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Comment by thegrimmest | Hacker News Reader

Yep, Facebook incited genocide - not the actual people who made the posts - Facebook. Lay the blame at the feet of the perpetrators, not the makers of the tools they used. This is like blaming Mercedes for the holocaust because they made Hitler's car(s).

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I'm really confused by this because there are most certainly cases where companies are responsible not to provide goods or services to war criminals or terrorists, by law. So it's already established that yes, you can blame the makers of the tools that perpetrators used.

I wouldn't conflate the offloading of policing functions on to private corporations with the assignment of moral responsibility.

Mercedes didn't have an easy way to detect and shut off violence they just decided not to use. I understand the point you're trying to make, but following that logic, should there be no moderation anywhere, for anything then, if it's ultimately only the poster's fault if they post something illegal like "let's all go to bob's house at 123 lane and kill him?"

As it works out, I would say it’s more in the vein of blaming IBM for their culpability in the Holocaust, not Mercedes, although clearly Meta’s role was nowhere near as awful as IBM’s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

Can I ask why? The Nazis could no more perpetrate the holocaust without cars than they could without computers.

I think the difference here is like between a German soldier who was ordered to do various things ultimately playing part in perpetration of Holocaust and/or other Hitler regime's crimes without possibly knowing/seeing/understanding the whole picture - after all millions of Germans did actively participated in Hitler regime - and say a USA person who would intentionally go there to join the SS to participate in it.

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