I did not claim they were bad. From their own words, some of them evidently believe they are not just morally superior to the people posting fake negative reviews, but vastly morally superior. It is not obvious that this is the case.
Let me rephrase that -- is there a more moral action they could take?
If burning the review section to the ground with garbage content forces Goodreads to take notice, I could see someone arguing that it is a morally productive, good action to take -- not just neutral, but in fact morally superior to any of the complaining we're doing on HN, since Goodreads is 100% not going to care about anything we write here.
I'm not certain I agree with that perspective, but I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. I'm somewhat cautious about making a strong claim that offsetting fake reviews isn't a morally desirable action.
> Let me rephrase that -- is there a more moral action they could take?
This depends on your basic values, but one could definitely argue that doing nothing is morally superior to abusing the voting system. Only sometimes do two wrongs make a right, and I'm not convinced this is one of those times.
Ok so lets say they do nothing, the business receiving fake negative reviews closes as a result and people lose their jobs. Was that the morally superior choice?
Cherry picking unlikely hypothetical scenarios (this is GR, not yelp) is a bad strategy for making a binary determination of the morality of a choice.
When you ask "Was that the morally superior choice", what set of options are you considering? In my prior statement, I simply claimed that it can be argued that doing nothing is morally superior to abusing the voting system.
> If burning the review section to the ground with garbage content forces Goodreads to take notice, I could see someone arguing that it is a morally productive, good action to take -- not just neutral, but in fact morally superior to
People who post fake negative reviews also use this argument, combined with allegations of moral inferiority of their target.
