alt Hacker NewsThis is the exact opposite of what you think. The problem is the governments in those places, and not the private company. The private company would gladly connect everyone.
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Strong disagree on this one! The problem is the company will do anything to stay operational in these repressive countries, including helping them hide human rights abuses (among other things).
The logic that if the local government was more open about their repressive policies then Meta would happily help spread that information is probably true but I don't think anyone has ever disagreed with that.
> The private company would gladly connect everyone.
They'll gladly connect everyone except those people/places they personally don't like, or anyone their friends/business partners don't like, or anyone they are paid/bribed to leave disconnected, or anyone who it isn't profitable to connect, or anyone who is profitable to connect but not profitable enough to be worth the bother, etc.
The transnational private sector is neither morally consistent nor geopolitically neutral.
The transnational private sector is neither morally consistent nor geopolitically neutral.
The transnational private sector is neither morally consistent nor geopolitically neutral.
One could (naively) hope that goliath corporations used their massive lobbying power for good. There was a time, long, long, ago, Google refused to operate in China because it refused to censor itself.
Since no matter how much power they have they won't behave good let's go ahead and regulate the shit out of them and tear them into tiny mangable pieces.
If we had a thousand different smaller federated platforms it would be harder for governments to impose rules on them anyways.
Connecting more than none is an admirable goal, but if a company is not objecting this policy in covert and overt ways, they're being just complicit for monies.
Being complicit is something, but being complicit while trying to sugarcoat or hide it is something else.
>The private company would gladly connect everyone.
they do plenty of completely arbitrary censorship voluntarily. no government had mandated the frenzied erasure of certain viewpoints during certain events of 2020-2023, for example.
> The problem is the governments in those places, and not the private company.
Do you think Meta will comply if North Korea or Iran requests same censorship?
If your answer is "No, they will not comply", then problem is the company
Public companies want only one thing, and it’s disgusting.
But seriously, they would gladly connect three people and leave everyone else out if it were most profitable. The fact freedom, such as it still is, is unevenly distributed is no excuse and we are not obligated to shrug and go, “Eh, what do you want this super valuable corporation to do?” We make it valuable as human beings. It should have a responsibility toward us. The fact it does not is a flaw in the system, not a fact of life.
Not opposite, a different problem.
If you remove one viewpoint because of government mandate, while still carrying the other, your platform is creating a biased viewpoint to influence people, that’s on the platform.