What moral difficulties do you see? My opinion is these companies are despicable but taking advantage of their generosity is not hypocritical. Applications and motives can be immoral, tools without human action simply exist.

If you're surrounded by a transparently evil organization AND you profit from it, even if you think you are doing good, you will likely be corrupted and trapped in a web of your own justifications that just happen to support the continuation of a fat pay check.

Ethics are not a law of nature, it's basically an opinion. Your opinion may be that all business is unethical, but most people disagree.

Most people consider it to be ethical to trade money for goods and services at an agreed price, for example.

Similarly I think most people would agree that hiding the truth from people in order to have them do things they wouldn't do if they knew the truth, is unethical. Tracking people's activity without telling them that you are doing it would be unethical by that standard.

Yes but many things can override morality. I believe it all comes down to how strong you hold are to your morals. But I see your point and it’s probably the case.

> That's a very pessimistic view that you expect most people to function from a lack of conscience. You're probably not wrong that it's more common in the business world as well where there's more to gain. I used to think that too, still to some degree but I understand that most people's selfishness is give themself a comfortable amount.

I don’t think it’s a lack of conscience but moreso an overide of it. I think depending on the incentive a lot of people would overide their morals. Though maybe not most people. Idk.

The reason I get upset with this is because the world is so complicated that it is really difficult to determine if something is ethical or not. Or rather, which options are the most ethical (the world is so complex that nothing is completely ethical, so I think we should make an analogy to harm reduction. There will almost always be harm and if we seek zero harm through purity testing, we give advantage to those that do the most harm). While I agree that we should vote with our wallets to put pressure on the market, it is clearly not enough. It never will be enough because we can't peer behind the curtain and no one really knows how to make a pencil[0]. If no one knows how to make a pencil, then it follows that no one knows if pencil making is ethical to begin with, let alone pencil usage. I think what we must do instead is be willing to have these complex and nuanced conversations without religious vigor and instead make sure our passion to advocate for or against a system is proportionate to the time we are willing to put in to learning about the complexities of said system.

[0] https://fee.org/resources/i-pencil/

How many people would be willing to let someone else do their job for them when the cost is adding a little extra bias, something that isn't even a big deal in a single case (but which adds up over time)? It feels like ethics will quickly take a back seat for some small boon.

I hope so. I can at least understand that. People have principles but they also have prices.

It would be a completely different matter if they actually believed what they're doing is moral though.

Because people making decisions are often influenced by their own biases and social preferences, unfortunately.

When your livelihood is funded by this kind of vile deception and manipulation, your actions are undoubtedly immoral.

How so?

Scenario: Assume that someone was born intelligent, and chose to sacrifice their time and money to become a surgeon, and then earned a lot of money. They chose to invest that money to generate more money.

It isn't unethical because they didn't break a law. It isn't dishonest because they worked for it.

What do you see that I don't see?

I very deliberately expressed no opinion in that regard.

Not expressing an opinion within a moral argument is political only with regards for the motive of inaction. Taken to a greater extreme people are not necessarily expressing politics by not agreeing with your opinion.

Nobody needs to offer his own money, though. You give a moral answer to a social conflict. You miss the point.

But that’s not your choice. It’s interesting that you indicate disagreement with how the money is spent, but not how it is taken. This seems like the same concern for those they are taking it from. Can you imagine how a society would function if it were based on consent?

> That's exactly the problem.

I thoroughly disagree, and I feel like speaking up about this particular philosophy of consent.

If I buy a used iPhone for $100 from someone who would die if they didn't get the $100, have I acted unethically? Whereas if I bought it from someone who didn't really need the $100, I wouldn't be acting unethically?

This sounds not only wrong, but highly counter-productive to me, since the consequence of not entering into this trade, just because the seller really needs the money, is that the seller dies. How does that make any of us better off?

As a society, we should encourage trading with people who really need the money, not label it as unethical. Whether a trade is unethical or not can be determined solely from the trade itself, not how much either (or both of the parties) needs the proceeds from the trade.

Example illustrating the absurdity: imagine two people who both really need the proceeds trading with each other. Ouch! According to your philosophy, they are both acting unethically (when in fact they are doing the only reasonable thing).

There’s one aspect of some sort of ethical wrongness because I suspect there’s an eventual chump who will lose out not having full perspective when this thing falls apart.

But, for me, I have a tendency to feel uncomfortable when things are “obviously” wrong. I find it curious about me, and I’ve met others, who just don’t like it when things are off. The simple act of making the world more correct is pleasing. I’ve found it pretty helpful in debugging and system design. I find it really annoying in domains where there isn’t really an objective right and wrong, or it’s not clear to me what’s right, or where they aren’t fixable. And it’s pretty common in politics or religion where people point out wrongs.

So I don’t think money or technology is neutral. I think they both as information have certain innate needs to grow in the most efficient way possible. Money is like a river trying to flow to the ocean and actions like We took and is taking are the equivalent of trying to build a harbor in shallow water or some other illogical act.

Yes.

I see. Profit motive is bad. The world would be so much nicer if people were just less greedy.

I do agree with that.

And then what? Will you appeal to people to just stop being greedy, and join in a brotherly harmony?

Or you will try to strengthen the state mechanisms that make greed less dangerous? For example, greed could make some people steal. Rather than appeal to people not to steal, we can (and do) have law enforcement that deters people from stealing.

Well, recently that deterrence started losing its potency. Do I hear you criticizing the human greed and deploring those who go in stores and steal in plain daylight to satisfy their greed?

It's called utilitarianism and here it demonstrates nicely that ethics comes in various flavors

It depends what you mean, but I think you underestimate people. We all contain virtue and greed, and have the free will to choose which we will favor.

Of course, it's more complicated than that anyway: What happens is that some kinds of corruption become normalized and thus people don't feel they are violating ethics, and some corruption, though objectively no worse, is not normalized and is responded to with outrage.