You mean like "do no evil"?

I have absolutely no faith at all that any large company can really stick to some moral compass. Eventually money corrupts all. Any individual morality and sense of responsibility gets diluted to the point where it disappears completely.

I mean, let's take your reasoning to its logical conclusion: I think most would agree that not paying taxes isn't very ethical, does it mean that we shouldn't have any laws and regulations and controlling bodies surrounding these topics because it's a line "a tech company shouldn't cross"?

If you don't put a cop on the line and there's money on the other side I can assure you that it will be crossed. Raising outrage at the company is not an effective way to enforce the law (although it can work at times).

> we shouldn't have any laws and regulations and controlling bodies surrounding these topics because it's a line "a tech company shouldn't cross"?

What? No, it means that we shouldn't shrug off bad corporate behavior and say oh well, I guess tax avoidance was good for their quarterly profits.

Raising outrage is an important check on corporate behavior, even moreso in a place like HN, where employers like Google hope to recruit employees.

I see what you mean but I sort of disagree, the problem with outrage-based policing is that it's extremely variable and in this day of social medial it's also very easy to manipulate and instrumentalize. In particular outrage works well for punctual, symbolic acts, not for long trends. See basically anything regarding the alt-right.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't be outraged and voice it, I'm saying that for something as large and intricate as our economical and political relashionship with China you can't really expect it to achieve much. The consequences of outrage should be to change laws and regulations to make sure that it never happens again, not Google saying "oh sorry, I won't do it (this time)".

Absolutely there are lines companies should not cross but that's what we have laws and policy for. That's why we have GDPR/AML/Anti-Bribery/Anti-Corruption legislation. We all know they are wrong but we still have laws even if some of practices are accepted locally, small bribes etc.

Contrived example, if a printing company wanted to expand into China they would not be allowed print anti Chinese government documents. Would we be as up in arms about this or should there be a law saying that until China increases human rightsn EU/US companies can't work there and Chinese companies can't work/sell to EU/US?

Obviously this won't/can't happen given our dependence on cheap Chinese manufacturing and our need for year on year growth.

So if it's not illegal, in your book, a company should just do it?

Let's say Saudi Arabia approaches Facebook and wants access to profile and location data to help round up all the gay people in the country to be executed. Maybe they even offer to pay a lot of money, so it'll be profitable.

That's fine with you? Those local laws, amirite?