5 ms·
> If you work ... with huge social responsibilities, discussions about ethics ought to be unavoidable, in my opinion. The problem is distinguishing ethics from
by toomim 6y ago
> If you work ... with huge social responsibilities, discussions about ethics ought to be unavoidable, in my opinion.
The problem is distinguishing ethics from politics. These are very hard to disentangle, because ethical values are usually based on some political orientation. And I don't want Facebook to be making political decisions on my behalf, as a user. And I don't even want internal employee discussions to be derailed by political considerations.
So how do you distinguish ethics from politics? I don't think it's possible, unless the company defines its own ethical values, a priori, and only considers those when making decisions.
If you read the article, I think that this is precisely what Facebook's new policy is trying to do by putting a fence around "social issues."
- t-writescode 6y ago> because ethical values are usually based on some political orientation Are you sure that isn't exactly backwards? Because it definitely should be the other direction in my very strong opinion. One's morals or beliefs on ethics should inform their politics, not the other way around. One way is based around a person's inner being, the other is molding their being and stances based on a sports team.
- sigstoat 6y agoone of you is describing the world as it is, and the other the world as you think it ought to be.
- t-writescode 6y agoIt's how I vote and how I encourage everyone to vote.
- vonmoltke 6y agoI don't agree with that. I don't think people choose their ethics based on their politics, but I do think they compromise them in the name of political tribalism. It's a mistake to ascribe the personal ethics of a specific party member to the ethics of the party platform, particularly when there is limited choice of parties.
- samthecoy 6y agoFacebook must make political decisions, because it must have a stance on content moderation. Even if that stance is "we shouldn't moderate content", that is a political decision. All possible actions and inaction around content moderation require political decisions, and you can't be in the social media business without having a content moderation policy.