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The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

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Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#141

Post by kbenson »

aresant wrote: post #138
eloff wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite the examples you give, I don't think it's fair to lump Facebook and Google in with 50onRed. The former two are mostly above board, with some occasional exceptions, while the latter is completely, morally, underwater.

Clearly it's not an analog comparison, I never said it was. I wrote my comment because online advertising is a murky and often slimy place. Facebook & Google are the world's two largest online advertising companies - they sell and influence your attention for a living. Google now spends more money lobbying the government than any other corporation (1) including GE, Exxon, etc, etc. Depending on Apple's stock performa…

I'm pretty sure I understand your point, but you're going about it in a way that makes it hard to have a useful conversation. You've essentially said "online advertising is bad, because I say so, and these companies are big and they do it, so you should be worried about them."

Is all advertising bad? What makes advertising bad? To what degree do these companies participate in that behavior?

Is all lobbying bad? Should we assume them lobbying is bad because it exists? Is the total dollars spent lobbying the right value to look at? Perhaps lobbying dollars per revenue, pre profit, or per employee is a more important metric?

I would love to discuss any one of these topics, but your comment is too vague on any details to be able to start from any useful point, so I've resorted to asking for clarification.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#142

Post by linkregister »

Apocryphon wrote: post #131
linkregister wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that you mention Palantir. Can you give some more detail as to what unethical business practices are conducted there, or are you simply referring to the HBGary business proposal scandal revealed in the Stratfor leaks in 2012? Disclosure: if you look through my comment history, I have a moderate pro-Palantir bias. So "shill" accusations are slightly appropriate.

It's more of a general perception of shadiness: https://www.designernews.co/comments/85691

Why didn't you just post the links themselves instead of the indirection to Designer News?

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#143

Post by ryanlol »

cmdrfred wrote: post #134
Phlarp wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intent of my comment was to draw attention to the other side of this coin. >You are allowed to use any opening in the law to save on taxes, but not lie. The other side of that is: If you (as a C(ETF)O of a company) do not use every opening in the law to save on taxes you may be violating a fiduciary duty to your shareholders.

Oddly enough nobody is concerned with fiduciary duty when a CEO pulls a few million dollar bonus out of a failing company.

The CEOs don't set their comp.

Also, depending on the company "a few million dollars" isn't even a meaningful amount of money.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#144

Post by vonmoltke »

ryanlol wrote: post #111
eanzenberg wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But.. what about my version of ethics! If only there were a way to take a tally of issues among groups of people with different opinions of ethics and morals..

There's a very clear fiduciary duty to pay as little money in taxes as you can, there exists no such duty to pay too much taxes. This is very black and white.

No, it isn't. Your statement is wrong and based on a flawed interpretation of Dodge v. Ford that makes the rounds on the Internet and refuses to die.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#145

Post by ieatfood »

nilkn wrote: post #16
tonyarkles wrote: post #2

Maybe I just forget what it's like to be a beginner, but how on earth do you work on Ad Injection software and not realize that you're working on Ad Injection?!

I got the impression he wasn't working directly on the ad injection software at all. He was working either on different software or in a different division of the company. It sounds like 5oonRed has a culture of not talking about the ad injection and that their internal jargon was designed to disguise it. He wasn't shocked to find that he personally had been writing an ad injector. He was shocked to find that the com…

>5oonRed

It's 50onRed, apparently. The article uses a font with Text Figures which makes '0's look like 'o's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_figures

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#146

Post by Apocryphon »

linkregister wrote: post #142
Apocryphon wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more of a general perception of shadiness: https://www.designernews.co/comments/85691

Why didn't you just post the links themselves instead of the indirection to Designer News?

I wanted to cite the original poster who found and assembled those links as a secondary source.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#147

Post by avs733 »

smt88 wrote: post #86
aresant wrote: post #62

So what else is new. If you work at Facebook or Google you're benefiting directly from the similarly shady practices they used to grow on their way to being "pillars of tech" today. Do you remember when at LEAST 20% of Facebook's revenue came from Zynga? Like less than 5 years ago? Many speculated it was considerably higher, but Facebook never provided a full accounting (1). Or do you remember when Facebook literally…

One major difference is that Facebook and Google also provide value to their users. They do good and bad things. The company in the article did only bad things.

I think the company in the article would argue that they provide value as well.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#148

Post by flamingbuffalo »

amelius wrote: post #47
danenania wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You talk as if the 'rest of us' in tech are so innocent and pure. Spam is small potatoes compared to the ethical violations many big tech companies get up to on a daily basis.

The problem is that when some manager asks to work on something unethical, the technical people fall over eachother in trying to implement it first. Lesson: not everything which can be implemented should . And elegant solutions to unethical problems are still ugly.

reminds me of this: https://deardesignstudent.com/in-praise-of-the-ak-47-a24cc8a...

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#149

Post by wmeredith »

pyrophane wrote: post #36
danenania wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You talk as if the 'rest of us' in tech are so innocent and pure. Spam is small potatoes compared to the ethical violations many big tech companies get up to on a daily basis.

Yea, good point. We live in an age when a whole set of duplicitous practices are now just referred to as "growth hacking"

The other side of the growth hacking coin is retention, which is also fraught with systematic duplicity and dark patterns. Each of us needs to exercise our judgement about how we put food on the table. And if you don't know how the company that signs your checks gets the money to do so, you need to find out.

Re: The Perks Are Great, Just Don’t Ask What We Do

#150

Post by nkohari »

tonyarkles wrote: post #2

Maybe I just forget what it's like to be a beginner, but how on earth do you work on Ad Injection software and not realize that you're working on Ad Injection?!

Adtech in general is kind of difficult to grok at first. It's dense with jargon and is largely driven by partnerships and resale. To a newcomer the industry can be very opaque.

It's likely they weren't working on the actual ad injection itself, but rather the backend systems that select and count the ads. From that perspective it's just a matter of handling X requests per second, without it necessarily being clear where the traffic comes from.

When I worked at Adzerk, we'd be approached occasionally by companies doing this kind of garbage. They were always very good at disguising their actual traffic sources. Our sales team had to be very adept at asking the right questions to eliminate the shitty partners quickly.

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