All the reasons you listed are not related to your charity at all. Basically is 1-3 and you just accidentally hit your #4 point. If it wasn't a color you liked, or you didn't need a phone, or it was more expensive, you would have not done it EVEN if it was to help.
Well, you just described the point of product red and why it is not irrelevant just because there are "proper" charities.
1 they manage to collaborate with big names like Apple that create products in demand, 2 they make sure the color is not ugly, 3 they make sure you don't pay more.
If not for product red Y-bar may not have donated to HIV/AIDS cause at all. Same for me, I always buy product red if device is available because why not, I don't care about the color much.
You’re actually reinforcing the idea: YES, it /isn’t/ charity. It’s a tiny modification to an existing behavior which individually might produce a negligible positive outcome, but cumulatively might produce a large(r) positive outcome.
I think prev post is saying: /some/ people making a trivial individual choice to produce /some/ cumulative benefit is preferable to /zero/ people making that same trivial choice to produce /zero/ cumulative benefit.
The way I see it, most people will not go out of their way to donate to HIV/AIDS in Africa. What RED has done is bake giving into getting a product, one you would have gotten anyways. Donating could certainly be more efficient but way more people are going to buy iPhones, and be tempted to buy the RED iPhone. Less efficent but at the end of the day there is going to be more money in the pot.
I think that comment was more aimed at someone who would seek out these products and sincerely believe their consumer choice is changing the world. You seem to be a bit more level-headed about it than those people, like - "if it helps a little, sure. if not, well this was the product I wanted anyway".
I’m sure there are big Product Red fans, but my guess would be the majority of the people fall into the same camp as him. I’ve bought product red stuff mainly because I liked the item in that color, and it supports a charity.
If you want but a single data point Apple yesterday highlighted a woman who got tested through a Red-funded clinic, and because she was tested early, she could also be treated and give birth to a HIV-free baby.
It's also worth reminding people just how amazingly successful medical science has been in solving the HIV health disaster.
A multi-year untreated infection would have been a death sentence still in the mid-1990s, but today we can routinely treat these cases to a level where the virus is undetectable.
Something that people also tend to forget is that there was a strong HIV-AIDS denialist movement. In the 1990s a lot of regular people and also some scientists were convinced that HIV doesn't cause AIDS, despite accumulating evidence to the contrary. Nobel Prize winner Kary Mullis was involved in this conspiracy-minded movement. The president of South Africa was also convinced, which caused thousands of unnecessary deaths in the country where HIV spread like wildfire at the time.
When somebody tries to argue that Covid-19 or climate change are fake based on the views of a single doctor or other scientist, I point at Kary Mullis.
I also buy the Product Red iPhones. If they help a bit, great! Also they are distinctive so long as you get a clear case. And they are often the best colour.
Guess I am one of those. I bought a Red iPhone 8 a few years ago for the following reasons:
1. I had to get a phone for my new job.
2. I liked the colour.
3. It was the same price as non-Red models.
4. It happened to send a few dollars towards a good cause which would not have been sent if I had bought the regular colour product.
I'm apparently a sucker who would rather give a little than nothing at all.