The Internet

Let’s Play “Unethical, Obnoxious, Or Just Plain Stupid!”

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

MC: Ready, contestants? For your first challenge, consider this latest controversial Truth Social post by former President (and soon to announce candidate for President in 2024) Donald Trump!

What do you say, contestants? Is this Unethical, Obnoxious, or Just Plain Stupid?

Our ethicist from Alexandia, Virginia is first to buzz in! Yes, Jack, what’s your answer?

JACK:  Wink, I say it’s all three. I’s unethical, because Trump is attacking rising conservatives in his own party for his own gain, or at least he perceives it that way. It’s disloyal, it’s irresponsible, and it can’t possibly benefit anyone but him. That kind of gratuitous attack is a Golden Rule violation, and it’s a Categorical Imperative breach as well: Trump is just using Virginia Governor Youngkin as a convenient prop to remind everyone how valuable (Trump thinks) he is as he senses hostility from Republicans after his attacks on Ron DeSantis.

The message is also obnoxious, though in a way Trump’s fans are used to: he’s boasting like a 10-year-old, taking credit for someone else’s achievements, and asserting, as usual, that everything is about him. The bit about Youngkin’s name sounding Chinese is off the charts; it’s arguably beneath a 10-year-old. I saw a pathetic defense of Trump’s message that claimed there was nothing in what Trump wrote that constituted an attack. Bias makes you stupid (not necessarily you, Wink, but this is something ethicists say, at least this ethicist): everyone knows what Trump thinks of China. If he had written “Sound Jewish, doesn’t it?” would there be any doubt about his intent? Continue reading →

Regarding KFC’s Cheesy Chicken Kristallnacht Promotion…In Germany!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Oopsie!

On the anniversary of Kristallnacht (“Reichspogromnacht” in Germany), the Nazi-organized attack on synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses in 1938 that marked the beginning of the Holocaust, the German app users of the international restaurant chain KFC received the message above, which translates to “It’s memorial day for Kristallnacht! Treat yourself with more tender cheese on your crispy chicken. Now at KFCheese!”

In the next message, KFC apologized for the “system error.” It was not the system’s fault, however, but the fault of the humans who put the task of sending out automated promotional messages entirely in the metaphorical hands of a machine, without human oversight. No human being, especially in Germany, would come up with the idea of celebrating a tragedy on the scale of Kristallnacht with a “cheesy chicken” promotion. What happened was that the system was programed to send out a promotion coordinated with every holiday and memorial on the calendar, and nobody bothered to make sure that such promotions would be appropriate for all of them.

Quick! Somebody check with KFC Japan to see if a fried chicken promotion is scheduled to commemorate the atom bomb falling on Hiroshima!

Fortunately, this episode of technology incompetence was only embarrassing and offensive. The next example of humans carelessly entrusting tasks and decisions to computers may not be so easy to fix. Technology is a monster if it is not tamed, trained, watched carefully and used with meticulous care. Not only that, the harm it can do if employed recklessly or cavalierly, or if supervised by those without the foresight and judgment to do so competently, is the stuff of science fiction horror movies. This is a cautionary tale, and attention must be paid.

If enough people pay attention and heed the lesson, KFC may have performed a great service in its incompetence.

That is a big if, however.

Yet Another Pre-Election Story That Should Be Getting Major News Coverage As Relevant To Which Party Is Threatening Democracy

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Come to think of it, the Democrats are wielding hammers, though metaphorical ones. More evidence has arrived on how the social media platforms work to serve the current government’s power objectives by suppressing dissent. This has been called a “right wing conspiracy theory” even though the immediate response by Facebook and Twitter to the Hunter Biden laptop report would have been enough to get to a jury if the platforms could be prosecuted for “trying to fix a Presidential election,” and that was two years ago. But every bit of new proof is helpful to convince those apathetic and gullible Americans who need to be hit over the heads with a hammer—I have hammers on the brain today for some reason—before they’ll pay attention.

Twitter: In a final show of defiance that also proved Elon Musk right, Twitter suspended several conservative accounts just as Musk began cleaning house, and only one week before the midterm elections.

Jake Denton, a research associate at Heritage’s Tech Policy Center, found himself suspended on Twitter at 11:10 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 29. Vince Dao, editor-in-chief at the conservative organization American Virtue, had his account suspended a day earlier. Neither had any hint about what led to their suspensions.

Denton said yesterday,

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“This Is Larry. Tragically, Though He Was Once A Renowned Law Professor, Bias Has Made Him Stupid. Won’t You Give A Tax-Deductable Donation to Help Us Find A Cure For Larry And Victims Like Him?

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

Tragic. Since retiring as a Harvard Law professor, Laurence Tribe has destroyed his reputation for integrity and intelligence by sending out one irresponsible, idiotic and politically-deranged social media post after another. It is sad and it is destructive.

The tweet above is Tribe’s latest, a despicable reaction to Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul being “violently assaulted” in a home break-in. There is no evidence, none, that the attack was politically motivated, and it’s not as if San Francisco is a community where people don’t lock their doors: thanks to the progressive madness of the far left ideologues who have taken over the city’s government, the once lovely “city by the bay” has become such a pit of crime and violence that residents and businesses are fleeing. Once, before his mind fled, Tribe was undoubtedly well-versed in Occam’s Razor. Which is more likely, that a wealthy home-owner was the victim of violent crime in a city infested with it, or that the husband of a Democratic leader was beaten by an angry conservative?

Tribe is a lawyer, though I doubt he could pass a bar exam today, or even one of his old exams. What kind of lawyer leaps to a conclusion without evidence, saying in a public forum that “this has to stop” when he can’t possibly know what “this” is? A bad lawyer. An unethical lawyer. A senile lawyer whose embarrassing partisan outbursts need to stop.

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“Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Sunday Continues With An Unethical Quote Of The Week From Media Matters President Angelo Carusone

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“[Fox News] had a profound distorting effect on the news media, on our society. And if you look at what Musk says about social media, we are in the same moment, just updated 30 years later…[He] sees Twitter, and the policies that he wants to put in place and the way that he wants to use the platform, as a way to balance out those other social networks.”

—-Angelo Carusone, president of the pro-progressive media bias organization Media Matters, comparing Elon Musk’s pending acquisition of Twitter to when Fox News broke the liberal monopoly on network news more than two decades ago

Give Angelo credit: he’s right, even if he can’t distinguish a good development from a bad one. But then, that’s Media Matters for you, nearly completely ethics-free. (I generally ignore MM because it is so clearly dishonest and untrustworthy, but it does have a odoriferous Ethics Alarms dossier, here.)

These periodic themes on Ethics Alarms aren’t planned, but wowie zowie, have a lot of examples of the news media’s leftist bias been flying by today!

Caruso’s quote is signature significance for the arrogance and totalitarian instincts of such people. I seldom watch Fox News because it so often is pitched to idiots incapable of critical thought, and its star pundits like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity are perpetually intellectually dishonest. Nonetheless, Fox News’ appearance on the scene was arguably the most important and essential development in American journalism before journalists decided not to practice journalism any more and almost completely stomp on the principles enshrined in the profession’s ethics codes.

How many news stories that the mainstream media tried to bury or distort would we have never been informed fully about (or informed about at all) without one network that existed, indeed with its own biases, to balance out the Borg-like perspective of the vast majority of its competitors?

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Today’s Untrustworthy and Unethical Social Media Platform: LinkedIn

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

From 2015 to 2019, LinkedIn randomly varied the proportion of weak and strong contacts suggested to users by its “People You May Know” algorithm, the company’s  system for recommending new connections to “link” to. Researchers at LinkedIn, M.I.T., Stanford and Harvard Business School then analyzed aggregate data from the tests in a study published this month in the “Science.”

In other words, users were used as virtual lab rats, subjected to changes in how the platform served their job-hunting and networking interests without their knowledge or consent. It would have been easy and ethical to alert users to this experiment and allow them to out out, but no. The New York Times, ethically inert as usual, writes, “Experts who study the societal impacts of computing said conducting long, large-scale experiments on people that could affect their job prospects, in ways that are invisible to them, raised questions about industry transparency and research oversight.”

Raised questions? What questions? Such secret experimenting is wrong, manipulative, arrogant, irresponsible and unethical. There is no uncertainty on that point. In a statement, LinkedIn now claims that it has “acted consistently with” the company’s user agreement, privacy policy and member settings. The privacy policy, while stating that LinkedIn uses members’ personal data for research purposes, does not reveal that the company will secretly play with  user’s contacts in ways that might result in career or life course changes. The company also, naturally, engaged in the now compulsory “It isn’t what it is” blather,  saying it used the latest, “non-invasive” social science techniques to answer important research questions “without any experimentation on members.”

Of course it was “experimentation on members.”

LinkedIn’s policy for outside researchers seeking to analyze company data states that those researchers will not be able to “experiment or perform tests on our members,” but no policy statement explicitly informs consumers that LinkedIn itself can experiment or perform tests on its members. “During the tests, people who clicked on the ‘People You May Know’ tool and looked at recommendations were assigned to different algorithmic paths,” the New York Times explains. ” Some of those ‘treatment variants,’ as the study called them, caused LinkedIn users to form more connections to people with whom they had only weak social ties. Other tweaks caused people to form fewer connections with weak ties.”

Then the Times adds, disingenuously, “Whether most LinkedIn members understand that they could be subject to experiments that may affect their job opportunities is unknown.” No, it’s just impossible to prove they didn’t know. LinkedIn knew damn well they didn’t know. I didn’t know, for example, not that I rely upon or trust LinkedIn in any way.

None of the social media platforms are trustworthy, and anyone who participates in them should just assume that they will abuse their power while deceiving users whenever they see profit in it. These are unethical Big Tech entities run by unethical, dishonest people. Interact with them accordingly, if you have to interact with them at all.

Comment Of The Day: NetChoice LLC v. Paxton (Item #4 In “Sunday Consequential Ethics Epiphanies, 9/18/2022”)

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I am enmeshed in a disagreement with esteemed and long-time Ethics Alarms commenter Chris Marschner regarding Texas’ HB 20 signed into law last year. It prohibits social media platforms with over 50 million monthly U.S. users from censoring posts based political positions and viewpoints. To my surprise (although considering the Court, maybe it shouldn’t have been) the Fifth Circuit helding that the right to free speech didn’t include the right to censor speech, a privately-owned platform. That opinion is here. I wrote that I didn’t understand the opinion at all, meaning that while I find the way social media platforms employ bias and partisan favoritism to censor posts using double standards profoundly unethical, I also think the Texas law is screamingly unconstitutional, and is likely to be held to be so by the U.S. Supreme Court. However, I understand the opinion better than I did thanks to Chris’s advocacy.

Here is his Comment of the Day on Item #4 of the post, “Sunday Consequential Ethics Epiphanies, 9/18/2022: On Incompetence, Diversity, Censorship And More..”

***

You and I are in complete agreement on the issue of viewpoint discrimination. I will counter that the service provided is not free. It is true that monetary compensation is not used but the Users barter for the service by providing valuable personal data and rights to the content they post online on an ongoing basis.

While Facebook does not sell users data directly it does so indirectly by serving as a middleman using its algorithm to serve up targeted advertising. That is the foundation of the business model from which the service derives its income.

One might argue that the perceived value of this trade is lopsided in favor of the user because of the billions of dollars needed to create and maintain the platform while all the user exchanges for access is giving the Service intelligence about the User. The problem with that argument is that it only appears lopsided because until the business model was developed the user has no individual means to collect financial compensation for them being subjected to an endless barrage of advertisements. Through this business model Users obtain an exchange of value by creating a social media account. In a sense, Facebook, et al serves as a medium of exchange which is the primary defining characteristic of money. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero (Maybe): Actor John Boyega

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The British star of the third “Star Wars”  trilogy films “The Force Awakens” (2015), “The Last Jedi” (2017), and “The Rise of Skywalker” (2019) launched a social media tempest when he stated in an interview with GQ,

“I only date Black…then it’s about chemistry, personality, goals. Is there a synergy? Can I help you? Can you help me?”

He’s either very frank and courageous, or extremely naive. Naturally, the Right is pointing to him as an example of the Hollywood culture’s hypocrisy. “Imagine if a white celebrity said this the other way around,” asks the conservative “Gotcha!” site “Not The Bee.” ” If you’re putting skin color above things like chemistry and personality, however,” Holly Ash writes, “I might argue that you’re technically, per the definition of the term, a little racist.” Oh? I might argue that you are using a lousy definition. Racist means that one regards one race inferior to another, to the extent of regarding individuals of the race intrinsically inferior. What Boyega is describing as a bias, and biases are innate, natural, human, unavoidable, and yes, they make us stupid. It is our duty as ethical beings to try to recognize biases and their emotional, irrational nature, and, if possible, get past them. However, preferring the company of people more like yourself than not is a a very natural bias, especially when it comes to romantic and intimate relationships. A racial bias like Boyega’s has to be kept in its proper place, just like, say, a man’s preference for attractive women. That is his right as sexual creature, but the bias is unethical if he’s hiring a staff….unless he’s directing a “Charley’s Angels” movie, or something similar. Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 9/20/22: ” Seeing Bad Stuff In September” Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Stop making me defend Scott Pelley! The conservative news media is beating on “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley for what they are calling a “softball” interview, as if every “60 Minutes” interview of a sitting President hasn’t been just as tame, or even tamer. At least Pelley asked Biden about Hunter. The truth is that Americans still prefer to see their Presidents treated with respect and some degree of deference, unless the President is Donald Trump.

It’s funny: the same outlets that are condemning Pelley as a Democratic ally and hack are wondering why Biden’s “handlers” allowed the blithering POTUS to do an interview at all. Of course the conditions demanded for the interview included no follow up questions, and a softball session. And it didn’t matter! Biden’s performance was frightening anyway, and unlike the 2020 interview with Trump, when Leslie Stahl’s clear objective was to attack throughout, the White House couldn’t complain afterwards that the President was sabotaged by a biased journalist. Pelley asked about Joe’s mental fitness, and Biden replied, “Watch me!” And so we did, and have. He continued,

And it ma—, honest to God, that’s all I think. Watch me. If you think I don’t have the energy level or the mental acuity, then — then, you know, that’s one thing. It’s another thing, you just watch and — and, you know, keep my schedule. Do what I’m doing….“I — I think that, you know — I don’t — when I sit down with our NATO allies and keep ’em together, I don’t have ’em saying, ‘Wait a minute, w— how — how old are you? What are you — what say?’ You know, I mean, it’s a matter of, you know, that old expression: The proof of the pudding’s in the eating. I mean, I — I — I respect the fact that people would say, you know, ‘You’re old.’ And — but I think it relates to h— how much energy you have, and whether or not the job you’re doing is one consistent with what any person of any age would be able to do.”

Whether it was Pelley’s intention or not, he ended up doing what ethical journalists are supposed to do: he let the facts speak for themselves.

1. On the topic of social media viewpoint censorship, this:

It takes a lot of chutzpah for YouTube to demonetize a channel because it violates YouTube’s “values” and then sell ads on the same content.

2. Oh please, please let this happen to me! In an open thread at Althouse, a commenter tells this tale,

A friend’s brother lives in Florida. They recently got new neighbors from NY, a husband and wife. A few days after moving in the wife stops over and sits down. She says, “OK, let’s get this out of the way. I am a Democrat and my husband an Independent. What are you?” Non-plussed, he says he is Republican. For the next 15 minutes he was called every expected name- Nazi, racist, etc. IN HIS OWN F-ING HOME!

It’s my contention that the left now knows its flaws are becoming obvious and are overcompensating to hear themselves repeat their failing worldview…

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More “Little Mermaid” Ethics: The White Ariel Version Of The Black Ariel Version Of The White Animated Ariel

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

In yesterday’s post, “Stop Making Me Defend Disney!,” Ethics Alarms looked at the controversy over Disney’s live-action version of its 1989 classic animated film “The Little Mermaid” that casts a black performer, Halle Bailey (not Halle Berry) as the Hans Christian Anderson heroine. Well, this one is moving fast.

One of the many fans who object to imposing “diversity, equity and inclusion” on “The Little Mermaid” announced via Twitter that technology was now available that could digitally transform Bailey into a white, red-haired mermaid just as Disney had transformed its original Ariel into a black one:

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