Pretending otherwise is delusional, and having morals isn't a bad thing.
Is doxxing always unethical?
Being on AM wouldn't solely have been about breaking commitment. From what I recall, it became an inadvertent hub for gay dating due to its extraordinary gender/sex imbalance. AM's entire business practice was about hooking into people's desire to seek taboo and then be exorbitant with charging them fees, even for terminating an account. It was, in no minced words, a con.
Having morals means knowing when to stay out of things that are none of your concern.
That's one way to look at things. I happen to have a different philosophy about marriage, that it actually does affect other people, and since you're so understanding, I'm sure you'll grant that my philosophy is equally valid.
The argument was that the breach of contract is no one else's business except for the two parties to that contract. This was rebutted by someone claiming that they hold value in knowledge about another's breach of a contract.
What I don't understand is the reasoning that says a breach of contract is only meaningful to the parties of the contract. If someone is influenced by knowledge that someone breached another contract, then that knowledge is meaningful outside the confines of the contract.
Here's the text:
>Then that's a breach of contract between two private parties which is of absolutely no relevance to outside observers.
The argument claimed that the breach was "of absolutely no relevance". Yes, the word "meaningful" wasn't used, but I dare you to provide a definition of the word "meaningful".
>The argument isn't that it isn't meaningful, it's that it shouldn't be.
Can you point me to someone making that argument?
I can see where one might read it differently, though, but I confess I fail to see the point in discussing from that POV.
I only wanted to point out that this particular sub-thread was going off the rails (as many are, but I can't respond to all of them due to time constraints and HN's hard rate limit).
The information can't be destroyed now, so there is little point in discussions about what should or shouldn't have happened in this specific instance.
If someone breached a contract and this provides evidence to those ends, then it's simply a fact. I completely understand that facts can upset people.
If someone didn't breach a contract...well I'm not sure what the worry is in this specific instance.
In any case, it obviously sucks when information you gave in trust is leaked out and there is certainly a lesson to learn in data security here. There also seems to be a lesson to perhaps not trust companies who apparently fundamentally produce and specifically market a trust violation product. Of course, if you are in the market for such a product, formal calculation of your preference function may not be a priority.
>I'd say the part where vezzy-fnord talks about the couple's "prerogative" and "things that are none of your concern" set the context in terms of moral rights, not whether it can possible affect the other person.
This makes it sounds like vezzy-fnord is arguing for some kind of thought control regime; a regime where one may selectively engineer the exact perception to create in others. If someone can perceive something, they should be able to contemplate it.
Just as it is a couple's prerogative to seek court mediation for their breached contracts (this is the right the argument afforded the couple), it is another's prerogative to act on information that is known to them.
> They think honesty is more important.
Yeah, that's a false dichotomy. And are monogamous marriages dishonest? That's oddly judgmental for an appeal for open-mindedness. Or you meant something else by "honesty", like realistic?. I guess that's slightly less judgy.
A lot of these philosophical arguments get bogged down in boring bickering about word definitions. Marriage, traditionally, has implied "monogamous". At least "adultery" and "cheating" do.
There's a significant chunk that is ok with cheating. There's a far smaller chunk that's ok with the other person cheating.
I can assert that this data breach is immoral while also asserting that infidelity, especially organized infidelity, is not simply an intimate detail. I'm not sure why everyone feels compelled to square off into two camps on every issue.
Of course there are portions of the AM leak which are bad, like the gay men in Saudi Arabia, but pretending that this is the norm and not the exception is feeding a delusion. Just because a small portion of the website does not follow the same perogative does not mean that we should derail the discussion from the main issue.
An epidemic of cheating over the internet is a concern for people who intend to get married. Estabilshing strong social taboos here is not some awful thing.
"An epidemic of cheating over the internet". My God, do you think adultery was invented recently? This is a classic fallacy of blaming the mere institutions as opposed to the root cause.
Hook-up culture has always existed as well, but let's not pretend that Tinder hasn't changed the pace/availability of hooking up. In the same light, let's not pretend that the anonymity of the internet hasn't facilitated people comitting adultery.
In the same light, let's not pretend that the anonymity of the Internet hasn't facilitated people engaging in terrorist activity and drug trade. When do we build the firewall, captain?
We build the firewall around prosocial behavior. I think that if the names of all of the coke dealers selling their wares through TSR came out today I would not be upset either, because it's a scummy, exploitative industry. If you're breaking a social contract, my expectation of other people upholding their social contracts with you, in that area, are very slim.
Public exposure of individuals' private information is irresponsible, period.
Vigilantism is against the social contract, upholding it implies you gave up that power to the institutions that have the responsibility to judge and prosecute.
I don't disagree with it being run by sleazy people with sleazy business practices. From everything I've read, I'd concur with this statement.
An epidemic of cheating over the internet is no more a concern than the "epidemic" of cheating. The internet was just a means to an end... just like party lines, dating services, the bar, the office and everywhere else people of our species comingle without their partners. Cheating is no more an epidemic now than it ever was. People just changed media. Perhaps if it's truly the epidemic you suggest, then instead of that being a concern to people who intend to get married, we as a species need to re-evaluate if monogamy is actually human nature or if it's just wishful thinking impressed upon us by the dogma of our upbringing.
People do things for many reasons you are not privvy to all the time and while they may seek comfort in the arms of someone outside their relationship, doesn't automatically justify violence and rape. I find this argument to be as laughable as those making arguments that same sex marriage is comparable to marrying animals.
If understanding and accepting human nature for what it is makes your life not worth living, then only you can evaluate that.
I choose to believe that people are inherently good. I choose to believe that while their interests align with my own, they're likely to make good on that promise. But I equally believe that accepting someone else's promise without question or qualification is naive at best. I cannot expect them to honour that promise when their interests are no longer aligned with mine.
Does that make my life not worth living? Of course not. I love people, I enjoy being around them. People are amazing, wonderful and fascinating creatures.
...but to expect that one person uphold a promise they had no hope of truly understanding when they made it, for the entire duration of the remainder of their life... and then holding them accountable for failing to keep it. That's beyond ridiculous, I don't care what religion you are.
Nobody on AM was your concern. At all.
You brushed the consequences of this vigilante justice under the rug. Those Saudi Arabians will most likely suffer severe consequences, probably death, for being exposed.
The public is not a judge, jury or executioner, no matter how good it makes you feel to play morality police.
None of this excuses an irresponsible exposure of private information.
That's fundamental to your moral framework. It may even be fundamental to the moral norms in US or Western culture. But it's not fundamental to everybody's. It's by no means objective. That's why we have objective laws to go by.
Talking about morals means realizing everyone has different morals. Of what use is it to argue whether cheating or hacking or meddling in the business of others or vigilante justice is or isn't moral in general?
Which as far as I know were violated.
Who are you, or anyone else, to question or evaluate "commitment" in a relationship that you have no part of, and know nothing about? Or to force someone's personal private life out in the open where it will be used to judge them without context?
Nothing is as black and white as you are claiming it to be.
Your right to privacy isn't naturally guaranteed, and is only granted by some mutually agreed upon rules in the form of privacy laws.
But if I know some fact about you, what gives you any right to say I can't reveal that information? Wouldn't you be limiting my speech?
If you argue that lying in marriage is a complex issue, then privacy rights is also a complex issue that's not black and white.
A world with no secrets and a world where everyone has a right to secrecy are both potentially equally valid.
In the context of encryption, A right to encrypt says that no one can stop you from encrypting your work. A right to privacy says no one is allowed to try to break your encryption.
Encryption protects infromation as long as A) the computation power, time and desire available to break your encryption does not exceed the level you encrypted, B) the underlying math principles on which the encryption was based do not see a change in some manner reducing the effectiveness of the algorithm for this task, or C) The implementation of the encryption algorithm did not suffer some flaw reducing it's effectiveness to the level if can be beaten.
I know A and C have happened in the past. I'm unsure whether B has occurred. It's worth noting that in the case of B or C, the strength you choose now may not have any effect on the outcome.
You have to take some care. But an NSA magic code breaking machine is in the same category as flying saucers at Area 51. Exceedingly unlikely.
That's about as good a guarantee as nature can offer.
The irony thickens.
Let me rephrase you: "Who are you, or anyone else, to evaluate 'abuse' in a relationship..." -- the answer is "anyone who knows how to count". While there are exceptions to every rule, the majority of cases fall into rather ordinary examples. Not everyone is special.
Of course, indiscriminately doing this sort of thing like the AM hackers is terrible -- notwithstanding those in third-world countries facing draconian legal consequences -- but plenty of the people exposed certainly deserved it.
Odds are that people don't want their spouse cheating on them.
Someone stealing from someone else doesn't have an affect on me either, but I would operate under the default assumptions that 1) they want their things 2) they would want to be notified if someone wanted to steal their things 3) they would want to be notified if someone actually stole their things
And guess what? People acting in this way has the prosocial implication of teaching people that stealing is bad, and gives me the assurance that if someone is trying to steal from me that people will let me know!
S&M is in much more of a grey area. See https://ncsfreedom.org/key-programs/consent-counts/consent-c... for details.
The fact that some people approve of vigilante justice and disrupting the personal lives of people they don't like doesn't mean it's a good idea. There are many obvious historical examples of terrible harm that sort of thinking has caused. If you think adultery is a crime that requires help from people not involved in the marriage, I suggest you campaign to make it illegal in all states and ask for police resources to be dedicated to it. If you see someone stealing, you should call the police.
That's completely different than people outside the family wanting to know.
I'm guessing that you haven't talked about this with anyone who is into BDSM. Just because you witness something that you think is violent abuse doesn't mean that you're right.
Conversely I've seen perfectly pleasant looking couple who engage in constant verbal abuse disguised as pleasant commentary. Most people won't recognize it for what it is. Go read http://www.amazon.com/The-Gentle-Art-Verbal-Self-Defense/dp/... and you may do better than most people.
Be very, very careful about judging what happens in other people's relationships. It may be bad. Or you may not know. For real.
YES