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huh, guess I'll have to break it down Barny style: you are effectively trying to wave a bloody shirt with the "think of the creators" bit. If your system of mor

huh, guess I'll have to break it down Barny style: you are effectively trying to wave a bloody shirt with the "think of the creators" bit. If your system of morals allows you to deny Youtube advertisement revenue on the basis of an aversion to invasive spying, then the "creators" aren't victims - they're collaborators in the spying. Of course not all of them draw advertising revenue... > I still think it's unethical to serve monetized content without paying the original "collaborator". So you're not even going to seek the refuge of "their payment is the free bandwidth" argument and admit that Youtube is screwing a lot of people over? > ...but you should have the right to enforce agreements whose nonenforcement would harm only you. lol, "harm". Sure, you have a legal right to argue over the definition of "harm" - but you know you've retreated from "ethical" to "legal", right?

mgraczyk 5y ago
I don't see it as a retreat, I'm using a different conceptual framework because we don't agree on the meaning of "ethical". I agree that under your moral system, it's not wrong to deny the creators value, but that's sort of just a restatement of the fact that we disagree on the acceptability of ads in the first place. In general I don't assign the label "unethical" to something unless I'm aware of a convincing case that the thing causes more harm than good, harm without appropriate equity, violates some other axiomatic principal that I agree to, etc. I just haven't heard a convincing case that ads meets any of those criteria.
- sennight 5y ago
  > I don't see it as a retreat... You can add the use of "retreat" in the context of a value judgement to the list of disagreements, but the reframe into a legal argument makes our exchange largely pointless. > ...unless I'm aware of a convincing case that the thing causes more harm than good... Ah, yeah - we definitely won't agree on much of anything. I'm more of a first-principles/universality sort of guy... whereas it sounds like moral relativism is more your thing. >> I think this is a case of straw-manning... > I just haven't heard a convincing case that ads meets any of those criteria. See what you did there? You created a strawman. There is a difference between "ads" and "Google using data to personalize ads". I've got no beef with the former, but you are arguing in defense of the latter.
  - mgraczyk 5y ago
    I'm not a relativist, I believe morality is a real objective thing, but that it's socially constructed. Morality is more like language than it is like physics. To your last point, you can substitute one for the other, I stand by the original point in either case. I haven't heard a convincing case from first principles as to the wrongness of "Google using data to personalize ads". Generally the principle I hear in these cases is very close to "tracking or targeting is inherently wrong", which I reject.
    - sennight 5y ago
      > Morality is more like language than it is like physics. Not as you've described it, as a real objective thing that is a social construct. I agree that it is a social construct, and I agree that it is "like language", because I'd describe morality as, at the very least, an internally coherent social construct. "more harm than good" has no logical constraint and easily permits the violation of every prior principal while affording no solid ground upon which to build, by design. > To your last point, you can substitute one for the other... Cool, so long as you're aware that there exists the possibility of data-hoard-free advertising - and that it was common prior to recent Internet centralization. > I haven't heard a convincing case from first principles... That is because, like ad-blockers, it isn't wrong. Good luck trying to construct on internally coherent system of morals that blesses the present state of data-broker panopticon while at the same time condemning ad-blockers. If you can do that with something beyond "might makes right" then I'll be impressed.

mgraczyk 5y ago

I don't see it as a retreat, I'm using a different conceptual framework because we don't agree on the meaning of "ethical". I agree that under your moral system, it's not wrong to deny the creators value, but that's sort of just a restatement of the fact that we disagree on the acceptability of ads in the first place. In general I don't assign the label "unethical" to something unless I'm aware of a convincing case that the thing causes more harm than good, harm without appropriate equity, violates some other axiomatic principal that I agree to, etc. I just haven't heard a convincing case that ads meets any of those criteria.

sennight 5y ago
> I don't see it as a retreat... You can add the use of "retreat" in the context of a value judgement to the list of disagreements, but the reframe into a legal argument makes our exchange largely pointless. > ...unless I'm aware of a convincing case that the thing causes more harm than good... Ah, yeah - we definitely won't agree on much of anything. I'm more of a first-principles/universality sort of guy... whereas it sounds like moral relativism is more your thing. >> I think this is a case of straw-manning... > I just haven't heard a convincing case that ads meets any of those criteria. See what you did there? You created a strawman. There is a difference between "ads" and "Google using data to personalize ads". I've got no beef with the former, but you are arguing in defense of the latter.
- mgraczyk 5y ago
  I'm not a relativist, I believe morality is a real objective thing, but that it's socially constructed. Morality is more like language than it is like physics. To your last point, you can substitute one for the other, I stand by the original point in either case. I haven't heard a convincing case from first principles as to the wrongness of "Google using data to personalize ads". Generally the principle I hear in these cases is very close to "tracking or targeting is inherently wrong", which I reject.
  - sennight 5y ago
    > Morality is more like language than it is like physics. Not as you've described it, as a real objective thing that is a social construct. I agree that it is a social construct, and I agree that it is "like language", because I'd describe morality as, at the very least, an internally coherent social construct. "more harm than good" has no logical constraint and easily permits the violation of every prior principal while affording no solid ground upon which to build, by design. > To your last point, you can substitute one for the other... Cool, so long as you're aware that there exists the possibility of data-hoard-free advertising - and that it was common prior to recent Internet centralization. > I haven't heard a convincing case from first principles... That is because, like ad-blockers, it isn't wrong. Good luck trying to construct on internally coherent system of morals that blesses the present state of data-broker panopticon while at the same time condemning ad-blockers. If you can do that with something beyond "might makes right" then I'll be impressed.