I think I know what you mean, though I typically frame it almost like they have an Anti-god problem. Big tech leaders are often explicitly trying to avoid passing moral or ethical judgment, so instead rely on "data" or "numbers." What a lot of the "I-follow-data" cultists seem not to realize is that "data" is basically inherently meaningless per se, thus decision-making based on data alone builds interpretive value judgments into the decision rule being used. It also invites fanatics to start producing manipulated/biased/tendentious "data" that appears to be some impartial metric, but is in fact just veiled motivated reasoning exploited to drive an agenda.
Facebook and Google appear to have followed this to its logical extent, allowing literal algorithms to make decisions "based on data." So has Twitter, though Twitter's system is probably even more dysfunctional.
At least when God damns you, you can argue your case and be presented with the evidence and know who to complain to. Tech damnation involves receiving a vaguely-worded message about polices or "community guidelines" being violated (per some unknown interpretation), or no reason at all. You have no recourse or chance to argue your case, even though many times the damnation was an error.
Despite the rumors, so far I have not seen or even heard of any evidence of a god doing that. Maybe gods need to get a "Tech Complex."
I have ample evidence that all humans are deeply concerned with this concept, however different their conceptions may be; yet I have seen or heard no evidence that could plausibly explain why it helped sustain us as a species.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_morality#Primat...
Tho I'd look beyond, towards reciprocity and deception detection in other animals as well
I’ve always been curious about this course. Maybe this thread will lead me to watch it. https://justiceharvard.org/
I’ll say it again: these are the actions of cowards. I’m ashamed these people are by default charting humanity’s course.
I saw an excellent critique of Roblox the other day, which covered many aspects of their business and different kinds of abuse which are happening in and around their game.
The most bizarre part was that they sent some questions to the company - and the company responded by saying they “clearly weren’t being objective” and essentially gaslighting the people making the video.
I think the people in charge of Roblox seriously don’t see themselves as holding any sort of responsibility to the broader society that pays their bills. It’s like someone watched The Corporation and thought - “oh companies can get away with sociopathic behaviour? I want in!”. Doing harm to the world in the name of your bottom line doesn’t make you clever. It makes you the villain.
(Video in question: https://youtu.be/vTMF6xEiAaY )
A few possibilities:
* people generally cannot discern moral realities within complex systems, instead preferring simpler narratives ("he made a lot of money, he must be a decent chap")
* people can see it on occasion, but insist that the problem is the single bad actor rather than the system enabling them
* people realize they can't do much about it, as they're implicitly bound up in this system run amok
At the companies themselves, I blame the C suite entirely. It’s a leadership problem. What is the vision for your company? Why do we all get out of bed in the morning? If the goal is to make the world better, then concerns about how your business is impacting the world would matter. But having a goal to simply to enrich the founders (which seems to be the case with most tech companies), is like making an entire car just so you can drive to the gas station.
Companies like Twitter and Roblox change the world by their very presence. It’s shameful to waste that capacity by not making the world better in the process.
Even if you want to make the most money possible, you usually won’t get there by screwing over your employees and customers.
"Broader society" is not a real entity; it's just a term to denote, presumably, the entire planet's population, given Roblox is not limited to a single country.
People make fun of the "we live in a society" "insight" - sadly it would seem that capitalism has gone so far, that even this is being forgotten now.
Why I'm critiquing is for the same reason I mention your "people" silliness: massive overgeneralisations are sloppy and lead to wrong conclusions.
I don’t expect them to fix everything overnight. But there’s plenty they could do, if they weren’t too busy gaslighting and ignoring any criticism of their platform.
Since you don’t have social media anymore (or at least Twitter), how do you get new traffic to your site? All via search engines?
I've had 3 accounts, 1 of which has been stuck at sub 130 users for over 10 years of posting, no matter what I've tried. That would be f*ing impossible on any platform that truly fosters creativity and even a scrap of post equality/fairness. There is also absolutely no indication nor procedure for contesting a limited status placed on social accounts on platforms like Twitter, it's all done in secret, which adds insult to injury.
Truth is, the minute you mention anything now that is remotely perceived as critical of a platform on the platform, a switch is flipped that prevents you from building anything positive within that community.
Tech sufferers greatly from a "God Complex" syndrome, and it's exactly what will prevent it from getting better. Even the largest social platforms are not insulated from bad leadership being accountable, and frankly, that's the reason why things really die a slow death these days.
Since I decided to just bolster my own site, I get reliable growth, and metrics... Focusing on my own site is a lot less stressful than relying on the gaslighting and unexplained "growth-hobbling" that is now far too typical on social sites...