I've worked in security for years. If I had a dollar for every time I heard that (security is a nice-to-have), either directly or implied, I could retire. LOL
And firing the A11y team doesn't immediately remove all accessibility from Twitter, they are forced by US law to follow accessibility standards and they would, they just won't do higher than what's required.
For all its pretense of wanting to be the Town Square, somehow I don't expect it to be a very inclusive one. Getting rid of a11y team is exactly what I would expect, crisis or not.
Immanuel Kant came up with the idea of a categorical imperative. It’s one of the foundation stones in the field of moral philosophy (or ethics). An example would be the moral requirement not to kill other people. The only way to successfully prove that there are no moral requirements is by arguing the point with people who don’t know any better.
There are many philosophers who disagree with Kant's categorical imperative though – even among those who agree that ethics is objective (in some sense). The categorical imperative gives morality a deontological flavour, to which many will object–such as consequentialists. And there are others who don't object to the deontological flavour per se, but who think there are better foundations for such a morality (e.g. natural law theorists).
I agree with your position that ethics is objective, but I don't think Kant's categorical imperative is a very good argument for its objectivity – a person can coherently accept ethics/morality as being objective, yet doubt or deny the categorical imperative. I think "ethics is objective" is one of those things where very many people can agree on a conclusion, yet disagree massively on what is the correct reasoning to reach that conclusion.
It was a somewhat rushed point, admittedly. I was reaching for enlightenment-era imagery to challenge the seeming disavowal of morality itself. I note that OP extended those remarks elsewhere to claim that the law is the preferred source of moral constraint. I'm not even sure of what to say to that.
But I very much appreciate the depth of your point. I've always found validation (?) in the deontological aspect of Kant's idealism because I think it neatly describes why people feel obligations to those they interact with most closely (i.e. I feed my child because I should, rather than to avoid his hunger). I certainly take your point that the categorical imperative isn't the best or only tool for interpreting moral dilemmas. Honestly, I was bringing it up in part because it's a recognisable phrase that might infer that there's more to the question of ethics than unexamined instinct.
> I've always found validation (?) in the deontological aspect of Kant's idealism because I think it neatly describes why people feel obligations to those they interact with most closely (i.e. I feed my child because I should, rather than to avoid his hunger).
It is interesting you bring up that example, because it connects with the moral universalism vs moral particularism debate: moral universalists argue that an essential component of a valid ethical principle is it must be universal in scope (equally applicable to everyone at all times), even though it may still produce quite different outcomes when applied to differing situations. Particularists claim
by contrast that one can have moral obligations which are non-universal in character - I owe special obligations to my children because they are mine, beyond those which I owe to children-in-general. Moral universalists have to either deny the existence of such particular obligations, or else insist that they are ultimately universal rather than particular in character. Anyway, the categorical imperative is a classic statement of moral universalism, yet you are invoking one of the favourite examples of moral particularists to support it.
Personally, I think the best way to defend the objectivity of morality is the “companions in the guilt” argument - for every argument that is put forward against the objectivity of morality, there is a closely parallel argument against the objectivity of (theoretical) rationality. If that’s true, then how is it not special pleading to grant objectivity to one yet deny it to the other?
And I agree, but that is not how I read your comment.
If you expanded it with "There are no moral requirements... for companies to provide accessibility features" it would have been entirely different story.
I don't think people downvote you because we "expect society to work out of goodwill and not through enforced regulations decided by the voters", but because your blanket statmenet denying the existince of moral requirements is interpreted negatively. I for one agree that relying just on morals is not enough and that regulations is needed, but your sentence is obviously not universally interpreted in that light.
AFAIK that’s a misconstrual. Having a “verified” blue checkmark will cost $8 a month, but using Twitter and saying whatever you want on it will still be free.
Before you let that cynicism build up too much, for the record, not all of us Elon+Twitter skeptics have a problem with the $8 thing. You're just not going to hear from any one who didn't have an issue with it.
Related: Is there a quippy term or a fallacy for the (very natural!) habit of treating a random sample of a million voices and expecting a coherent message from them? I feel like it's related but distinct from a strawman.
After thinking on it, maybe it is a form of unintentional straw man. People are attacking a hypothetical position and view that is a synthesis of many people and only is combined in their mind.
There is also a reverse no true Scotsman, I've seen referenced as dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid. Not as catchy as no true Scotsman but you're basically imagining a perfect Scotsman and then attacking them when they don't exist
"Weak man" is when you take a genuine-but-weak take from one of your opponents and treat them as representing your opposition in general. (That's not quite what you're asking for though, I think)
> Before it was that private companies could do whatever they wanted,
No, it was that “free speech” means private actors are free to make decisions about what content to relay.
Not that everything they choose on that (or any other) is equally good, nor that they shouldn’t be punished in the marketplace (not by the state) for their bad choices.
> That’s why in a free marketplace, Elon asserted his free speech to take over Twitter due to their perceived poor management.
That’s not really accurate. Twitter’s management took Elon to court to force him to take over so the stockholders they worked for could reap thr windfall ofnthe premium price he regretted offering and tried to tun away from.
Private companies explicitly shouldn’t do whatever they want at all. They don’t even get to decide totally whom to serve, as doing so against a protected class will quickly lead to a really bad outcome for the company.
And that’s a good thing. It is frankly ridiculous that private companies get to decide the public opinion by tweaking their algorithms, it should be managed in a similar way how we don’t allow food companies to put cocaine into their products.
In what delusional world could private companies ever 'do whatever they wanted'? We have huge legal tomes filled with laws to prevent this sort of sociopathic thinking from becoming reality for the sake of profit.
If you think the bannable offenses on Twitter only gave enough room for the left, you are not just to the right of that, but more like far right extremism. Twitter did and does, in fact, tolerate right-wing and conservative views. It is full of them.
Don't mistake hate speech, disinfo, racism or whatever you think twitter was violating 'free speech' for as being the right wing. It is not.