Hong Kong legislator urges Tim Cook to put 'values over profits, pls!'

Posted:
in General Discussion
Hong Kong's IT legislator has written an open letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, and is urging him to unban the controversial HKMap Live, citing freedom of expression and citizens' safety as chief concerns.

Charles Mok asks Apple to reinstate HKMap Live


HKMap Live has been the subject of a lot of controversy over the past week. The police-monitoring app was removed for a short while before being reinstated--only to be removed once again.

The app provided crowdsourced information about the known location of police, to allow users to avoid areas where protester and police conflicts could potentially take place. Others have claimed that it allows criminals to avoid the police, and some sources have said it has been used to target individual officers for violence.

Hong Kong's IT legislator, Charles Mok, has now penned an open letter to Tim Cook expressing his dismay at Apple's choice to remove HKMap Live from the App Store. Like many others, Mok believes in the developers' intentions, and that the app was helping to prevent users from being caught in conflicts.

"There are numerous cases of innocent passersby in the neighborhood injured by the Hong Kong Police Force's excessive force in crowd dispersal operations," the letter reads. "Users are merely sharing location information with the app to arrange their own transportation route and protect themselves from indiscriminate use of tear gas and confrontations."

Today I wrote to Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, to tell him his company's decision to remove HKmap live app from Appstore will cause problems for normal Hong Kong's citizens trying to avoid police presence while they are under constant fear ofpolice brutality. Values over profits, pls! pic.twitter.com/guaBfV8Pnf

-- Charles Mok (@charlesmok)


He ends the letter by telling Tim Cook that he hopes Apple will choose to support its users rather than the Chinese government.

"As a long-time user of Apple products and services, I highly appreciate that Apple has been championing freedom of expression as one of the corporation's tenets. I sincerely hope Apple will choose to support its users and stop banning HKmap.live simply out of political reason or succumbing to China's influence like other American companies appear to be doing."

Earlier this week, Tim Cook had sent out a company-wide memo saying that he defends the decision to finally remove HKMap Live from the App Store once and for all.

HKMap Live is not the only app to be removed from the Chinese App Store in recent times, either. Quartz, a news app that featured extensive coverage of the Hong Kong protests, had been removed from the Chinese App Store earlier this week.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 65
    Timmy always put profit over values. Had he not, many things at Apple would have looked different.
    wozwozmuthuk_vanalingamcat52ravnorodomsvanstromNam3lesschemengin1
  • Reply 2 of 65
    Supporting violence for personal political gain, not much better or worse than Trump! Tim is just being responsible and not meddling in foreign domestic politics, per US Congress and public opinion.
    lkruppGeorgeBMacradarthekatchaickaravnorodom
  • Reply 3 of 65
    slurpyslurpy Posts: 5,382member
    ElCapitan said:
    Timmy always put profit over values. Had he not, many things at Apple would have looked different.
    I'm betting Tim Cook has stronger values than you could ever attain in 10 lifetimes. Not sure what your statement even means. In the context of big tech companies, I can't think of one that generally has better values than Apple, in a whole host of areas.
    edited October 2019 Soliking editor the grateStrangeDaysAppleExposedGeorgeBMacdoctwelveGG1chaickajony0
  • Reply 4 of 65
    It's been said many times before, Apple can't influence policy or improve the conditions for the people of China/UAE/etc by being banned.
    Without iMessage/FaceTime/etc, the people of these regions have minimal options to communicate freely without interference from their government.

    It comes up a few times a year where Apple has to remove content due to conflicts with the local laws and they don't do this lightly.
    I think people forget that individuals and businesses in China/UAE/etc do not share the same legal foundations to effectively challenge government requests. This is a strength of the legal systems in the USA and other western nations and a feature of true democracies. 

    It can be argued that any participation in these oppressive regions is immoral, and that the problem was created when entering the market, not with this particular conflict.

    As a side note: I see a lot of verbal posturing from people who can actually make a difference (e.g. US politicians) - yet everyone seems fixated on this company falling on its sword, damaging its business (it is a business remember) and doing the heavy lifting for all the people out there who need to understand what it means when they flip over a product and see the words "Made in China".
    edited October 2019 SoliStrangeDaysArloTimetravelerleavingthebiggJWSCchaickaFileMakerFellerjony0
  • Reply 5 of 65
    For Apple, based in the world unique land of self governing people, deception will have its own rewards such as self delusion.
  • Reply 6 of 65
    tzm41tzm41 Posts: 95member
    The Hong Kong legislature is the prime example of putting profits over values. They are almost useless for passing laws and regulations to protect the mass from the oligarchs, who control land supply, housing price, and profit distribution... Like Li Ka-shing basically robbed the dream out of all Hong Kongers, and now he moved away with his money.
  • Reply 7 of 65
    slurpy said:
    ElCapitan said:
    Timmy always put profit over values. Had he not, many things at Apple would have looked different.
    I'm betting Tim Cook has stronger values than you could ever attain in 10 lifetimes. Not sure what your statement even means. In the context of big tech companies, I can't think of one that generally has better values than Apple, in a whole host of areas.
    You could be a dude who throws a woman down a flight of stairs and then publicly jokes about it and Tim Cook will still do business with you.
    razorpitchemengin1
  • Reply 8 of 65
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,844member
    ElCapitan said:
    Timmy always put profit over values. Had he not, many things at Apple would have looked different.
    Patently false. From the accessibility to environmental initiatives*, Apple clearly does things that don’t concern it with regards to “the bloody bottom line”, as Cook himself defended them on an investor call. You literally have no idea what you’re talking about, again. 

    * both of which are best in the industry. With Catalina Apple just cracked it out of the park with accessibility. There is no other OS anywhere close on meaningful usability by those with a number of disabilities. And that they also roll these out in iOS shows they don’t just talk the talk, they walk the walk. At the expense of profit. 
    edited October 2019 AppleExposedGeorgeBMacJWSCbonobobbb-15
  • Reply 9 of 65
    Virtue signaling is easy PR for the fanboys and  delusional NPC out in America.  Americans are so delusional they will soak up any left wing bullshit that gets thrown their way.  But in China the rules are different so their obvious desire for big profit over value becomes very self evident, and evil.
    AppleExposedrazorpitElCapitancat52
  • Reply 10 of 65
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,844member

    slurpy said:
    ElCapitan said:
    Timmy always put profit over values. Had he not, many things at Apple would have looked different.
    I'm betting Tim Cook has stronger values than you could ever attain in 10 lifetimes. Not sure what your statement even means. In the context of big tech companies, I can't think of one that generally has better values than Apple, in a whole host of areas.
    You could be a dude who throws a woman down a flight of stairs and then publicly jokes about it and Tim Cook will still do business with you.
    More absurd nonsense. 
    doctwelveJWSC
  • Reply 11 of 65
    Ciprol said:
    Supporting violence for personal political gain, not much better or worse than Trump! Tim is just being responsible and not meddling in foreign domestic politics, per US Congress and public opinion.
    What is this bullshit?
    AppleExposedrazorpitJWSC
  • Reply 12 of 65
    It Would be great that there was a website that focused on Apple technology.
    doctwelveJWSCdewmeSpamSandwichcincymac
  • Reply 13 of 65
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member
    ElCapitan said:
    Timmy always put profit over values. Had he not, many things at Apple would have looked different.
    And for you it’s always Apple, right. No other CEOs do this, right? And I wonder if you put values over income in your own life. Would you take a 50% pay cut to work for a company you consider ethical. We are all hypocrites in some way. My financial advisor asked me, when I first established an account, if I had any ethical reasons for not investing in certain companies. My answer was an emphatic no. Oh, and Apple is now less than a billion away from catching Microsoft in the market cap race.
    edited October 2019
  • Reply 14 of 65
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member

    It Would be great that there was a website that focused on Apple technology.
    It’s all about the ad clicks, my boy, all about the ad clicks. 
    AppleExposedArloTimetravelerdoctwelve
  • Reply 15 of 65
    k2kwk2kw Posts: 2,075member
    As long as Most phones and computers are made in China the communistic government will be able to choke Cook’s chain.   Hopefully the trade war by Trump has made Cook Realize Apple needs to move lots of Manufacturing and assembly out of China to India and other Democratic countries.    Ideally Trump would pull us out of WTO.
    razorpitmaestro64tmaycat52
  • Reply 16 of 65
    DuhSesameDuhSesame Posts: 1,278member
    It's like the CCP knew what Apple would do, therefore they called them out.  They are using their weaknesses against them just like the NBA.

    Either way your corporate sucks, but the real deal is free from criticism.
  • Reply 17 of 65
    No idea why online trolls think this is a left/right issue. The current right wing U.S. administration isn't saying/doing much of anything about Hong Kong and has downplayed human rights as being an international concern of this country. It wasn't Tim Cook that removed the U.S. from the UN Human Rights Council. 
    ronn
  • Reply 18 of 65
    AppleExposedAppleExposed Posts: 1,805unconfirmed, member
    ElCapitan said:
    Timmy always put profit over values. Had he not, many things at Apple would have looked different.

    Apple is the last damn tech company who cares about the user and the environment.

    slurpy said:
    ElCapitan said:
    Timmy always put profit over values. Had he not, many things at Apple would have looked different.
    I'm betting Tim Cook has stronger values than you could ever attain in 10 lifetimes. Not sure what your statement even means. In the context of big tech companies, I can't think of one that generally has better values than Apple, in a whole host of areas.
    You could be a dude who throws a woman down a flight of stairs and then publicly jokes about it and Tim Cook will still do business with you.

    You're one of THOSE morons.....
    doctwelve
  • Reply 19 of 65
    lkrupp said:

    It Would be great that there was a website that focused on Apple technology.
    It’s all about the ad clicks, my boy, all about the ad clicks. 
    I will be stealing your quote!
  • Reply 20 of 65
    GeorgeBMacGeorgeBMac Posts: 11,421member
    When I saw the article I wondered:  "What is this???"
    When I got to the part where he said:  ""There are numerous cases of innocent passersby in the neighborhood injured by the Hong Kong Police Force's excessive force" -- I knew it was all political bullshit.   Hong Kong police have been incredibly patient and tolerant in the face of rioters destroying property and even attacking police with Molotov cocktails.   Amidst all the riots, the rioters got all offended when police cleared them out of a subway station they were commandeering and again when police shot a rioter who attacked them with a club.

    I know of no other police in the world who would put with as much as the Hong Kong police have -- so this guy is just pandering to the rioters and those who support them.

    (However, that patience and tolerance does appear to be coming to an end.  I suspect these rioters thinking they can do anything they want will be both surprised and offended when that happens.)
    chaickacincymac
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