“Saudi Arabia murders gay people and owns 10% of Uber.”
“Saudi Arabia crucified two people last year and owns 10% of Uber.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/lyft-kingdom-holding-ma/saud...
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: –
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"
It’s interesting seeing people admit to their fake outrage nowadays.
Will anyone be able to silently leave the country if this app was pulled from the store? No, the SMS messages would still be sent, because they have nothing to do with the app.
Sometimes helping just a very little bit is as good as doing nothing, or even worse, because doing nothing at least is unequivocal in terms of moral culpability. In this case we’re talking about Saudi Arabia, a country with vast riches because we all buy their oil and kiss their asses. It’s like my government (U.K.) crying about Yemen while selling the Saudis more weapons.
Helping is a good idea, we shouldn’t host these apps, shouldn’t sell them weapons, and frankly shouldn’t dare to pat ourselves even slightly on the back for it.
So, we might as well demand that they step on the things we wish them to step on.
Even asking big tech to step on them seems to have a better chance of accomplishing my goals.
It's not that they won't make demands, it's that they'll use your demands to legitimize theirs. If you don't make any then you can credibly defend against theirs by saying that nobody should. If you do, what will you say to theirs? Do as I say not as I do?
> Even asking big tech to step on them seems to have a better chance of accomplishing my goals.
I'm not interested in defending against theirs by appeal to some principle that I don't think anyone believes in either way. I'm interested in making the case that I'm right and they're not. If I'm not right, I shouldn't win the argument, they should. And I am right and big tech is run by people who aren't smart enough to understand why, we're all screwed anyway so whatever.
I have trouble distinguishing the "don't legitimize it" argument from, say, "You shouldn't engage in political attack ads because it legitimizes the other side using them," "You shouldn't have an army because it legitimizes other countries having an army, and what if they invade you one day," and so forth. Without some concrete reason to believe that the other side either wouldn't or couldn't use a tactic, refusing to use it on principle is just planning to lose.
That's assuming you're in a symmetric position. If they show up and argue that we should censor pornography using a definition that covers most forms of gay culture, the pro-gay coalition and the anti-censorship coalition may comprise enough of a majority to prevent it.
Whereas if you show up and argue that we should censor apps you don't like, maybe they don't have enough support to defend against you even with the anti-censorship coalition.
So you win the battle and the war continues. But now the anti-censorship coalition is dead, because you can't hold together a bipartisan coalition that only benefits one party. So when the other side comes back and wants to censor gay culture again or remove apps that "violate immigration laws" or demands that search results not be "biased" against religious conservative viewpoints, you'll have given up ground useful in preventing those things.
> I'm interested in making the case that I'm right and they're not. If I'm not right, I shouldn't win the argument, they should. And I am right and big tech is run by people who aren't smart enough to understand why, we're all screwed anyway so whatever.
That's assuming winning is binary, either you get everything or nothing. But it's possible, indeed likely, for both sides to lose by just hacking each other to death piece by piece.
When censorship is made easy, it happens more often. The ban list grows until we end up in beige neutrality hell and the only thing left is pop music and corporate propaganda.
And it's not just about convincing the tech companies. If platforms don't censor, people can respect that and fight their battles without them. But once you bring them into the fray, you're going to get calls for legislation. Then it's Congress deciding what's allowed and what isn't, which they've repeatedly proven to be spectacularly bad at even when they have good intentions, and more to the point the opposition is in the majority as often as you are there.
> I have trouble distinguishing the "don't legitimize it" argument from, say, "You shouldn't engage in political attack ads because it legitimizes the other side using them," "You shouldn't have an army because it legitimizes other countries having an army, and what if they invade you one day," and so forth. Without some concrete reason to believe that the other side either wouldn't or couldn't use a tactic, refusing to use it on principle is just planning to lose.
What happens when you apply that logic to other scenarios? Preemptive nuclear strikes. Concentrating your political opposition into internment camps, or just murdering them as Stalin did. Licensing publishers so that only information pre-approved by the state can legally be distributed.
The other side could do it so we'd better do it first? Pretty glad that wasn't JFK's policy or Reagan's.
There is a difference between having the ability to do something and actually doing it. It's the difference between having an army and invading a foreign country.