Apologies for the seemingly seagull-ish comment/rant, but it is 100% true: "money talks, bullshit walks". Zoom is not going to miss out a 1bn ppl market because of ethics. Apple will not miss out a 1bn market because of ethics. Blackberry handed the keys to the kingdom so fast the heads of the tortured people were spinning, and the tale goes on and on. Autocratic regimes play by our (civilized) rules when they claim "local laws, terrorists, pedophiles", etc.)(hey our govs use the same narrative, right?)
We don't stoop to their (autocratic regimes) level and ignore there legal (and unethical requests).
Capitalism (aka money flowing from country A to country B) is cross-border, freedom-agnostic, and amoral (not IM-moral)(utter lack or morals instead of bad morals).
I use a phone made in China, and thus allow a USA company reduce the number of workers in the USA market and increase dividend to its shareholders. That empowers China to continue its thing since all they care for is my money. Not my attention and my opinions. In the end, I help them get the power they seek. This is why we placed embargo to Iran, Russia, NK.. to teach them a lesson. But China? Too much £€¥$ at stake to isolate them.
May the one without sin cast the first stone. We are all in this together unless we ALL boycott Zoom, Apple, Google, Cancerbook, and the rest until they either help CHANGE China, or we let them isolate and starve until the people will start the fight back.
Google is the one company that did walk away from a billion person market - and a strong, established position in it - when asked to censor, and you want to boycott then too?
It's no wonder companies don't bother doing the right thing. People just ignore that massive sacrifice and pull out some other reason to not like Google.
I wrote this earlier, but the thread has become massive and hard to navigate so I figured I would respond to you here.
Google's history isn't so clean either.
They spun backing out of China as something they did in the interest of free speech, but it was more a response to them getting hacked by the CCP (it's still not clear what was stolen, but something big happened).
It's unclear what caused that to get shut down, but its leak and subsequent public pressure was probably a factor.
That said, I still think people within these companies should try to do the right thing (specifically that includes developers like us that make up these companies).
They spun it as leaving due to both. I've never seen an analysis that said it was a big hack, but both are points of principle.
Of course, they've re-examined it. It was the biggest sacrifice for principle in corporate history and they got almost no credit for it.
They must regret it every day, because people who simply dislike Google can take an example of Google doing exactly what they want, and still find a way to call them out for boycott on that exact issue. And even support that issue with quibbles that are tiny in comparison.
And leave Microsoft out of the boycott request in spite of their incredibly craven and spineless behavior on same point (jumping in to try to take Google's spot).
It would appear that, if you dislike Google, it doesn't matter what they do, so why should any company make any sacrifice on principle? They should just spend the money on marketing.
If I pretend they left entirely for principled reasons then it shouldn’t matter that the public is too stupid to understand that.
I guess I take the position that doing the ethical thing is done because it’s the right thing to do and not necessarily because you’ll be rewarded for it with virtue from the public.
I agree that the public’s position on technology companies is often uninformed and contradictory, but I don’t really care about that.
If I worked at google I wouldn’t want to enable CCP censorship - not because I expect the public to like me for it it, but because I don’t want to be complicit in the oppression of Chinese citizens.
If they regret it and are willing to re-enter and comply then it wasn’t really based on ethics in the first place.
That said, I’m pretty sure the hack was the main motivation and the speech issue was just a nice story to tell about it.
It really is silly to claim you want companies to behave in a certain way (not cooperate with China) and then paint them all with the same brush including those that are doing what you want.
>Capitalism (aka money flowing from country A to country B) is cross-border, freedom-agnostic, and amoral (not IM-moral)(utter lack or morals instead of bad morals).
The idea that capitalism is an amoral system is presented as if it were fact, but I can think of several philosophers of morality who have arguments for the morality or immorality of capitalism.
Apologies for the seemingly seagull-ish comment/rant, but it is 100% true: "money talks, bullshit walks". Zoom is not going to miss out a 1bn ppl market because of ethics. Apple will not miss out a 1bn market because of ethics. Blackberry handed the keys to the kingdom so fast the heads of the tortured people were spinning, and the tale goes on and on. Autocratic regimes play by our (civilized) rules when they claim "local laws, terrorists, pedophiles", etc.)(hey our govs use the same narrative, right?)
We don't stoop to their (autocratic regimes) level and ignore there legal (and unethical requests).
Capitalism (aka money flowing from country A to country B) is cross-border, freedom-agnostic, and amoral (not IM-moral)(utter lack or morals instead of bad morals).
I use a phone made in China, and thus allow a USA company reduce the number of workers in the USA market and increase dividend to its shareholders. That empowers China to continue its thing since all they care for is my money. Not my attention and my opinions. In the end, I help them get the power they seek. This is why we placed embargo to Iran, Russia, NK.. to teach them a lesson. But China? Too much £€¥$ at stake to isolate them.
May the one without sin cast the first stone. We are all in this together unless we ALL boycott Zoom, Apple, Google, Cancerbook, and the rest until they either help CHANGE China, or we let them isolate and starve until the people will start the fight back.