Do you think that beneficial use absolves you of responsibility for harmful use?
I ask because you say "We have had over 100 million downloads and this use case is the most extreme of outliers.", which sounds like you might.
I would think the better calculation compares the cost of preventing the harmful use to the harm (where focusing on beneficial use is dismissive of the harm).
Yes, I think it does. I’m not sure where the line is drawn but 1/10 is different than 1/100 which is different than 1/10,000,000.
If we are extending the sex theme, how often is alcohol used to limber up a young woman to lower her inhibitions? Having gone to college I wouldn’t even consider that an outlier, yet alcohol is prevalent and almost expected at almost all social functions. Should we move back to prohibition?
And it is provable we have saved thousands of lives. So yes, I do think the fact that this an extreme outlier vs the good we provide is relevant and does absolve us. And we do take action as evidenced in this very article - these creeps went to jail in no small part because of us.
I guess I'm glad you answered the question but damn what a terrible collection of thoughts. Definitely makes it clear why your product would be prone to this sort of abuse and why you don't seem to consider it a major problem, or reflecting on you at all.
> yet alcohol is prevalent and almost expected at almost all social functions. Should we move back to prohibition?
Can't think of any middle ground between "date rape as a social norm" and prohibition here? Any steps we might want to try on the way?
> the good we provide is relevant and does absolve us
Is that how anything else works? You consider moral responsibility merely a balance, and as long as you come out positive, your transgressions are forgiven? On that note, how about those "creeps" who went to jail? Did you check to make sure none of them had donated a kidney to an orphan or rescued a family from a burning building recently? It would absolve them, after all, right?
Of course there are middle grounds, and I think we are already doing these middle ground style actions (see my comment on this same thread). The implication by many of these comments is that we just plain old shouldn't exist, and that is what I am pushing back on.
I am also not getting any pushback that this as an extreme outlier. If companies started reacting to every extreme outlier you can think of we would not have progress.
I agree with you on your point about moral responsibility. I was more trying to make the point that in a simplistic sense, if our good outweighs the bad, it is good. It doesn't mean we shouldn't also try to minimize the bad, which we do.
So to restate my question, I'm asking if you are expending sufficient resources preventing harm. Like if you spent another $5, would you be likely prevent more than $5 of harm?
That's what it means for the beneficial use to absolve you of responsibility for the harmful use, you don't have to think about whether you need to spend that next $5.
Going a bit deeper though, and putting aside the question of prevalence, how would you suggest we solve this problem?
-We have actively collaborate with law enforcement (sidebar: we are used to the HN crowd going after us for this due to data privacy issues)
-We are a "noisy" app - no one can install Life360 on your phone without you knowing
-We have a resources page specifically to help people who feel Life360 is being improperly used
-We have a "bubbles" feature that allows you to keep safety features active while hiding your exact location
-We have a customer support team that passes all reported instance of misuse to our legal team, which contacts authorities as needed.
If there were some easy way to do more, we would certainly consider it.
But, getting more philosophical, in some ways you are advocating that all for-profit companies pay for their own externalities. In some respects this makes a lot of sense (e.g. pollution, carbon credits, etc). How do you do this though when an externality is extremely rare or almost impossible to quantify?
Should car manufacturers pay into a fund that compensates people who are injured by speeding drivers who emulate racing in car ads? Should hammer and kitchen knife manufacturers do more to prevent murders? Should cigarette manufacturers pay insurance companies for their share of increased actuarial costs? Should social media companies pay for free therapy?
Life is grey and I don't claim to be the authority on right or wrong, but I don't feel the critique here zooms out and looks at the bigger picture. Odds and ratios matter.
If there were some easy way to do more, we would certainly consider it.
Why is easy the line? My argument is that you should be actively working to prevent harm, whether it is easy or not. I'm not arguing that you should be expending unlimited resources on it, but I don't think asking other people to think of easy things for you to do is where you should draw the line.
I ask because you say "We have had over 100 million downloads and this use case is the most extreme of outliers.", which sounds like you might.
I would think the better calculation compares the cost of preventing the harmful use to the harm (where focusing on beneficial use is dismissive of the harm).