4 ms·

> I don't really want to trust Google, but they behave much better than the Australian government, If you ignore who does it worst in pracice, the most import

by berkes 6y ago

> I don't really want to trust Google, but they behave much better than the Australian government, If you ignore who does it worst in pracice, the most important argument becomes apparent: The Austrialian government is a democratically assigned entity; one that has (or should have?) checks and balances in place; one that is closely monitored as your various references prove. Google, a foreign private entity has no such checks and balances in place. We don't vote in general elections for the new CEO of Google, we don't elect representatives into the board, and we cannot lean on transparancy laws to look into the kitchen at that private entity.

eru 6y ago
So you are saying democracy is magic?
- berkes 6y ago
  No. I'm pointing out some differences between a private entity and a goverment, which the parent commenter either ignored, or forgot to mention when comparing said governement with said private entity.
barry-cotter 6y ago
So what? Democracy isn’t a sacrament, it doesn’t sanctify the government. Hitler was democratically elected. Democracy does not have moral valence as such.
- fauigerzigerk 6y ago
  Hitler got 33% of the vote in the last free and fair elections. But I agree that democratic government doesn't automatically justify everything. Minority and fundamental individual rights are a problem. There are a lot of tricky issues with self referentiality if you think about independence movements for instance.
  - Tainnor 6y ago
    Yep, Hitler being elected Chancellor was well within the legal framework of the Weimar constitution (even if it was kind of a shady backdoor deal). Him rigging the 1933 election and later grabbing all the power through the Enabling Act wasn't.
- kiplkipl 6y ago
  I find the elected fascist to be an interesting thought experiment. If someone was fairly elected on a platform of genocide, would you comply? If someone doesn't, does that mean democracy is second to morality? And, if they don't, do they think that person should be allowed to stand on that plaform?
  - eru 6y ago
    Duh, obviously democracy ranks way lower than morality. Whether someone should be allowed to campaign for genocide depends on the laws of the country. In modern Germany platforms like that are explicitly forbidden. But the laws of the Weimar Republic were more value agnostic.
- josefx 6y ago
  Hitler wasn't elected, in fact the Weimar Republic was mostly incapable of forming a working government during the time it existed. Like many before him Hitler was assigned his position in the hope that his failure to uphold his promises would also cripple his support in the population. His biggest grab for power was underlined by armed SA troops in the Reichstag, a lot of imprisoned or outright missing politicians and Göring fudging the attendance count to meet the minimum requirements for a legitimate vote.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    The Nazi faction, led by Hitler actually 'won' the election because their party got the most votes, but not enough to have an absolute majority so they were going to have to make some kind of coalition. A similar thing could easily happen today.
    - josefx 6y ago
      > The Nazi faction, led by Hitler actually 'won' the election because their party got the most votes, but not enough to have an absolute majority The coalition Hitler lead had around 240 of 580 seats. They didn't have an absolute majority because they weren't even near having any kind of majority. Of course a hundred of the other seats were held by communists and those went up in flames after the Reichstag fire and the subsequent ban on left leaning political organisations. > A similar thing could easily happen today. The last time a German government tried to outlaw an opposition party it ended up with the courts throwing the case out for involving too many law enforcement moles.
mcv 6y ago
True, and I absolutely support regulation where necessary. I strongly support regulation that require companies to handle user data in a confidential manner, for example. But that doesn't make all regulation automatically good; I strongly oppose regulation that requires companies to share sensitive user data with anyone who asks for it, for example. And forcing a company to do business it does not want to do, seems unreasonably oppressive. In this particular case, if Google barely makes any money on linking to news sites, and the law says they need to pay a lot of money to link to those sites, then the obvious business decision is not to link to those sites at all, which will likely hurt news sites, because they get less visitors. There are levels of regulation that will hurt the market, rather than help it, and this sounds like it might be one of those. I recognise the right and need of democratic governments to regulate markets, but I also recognise that this can turn the government into an authoritarian seat of power, that serves power, rather than the people. This democratic accountability needs to work, needs to be used, needs to be obeyed by the government. So that makes it good that Google shares with the Australian public what's going on.
- berkes 6y ago
  I'm not saying this specific law is any good (I think it is not). But I am saying that when we compare who is to allow or deny us access to news and knowledge, and who should be able to track our every move, a democratic elected goverment is better suited to do so, than a private entity.
  - mcv 6y ago
    That sounds completely contrary to the concept of a free press. If the government gets to decide access to news, then independent checks on the government can become impossible. It would be the end of a free press. This is absolutely a big problem with democracy: on the one hand, it requires a free press to inform voters about the state of the country and the government, but on the other hand, there's no way to guarantee that the press will provide the necessary information; the press needs to be funded, but if the government funds it, the government controls it. If the people pay for it in a free market, then the press will publish what the people want to pay for, rather than what is necessary for them to know about their government.
fauigerzigerk 6y ago
On the other hand, the government is a true monopoly (for good reason) so you can't just stop being their "customer" whenever you like. You may end up spending your entire life oppressed by your fellow citizens who may be indifferent towards your needs. So I think there is a good reason for not having the government directly run everything. It wouldn't even mean democratic control over everything. It would mean bureaucratic control, very indirectly influenced by a democratic choice between a handful of parties once every 4 or 5 years. Both government and voluntary agreements between individuals and companies have their place. What governments should do is make sure that our interaction with Google and other tech giants is indeed voluntary and transparent.
- maigret 6y ago
  Turns out it's surprisingly hard to stop being a Google customer, if not impossible. I advise you to check the series by Kashmir Hill if you haven't yet: https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-the-big-five-tech-giants-from-my-life-it-was-hel-1831304194 https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-the-big-five-tech-giants-from-my-l...
  - vageli 6y ago
    From the article, it doesn't sound _too_ hard to not be a customer of any of the companies (and I was Google-free for a long while until I had to use an Android for work purposes); what is difficult is not interacting with any customers of these companies in addition to not interacting with the companies themselves. This person didn't use Signal, for instance, because it is hosted on AWS. That's like saying you'll stop visiting shops that have Verizon Business internet or similar, which to me seems very different from just trying to cut Verizon out of your life.
- eru 6y ago
  > It wouldn't even mean democratic control over everything. It would mean bureaucratic control, very indirectly influenced by a democratic choice between a handful of parties once every 4 or 5 years. Even direct democratic control would be a nightmare. In practice the bureaucratic layer probably tempers the worst excesses.

by berkes 6y ago

eru 6y ago

So you are saying democracy is magic?

berkes 6y ago
No. I'm pointing out some differences between a private entity and a goverment, which the parent commenter either ignored, or forgot to mention when comparing said governement with said private entity.

barry-cotter 6y ago

So what? Democracy isn’t a sacrament, it doesn’t sanctify the government. Hitler was democratically elected. Democracy does not have moral valence as such.

fauigerzigerk 6y ago
Hitler got 33% of the vote in the last free and fair elections. But I agree that democratic government doesn't automatically justify everything. Minority and fundamental individual rights are a problem. There are a lot of tricky issues with self referentiality if you think about independence movements for instance.
- Tainnor 6y ago
  Yep, Hitler being elected Chancellor was well within the legal framework of the Weimar constitution (even if it was kind of a shady backdoor deal). Him rigging the 1933 election and later grabbing all the power through the Enabling Act wasn't.
kiplkipl 6y ago
I find the elected fascist to be an interesting thought experiment. If someone was fairly elected on a platform of genocide, would you comply? If someone doesn't, does that mean democracy is second to morality? And, if they don't, do they think that person should be allowed to stand on that plaform?
- eru 6y ago
  Duh, obviously democracy ranks way lower than morality. Whether someone should be allowed to campaign for genocide depends on the laws of the country. In modern Germany platforms like that are explicitly forbidden. But the laws of the Weimar Republic were more value agnostic.
josefx 6y ago
Hitler wasn't elected, in fact the Weimar Republic was mostly incapable of forming a working government during the time it existed. Like many before him Hitler was assigned his position in the hope that his failure to uphold his promises would also cripple his support in the population. His biggest grab for power was underlined by armed SA troops in the Reichstag, a lot of imprisoned or outright missing politicians and Göring fudging the attendance count to meet the minimum requirements for a legitimate vote.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jacquesm 6y ago
  The Nazi faction, led by Hitler actually 'won' the election because their party got the most votes, but not enough to have an absolute majority so they were going to have to make some kind of coalition. A similar thing could easily happen today.
  - josefx 6y ago
    > The Nazi faction, led by Hitler actually 'won' the election because their party got the most votes, but not enough to have an absolute majority The coalition Hitler lead had around 240 of 580 seats. They didn't have an absolute majority because they weren't even near having any kind of majority. Of course a hundred of the other seats were held by communists and those went up in flames after the Reichstag fire and the subsequent ban on left leaning political organisations. > A similar thing could easily happen today. The last time a German government tried to outlaw an opposition party it ended up with the courts throwing the case out for involving too many law enforcement moles.

mcv 6y ago

True, and I absolutely support regulation where necessary. I strongly support regulation that require companies to handle user data in a confidential manner, for example. But that doesn't make all regulation automatically good; I strongly oppose regulation that requires companies to share sensitive user data with anyone who asks for it, for example. And forcing a company to do business it does not want to do, seems unreasonably oppressive. In this particular case, if Google barely makes any money on linking to news sites, and the law says they need to pay a lot of money to link to those sites, then the obvious business decision is not to link to those sites at all, which will likely hurt news sites, because they get less visitors. There are levels of regulation that will hurt the market, rather than help it, and this sounds like it might be one of those. I recognise the right and need of democratic governments to regulate markets, but I also recognise that this can turn the government into an authoritarian seat of power, that serves power, rather than the people. This democratic accountability needs to work, needs to be used, needs to be obeyed by the government. So that makes it good that Google shares with the Australian public what's going on.

berkes 6y ago
I'm not saying this specific law is any good (I think it is not). But I am saying that when we compare who is to allow or deny us access to news and knowledge, and who should be able to track our every move, a democratic elected goverment is better suited to do so, than a private entity.
- mcv 6y ago
  That sounds completely contrary to the concept of a free press. If the government gets to decide access to news, then independent checks on the government can become impossible. It would be the end of a free press. This is absolutely a big problem with democracy: on the one hand, it requires a free press to inform voters about the state of the country and the government, but on the other hand, there's no way to guarantee that the press will provide the necessary information; the press needs to be funded, but if the government funds it, the government controls it. If the people pay for it in a free market, then the press will publish what the people want to pay for, rather than what is necessary for them to know about their government.

fauigerzigerk 6y ago

On the other hand, the government is a true monopoly (for good reason) so you can't just stop being their "customer" whenever you like. You may end up spending your entire life oppressed by your fellow citizens who may be indifferent towards your needs. So I think there is a good reason for not having the government directly run everything. It wouldn't even mean democratic control over everything. It would mean bureaucratic control, very indirectly influenced by a democratic choice between a handful of parties once every 4 or 5 years. Both government and voluntary agreements between individuals and companies have their place. What governments should do is make sure that our interaction with Google and other tech giants is indeed voluntary and transparent.

maigret 6y ago
Turns out it's surprisingly hard to stop being a Google customer, if not impossible. I advise you to check the series by Kashmir Hill if you haven't yet: https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-the-big-five-tech-giants-from-my-life-it-was-hel-1831304194 https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-the-big-five-tech-giants-from-my-l...
- vageli 6y ago
  From the article, it doesn't sound _too_ hard to not be a customer of any of the companies (and I was Google-free for a long while until I had to use an Android for work purposes); what is difficult is not interacting with any customers of these companies in addition to not interacting with the companies themselves. This person didn't use Signal, for instance, because it is hosted on AWS. That's like saying you'll stop visiting shops that have Verizon Business internet or similar, which to me seems very different from just trying to cut Verizon out of your life.
eru 6y ago
> It wouldn't even mean democratic control over everything. It would mean bureaucratic control, very indirectly influenced by a democratic choice between a handful of parties once every 4 or 5 years. Even direct democratic control would be a nightmare. In practice the bureaucratic layer probably tempers the worst excesses.