2 ms·

Moral grounds and PR are one in the same. It's your companies morals that are most important to PR. PR is all about communicating your companies morals. Your mo

Moral grounds and PR are one in the same. It's your companies morals that are most important to PR. PR is all about communicating your companies morals. Your morals are your PR. Perhaps I'm taking a broader definition of PR than you. I'm not just including money actively spent on PR, PR reps, etc. I'm talking more fundamentally than that - the way your company conducts it's business. I understand your point. You care more about Google discouraging negative racial speech (I don't like the phrase hate speech as its used too subjectively) than you do software freedom. And from that perspective google made the right PR move. But, as someone that cares more about software freedom, freedom of speech, etc, I think it's a bad PR move. In the end, Google will do whatever it think is best in its opinion.

munchbunny 10y ago
Your definition of "PR move" seems quite different from the common usage, which comes with a strong connotation of "we are doing this primarily for public image reasons," which is different from "we are doing this because we think it's the right thing to do." > I understand your point. You care more about Google discouraging negative racial speech (I don't like the phrase hate speech as its used too subjectively) than you do software freedom. And from that perspective google made the right PR move. That's not quite my point. In most situations where this is an issue, it's a judgement call on balancing freedom with ethical/moral concerns. I believe in neither extreme because they both represent systems that are broken in very obvious ways. Title IX and the various Civil Rights Acts are pretty good examples where freedom of speech (and some other freedoms) are explicitly limited for worthwhile reasons. In this situation, even in its most charitable interpretation, it's probably a tool for directing unambiguously negative racial speech that's tied to a social agenda that is unhealthy for our society's cohesion. My point is that in this case, the balance of considerations puts this app clearly on the "unambiguously bad" part of this spectrum, and it's quite possible to value software freedom or freedom of speech and still think that Google made the right PR move.

munchbunny 10y ago

Your definition of "PR move" seems quite different from the common usage, which comes with a strong connotation of "we are doing this primarily for public image reasons," which is different from "we are doing this because we think it's the right thing to do." > I understand your point. You care more about Google discouraging negative racial speech (I don't like the phrase hate speech as its used too subjectively) than you do software freedom. And from that perspective google made the right PR move. That's not quite my point. In most situations where this is an issue, it's a judgement call on balancing freedom with ethical/moral concerns. I believe in neither extreme because they both represent systems that are broken in very obvious ways. Title IX and the various Civil Rights Acts are pretty good examples where freedom of speech (and some other freedoms) are explicitly limited for worthwhile reasons. In this situation, even in its most charitable interpretation, it's probably a tool for directing unambiguously negative racial speech that's tied to a social agenda that is unhealthy for our society's cohesion. My point is that in this case, the balance of considerations puts this app clearly on the "unambiguously bad" part of this spectrum, and it's quite possible to value software freedom or freedom of speech and still think that Google made the right PR move.