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Whataboutism. Regardless, his point is that comprehensive surveillance of the Sidewalk project is bad. > Sidewalk’s proposal is peppered with phrases like “com

Whataboutism. Regardless, his point is that comprehensive surveillance of the Sidewalk project is bad. > Sidewalk’s proposal is peppered with phrases like “comprehensive data collection,” “an enormous amount of data,” and “fine-grained data.” The data it desires runs from environmental (localized weather conditions, noise levels, and pollution) to social ( everyday actions that paint a detailed picture of what residents are doing and when ). It looks like Google's vision for the modern city is to turn it into the Sims where Google can peer into everything. If you want to live in that world be my guest, but he's absolutely right. This is not something which is good in many ways. Where Google is monitoring everyone all the time. I mean even in Star Trek the computer isn't monitoring everyone all the time.... if it were then many plots could be resolved with the surveillance log on everyone's actions.

Zhenya 7y ago
Not whataboutism at all; with historical context you might be able to see that this isn't a principal stand but possibly has some, yet unknown, commercial reason.
- kbenson 7y ago
  It's somewhat whataboutism because the whether the message is truthful does not rely on the source. i.e. Hitler could say genocide is bad, and he would still be correct even though he's Hitler. It is relevant to the discussion to point out Jim Balsillie's relation to this topic. It's not a refutation of the point being made though. It's entirely possible that he has ulterior motives for making this argument that aren't based on it being morally (or event factually) correct, but it may be correct (or incorrect) separately from that.
  - ehsankia 7y ago
    Except the source has a very large incentive to besmirch Google and their business model, because Google is the very company that destroyed their business. Therefore, I'd take anything in this attack piece with a grain of salt, they are far from being the authoritative source on the subject.
  - shstalwart 7y ago
    Is whataboutism the modern incarnation of ad hominem? Personally, I would classify these objections about Balsillie's arguments as ad hominem attacks. If the point he makes is logically coherent, what does his personal motivation it matter?
    - caprese 7y ago
      Whataboutism is an ad hominem fallacy when the context is US-Russia geopolitical relations. Traditionally it has been used to successfully ignore accurate observations about US/Russia, when the messenger is Russian/US respectively. Here the concept has been extended to large multinational corporate relations.
- caprese 7y ago
  > Not whataboutism at all; with historical context you might be able to see that this isn't a principal stand but possibly has some, yet unknown, commercial reason. or experience and an authoritative source on the peril?

Zhenya 7y ago

Not whataboutism at all; with historical context you might be able to see that this isn't a principal stand but possibly has some, yet unknown, commercial reason.

kbenson 7y ago
It's somewhat whataboutism because the whether the message is truthful does not rely on the source. i.e. Hitler could say genocide is bad, and he would still be correct even though he's Hitler. It is relevant to the discussion to point out Jim Balsillie's relation to this topic. It's not a refutation of the point being made though. It's entirely possible that he has ulterior motives for making this argument that aren't based on it being morally (or event factually) correct, but it may be correct (or incorrect) separately from that.
- ehsankia 7y ago
  Except the source has a very large incentive to besmirch Google and their business model, because Google is the very company that destroyed their business. Therefore, I'd take anything in this attack piece with a grain of salt, they are far from being the authoritative source on the subject.
- shstalwart 7y ago
  Is whataboutism the modern incarnation of ad hominem? Personally, I would classify these objections about Balsillie's arguments as ad hominem attacks. If the point he makes is logically coherent, what does his personal motivation it matter?
  - caprese 7y ago
    Whataboutism is an ad hominem fallacy when the context is US-Russia geopolitical relations. Traditionally it has been used to successfully ignore accurate observations about US/Russia, when the messenger is Russian/US respectively. Here the concept has been extended to large multinational corporate relations.
caprese 7y ago
> Not whataboutism at all; with historical context you might be able to see that this isn't a principal stand but possibly has some, yet unknown, commercial reason. or experience and an authoritative source on the peril?