Hacker News Reader

Comment by numeromancer | Hacker News Reader

"All hate is hate, but some hate is more hate than others."

-- Hypocrite Valley

I would love to see a rise of alternative BigTech (FB, Google, Apple, Microsoft). Not the Parlor kind, but more leaning towards libertarian values and the foundational principles of the United States. Perhaps based in the East Coast: Philadelphia, Chicago or Boston.

What would that look like? A messenger app or forum, sure I can see that, we have 4chan, but I'm having a hard time envisioning a whole bigtech corp embodying those ideals or even what those ideals are that would be embodied.

Based on Chicago principles, less virtue signaling and more doing, apolitical and completely ruthlessly neutral (like Switzerland), highly capitalistic but also with strong integrity, protect the interest of United States and its allies, straightforward CEOs that don’t speak corporate lingo, work with DoD and DARPA, unwavering support for human rights. Above all, have conviction of their own and not buckle under pressure, and won’t sell out to questionable labor practices in China. 100% domestic.

Seems to be a common response: if it’s not big tech it’s automatically 4chan.

You're editing a lot, so I want to snapshot what you said at the point of time I'm responding:

> Based on Chicago principles, less virtue signaling and more doing, apolitical and completely ruthlessly neutral (like Switzerland), highly capitalistic but also with strong integrity, protect the interest of United States and its allies, straightforward CEOs that don’t speak corporate lingo, work with DoD and DARPA, unwavering support for human rights. Above all, have conviction of their own and not buckle under pressure, and won’t sell out to questionable labor practices in China. 100% domestic.

> Seems to be a common response: if it’s not big tech it’s automatically 4chan.

That seems like a lot of oxymorons - what are they doing that is apolitical, but also happily involved in defense, but also interested in human rights? And neutral like Switzerland but only in regards to America?

If they enable the air force to better bomb civilians in a foreign country is that still apolitical and for human rights? How does it approach the knowledge that those agencies are doing their best to do questionable things to its own citizens rights? What happens in 4 years if domestic policy changes? Do they not lobby? And they never leave the United States? Can you have a Facebook/Google/Amazon and be exclusively in America?

Why such a hostile response? I am trying to have a peaceful discussion. And all those rhetorical questions appear to be strawmaning what I am proposing.

Oxymorons are currently present in the way Apple does its PR - no problem with sweatshop labor in China, but they'll never miss a chance to have a political opinion about other things - diversity, BLM, Ukraine, etc. Whatever aligns with their audience.

I'm not trying to champion Apple, far from it, but I can't see how any sort of consistent policy could be defined from those opposing ideals and I wanted to highlight some I saw, especially when the stated goal is to align with core fundamental principles. As stated, those principles seem in opposition to each-other.

that's the stated goal of Gab and its sub-brands, but [insert reasons for why they're bad here]

The CTO of gab posts here and he was actively pushing Russian propoganda pre-invasion

Not big tech, but an internet version of a post office. That is, a government-provided at-cost presence on the web linked to your real identity that can't be taken away from you without a court order and whose only rules are the laws of the United States. I don't think we have it in us, though.

> Not the Parlor kind, but more leaning towards libertarian values and the foundational principles of the United States.

Yes, but as noted by Scott Alexander:

The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservativ...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com