DeGoogle Yourself finethics • 4 years ago • 70%

Google has the reputation for being the big evil tech giant that everyone should avoid. It was well earned decades ago, but there are much bigger evils now like Microsoft and Amazon who get disproportionately less attention. When Google employees protest and petition Google taking a contract from some evil activity like ICE, weapons production, or fossil fuels, Google reacts and often renounces such contracts. The rationale is sometimes Google's [AI principles](https://ai.google/principles) -- principles that don't even exist at other tech giants. When Amazon and Microsoft employees petition and protest, they're told to piss off and get threatened with sacking. And Microsoft also has the lion's share of the more evil gov contracts. [This article](https://techinquiry.org/SiliconValley-Military/) is ram-packed with dense information about these companies and Google is clearly a lesser of evils. I still boycott Google, but so many fools leave Google for DuckDuckGo thinking that's an ethical improvement. DDG is a bigger evil than Google because DDG feeds Amazon & Microsoft. There are plenty of decent search engines that don't rely on either (e.g. Metager, Mojeek and Ekoru). The problem is this "deGoogle" movement. There is a deGoogle movement and not a deAmazon or deMicrosoft movement. It's all relative and "deGoogle" sends the wrong message. It actually helps Google's more harmful competitors.

Asklemmy finethics • 5 years ago • 100%

For example, scroll to the bottom of this post: https://dev.lemmy.ml/post/29338 When each row uses exactly one line there's no problem ([eg](https://dev.lemmy.ml/post/29142)). But when some cells consume two lines or more it's a disaster. The left column cells are vertically centered, which makes it unclear which line is for which row when there are no grid lines.

Since cheques have been eliminated, Belgian government agencies (e.g. tax offices) often require people to supply a bank account number to receive money (e.g. tax refunds). Taxpayers apparently cannot get a tax refund without submitting a bank account number. So the question is, since paying tax in an obligation, does that make banking a **right** in Belgium? If so, the next question is: are banks allowed to deny consumers? I ask, because some Belgian banks deny service to people in some situations. Specifically: * some banks refuse to open accounts for Americans (e.g. Rabobank) because they do not have an info sharing agreement with the US. * some banks refuse online service to those without an Apple iPhone or Android smartphone (and the OS must also be recent). Counter service may be viable but those customers will pay high fees. Aion is like this and perhaps Hello Bank. What's to stop all banks from forcing customers to patronize Google or Apple? * some banks lock your account if a document they have on file (e.g. id card) expires, thus forcing you to renew your id card even if there's no legal requirement to do so. Even neglecting whether the above reasons for service denial are fair or reasonable, the fundamental issue seems to be the combination of: * the government and essential commercial transactions like receiving a salary *require* recipients to have a bank account * cash transactions above 3k are illegal (so salaries can't be in cash) * banks seem to have a right to refuse service to whoever they want Am I missing something?

For the record, u/scuczu [censored](https://www.reddit.com/r/betterment/comments/bz0jr2/is_offline_service_available_forced_to_solve/) this rule-abiding post: > Betterment forces Tor users to solve an (often broken) Google CAPTCHA. After looking further, it's evident that Betterment also forces all web traffic through CloudFlare. That's a very bad idea. Financial data is sensitive and should not be shared with CloudFlare. Is there an offline way to open a Betterment account?"