However, I also believe it is necessary to bring this shit to light no matter whose demand is being supplied under these conditions.
Except, this article isn't "bringing it to light" it is obscuring what is going on by focusing only on Apple in a very misleading way. It is entirely probable some of the issues they mention are happening at plants making things for Sony(or some other company) because, Sony, unlike Apple has not stepped in to stop the practices. By referring to Foxconn only as an Apple supplier and not checking to see which company is funding the practices that are abhorrent, all that is happening is they are providing incentive to make things worse.
If Apple has to eat shit for using virtual slave labor abroad SO BE IT!!!!
That would be fine, if it were happening, but Apple is the one company that is not allowing them to use underage workers or make people work extreme numbers of hours. They're the one company that is actually investigating and firing suppliers for just those practices. But all that is obscured by the slanted reporting.
If Apple deserved any white night status in all of this, it would only be because upon learning of these abuses, they moved all of their manufacturing base back here.
They did at one point, or in a way. Jobs left Apple and founded Next which did all it's manufacturing in the US, not the third world. Unfortunately, people were not wiling to pay a premium for that and elected politicians who would not even enforce the antitrust laws on the books, so Next was purchased by Apple and went back to the status quo. So Apple does the only thing that they can to stay in business, prevent the abuses at the facilities they work with, using regular openly published audits and reports on what action they take in response to abuses. Sorry, but picking on the only company doing anything is really, really counter productive, and trying to spin what Foxconn does overall, not at plants making things for Apple, as though it was Apple's fault is likewise counter productive.