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People often get things backwards. If an entire village is razed to the ground then whatever led up to that is wrong, period. What people get backwards is thi
by Randosaurus 5y ago
People often get things backwards.
If an entire village is razed to the ground then whatever led up to that is wrong, period. What people get backwards is thinking that if the actions that led up to the razing were themselves not ethically problematic, then the result has no bearing on whether or not we should continue allowing said actions.
Then there's the fact that actual FB employee's have gone on record that FB is making things worse in Ethiopia. Or aren't we allowed to take that into account when condemning FB?
Discounting this as being simply "he said/she said" is itself ethically dubious.
- missedthecue 5y ago"If an entire village is razed to the ground then whatever led up to that is wrong, period" This is where we fundamentally disagree then. I think perfectly innocent things can contribute to deadly consequences. For instance, Timothy McVeigh rented a moving truck and filled it with fertilizer to blow up Oklahoma City. But I don't think renting moving trucks or buying farming essentials are morally wrong. I also don't think that posting on Facebook or Facebook algorithmically promoting posts that gain traction is wrong. Like I said in my original comment, the worst thing you can say about Facebook here is that they're not picking sides in a messy ethnic conflict happening in a foreign country.
- Randosaurus 5y agoTimothy McVeigh also took a shit once, no reasonable person would interpret my words as claiming taking a shit is immoral. This is a false equivalency.
- missedthecue 5y agoTimothy McVeigh defecating obviously did not lead to the bombing. Him renting a box truck and buying farm goods directly led to it. I don't think i'm the one making the false equivalency here.
- Randosaurus 5y agoSince you've chosen to go with a false equivalency using an apples-to-oranges comparison, lets rewrite that "If an entire village is razed to the ground then whatever led up to that is wrong, period" People shot guns while hunting all the time, therefore the actions of Cheney that led up to him shooting his friend are both acceptable, things we should continue doing, and should under no circumstances be expected to change in future hunts. ^ Because you see ... it doesn't matter that other people have successfully gone hunting and shot guns in the past, what matters are the specific circumstances that led to Cheney shooting another human being. --- What happens is that people like you want to point to the firing of the gun and argue that firing guns is legal therefore Cheney did nothing wrong. Everyone understand the flaw in that logic, I don't even have to explain it. --- FB did nothing wrong everyone! FB is just displaying text on a webpage, something people do all the time!
- dang 5y agoWe've banned this account for posting flamebait comments. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- Randosaurus 5y agooh god, did I use the word shit in a sentence... I also used vagina, those bodily functions shouldn't be used in good company! Oh how dare I, my days of making points are certainly coming to a middle...
- dang 5y agoWe don't care about profanity—the issue is comment quality. Your comments have unfortunately been unsubstantive and flamebaity, which is not what we want here. Since each comment evokes more of that same type of comment from others, this is rather important. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html