Lawsuit: Apple Punished Employee for Approving App Critical of Communist China

Tim Cook, Apple CEO, in China
NG HAN GUAN /Getty

A former Apple employee claims in a recent lawsuit that the company punished him for approving an app critical of the Chinese government.

Reason reports that a former employee of tech giant Apple claims in a recently filed lawsuit that the company punished him for approving an app critical of the Chinese government in order to appease communist authorities in Beijing. The former Apple employee worked as an app reviewer for Apple and made his claims in a discrimination and wrongful termination suit filed at the Santa Clara, California, Superior Court in December 2019.

In the complaint, the former employee claims that in 2018 he was criticized by his managers at Apple for approving an app by Guo Media as it was “critical of the Chinese government.” Guo Media is a website run by Guo Wengui, a Chinese businessman who has been exiled to the United States and is currently wanted by authorities in Beijing on charges of economic crimes. Wengui has previously made allegations about major corruption at the highest levels of the Chinese government.

The former employee alleges that after they filed an internal discrimination complaint in September 2017, managers at the company conducted a review of their performance and gave him a “Documented Coaching Plan,” which included reviews that were allegedly completed incorrectly. The plan claimed that the former employee’s most serious error was approving the Guo Media app which was forbidden in the Chinese version of Apple’s App Store.

The lawsuit alleges that the app was approved but Chinese authorities contacted Apple and demanded the app be removed. Apple then allegedly conducted an internal investigation which revealed that the plaintiff was the reviewer who approved the app.

Read more at Reason here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com

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