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Comment by abpavel | Hacker News Reader

Well boo hoo, Google is trafficking in human information, Facebook is trafficking in human information, FourSquare remnants are trafficking in human information, all realizing Orwell's sweaty nightmares. But a company that is affecting someone overseas, and not it's own citizens, is in the wrong?

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Find me a specific incident perpetrated by GOOG/FB that has directly facilitated human rights abuses. This is not an accusation of a vague misuse of information. This is a direct action by the company that they knew would facilitate torture, etc.

That's their business model - people are their product. That's how they make money. That's the only way they make money. They sell people to advertisers. What's not wrong with that?

"Sell[ing] people to advertisers" != "sell[ing] people to an oppressive regime."

That's one way to look at it. But Chinese view US regime as oppressive, and any opinion to the contrary would result in the downvote fairies of the 50-cent army slashing your karma to oblivion, in a similar way I lost about 25 points on this post.

Wat? Nothing you've said above or below would incite the ire of 50¢A. If anything they would upvote you.

Google has an intimate relationship with the State Department and the Department of Defense. At one point they created a "tool" to track defections from Syria[0][1], and encourage civil war, meaning they are at least in part responsible for the violence there.

They also censored Benghazi related video on Youtube at the request of the State Department, which, while not really an "abuse of human rights," and only a temporary block, still amounts to propaganda and censorship.

[0]https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/12166#efmAMoAbj

[1]http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/22/leaked-clinton-emai...

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