A former Apple employee has filed a lawsuit accusing the company of punishing him for approving an App on its shelves that criticized the Chinese Communist government, saying Apple did so to appease Beijing authorities.
A former Apple employee has filed a lawsuit accusing the company of punishing him for approving an app on its shelves that criticized the Chinese Communist government, saying Apple did so to appease Beijing authorities.
Trieu Pham (pronounced Pham), who worked as an app reviewer for Apple, filed the lawsuit in December 2019 in Santa Clara County (Calif.) Supreme Court.
In the suit, he said he approved the “GUO.MEDIA” app for shelving in 2018 and was subsequently reprimanded by his manager for its content critical of the Chinese government. Guo Media was founded by Guo Wengui, a U.S.-fugitive mainland tycoon who revealed massive corruption by top Chinese Communist Party officials and whom Beijing authorities tried to get to return to the mainland, citing economic cases.
The lawsuit specifies how Apple has defined its relationship with the Chinese Communist government, which has been notorious for making market access conditional on forcing Western companies to comply with Communist Party speech censorship and surveillance regulations. Apple, for its part, relies heavily on China as its third largest market.
In his lawsuit, Fan said he had filed a complaint in September 2017 against the company for internal discrimination, after which his manager began reviewing his work. The manager verified a sample of Van’s review app from July to September 2018 and then sent him a written training plan, which noted that some of the content was wrong. The manager considered the most serious mistake to be the approval of Guo Media’s app, and the Apple Store banned the Chinese version of Guo Media’s app.
According to an analysis by the Tech Transparency Project, a U.S. nonprofit organization, Apple regularly removes apps from the Apple Store in the Chinese market, actively blocking hundreds of apps that Beijing authorities consider politically sensitive.
Fan said in the suit that after he approved the Guo Media app, Beijing authorities asked Apple to take it down. The company then conducted an internal investigation, which eventually found Fan to be the censor who approved the Guo Media app.
Fan had been asked to meet with several managers in September 2018 to discuss the Guo Media app. The manager claimed the app should be taken down because it criticized the Chinese government. At the time, Fan said that the Guo Media app did not violate any of Apple’s rules regarding apps, but only publicly pointed out the corruption of the Chinese Communist Party, so it should be kept in the spirit of freedom of expression.
During the meeting, Fan also mentioned to his manager that taking down the app because of pressure from the Chinese government would be tantamount to submitting to CCP speech censorship. He repeatedly asked the manager if he could give a valid reason for taking down the app based on Apple’s policy, but the manager was unable to give a relevant reason.
After this meeting, Fan met again with his supervisor over the same issue and reiterated the reasons why Apple should keep the Guo Media app. He also mentioned the above meeting to his colleagues and noted that Apple was censoring voices critical of the CCP due to pressure from Beijing authorities.
Fan is convinced that Apple created the training program (for him) to please the Chinese government by telling them that Apple itself did not agree to shelve the Guo Media app.
Fan was fired from Apple in 2019 for speaking out against speech censorship.
A judge said last November that the lawsuit would move forward after Apple sought to remove some of Van’s causes of action.
Apple has previously been criticized for caving in to the Communist Party’s speech censorship demands.
Last year, Apple pulled the HKmap.live app. The app was used by Hong Kong protesters to view the actions of Hong Kong police. Apple said this was done for public safety reasons, and protesters condemned Apple for giving in to Chinese Communist Party pressure.
Apple also removed the Quartz news app from the Chinese market at the time, after Beijing authorities pressured Apple to claim the app contained content from Hong Kong protests.
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