Submitted 2 days ago by IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/01/03/tim-cook-trump-inauguration-donation/
“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.
Imagine being a woman working for Apple and having a CEO who funds a rapist.
Imagine being an openly gay CEO who finds 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.
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.
What the fucking, fuck.
This is one of the reasons why I am gradually untying myself from the Apple ecosystem, and all of propriety/big tech; especially US based.
When push comes to shove capitalism will not resist fascism. They will ignore all stated virtue signals and choose profits.
Choosing E2E encrypted FOSS products, that are interoperable with FOSS standards/formats and do not lock you into walled gardens, are the only viable long term solution.
This might actually become the year of Linux on the desktop for me.
Suprised? Had you put him on a pedastle in your mind? Did you think him to be more than a sniveling greedy capitalist prick? I’m sorry for this very harsh fall from artificial grace if so. I’d be careful about holding anyone with more than a few hundred million dollars to lose in too high esteem in the future.
He’s doing this to avoid being associated with Apple, but this only highlights that he’s personally a piece of shit, in addition to Apple.
Fuck him, fuck Apple, and fuck all those other motherfucking bootlickers enabling these fucking fascists.
What’s funny (or sad) is that 100 years from now this will be looked at the same was as when Ford or IBM supported the Nazis. Their business won’t hurt long term and Tim Apple will be long dead.
IG Farben, Krupp, Thyssen, Boss, Porsche and the mist goes on and on and on. Fuck I suspect that even my own grandfather “had stripes” (slang for collaboration with Nazis without yourself being proclaimed nazi) and he even fought them during the invasion of Norway.
If we survive that long as a species.
He should just be honest and said “this $1m is a mandatory payment to trump so that he exempts Apple from tariffs, no other reason”, of course, then it’s an obvious quid pro quo.
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.
It’s coercion but somehow legal.
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.
I guess I never really paid attention before but is it normal for companies to donate to an inauguration fund? It sure seems like a government sanctioned protection racket.
Perfectly normal, but not like this.
ABC News reported that Trump’s second-inauguration haul is on track to shatter the previous $107m record, as pledged contributions have already exceeded a $150m fundraising goal. Barack Obama’s inauguration raised $53m in 2009 and $42m in 2013, and Joe Biden’s raised $63m in 2021.
Oh wow, this is really informative. Thanks for the link friend
Speaking of forgetting what’s perfectly normal… the days before uniting the citizens…
Obama capped money for his inauguration at $50,000 per person - still, more than 10 times what individuals could give to his campaign.
Only since Citizens United.
you’re thinking of FECA probably. inauguration vs campaign funds are different things, and Citizens United was about campaign funds.
As a Bi man there is something that particularly stings about a well known, openly gay CEO funding a man who is hateful towards LGBTQ+ people. I never really liked him nor apple but it is an extra fuck you.
Being rich is ultimately the disease as it compels him to appeal to power but I hope the last things hears is “Told you I would kill you last”.
His in-group is not LGBTQIA+, it is other rich people. The same is true for all of them.
The wealthy all seem to understand that class solidarity is more important than any other issue. Why is it taking so long for everyone else to figure that out?
Hands down, the most effective punishments for these people at the top is to redistribute their wealth so they have to live like everyone else.
That is legitimately a fate worse than death in their eyes, which should put things into perspective for the rest of us.
There are no real allies in the oligarch class. Temporal alliances or common goals at best. They will (and do) kill for a penny.
Tim cook will never suffer the consequences of anti-gay legislation or the lack of legal protection for gay people.
Unfortunately, gay people like money too. He cares more about furthering his own personal empire than he does about those who have less money than him.
In the eyes of timmy, the struggles of poor gay people are completely irrelevant to the struggles of rich gay people.
Peter Thiel is also a gay man, and pulling a lot of these strings behind the scenes.
It’s oligarchy. Thiel can fuck who ever he wants (and make them disappear when he’s done…) while maintaining political power by sacrificing queer people to the Hour of Hate.
Sam Altman, too
he is ultra rich, the hateful divide and conquer tactics applied to common people don’t apply to him so he simply does not have any empathy for the matter.
Yeah this is so weird. I guess it’s either comply or die when it comes to this stuff
I’m really not sure what the threat to him is though. Does “die” in this case mean lose out on money? One would think he already has his walk away money.
I’ll defend Apple as being the least shitty of the big tech giants but I can’t defend this.
Why would you do that though? The only thing I’m aware of that they do even remotely better than anyone else is privacy. But it’s not that much better, and it comes at the cost of gestures at everything else
IDK why people say they have better privacy: They just settled a lawsuit over evesdroping using Siri. I think they probably have less interest than Google in selling data for advertising, mostly likely using it internally for their ecosystem so they probably come across more privacy focused but I assume they snoop just as much as any other big tech company.
less interest than Google in selling data for advertising
Google don’t sell data. The data is what makes them valuable, so it wouldn’t make sense. If they did sell data, the other big tech companies would just buy their data to remove their competitive advantage.
What Google actually sells is your attention. Advertisers can target people based on demographic data, things you like, etc, but the advertiser never sees the data used for targeting.
You can use Google and Facebook’s Ads Manager sites yourself and see exactly what advertisers see.
The only thing I’m aware of that they do even remotely better than anyone else is privacy.
Where did you hear this? Its my understanding that they are one of the worst when it comes to privacy.
Siri “unintentionally” (because it’s a sentient being right?) recording entire conversations def feels pretty terrible.
They do better about privacy because they make enough money from their inflated prices and blind brand loyalty where they dont have to become an ad company like google. Google is very good at protecting their users data from third parties, as long as they can still collect all of it.
Apple (currently) doesn’t collect a lot of data which allows them to design products with security as a primary component instead of as an afterthought
They collect everything. Every detail of your usage. They may not sell it, but your entire life is on an apple server
Like I said, they’re the least shitty. Can you think of a corp that’s better? Google? Fucking Meta? Microsoft?
Microsoft didn’t spend multiple decades trying to force their own chargers and ports over universal standards. Not saying any of them are good, but apple is in no way better and has spent years creating contention between consumers. It’s just as likely they sell your tracking data as anyone else, they spend developer time every month making sure their ecosystem is considered better for cultural reasons while being ostensibly worse than competitors for most things. Their phones are generally a year or more behind competitors but they have made-up features that serve no purpose consumers rally around like imessage. They have a tiny sandbox to play in without completely voiding your warranty - Themes instead of real customization. “Blue bubbles”? Are you kidding me? How about allowing any form of tinkering beyond a garden path? How about supporting repair of devices at their actual branded stores? They’re easily up there as one of the worst for consumers at large.
Bad gay!
When you’re a traitor to your own kind for the sake of an unquenchable thirst for profit, you become an enemy to LGBTQ+ folks.
Fuck you, Tim Apple
It’s not just LGBTQ+ folks. Anyone not male, straight, white, christian, republican or natural born is in the firing line.
I think the point is that Tim Apple is all of these things (so he need not care) except straight.
It really goes to show what kind of times we’re living in when Steve Jobbs is the limbo bar to measure good ethics that everyone today is clearing under.
Fuck Tim Apple, but please do not ever utter the phrase “bad gay” again.
Yeah, as much as I hate Steve Jobs, he would have given Trump the finger on camera back in 2016 had he been alive.
When people shit on Apple - esp Jobs - they forget that it was Jobs who directed the company to fight the FBI to protect our right to on-device encryption. And the FBI backed down because they knew if they went to the Supreme Court, chief Justice, Antonin Scalia, who was a huge supporter of encryption, would guarantee any challengers to that right would lose.
The political climate is different today, but because of Apple fighting for the right of every person to have on device encryption, we all owe him a debt.
Yes, Steve Jobs and chief Justice Antonin Scalia were both immeasurable pieces of shit, but some good came from them. And it’s a lasting good that will ensure the rights of individuals to encrypted their own data, possibly for generations.
Again, I’m not defending either jobs nor Scalia, they were terrible people. But they did do some good.
It really is a class war, not a culture war.
Always had been
All these Billionaires PAYING Trump MILLIONS of Dollars is PROOF he CANT be Bought!
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.
Fuck Tim Apple
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 good profit.
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…
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 not going to make him remember your actual name, Tim.
You’ll always be Tim Apple to him.
Have inauguration funds always been a thing? Or is this a Trump thing? What’s the purpose?
I can understand campaign funds. But if you’ve won I don’t know if I understand a candidate specific donation after the fact.
This country makes me sick to my stomach. What a fucking joke.
Gross. Sick of rich assholes enabling the fascist.
Tim Cook is hoping to be spared when Trump starts purging gay people.
Absolutely disgusting
Paying largesse/protection money.
Paying his tribute to the king. He’ll have to donate more if he wants to usurp Elon. How much has Zuck donated?
The personal donation part is weird. This sounds like a deliberate attempt to appease the fascists while trying, desperately, to maintain Apple’s image.
Tim Apple.
It’s time to boycott Apple
No matter how much money they spend on this party they’re still celebrating putting a convicted con man in the White House while the chumps who voted for him say, “What… my meds aren’t covered anymore?”
How “conservative” - congratulations on flushing your country down a solid gold toilet, jackasses!
least shitty
Wat!?
$1 million seems to be the going fealty price for these people.
iClass-traitor.
Meh, I was never going to buy their shitty crap anyway.
Fades@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Pathetic thinly veiled bribe
nightwatch_admin@feddit.nl 2 days ago
Or it is protection money. “Nice apple you got there, would be a shame if anyone took a bite out of that”….
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Why would Tim Cook be assosiated with Apple in trumps mind?
Apple is owned by Tim Apple.
Kind of strange that this line cook is able to afford a small 1 million dollar loan…what? You think trump knows that a loan is different than a donation? You think he knows you’re supposed to pay back loans?
IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world 2 days ago
If any company could insulate itself from Trump’s agenda, it would be Apple with its “fuck you” money.
This is cowardly and craven.
dink@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Needs to make sure there’s a loophole for Apple production when more China tariffs hit.