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> - They describe Google's demonstrated ability to remove malware from user's devices as a "backdoor" from wikipedia "A backdoor is a method, often secret, of
by leshow 7y ago
> - They describe Google's demonstrated ability to remove malware from user's devices as a "backdoor"
from wikipedia "A backdoor is a method, often secret, of bypassing normal authentication or encryption in a computer system, a product, or an embedded device "
Seems to fit.
> - They describe parental controls as "censorship"
"Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient"."
Also seems to fit.
I could go on about the other points, but most of it is true almost by definition.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- creeble 7y agoAren't the parental controls voluntary censorship? That is requested by the user? True by definition, but not by intent.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoDepends on who you consider the user. Children subject to parental control censorship aren't voluntary parties.
- mav3rick 7y agoThis is such BS. When you put a baby in a car seat and he/she starts crying, you don't have their consent. However, legally the parent is the guardian of the child and is responsible for the well being. Stop using semantic bullshit to justify random arguments.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoIt's not semantic bullshit. It depends on what value you substitute for "child" when you think about it. It's different when you're thinking 5yo vs. 15yo. If anything, being outraged at calling parental controls censorship is what's bullshit. "Censorship is bad and protecting children is good, therefore parental controls are not censorship". We could instead call spade a spade, and then talk about when its use is justified.
- joshuamorton 7y agoThen GNU shouldn't try to use providing censorship tools as a pejorative. If we agree that there are ethical ways to use censorship, providing censorship tools cannot be inherently unethical and companies shouldn't be faulted for doing so.
- mav3rick 7y agoThe point is that legally parents are allowed to make that choice among other things. It doesn't matter if the kids are the direct user. This is the legal framework we live in
- ben_w 7y agoDisagree. We’re allowed to dislike the legal framework we live in. We’re allowed to say, if we wish to, that our laws appear to force[1] parents to use censorship to limit what their kids see, and that that is a bad thing. Furthermore we can say we disagree with the rules defining that censorship — for example, I have always been more disturbed by violent content than sexual, and I wish that fictional depictions of murder were even more unusual than fictional depictions of rape currently are in daytime television, i.e. never. Of course I already know the standard counter-arguments, but those don’t change the visceral annoyance I have with a system that considers all full-frontal nudity to be a bigger problem than watching someone being shot, stabbed, or poisoned. I am also annoyed that the rules of these parental filters seem to copy American sociopolitical norms by default. [1] reality depends on your jurisdiction, and I am not a lawyer in any case, but people still get to say that if they mistakenly think it’s true :-)
- mav3rick 7y agoBlaming the law and society should be a separate thread. Conflating that with tech companies abiding to them is plain wrong and dilutes two separate issues.
- tedunangst 7y agoWait, I thought it was a good thing for the owner of a phone to decide how it can be used?
- kodt 7y agoIDK according to my kid it's "his ipad".
- tedunangst 7y agoBut did he lick it? Common law doesn't recognize property rights unless it's been licked.
- hrktb 7y agoI interpret it as a point about the mechanism being in place.It being marketed as a parental control is accessory.
- mav3rick 7y agoYou will have no legal viable product if you don't ban extreme hate speech or child pornography on your platform. Is a GNU "approved" platform okay with supporting those ? It's very easy to right these tenets and criticize every company. It's hard to build products used by billions and stipulating to laws in different countries.
- CobrastanJorji 7y agoA tool to remove malware may qualify as a backdoor, and backdoors may generally be considered as malware, and malware does generally harm or mistreat users, but it does not follow from all of that that tools to remove malware harm or mistreat users.
- anchpop 7y agoThis is an example of the noncentral fallacy. It's quite easy to do this for other situations. Was Martin Luther King a criminal? A criminal is someone who breaks the law, and King knowingly broke a law against peacefully protesting against segregation, so yes. Is it sexist to only hire women for a lingerie ad? Discrimination on the basis of sex is sexist, so yes. Is it murder for a doctor to euthanize someone who wishes to die, even if it's not allowed in their area? Murder is the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another, so yes. But for all these things, if you just describe them as "criminals", "sexists", and "murderers", you're saying "we agree x is bad, y is an example of x, so y is bad", even if the reason x is bad doesn't really apply to y.
- tripzilch 7y agoremoving malware is good, so this method of bypassing normal authentication is good. parental controls are good (?), so this functionality to suppress what-we-define-as-objectionable content is good. autocomplete is good, so this keylogger is good. Google Assistent is good (?), so having it just pop up unprompted and just start recording is good (It managed to record me a few times, even though I have zero interest in voice controlling my phone--I have NO idea what triggered it, so yeah that's malware).
- leshow 7y agoI'm not making a value judgment about anything, so that particular 'fallacy' doesn't apply. Good arguments don't just call things fallacies and leave it at that. Besides, the existence of a fallacy in an argument doesn't necessarily make it wrong; it's called the 'fallacy fallacy'.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]