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“For profit US corporation fighting foreign government atrocities” I think that's a bit of an unfair phrasing. How about "Good people upholding their morals in

“For profit US corporation fighting foreign government atrocities” I think that's a bit of an unfair phrasing. How about "Good people upholding their morals instead of dropping them at the door when they go to work" I really am not a fan of how far we've taken the general image that 'business is business' and a bunch of regular morals are OK to toss out. We should preserve the social stigma we hold against people equally against companies.

mrtksn 5y ago
I agree. IMHO, corporations must be hold morally accountable(whatever that is, locally). However, if the local morals say that "It's all about profits" or something permissive then they will operate in oppressive regimes. What I disagree with, is the expectation of enforcing US morals to other parts of the world. If we are going for the moral stance of "should not tolerate censorship", instead of expecting Twitter to "fight the oppressive Indian govt" , it's more reasonable to expect Twitter not doing business there. So far, as we see with Apple, Twitter, FB, Palantir, Oracle, Cisco and many others, the Americans are fine with their businesses working with those governments.
bellyfullofbac 5y ago
Twitter allows posting of naked photos. I have no problems with this, but should a country's laws against pornography be ignored because "our morals are superior"?
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  I don't think it's valid to compare different pornography laws with a government censoring criticism. The former has very little societal significance, the latter is correlated with rather unpleasant state authoritarianism.
ehsankia 5y ago
At the end of the day, this goes back to a debate that's been had here many times before, such as with Google's Dragonfly, which is that is Twitter doing more good being available in India with occasional censoring, or if it do more good if it wasn't available in India all. I'm not siding one way or another, but it's not clear that taking down the platform as a whole is always a better solution than running a slightly censored one.
forks34 5y ago
No. The U.S. 300 million citizen don’t have the monopoly on morals when 1 billion Indians have a different idea about them. So don’t be pretentious, adapt to local laws and let people figure out their own ideas about life. Maybe, just maybe, the U.S. has the wrong laws.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  1 billion Indians aren't all supporters of government censorship of criticism. If the US government enacted some ridiculous law, you would hope that US corporations would try to push back a bit, at least rhetorically, because you recognize that the state isn't its people. Why suddenly the different tone for India?
  - input_sh 5y ago
    Plenty of countries in the world have a lax view on nudity, show it on TV, go to the beach naked, have a regulated sex work industry etc. Yet, since almost all large platforms and payment processors are American, good luck posting photos of sand dunes because some algorithm at Facebook might confuse it with woman's breasts, and I don't see anyone pushing back. Point being adapt to local laws and culture instead of pretending that a couple of thousand of unelected dudes in Silicon Valley should have any say in what's allowed in some country none of them stepped foot in.
    - fighterpilot 5y ago
      > adapt to local laws and culture instead of pretending that a couple of thousand of unelected dudes in Silicon Valley should have any say I think we might both agree there's a line beyond which even you would abandon this view. We may just disagree on where that line should exist. If the Indian state was forcing Twitter to delete the profiles of anyone who is a homosexual, would you agree that Twitter should just adapt to local laws and not at least say something? Probably not, right?
FlyingSnake 5y ago
> Good people upholding their morals instead of dropping them at the door when they go to work Who gets to define the "Good people"? We've seen time and again that the social media platforms are far from altruistic and in fact enable movements like Trump '16 and Brexit. I agree with your general point though, we should hold companies accountable to the same rigor that we have for govts and individuals.
idownvoted 5y ago
> upholding their morals What ethics are you talking about? The ones where they silenced "Far-Right" Sceptics of Corona-Measures in Europe? A rapper responding with "ok, dude" to a trans person? HK Virologist Li Meng-Yan? The government of Hungary? Or where they permanently ban conservative cartoonists, the MyPillow guy, Project Veritas – but not the Ayatollah? AFAIC there's nothing special here to see. Standard Twitter Behaviour. Also OP's critique is misguided, as there is no specific Indian law Twitter would have broken (according to the article) if it hadn't complied with the government's request. Likewise, there was no law forcing twitter to permanently ban the accounts I've mentioned. Twitter is just a typical SV org, laden with upper-class virtue-signalers, who couldn't even notice their own bigotry if the stench of human-feces covered San Francisco actually made it into their comfy homes.

mrtksn 5y ago

I agree. IMHO, corporations must be hold morally accountable(whatever that is, locally). However, if the local morals say that "It's all about profits" or something permissive then they will operate in oppressive regimes. What I disagree with, is the expectation of enforcing US morals to other parts of the world. If we are going for the moral stance of "should not tolerate censorship", instead of expecting Twitter to "fight the oppressive Indian govt" , it's more reasonable to expect Twitter not doing business there. So far, as we see with Apple, Twitter, FB, Palantir, Oracle, Cisco and many others, the Americans are fine with their businesses working with those governments.

bellyfullofbac 5y ago

Twitter allows posting of naked photos. I have no problems with this, but should a country's laws against pornography be ignored because "our morals are superior"?

fighterpilot 5y ago
I don't think it's valid to compare different pornography laws with a government censoring criticism. The former has very little societal significance, the latter is correlated with rather unpleasant state authoritarianism.

ehsankia 5y ago

At the end of the day, this goes back to a debate that's been had here many times before, such as with Google's Dragonfly, which is that is Twitter doing more good being available in India with occasional censoring, or if it do more good if it wasn't available in India all. I'm not siding one way or another, but it's not clear that taking down the platform as a whole is always a better solution than running a slightly censored one.

forks34 5y ago

No. The U.S. 300 million citizen don’t have the monopoly on morals when 1 billion Indians have a different idea about them. So don’t be pretentious, adapt to local laws and let people figure out their own ideas about life. Maybe, just maybe, the U.S. has the wrong laws.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
fighterpilot 5y ago
1 billion Indians aren't all supporters of government censorship of criticism. If the US government enacted some ridiculous law, you would hope that US corporations would try to push back a bit, at least rhetorically, because you recognize that the state isn't its people. Why suddenly the different tone for India?
- input_sh 5y ago
  Plenty of countries in the world have a lax view on nudity, show it on TV, go to the beach naked, have a regulated sex work industry etc. Yet, since almost all large platforms and payment processors are American, good luck posting photos of sand dunes because some algorithm at Facebook might confuse it with woman's breasts, and I don't see anyone pushing back. Point being adapt to local laws and culture instead of pretending that a couple of thousand of unelected dudes in Silicon Valley should have any say in what's allowed in some country none of them stepped foot in.
  - fighterpilot 5y ago
    > adapt to local laws and culture instead of pretending that a couple of thousand of unelected dudes in Silicon Valley should have any say I think we might both agree there's a line beyond which even you would abandon this view. We may just disagree on where that line should exist. If the Indian state was forcing Twitter to delete the profiles of anyone who is a homosexual, would you agree that Twitter should just adapt to local laws and not at least say something? Probably not, right?

FlyingSnake 5y ago

> Good people upholding their morals instead of dropping them at the door when they go to work Who gets to define the "Good people"? We've seen time and again that the social media platforms are far from altruistic and in fact enable movements like Trump '16 and Brexit. I agree with your general point though, we should hold companies accountable to the same rigor that we have for govts and individuals.

idownvoted 5y ago

> upholding their morals What ethics are you talking about? The ones where they silenced "Far-Right" Sceptics of Corona-Measures in Europe? A rapper responding with "ok, dude" to a trans person? HK Virologist Li Meng-Yan? The government of Hungary? Or where they permanently ban conservative cartoonists, the MyPillow guy, Project Veritas – but not the Ayatollah? AFAIC there's nothing special here to see. Standard Twitter Behaviour. Also OP's critique is misguided, as there is no specific Indian law Twitter would have broken (according to the article) if it hadn't complied with the government's request. Likewise, there was no law forcing twitter to permanently ban the accounts I've mentioned. Twitter is just a typical SV org, laden with upper-class virtue-signalers, who couldn't even notice their own bigotry if the stench of human-feces covered San Francisco actually made it into their comfy homes.