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Comment by about_help | Hacker News Reader

It is an extreme example to illustrate the point, not a direct comparison of FB to atomic bombs.

However, one might argue that FB is actually worse. It is hard to quantify widespread societal effects and determine if they would have occurred through other channels. The massive privacy violations across the world through FB is another item that is hard to quantify yet 100% morally wrong.

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I don't think it would be a very persuasive argument. Atomic bombs have some easily quantifiable negatives, for example $5+ trillion spent on nuclear arms in the US alone, and ~200,000 mostly civilians killed.

https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/costs-us-nuclear-weapo...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a...

Just because something can’t be tied to “people died” does not make it a positive for society. Things like censorship and tracking don’t have clear and immediate negative externalities, but they are clearly wrong and they can enable other, worse things.

"Just because something can’t be tied to “people died” does not make it a positive for society."

I never asserted that Facebook was a positive for society, neither here nor ever in my life. I'm just saying it's a very steep uphill climb to make a convincing argument that it's worse than something that directly caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and cost trillions of dollars.

The atomic bombs were dropped as a result of a dangerous political movement gaining power in Germany. That's the sort of thing people are upset about Facebook enabling now.

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