2 ms·

How is that the whistleblower’s fault? “Damn these pedestrians dying to drunk drivers forcing governments to make drunk driving illegal” what?

gorgoiler 5y ago
It’s their fault if the alleged behaviour isn’t illegal enough. No one’s going to blame a whistleblower who uncovers someone harming children. It becomes much more of a gray area if the whistleblower uncovers someone trying to find out what effects, positive and negative if any kind, harmful, long-term, short-term or otherwise, that their product might be having. Is a leak worthy if no one is arrested or taken to court, and all we get to do is tut-tut a little more sanctimoniously?
- eropple 5y ago
  > No one’s going to blame a whistleblower who uncovers someone harming children. Of course they are. The idea that "no one", even in the vernacular sense of the term, will blame a whistleblower for literally anything is naive; there are too many people who are terminally incapable of faulting a C corporation for acting against the body politic. > It becomes much more of a gray area if the whistleblower uncovers someone trying to find out what effects, positive and negative if any kind, harmful, long-term, short-term or otherwise, that their product might be having. Not when those people doing that investigation find something they don't like and bury it because it's inconvenient for their bottom line. Which Facebook did. It's not a gray area at all. Not in the slightest. > Is a leak worthy if no one is arrested or taken to court, and all we get to do is tut-tut a little more sanctimoniously? Yes, it is an unmistakable good to have the operations of megacorporations with more effective power than many governments as transparent as possible. People matter more than companies, and the behaviors of those companies are fundamentally relevant to the behavior of people in their polities. A company at Facebook's scale (or Apple's, etc.) should have no secrets not directly related to user or employee privacy. If they don't want to have eyes on them, don't be megacorporations. We've seen far too many diseconomies of scale with regards to fundamental and foundational morality to assume anything else.

gorgoiler 5y ago

It’s their fault if the alleged behaviour isn’t illegal enough. No one’s going to blame a whistleblower who uncovers someone harming children. It becomes much more of a gray area if the whistleblower uncovers someone trying to find out what effects, positive and negative if any kind, harmful, long-term, short-term or otherwise, that their product might be having. Is a leak worthy if no one is arrested or taken to court, and all we get to do is tut-tut a little more sanctimoniously?

eropple 5y ago
> No one’s going to blame a whistleblower who uncovers someone harming children. Of course they are. The idea that "no one", even in the vernacular sense of the term, will blame a whistleblower for literally anything is naive; there are too many people who are terminally incapable of faulting a C corporation for acting against the body politic. > It becomes much more of a gray area if the whistleblower uncovers someone trying to find out what effects, positive and negative if any kind, harmful, long-term, short-term or otherwise, that their product might be having. Not when those people doing that investigation find something they don't like and bury it because it's inconvenient for their bottom line. Which Facebook did. It's not a gray area at all. Not in the slightest. > Is a leak worthy if no one is arrested or taken to court, and all we get to do is tut-tut a little more sanctimoniously? Yes, it is an unmistakable good to have the operations of megacorporations with more effective power than many governments as transparent as possible. People matter more than companies, and the behaviors of those companies are fundamentally relevant to the behavior of people in their polities. A company at Facebook's scale (or Apple's, etc.) should have no secrets not directly related to user or employee privacy. If they don't want to have eyes on them, don't be megacorporations. We've seen far too many diseconomies of scale with regards to fundamental and foundational morality to assume anything else.