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I've been struggling with this. Should a company be expected to obey the local government and local laws, even if they seem unjust? Or should they uphold the va

I've been struggling with this. Should a company be expected to obey the local government and local laws, even if they seem unjust? Or should they uphold the values of their country of origin in foreign countries where they operate? What does history teach us about what companies have done in the past in similar situations? Was the outcome good? I'm genuinely curious.

Raed667 6y ago
As a concrete example in this case; Facebook does not have an office (or any legal entity) in Tunisia. Besides informal relationships with the authorities, I don't see why they "have" to abide by any local law? PS: Tunisia has internet transparency laws, so they can't go blocking Facebook (or any other website) at a whim.
- Tuna-Fish 6y ago
  I have no office or legal entity in the United States, yet there are US laws which, if I broke them, would cause the United States to attempt to extradite me. For example, see Kim Dotcom. I strongly agree with you on the idea that companies and people should only need to obey the laws of the countries they operate in, but you must recognize that this idea is not currently the status quo, is actually fairly radical, and is strongly opposed by a lot of very powerful governments, including the United States.
  - da_big_ghey 6y ago
    Extradition typically relies on an action being a crime in both nations. Refusing to disable accounts critical of a government would not be against the law in America, and we also have no extradition treaty with Tunisia. She couldn't do squat.
    - UnFleshedOne 6y ago
      They could try to extradite FB employees when they travel to countries they do have an agreement with.
  - ev1 6y ago
    Arguably it would be much, much harder if you had formal separation. Kim Dotcom had servers in the US - in fact, nearly their entire server fleet if not entirely was in Virginia, vendors in the US, collected payment for illegal downloads and uploads in the US, in USD. Their primary domain was a .com, which is owned by Verisign, a US company. This would likely not be the case if you were running on a ccTLD in your own country, hosted in your own country, at least.
  - athms 6y ago
    >I have no office or legal entity in the United States, yet there are US laws which, if I broke them, would cause the United States to attempt to extradite me. If you are in Canada and hire somebody to rob a bank in the US, you have violated American law and can be extradited. This works in reverse too. If you are in the US and hire somebody to rob a bank in Canada, you have violated Canadian law and can be extradited. >For example, see Kim Dotcom. Poor example because Megaupload had a US nexus.
asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
On some level it's not about should or shouldn't. The local government has the power to force a company to comply via a variety of enforcement tactics. There's no practical way for a company, on its own, to refuse orders from a government, unless they are willing to do as Google did in China so long ago and exit the country. One question that I do think bears inspection is whether governments should offer assistance to companies mostly owned domestically that do business abroad. The US government could enter the fight on Facebook's behalf and force a better result. But that would require the USG to spend international political capital on behalf of the oppressed citizens of arbitrary foreign countries. It might be a better world if we did, but historically this has not been something we spend many resources on unless there is a geopolitical end that benefits us.
- curryst 6y ago
  We also have a not great reputation as Team America: World Police where were already perceived to be sticking our fingers where they don't belong. A last thought is that involving the USG is going to create a vastly unequal amount of pressure. Were going to have a lot of leverage over poor countries that depend on the US directly or indirectly for humanitarian aid, trade or military protection. Just take a look at what has happened to Cuba since we tried to change them. Still Communist, but now they also have tons of humanitarian issues because they lack access to a close first world trading partner. The regimes also don't seem any less brutal. I also hate that the USG leaning on a country usually makes the citizens miserable, not the government. Just as an example, dictator in Blahland says Facebook has to ban these 15 journalists. Facebook refuses, dictator blocks Facebook. USG steps in and demands that they unblock Facebook, or we withold humanitarian aid. The dictator says fine, it's not like he/she is going to starve. We withold aid, causing famine and instability in the region. At the end of that, are we really the good guys? The journalists still have no access, Facebook is still blocked, and now there's an escalating humanitarian crisis. I'm not well versed in politics though, perhaps there are more surgical means to apply pressure.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    You're absolutely right, our reputation right now is not great, because of the purposes for which we've deployed our power. You could imagine a world where we actually deploy it selflessly, but I don't know if that can really happen at an international level. It certainly hasn't yet.
bisectable 6y ago
How about companies operate in their local markets and we abolish multinationals?
aaron-santos 6y ago
> Should a company be expected to obey the local government and local laws, even if they seem unjust? Should people be expected to object the local government and local laws, even if they seem unjust? Besides the fallacy of composition, what makes companies different from people?
- ardy42 6y ago
  > Should people be expected to object the local government and local laws, even if they seem unjust? People are expected (though not necessarily predicted) to do the moral thing. > Besides the fallacy of composition, what makes companies different from people? In their purest form, companies are basically AI entities made of people engineered to replace the human conscience with bare minimum legal compliance, in order to sociopathically pursue maximum shareholder value.
giuliomagnifico 6y ago
No, they should respect the laws from they’re internal regulations, not to an external state where the company doesn’t have offices/HQ. The company can go out from these states like in China. I can’t find the point in offering a place to talk/discute in critical states and after censorship they’re users. It’s pointless.
uniqueid 6y ago
Should a company be expected to obey the local government and local laws, even if they seem unjust? The best example I can think of, in my life time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Apartheid_Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Apartheid_Movement The consensus then was 'boycott the nation.' I get the impression that, lately, it doesn't occur to people that a business walking away from money is even an option.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  It's not clear that a boycott is a meaningful response in the context of these kinds of disputes. If Facebook gets an improper censorship demand from the Tunisian government and responds by cutting off Tunisia's Facebook access, aren't they just doing what the government wanted?
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    I think the idea is that if Facebook cut off all access, more people would be aware of what was happening and push the government to reinstate it. It could be construed as “bullying but through the populous” depending on who you ask. The big problem with the “cutting them off” strategy is: if it’s a dictatorship, the people may not push back for fear of death
    - stickfigure 6y ago
      Why should Facebook cut off access, instead of simply ignoring the local laws? As a US citizen I honestly couldn't care less if the content of my website is criminal in Iran or Saudi Arabia. As long as Facebook doesn't have employees or servers in that jurisdiction, it should ignore the laws of that jurisdiction. Let that country put up its own firewall. What's probably happening here is that Twitter/FB/etc are afraid of that firewall threat. That's just spineless.
      - bostik 6y ago
        > As a US citizen I honestly couldn't care less if the content of my website is criminal in Iran or Saudi Arabia. Doesn't need to be criminal, inconvenient is enough. Jamal Khashoggi's family should know.
hindsightbias 6y ago
Mass news media have always suppressed or ignored critics that were not congruent with domestic political regimes. Why should digital platforms be any different? The vaunted Arab Spring in this plea had a pretty mixed outcome. Libya is a messs, Egypt ended up with another dictator after overthrowing a democratically elected organization (which the west didnt want, but was the only viable party after the same said west pushed for quick elections), and Syria ended up with a civil war, ISIS and same regime after every western and digital platform insisted for years that the regime was on its last legs. The only platform that didn’t restrict Trump was twitter. Even (most of) Fox opposed him until it was clear he was going to mop up the primaries. He may be mainstream now, but the states and platforms have closed that loophole for now.
- wreath 6y ago
  Tunisia seems to be the only country that had at least one thing positive out of the arab spring, which is a better level of democracy (already had 3 democratic elections in the past decade). Perhaps Tunisia isn't as diverse as Egypt, Libya or worse, Syria in terms of tribes or religious sects and I'd attribute that to its success.
FriedrichN 6y ago
This is a great question. One could say that you obviously not censor content if a classical dictator asks you to. But what about more subtle cases like when IKEA removed all images in their Saudi version of their catalogue? That obviously didn't sit well with even IKEA.* When does something become 'unjust' enough to not comply with local laws? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/02/ikea-apologises-removing-women-saudi-arabia-catalogue https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/02/ikea-apologise...
friendlybus 6y ago
I don't see where justice comes in. That's between friends. Companies expand and governments adjust them. Banana republics are born from broken governments, which brings negative outcomes to the people. Governments that close off to the corporate world lack capital growth. Companies don't spread values into other countries anymore than invading armies of yesteryear. The life and death that comes with corporate money is what it is. They may reveal underlying values and profit off them. Corps may discover certain business is not desired, but corporation values won't change the country. The only values companies need to care about is the ones that will get them kicked out of their host country, or are shared worldwide.
AntiImperialist 6y ago
Your laws, which seem right to you, are only right to you because of your cultural values. So, ideally, companies should follow laws of governments they operate in. But we have seen over and over through history that companies bring their values and disrupt the local culture.

Raed667 6y ago

As a concrete example in this case; Facebook does not have an office (or any legal entity) in Tunisia. Besides informal relationships with the authorities, I don't see why they "have" to abide by any local law? PS: Tunisia has internet transparency laws, so they can't go blocking Facebook (or any other website) at a whim.

Tuna-Fish 6y ago
I have no office or legal entity in the United States, yet there are US laws which, if I broke them, would cause the United States to attempt to extradite me. For example, see Kim Dotcom. I strongly agree with you on the idea that companies and people should only need to obey the laws of the countries they operate in, but you must recognize that this idea is not currently the status quo, is actually fairly radical, and is strongly opposed by a lot of very powerful governments, including the United States.
- da_big_ghey 6y ago
  Extradition typically relies on an action being a crime in both nations. Refusing to disable accounts critical of a government would not be against the law in America, and we also have no extradition treaty with Tunisia. She couldn't do squat.
  - UnFleshedOne 6y ago
    They could try to extradite FB employees when they travel to countries they do have an agreement with.
- ev1 6y ago
  Arguably it would be much, much harder if you had formal separation. Kim Dotcom had servers in the US - in fact, nearly their entire server fleet if not entirely was in Virginia, vendors in the US, collected payment for illegal downloads and uploads in the US, in USD. Their primary domain was a .com, which is owned by Verisign, a US company. This would likely not be the case if you were running on a ccTLD in your own country, hosted in your own country, at least.
- athms 6y ago
  >I have no office or legal entity in the United States, yet there are US laws which, if I broke them, would cause the United States to attempt to extradite me. If you are in Canada and hire somebody to rob a bank in the US, you have violated American law and can be extradited. This works in reverse too. If you are in the US and hire somebody to rob a bank in Canada, you have violated Canadian law and can be extradited. >For example, see Kim Dotcom. Poor example because Megaupload had a US nexus.

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago

On some level it's not about should or shouldn't. The local government has the power to force a company to comply via a variety of enforcement tactics. There's no practical way for a company, on its own, to refuse orders from a government, unless they are willing to do as Google did in China so long ago and exit the country. One question that I do think bears inspection is whether governments should offer assistance to companies mostly owned domestically that do business abroad. The US government could enter the fight on Facebook's behalf and force a better result. But that would require the USG to spend international political capital on behalf of the oppressed citizens of arbitrary foreign countries. It might be a better world if we did, but historically this has not been something we spend many resources on unless there is a geopolitical end that benefits us.

curryst 6y ago
We also have a not great reputation as Team America: World Police where were already perceived to be sticking our fingers where they don't belong. A last thought is that involving the USG is going to create a vastly unequal amount of pressure. Were going to have a lot of leverage over poor countries that depend on the US directly or indirectly for humanitarian aid, trade or military protection. Just take a look at what has happened to Cuba since we tried to change them. Still Communist, but now they also have tons of humanitarian issues because they lack access to a close first world trading partner. The regimes also don't seem any less brutal. I also hate that the USG leaning on a country usually makes the citizens miserable, not the government. Just as an example, dictator in Blahland says Facebook has to ban these 15 journalists. Facebook refuses, dictator blocks Facebook. USG steps in and demands that they unblock Facebook, or we withold humanitarian aid. The dictator says fine, it's not like he/she is going to starve. We withold aid, causing famine and instability in the region. At the end of that, are we really the good guys? The journalists still have no access, Facebook is still blocked, and now there's an escalating humanitarian crisis. I'm not well versed in politics though, perhaps there are more surgical means to apply pressure.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  You're absolutely right, our reputation right now is not great, because of the purposes for which we've deployed our power. You could imagine a world where we actually deploy it selflessly, but I don't know if that can really happen at an international level. It certainly hasn't yet.

bisectable 6y ago

How about companies operate in their local markets and we abolish multinationals?

aaron-santos 6y ago

> Should a company be expected to obey the local government and local laws, even if they seem unjust? Should people be expected to object the local government and local laws, even if they seem unjust? Besides the fallacy of composition, what makes companies different from people?

ardy42 6y ago
> Should people be expected to object the local government and local laws, even if they seem unjust? People are expected (though not necessarily predicted) to do the moral thing. > Besides the fallacy of composition, what makes companies different from people? In their purest form, companies are basically AI entities made of people engineered to replace the human conscience with bare minimum legal compliance, in order to sociopathically pursue maximum shareholder value.

giuliomagnifico 6y ago

No, they should respect the laws from they’re internal regulations, not to an external state where the company doesn’t have offices/HQ. The company can go out from these states like in China. I can’t find the point in offering a place to talk/discute in critical states and after censorship they’re users. It’s pointless.

uniqueid 6y ago

Should a company be expected to obey the local government and local laws, even if they seem unjust? The best example I can think of, in my life time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Apartheid_Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Apartheid_Movement The consensus then was 'boycott the nation.' I get the impression that, lately, it doesn't occur to people that a business walking away from money is even an option.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
It's not clear that a boycott is a meaningful response in the context of these kinds of disputes. If Facebook gets an improper censorship demand from the Tunisian government and responds by cutting off Tunisia's Facebook access, aren't they just doing what the government wanted?
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  I think the idea is that if Facebook cut off all access, more people would be aware of what was happening and push the government to reinstate it. It could be construed as “bullying but through the populous” depending on who you ask. The big problem with the “cutting them off” strategy is: if it’s a dictatorship, the people may not push back for fear of death
  - stickfigure 6y ago
    Why should Facebook cut off access, instead of simply ignoring the local laws? As a US citizen I honestly couldn't care less if the content of my website is criminal in Iran or Saudi Arabia. As long as Facebook doesn't have employees or servers in that jurisdiction, it should ignore the laws of that jurisdiction. Let that country put up its own firewall. What's probably happening here is that Twitter/FB/etc are afraid of that firewall threat. That's just spineless.
    - bostik 6y ago
      > As a US citizen I honestly couldn't care less if the content of my website is criminal in Iran or Saudi Arabia. Doesn't need to be criminal, inconvenient is enough. Jamal Khashoggi's family should know.

hindsightbias 6y ago

Mass news media have always suppressed or ignored critics that were not congruent with domestic political regimes. Why should digital platforms be any different? The vaunted Arab Spring in this plea had a pretty mixed outcome. Libya is a messs, Egypt ended up with another dictator after overthrowing a democratically elected organization (which the west didnt want, but was the only viable party after the same said west pushed for quick elections), and Syria ended up with a civil war, ISIS and same regime after every western and digital platform insisted for years that the regime was on its last legs. The only platform that didn’t restrict Trump was twitter. Even (most of) Fox opposed him until it was clear he was going to mop up the primaries. He may be mainstream now, but the states and platforms have closed that loophole for now.

wreath 6y ago
Tunisia seems to be the only country that had at least one thing positive out of the arab spring, which is a better level of democracy (already had 3 democratic elections in the past decade). Perhaps Tunisia isn't as diverse as Egypt, Libya or worse, Syria in terms of tribes or religious sects and I'd attribute that to its success.

FriedrichN 6y ago

This is a great question. One could say that you obviously not censor content if a classical dictator asks you to. But what about more subtle cases like when IKEA removed all images in their Saudi version of their catalogue? That obviously didn't sit well with even IKEA.* When does something become 'unjust' enough to not comply with local laws? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/02/ikea-apologises-removing-women-saudi-arabia-catalogue https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/02/ikea-apologise...

friendlybus 6y ago

I don't see where justice comes in. That's between friends. Companies expand and governments adjust them. Banana republics are born from broken governments, which brings negative outcomes to the people. Governments that close off to the corporate world lack capital growth. Companies don't spread values into other countries anymore than invading armies of yesteryear. The life and death that comes with corporate money is what it is. They may reveal underlying values and profit off them. Corps may discover certain business is not desired, but corporation values won't change the country. The only values companies need to care about is the ones that will get them kicked out of their host country, or are shared worldwide.

AntiImperialist 6y ago

Your laws, which seem right to you, are only right to you because of your cultural values. So, ideally, companies should follow laws of governments they operate in. But we have seen over and over through history that companies bring their values and disrupt the local culture.