By Walker Wildmon for AMERICAN FAMILY NEWS
Apple won the battle for the most heartwarming holiday ad last Christmas season. Advertising the new hearing aid feature in its Airpods Pro 2, the company left melted hearts and watery eyes the country over, with a story about a hearing-impaired father (left) being able to be present more fully in his daughter’s life.
It’s a profoundly pro-life and pro-family message – and as vice president of the American Family Association, these are two things I can get behind. And just as importantly, it’s a key sign that Apple is willing to resist the activist urge to opine on non-core business issues and focus on the company’s primary business responsibility: making the world a better place via its products and the human flourishing that such products create.
It’s because of this, and because of my organization’s position as an Apple shareholder, that I don’t enjoy writing a piece with this title. Apple is more than willing to express support for pro-family values – but that doesn’t mean the company’s record is clean when it comes to defending those values via its corporate policies. No shareholder wants to go on the Internet and see their company facing a billion-dollar class-action lawsuit over its alleged failure to protect victims of child pornography. And that’s exactly what happened with Apple.
Survivors of child sex abuse allege that the company’s 2021 decision to ditch software designed to curb the spread of child sex abuse material (CSAM) resulted in videos of their abuse being shared via Apple platforms for more than a decade after this unconscionable abuse occurred. As an Apple shareholder, I’m familiar with many of the concerns raised by the deployment of such technology – concerns of jeopardized privacy and resultant questions of who truly owns the iPhone in their pocket. And yet, as a father, I also understand the pain and suffering of the victims involved in these horrific cases of abuse.
