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Comment by 7u8Cpa2B | Hacker News Reader

I am not sure how ethics is defined here. In fact, I can totally see how some of these options can be considered unethical.

Before we proceed, recall that Facebook is now a "morally bankrupt liars" because it "enabled genocide", "facilitate foreign undermining of democratic institutions", "allow the live streaming of suicides, rape, and murders", and "host and publish the mosque attack video".

Let's compare this with one of the ethical browsers listed here -- Tor. Tor allowed Silk Road, which allowed dangerous drugs and fake IDs to be sold, and other sites that hosted child abuse and pornography content.

But privacy! Well, how about PeerTube? Interestingly, PeerTube "viewers don't have privacy" as it exposes the IPs of all viewers. Imagine if YouTube or Facebook does this.

So what gives?

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> Before we proceed, recall that Facebook is now a "morally bankrupt liars" because it "enabled genocide", "facilitate foreign undermining of democratic institutions", "allow the live streaming of suicides, rape, and murders", and "host and publish the mosque attack video".

This is a nice example of a not so common fallacy, the "fallacy fallacy": suppose that you have an argument a for the proposition p:

a -> p

It does not follow that:

~a -> ~p

Which is to say, showing some cherry-picked argument for Facebook being unethical to be invalid tells us nothing about Facebook being unethical or not.

Given that you crated a throwaway account one hour ago just to post this comment, I suspect that you are aware of what I am saying, but others may not be.

For those interested in a less cherry-picked source of claims against Facebook, there's even a Wikipedia page just for that (warning: it is quite long):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook

Oh yes, I am quite aware of this fallacy. It is known as the inverse fallacy (~a -> ~p is the inverse of a -> p). Thanks for bringing this up.

Anyway, the reason that I am giving this cherry-picked argument is not to arrive at a conclusion on whether or not Facebook is being ethical or not. (Spoiler: I don't know, see my other comment.)

I wanted to highlight that ethics is a very subjective business. I understand why some people might consider these projects ethical. However, to some people, they are considered very much unethical. The New Zealand government says that because Facebook allows X, Y, and Z, therefore, Facebook is unethical. Now, you might disagree with this statement, but (no offense) what you think does not matter here, because this (X, Y, Z -> unethical) is now the standard that some entity is using to decide if something is unethical. By the same standard, if another project/product (that is not Facebook), allows X, Y, and Z, too, then this project/product is considered unethical by this entity. And it is very much the case (or at least possibly the case) that the projects listed here satisfy X, Y, and Z, too.

Hey, thanks for stopping by.

So better not bother even thinking about ethics at all?

More on the topic of ethics here: https://ethical.net/ethical/future-ethics-with-cennydd-bowle... https://ethical.net/ethical/ethics-should-not-be-a-luxury/

Definitely not. Precisely because I care about ethics that I bring these up. The reason is that I think we as a society (well, at least a subset of the tech community) romanticizes free (beer and speech), open-source, decentralized, and non-profit projects so much that we automatically equate them as being ethical. (Exhibit A: this website, ethical.net.)

The truth is that ethics is hugely complex and nuanced. For example, what is your take on a super secure messaging app like Signal? Obviously, it is useful because it allows people to communicate privately (e.g., allows confidential sources to talk to journalists without being spied on). Now, what about the cliched scenario where it is being used by criminals to coordinate their bad deeds? Honestly, I don't know. I live in a democratic country whose government respects its citizen's privacy. As such, I am perfectly willing to give up a little bit of privacy (between myself and my government) if it means keeping the society safer. On the other hand, there are people (lots of em) who are not as fortunate as I am -- a wrong sneeze and you are dead.

Ethics is complicated. Even if we fully understand a product (or policy or project), it doesn't mean we fully understand its ethical impact. And even if we do understand its ethical impact, it is almost impossible for us to say if its entirety ethical or not. Because of these complexities, any attempt to consider ethics as a yes/no label (like this site, ethical.net) is almost certainly wrong. In fact, it trivializes this very important issue.

Is this a list of ethical software, carefully curated and thought about, or is this a list of non-main-stream software with the implicit assumption that contrarianism is implicitly ethical?

When I look at your list, I just see a sentence of ad copy about each product and an outbound link. Why not an essay about each product and the criteria you used when deciding that product was ethical and its competitors were not?

No, be upfront with your definition, engage in discussion, and don't patronize criticisms.

You don't get to proclaim something ethical and then move along. That's close-minded and ripe for abuse.

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