And why would those Twitter employees be able to judge what's the better option in a foreign sovereign affair (especially given the quite low knowledge most Americans have of world affairs)?
As for the real answer, so that Twitter and co can give a resemblance of being neutral international internet service, as opposed to being "Western media" company tied to regional interests.
There is no "neutral" here; one side is a wealthy government, the other is an informal assembly of citizens.
Do you also believe that political contributions should be unregulated? Wouldn't that be fair and "neutral"? Of course it wouldn't; it would heavily favor the side with the most money.
You don't need to be inside of North Korea to be able to judge that the South Korean approach is superior in all regards.
If 100% of the people in a country believe state slavery is ideal, that no human rights is ideal, all that means is that 100% of the people in that country are wrong.
Vaccines are also not a subjective value, speaking generally, and the morality of Hong Kong vs China in terms of human rights and systems, is every bit as clear of a matter as whether vaccines are good or bad. One is better than the other and it is very easy to prove in numerous obvious ways.
If 100% of Americans believe vaccines are bad, that doesn't mean they're right. A proper human morality stems from what best provides for a high quality of life for humans. The basis of a proper morality is what human life needs to flourish and we can test and track and prove it out. We've already figured this out in fact and it isn't the repressive Chinese authoritarian model (it's a lot more like Canada, Denmark, Japan, Sweden, Finland, Austria, etc).
Well, wars that killed tons of people were supposedly fought for "basic human rights" and "democracy" too, so there's that.
>If 100% of the people in a country believe state slavery is ideal, that no human rights is ideal, all that means is that 100% of the people in that country are wrong.
And whose to say? Some other country based on its own culture, and treating it as some some of universal laws of physics?
>Vaccines are also not a subjective value
That's neither here, nor there, because vaccines are the subject of scientific study, and results can be measured.
Preferred way of government, laws, ethical questions, etc, are cultural, and should be up to the people.
The UN Convention of Human Rights. Which China recognizes, that's why it got Taiwan's seat at the Security Council.
I posit being in a position to judge and enforce human rights, and then violating the rights you recognize for your own gain, is immoral.
> Preferred way of government, laws, ethical questions, etc, are cultural, and should be up to the people.
That doesn't work, which is why we have the UN Convention. There were more non-Jews than Jews in Germany, a party only resonating with the majority population could then harness that to murder the minority. To make sure minorities are safe the International community is trying to make human rights universal in spite of what a local majority thinks.
We have the UN Convention because some top-dog nation states pushed for it, as a means to influence lesser states in a faux-democratic way [1].
https://www.cgdev.org/publication/linking-us-foreign-aid-un-...
When the UN doesn't vote or suggest something they like, they can simply veto it or ignore it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._ratification_of_the_Conve... (not ratified by US)
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/23/politics/un-security-coun...
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/43-times-us-has-used-veto...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty#...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Elimination_... (not ratified by US)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol#Non-ratificatio... (not ratified by US)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_Internat... (not ratified by US)
So much for "making minorities safe" -- they also have to be the minorities (or majorities) certain top dogs care about.
[1] And this is not a new Trump-era thing: the US has pushed UN votes its way through this and similar means since Kissinger times
But, you’re making the claim here that the convention on human rights was a tool to influence nations in a faux-democratic way. Could you tell me what in the human rights convention makes the world a less democratic place? And why is it bad to have some framework in place that for example covers the human rights abuses China is comitting against the uighurs? And what would be the alternative, just letting countries violate minorities who pray for other countries to do something?
Because, again, we’re talking about China here, a permanent member of the Security Council. It’s supposed to uphold these values of human rights across the world, but it violates them instead because it wants to, is that not something other countries should condemn then?
That's not a meaningful statement. It doesn't matter what something was supposedly fought for (Iraq was supposedly fought for WMDs). It matters what it was fought for (Iraq wasn't fought for WMDs).
> And whose to say? Some other country based on its own culture, and treating it as some some of universal laws of physics?
The people in Hong Kong or Japan are not so biologically different such that what causes their humanity to thrive, is entirely different from what causes the humanity of North Korea to thrive. Culture is a bogus excuse, there is nothing special about it that justifies oppressing people.
You answered your own question with the last part. We can easily prove out what is best for humanity, under what conditions humans best thrive. Yes, it in fact can be measured and easily demonstrated. We've already figured this out. It's no different than understanding that humans don't thrive when they're suffocating or starving or lacking water.
> That's neither here, nor there, because vaccines are the subject of scientific study, and results can be measured.
And that's where your entire premise falls apart. A human morality can be judged by its outcomes, very clearly. This is night & day in many cases, such as Cold War West & East Berlin, or current North & South Korea.
The actual outcomes of an applied morality can plainly be measured in numerous obvious ways. We do it all the time: we know for a scientific fact (yes, scientific fact) that the approach Denmark uses is vastly superior to the approach North Korea uses. We have measured the outcomes, we know what works. We have dozens of metrics of human life that we can measure it based on, such as life expectancy or access to basic healthcare. Morality is not entirely subjective: someone strangling an innocent person to death in murder isn't a matter of opinion as to whether it's good or not. That's a simple, obvious, baseline example proof that morality is not always subjective. Someone having an opinion on something doesn't mean it's right or wrong by itself. Whether a morality is good or not, requires one simple starting question: does this approach improve human existence; does it lead to demonstrably increased happiness and well being. The surveys of the happiest countries that persistently come out with eg Scandinavia on top, are not a fluke.
From basic foundations you can determine objective morality issues to build a society on, including whether eg murdering innocent people is proper to a society flourishing or not. We can measure how humanity survives, thrives, or fails under various conditions and create approaches that utilize rules of morality that are best to spur positive outcomes.
If this weren't true, the best outcome countries would all be scrambled, it'd be nearly entirely random. Sudan would be right up there with the Netherlands. You'd have repressive slave states routinely with hyper GDP per capita figures, low work hours, top notch welfare states, and leading all the happiness surveys world wide. Of course that's not the common outcome at all, it's exactly the opposite.
In fact, this sort of oversimplification is itself dangerous, even if it is for a “good” cause, simply because it lends ammunition to your opposition, subsequently helping the exact people you are fighting against.
It was fought for control and oil, which is even worse.
>You answered your own question with the last part. We can easily prove out what is best for humanity, under what conditions humans best thrive. Yes, it in fact can be measured and easily demonstrated.
Only with the measurement tools (criteria) of those doing the measuring.
This method has historically been used to justify all kinds of oppression itself.
E.g. how Native Americans, after being exterminated for the most part, had to be "schooled" in education camps to really "thrive". Or how colonialism and enslavement of billions of people was for their "own good" (the "white man's burden" to civilize them, and give them railways and prosperity).
Also China is not North Korea.