They're not a moral entity. corporations aren't people.

I think a lot of the harms you mentioned are real, but they're a natural consequence of capitalistic profit chasing. Governments are supposed to regulate monopolies and anti-consumer behavior like that. Instead of regulating surveillance capitalism, governments are using it to bypass laws restricting their power.

If I were a google investor, I would absolutely want them to defeat ad-blocking, ban yt-dlp, dominate the ad-market and all the rest of what you said. In capitalism, everyone looks out for their own interests, and governments ensure the public isn't harmed in the process. But any time a government tries to regulate things, the same crowd that decries this oppose government overreach.

Voters are people and they are moral entities, direct any moral outrage at us.

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layer8 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Why should the collective of voters be any more of a moral entity than the collective of people who make up a corporation (which you may include its shareholders in if you want)?

It’s perfectly valid to criticize corporations for their actions, regardless of the regulatory environment.

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notepad0x90 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Why should the collective of voters..

They're accountable as individuals not as a collective. And it so happens, they are responsible for their government in a democracy but corporations aren't responsible for running countries.

> It’s perfectly valid to criticize corporations for their actions, regardless of the regulatory environment.

In the free speech sense, sure. But your criticism isn't founded on solid ground. You should expect corporations to do whatever they have to do within the bounds of the law to turn a profit. Their responsibility is to their investors and employees, they have no responsibility to the general public beyond that which is laid out in the law.

The increasing demand in corporations being part of the public/social moral consciousness is causing them to manipulate politics more and more, eroding what little voice the individuals have.

You're trying to live in a feudal society when you treat corporations like this.

If you're unhappy with the quality of Google's services, don't do business with them. If they broke the law, they should pay for it. But expecting them to be a beacon of morality is accepting that they have a role in society and government beyond mere revenue generating machines. And if you expect them to have that role, then you're also giving them the right to enforce that expectation as a matter of corporate policy instead of law. Corporate policies then become as powerful as law, and corporations have to interfere with matters of government policy on the basis of morality instead of business, so you now have an organization with lots of money and resources competing with individual voters.

And then people have the nerve to complain about PACs, money in politics, billionaire's influencing the government, bribery,etc.. you can't have it both ways. Either we have a country run partly by corporations, and a society driven and controlled by them, or we don't.

	▲	layer8 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		When we criticize corporations, we really are criticizing the people who make the decisions in the corporations. I don’t see why we shouldn’t apply exactly the same moral standards to people’s decision in the context of a corporation as we do to people’s decisions made in any other context. You talk about lawfulness, but we wouldn’t talk about morals if we meant lawfulness. It’s also lawful to vote for the hyper-capitalist party, so by the same token moral outrage shouldn’t be directed towards the voters.

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svnt 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Because of the inherent capitalism structure that leads to the inevitable: the tragedy of the commons.

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ThrowawayR2 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Why are you directing the statement that "[Corporations are] not a moral entity" at me instead of the parent poster claiming that "[Google has] been the great balancing force (often for good) in the industry."? Saying that Google is a force "for good" is a claim by them that corporations can be moral entities; I agree with you that they aren't.

	▲	notepad0x90 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I could have just the same I suppose, but their comment was about google being a balancing force in terms of competition and monopoly. it wasn't a praise of their moral character. They did what was best for their business and that turns out to be good for reducing monopolies. If it turned out to be monopolistic, I would be wondering what congress and the DOJ are doing about it, instead of criticizing Google for trying to turn a profit.