8 ms·

This is about as evil as it gets for a software company. Using your technology to put people behind bars for victimless crimes Microsoft products are generally

This is about as evil as it gets for a software company. Using your technology to put people behind bars for victimless crimes Microsoft products are generally such low quality that I avoid them anyway, but I'm going to try to disable all my Microsoft cloud accounts after this revelation.

kick 6y ago
It gets worse. Google what IBM did for a certain country in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s (yes, after the invasion of Poland).
- the-dude 6y ago
  But Poland fired first!
- tracker1 6y ago
  Absolutely... we should burn every IBM, VW, BMW and every other corporation that worked with WWII Germany to the ground!
  - whymauri 6y ago
    Not sure if this in bad faith, but... What we should study is how these companies successfully laundered their reputations, such that we can hold modern corporations accountable for conspiring with genocidal or dictatorial state actors. This does not solve every ethical problem that underlies the contemporary corporation, but I believe that companies that are complicit in the mass extermination of human life should face the consequences. Hopefully, we're on the same bandwidth here.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      Or, maybe address the systematic realities that make companies act this way over and over for centuries.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - bad_user 6y ago
        You mean people? Companies are ran by people, people want to get rich, people are the problem. The only change I see working is to hold accountable not just the companies themselves but the decision makers too.
        sudosysgen 6y ago
        Companies are not people and are not run by people, they have specific legal requirements and power structures that mean that the operate very differently from how most people that compose them want them to. In any case, how people act is largely a consequence of their environment, i-e, the system. These can be environmental, political (as in, power relations), cultural, etc...
        ta17711771 6y ago
        > specific legal requirements Stop leaning on this, because it's not true, just a cop-out. Individual corporate humanism isn't a crime.
        sudosysgen 6y ago
        Corporate humanism isn't always a crime. Sometimes it is. But even when it isn't, it is a sub-optimal strategy compared to maximizing as long as those that make the decisions have differing interests than those that bear them. And if they do not have differing interests, then why separate them?
        tracker1 6y ago
        And what's the solution? Do you propose killing everyone that worked for the companies in question during WWII? What about those not in Germany or occupied terretories? Since most of those people are long since dead, do you propose killing their children and grandchildren? Anything done today for crimes 80 years ago will only serve to hurt those that weren't even around, and not really help those that were harmed.
    - tracker1 6y ago
      I kind of just left it alone... it was intended to be sarcasm, but figured there's three ways it could be taken. Sarcasm/humor, genuine or false-flag. The reality is that companies aren't people, and despite the concept of corporate personhood shouldn't be treated like it. Nobody working in or managing a corporation today was likely a part of said company during WWII. Beyond the above, Sometimes "companies" have no choice. If your company, and its' resources, employees, etc. exist in a totalitarian regime, you're kind of stuck. If the country's leaders are willing to kill and replace you, then most people would simply comply. Many that worked in these companies during WWII passively resisted by slowing things down and hindering projects. Not enough to get them killed, but enough to keep things from going as bad as quickly as they otherwise would have. A company is made up of its' people, from the leadership down... and that changes over time. Trying to hold a company to something done 80 years before is kind of meaningless. If it was called for and/or done at the time, or nearer the time that's different. Like many things, at some point you need to get over things that happened before you were born and concentrate on the now.
ashtonkem 6y ago
Worse still; possibly putting innocent people behind bars for victimless crimes.
- flattone 6y ago
  I have a question on this. Example US drug consumer money pays for violence and corruption in Mexico. Speaking first hand of a hostile takeover > theft of family home in Acapulco.
  - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
    “Drugs” aren’t exclusively from Mexico. The DEA’s remit includes domestic production. You’re correct in that strong demand for illegal drugs imported from Mexico fuels gang violence - but the DEA would prosecute me regardless of whether or not my hypothetical cannabis was ethically sourced, home-grown, or was the product of cartel wars, exploited workers, and gang violence. I don’t believe there is any argument to be had in good-faith to advocate for the punishment for the possession, personal-use, and personal-production of drugs to be worse than the effect of the drug itself. This is what we mean when we talk about the DEA pursuing victimless crimes. Note that I’m not at all saying that dealers who push addictive substances should be allowed to operate: by all means go after opiates’ supply-chain (and we can start with Perdue’s executives!) but it’s senseless to have the laws against cannabis, LSD, et cetera that we have today, especially when alcohol and tobacco are legal. I’d rather we banned alcohol and had state-licensed LSD counters in supermarkets... Remember, “drugs” are not a monolithic social-ill and it’s dangerously ignorant to lump entirely different substances together, label them broadly as “drugs” and suggest they’re all equally bad while giving alcohol and tobacco a free-pass - because this leads to horribly misguided social policymaking and damages the credibility of those in-charge. I wouldn’t have a problem with the DEA if they left individuals alone, and employed more social-workers than Hank Schrader-types. It’s maddening how few departments in the US gov (or any country’s gov, really) have evidence-based policymaking as an organisational pillar.
    - Reelin 6y ago
      > by all means go after opiates’ supply-chain (and we can start with Perdue’s executives!) I agree with the rest of what you wrote, but I'd like to suggest that the vast majority of the negative effects of opiates are entirely due to how society treats them. (Also note their incredibly low wholesale prices, and that (as with alcohol) most people who become addicted to them seem to have other problems in their lives that don't magically go away when the drug is banned.)
jeffreyrogers 6y ago
> put people behind bars for victimless crimes Have you been to any of the regions where these drugs are produced? They aren't victimless crimes. The drug trade creates very real social problems in both the regions they're produced and where they're consumed. Now, maybe certain policies and the war on drugs create more problems than they solve, but the problems they aim to address are very real, and do have victims associated with them.
- stronglikedan 6y ago
  > The drug trade creates very real social problems The drug war creates those problems. A legal (or maybe just decriminalized) drug trade would eliminate most of them.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    Prohibition, not war. You don't need a war on drugs to create those situations, as France currently proves, you need prohibition. It's the laws that create the incentives, not how crazy you enforce them.
  - jeffreyrogers 6y ago
    I mostly agree with that, however, they are still not victimless crimes.
  - jansan 6y ago
    So the whole OxyContin scandal is based on false accusations? What we had here was a quasi-legalization of drugs that should be strictly regulated. It destroyed families, lives, whole communities. This is what you get if you fully legalize drug trade. It's insanity.
    - stronglikedan 6y ago
      If addiction were not stigmatized, in (very) large part due to the war on drugs, there would not be a OxyContin scandal. Legalization has nothing to do with that.
sambull 6y ago
Have to assume they will use their telemetry data for evil as well.
Mirioron 6y ago
It's easy to lay the blame on corporations, but where do the voters come into this? They are the ones that get politicians into office. Politicians are the ones with the power to stop the war on drugs, yet they haven't. Should we say that people who vote for politicians that don't get rid of the war on drugs are using their vote to put innocent people in prison? It just seems odd to me that the two groups of people that could put an end to the whole thing (voters and politicians) seem to be blame-free.
- bad_user 6y ago
  This is whataboutism. Yes, ideally our elected politicians should solve this, but we don't live in a perfect world. So what can we do in a world led by imperfect people?
  - Mirioron 6y ago
    The elected officials are the cause of this problem. If they stopped funding the war on drugs then it would dissipate on its own.
- trophycase 6y ago
  People are too busy arguing about spanish speaking people and how vaginas should be allowed to be used to give a shit about the corporate surveillance state taking over the entire world. This is why identity politics is a wedge issue, call me privileged.
- staplers 6y ago
  “Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.” -Lucy Parsons (1878-1937)
  - squarefoot 6y ago
    How true, but good luck telling that to those who keep voting billionaries.
- TACIXAT 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

kick 6y ago

It gets worse. Google what IBM did for a certain country in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s (yes, after the invasion of Poland).

the-dude 6y ago
But Poland fired first!
tracker1 6y ago
Absolutely... we should burn every IBM, VW, BMW and every other corporation that worked with WWII Germany to the ground!
- whymauri 6y ago
  Not sure if this in bad faith, but... What we should study is how these companies successfully laundered their reputations, such that we can hold modern corporations accountable for conspiring with genocidal or dictatorial state actors. This does not solve every ethical problem that underlies the contemporary corporation, but I believe that companies that are complicit in the mass extermination of human life should face the consequences. Hopefully, we're on the same bandwidth here.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Or, maybe address the systematic realities that make companies act this way over and over for centuries.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - bad_user 6y ago
      You mean people? Companies are ran by people, people want to get rich, people are the problem. The only change I see working is to hold accountable not just the companies themselves but the decision makers too.
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        Companies are not people and are not run by people, they have specific legal requirements and power structures that mean that the operate very differently from how most people that compose them want them to. In any case, how people act is largely a consequence of their environment, i-e, the system. These can be environmental, political (as in, power relations), cultural, etc...
        ta17711771 6y ago
        > specific legal requirements Stop leaning on this, because it's not true, just a cop-out. Individual corporate humanism isn't a crime.
        sudosysgen 6y ago
        Corporate humanism isn't always a crime. Sometimes it is. But even when it isn't, it is a sub-optimal strategy compared to maximizing as long as those that make the decisions have differing interests than those that bear them. And if they do not have differing interests, then why separate them?
      - tracker1 6y ago
        And what's the solution? Do you propose killing everyone that worked for the companies in question during WWII? What about those not in Germany or occupied terretories? Since most of those people are long since dead, do you propose killing their children and grandchildren? Anything done today for crimes 80 years ago will only serve to hurt those that weren't even around, and not really help those that were harmed.
  - tracker1 6y ago
    I kind of just left it alone... it was intended to be sarcasm, but figured there's three ways it could be taken. Sarcasm/humor, genuine or false-flag. The reality is that companies aren't people, and despite the concept of corporate personhood shouldn't be treated like it. Nobody working in or managing a corporation today was likely a part of said company during WWII. Beyond the above, Sometimes "companies" have no choice. If your company, and its' resources, employees, etc. exist in a totalitarian regime, you're kind of stuck. If the country's leaders are willing to kill and replace you, then most people would simply comply. Many that worked in these companies during WWII passively resisted by slowing things down and hindering projects. Not enough to get them killed, but enough to keep things from going as bad as quickly as they otherwise would have. A company is made up of its' people, from the leadership down... and that changes over time. Trying to hold a company to something done 80 years before is kind of meaningless. If it was called for and/or done at the time, or nearer the time that's different. Like many things, at some point you need to get over things that happened before you were born and concentrate on the now.

ashtonkem 6y ago

Worse still; possibly putting innocent people behind bars for victimless crimes.

flattone 6y ago
I have a question on this. Example US drug consumer money pays for violence and corruption in Mexico. Speaking first hand of a hostile takeover > theft of family home in Acapulco.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  “Drugs” aren’t exclusively from Mexico. The DEA’s remit includes domestic production. You’re correct in that strong demand for illegal drugs imported from Mexico fuels gang violence - but the DEA would prosecute me regardless of whether or not my hypothetical cannabis was ethically sourced, home-grown, or was the product of cartel wars, exploited workers, and gang violence. I don’t believe there is any argument to be had in good-faith to advocate for the punishment for the possession, personal-use, and personal-production of drugs to be worse than the effect of the drug itself. This is what we mean when we talk about the DEA pursuing victimless crimes. Note that I’m not at all saying that dealers who push addictive substances should be allowed to operate: by all means go after opiates’ supply-chain (and we can start with Perdue’s executives!) but it’s senseless to have the laws against cannabis, LSD, et cetera that we have today, especially when alcohol and tobacco are legal. I’d rather we banned alcohol and had state-licensed LSD counters in supermarkets... Remember, “drugs” are not a monolithic social-ill and it’s dangerously ignorant to lump entirely different substances together, label them broadly as “drugs” and suggest they’re all equally bad while giving alcohol and tobacco a free-pass - because this leads to horribly misguided social policymaking and damages the credibility of those in-charge. I wouldn’t have a problem with the DEA if they left individuals alone, and employed more social-workers than Hank Schrader-types. It’s maddening how few departments in the US gov (or any country’s gov, really) have evidence-based policymaking as an organisational pillar.
  - Reelin 6y ago
    > by all means go after opiates’ supply-chain (and we can start with Perdue’s executives!) I agree with the rest of what you wrote, but I'd like to suggest that the vast majority of the negative effects of opiates are entirely due to how society treats them. (Also note their incredibly low wholesale prices, and that (as with alcohol) most people who become addicted to them seem to have other problems in their lives that don't magically go away when the drug is banned.)

jeffreyrogers 6y ago

> put people behind bars for victimless crimes Have you been to any of the regions where these drugs are produced? They aren't victimless crimes. The drug trade creates very real social problems in both the regions they're produced and where they're consumed. Now, maybe certain policies and the war on drugs create more problems than they solve, but the problems they aim to address are very real, and do have victims associated with them.

stronglikedan 6y ago
> The drug trade creates very real social problems The drug war creates those problems. A legal (or maybe just decriminalized) drug trade would eliminate most of them.
- luckylion 6y ago
  Prohibition, not war. You don't need a war on drugs to create those situations, as France currently proves, you need prohibition. It's the laws that create the incentives, not how crazy you enforce them.
- jeffreyrogers 6y ago
  I mostly agree with that, however, they are still not victimless crimes.
- jansan 6y ago
  So the whole OxyContin scandal is based on false accusations? What we had here was a quasi-legalization of drugs that should be strictly regulated. It destroyed families, lives, whole communities. This is what you get if you fully legalize drug trade. It's insanity.
  - stronglikedan 6y ago
    If addiction were not stigmatized, in (very) large part due to the war on drugs, there would not be a OxyContin scandal. Legalization has nothing to do with that.

sambull 6y ago

Have to assume they will use their telemetry data for evil as well.

Mirioron 6y ago

It's easy to lay the blame on corporations, but where do the voters come into this? They are the ones that get politicians into office. Politicians are the ones with the power to stop the war on drugs, yet they haven't. Should we say that people who vote for politicians that don't get rid of the war on drugs are using their vote to put innocent people in prison? It just seems odd to me that the two groups of people that could put an end to the whole thing (voters and politicians) seem to be blame-free.

bad_user 6y ago
This is whataboutism. Yes, ideally our elected politicians should solve this, but we don't live in a perfect world. So what can we do in a world led by imperfect people?
- Mirioron 6y ago
  The elected officials are the cause of this problem. If they stopped funding the war on drugs then it would dissipate on its own.
trophycase 6y ago
People are too busy arguing about spanish speaking people and how vaginas should be allowed to be used to give a shit about the corporate surveillance state taking over the entire world. This is why identity politics is a wedge issue, call me privileged.
staplers 6y ago
“Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.” -Lucy Parsons (1878-1937)
- squarefoot 6y ago
  How true, but good luck telling that to those who keep voting billionaries.
TACIXAT 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]