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Sina Digital News on the morning of August 17th, an Apple employee said that Apple was going to fire him for posting a video on TikTok (overseas version of Douyin) on how to avoid losses after the iPhone was stolen.
The person, Paris Campbell, said she has worked at Apple for more than six years and has nearly 500,000 followers on TikTok, with a total of 17.7 million likes. Campbell never publicly identified himself as an Apple employee until a video last week. She often shares talk show clips and related videos of all kinds of weird applications.
A week ago, someone messaged Campbell on TikTok that their iPhone had been stolen, and then received a message from a thief threatening to sell their private information on the black market. Thieves blackmail victims into removing stolen iPhones from their Apple ID accounts so they can turn off Activation Lock. Without the passcode for the Apple ID or the password to unlock the device, the iPhone is out of the question for criminals.
So Campbell made a tutorial video telling users not to do it. In a video responding to the victim, Campbell said: “I can’t tell you exactly how I got this information, but I can tell you that for the past six years I’ve been a company that loves to talk about ‘fruit’ Certified Hardware Engineer”.
The video has over 7.4 million views so far. Days after posting the video, Campbell posted another, claiming she received a call from her manager asking her to delete the video or face disciplinary action “up to and including dismissal.”
However, according to Apple’s rules, while the company warns employees not to post content about customers, colleagues or confidential information, it does not explicitly and completely prohibit employees from posting their technical information.
Dozens of Apple engineers are now openly identifying themselves as Apple employees on Twitter, regularly interacting with the community and sharing their excitement about the work they are doing following the announcement.
Campbell believes that he has done nothing wrong. Those videos on TikTok are only personal behaviors in his spare time, and they are all public information that does not involve confidentiality. “Talking about products and technology and how people use it in their daily lives is what I do best,” Campbell said.
Campbell’s employment status remains unknown since the follow-up video was posted. Some foreign media contacted Apple and did not receive a response. Will being a celebrity on social networks in my spare time conflict with company policies? Does your boss think that this makes your job less focused? This is actually a problem that many people encounter.