WIRED:IF CORPORATIONS are people, can they sometimes provoke a modicum of pity from us, their human counterparts? Three tech companies last week made a sidelong plea for sympathy, even as they were being roasted over a fine internet flaming for their behaviour.
At least two of them – Google and Twitter – seem to have been trying to pro-actively address criticisms of their work, with announcements about allowing pseudonyms and addressing government censorship. The other, Apple, was rather more indignant of the attention given to its failing – the conditions of its workers in Chinese factories.
In each case, it’s not really the feelings (or morality) of corporate entities but the real people whose human rights, or even lives, are suffering. Well-intentioned or not, the question is whether the statements and actions each company makes will make a real difference to the non-corporate persons.
The first announcement made the smallest ripple on the wider internet, despite being the initial stage in a long-winding and often internecine fight.
Google+, Google’s social network, announced that it would be accepting pseudonyms on the site, albeit pseudonyms that the user could prove were established on the rest of the internet. So Lady Gaga and Madonna could sign up under their more famous names, and perhaps also prominent dissidents in repressive countries who want to use the site to promote their work, but don’t want to give a hand to their pursuers.
Right now, there’s not much chance of a Google+ revolution in the Middle East or elsewhere. The majority of those fighting for their right to a pseudonym have less explosively media-friendly reasons: domestic abuse cases, changes in gender, and often the fact that none of their friends knows who they are when they use their “real” government name.
For those users, some of whom were arbitrarily suspended early on in Google+’s growth, deliberately vague promises aren’t reassurance enough. It’ll be hard for the company to win them back, no matter how much it tires.
And it cannot be said that Google does not try. Last week, the company also chose to “simplify” its privacy policy. Rather than bury such changes, it’s taken the unusual step of highlighting the decision, sending out press releases, and flagging the changes on its front page.
Cynically, you might see this as an attempt to get ahead of those who say that the “simplification” is one more step in Google’s move to a company that mines and exploits every personal detail it learns through its many services. But you could not argue that it was not transparent.
The same small concession is true of Twitter, which, with a little diplomatic language, announced that it had finalised a system by which governments could censor individual tweets.
The system has the benefit of clarity, at least: the excised tweets leave a little scar where they are removed, so you can see that something has vanished. And it’s commendably easy to circumvent: Twitter will not actually delete the tweets, merely hide them from the national jurisdiction that the order proceeded from. Everyone else sees the tweet; and (though Twitter itself did not make this explicit) any user can instantly switch countries by changing their Twitter settings.
Nonetheless, no matter how minimal, Twitter, as its critics emphatically pointed out, is implementing a technical system of censorship. It could hardly have expected its statement to have been greeted with a round of applause, and it was not.
Finally, Apple fended off growing coverage of labour conditions at its Chinese factories, including the re-reporting of a 2011 explosion in an iPad manufacturing unit which left three dead and dozens injured. Apple doesn’t often make announcements, but its new chief executive Tim Cook did choose to email his entire workforce, defending the company’s record, and calling the claim that “we don’t care . . . patently false and offensive to us”.
But, once again, the underlying facts, no matter how much each company attempts to mitigate them, are upsetting in themselves. Apple’s factories may be no worse than its more obscure competitors such as HP, Lenovo and Dell, but this is not a competitive market for human rights, and the conditions we are comparing are not those of the corporations’ self-esteem, or brand integrity.
Apple may do wonderful things, but its factories still put workers in conditions it would not accept closer to home. Twitter may seek to censor minimally, but it is still offering a global solution for governments wishing to censor. And Google may be as forthcoming as it likes about its privacy settings, but it cannot evade the consequences of vacuuming up billions of users’ private information.
The real people behind these company names may be feeling a little harried right now. “How can we do the right thing,” they may be asking, “if when we do, it just draws flak for us not doing the perfect thing?”
But the criticisms have to continue. What holds these companies to an ethical line, is the sense that if they did not, the furore – and the damage – would be even greater.
Companies don’t have consciences. The people inside them may do, but the true guardians are their own customers. Our complaints are what hold them to account.
