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Comment by albntomat0 | Hacker News Reader

Similarly, I would argue that we don't want to be reliant on corporations to determine what the lines are themselves, as they should not be de-facto moral authorities. Determining what is acceptable needs to come from our society as a whole, through reasoned debate and proper functioning of government.

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> through reasoned debate and proper functioning of government.

Yikes. Is there a fallback option?

The other options seem to be the benevolence of Bezos or Twitter condemnation, so not really.

Still better in some cases than relying in government taking action :-(

Note that this is a one way relationship, corporations must comply with laws, but can also do other things.

I'd say "better" as in "more likely", but I'm still not a fan of a handful of SV folks being the moral decision makers for the world as the general order of things.

I'll gladly accept additional benevolence from them though! Just not as the sole power in the area.

> corporations must comply with laws

Sadly, global corporations seem to be mostly able to choose which laws they want to comply with by shifting jurisdictions at will... "Oh no, for _tax purposes_ we're an Irish company! For privacy purposes we're European. For Intellectual Property purposes we're a Delaware C Corp. And, ummm, that department that doesn't exist is officially deputised by the Saudi Royal Family."

Ultimately, the French option from the late 1700s...

It'd be kinda nice if we trusted the police to act as "moral authorities" instead of trampling the public's rights and privacy (and necks) with wilful abandon whenever they feel like it...

We can only get to that point via systemic processes to ensure the proper people end up in the positions of power, with proper accountability acting in the limits of a shared morality

Hoping that police/tech companies/miltiary/etc are moral isn't an actionable plan.

I find that I don't shoot random innocent people mostly because I'm not a homicidal maniac but also because I will probably lose my house and everything I've worked for my whole life possibly including my freedom.

People in the armed forces need to be put in the same boat I'm in.

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