I find it tremendously funny a bunch of tech people are fuming over "tech billionaries" all of a sudden when the previous generation of tech billionaires were actively liaisoning with government agencies to erect horrible censorship regimes*
(Also, you might want to check on the concept of "multiple people" which may, surprisingly, hold different opinions and express them at different times or events. Noone in this world owes you consistency to other people.)
The accusation of hypocrisy is generally untenable from a moral point of view unless the discussion was about the virtues and vices of that person to start with. It's just one of those modern virtue-ethical fallacies. The question of whether a standpoint is morally the right standpoint is orthogonal to questions about the personal consistency of persons who defend the standpoint. A signpost does not need to walk into the direction it points at all.
Another, more general fallacy is the computation that two moral wrongs can somehow make a right. They never do.
These are not moral opinions, by the way. These points are codified into law and common jurisdiction. You cannot defend yourself in court by pointing out that others have broken the law, too.
An observation of hypocrisy does not per-se invalidate the original observation, but it does expose the speaker as acting from motivated reasoning, which may put into doubt their motivations and hence their conclusions. It does not invalidate any evidence presented, but it contextualizes it by showing it to be produced by a biased and selective process. This is particularly important in political rhetoric, where framing is usually more impactful than facts.
> may put into doubt their motivations and hence their conclusions.
That's literally a fallacy, too. Look, you can attempt to frame it as you like, accusing others of hypocrisy is deviating from the original argument and fallacious. It's an invalid ad hominem attack to distract from the topic. The only exception is when the accusation is that the arguer does not really mean the argument sincerely, but that's another type of argument and not under discussion here.
Likewise, to re-iterate this point, two wrongs never make a right, yet in nearly all cases of blaming someone for being a hypocrite that type of fallacious argument is exactly the motivation behind the accusation. It certainly is in the above discussion.
It's only a fallacy if you're looking at the conclusion in isolation. In many cases, that a conclusion was brought to your attention implies a large amount of other conclusions that you assume to be false because they were not raised. This is the difference between "telling a technical truth" and "actually telling the truth" - when you omit observations that would contextualize a conclusion, you're using a valid argument to mislead people. So hypocrisy is not an accusation of lying by falsity but by omission. If I say "X was stealing office supplies from the breakroom" and I omit that every other employee was also stealing office supplies from the breakroom, I am lying even when X was in fact stealing. The exception implies the rule; the rule is a lie. If I speak a sentence that I know will mislead the listener, the sentence being logically true in isolation does not save me.
In the cases under discussion (like the above one), the person accusing the arguer of hypocrisy is trying to distract and is arguing in bad faith. That's why it's called whataboutism.
As a typical example, Russian propaganda sources have replied to accusation of Russian war crimes in Ukraine with "The US has invaded Iraq and committed countless war crimes." This is not only fallacious, because US war crimes have no bearing on Russian war crimes, it's also hypocritical and logically inconsistent. It's hypocritical because the accusation would only work (from the perspective of the arguer) if they recognized war crimes and argued against them, but the rhetorical goal is the opposite. It's logically inconsistent because the desired inference is that what Russia does is not bad but the argument schema rests on the accusation that what the US in the past did was bad.
That fallacious scheme is very common. You can observe it nearly everywhere, especially in political discussions, despite the fact that it makes no sense whatsoever on a closer look.
The original example under discussion has a similar structure but also differs in an important detail. Somebody argued "what about previous tech billionaires who did some other nefarious things." The correct conclusion from this would be that previous tech billionaires (distraction topic) and current tech billionaires (real topic) did some nefarious things, if the claims are true. But that's not what the arguer had in mind. The arguer wanted to relativize the arguments against tech billionaires in the real topic. In this case, the accusation of hypocrisy against whataboutism is made in bad faith because the arguer knows that the two topics do not have anything to do with each other. Understanding the context of what previous tech billionaires did does not help you evaluating the morality of the real topic in this case. It does not provide any context needed because the contexts barely have anything in common (different times, different tech billionaires, etc.).
That's in my experience another common case when people argue against pointing out whataboutism. The people who do that have rhetorical goals, of course, but they are not arguing correctly. Whataboutism is practically always a fallacy. I believe there are cases you describe where pointing out a hypocrisy can lead to a better understanding of the subject matter, but these are very rare and even then they still distract from the question under discussion.
I believe the reason why you're so keen on insisting that you're right and that whataboutism is often wrong is mostly psychological. People want to set themselves apart and it's normal to come up with contrarian opinions about perceived wisdom. I have strong tendency do that myself.
Sorry for the lengthy post. I just wanted to make it very clear that you did not convince me at all. The topic is important to me for various reasons, both professionally and personally.
> As a typical example, Russian propaganda sources have replied to accusation of Russian war crimes in Ukraine with "The US has invaded Iraq and committed countless war crimes."
Sure, and if someone only called out Russian war crimes you shouldn't take them as "a person who dislikes war crimes" but "a person who dislikes Russia", and expect them to produce information on that basis. This is not fallacious, it's vital information to understand what they're saying: when they say "Russia has committed a war crime", it does not imply that this is an uncommon crime to have committed. Other nations could be committing that war crime all the time and that person wouldn't raise it to your attention, because they're focused on Russia. The knowledge of their stance is necessary to understand what they're saying at all. And that's even before accounting for positive bias, where you're not mentioning American war crimes despite knowing of them because you have positive feelings about America. (The same thing happens, of course, in reverse.) You can't have a discussion only in the positive space of what is actually said; words simply don't work like that. Every concretization in a message implies information by means of generalizations you didn't make. If I say "jews murder thousands of people every year", then I imply that this number lies above the baserate of murders; if it in fact doesn't or is less than the baseline, then I've been (possibly intentionally) deceptive without ever saying a false word. (Base rate fallacy!) This is not a rare corner case, it's extremely widespread.
> The arguer wanted to relativize the arguments against tech billionaires in the real topic.
Correct, and this is a valid argumentative technique. Why wouldn't it be? That's just a framing/categorization debate. They're a proxy for causal-structure debates for people who don't know the term "causal structure". "Is Elon Musk an usual or unusual member of the category of billionaire social network owners" is material to the article.
I couldn't disagree more, especially about Russia example because the Russian war qualifies, by application of objective criteria from UN conventions and ICC, as a genocide. You're right about the murders example, but this is not related at all to the above debate and, again, a deviation. Whether Elon Musk is an outlier and exceptionally evil as a tech billionaire or whether every tech billionaire is as evil as him has absolutely not the slightest bearing on his evilness. That's why the accusation of whataboutism is perfectly adequate and reasonable in this case.
As I said in my initial post, the moral independence of actions is codified in law and common practice. The "others did it too" defense does not work in criminal court, and I can assure you that it will also not work for Russia.
> Correct, and this is a valid argumentative technique.
It's provably a fallacy. On a side note, framing has nothing to do with making fallacious arguments, it only pertains to how you express arguments. "The glass is half full" vs "The glass is half empty" -- that's framing. Two different arguments about the same topic -- that's not framing. It also has nothing to do with the baserate fallacy. If someone commits a baserate fallacy, you simply point out that they've committed a baserate fallacy. This only makes sense for statistical arguments. Framing and categorization are also two totally different terms for different application domains. Framing does not concern the categories and population you choose when making statistical inferences. I don't know why people misuse the term all the time, it's not hard to understand if you look at the original literature in experimental psychology. Framing is also not related in any obvious way with causal structure/causal models. Moreover, your example about Elon Musk is not about causal structure, it concerns a statistical property; at least, I cannot see how a causal model can be used to support "usual" vs. "unusual" attributions. However, I grant you that maybe it could be spelled out in causal modeling terms, for example in Judea Pearl's approach, but it's not obvious how to do that.
Anyway, for me this discussion is closed. You're not very persuasive because you're using the wrong terminology. As I said, I'm interested in this topic also from a professional perspective. I know what I'm talking about (whether you believe me or not). I'll keep it at that and close this conversation.
Whataboutism is constantly employed by individuals more concerned about their "side" winning than concerns about actually solving problems. It is rarely a question asked in good faith, but rather a thinly veiled accusation of hypocrisy (as per your comment). That the question might have a legitimate answer is never considered.
Getting to the original point: What about the previous generation of tech billionaire? I think Zuck is an awful person and I will not sign up for Threads. I also think that Musk is an awful person and I will not sign up for Twitter. Where is the hypocrisy in this stance?
I apologise for misinterpreting your comment. I did delete my Twitter account under Dorsey's tenure as I became more aware of his behaviour and policies, so I believe that my point still stands.
Fair enough! But then your strongest counter isn't "you are engaging in whataboutism", but "Yeah what about Dorsey, I left under Dorsey, I act consistently." "Whataboutism" as a concept is only needed if that defense is unavailable.
theres some truth to this. I live in an EU timezone and often see the pattern where I receive a upvotes during the day and as evening comes along theres a shower of downvotes
Some revealed preferences there for sure
*https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-requests-stay-order-that-re...