867 karma · joined January 7, 2014
I also think only supporting larger movements is the wrong way to go about things. The more local the problem, the more impact you can have on it. Support Medicare for All? That's certainly good to do if you feel that's right, but that's going to be a long, drawn-out battle. Paying your nanny a little bit more? That's very easy to do and can immediately improve someone's life.
Also, given how often Uber is brought up in these forums for ignoring/breaking local laws, I really would not be surprised to find that they have committed real crimes. I would be far more surprised if they had not.
It would be one thing if he never realized he was broadcasting publicly. Once you realize something is public and decide to leave it up, I think you lose any moral authority to claim others shouldn't have any fair use claim to your public work.
But net worth has everything to do with risk. A person worth $1 million putting up all $1 million is risking everything he has. A person worth $1 billion probably won't even notice if he loses $1 million. There's almost no risk to him if he loses that money.
I think it's really easy to look at something from the outside and think "how hard could that really be?" I bet if you asked someone who wasn't in CS how hard an identity management system is, they wouldn't think it is all that hard. Only once you get into the details do the challenges become apparent, and I suspect that's very true for bakeries as well.
So given that it's not very hard to make the arguments that standing up for privacy might be or might not be a good financial decision, why would you think the decision Tim Cook chose had absolutely nothing to do with his life experiences?
EDIT: Another comment chain had this quote from Tim Cook in a shareholders meeting that I think illustrates my point. From https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/tim-cook-soundly-rej...:
""When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind," he said, "I don't consider the bloody ROI." He said that the same thing about environmental issues, worker safety, and other areas where Apple is a leader."