- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
“Apple CEO Tim Cook plans to donate $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund, reports Axios. The donation will be a personal donation directly from Cook rather than a donation from Apple”
I’ll defend Apple as being the least shitty of the big tech giants but I can’t defend this.
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They’re being shaken down. Same as Mark Zuckerberg being summoned to a meeting with Trump and the next day paying $1m to the same fund.
I’m betting these meetings went something like, “You don’t want a president as an enemy, do you? Cough up.”
And don’t think of it as a tax on the rich - it’s not going towards the benefit of the American people. It’s extortion.
It’s insane that this is even legal.
I’m certain it’s not - but it doesn’t matter. Trump has proved that he is beyond the law in every way.
Clinton got impeached for lying and it ruined his credibility. Trump lies all the time and gets re-elected, but has no credibility to ruin.
God neoliberals are pathetic.
All these Billionaires PAYING Trump MILLIONS of Dollars is PROOF he CANT be Bought!
lol I interpret this as sarcasm, as with many of your other comments around Lemmy. If they are so, I think they’re funny and so far I agree with what you actually value, democracy. However, it took me some time to understand your sarcasm. This might be just me, but I wonder if your comments could be subjected to Poe’s Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe’s_law). Do you think it’s impossible that they could be?
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Fair points:
- I see how that joke can be fine in the sense that, if everyone in the group shares values, there is no need to consider how a staunch Trump supporter will respond to the joke. After all, I think there are very few staunch Trump supporters reading this.
- I also see that it can be very hard to convince people to reconsider tightly-held beliefs, or at the very least gain perspective on them. It sounds like you do not believe changing perspectives is even possible, that no dialogue can ever be worthwhile or useful.
I see you appreciate facts and information, the scientific process and the institutions that enable it. We have that in common. That’s why, ironically, I’ll start with anecdotal facts and then move on to more robust and generalizable findings. Do you know about my friend who went from defending “one dollar, one vote” (a couple of years ago) to explaining how the lack of third spaces is associated with inequality (a couple of weeks ago)? I don’t expect you to at all, so do you know Contrapoints’ impact on radicalized people who reach out to her (https://www.vice.com/en/article/contrapoints-interview-2019-natalie-wynn/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nrz4-FZx6k)?
These may sound like cherry-picked examples, but there’s actually evidence of massive shifts in people’s political views: the World Value Survey. Do you know how world values have changed ever since the WVS started (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIXdRVe92gg)?
In the face of the WVS shifts, it may seem like value changes only occur when material conditions allow for it, but there’s evidence within the WVS literature (check out the variance that explains democratic values, in particular how material conditions most explained democratic values in the past but today connectivity most explains it) that material conditions are not as important. However, we can also look at another set of scientific literature that shows that the way that things are presented can lead to changes in political attitudes. Do you know about the moral reframing literature? I’m sorry for the paywall https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12501 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337861541_Moral_reframing_A_technique_for_effective_and_persuasive_communication_across_political_divides
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None of these companies would touch Trump with a 10 foot pole in the situation wasn’t so dire. But he is the next president, and he is known to respond to stuff like this. Bend knee, kiss his ass and carry a huge wad of cash. This is just the cost of doing business, and even if a vocal minority cries out most people still buy iPhones, Teslas and shop at Amazon and Wal-Mart.
It’s almost like capitalism is a terrible idea.
I struggle to call this capitalism. It’s so twisted and corrupt it doesn’t resemble what it started out as.
It really is a class war, not a culture war.
Always has been.
Imagine being a woman working for Apple and having a CEO who funds a rapist.
Imagine being an openly gay CEO who funds a party who hates gays
They don’t hate gays, they hate honesty, and also having social and legal limitations for various divergent traits allows blackmail and defamation.
They don’t hate gays
Yeah, they only cheer on the concept of queer genocide and talk about how queer people groom children to support the idea.
But they don’t hate them. Jesus loves them after all.
They hate poor gays
No, they hate all gay people. They are just lower on the list right now, but they are definitely there.
First they came for…
And open guys, and gays suffering for our sexuality. None of them visited Roy Cohn as he died of AIDS. Tim Cook may get spared from raids at first, but if it goes as bad as we fear he’s going to have nobody willing to defend him
The guy clears 2 billions in net worth. There are plenty of people who are willing to defend him for a piece of that.
It’s absolutely wild how the first time around, everyone left of center was against Trump, even if it was only posturing. This time around, he’s even worse and the same people are literally supporting him.
least shitty
Wat!?
It’s a very low bar
They’re the only one selling physical products as their main business so they can afford to give you marginally better privacy and UX than say, Google, who’s built their business on tying tracking and advertising into their open source products like Chromium and Android.
Better UX what
What I’m curious about is, according to the article, Tim Apple is donating from this own money and won’t be donating Apple’s money. Why make it a personal donation and not a corporate one?
While others are donating as companies (don’t agree with this either but different subject), none are doing it as a personal donation. As the face of Apple, he won’t get far claiming that it doesn’t reflect Apple as a company, so why not just m make it corporate? Unless it’s for tax reasons?
I didn’t follow these donation news too closely, but from the headlines it always sounded like they do it personally!? Maybe Trump makes a point out of it that it comes from them personally? Would make them personally attached to him.
I didn’t follow these donation news too closely, but from the headlines it always sounded like they do it personally!?
Really? I’ve never seen a single article that said that. Even this one points out that
Amazon, Meta, Uber, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Coinbase, Toyota, Ford, GM, AT&T, Black & Decker, and Charter Communications are also making donations to Trump’s inauguration fund.
None of these say Zuckerberg, or Bezos, etc… (except for Sam Altman). Seems that it’s companies that are the norm.
My impression came from headlines like this:
Tech moguls Altman, Bezos and Zuckerberg donate to Trump’s inauguration fund
Maybe he assumes it will be more impressive to Trump.
Why does such a thing as an inaugural fund exist? Seems like it’s just to facilitate more corruption!
It doesn’t usually. The ‘why’ in the case is because Trump and his team refuse to sign the ethics agreement to get the normal funding from the government.
Thanks, it must be amazing for Americans to have a president who won’t sign a standard ethics agreement.
Up here in Canada, we’re only ever 10 years behind at most.
Germany, too, is poised to follow suit at the upcoming elections in February.
Americans have been convinced to sell themselves out.
Every trump supporter is either a dipshit or someone taking advantage of dipshits.
It’s coercion but somehow legal.
These CEOs are funding hate, violence and the end of American democracy - they have enough power, money and influence to oppose, yet they don’t. They decided that a few must be sacrificed for the greater
goodprofit.Something happened on the 5th of December. Tomorrow is the 5th of January. Just in case anyone’s calendar app is stuck closed. Interesting if true…
Well… they saw that they can show their real face.
This country makes me sick to my stomach. What a fucking joke.
If you can find a way: get out.
For everyone else, you have my sincere sympathy.
And go where? Where in the world is safe right now? I thought about living in the Philippines with my family, but China is probably waging war soon. Europe? With the way America is headed and the war is going? Let’s assume Ukraine wins: Europe is out of gas and will militarize and right wing governments are rising with German nationalism leading the battle drums, Ukraine gonna be in an economic, Russia is gonna be subservient and dependent on China.
That leaves countries with metropolises that are suffering from westerners gentrifying their neighborhoods with the USD being strong in these places. We are really going to make the poor in other nations pay the price for our government’s doing?
Do you mean safe or safer than the U.S.? Because you can’t be guaranteed of absolute safety anywhere. If you’re queer or brown, there are a lot of countries where you’ll be safer than the U.S.
Fair point. If you are in immediate danger then yeah, not gonna argue. But if you are able to stay and do something, that should be preferable.
I am brown (Filipino). I won’t be leaving.
Ohh shocking!! A US company CEO donated to the inagural fund of the new president elected by the people (idiots).
This isn’t even remotely surprising. Apple has been a shitty company for well over a decade.
And before it wasn’t?
That’s probably 2% of their holiday bonus!
It’s from his own money, not that it makes things any better.
Yes, not really better at all. These donations are all symbols, not meaningful except as a show of obeisance. So we should interpret it along the same symbolic parameters.
It’s being framed as a personal donation because Cook is acquiescing to Trump’s pending authoritarian takeover, but wants plausible deniability that that imputes to Apple. But since Tim Cook is the one acquiescing and he leads Apple, it’s indistinguishable from the same thing. It carries the same message: Apple won’t get in your way, do what you will.
Paying largesse/protection money.
