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Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong

(blog.emojipedia.org)
1456 points pulisse | 3 comments | 07 Oct 19 16:24 UTC | HN request time: 0.005s | source
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tibbon ◴[07 Oct 19 18:36 UTC] No.21184395[source]▶
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.

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1. AmericanChopper ◴[07 Oct 19 19:23 UTC] No.21184916[source]▶
If you apply the idea that in order to work for a company that you must ethically agree with every single one of its decisions and associations consistently, you’ll end up with absolutely nowhere to work. This comment doesn’t represent a principled stance, only a case of moral outrage (and over an emoji). If you actually behaved like this, you’d get fired, and somebody else would simply ship this simple change (that really doesn’t hurt anybody anyway) without any further drama.
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2. tibbon ◴[07 Oct 19 20:42 UTC] No.21185749[source]▶
I used to think that, but after long searching I have found that there are actually companies (often non-profits, but not always) that do hold reasonable morals.

If this act didn't stand to hurt anyone, why did China care in the first place so much? Let's look at the converse, what does having a flag in a phone do that hurts China?

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3. AmericanChopper ◴[07 Oct 19 20:57 UTC] No.21185864[source]▶
China is a totalitarian regime. Any form of expression against their authority hurts them. Not complying with their demands would hurt Apple who want to do business with them.

Your response doesn’t really address the issue though. Say you can find a company that conforms most to your own moral standards (which is already unlikely, depending on where you arbitrarily choose to draw that line), that’s not good enough. You need to find a company that meets those standards, that only does business with other companies who also meet those standards, and only employs people who again meet those standards. That’s simply not realistic in any way.

The real answer to this question is that in order to participate in society, you need to accept that you’re going to have to interact with people you disagree with. Otherwise you can choose between trying to exclude all those you disagree with, or excluding yourself. Neither of which are tenable. If a company goes further than you’re willing to participate in, then your only option is to not work for them. Anybody working at Apple today likely started knowing that Apple did business with China. If they can’t handle that they should leave, and prepare themselves for a difficult job search for a company that doesn’t. But trying to force others to make the same decision is just completely unreasonable.