This is just one tool, and there will be killing with or without it.
Right or wrong, when people are abused repeatedly, and or they cease to believe in governance, they will act out and it won't all be nice.
The root cause here is an authoritarian regime failing to justify their authority. People acting out is a symptom.
Yes, but the discussion here is about whether Apple should facilitate or hinder particular kinds of act by people.
That's not a symptom for Apple, that's a dilemma for Apple, and there is no truly neutral option.
Regarding apple...
Do you give an innuendo that this is somehow wrong?
- Killing a "regime supporter", meaning someone targeted only because of their political beliefs. It is not right that political beliefs should be punished like that. Ideally they shouldn't be punished at all, they should be tolerated but simply lose an election.
You can't claim to "protest for democracy" while being happy to facilitate murdering people who vote for the other side! That would be mad hypocrisy.
- Killing a police officer whose crime, even if violent, fell significantly short of killing someone themselves. Punishment should fit the crime, not be 10x worse.
You can't claim to "protest for justice" while being happy to facilitate extra-judicial killings that aren't even based in justice.
- Killing an innocent person who is mis-identified, whether by accident or not so much.
See above.
The third point, killing an innocent person seems even more likely due to automated facial recognition software like what's running on Facebook, with its biases and a mask to add more noise too, integrated with deepfake image reconstruction technology to produce convincing "unmasked" images, combined with vigilantes often not being too bothered about accuracy and statistics.
However wrong or right you think it is, surely everyone agrees it's wrong if it ends up getting the wrong people.
But no apparently. I've spoken with people in other situations (at other times) who said, basically, it's ok for "a few innocents" to die if that's what it takes to rid the world of guilty people. And others taking the view that it's ok for "police" to die because police are bad. Both views strike me as boneheaded AF.
It is clear AF from the reports that the Belarus authorities think it's ok for some number of innocents to die and suffer for the sake of policing and intimidation. If I were there I would certainly want the authority to "die", by being thoroughly dismantled asap.
If you don't see the power imbalance between the government and the people, then you are very lucky that you had not experienced it.
Not trying to justify murdering, but some kind of deterrence for oppressing peaceful, freedom-loving people is not a bad thing. Of course if it become French Revolution style execution after taking power, that is wrong and it must be stopped. For the moment, that is before that state, so anything can be bearable.
Belarus is on the brink of civil war.
Doxxing regime supporters can easily end up as a "murder todo list" if things heat up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Griefing