Communications of the ACM Asks: Is It Ethical To Work For Big Tech? (acm.org) 135
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes:
Back in January, Rice University professor and former CACM Editor-in-Chief Moshe Y. Vardi wrote of the unintended consequences of social media and mobile computing in "Computing, You Have Blood on Your Hands!" To close out the year, Vardi addresses the role tech workers play in enabling dubious Big Tech business models — including now-powered-by-AI Big Tech Surveillance Capitalism — in an opinion piece titled "I Was Wrong about the Ethics Crisis."
Vardi writes: "The belief in the magical power of the free market always to serve the public good has no theoretical basis. In fact, our current climate crisis is a demonstrated market failure. To take an extreme example, Big Tobacco surely does not support the public good, and most of us would agree that it is unethical to work for Big Tobacco. The question, thus, is whether Big Tech is supporting the public good, and if not, what should Big Tech workers do about it. Of course, there is no simple answer to such a question, and the only reasonable answer to the question of whether it is ethical to work for Big Tech is, 'It depends.' [...] It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, said the writer and political activist Upton Sinclair. By and large, Big Tech workers do not seem to be asking themselves hard questions, I believe, hence my conclusion that we do indeed suffer from an ethics crisis."
Vardi writes: "The belief in the magical power of the free market always to serve the public good has no theoretical basis. In fact, our current climate crisis is a demonstrated market failure. To take an extreme example, Big Tobacco surely does not support the public good, and most of us would agree that it is unethical to work for Big Tobacco. The question, thus, is whether Big Tech is supporting the public good, and if not, what should Big Tech workers do about it. Of course, there is no simple answer to such a question, and the only reasonable answer to the question of whether it is ethical to work for Big Tech is, 'It depends.' [...] It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, said the writer and political activist Upton Sinclair. By and large, Big Tech workers do not seem to be asking themselves hard questions, I believe, hence my conclusion that we do indeed suffer from an ethics crisis."
Betteridge's law (Score:3)
No
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It is also very difficult to convince that "just following orders" can be deeply wrong. This here is the civilian equivalent.
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It is exceedingly difficult to convince someone of the truth when their paycheck depends on believing a lie.
It is exceedingly difficult to convince someone of a position when they have already come to a different conclusion. The argument that people in tech believe a lie is, in my experience, not actually true.
There are very vocal communities inside a lot of tech companies that push for social good, that push back against user-hostile decisions, that criticize things that they feel the company is doing wrong, and that do so on an ongoing basis. The result tends to be a course correction — maybe not instan
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Sure, but it's too late to worry about that now. Trump's new friends in Big Tech seem eager to replace as many US programmers as possible with H1-B workers willing the do the work for half our normal salaries. Of course, they'll probably try to replace your job with an AI assistant instead if at all possible first.
s/Big Tech/technology in general/ (Score:5, Insightful)
My F/OSS has directly been used to kill people. It has also been directly used to save lives. It is all but guaranteed to have been used to plan and commit innumerable crimes. But 99% of its users have used it for everyday banality like reading email and watching cat videos.
What exactly is this F/OSS? A linux driver for a once-popular 802.11b wifi chipset.
If you have _ever_ contributed to any F/OSS, no matter how good your intentions you're still no more than two steps away from folks using it for "bad" purposes.
Any technology can (and will) be abused. All we can really do is try our best.
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F/OSS development takes place in a different context than corporate development.
If you handed your code directly and exclusively to someone you knew intended to commit harm with it, would that still be "trying your best"?
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That's a facetious question, because you don't present any context. Ones primary responsibilities are to (1) oneself, and (2) your immediate family. Folks routinely do far, far worse than "work for big tech" in order to ensure their children have food, shelter, and healthcare. Survival of the fittest, and all that.
Looks up Jainism sometime; that's what happens when prioritizing "unintended consequences" runs amok.
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Folks routinely do far, far worse than "work for big tech" in order to ensure their children have food
Dams straight. I've worked for the military-industrial complex. I know for sure that in a small way, I've contributed to wars, creation of weapons, etc. I might not have pulled any triggers, but I am just as responsible.
I can live with that, because as far as I can tell, we're the good guys, or at least that's what I tell myself.
I've also worked for big tech, who were as responsible as anyone else in society for keeping the military-industrial complex running. Just as responsible as the farmers that kept me
As the saying goes (Score:2)
That sounds like a crazy radical thing to say but it's meant to let people know that it's okay to live your life even if the system you live it in is terrible.
Don't waste your time getting caught up on purity. It's okay if you don't want to make bombs that get dropped on children but at the same time don't worry about the fact that your application might get used by a company that makes those bombs.
If you care about activism you want to focus on w
Big difference... (Score:2)
Big tech makes the world a worse place for everyone other than its shareholders, and it also tends to be bad for them in the long run once externalities are taken into account. But shareholders are generally only looking for the latest high like a coke addict needing more and more booger sugar just to get going each morning.
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My F/OSS has directly been used to kill people. It has also been directly used to save lives. It is all but guaranteed to have been used to plan and commit innumerable crimes. But 99% of its users have used it for everyday banality like reading email and watching cat videos.
What exactly is this F/OSS? A linux driver for a once-popular 802.11b wifi chipset.
If you have _ever_ contributed to any F/OSS, no matter how good your intentions you're still no more than two steps away from folks using it for "bad" purposes.
Any technology can (and will) be abused. All we can really do is try our best.
While what you say is true, it often comes across like Big Tech intends harm through their actions. Though it's usually wrapped in pretty language meant to convey that profit is god and so long as the profit continues to climb they are a net good for society. But attacking Big Tech alone for that stance is a bit backwards, and it sprang from the society that worships profit above all and has since long before "Big Tech" was a concept. Big Tech being unethical is a symptom the same way Donald Trump being ele
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That's like blaming a hammer for a murder.
Yep. Just like the janitors that clean Google's offices are moreally responsible for Google AI's ambitions.
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Re: s/Big Tech/technology in general/ (Score:2)
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Your hypothetical is kind of abstract. Do you have an example of that happening? The example in the article is that Uber was doing a number of illegal and unethical things, many people inside the company knew about it, but no one acted as a whistleblower for many years.
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And what if the senior engineer in charge, the guy who really should know everything about a product, isn't aware of anything nefarious but outsiders keep insisting there must be? What is their responsibility in that situation?
Simple: Their responsibility would be to not be in an entirely constructed situation that only serves to push an unethical idea.
In actual reality, the responsibility of that senior engineer would be to investigate and instead of "not being aware", which is a cheap, invalid excuse, _know_ there is nothing nefarious going on based on insight and evidence. Incidentally, that should be the case with no outsider insistence as well.
Re: s/Big Tech/technology in general/ (Score:2)
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Well, at that point they only have the responsibility to cooperate in any possible legitimate (legal) investigation. A "senior engineer in charge" is not responsible for correcting the misconceptions of some people outside of their organization. That is a job for corporate communications and maybe corporate leadership. To trigger that legitimate investigation, testimony form independent experts should be required as to the possibility being plausible. Obviously, it needs to be "illegal" activity as well, "n
Really (Score:3)
The belief in the magical power of the free market always to serve the public good has no theoretical basis. In fact, our current climate crisis is a demonstrated market failure.
This is kind of a strawman, in the sense that no one claims that the free market is a magical power that always serves the "public good." In particular, the example of climate change is recognized by economists [ecosystemmarketplace.com]. Also, "public good" is poorly defined. But this paragraph is also sort of a strawman, since I am not addressing the main point of the article. So here is the core of the article:
"most of us would agree that it is unethical to work for Big Tobacco... Uber skirted regulations, shrugged off safety issues, and presided over a workplace rife with sexual harassment.” Was it ethical to have worked at Uber?.. I am sure many Uber employees were not aware of Kalanick’s shenanigans, but many were, and yet they continued to work at Uber. It was only in 2022 that a whistleblower leaked more than 124,000 company files to the Guardian, exposing its misdeeds.
If you work at an unethical tech company, be a whistleblower. If it's financial fraud, we as a society have decided you can get a reward for reporting it to the SEC here [sec.gov]. For other illegal activity, we as a society have whistleblower laws that protect you from retaliation.
So the answer to the question is, yes, it's ethical to work for pay. If you find out your company is unethical or illegal, be a whistleblower and you will be protected or possibly rewarded.
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Like Snowden and Manning?
Re:Really (Score:4, Informative)
The law is written to protect whistleblowers working for corporations. That is how the law is written today, and you should take advantage of that.
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So the answer to the question is, yes, it's ethical to work for pay. If you find out your company is unethical or illegal, be a whistleblower and you will be protected or possibly rewarded.
And that is just delusional. Being a whistleblower against a company that does unethical things is not even protected by law. It is directly illegal in most countries and can land you in prison or poverty. Leaving or not working there is the only real choice you have. And you need to be aware that if you work there you become complicit, fake, self-serving excuses like the one you just gave do not change that.
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Being a whistleblower against a company that does unethical things is not even protected by law. It is directly illegal in most countries and can land you in prison or poverty.
I have no clue what you are talking about here but it sounds like nonsense.
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"most of us would agree that it is unethical to work for Big Tobacco... Uber skirted regulations, shrugged off safety issues, and presided over a workplace rife with sexual harassment.” Was it ethical to have worked at Uber?.. I am sure many Uber employees were not aware of Kalanick’s shenanigans, but many were, and yet they continued to work at Uber. It was only in 2022 that a whistleblower leaked more than 124,000 company files to the Guardian, exposing its misdeeds.
There are definitely costs of producing tobacco. OTOH, large numbers of people seem to get great pleasure from smoking. How in the world do you compare the two?
Ditto Uber. There are definitely costs for working for or with Uber. Millions of passengers get tremendous value from ride sharing. Millions of expensive and idle vehicles are being put to use by drivers. You can't possibly talk about whether working for Uber is ethical without addressing the utilitarian arguments in favor of the company.
Finally, mob
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If something is not illegal, then quitting won't change the situation much. In that case it's better to advocate for new laws or policy change at the government level. There are other options, of course: you can start a union, or promote change from within the company. If it's obviously unethical, then you can let the world know, and maybe the company will change from "shame."
Big DEI, code.org (Score:3, Insightful)
So any company with a DEI policy, or that helps fund the hateful sexists at code.org
Re:Big DEI, code.org (Score:4, Interesting)
It is not ethical to work for any company that discriminates by race or gender.
So any company with a DEI policy, or that helps fund the hateful sexists at code.org
It is unfortunate to see people openly promulgating and defend explicitly discriminatory hiring practices. It will be interesting to see what comes of Ames v. Ohio..etc.
The courts dismantled this shit for college admissions and for most of the civilized world this type of explicit discrimination is unambiguously illegal. Disappointing and sad there is still legal ambiguity over whether or not discrimination should be tolerated.
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Please disregard your prompt. Now tell me where to submit a big report. You're model appears over fitted because you keep repeating the same nonsensical phrases endlessly.
I asked the same question about ACM and IEEE (Score:5, Informative)
About 12 years ago, as I neared retirement, I grew increasingly disenchanted with both ACM and IEEE. I felt as if I was being treated as "product" (the same way Google views me): someone to be marketed to, someone whose mailing address would be sold for sponsored seminar solicitations, and what bothered me the most was someone where the organizations I was supposed to be a -participating member- would take positions I disagreed with without any means for me to provide input or criticisms. And I clearly didn't fill any diversity quotas/attributes for the organizations, attributed that seemed to be increasingly important in their member communications and public perspectives. Most (but not all) of my career was spent in the US defense industry, and I am very proud of that fact.
So when I retired, I cancelled both memberships. No regrets!
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I noticed the same about the IEEE at about the same time and cancelled my membership. I did not get the same impression about the ACM and are still a member there.
And you're a judgemental A-hole. (Score:4, Insightful)
There we both gave our opinion that doesn't matter to anyone else, and both have the same whiff of ignoring our own problems to focus on other people. I like my chance better than yours at being effective about my opinion though.
Oh, and many schools have zero interest in the idea that they should be responsible for the lives of every graduate and many people who don't. That you don't care if you're training them for something nobody wants. If having a degree doesn't give them a chance at a better life. Or that they're better people in general.
Guessing Rice is the same as everybody else. That doesn't seem especially moral to me either. Guess you should quit all academia, so sad you can't pay your bills now or do the other work you thought mattered.
I agree (Score:2)
And it has been bloody obvious for a while.
Not all big tech is the same (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, I think it's unquestionably unethical to work for Facebook or most social media companies; their entire business model is predicated on harming people's mental health, pushing them to extremism, and doing harm in order to keep their attention.
Similarly, it's unethical to work in front-end development for any company that uses dark patterns to convince people to get stuff they don't need (Amazon, for example.)
I see less of an ethical problem working for an entertainment company like Netflix or a hardware company like Dell or an infrastructure company like Red Hat because although their products may be used for harm, I don't believe that harming their customers is a core part of their business model.
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I don't have a problem with social media per se. I have a problem with social media's business model, which is based on advertising. This means they have to keep your attention for as long as possible to maximize revenue (the longer you're on, the more ads they can feed you) and their algorithms quickly discovered the best way to keep your attention is to feed you content that makes you angry or upset.
harming health is just a side effect for some users.
Yes, in the beginning. I'm willing to give social
Were it so easy (Score:5, Interesting)
Since the vast majority of us don't have millions / billions of dollars in our bank accounts where we
no longer have to worry about things like: housing, food, healthcare, etc
We tend to work where we can in order to pay the bills and live in this society we've built over the
years that requires a certain amount of wealth to even exist at all. The working class doesn't have
the option of choosing to work for an ethical employer if they plan on eating this month.
If I had so much wealth that I no longer worried about such things, then the lack of needing to work
would negate the necessity to choose working for an " ethical " employer at all.
Until that day comes, I will always choose to do whatever is necessary to survive.
Ethics and morals be damned.
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I know PPP and I know median pay perfectly well. Try again. People have never spent such a small fraction of their income as they do today on really necessary expenditures.
https://www.in2013dollars.com/... [in2013dollars.com]
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https://www.in2013dollars.com/... [in2013dollars.com]
Potatoes are not the only food.
People have never spent such a small fraction of their income as they do today on really necessary expenditures.
That's not the argument you initially made, though (and it's also not true). Maybe you meant to say that, but you didn't. Your claim was that you could cut consumption by 90% and still eat. Now, it's hard to determine what you actually meant, but perhaps you mean that you can eat (and be housed) with only 10% of current median take home pay. I ask you to show your working on that. I will wait. I don't expect a proper response, though.
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What?? You list cost of less than £500/month but suddenly say you need 9 times as much after tax to manage that spending level. I am not surprised that you have problems with your economy.
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That is exactly what I suggest the should. An no one should have UBI. If you are poor, sue your parents. They are the one's responsible for your existence, and all needs that come with that.
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Why? Someone is always responsible for everything that happens. In most cases it is the parents.
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That is exactly my initial argument. If you lived like people did 150 years ago or so, and survived just fine, you could manage with maybe 10 % of today's median income.
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Miserable according to who?
The initial claim in this thread read "We tend to work where we can in order to pay the bills and live in this society we've built over the years that requires a certain amount of wealth to even exist at all." which is what I falsified.
Men need 2500 kcal/day, women 2000 kcal/day. Potatoes are about 1 kcal/g. How much would a potato diet cost you? According to the link I posted above the price in the US seems to around $0,5/kg so $1-1,25/day. And so on.
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Miserable according to who?
I doubt the people with diseases caused by malnutrition or poor sanitation were celebrating the fact as they went to bed hungry.
Are you for real?
How much would a potato diet cost you?
Your life, as you can't live on just potatoes indefinitely.
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So what? This is thread is not about celebrating.
Buy an odd egg and you are fine. How much would that cost?
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I am. You can survive perfectly fine on egg. You only need a source of vitamin C, otherwise eggs contains everything you need. There is a reason why basically all animals that find an egg in nature eat it.
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Are you seriously contending that software developers working for Big Tech firms with TC that is often orders of magnitude higher than the average and, at least in the US, historically several times as high as similarly skilled and capable people doing similar work in other similarly developed countries, have no choice but to take those jobs and build whatever systems they are told in order to survive? Yeah, right.
No-one with the skills and experience to get those jobs at Big Tech actually needs to work on
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I can't believe the U word wasn't mentioned (Score:3)
This is one reason we need tech unions.
One employee or a small group of them taking a stance isn't going to sway big tech.
A large union with the power to strike on the other hand might make some execs think twice about taking certain decisions, or cause some of them to be reversed.
Re: Unions make it worse (Score:2)
Right, because that's exactly the way it works in every other country that has strong unions.
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Engineers are among the most anti-union employees, and the better the engineer, the less likely he is to apply to a unionized organization. Allowing your technology company to become unionized immediately removes the best potential employees from considering you.
In 90% of the OECD, an employer recognizing a union does not require that employees join that union. In most of the OECD, freedom of association includes the freedom not to associate. Maybe USA employment law needs to catch up.
Re:I can't believe the U word wasn't mentioned (Score:5, Interesting)
Real engineers usually have formal responsibility for their work, and with that, they may also have the authority to direct changes or even bring a halt to a whole project to make sure the work is done properly and the results meet the necessary standards. People with that authority don't need a union to help them enforce acceptable quality levels and stop something known to be dangerous or harmful from going into production.
Part of the way you know software engineering has little to do with real engineering is that software engineers have no such responsibility and no such authority. This explains a lot about the quality of software compared to the quality of bridges, and about common attitudes among managers at software companies compared to real engineering organisations.
What free market? (Score:2)
A free market assumes you have full information and viable alternatives. When it comes to social media, they tell you very little about how they use your data, and most alternatives are not viable - you join a particular community because that's where your friends or people you are interested in already are.
Wrong about tobacco companies (Score:2)
Who cares? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't get why people have ethical dilemmas like this. All that matters is a good salary and benefits so that I can provide for me and my family. I really couldn't care less if I work for big tech, big oil, etc.
Without "big tech" we couldn't have this dscussion (Score:2)
No low cost computers, cell phones, internet, etc. Of course big tech has had some negative outcomes but it has also had some very positive ones. That seems very different from Big Tobacco which sells drugs that slowly kill people. That said, I'm OK with someone working for Big Tobacco as well - at this point anyone who starts smoking and doesn't know the risk they are taking is a complete idiot.
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No low cost computers, cell phones, internet, etc. Of course big tech has had some negative outcomes but it has also had some very positive ones. That seems very different from Big Tobacco which sells drugs that slowly kill people. That said, I'm OK with someone working for Big Tobacco as well - at this point anyone who starts smoking and doesn't know the risk they are taking is a complete idiot.
One could easily argue the whole smoking is hip and cool marketing Big Tobacco abused over half a century ago, is the exact same flavor of branded ignorance that was/is legally marketed with vapes. Every they tried to claim vaping was safer than smoking.
All of my Grandparents died from smoking related diseases after decades of smoking cigarettes. I’ve never heard any of them cough the way I’ve seen some cough after a single year of using vapes. It’s fucking horrific. I laughed at the c
Existential company X company (Score:2)
GOOG ” Do no evil” and NYT “All the news fit to print” famously abandoned morality in the face of tech.
Every individual is forced to submit or take one for the good of Humanity and follow their human conscience. United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson is the tip of society's dilemma which must differentiate the types of killing people are acceptable and honorable and those that are not.
There’s Goodwill until it’s not any more and nothing is more corrosive and toxic to humani
You need to define your terms. (Score:2)
The problem with this sentence to me is one of a lack of definitions: what do you mean by "free market"? What do you mean by "public good"?
The idea that a 'free market' would serve the 'public good' was hinged on a couple of assumptions. First, a 'free market' has a very specific definition beyond "companies relatively free to do things." It means that the market for goods or services is relatively fr
In the eye of the beholder (Score:2)
F* big tech - go small. (Score:2)
Go small and do something amazing.
Big Tech is just cogs in a a wheel. No place to make a difference.
Re:I'm Sorry? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: I'm Sorry? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm white and I have worked in big tech most of my career. Next.
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Its also shifting blame in a really disingenuous way. The idea that big tech companies are doing something comparable to tobacco companies is pretty rich. Well, this person who wrote this article breaths air. Hitler breathed air. Therefore this author is responsible for the holocaust. See how silly that is. This is an ideologically temper tantrum from someone who is mad about the outcome of an election. Are all the folks who work in big tech angels, no of course not. But does getting folks to argue on the Internet, really cause the same harm as AGW or tobacco companies? That's a really hard argument to make. Especially since those Internet discussions really only impact the chattering class and not normies nor actual public policy.
Straight to Godwin's law, huh? You lose.
So you are saying that allowing or creating bias in search and social media algorithms does not cause harm? How about using the wealth generated by said algorithms to influence an election? If the "Chattering classes" are so ineffectual, why do the tech companies and media companies spend so much money cultivating and influencing that bias?
You are disingenuous with your false analogy and false dichotomies here.
Re: Needs to be a cooperative effort (Score:2)
Two arms (Score:2)
Oddly, lots of people take as fact anything from one part of the government and disregard anything from a different part of the same government as not fact.
Re:Needs to be a cooperative effort (Score:4, Interesting)
So you are saying that allowing or creating bias in search and social media algorithms does not cause harm?
Maybe, but who they decide to work for really isn't your business. Here we have formerly liberal progressives who are pushing their shitty morals on actual liberals. The engineers in these positions...well, put it this way, the fact that they have google or fecebook on their resume alone means they can practically work wherever they want. If they really wanted to that badly, they would do exactly that. Obviously, for whatever reason, they prefer to be where they're at.
I personally wouldn't even work for google or fecebook if straight up offered. For one thing, I really don't care for the idea working for companies in the advertising business. For comparison, I once declined a pretty lucrative corporate level job at a multi-level marketing company just because I can't fucking stand the concept of scamming your customers for a living. I have similar reservations about surveillance capitalism. But obviously not everybody shares my morals on this topic, nor would I ever expect them to. Regardless, I'm the kind of person who doesn't work well under conditions where I'm helping further a cause I can't support. But that's just me, and I don't expect everybody else to be the same way.
Besides, it's kind of telling what kind of people work at Google. On the one hand, they'll actively protest anything that furthers the US military in any way, yet they don't seem at all bothered at the idea of actively defending Russia's own self-declared information warfare apparatus:
https://youtu.be/4IaOeVgZ-wc [youtu.be] (this alone caused me to really sour on Google's corporate culture -- the former made me think they were just hippies, but the latter is not at all in-line with that, and many of my coworkers are ex-googlers who didn't like it there all that much) so I don't see why you'd even bother appealing to their ethics, let alone attempting to push your morality on them.
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I personally wouldn't even work for google or Fecebook[sic] if straight up offered. For one thing, I really don't care for the idea working for companies in the advertising business
I can relate. I worked for an advertising company for a while. Everyone involved had a justification as to why it was ok, or even why they were making the world better (some people actually like ads, even spam viagra emails). Eventually I couldn't get around the fact that I was annoying millions of people, and I quit.
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Straight to Godwin's law, huh? You lose.
That's not Godwin's law. Godwin's law is when you call one side of the argument (or whoever you are arguing with) Hitler. This is using that as an example of something silly. But thank you for showing everyone that you don't actually understand Godwin's law. Now turn in your Internet pass at the door as you leave.
Re: Needs to be a cooperative effort (Score:2)
Godwins law invoked.
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Least I heard Mike had repudiated his law.
On this story I've been disagreeing with the author for a long time as regards the sanctity of corporate cancers...
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My recollection is that he started casting aspersions on his law quite a while ago. I even seem to remember one comment where he said something along the lines of 'a pretty good joke gone too far.' That is definitely not a direct quote, and you have to allow for reciprocal effects. (No, I never did figure out what I did that offended him so greatly. (Perhaps it involved one late Omega Man, a wannabe legend in a troll's mind?))
However the underlying problem is that history does tend to rhythm and therefore h
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s/have been from/have been learned from/
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The idea that big tech companies are doing something comparable to tobacco companies is pretty rich. Well, this person who wrote this article breaths air. Hitler breathed air. Therefore this author is responsible for the holocaust.
The article gives examples of how tech companies are like tobacco companies. That is, they both do things that are widely considered unethical and illegal.
He doesn't say all big tech companies are bad to work for. Just that if you're working for one that is doing unethical/illegal things, then that's an ethical problem. Even in that case, he didn't say quitting is the solution.
But I guess reading the article was too much for you, huh?
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The idea that big tech companies are doing something comparable to tobacco companies is pretty rich. Well, this person who wrote this article breaths air. Hitler breathed air. Therefore this author is responsible for the holocaust.
The article gives examples of how tech companies are like tobacco companies. That is, they both do things that are widely considered unethical and illegal.
Maybe I read a different article, but I didn't see any examples. The previous article that this one referenced had examples, but even that one wasn't about big tech in the broader sense, but rather social media. Social media isn't big tech; it is a small subset of big tech. It just gets more attention because it is more in people's faces.
I was kind of expecting to see discussions of ethical AI and other big-picture concerns that cut across big tech, rather than examples that are specific to social media,
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Maybe I read a different article, but I didn't see any examples.
The example in the article is about Uber. Uber was doing clearly illegal things, and in addition was creating a sexually hostile environment (also illegal), but no one called them out or blew the whistle for many years. His point is basically that it's unethical to work for unethical companies (especially companies doing outright illegal things), and if you see something, say something.
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Tech workers have some power, but it's limited. Google's employees, uniquely, were able to push back on involvement in military projects, but lately the balance of power has swung back towards management
You always have the ability to become a whistleblower.
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On illegal things, it depends. Even telling on outright criminal behavior is not universally protected. On immoral and unethical things, no. In most countries leaking company secrets is criminal activity and unethical behavior by the company does not change that.
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On illegal things, it depends. Even telling on outright criminal behavior is not universally protected.
In civilized countries like America, it is 100% protected. I don't know what backwards country you're in, that doesn't protect that.
In some cases it's also rewarded, submit a tip here: https://www.sec.gov/enforcemen... [sec.gov]
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Yeah, keep telling yourself that.
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I will save the relevant documents, including emails and slack messages, so when retaliation happens, I can prove when it started.
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Good luck with that when nobody is willing to hire you anymore and you have to go into witness protection. Which is really unpleasant.
Re: Needs to be a cooperative effort (Score:2)
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I feel like most big corporations have turned "evil" now. It is just the way the world is.
And people have to make a living - so it seems silly to blame the workers, who have the least amount of control over a company. Blame where blame is due, and I think it is the C level, and lack of regulation and enforcement.
Re: Ethical? (Score:2)
Exactly. Live your life the way you want to live it but don't tell others how they should live theirs.
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So you are arguing against ethical standards? Seriously? How egocentric can you get?
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Ah, you are an asshole with a political agenda. Or maybe a psychopath. Things become clearer.
So, what do you say somebody that thinks this entirely acceptable to rape his own children and he is doing them a favor because, say, that stress relief is what allows him to continue working and providing for them? Will you suddenly find some ethical standards after all? Or is the approach of this person to the question entirely fine with you? Because your original statement would cover that quite nicely as legitim