Apple, Google criticised for Saudi Absher app that tracks women

I don't think a real argument can be made that morality is subjective. If morality were subjective then the choice would be clear, no, Google and everybody else should respect other peoples' morals.

But things like slavery and the Holocaust make that determination, well, difficult. To say that morality is ultimately relative is ultimately to condone societies choosing to do really repugnant things to people.

There is a line to draw. That much is certain. The only question is where. I don't think we should be charging into the Sentinel Islands like a bunch of idiots and destroying their culture. But Apple choosing not to technologically enable the Saudis to further disenfranchise their women seems to be worthy.

In 1807, Britain passed the Slave Trade Act, outlawing slavery throughout the Empire. Passing the law wasn't enough to actually stop the slave trade. So the British Empire established the West Africa Squadron at considerable expense, to curb the illegal trade.

At first the squadron was hampered by the need to remain on good diplomatic terms with other European countries, but soon they signed treaties allowing Britain free reign to interdict and search ships they suspected of carrying slaves. At it's height, one sixth of the resources of the Royal Navy was devoted to curbing slavery.

What should be the arbiter of morality? I don't really know. But the public willingness to devote considerable social resources to stamping out an awful practice is a gift we shouldn't turn away.

Another example is the Latin American drug trade. The liberal-minded thing to do is to legalize drugs so that the cartels can't profit from them. But history teaches that cartels are in the business of doing nasty things, not in any one nasty business. So if they can't make mountains of cash funneling drugs across borders, they'll make hills of cash funneling humans.

It takes cross-border cooperation to smash these quasi-states, as they largely managed to do in Colombia.

Saudi Arabia is not interested in rapid social change, many many countries are doing the best they can to resist the destabilizing effects of Western technology on their traditional cultures. China has their Great Firewall. North Korea is closed off completely.

Maybe they have a point. But the West can't put the genie back in the bottle, we can't go back to a world before the Internet. And the elites in these traditional societies are perfectly fine profiting off of the tech when it's convenient for them.

So I don't really have much of a problem with Apple deciding to stick their neck out, or with us placing a moral onus on them, to stop facilitating the exploitation of humans.

Typically, personal spyware apps are removed from both apple store and play store. That includes apps for abusive or jealous western partners that were meant to limit freedom of their partners.

You will be surprised I guess, but I would take issue with app that facilitates genocide in Yemen. As people did. People do take issue with IBM facilitating Nazi project during wwii. I would take issue with app that notifies Islamic State or whatever militia in Syria when high target leaves.

Putting pressure on stores to take away apps that do any of the above is fine by me. Because again, there is big difference between taking Saudi money and doing business with them on one hand and distributing spyware designed to limit freedom of victim and facilitate violence against her.

I disagree with you. First, spyware is installed without anyone's knowledge and this is not the case. Second, I can agree with you that any decent human being would be outraged. The reason of this outrage isn't this specific app, but rather how women are mistreated there.

So my question is this. We can all take moral high ground and demand that Google takes this this app down. But if you look at the situation broader, one can argue that the US government is a much bigger enabler than Google in this instance. Is there really a big difference how women are treated in Iran than they are in KSA, for instance? Iran is probably better off, though not by much.

Think about all that oil money that flows from US to KSA for decades. What is the real cause here? Is it just Google's failure to police their marketplace? Or have the Saudies always been this way.

Google is a very easy target here. Blame it on Google, pressure them to take the app down, problem solved. Or is it?

Philosophically, he is a dog-in-a-bucket. Either be moral or don't; you don't get extra credit for agonizing a bit on the decision and suggesting that somewhere there might be some really good solution ("maybe there will be a broad multi-constituency committee of wise people who can decide for all of us who gets to be on the internet"?).

I'm sure as a businessman he knows exactly what he's doing. Some Pilate-level hand-washing ("I don't want to make this judgement, you know") is just good business - you can blunt some of the criticism from the Free Speech Absolutists ("Hey guys, I'm uncomfortable too!") while also saying farewell to your least favorite customer, the Daily Stormer. Putting the criticism up is also pretty astute in this regard.

It would be ironic if the USA government tried to regulate or fine Google on this, while at the same time selling heavy weaponry to SA.