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0 pointsdexen5y ago0 comments

Upon reading your, and GP, it occurred to me that we've lost the idea that it is the buyer that is responsible for the purchases.

It used to be that people and organizations making unethical purchases were the ones we considered, and held, responsible. For a long time we've had good, positive movements centered on informing the buyer. We added expiration dates, ingredient lists, nutritional value information, crashworthiness scores and reliability ratings, country of origin labels, even ethical sourcing labels. Perhaps too much of a good thing caused information overload and resulting numbness? Somehow, between the Prohibition, the "war on drugs", and the supply side moral regulations, we've lost the spirit of "well informed free agents making decisions".

Most of the services (FB and the likes) we're discussing here are morally neutral by their nature, and it takes concerted efforts to make them non-neutral[1]. It is the particular use they are being put to that is moral or immoral. Let's not shift vast moral powers from the wide society to a narrow cadre, shall we? The economy is a neat distributed system. It's the popular democracy before democracy became popular. Let's not give it up.

[1] example of non-neutrality: the current trend of algorithmic manipulation

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kelnos5y ago

> Most of the services (FB and the likes) we're discussing here are morally neutral by their nature

I don't think that's the case. Is it moral to exploit human psychology when developing addictive features that pull people into the site over and over? Is it moral to sell user information to advertisers so they can emotionally manipulate you into buying crap you don't need? Is it moral to design interactions that evoke outrage and disagreement in order to increase engagement? Is it moral to track user activity across the web, outside the company's site?

I don't think any of these things are moral. These practices might not be necessary for a site like FB (then again they might), but this is the model they all seem to choose. And that's what actually matters.

dexenOP5y ago

I hear your objections, and I should have worded my idea better.

The gist was, a bare messaging+microblogging platform is, by its own nature, morally neutral[1]. Of course if the operator starts doing editorial decisions - like algorithmic timelines, or propping up/pushing down content, or manipulating user mood - then the operator clearly is making moral judgements & decisions.

Funny how respecting user privacy does, at least partly, absolve the operator from a lot of risks related to making moral judgements on a mass scale in a hurry.

[1] with the only caveat that, if somebody believes facilitating communication to be evil or good, then it would be considered respectively evil or good.

kelnos5y ago

I agree that the mere concept of a bare messaging+microblogging platform is morally neutral, but frankly I just don't see what the point is of making that observation, because we don't have one of those, at least not something that's wildly successful enough to matter. (By that I mean that a platform that has 100 or 1000 or even a million users can do whatever it wants; unethical behavior just doesn't move the needle on a global scale.)

It's the classic argument, "technology is neutral; how it's used determines the ethics". Well, yes, I agree with that, but here we have a company that's using it unethically, and has no desire or need to stop their bad behavior. And that bad behavior has been instrumental to their success. That's what matters.

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kelnos5y ago

> Most of the services (FB and the likes) we're discussing here are morally neutral by their nature

dexenOP5y ago

I hear your objections, and I should have worded my idea better.

Funny how respecting user privacy does, at least partly, absolve the operator from a lot of risks related to making moral judgements on a mass scale in a hurry.

[1] with the only caveat that, if somebody believes facilitating communication to be evil or good, then it would be considered respectively evil or good.

kelnos5y ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse