These locations are in the supply chain of at least 83 companies many of them technology behemoths.
The majority of these people are Uyghurs, an ethnic minority in China that has undergonehorrendous treatment.
This effectively includes ideological training, constant surveillance, and religious oppression.
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One of them was the transfer of 1,200 Uyghurs to an O-Film factory in 2017.
This company manufactured the front-facing cameras for the iPhone 8 and iPhone X.
According to its website it also makes components for companies including Huawei, Lenovo, and Samsung.
What have the companies involved said?
Is this method of responding a surprise?
No, its straight out of the PR playbook: Dont take responsibility and promise vague, positive action.
Thing is this ishardly the first timea big tech company has been found using human rights-abusing factories.
At this point, theres really only one conclusion: Big tech companies dont care.
just, prove me wrong.
What can be done about the forced labor camps?
Here we reach one of the biggest issues.
Look again at that list of companies.
This means if you love gadgets youre, morally, kinda fucked.
Which, as a gadget-lover and reviewer, is depressing as hell.
This leads to a simple question: What can we actually do?
I have my doubts on how well that works.
Which is all sorts of bullshit.
The clearest way of achieving this is simply delivering huge fines to companies caught using these practices.
And ifa fine doesnt work?
Put some of the companys executives in prison.
Is there another way?
One option is to concentrate on making devices less disposable.
One example is the organization looking into forcing phone makersto include replaceable batteries in handsets.
Another isits fight with Apple over standardizing cables.
Theres not a huge leap from this to right-to-repair legislation, which would help reduce unit churn.
Would this automatically solve forced labor camps?
Of course not, but its a step away from our current system that requires a never-ending manufacturing cycle.
But there is a real human cost to this.
Of course, as individuals we can be aware and make changes where we can.
But never forget that its the companies themselves supporting and spreading this methodology.
