I find it interesting how you contradict yourself in your very first sentence. "Technology is neutral, except when it isn't". To me it means that it is not neutral, doesn't it?

Deserts are dry places except for rare occasions, when they can even be flooded. No contradiction just how language works.

I did not mean to ask "Is technology sometimes neutral?", but rather "Is technology always neutral, and in this case, is this particular technology neutral?". I did not write all that, but I assumed that it would be inferred from the context. And that, too, is how language works.

Also note that my above reaction was not aggressive. I genuinely find it interesting that they think "technology is neutral" but start their explanation with a sentence that clearly shows that they think technology is not neutral.

In common language there is no difference between "Yes, almost always, except.." and "No, not 100% always, there are some very rare exceptions". That sounds contradictory at first because one starts with yes and one with no, but both say the same thing and people are perfectly fine with shortening "90% true" to true.

The reason for that is that your question is kinda trivial to answer and kills any discussion for no gain of insight. "Is A literally, always B with absolutely no exceptions?". No, unless you talk about mathematics you don't get absolute statements.

> The reason for that is that your question is kinda trivial to answer and kills any discussion for no gain of insight.

Is it, really? What is the trivial answer? Is technology neutral or not? You seem to acknowledge that there are exceptions, so... does that mean that you think that technology is trivially not neutral? Because let me tell you that it is absolutely not a large consensus (to the point where I am genuinely not sure if that is your opinion or not).

But assuming that you agree with me that technology is not neutral, then my point was: maybe those who worked on that technology should have thought more before doing it. And there I was expecting constructive comments like "the technology itself is really useful for [saving lives / helping biodiversity / put something nice here], and unfortunately some abuse it with deepfakes". Because if we all "kinda trivially" agree on the fact that the technology behind deepfakes is evil, then maybe we should do something about it. Like teach ethics to engineers.

In this case, I don't see what good comes from the technology that enables deepfakes, but I would love to be enlightened.

I still don't understand what your opinion is, though.

This is a bad example, hollow points have a legitimate use in the prevention of collateral damage, among other things. Unless you mean it's an exception because it's clearly a good technology, but I'd also say that's not true. It falls under neutral.

Given most offensive weapons have a defensive purpose, both active and deterrent, their is a case for them being neutral.

A bio weapon, near shore detonated nuclear device, or other doomsday devices that are designed to indiscriminately kill large numbers of civilians strike me as evil tech.

Ok, so some laws were adjusted around the use of small cameras. Yet there are still issues today. I mean, you have to actually catch someone using it. How many people are redlight scanning their airbnbs? Many people breaking the law just aren't getting caught. I fail to see how the laws really fixed anything. All that happened is people learned to live in this new reality and the news stopped reporting it because it's not new.

I'm not sure what you're getting at with the hollowpoint comment. In theory it could be applied for evil (murder) or could be applied for good (self defense, public defense, food, etc depending on one's beliefs about what is good vs evil).

20 years ago long before iPads when I was in high school there were definitely kids that would have done this exact same thing if the technology was available. Lets not pretend as though lose morals are a recent invention.