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Comment by 1propionyl | Hacker News Reader

"The East India Trading Company is just an extension of the open seas."

Yes, a company which owns large chunks of India and has a well-used private army numbering in the tens of thousands, is a great analogy for a social-media company. </s>

The East India Company was responsible, at least in part, for tens of millions of deaths in various famines, and to equate the two fails both by being ridiculous (Facebook is not a private empire with an empire), and trivializes the actual damage done by that institution.

In much of South/South-East Asia, for many people, Facebook is the internet. (And remember Facebook Zero? Facebook was aware of and tried to engender this).

https://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-id...

A staunch defender of the EITC would claim they were "just" engaging in mercantilism and facilitating the exchange of goods, and the war and deaths were just unfortunate side-effects. Facebook is "just" engaging in connecting people and facilitating the exchange of information, and stoking violence and racial conflict are just unfortunate side-effects.

While I appreciate the invocation of Godwin's law, Facebook is absolutely a private empire with an empire; in context of modern society.

You're not going to convince me (or hopefully, anyone) that an institution with an army that actually goes about the business of conquering and killing people, has any moral equivalence with a misguided (and I'm not contesting, destructive) social media company.

We can say that things are bad, while at the same time admitting that in the past, people did far worse things. It's a new, different, less-bad-but-still-bad, thing. It's OK.

Defenders of the EIC at the time surely said "yeah some bad stuff happens but think about the squalor the average Indian lived in prior to the Englishman coming in and bringing great wealth to their country. Think of the untold famine and poverty we're helping ameliorate by bringing western Christian ideals and wealth to a primitive people.

How DARE you compare some unfortunate incidents of the EIC to the human misery that existed before the Brits arrived, you're being ridiculous!! "

People have always been able to use motivated reasoning to explain away the terrible externalizes of their choices when there's a shitload of money on the line.

FB has been a tool to aid genocide, they've contributed to incivility in societies throughout the world while they're cashing checks but don't want to appear "paternalistic" of course so it's fine.

Social media companies have played a primary role in overthrowing governments and manipulating elections across the world.

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