I always get annoyed how these programmers can have a good sleep at night given what they have done. Note that blaming it on the marketing VP is not fair. If even 50 % employees have a thought this tracking can be stopped.
The developers may not be aware of the full consequences of what they've been asked to do.
I was recently discussing the Uber revelations in an ethical tech group that I run. The most shocking part for me was that at one time the app was designed to behave differently depending on whether the user was categorised as law enforcement based on their usage history.
This surely required complicity at all levels, from management down to engineers and testers.
But someone point out quite astutely that such a feature can be generically framed as "optimise/adapt behaviour based on historical usage". It makes business sense to categorise a user's profession and alter ride costs based on that. All that's needed then is to give a higher-up the control over a dial that effectively nullifies law enforcement's ability to get a ride.
I can believe that some employees of these companies are genuinely shocked and surprised that this is being done, but few will refuse to do it, and fewer still will quit.
The sad fact is that our surveillance society was built with the willing cooperation of countless developers for whom money was far more important than the privacy of their users.
Framing this as "money vs privacy" is disingenuous. There are many other factors at play. It takes a lot of courage and social/emotional skill to be able to say "no" to a work request in a way that is assertive, respectful, and doesn't lead to becoming a pariah. Consistently doing this in the face of deadlines and incoming requests is a big investment of energy. Switching jobs whenever you find yourself in that position is also a big investment of energy. Not everyone has that energy to spare, for example if they have a young family, are going through bereavement, divorce or moving house, or have a health condition etc... .
if you are that talented enough where companies will continue to offer you $$ to program whatever they say, then yea you do have a lot of POWER and can say NO..
I don’t find it is generally one programmer enabling it. Decimation of privacy often occurs slowly at most orgs. One exception at a time. One “critical” temporary need on top of another. Often in different teams. The person who built the UI didn’t build the GPS modules. The person who built the GPS module didn’t build the data store. The person who built the data store didn’t deal with report exports. And that person didn’t deal with their privacy and compliance policies- or sales pipeline. Lots of people wanting to say yes and do a good job. Often leadership is caught up chasing a dollar
People are very willing to do almost anything against "the bad guys", defined by whatever ideology they were brought up with. Everyone doing this imagines that they're preventing crime and terrorism, and can probably point to a case in which it was.
Programmers selling out is the goal in and of itself these days.
It's gotten to the point where we just sorta accept that people want to work at places like Facebook and Google. There's so many of them that the thing to do is treat it like a morally neutral job or be seen as a weirdo.
And when the largest and most pervasive global surveillance systems history has ever known "aren't so bad", then nothing is.
Responsibility is still probably more in the product VP realm, but with a few internal "cambridge analytica" shops where the devs/data scientists know exactly what they are doing; however or more jazzed up by their desire to advance in their research domain.
For vast majority of devs, any level, the way data pipes out to different business units from your appliance at a large business is often obscure/unknown. You integrate SDKs and API's that are black boxes, you send data out to warehouses with 30 analytics teams measuring/creating new data products you'll never see.
I'd agree if we were talking about low-skill work where people are just scraping by. Programmers have the luxury of choosing from a wide range of places to work. We're all in a position where we can refuse work we find unethical, even if it means taking a pay cut.
Yes, but… I’ve seen that it is often just shades of bad. There are so few morally pure companies out there- they are all willing to do bad things for money. Or the vast majority of them. And it is hard to evaluate that upfront. Even the most virtuous will bend privacy for the right stakeholders
I should go work for Google? Because they clearly value privacy?…
You say that as if we all started out fresh from college with the ability to pick and choose the kind of dev work we do. Not everybody has the kind of safety net starting out that implies the ability to do that.
you are right but then you should work to get to a point where you can and will do whatever you want..you can destroy a system 2 ways, within or create your own
yup if you are that talented enough where companies will continue to offer you $$ to program whatever they say, then yea you do have a lot of POWER and can say NO to whatever you want
True, as long as there's money in it, but I'd bet the majority of people in adtech aren't in terrible positions, so I don't think that's the root of this. Do people generally care about acting ethically without circumstances forcing them to? Beyond paying lip service. And if you think so, do you think they generally care in the context of surveillance, where most of us haven't had first or second hand experience of any obvious cost?
C'mon, it's just someone with some opinions you don't like, not the bogie man.
It's not a rabbit hole to hear out someone you disagree with. Unless you're either afraid 1) they might be right, or 2) the listener doesn't have critical thinking skills. I get that #2 is scary, and it's a legit issue in society, but they shouldn't be listening to you either.
Also, there are good tear-downs Peterson's message online, the one you linked is... not.
I used to think that - despite his overreaching when it comes to politics and culture - he was probably a decent enough psychology researcher and self-help author.
However, having been through a fairly significant psychological journey myself and then reading the 12 Rules for Life, I'm quite worried that his rules have the potential to prolong or exacerbate psychological insecurities. Some of them, e.g. "Pursue what is meaningful" and "Make friends with people who want the best for you." are absolutely fine. But there is nothing there I can see about self-compassion or self-acceptance. If anything there's a general trend in the opposite direction of encouraging self-criticism. This probably works in the short-medium term for people who experience pleasure from validating their own self-critical thoughts, but I fear in the longer term that it will postpone or diminish their potential to love themselves.
Admittedly I have only read the rules themselves and not the whole book; in fact I'm reluctant to read the rest if that is the best he can do.
Just a quick link to alert people who may not realize who/what he promotes.
I read all sorts of terrible stuff, and it probably influences me more then I'd like, but it's easy to jump in the middle of something that "seems" reasonable on the Internet.
Jordan Peterson is indeed a good person to help answer, "Why do they do it?" Because the answer is always money, and Peterson is willing to be repeatedly make a fool of himself and compromise his supposed morals to pander to people who give him money and attention.
