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Comment by sriku | Hacker News Reader

Apple stood for privacy in the US where privacy is part of law. It didn't stand by privacy in China where privacy in some forms is prohibited as part of law. Asserting the US law in China would discount China's sovereignty, implicitly declaring "your principles are inferior to ours".

A global company needs to be sensitive to these political/cultural differences and accommodate them. Even in the US where "privacy" is part of law, the legal system recently ruled that Facebook can continue to track users online even when they're logged out. So pretending that the privacy issue is one of "morality" is just borrowing the emotional power of the "morality" label for something that is not a universal law on the planet ... not even within aspects of the US. It is not different from a middle-eastern global company offering christmas discounts for its products in western countries, or Amazon not selling banned books in the countries they operate, or selling books on witchcraft and sorcery as though the books were of the same standing as, say, Principia Mathemtica.

Permitted? Do. Not permitted? Don't. ... unless the goal of your company is to champion a particular political ideology. So, frankly, this NYTimes article is, from a global perspective, "politically incorrect".

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This amount of cultural relativism is silly and frankly just plain ignorant. China doesn't restrict free speech for cultural reasons. The CCP restricts free speech because it fears losing its ruling status.

>The CCP restricts free speech because it fears losing its ruling status.

And that's China's own problem (or lack thereof) as a sovereign nation, not something for Apple or the US to decide.

Not every country wants (or even works better) with a US style system, and interventionism has led to disastrous results in the not that far past.

Apple is still a US company at the end of the day. If it makes profits from supporting censorship in China, that makes it a US problem.

One way to not have that problem is to let China has its own Apple - how's that for non-interventionism and non-colonialism?

>Apple is still a US company at the end of the day. If it makes profits from supporting censorship in China, that makes it a US problem.

In what possible way does it make it a US problem?

Besides, western companies make tons of money by selling arms, doing deals, and supporting all kinds of regimes, including the most abhorrent ones, from Pinochet's Chile to S.A.

Western people object to a lot of that, too.

Here, we're objecting to Apple's behaviour.

Because the actor deriving benefits from those profits is in our jurisdiction.

(I also wonder if they pay US taxes off any of these profits?)

That means every single nation would have to have its own company in every industry. No US food company would operate in Europe by this standard. And no Chinese Companies should sell anything back to US due to what you just describe.

It wouldn't have to. It would have to decide whether having its own distinct and incompatible basic values is worth it.

Yup. https://gwydionwilliams.com/99-problems-magazine/why-chinas-...

So was apartheid.

Apartheid was the result of white western settlers screwing and mistreating over the local black population, after the region got colonized.

This is a single country, with its own culture, history and tradition, minding its own affairs.

And blacks were clearly against apartheid and fighting fiercely for decades. Have you talked to many locals in China and found out they were against their regime?

> Have you talked to many locals in China and found out they were against their regime?

The ones whose opinion would be interesting are in prison, or no longer locals.

There are whole bookshelves of books describing the wholesome family and city life people "on the right side" in Nazi Germany engaged in. They had their pleasures, their had their excuses, and I care not for either. The phrase "whitewashed tombs" comes to mind.

> blacks were clearly against apartheid

Blacks? Or "the blacks"? Because I'm sure I could find you Uncle Toms, there's always some. And since I also could find you people fighting against the Chinese regimes since Mao, the sentence "Chinese were clearly against oppression" would also be correct and we achieved nothing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1...

Really, the nerve. Did I ask the dead if they are against their regime?

Similarly, as a German I flat out don't care much for people from the GDR who aren't dissing it. I don't care if that was their "culture" (what a totally empty word, it's like a void pointer). They survived it with their blinders intact, and that says something about them, not the GDR. I feel the same way about "the West" before anyone asks, but that doesn't mean I find more backwards tyrannies cute. I don't need to borrow their blind eyes to see what I see, and if I have to be against thousands of them to be for those I HAVE to be for to not spit out when I look in the mirror, so be it. The more, the merrier.

> Have you talked to many locals in China and found out they were against their regime?

I actually have. In fact, every single one that I talked with was against their regime.

The Chinese culture is not the victim here. The "evil whites" are not trying to mess with the eastern cultures in this case. Instead, the Chinese people are the victims, victims of the fascist regime that rules over them.

>And blacks were clearly against apartheid and fighting fiercely for decades. Have you talked to many locals in China and found out they were against their regime? No, they were all killed decades ago. Why does it matter if it is black vs white or chinese vs chinese? Sounds like a double standard to me.

>Why does it matter if it is black vs white or chinese vs chinese? Sounds like a double standard to me.

Because (a) the whites were colonizers, where Chinese are at home in China. And because in apartheid it was whites against blacks, whereas in China it's not "chinese vs chinese" -- chinese in general LIKE their government.

I don't think the Chinese citizens have a choice about whether they say they like their government or not. The Hundred Flowers Campaign was pretty brutal.

While I agree with attempts to prevent governments from controlling speech, have spent a fair amount of time working on that, and was disturbed by Apple's role here, I don't think the dichotomy you present works as cleanly as you suggest. State power and culture shape and reinforce each other in an extremely complex way.

That's true. I lived in China for a few years and was surprised to find out that most people seemed relatively (if not very) happy with the CCP. Ignorance plays a role but it's mainly that they value economic growth (and therefore, political stability) over anything else. Free speech would be nice but when you go from near starvation to owning a house and a car, you learn what economic growth does and start to value it.

> I lived in China for a few years and was surprised to find out that most people seemed relatively (if not very) happy with the CCP.

What happens if you make your displeasure with the CCP known publically?

Assuming it was a rhetorical question: I am basing my observation on many private conversations I had over the years (e.g. with my wife). I think most foreigners in China would agree with this as well.

In case your question wasn't rhetorical: nothing would happen. That is, unless you were a very public figure or made it your life's mission. Fun fact: China has a very low incarceration rate, about 15% that of the USA. It's not like people are getting thrown in jail right and left for opening their mouth.

I know, it's a hard pill to swallow.

China has a lower incarceration rate, but they also have a higher rate of execution. Even for things like drug trafficking (which most of the US prison population consists of). These stricter punishments surely make people more afraid of breaking the law...and I'm sure many chinese are justifiably afraid of speaking out due to fear of the consequences. So the fact that there is a smaller prisoner population isn't that great when considering there are harsher penalties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_China

I know, it's a hard pill to swallow.

I agree that incarceration rates alone don't paint the whole picture. The "hard pill to swallow" was that Chinese people don't value free speech as much as we do, even if you account for the deterrents. That's a hard pill to swallow, at least to a person like me who values free speech.

>These stricter punishments surely make people more afraid of breaking the law

Actually, far from surely.

>Fun fact: China has a very low incarceration rate, about 15% that of the USA. It's not like people are getting thrown in jail right and left for opening their mouth.

That's not a good comparison. You would need to compare stats for number of people thrown in jail for speaking out against the government.

The US has the idiotic war on drugs and terrible recidivism driven by bad incentives to thank for its high incarceration rate.

The thing is though that the economic growth came after, and as a result of, the market deregulations and special economic zones instituted by the Deng administration. The founding principles of the CCP has been proven not to work in China, they led to millions of people starving to death and a huge brain drain to the US, Europe, Hong Kong and Taiwan the effects of which are still felt today.

So, I wonder if it's not all ignorance. I just don't see how anyone with access to uncensored history books can give credit to the CCP for the economic growth. Surely they could tell that Taiwan, also a Chinese country, has a far better track record when it comes to economic growth and the well being of their population (not to say that the Kuomintang has a squeaky clean record)?

They could also tell that there are a number of countries with fresh democracies that have fared a lot worse (See the entirety of eastern Europe for instance).

The view that "Meh, it could be worse" is the one that's been most prevalent among those who I've talked to about the issue. As mentioned higher up in the thread, it's easy to look the other way when it comes to a couple of human rights crimes when your family has gone from starvation to owning cars and apartments in skyscrapers in less than a generation.

Not to steer this completely off topic, but despite a lot of setbacks in Poland, Hungary and Russia the economic situation post USSR in Eastern Europe has been tremendous (Poland was the only country in the EU not to suffer negative growth in the Great Recession), the political rights to the citizens (such as being able to vote for more than one party), the freedom of the press increases (even in Poland, despite the recent setback with government intervention in public service media) is far beyond what China has mustered since the Deng deregulations started in the early 80s.

If you're Polish or even Russian you are far more likely to have a nice car, food on the table, a nice house, the ability to blog about whatever interests you, read what you want and even run for office than if you're a citizen of the PRC. So, again, it sounds like it's mostly ignorance, or expectations that democracies never experience setbacks.

People in general will tolerate restrictive systems as long as they are economically compensated or economic system is humming. The most authoritarian regimes, use fear but the most used tactic is to "payoff" the "village elders". If a dictator yielded the kind of break-neck growth that China experienced in any Western country, there is a good chance people will put up with it. The problem is when the growth dies, and the gravy train stops. How will CCP handle a low growth system? By becoming more authoritarian, that is what is happening in China with corruption purges.

While you may be right about the CCP's motives, China has its own long history of political thought, including the correct role of the State and public dissent. Guess what? For the vast majority of Chinese history, rulers viewed public dissent as tantamount to open rebellion and reacted accordingly.

Political systems are in part products of their culture. Free speech is not part of the cultural or political history of China, as it is in the West.

>Free speech is not part of the cultural or political history of China

And that has absolutely no impact on whether or not free speech is a fundamental human right. There's many examples of cultures with abhorrent traditions. It doesn't make them just and that's why many of those cultures reject those traditions today.

>And that has absolutely no impact on whether or not free speech is a fundamental human right.

Only you don't get to decide what's a "fundamental human right" for others (something that's based on one's own culture and, when intervened and enforced, is often interpreted by their own national interests -- like "bringing democracy").

Not to mention that what's "free speech" is not clear cut, most EU countries for example have totally different laws than the US, and you can land in jail or be hit with a hefty fine for stuff that's considered as protected by "free speech" in the US, and they consider it totally fine.

>There's many examples of cultures with abhorrent traditions. It doesn't make them just and that's why many of those cultures reject those traditions today.

Well, until China rejects their traditions, it's not for other countries to dictate it to them.

> Only you don't get to decide what's a "fundamental human right" for others

If you accept the concept of "fundamental human rights", then it seems to me that they are rights that are derived from the simple fact of being a human, regardless of what your culture or rulers currently impose on you, and which you accept axiomatically. That is what makes them "fundamental", rather than just the (larger) set of normal rights afforded to you by your state.

I could easily see things like having the right to not be held as a slave as belonging to such a fundamental set.

> Not to mention that what's "free speech" is not clear cut, most EU countries for example have totally different laws than the US

I think the issue is more about how much trespassing on the freedom of speech is allowed by different jurisdictions. Even in Europe very few argue that holocaust denial laws, or blasphemy laws are not a trespass on freedom of speech. It is just that many accept them. And many, including myself, do not, because it has had a chilling effect of public discourse on many important issues.

Consider the disaster that happened in Iraq when the US wanted to export democracy there.

Or how the Arab Spring devolved into brutal civil wars.

It's not tenable to pretend that western values can be separated from western culture and exported to other cultures as-is.

It doesn't work.

> Consider the disaster that happened in Iraq when the US wanted to export democracy there.

...by force.

For the vast majority of Spanish history, rulers viewed public dissent as tantamount to open rebellion and reacted accordingly. Same with most European countries, if not all.

And how many hundreds of years and how much blood was spilled before the principles of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution took root in Europe? Would it have happened faster if instead external parties tried to push it on Europeans?

The current spell of freedom in Spain isn't the culmination of some positive trend that developed through the centuries.

50 years ago we had less freedom than the Chinese have today. Then the tyrant died of old age, and the absolute monarch that succeeded him decided democracy was the way to go.

Latin American countries have the same cultural roots as Spain. They were part of Spain for more centuries than they've been independent; and even after independence the cultural exchange has been continuous. Today, some are free, and some like Cuba or Venezuela are tyrannies.

That fatalism about some cultures not being ready for freedom is too simplistic when faced with the details of reality. The Chinese of Hong Kong and Taiwan handled freedom no problem; one from within, the other "pushed on them" by the British.

It seems very unlikely that Spain would have immediately adopted a stable, multiparty parliamentary democracy after Franco if it were not literally surrounded by a community of European nations that it interacted with intimately.

The right to self determination for every nation is the bedrock of the international system that Europeans created after centuries of bloody religious strife. Not sure how Hong Kong is a great example, unless you're proposing to go back to the days of colonialism and Westerners imposing their rules and values by force.

> Free speech is not part of the cultural or political history of China, as it is in the West.

This is not at all unique to Chinese culture - It is and has been the universal argument of dictators and oppressors worldwide. Putin uses it in Russia these days.

The claim is belied by Taiwan and Hong Kong, two indisputably Chinese places where free speech is highly valued. The idea that it's a Western value at all is belied by places like Japan, South Korea, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey (until recently) and endless more nations and cultures. Protestors in Iran and throughout the Mideast and into N. Africa in the Arab Spring risked (and many paid with) their lives for it. And very rarely does anyone with a choice vote to be rid of it.

It's widely considered a universal human value, and I think the evidence is overwhelming in support of that.

This is called culturalism. Saying X is not for race Y is racism. Saying that X is not for culture Y is culturalism. There is really not that much difference here. Because I am Chinese/Saudi/Russian etc. in no way implies that I, or my culture, does not value such a basic right as free speech

I don't understand the point you're trying to make. Is it culturalism to say that Western cultures value free speech? If you just wanted to say that parent was wrong that Chinese don't value free speech, why the diatribe about culturalism and racism?

You also haven't really put forward any argument that the Chinese value free speech - you can make a base argument that it's valued in some Western countries because they've codified it in their laws - most notably the FA in the US(it's questionable how much this "basic right" is respected in reality). Calling it a "basic right" is culturalism by your own definition, as you apply your own cultural values(whatever they may be) over the whole of humanity. What makes you think humanity as a whole values this "basic right"? Millions of people live in countries where free speech is not as important as religion, for example, and blasphemy laws exist.

You seem to omit that's possible that we have universal pricinciples that's superior to whatever culture. You can attain these principles via philosophy. Any individuals can rediscover the values of free speech, freedom of government arbitrary, freedoms of thoughts and actions by just reflexion itself.

One cannot disassociate philosophical principles with the culture and history that brought about it.

By claiming there's some Universal Principal that's superior is basically saying that you're own beliefs and culture (presumably the one and the same as the proported Universal Principle) is superior.

This isn't mathematics where there's some objective truth.

>This is called culturalism. Saying X is not for race Y is racism. Saying that X is not for culture Y is culturalism.

You can give a name to anything, and call it a no-no, but that doesn't make it wrong. There are nuances, and there's also the matter of who gives the name, and under what premises.

>Because I am Chinese/Saudi/Russian etc. in no way implies that I, or my culture, does not value such a basic right as free speech

Actually it does. Many cultures value other things over and above free speech or individual freedom, like cooperation and social cohesion. Try selling the Japanese your "universal idea" of free speech in social situations for example...

It's funny how the "fundamental" rights projected to others as "universal" are often the rights and cultural preferences that are characterizing and championed by one's own culture.

"Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature." (G. Bernard Shaw, Julius Caesar)

What if you say that one culture is inferior to another? What's that called?

This is difficult water to navigate.

Free speech, privacy and access to a free press are part of the legal and constitutional/meta-legal framework for many democratic systems of government. In principle and in practice. There are laws in the US guaranteeing these freedoms, and hundreds of years of common law supporting and interpreting them.

Subverting those freedoms in the US, is subverting the US' system of government, and ilegal. There are (as they demonstrated) legal channels to defending their users' rights within the US' legal framework because they exist in the US' legal system.

There are philosphical elements to this, universal & inalienable rights and freedoms. But, these are philosophical. In the US, Apple acted at the legal level, with a legal argument not a philosophical one.

China is not a democracy. These rights are not a part of their system of government and there is no legal way to defend rights that are not recognized in that country. This is not some postmodernist or nihilist relativism. It's just recognizing that different laws and rights exist in different countries.

I'm not sure what you expect from Apple. They could pull out of China altogether, on the grounds that China's laws are too immoral. They could try to promote their idea of what a government should be and what rights citizens should have. This amounts to calling for a revolution.

I don't think this is a reasonable expectation of a company. I don't think it will lead to a good place either. Apple are a computer company, not a revolutionary movement (1984 ad notwithstanding). The revolutionaries need to be (or not to be) Chinese citizens, not foreign companies.

The argument isn't that the lack of political freedom in China is tolerable because that's just how Chinese culture is, but rather that corporations must not be the ones deciding which laws are applicable where.

>corporations must not be the ones deciding which laws are applicable where.

This is literally restating this:

>the lack of political freedom in China is tolerable because that's just how Chinese culture is

Who decides when and where it is okay to disobey laws that restrict freedom/privacy? If not the modern day multi-nation states of corporations, who? Serfs?

I call us people. You calling me serf tell much about your own mindset...

You are missing the analogy in the previous sentence to that word, which does not demean people in the least. It should tell you what I think of the Chinese government.

In this case, literally the Chinese people.

>>> The CCP restricts free speech because it fears losing its ruling status.

They don't have any fear about that. The CCP is widely supported and deeply entrenched in Chinese society. This is just about preventing civil unrest/promoting a "harmonious society".

The Chinese govt are firm believers of 'give'em an inch and they'll take a mile'

Actually this much is quite reasonable.

Unreasonable cultural relativism would be something like, pretending that child sacrifice is ok.

There's no reason to believe that absolute privacy and absolute freedom are universal objective moral values.

Apple is free to this move for business reasons, that is certainly true. But they can no longer also claim the moral high ground as a defender of personal liberty. Human rights do not stop at international borders. They cannot have it both ways.

Apple never challenged actual law. To quote the article:

> [Timothy D. Cook] made clear that Apple would obey American law — but only after trying to shape the law.

In the case of China here, the law was already passed. Apple is just conforming to the law.

Apple has been using privacy as a marketing tool. But apparently it will go no further than that. Privacy seems to be useful to Apple only if it can be used as a marketing tool, otherwise it's discarded as fast as some "offensive app" in the app store.

Great contrast to Google deciding to leave China.

You cant have an explicit define Set of Human Rights internationally.

Because most Chinese users are perfectly fine with the rule and law. They would rather follow what CCP said and have an Apple product.

You're right. That's why neither iMessage nor FaceTime use encryption in china. Because they don't care.

Oh wait, Apple still uses into end encryption in China for both of those so that the Government Camp spy on people.

Getting rid of VPN apps is part of staying in China. So the question you have to ask is which is better for Apple to do: stay trying out without VPNs but keeping their consumer products encrypted whenever possible, or keep VPNs in the store and get all their products kicked out of the country.

If Apple gets kicked out, the no one gets to use VPNs on their iPhones. They don't get to use iPhones at all. They lose the encryption of iMessage in FaceTime.

(and the board may not let them pull out of China to anyway)

Facetime is blocked in china, and I'm willing to bet that the non-sms part of iMessage is blocked as well...

But there's nothing wrong with staying in China to increase profits, it's their biggest market after all.

> Facetime is blocked in china, and I'm willing to bet that the non-sms part of iMessage is blocked as well..

Both these facts are false according to the article we're discussing.

Just got back from 9 days in China. My observation is that some services are blocked on local Sim card yet available on international ones.

Citation needed.

I don't think this logic holds. Apple and Amazon both spend millions every year on lobbying. I don't think their attempt at influencing policy has to do with championing a particular political ideology.

These companies don't follow required business practices out of a political sensitivity or an underlying respect for sovereignty, they do so because it is financially expedient and they demonstrate an eager willingness to modify those legislated business practices when presented a route to do so.

exactly. Outsourcing foreign politics or issues of morality to a business is both harmful (because that's arguably not what a company's task is or ought to be) and it circumvents Chinese law.

If issues of privacy in China are very important to you electing officials who's foreign policy reflects that is a better idea.

> Outsourcing foreign politics or issues of morality to a business is both harmful (because that's arguably not what a company's task is or ought to be)

Or in other words, corporations should at all costs be faceless?

Is it wrong, then, that Tim Cook uses his CEO creds to rally for LBGT rights? Should companies stop meddling with politics by pushing back against encryption backdoors? Should companies use every harmful additive that's not yet illegal to please shareholders?

that's arguably not what a company's task is or ought to be

Ok, argue it. Why should a company, as a member of the society it's based in, be above criticism for taking immoral actions just because they happen somewhere else?

And does that apply to any immoral action, or do you draw a line?

> And does that apply to any immoral action, or do you draw a line?

You're arguing in circles here. Immoral is in the eye of the beholder, culturally, so by defining something as "immoral" you're just labelling it as "bad" and asking somebody to justify decisions. That's a loaded question and a cheap rhetorical technique.

You could make an argument that since most governed people in China don't mind that they have limited freedom of speech, there is nothing immoral about it. It's not like there are riots breaking out in the streets often

No, I'm asking under Barrin92's own moral code: if there's nothing Apple could do that Barrin92 would find morally abhorrent and worth criticizing Apple for, assuming it was legal in the other country.

It's not like there are riots breaking out in the streets often

That's a funny position. So if the people actually hated it, but the State's repression mechanisms kept them in line, it would be moral?

I'm saying regardless of what my or someone elses moral positions are, businesses are not the right body to carry them out.

Apple is a business, not a governmental or civic institution. And to answer your question, of course Apple could do things that I consider morally abhorrent (even if they happen to be legal), but it is the public's and the respective governments job to set out the laws, it's not the job of Apple's CEO.

The Eichmann defense for corporations. Lovely.

> unless the goal of your company is to champion a particular political ideology

The "Eichmann pathology" is even worse than most ideologies, since the content of the ideologies can change, but the conformism does not. By that logic, the problem with making deals with, say, the Nazis, was that it was illegal during war, nothing else, and if a company requires acceptance of that to exist, I require that company to not exist.

> for something that is not a universal law on the planet

Yes, and? Is there a universal law "on the planet" that you should only act according to some imaginary universal laws? Is there an universal law that a company should not "champion an ideology", or that companies just have to operate globally? Why can't people be restricted to acting in circles they are accountable in, why is that such a crazy idea?

> a particular political ideology

"Ideologies" are not equally valid; morality is a real, very serious and important thing. Some ideologies promote oppression or even mass murder. And the value of liberty is not the same as the value of Christmas discounts.

Freedom to pursue your own ideology (as long as it doesn't hurt others) is widely considered a universal human right. Let's not pretend we can't see why, even if some want to disagree.

> A global company needs to be sensitive to these political/cultural differences and accommodate them.

Global companies are instrumental in transmitting western values to the rest of the world. You can't antagonize host countries but at the same time you can't ignore the arc of the moral universe.

Domestically, a great example is the economic repercussion for southern states that tried to pass trans bathroom laws. Companies didn't worry about "respecting political/cultural differences." They did what was right.

So by that logic, Chinese companies should push Chinese values on the rest of the world. Are you okay with that? And if not, what makes Western values special? Absent an independent moral authority (i.e. God of some sort), there's no way to say that Western values even should be spread. Absent an independent moral authority, pushing your values on everyone else is exactly what the Chinese government is doing.

The trans bathroom laws are a good example. What makes your position "right"? The other position happens to go against some of your core values (presumably), but that doesn't make it "wrong." Maybe your core values are "wrong" or at least incomplete.

There's a lot of people that are trying to push their values on people under the guise of "it's right." Ironically, these people will say they want people to have the freedom to live the way they want. Trans bathrooms, homosexual marriage: well, maybe I don't want to live in a world where I have to put up with that. Too bad, I don't get a choice, because "it's right."

You'd better have concrete direction from the independent moral authority (i.e. God) if you're going to push your values on other people, because otherwise it's just intolerant. "I feel strongly about this" != "it's right"

> what makes Western values special? Absent an independent moral authority (i.e. God of some sort), there's no way to say that Western values even should be spread.

That's a philosophical challenge but not a real argument. Obviously we can, we do, and we must make moral distinctions despite the handicap of our lack of omniscience.

One way we do it is by the use of reason, which separates humans from beasts and our current world from the Dark Ages. There are arguments against the universality of these values, but the one above isn't one of them.

If Chinese law required Apple to hand over names and locations of its users for mass executions, obviously the moral relativism argument wouldn't hold. The issue here is that VPNs are a less clear moral issue - obviously it would be better if Chinese people had free speech, but is it worth Apple fighting a battle for it? Another way to ask: Is it ok for Apple to sacrifice their rights in order to make more money?

I'll also point out that the values are not "Western", but universal. The people of Taiwan and Hong Kong strongly embrace these values. As do the people of India, Japan, South Korea, most South American countries, South Africa, all the protestors of the Arab Spring from Iran to North Africa, etc. The only people who say otherwise are the dictators and oppressors, who conveniently find that their cultures are not conducive to freedom (Putin is making the same argument these days - it's a universal value of dictators).

I think the moral obligation to make the world a better place trumps the need to be tolerant or accommodating.

My family is from Bangladesh. My cousin, who is a woman, moved to Australia. She's way happier in a society that allows freedom and equal participation to women. She, in particular, had chaffed at the social restrictions imposed on women in Bangladesh. I don't need to invoke God to realize which way is better.

Bangladesh is an interesting example because it was founded on western principles: a secular democracy with freedom of religion, women's suffrage, etc. Over the years those ideals have been chipped away. In my view, people who equivocate on westernization, or apologize for the forces that oppose westernization under the banner of tolerance, in Bangladesh are doing something profoundly immoral. They take responsibility for depriving people of happiness and prosperity.

> You'd better have concrete direction from the independent moral authority (i.e. God) if you're going to push your values on other people, because otherwise it's just intolerant. "I feel strongly about this" != "it's right"

Adding an objectively unverifiable external actor to whom you have ascribed the role a of moral arbiter and your belief that they feel strongly about a moral point to the equation doesn't really help anything compared to you feeling strongly about it yourself.

You'd better have concrete direction from the independent moral authority (i.e. God) if you're going to push your values on other people, because otherwise it's just intolerant.

There's a universal declaration of human rights. It's a pretty decent attempt at a starting point for non-divine moral authority.

Some values are better than other. It's not a popular statement when phrased that way, but every person in the world effectively asserts that every time they judge someone - you can't judge unless you apply some standards, and even when they're not own (e.g. "dura lex sed lex"), you're still exercising judgment in adopting them.

If you're still uncomfortable with this notion, ask yourself if you're okay with punishing (or deterring, or rehabilitating) murderers. If you answered "yes", then you believe that "murder is okay" is not a good value proposition, and "murder is wrong" is strictly better.

And no, you don't need a God for that. You can just say "I believe these values are better, as a matter of faith". You don't need to believe God or any other supernatural entities to have some moral axioms - case in point is The Satanic Temple, which has its tenets: https://thesatanictemple.com/about-us/tenets/ - but doesn't believe in supernatural.

They did what was right.

They did what was popular. That it was right was a coincidence.

> So pretending that the privacy issue is one of "morality"

You lost me there. Privacy is a human right. Would Apple be silent if China tortured gay people, too, because of "cultural differences" and just because it's trying to add an extra billion dollar to its balance sheet?

Now I can understand the argument that as a for-profit corporation Apple is "neutral" to the laws in various countries. But to take it much further say that privacy is not important - well, that's where I disagree completely. Some countries care about respecting human rights, others don't. That doesn't mean human rights are not important because some large economic powers don't respect them. Otherwise the US may have never abolished slavery either, if it was "all the same" and human rights didn't matter or were "relative" from the viewer's perspective.

> Would Apple be silent if China tortured gay people, too, because of "cultural differences" They do, in Saudi Arabia & Qatar.

I'm actually quite sympathetic to moral absolutism/moral arc arguments. I'm a moral realist.

What I find hilarious is people suggesting America or most american companies are in any position to export values to anybody.

Sure, I have no problem with that. But then it goes both way, the same companies should stop virtue signaling at home every times they disagree with a social policy enactment.

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