All have their faults of course but which one is the most evil?
Amazon puts local companies out of business and has sweatshops.
Apple’s production plants have suicidal workers because the conditions are so bad. Plus Justin Long.
Facebook hates your privacy and is responsible for the horrible success of Zynga.
Google has all your data and they want to take over the world.
Microsoft makes you pay for multiplayer and then foists ads all over your Xbox screen. Plus the Zune. It was evil.
Amazon is an unfortunate result of capitalism, like Wal-Mart.
Facebook is just a matter of degree.
Google tries hard, but is sometimes evil.
Microsoft wants to make a buck.
Apple, though . . . Jesus I hate fucking Apple. I hate them and the people who are enthusiastic about them. It combines five or six of the things that anger me the most in life, all in one product.
Microsoft is still pretty evil, but they have clearly lost out to Facebook. I will give Apple some second-hand evil points for Foxconn, but if we judged all companies by their supply chains, I’m afraid that few electronics, chemical, textile, or retail firms would avoid damnation.
I voted Apple for their pricing. But Facebook sucks too.
Bah, we’re not asking you to judge Ford by the oil suppliers, we’re asking you to judge Ford by a friggin’ Ford factory. Maybe it’s not Apple’s name on the thing but they’re a hardware company and that’s where their hardware is made.
Yes, but my point is that the the vast majority of electronics are made in similar or worse conditions. Almost all textiles are made in worse conditions still because the labor is less skilled. Same for all the other feeder industries, starting in the mines and fields, that supply goods to western firms. Because of the media attention, Apple’s Foxconn workers are probably better off than those who work to make the components for other manufacturers. In comparison Ford is a shining beacon of virtue.
So no, I’m not saying Apple shouldn’t bear a lot of blame. It was their choice to use these companies and workers. I’m saying I want all the other firms that have made exactly the same choice to bear the proper blame too. It seems strange to single out Apple as more evil than the others when they are one of many to do exactly the same thing or worse.
The whole system which supplies cheap goods to the west is run on the blood of the worker. That may sound like Wobbly rhetoric, but I can’t see any other way to say it right now. This is one reason why the Chinese can’t take us seriously when at the same time we prate about human rights and channel billions and billions of dollars into their factories.
Edit: I realize this post veers into P&R. Quite possibly the real intent of this thread was to ask which company is the most obnoxious or the most annoying, not the most evil.
I guess the answer is me, because I have used products or services from all of the above companies in the past 5 minutes.
Pricing? That seems like a weird evil criteria for a company. It’s not hidden: you can choose to buy or not buy.
I have no problem with any company pricing a non-staple (i.e., luxury) product at whatever price they want.
RJ Fucking Reynolds. All those given in the poll simply pale in comparison. I’d like to see their executives held accountable for all the evil they have perpetrated - I don’t believe in the death penalty, but I’d be sorely tempted to swing the axe personally.
I would think that it was obvious. Purchase or produce devices at pennies on the dollar. Then sell them at outrageous markups tp people that would buy anything that you create. You have a market that allows you to rip them off just to be the first one to own your product. And yeah, Nike or any other company that does the same falls into this area. But Apple was the only one mentioned here. Thus my choice.
Apple makes a good margin on their products (23%) or so, but they don’t have the other revenue streams their competitors do. As mentioned before, you know what the price is, buy it or buy something else.
Microsoft doesn’t seem evil at all to me, they just stumble about in the market place like a confused giant, trying so hard to be cool and failing.
FB…yeah, evil.
Google:They want every bit of information they can glean from your mortal soul so they can sell it to target ads at you. I use google as a search engine. No gmail account or any other google stuff in my life.
When I joined Microsoft, I was rather disappointed at the lack of evil. It’s just a big corporation where most of the folks there want to make a living making cool products.
I was expecting something more like… this:
Goddamn fucking Apple, and their shitty, overpriced, closed products. I don’t know if they’re evil but I hate them.
the real correct answer is somewhere within the unholy triumvirate of, ‘Big Oil-Arms Industry-Financial sector’. These guys cause most of the evil in the world, from wars to global warming. Apple/Windows are ‘indie’ efforts at best compared to the AAA of these evil companies.
Microsoft is evil enough to corrupt official in some countries to gain votes to get some stuff standarized. Being that stuff a whole bunch of crap that don’t make sense. Also, make so other people pay for his errors. Is the type of company that chargeback everything, even his own errors. Maybe make great finnacially, but don’t deserve it, are assholes. Microsoft can’t be more evil, withouth steping into cheesy territory, like maniac evil laughts, having the HQ in the center of a active volcano, or fueling a death robot with small childrens arms.
Apple has a idea about how everything need to work, and this is great if you have the exact idea. So is somewhat like a benevolent dictatorship. Big power with “good” intentions, that will crash anything under his boot withouth even remorse.
Google is getting take over by the type of people that control Microsoft, and in a few years will be Microsoft with other name. I have seen a lot of services shutdown for no good reason… This is not the same company that created a server with legos and released Gmail with 1GB inbox.
I don’t know enough about amazon to talk about it.
You are correct for the most part - but at the same time Apple is known for squeezing the last cent out of its supply chain partners and also imposing harsher QA controls and penalties for not meeting their standards. This results in companies like Foxconn to impose even harsher working conditions on their employees to in order to at least break even on their contracts with Apple and unrest in factories have been going up the past few years as a result.
It is certainly within Apple’s right to do this and not necessarily immoral per se, but they have greater power over their supply chain than many other companies due to the popularity of their products and they have been very agressive in taking advantage of this fact.
Amen to that!
Back in grad school this guy asked me what my parents did (they’re retired from one of the US intelligence agencies). He said, “Whoa. Blood on your hands.” Annoyed, I asked what his parents did. He said his dad was a lawyer/lobbyist for tobacco companies…
You missed Koch Industries, so at best the above are just lesser evils…
I’m stunned that apple doesn’t have at least 75% of the vote, but this is a particularly apple-friendly board I guess.
I’m going to say Facebook, because I think it’s probably making me stupider to read some of the shit that people post on there. In aggregate therefore, I suspect Facebook is making the entire world stupider.