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Comment by lvoudour | Hacker News Reader

9/ For many people there is little difference between what is legal and what is moral. This mindset is especially dangerous when it is held by people in power, such as Google's executives. The mindset is: if it's a legal requirement to censor, then we should do it.

Except when standing on a moral pedestal does not hurt your bottom line. Then apparently it's ok to dictate what is moral and what is not, what is good and what is evil and use your power to force your agenda. It's not google's (or any company's) version of morality that gets me, it's always the hypocrisy

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The free market does have a tendency of weeding out those companies that act morally beyond legality, because less moral competitors can outcompete them. So as a survival bias, less moral companies are just more likely to be left standing. Likewise, morality beyond legality is much more likely if it doesn’t yield any ground to competitors (ie effect the bottom line), so what you see as hypocrisy might again just be survival bias in a free market.

Don't know why you single out free markets there. A lack of scruples can be advantageous in economically closed environments as well.

Survival bias applies to a lot of situations. For example, in a system where corruption is endemic, non-corrupt officials won’t get promoted (because they have no dirt higher ups can use against them and/or don’t bribe the right people), leaving only corrupt officials. Do non-corrupt officials exist? Yes, but they are not likely to survive to he noticed.

Also, people in positions of potential power to steer a company back on the right course leave in protest at the most cruicial moments, opening a spot at the wheel for a yes-person.

Under oligopoly, the FAANG companies are kings. The could:

- create bilateral trade agreements that promote ethical standards (instead of finding ways around them)

- lobby for more ethical laws globally (instead of lobbying for maximum legal freedom)

As job governmental organizations, they have little influence in this. Sure they could lobby, but the voters and government branches need to be on board with it also.

> Likewise, morality beyond legality is much more likely if it doesn’t yield any ground to competitors

Then, why do it at all?

You want to tell the world what is right and wrong, fine, do it as an individual, write a book, found a religion or something. Enforcing your moral values inside the company and even worse, using the company's power to force them to the world - only to abandon them when it hurts profits - is perverse IMO.

> Enforcing your moral values inside the company and even worse, using the company's power to force them to the world - only to abandon them when it hurts profits - is perverse IMO.

The same could be said about executives and their lack of moral values. Except the C-level actually wields the power to control the company.

That's true in competitive markets, but in tech, winner-takes-all happens more often than not, and it affords the winner a lot of freedom.

True, survival bias only applies to competitive markets. Google still has leeway to leave China on the table without going out of business, especially since Chinese tech companies remain isolated from the rest of the world.

I see this argument being used a lot now.

"It's okay to censor Alex Jones because it's done by a private industry".

"Presumption of innocence doesn't apply to Judge Kav because this is a 'job interview'".

I feel what's lacking here is core principles.

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