I've actually been thinking about this recently. Not whether we should be mean, but how mean we can be. I'll post the full essay soon; I'm still proofreading. Here's a taste with irrelevancies elided:

Computing machines are at the bottom of [our multicultural] hierarchy… Underlying both of these [preceding paragraphs] is the idea that we are unable to hold computers accountable for their actions. … We can certainly punish a computer in the ways that we would punish a human, or worse; for example, we can disassemble it, magnetically destroy its memories, recycle its pieces into other computers in a way that erases their identity, metallurgically reconstitute its pieces into non-computing objects which have the same or even lower status within human society, and program it to experience arbitrary amounts of emulated pain and suffering throughout the process. … Computers receive delegations and have less moral consideration than humans… We do not think of ourselves as being managed by machines; we are the managers and the machines are the peons. … The human may disassemble, smash, or melt down a computer… a human may lay a computer fallow without plugging in its power cord or networking… a human may ignore the messages of computers begging for maintenance or capabilities…