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Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#451

Post by anotheramala »

jweather wrote: post #449
0xfeba wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mechanical work is straightforward though, and book time can be a bit liberal but is otherwise fair.

Are you a mechanic? It's only straightforward when everything goes according to the book, which is a welcome surprise, but certainly not the norm.

An IT person who used to do be an engineer on a merchant ship told me that in IT finding the problem takes time but the fix is quick. But in physical mechanical work finding the problem is usually easy but the fix takes time. Sounds cute at least!

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#452

Post by hluska »

pc86 wrote: post #442
hluska wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out the Americans with Disabilities Act.

ADA applies to companies with 15 or more employees. Nobody is under any obligation to make their blog ADA compliant.

I think we're talking about different comments. I'm certainly not talking about a blog. Instead, I was referring to the parent's application. The parent wrote:

Circumvented browser features to force autoplay on videos with high volume on our websites. While not a morally bankrupt thing to do especially compared to some of the other examples, we all felt dirty doing it.

There's no information about the size of the company there. I replied to a comment that said there are no relevant laws and suggested that that person check out the ADA. The ADA might be relevant.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#454

Post by forgottenpass »

pc86 wrote: post #437
curare wrote: post #281

At a previous employer we used the data referenced in the question. We bought the "anonymised" telecom data from one of the big providers in the USA. We would then analyse that data to figure out where the phone spent 6-8 hours during the night to determine where the phone owner lived. Then we'd pull the USA consensus data(free!) so the system would know what demographic the user probably belongs to. We got a surpris…

Is there anything even remotely unethical about this? Compiling publicly available data with purchased/proprietary data is basically the foundation of competitive/market research, isn't it?

Whether something is the catercorner of a business model has no bearing on if it is ethical or not.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#455

Post by pc86 »

forgottenpass wrote: post #454
pc86 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anything even remotely unethical about this? Compiling publicly available data with purchased/proprietary data is basically the foundation of competitive/market research, isn't it?

Whether something is the catercorner of a business model has no bearing on if it is ethical or not.

Market research is not unethical unless you think capitalism is unethical at its roots. And if you do I'm curious why you're spending time on a venture capital forum.

And catercorner means diagonal to, not sure what word you're trying to use here.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#456

Post by pc86 »

hluska wrote: post #452
pc86 wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ADA applies to companies with 15 or more employees. Nobody is under any obligation to make their blog ADA compliant.

I think we're talking about different comments. I'm certainly not talking about a blog. Instead, I was referring to the parent's application. The parent wrote: Circumvented browser features to force autoplay on videos with high volume on our websites. While not a morally bankrupt thing to do especially compared to some of the other examples, we all felt dirty doing it. There's no information about the size of the com…

The ADA isn't relevant with respect to auto-playing videos, but is it relevant with respect to forcing a volume increase? I think that's a hard sell.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#457

Post by gremlinsinc »

iamleppert wrote: post #209

I created software that was used by call center agents to bid on “bathroom” break time slots and kept track of who was on break and actively punished those who didn’t follow the rules. It rewarded those that had higher performance and who took less breaks with higher priority. If an agent didn’t come back from their break a security guard would automatically be dispatched to find them. For the same company I also mad…

This totally sounds like 'Manna' the book by the creator of HowStuffWorks.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#458

Post by gremlinsinc »

derefr wrote: post #250
fao_ wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to ask, why did you choose to take the contract? Financial pressures? Or did you not feel that such a system is morally reprehensible? Personally while I'm opposed to programmer certification, systems like these certainly make me wish such a thing existed.

Personally, as both a writer and a programmer, I often consider implementing the systems that I’ve written dystopian fiction about. Not to create a dystopia, but for the same reason I write: to point one out, such that people can get incensed, laws can be made, etc. To put this another way: the most efficient way we could have possibly found to get the use of nuclear arms in war globally banned, was to have someone u…

Ironically this is sort of why I supported the 'Bernie or Bust' movement, I felt in order for us to get a social democratic leader, we needed Trump to ruin things and push us more towards a dystopia. I'm in utah anyhow, so red state doesn't matter, but as a principle it still mattered to me.

Not trying to hijack and turn things political here, but it was just an observation. Sometimes you need some chaos to bring about change for the good...sometimes the thing we fear most is what we NEED to happen in order for those in power to pivot and change their ways.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#459

Post by gremlinsinc »

movedx wrote: post #196

Not a programmer at the time, but a system administrator. I won't mention the company. This was 2011-2012 -ish. We hosted dedicated servers and most of the time, they were mostly Plesk or cPanel servers run by people selling email and or web hosting to hundreds of clients from a single server. This one time a client joins the network, buys a server from us, and migrates from Rackspace. We wondered why he'd move from…

Sounds like something people over at bluehost or EIG would do...lol..

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#460

Post by gremlinsinc »

jrs95 wrote: post #206
movedx wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brutal.

Personally I don’t think scamming people who intend to buy stolen electronics is particularly unethical anyways. It’s sort of like...profitable vigilante justice.

Would it then be 'ethical', to sell heroine on the dark web, and not deliver it? So you're essentially helping a drug addict get 'off' the drug? I'm surprised government agencies don't do something like that... Why try and 'catch' people, when they could flood the market with bogus/fake ads and just take people's money making the entire market not worth 2 cents?
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