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Comment by londons_explore | Hacker News Reader

Pick between the news headlines:

* Apple car found to have transported terrorists to sabotage Capitol building. Should those with morals be boycotting Apple?

* Apple refuses service to terrorists. Apple tries to hold the country together and keep peace.

If you were Apple, and had to pick between those headlines, which would you pick? When your company is built on your brand, it is suicide to associate yourself with something unpopular.

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Why should that be important?

Does anybody care about the brand of cars used in terrorist attacks and boycott those brands? Also remember the Toyota War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_War I don't think that was bad for the brand. Maybe it was even good advertising.

Ask yourself why you and your friends and family buy certain brands. The reasons aren't limited to just price, quality, and features. Marketing is a rabbit hole. Few if any people are completely immune to it.

The Taliban and other less savory groups drive Toyotas yet the demographics who cut ties the nanosecond they catch a whiff of wrong-think still love the brand. In fact, they go so far as to spin it as an endorsement.

Why wouldn't apple get the same treatment? Its other products are known as high quality status symbols the world over. You don't see people up in arms because a public execution in some developing nation was filmed on an iPhone.

It might have something to do with the fact Toyata has literally no ability to enforce driver usage.

If they really cared, they would implement such tracking technology.

Its 2021. There is literally no reason for _anything_ to be sold without the ability to tell if $BAD_PERSON is using it and self-destruct if so. You're a terrorist if you disagree.

/s, but not for long.

So, how long before they have to address the current pandemonium of their vehicles roaming free on a generous 24-hour notice, given that Toyota's Mobility Services Platform is hosted on AWS?

Tbh the tech on those vehicles is really outdated stuff. No computers, no tracking chips, nothing.

Sourcr:- my Dad's 2002 Corolla is in Yemen

An interesting consequence of the "safe" possibility. You would not be able to just come and watch some events out of curiosity.

Several years ago, my GPS coordinates would indicate that I took part in a certain rather weird demo. The thing is, I just stood a few meters away taking photos, because some of the participants were ... bizarre to say the least.

I am not sure if this excuse would help me in 2021.

> * Apple car found to have transported terrorists to sabotage Capitol building. Should those with morals be boycotting Apple?

Why is there any reason to believe this would be a headline? Even ISIS using Toyotas didn't have any serious repercussions for Toyota.

I know cancel culture has gotten itself pretty ingrained into society, but this is flat out insane.

Once the ability to remotely brick a car becomes a possibility, people will expect it. For now, Toyota can't do a thing to their cars when someone else is using it, so no one holds them to that standard.

Nobody expects Apple to brick the iPhone of $BAD_PERSON

True. I wonder if something like this happens in China though.

You'd have to extend it to taxis, Uber / Lyft, and any other form of provided transportation.

Should the subway train skip that stop?

You do whatever you want and then ban anything and anybody publishing anti-Apple headlines in your platforms. Win win!

Who decides who is a terrorist ?

You’ve just handed over the role of government to Apple.

Or all the big tech companies could ban every journalist outlet that commits sedition by publishing negative headlines.

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