Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong

What's it take for an engineer in the US to actually do something like this?

If my boss/product manager wanted me to do something like this, I'd be calling them out for shitty politics, and telling them they need to find a new engineer because I'd quit immediately - and likely incite others to come with me.

Maybe I have a higher sense of morality than others, but I'm no shill for China's power over Taiwan. I can use my entitlement/privilege as an engineer to say "fuck off" to anyone who wants me to do things I find immoral. Furthering the needs of a power hungry regime looking to assert dominance over others? Nope. I spend all my day working to further democracy and freedom, not to enable free thought and self-determination to be squashed.

Whoever coded this change and approved this PR, shame on you.

> What's it take for an engineer in the US to actually do something like this?

What makes you think that it was an engineer in the US who made the change? Apple's got employees all over the world, including in China. If anything, my first guess was the update was made from a team based in shanghai or shenzhen, since the emoji is already banned there.

I'm absolutely 100% certain that someone in the US was aware of this change, and signed off on it. What I'm saying is that there is no circumstance in which I'd personally do that, and as someone who is comparatively "rich" worldwide as an engineer, I have that luxury of putting my foot down and not doing it. I can have a new job tomorrow that probably pays me yet more.

I don't blame anyone who is making $30k a year for going along with bad-politics at a company. But if you're making over 100k a year as an engineer? Yea, I hold you accountable for your actions and implementing bad politics.