Show HN: Ethical Resources – 300 ethical alternatives to mainstream stuff (opens in new tab)

vegan > not vegan

In South Africa, I refuse to buy (vegan) margarine. It contains palm oil, whereas our own butter is locally farmed in the Eastern Cape. TLDR: I've been on said dairy farms and it's way better for me to buy that butter than the (vegan) alternatives that contain palm oil.

The second issue I have is that they seem to have a book advertisement section.

Apart from that, there seem to be useful links there.

Monetization models are even less clear. What if I'd prefer to not pay with cash?

If someone proposes to me that murder isn't ethical, I can more-or-less get on board with that without a bunch of defining and qualifying. You're talking about software though. To suggest that Open Office is ethically superior to MS Office is not at all self-evident or the general consensus of most people.

It comes off as you being oblivious or close-minded to competing ideas of ethics, which doesn't lend credibility to your use of the term.

It's a great start! Lots of programs and services I wasn't aware existed. There are some services I'm familiar with that I don't think belong on the list (given my own interpretation of ethical as it relates to modern computing) and am happy to see that suggestions are welcomed via the community forums.

Surprised & delighted to see sections like Organizations, Magazines and Newsletters, Books and even Films - since most similar lists focus on applications instead of voices.

It's these extra sections that really highlight and bring together the larger community concerned with these issues and helps open my eyes to other issues that don't normally penetrate my bubble of news.

I can see most of these sections growing to include many more sites. The only immediate suggestion - short of separating the sections into their own pages - is a "detailed" list view to help make the information more manageable.

Something that benefits humans is usually not good for the planet or for animals :-) It basically means nothing and everything.

It's easy to think of good arguments for Twitter being ethical and unethical.

Website: https://matomo.org/

GitHub: https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo

Demo: https://demo.matomo.org/

You can both self-host or use their managed service. They are absolutely competitive with Google Analytics.

You are selling out the privacy of your users so you can save ten bucks on analytics.

(I'm blocking all of those, but requesting them could lead to additional requests.)

(I don't block the third-party for Cloudfront, where you seem to host Wordpress.)

(The third-party request purporting to be for privacy is arguably counterproductive.)

(I thought I saw a Google/Doubleclick one earlier this morning, but don't see it right now, and I could've be mistaken.)

Towards your goals of ethical, it might make sense to strip out all your third-parties (except Cloudfront, for now), and if you really have to add anything else, self-host it. Otherwise, you're leaking cross-site tracking&profiling information about your users, generally without their awareness, which I'm sure is not what you intend.

Good luck with your effort.

Anyway, the reason that I am giving this cherry-picked argument is not to arrive at a conclusion on whether or not Facebook is being ethical or not. (Spoiler: I don't know, see my other comment.)

I wanted to highlight that ethics is a very subjective business. I understand why some people might consider these projects ethical. However, to some people, they are considered very much unethical. The New Zealand government says that because Facebook allows X, Y, and Z, therefore, Facebook is unethical. Now, you might disagree with this statement, but (no offense) what you think does not matter here, because this (X, Y, Z -> unethical) is now the standard that some entity is using to decide if something is unethical. By the same standard, if another project/product (that is not Facebook), allows X, Y, and Z, too, then this project/product is considered unethical by this entity. And it is very much the case (or at least possibly the case) that the projects listed here satisfy X, Y, and Z, too.

The truth is that ethics is hugely complex and nuanced. For example, what is your take on a super secure messaging app like Signal? Obviously, it is useful because it allows people to communicate privately (e.g., allows confidential sources to talk to journalists without being spied on). Now, what about the cliched scenario where it is being used by criminals to coordinate their bad deeds? Honestly, I don't know. I live in a democratic country whose government respects its citizen's privacy. As such, I am perfectly willing to give up a little bit of privacy (between myself and my government) if it means keeping the society safer. On the other hand, there are people (lots of em) who are not as fortunate as I am -- a wrong sneeze and you are dead.

Ethics is complicated. Even if we fully understand a product (or policy or project), it doesn't mean we fully understand its ethical impact. And even if we do understand its ethical impact, it is almost impossible for us to say if its entirety ethical or not. Because of these complexities, any attempt to consider ethics as a yes/no label (like this site, ethical.net) is almost certainly wrong. In fact, it trivializes this very important issue.

When I look at your list, I just see a sentence of ad copy about each product and an outbound link. Why not an essay about each product and the criteria you used when deciding that product was ethical and its competitors were not?

You don't get to proclaim something ethical and then move along. That's close-minded and ripe for abuse.