4 ms·
It's all about unfounded accusations, but even if the accusations are founded, if the person living there is the worst fucking racist who deserves to be shunned
by mcv 3y ago
It's all about unfounded accusations, but even if the accusations are founded, if the person living there is the worst fucking racist who deserves to be shunned; that may be a valid reason for Amazon to stop delivering stuff to his home, and refuse to sell anything to him, but not to disable his entire home and disable the devices that he has already paid for.
Once you've sold it, it shouldn't be yours anymore. Inviting this kind of surveillance into your home, where we're being policed by profit-driven corporations, is the biggest condemnation of this sort of IoT crap. Imagine if my car stops working if Toyota disapproves of something I say. Imagine I can't pay for food because of something I said.
Pulling this sort of crap should be punished with heavy fines.
And if companies are at the same time held responsible for the stuff that goes through their servers and that creates an impossible situation for them, then maybe they shouldn't be creating these sort of dependencies at all.
- N19PEDL2 3y agoTotally agree. Moreover, there could be people living in the same house who are not involved in the racism incident in any way but are still affected by Amazon's decision.
- ipaddr 3y agoA company refusing to deliver products because they are gay, racist or black is wrong
- Timon3 3y agoOne of those is not like the other. Can you explain why you see them as similar?
- JohnClark1337 3y ago[dead]
- Supermancho 3y agoThese terms (gay, black, racist) are arbitrary classifications that are just broad enough to be useful, but are often attributed due to narrow characteristics or specific behaviors. eg "acting <label>"
- Timon3 3y agoI can see how black is an arbitrary classification (since the borders are ill-defined and social in nature), but how does that hold for the other two?
- forrest2 3y agoIn some places, it's "gay" if two guys hold hands. On the racist bit: it can be hard to disambiguate why someone treats you in an unfavorable way -- it could be because they're actually racist or they could just be a pissy person who hates their job. Just because a person or group of people classifies you a certain way doesn't make it universally true.
- Timon3 3y ago> In some places, it's "gay" if two guys hold hands. Sure, but that doesn't mean those two guys are gay. > On the racist bit: it can be hard to disambiguate why someone treats you in an unfavorable way -- it could be because they're actually racist or they could just be a pissy person who hates their job. Just because a person or group of people classifies you a certain way doesn't make it universally true. It might not be universally true, but it is subjectively true. That's the difference: even if you think you're not being racist, you might be racist from the PoV of someone you were racist towards.
- forrest2 3y agoThen it's an arguably arbitrary classification right? The borders seem potentially ill-defined and/or social in nature.
- circuit10 3y agoWouldn’t it be even more wrong to send drivers to someone who might racially abuse them? Of course that doesn’t excuse the smart home part and they should have done a better investigation
- sowbug 3y agoThoughts are not crimes in free countries. What someone "might" do is irrelevant.
- circuit10 3y agoAmazon thought that the person had already shouted a slur at the driver. They were wrong, but if they had been right blocking further deliveries to protect the drivers would have been reasonable (if it was just that)
- Auracle 3y agoI disagree. It should take something like a police report to block further deliveries. Just taking one delivery driver’s word is ripe for abuse.
- circuit10 3y agoSo Amazon should continue sending people to someone who will racially abuse them just because the police didn’t catch it yet? (again, assuming that they had done the investigation properly which they didn’t in this case, which would involve collecting more evidence to back it up)
- Auracle 3y agoI said a police report, meaning the driver would report it to the police. Not that they'd catch them in the act.
- xdennis 3y ago> someone who might racially abuse them Agreed, but note that "abuse" is the operative word here. It's possible to be racist and not be outwardly hateful, and it's also possible to be non-racist and horribly abusive to staff.
- tj-teej 3y agoJust a counter example, if a Comcast customer unloads a racist tirade against a customer support rep on the phone, it's reasonable for Comcast to cut-off their internet services, right? Even if they bought their router and modem from Comcast - is there a meaningful difference?
- milesvp 3y agoNo. Internet connectivity is now on the same level of utility as phone service was 30 years ago. As far as I know ma bell couldn’t disconect your phone just because you yelled at them. Utilities are held to higher standards (often because they’re sanctioned monopolies) and companies cannot just decide to not do business with you because you’re a bad person. Something like a smart home starts to be a gray area I think, due to the indirect nature of it. Does shutting off some MQTT service count simply because it serves traffic? But if it becomes more common I guarantee it’ll become more regulated, so things like this can’t happen as easily. Personally I think it’s foolish not to control the backbone your smart devices run on, home assistant gets better every year, but I also know that most people aren’t going to add that to their already busy lives.
- tomjen3 3y agoI am going to assume that is an honest question: yes, with Comcast you pay on a monthly basis, so they are well within their rights to cancel.