
Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True - MikusR
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/apple-does-not-melt-iphones-into-gold
======
c3534l
What does it say about the world we live in where blogs do more basic
journalism than CNN? All that one would have had to do is read the report
actually provided.

I don't think I'm being too extreme when I say that, apart from maybe PBS,
there is no reputable source of news in America. If you don't believe me, pick
a random story, watch it as it gets rewritten a million times through Reuters,
then check back on the facts of the story one year later. A news story gets
twisted to promote some narrative that will sell papers, and when the facts of
the story are finally verified (usually not by the news themselves, but
lawyers or courts or whoever), the story is dropped and never reported on
again.

Again, if the only thing a reporter had to do was read the report to find the
facts of the case to verify what is and isn't true, what the fuck is even the
point of a news agency?

~~~
malchow
WSJ has floors of smart, trained, inquisitive journalists who assemble real
original data and break real original stories, and who try hard–through
single, double, and triple verification–to ensure the accuracy of every single
figure and fact they report.

Which is why it's sometimes annoying to see people treat paywalls as though
they were moral disgraces.

Source: I help invest for the chairman of the company.

~~~
chm
I don't see it as a moral disgrace at all, but it really is an inconvenience.
I have no way of creating this myself, but why doesn't the "Netflix" of
journalism exist? Or why can't I just pay X$ more to my ISP, who has deals
with publications such as the WSJ, to offer me access to their articles? I'd
rather just browse and read, not manage subscriptions.

EDIT: Apparently I'm replying too fast. Note that I quoted Netflix, implying
similarity and not identity. I can also see the potential problems concerning
Net Neutrality, but I don't think it has to be a problem. If done properly, no
throttling is needed as the news sites can still serve ads to non-paying
customers. You're just distributing your money in 1 place instead of 10. It's
solely for convenience.

~~~
nradov
ISPs probably wouldn't get enough customer adoption of such a service to make
it worth their while. Someone needs to resurrect micropayments and figure out
a way to make them work. There are a lot of people who don't necessarily want
to subscribe to a news site but would be willing to pay a few pennies to read
individual articles.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
"Resurrect"? I don't recall any time period in which micropayments were
successful.

~~~
Intermernet
Not in the west, but they're very successful in developing nations. Africa
being the primary example.

------
wklauss
These kind of stories are useful to understand to what extent the media has
turned into an echo chamber. Everybody has to have (or comment on) the same
stories than everybody else has, so fast copying (with or without attribution)
has become a de-facto practice in every news outlet out there.

Good for Motherboard to wait and check. Unfortunately this means we will see
this article now in all the outlets that published the previous one with a
hand-washing disclaimer ("remember that article SOMEONE ELSE wrote that we
talked you about last week, well...")

~~~
r3bl
I'm not in the US, but if it's anywhere similar to the situation I live in,
media outlets will either:

1\. Make a small apology for not sharing the truth that's not going to be very
visible on their website.

2\. Just ignore the facts. Their work is done, they're moving on to different
stories and pretty much forgetting this one.

Now, if 1st case happens, and it happens very rarely, you can bet that the
apology is not going to be read by as large amount of people as the original
story was. Therefore, a lie will become a "fact" in the eyes of regular
people.

Example: the most popular newspapers in one European country next to mine
shared screenshots of a very popular porn actress's video, but claimed that it
were porn videos of the (female) president of the country next to it.

Of course, this was a blatant lie, the head of that news outlet made a public
apology (over Twitter for sure, not sure if he did it over his news outlet),
but if you ask Regular Joe, that story still remains true, because the apology
made nowhere near the impact as the original story did (as you can imagine).

------
FreedomToCreate
This hits the nail on the head in calling out news reporting sites who don't
fact check or truthfully report a topic. Its incredible how far from the
actually story the Apple recycled gold headline deviates and really makes you
wonder if citing so called reputable sources is even valid in some cases.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
That's the problem with 24/7 news and the Internet.

1: Someone breaks a story 2: People get interested and share it with their
friends 3: Other sources want a piece of that action so they bandwagon and
cite the original piece for their own version.

I am often struck at how our modern communications framework, going all the
way back to the telegraph, has allowed so much misinformation to be spread.

~~~
scholia
Some of those reporters are contracted to write five or even 10 posts per day.
It's not like a NYT or WSJ reporter spending three weeks or three months on
one story.

Also, because Google promotes blogspam without any regard for content quality
(see the "freshness algorithm"), you lose money by spending longer on a post.

It's the exception rather than the rule that somebody will come along several
days later and hit it out of the park, but well done Jason Koebler.

~~~
uxp
> Some of those reporters are contracted to write five or even 10 posts per
> day. It's not like a NYT or WSJ reporter spending three weeks or three
> months on one story.

Vice doesn't necessarily fall out of that category either. Smack dab in the
middle is the statement:

"I still had outstanding questions, which I asked Apple ... The company has
not yet responded."

The number of times I've read a developing story that has had that or similar
in it is countless. Apple isn't known to have an army of PR representatives
waiting for the next question to come down the pipeline, but it begs the
question of how long they waited before publishing the story and just hoping
they can update the story later while it's still getting pageviews.

~~~
jkoebler
I wrote this article, I gave Apple 18 hours to respond. The article has now
been out for four hours or so, and it's been close to 24 hours since I
originally asked them.

Apple RARELY responds to press inquiries and the only time it has reliably
spoken to the press was during the recent encryption battle and that's because
it desperately needed the public to understand its argument.

I understand what you're getting at, but Apple loses nothing by having the
original story misreported—it ends up looking really good. Apple just straight
up ignores reporters, all the time.

~~~
st3v3r
That really doesn't seem like a lot of time for them to respond. Especially
given that for 10 or so of those hours, people are probably at home, asleep,
or with their families.

~~~
jkoebler
I see what you're saying—but companies regularly respond to things like this
very quickly. At least to say "we're looking into it" or "can you give us some
time to respond." Apple and every other major company has people on call for
things like this 24 hours a day, they have email on their phone ... the
company saw my questions and chose not to respond. They still haven't
responded or acknowledged it.

~~~
scholia
Apple's approach is to pick favorites, like Walt Mossberg, and then to play
its handful of favorites off against one another. (Time gives you a bad
review, Newsweek gets the next exclusive interview; or it's NYT vs WSJ.)

The rest of us are generally ignored, so we have to pick up scraps from the
chosen few.

Obviously the big titles get more attention than small ones -- nobody has an
infinite supply of time -- but companies like Google, Microsoft and Intel cope
with dozens if not hundreds of journalists worldwide. They even deal with
journalists that they think view them unfavorably.

------
coldtea
While the article is fine, this does not really follow:

> _So while Apple is nominally responsible for recycling a 90 million pounds
> of e-waste, very little of that is actually iPhones, and very little of that
> is actually being done by Apple. In Washington State, for example, Apple
> products made up just 1.78 percent of the total weight of e-waste recycled
> in 2014. In Oregon, Apple products made up 1.65 percent._

The author wants to argue that "very little of that is actually iPhones, and
very little of that is actually being done by Apple" but the example he uses
for that doesn't really show "very little", but rather a huge percentage of
recycled e-waste being Apple stuff.

While the statement that "very little of that [apple products recycling] is
actually being done by Apple" is compatible with the example, the example
doesn't really prove that "very little of that is actually iPhones" as it's
supposed to.

And even the implication that the numbers are small doesn't follow -- 1.65 to
1.8 percent of the total e-waste in a state is nothing to sneer at,
considering Apple is just one among tens of thousands of companies making
electronics, and compared to things like TVs and such, theirs are tiny and
weight little (a fact admitted elsewhere in the article).

~~~
addicted
1.65 % is not much when Apple makes up such a significant percentage of the
phone market.

But even out of that 1.65%, iPhones themselves probably make a small
percentage because macs are so much heavier.

The point of this article is that the media has implied that Apple is getting
x pounds of gold by recycling iPhones and macs.

In reality Apple is eating about 1.5% of x pounds of gold by recycling iPhones
and macs. They are likely getting 98% of x pounds of gold by recycling old CRT
TVs and Dells. And only a very minuscule percent of the recycling is done by
Apple. He vast majority of it was Apple paying 3rd party recyclers to get
credit for the recycling.

~~~
coldtea
> _1.65 % is not much when Apple makes up such a significant percentage of the
> phone market._

The excerpt is not about phones though -- it's the 1.65 of total consumer
electronics waste in the state. And as far as consumer electronics go, phones
are hardly the biggest...

> _And only a very minuscule percent of the recycling is done by Apple. He
> vast majority of it was Apple paying 3rd party recyclers to get credit for
> the recycling._

How is that different than how every company that is not a recycling company
does it?

~~~
kissickas
I would imagine that more phones and computers get recycled (per product
bought) than other consumer electronics. If I've spent $400 on a phone, I
won't throw it away - if I can't resell it, I'll find out how to properly
recycle it.

On the other hand, most other products probably just get thrown out - broken
or working chargers, cables, old telephones, etc.

------
zatkin
In Apple's defense, I would imagine that most people who are getting rid of
old Apple devices don't think about taking the devices to the Apple Store
because that's where they buy new products. They typically take their products
to an electronic recycling center, or even worse, they just throw it away in
the garbage. Apple may be 'cheating the system' by paying these companies to
receive credit for some X amount of pounds, but it's not like they're able to
force their customers to return old Apple products to their stores.

~~~
fabulist
I don't see this as cheating, but we're talking about the company who
convinced people "Rose Gold" was cool. If they told their customers it would
be super for them to bring old iDevices back to the Apple store for recycling,
I'm confident they would succeed.

~~~
studentrob
> If they told their customers it would be super for them to bring old
> iDevices back to the Apple store for recycling

They do - [http://www.apple.com/recycling/](http://www.apple.com/recycling/)

~~~
fabulist
I meant more, "if they ran a marketing campaign."

------
alexkavon
This reminds of a great article from Blake Ross that demonstrates the laziness
in journalism today. It also goes into detail about a few simple ways a
journalist can investigate a topic: [https://medium.com/@blakeross/don-t-
outsource-your-thinking-...](https://medium.com/@blakeross/don-t-outsource-
your-thinking-ad825a9b4653)

------
DonHopkins
Have other people noticed how many articles go out of their way to compare
things in different units, like "30% of people do this, and 1 out of 5 do
that"?

It's like they're trying to make it hard to compare things numerically on
purpose, so you have to read and believe the conclusion in their verbal
narrative.

------
nstj
> Amount of material recovered for reuse through take-back initiatives in 2015

> Gold 2204 [lbs] [0]

[0]:
[http://images.apple.com/au/environment/pdf/Apple_Environment...](http://images.apple.com/au/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental_Responsibility_Report_2016.pdf)

So is the Vice story trying to claim that "take back initiatives" aren't run
by Apple? This

------
collyw
Is Vice any more reliable? A lot of their stories look too outrageous to be
true. Like this one: [http://www.vice.com/read/this-guy-has-eaten-nothing-but-
raw-...](http://www.vice.com/read/this-guy-has-eaten-nothing-but-raw-meat-for-
five-years)

------
frostymarvelous
I've seen a vice documentary on Sakawa in Ghana and I must admit. These guys
are smart and thorough! They actually have me insights on things I see all the
time, but failed to see the implications of.

------
qb45
Heh, I'm officially dumb. I _knew_ that something was fishy when the news
reported more lead being recovered than gold and tin combined but I dismissed
this feeling.

Stupid, stupid, stupid and naive :)

------
ncavet
Who cares about $40MM dollars any more.

------
abhi3
Summary:

Various media sites claimed apple recycled $40 million worth of gold from
iphones, they were dead wrong.

What actually happened is that Apple is under statutury obligation to recycle
a certain weight of e-waste depending on it market share or weight of
electronics sold (depending on state laws). The e-waste doesn't have to be of
the manufacturers own products.

Apple paid third party recyclers to recycle mostly CRT's and PC's (iphone have
hardly any gold and are much more valuable refurbished, In fact, phones and
tablets often don’t count toward the overall recycling requirements in many
state laws.) and probably incured a loss rather than a 40 million windfall as
claimed in news articles.

Original Article: 1500 words (~8 minute read) Summary: 114 words (less than a
minute)

The articles goes in to some more detail and analyzes the mandatory recycling
laws deeper as well. There is also some commentary of how many other sites got
it very wrong and overview of the e-waste recycling industry. Reading
recomended if you want gain more knowledge on this.

If you'd like such summaries for all articles before you read them check out:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11535695](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11535695)

~~~
bobwaycott
Hey, can you cut it out with the summary advertising crap?

~~~
adrusi
It's an ad, but one that's providing a legitimately useful service. Theres no
conflict of interest here (the summary isn't any more biased because it's an
ad than a regular commenter would be) and if it weren't an ad, it would be
generally recognized as a constructive comment.

There's no need to get dogmatic about advertising. If all ads were this high
quality and considerate, I would have no problems with ads.

~~~
bobwaycott
Except it's really not very constructive, is it? It's a summary with no
context or part in discussing the actual article. I know we all love TL;DRs,
but I don't want to see every article that takes >60s to read have promotional
summaries. That will make HN rather low quality.

------
johansch
Apple misled media. I hope media learns from this.

~~~
morgante
Where is evidence of Apple misleading media? Apple certainly never said they
were making money off recycled gold.

~~~
sp332
Apple announced a robotics project last month called "Liam".
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYshVbcEmUc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYshVbcEmUc)
It recovers "cobalt and lithium", "gold and copper", "silver and platinum".

The number "2,204 pounds of gold" comes from page 17 of this PDF
[https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental_Re...](https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental_Responsibility_Report_2016.pdf)
which prominently displays Liam on the cover page.

~~~
morgante
Mentioning two different facts about their recycling programs on completely
different pages of a holistic report about their environmental responsibility
now constitutes "misleading the media?"

~~~
sp332
First, it's on the same page. The discussion of Liam starts 3 lines below the
number 2204.

Second, the video clearly states that the gold from iPhones is recycled. It
would be clearer to say that the phone parts which happen to contain gold are
put into refurbished phones. It's not extracting the gold at all, and that's
why it's misleading.

~~~
morgante
> First, it's on the same page. The discussion of Liam starts 3 lines below
> the number 2204.

And 2 lines above the gold it says 61,357,800lbs of total material, in a
figure much more clearly connected than the ostensible paragraph.

When Liam is introduced on that page, Apple explicitly says it is "a line of
robots designed to disassemble 1.2 million phones a year." Unless you think
the average phone weighs 61 pounds, it's obviously not responsible for the
total material recycling chart above.

Nobody could possibly read this report and come away thinking that Liam is
recycling millions of dollars of gold.

------
ronkwan
aapl = pretentious

------
awinter-py
they're after me lucky charms

------
ck2
Not that I would confuse CNN as actual journalism with investigative
journalists but how many times a day does CNN say "we have not been able to
independently verify" about a story, yet doesn't bother with stuff like this?

How can these places claim "freedom of the press" without having to prove they
are "press" or what "press" even is?

