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by lmm 5149 days ago
Utilitarianism 102: having firm written rules, even subobtimal ones, can often have better consequences than evaluating each action on its merits. I've seen it recommended on this very site to avoid any hosting provider with a "morality clause" in their T&Cs. A service that will host "any legal content", while it will aid a certain proportion of unethical actions, ultimately contributes more benefit to society than one that hosts "any legal content, except that we morally object to".
2 comments

You know, you're right (about the dangers of morality clauses). Consider my original content 70% retracted or at least flagged for requiring modification.

Maybe you could have a list up-front of who you don't deal with (Scientology, patent trolls, KKK, etc.) and remark that anyone not on this list who signs up will be grandfathered in forever, even if their category is added later - this gives existing customers peace of mind, and tells your browsers exactly what you consider morality?

But if lots of people did this, I'm not sure the world would be a better place, now that I think about it. Pick a previous decade, and gays would've been the ones most often targeted - of course, then I could meta-boycott, but...

This is a deeper issue than my original comment acknowledged, so on further consideration, please consider it entirely retracted until I can give this more thought.

What sort of business policy should one go around advocating on a planet where most people think "morality" is about disapproving of sex acts, and so anything that strengthens the force of what other people believe to be "morality" within economic business, tends to make things that much worse? I don't know.

Fully agree. Since maybe it wasn't clear, I wasn't objecting to the approach of "let's decide what our firmly written rule is" but to the seemingly-implied rationale given in support. "Let's decide our primary responsibility" sounds like it's more concerned with responsibility than utility. Having those priorities is the thing with which I disagree.