> Your totally ignore the key element here: a new technology is allowing denying entry at a whole new scale. Nobody really has an objection to organization blocking a single individual who is might cause trouble. But blocking an entire class of people is a) newly enabled* and b) much more harmful to society.
So you're okay with the principle of denying individuals entry to a private business, but you're NOT okay with businesses enforcing this with technology? How does that make any sense?
The two ideas are not incompatible. Consider that it’s much easier to drag and drop a list of faceless names and categories into a “Deny” list on a GUI, than it is to argue to a mother’s face that she cannot attend an even with her daughter’s Girl Scout troop because she happens to work at the same firm as some opposing lawyers. There is, or was, a higher cost associated to this action. Denying people access was OK back when you had to really care about it. The easier it gets, the more likely you are to exclude people that it just sounds like a good idea to exclude. The issue, of course, is that this leads to a world where your child gets excluded from playgrounds and theme parks because you had the wrong opinion on the Internet back in your 20s. Maybe you were too woke, or maybe you weren’t woke enough. We’d all be happy to forget about it after a few years, except that facial recognition databases won’t let you forget about it until the day you and all your progeny have died.
I'm saying there's a difference between blocking 10 people and 10,000, or 1 million. And I'm saying that technological change allows the latter, and we need to be cognizant of that when we decide what we're going to accept in society.
The scale means we need to get the reasons to discriminate exactly right. This is society fracturing/shaping technology here.
We've struggled to get to the point where we can legally say "No discrimination vs skin colour/sex/sexual orientation etc etc".
Facial recognition AND being able to build your own Farley files for every individual means you can discriminate on any other factoid you want.
The obvious "No woke/lefties" or "No conservative/righties" lines are obvious drawcards but the filter could be about anything - however trite - with whatever timescale.
Did you say something negative on social media 10 years ago, about a flavour of chewing gum? You and everyone who liked/shared your comment are banned from that brand structure now!
Did the mother brand even own the brand you dissed at the time you made the comment? Irrelevant! Timescale for selection of candidates for banning AND implementation of ban is completely arbitrary too!
But I think the parents 4 questions are still an appropriate starting point for productive discussion. Are these rights that an individual or organization has? Technology is secondary.
If your answer is yes to all 4 is yes, the answer to 5 is also yes.
If your no or conditional to some of them, then you can discuss where the line should be drawn (e.g. numbers, characteristics, or technology allowed)
I kinda get what he's saying and there isn't an easy answer. Things done bit by bit are often different than things done at large scale. Especially when automated by tech taking out the individual human element. The nuance between people making informed decisions vs algorithms dictating action off generalized heuristics can get muddy.
Just think of anonymized user data. Individually that info isn't really all that important, but taken at massive scale it can lead to worrying trends. Consider something like the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
They're okay with the principle, AND they're okay with the technology, what they're NOT okay with is using the technology to microneedle and retaliate against tangentially innocent people.
The technology didn't decide to single the lawyer out, some manager or legal person did. It's not the tech that is wrong, it's the people's use of it.
When you invent a hammer someone is going to use it to hit someone else over the head with it. It is an unavoidable foregone conclusion. Now, instead of a hammer in which society thinks they are useful and that anyone should have one, lets look at more controversial things like guns. In the US we tend to think everyone should have one, other countries tend to think the opposite, and are crime statistics reflect that.
And I would hold the same is true when it comes to 'business crimes'. The US will likely uphold that businesses can use advanced technology against the general public, and countries in the EU will more than likely prevent businesses from discriminating with it.
There is a reason we have laws regarding technologies. People will abuse them and the law is there to punish those who are abusers.
So you're okay with the principle of denying individuals entry to a private business, but you're NOT okay with businesses enforcing this with technology? How does that make any sense?