It is a mere declaration, as specified at the top of the page, that "is widely recognized as having inspired [...] the adoption of more than seventy human rights treaties"
That does not make it an enforceable law. Moreover, treaties are agreements between countries, not laws, which a country can violate at will.
People might create supranational organizations like the UN or the ECHR, but that has, untimately, no enforcement power because that always belongs to sovereign countries. Violating a treaty can also lead to retaliation by other signatories or even war, but it still does not make a treaty law.
It might well be that the US has specific laws that prevent charging a citizen when they wipe their phone. But that must be a law passed by the US legislature, not a "universal declaration".
I agree with the conclusions of the article, and I am no fan of Amazon or search ads on any product.
However, I would like to play devil's advocate for a moment to brainstorm another issue.
Let's say I build a product that is better than others in the market. We all agree that competition is good becuase it leads to better products and lower prices.
However, the algorithm favors entrenched players. A product that has been bought many times and has positive reviews will be the first in the search results and people usually buy that. Which means I have no way to compete other than paying my way at the top of the list.
I'm not stating this as the ultimate solution or even a good one. But I think it's worth to ask the question.
> Let's say I build a product that is better than others in the market.
This sounds like the same song as Evolution: the winner is not "the best", the winner is "good enough" and dethroning "good enough" with "better" absolutely requires a sufficiently strong advantage, not just any incremental advantage.
If the incumbent is not "good enough", then they won't get great reviews and whoever does try them will be looking for an alternative right away, so you have your foot in the door on either front.
If the incumbent is good enough, then you just cannot market "being very slightly better": you target a demand that is not already sated. You could be cheaper.. by a large enough delta and without sufficient loss in quality to drive away demand, or you could begin by targeting whatever portion of the market is not satisfied by the incumbent for whatever reason.
Marketing is hard (and harder still when one is aiming to be ethical and a good steward of the market instead of constantly scamming and cheating and ruining everyone's trust), and "paying to force your message in front of unsolicited eyeballs" is not the only game in town.
While the calculation is not wrong, there are other factors at play in Meta's decisions.
First, how likely is it that similar rulings happen in other states or countries? While proportionally to the population the fine is significant, it isn't over Meta's global market. It can be only if similar fines will happen at a high enough rate.
Second, what is the global cost of adapting the whole platform to the ruling? (Assuming they don't build exceptions for users in New Mexico like Apple does)
Both factors have an influence, so if the fine is unlikely to be replicated, which it probably is, and the cost of adapting is exceedingly high, which certainly is, then Meta will continue their practices.
I don't think the comment you are replying to is giving up leverage. It's simply pointing to the OP that what he seems to be upset is not the thing itself, which everyone does, but only that he knows about it or ignores others doing the same.
When I say cancer sucks I'm not ignoring that other things also suck. So when people start trying to put those words into the words of others, they effectively act like cancer fanboys, which is weird and all about them, with no part of originating or relating to the the people they question about stuff they supposedly "ignore".
Neither of your examples would be considered murder by those doing them. In the case of slavery you can’t murder property.
A murder is specifically an unjustified killing. And as far as I am aware it is universally considered bad. Which makes sense because murder being considered bad is pretty much baked into the definition.
I can’t think of a modern society that does not condemn going into a random person’s house and killing them. Nor any past ones for that matter.
Now in some backwards ass country they might not consider it murder if that random person was homosexual. Or a killing might be justified in the context of a revolution. Or to bring rain. Or when shooting some guy fleeing with your tv in the back.
You realise that it is exactly what I'm talking about: everything is "subjective" if you look close enough, but only an idiot will think everything is therefore on the same plane.
Sure, "murdering" is not "100% always in all circumstances considered 100% bad" (but I still think that "universal" was not a bad choice, the same way "universal healthcare" does not mean there is no illegibility criteria and therefore exceptions). And of course, there is a lot of discussion to even have on what people mean by murder, but that is, again, missing the point.
But that is totally ridiculous to then pretend that it means that "murdering is bad" has therefore as much legitimacy as "touching your nose with the left hand index finger is bad".
The fact that is subjective does not mean that you cannot say anything anymore. It feels like a common bias in "technology" people: some of them think they are so smart and are condescending to "social science", and yet they are lost on concepts that social science considers as obvious.
Overall, intent is quite hard to prove. You would need to access internal documents and communications that explicitly direct the military. That's probably not going to happen.
However, from what I have observed, Israeli government officials have often expresses that intent publicly, despite claiming otherwise at the UN.
In this case it is fundamentally impossible, since halakha prohibits deliberate targeting of civilians-- but not collateral damage.
So if you optimize for collateral damage and all civilian casualties are "accidental," then you are wholly operating within the constraints of your moral framework and can plausibly deny all claims of genocidal intent.
It is a mere declaration, as specified at the top of the page, that "is widely recognized as having inspired [...] the adoption of more than seventy human rights treaties"
That does not make it an enforceable law. Moreover, treaties are agreements between countries, not laws, which a country can violate at will.
People might create supranational organizations like the UN or the ECHR, but that has, untimately, no enforcement power because that always belongs to sovereign countries. Violating a treaty can also lead to retaliation by other signatories or even war, but it still does not make a treaty law.
It might well be that the US has specific laws that prevent charging a citizen when they wipe their phone. But that must be a law passed by the US legislature, not a "universal declaration".
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