Usually, we would sanction countries that did this. Maybe time to sanction companies? Otherwise, why do anyone expect them to do anything other than what is the most profitable? Its even illegal not to.
> Usually, we would sanction countries that did this. Maybe time to sanction companies? Otherwise, why do anyone expect them to do anything other than what is the most profitable? Its even illegal not to.
Sanction for what exactly? Sanctions against nations don't work. USA has been sanctioning Cuba, Iran for half a century, no regime change whatsoever, it only hurt the population in these countries. USA are sanctioning Russia right now, is Putin gone? No.
And you want to sanction Apple or Google for what? under what law? Isn't the whole argument made all the time now that these "private companies" are free to censor whoever they want for whatever reasons and they don't have to respect the concept of freedom of speech on their platform?
I agree with you that sanctions against countries don't work.
But then the next logical step is to propose the action that actually works: sanctions against individuals. Perhaps that's what should be done - sanctions against individual decision-makers at Google and Apple?..
The US government allows Google to operate in Russia (unlike Iran for example). So how can it arbitrarily ’sanction’ employees for complying with the laws of a country their company operates in. Do that sound fair to you? It wouldn’t make any sense.
That would make the US more of a pariah than it already is. Already most of the west only follow sanctions imposed by the US screaming and kicking unless it plays into their own agenda.
It wasn't just sanctions in that case, but also boycotts and divestment (via shareholder activism). Which is why Israel is so keen to get US state legislatures to ban speech in favor of the BDS movement.
