Snake oil, anyone?
Very interesting graphic, derived from data from the Cochrane Collaboration.
(Click on the graphic to go to the full-sized image.)
“Moral” judgements at Citibank
UPDATE 1 March 2010: fabulis reports that Citibank has announced a change in their policies in light of the screw-up caused by a nameless compliance officer for the company. Yay!
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Let’s say you create a start-up business that specializes in travel services for homosexual men. You raise $600K to start, and create a web site called fabulis to advertise and bring business in.
You create a forum for discussions about what the business will offer, and you invite those who sign up early to upload videos to describe why the sender “is fabulis”. Content is purposely kept at the PG-rated level.
All sounds on the up-and-up, right?
Not according to Citibank. fabulis’ accounts were “frozen due to ‘objectionable content’ found on its website”. Figuring out why Citibank employees thought it appropriate to do so is left as an exercise for the student.
After the publicity storm hit the Internet, Citibank backed off, thawed the account, and issued a “good and sincere apology”.
That might have been the end of the issue, if it weren’t for the fact that Citibank has done that sort of thing before with an underwear-selling company. The owner of Sillyunderwear was told
“we typically decline accounts associated with content that the general public may potentially find inappropriate or offensive”
Question: offensive to whom? Why is men’s underwear or a gay travel service inappropriate?
And, more importantly, why does Citibank even think it is in a position to pass moral judgment on the transactions of legitimate businesses?
