Monsanto 'compiled dossier' on political opponents | Hacker News Reader

Monsanto 'compiled dossier' on political opponents

bbc.com

This is basic lobbying work. They used publicly available data (like Twitter posts or news articles) to annotate an excel file of public figures with mentions such as "Potentially an ally" or "Detractor".

...which is against the law in France.

Edit:

> Le Monde reported that the list was "problematic" under French law which prohibits the construction of a database "revealing the political and philosophical opinions of a person without their consent".

Honestly, why wouldn't you. We're in a call out culture period of time. If you're running a business it makes sense to research the people most likely to become a problem for you in the future.

Not personal, just business.

> Not personal, just business.

Ah yes, the oldest way to get out of responsibility for actions. "It's not personal, I just personally want my business to succeed even if it comes at a cost to you."

People's definition of what is right is different. Why not give your vision a bit more force behind it.

That's not immoral, it's just the way to get ahead of the detractors.

Specifically why I left morality out of it. If one brings morals into it, you end up using phrases like “it’s not personal, it’s business” to justify morals or disregard responsibility from actions.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with adding “force”, or “force majeure” in some cases, behind ideas. Just don’t pretend that it doesn’t cost anything or that doing so is not having an effect by slinging around meaningless apologies like “sorry, it’s not personal, it’s business.”

If you're playing chess against someone, it would be absurd to ignore the positions of their pieces when deciding your next moves, especially given that the positions of the pieces are open knowledge. Stop trying to make strategic decision making into an illegal or unethical thing. That's absurd.

> Stop trying to make strategic decision making into an illegal or unethical thing. That's absurd.

What? Could you please explain this and point out when it happened?

The dog whistle of "get out of responsibility".

The First Amendment is so fundamental to my American understanding of liberty, that I'm dumfounded to learn that a developed country like France has a law that says it is illegal to write a paper summarizing someone's publicly expressed political views.

How different is their concept of liberty that they would even consider a law against compiling public facts?

Perhaps they too should create blacklists of suspected communists to be reported to the government for extrajudicial consequences. Then France can enjoy freedom like America.

Whataboutism is unwise.

Also, a "blacklist" is little more than a name for a list of boycott targets. Boycotts, and the expression of who to boycott, are fundamental to liberty. That liberty results in people using liberty for good and for bad is not a sensible reason to dismiss liberty.

FWIW, everybody pretty much agrees that McCarthyism was bad. And, more importantly, it's a thing of the past. To be honest, litigating present issues by citing the past positions of people who are now mostly dead is kind of odd and nonsensical.

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