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Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims

latimes.com

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Re: Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims

#291

Post by dang »

jsf666 wrote: post #42
exabrial wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is slightly abrasive, however, it is worth discussing. Every Religion has been warped by humans at some point to gain wealth or power, I think Islam has seen the worst of it. What was meant as framework to help people be happy and treat each other with dignity has turned into a destructive force used to justify crimes.

The thing is Islam wasn't "warped". Mohamet was a barbaric warlod, you think the religion he created was and is about love of respect to your enemies? Could you please explain the train of thought that brought you to such conclusions?

We've banned this account for using HN primarily for politics (an abuse of this site) and, worse, for religious flamewars.

Re: Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims

#292

Post by dang »

exabrial wrote: post #31
jsf666 wrote: post #20

Can someone explain to me why a religion made by a pedophile-barbarian is somehow tolerated and even defended against "islamophobia" (is e.g. a gay guy phobic for being scared of muslims that given power would throw him from a building or persecute him in some other way at least)? Their whole ideology (as it basically governs every aspect of life) is crude, vile, barbaric and dangerous. The animosity towards them is…

Your comment is slightly abrasive, however, it is worth discussing. Every Religion has been warped by humans at some point to gain wealth or power, I think Islam has seen the worst of it. What was meant as framework to help people be happy and treat each other with dignity has turned into a destructive force used to justify crimes.

No, this is not "worth discussing" on Hacker News. It attracts bad users (I mean the ones who have no intention to use this site as intended) and evokes bad comments.

Litigating religion is profoundly not what this site is for. Those of you who crave that, please do it elsewhere.

Re: Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims

#293

Post by pvg »

ryandrake wrote: post #267
tptacek wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you're misunderstanding the concept of the pledge. Most of the people who signed the pledge at (for instance) Google[1] are never going to be anywhere near the actual creation of misuse of databases for deportation or religious discrimination. The pledge isn't about denying labor for the actual project. What it's about is radically altering the cost to companies of having anyone comply. It doesn't matter than you…

OK, so what you're saying is it boils down to math: N = Number of employees signing the pledge, Q is probability that an employee will quit their otherwise fantastic $300K/yr^ job because someone ELSE at the company is working on MuslimDB, C = average cost to replace and retrain an engineer, P = expected profit from project. If NQC Makes sense. I suppose whether it has an effect, then, depends on how many people sign…

Adding a pre-pledge that commits you to not turning every moral question into a variant of the Drake equation would probably improve the onboarding experience and drive conversion.

Re: Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims

#294

Post by coldtea »

1ris wrote: post #241
coldtea wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everybody was warned, everybody could have seen this coming. There has been nothing coming. Trumps pre-election stuff was BS, nothing will be done. Check back in 4 years. Besides government agencies obviously already have detailed profiles of such things, going far beyond the religion of a subject.

I'm talking about what is happening right now. If you find yourself in a situation where you regret data having this deeply, you shouldn't have collected them in first place. The second statement is true, but unrelated. It's like saying you are fine because others are worse.

>The second statement is true, but unrelated. It's like saying you are fine because others are worse.

No, it's like saying "Whether I catch a flu or not is not really worth it to fret about, given that I have a couple terminal illnesses going on anyway".

Re: Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims

#295

Post by coldtea »

geofft wrote: post #201
interstitial wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another one-way function? Only people I declare "other" and bad can be guilty of virtue-signaling. Hard to keep up.

> Only people I declare "other" and bad can be guilty of virtue-signaling. ??? My definition of "virtue signaling" is the practice of loudly proclaiming that you believe X because of the benefit to your reputation from people seeing you proclaim X and not because you particularly care about believing X (and maybe you don't), a "they love to stand and pray in the street corners" thing. I find it hard to believe that p…

>My definition of "virtue signaling" is the practice of loudly proclaiming that you believe X because of the benefit to your reputation from people seeing you proclaim X and not because you particularly care about believing X

If that's the definition, then it's just as bad for Trump as it is for most of the "virtuous" liberals (or whatever you call the left of center in your country). Which could not care less about stuff (if they did they'd live differently and be far more active citizens), but like to signal their concern among friends and on their social media.

Re: Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims

#296

Post by vixen99 »

woofyman wrote: post #141
kukx wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called Old because there's a New Testament, which overrides the Old where applicable. And Jesus was a peace-loving man.

Please tell that to the homophobic Christians who selectively quote Leviticus.

Why do you say selectively? Presumably you don't mean that homosexuality is quietly applauded in some sections they prefer not to quote. It isn't. (But so what!)

Re: Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims

#297

Post by germanier »

gdelfino01 wrote: post #166
soufron wrote: post #133

That's exactly the reason why databases of people including their religious opinions are forbidden under EU Law. And it has been that way in France and in Germany since 1978.

I lived in Germany. They asked my religion and made me pay religion tax (Kirchensteuer). So they already have such a database.

They don't ask for your religion. They ask if you are member in one of a few religious communities. You may say that this is nitpicking but it's really not. They don't care about beliefs but just perform a service for those communities that asked them to do it. That tax is best to be thought of a membership fee that happens to be collected by the state.

If a religious community does not want to participate in that scheme they can. Plenty don't use that service.

Re: Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims

#298

Post by zigzigzag »

tptacek wrote: post #211
zigzigzag wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they won't do it. This pledge is so full of get-out clauses it makes Swiss Cheese look robust. Many of the signers already work for companies that build large databases that could be used in bad ways by governments. This is the Silicon Valley equivalent of saying "I'll move to Canada".

Then hold them to it when something happens. Personally, I think the people who have publicly signed this, putting them a Google search away from any future employer learning about this, probably thought about it more carefully than you did. In talking to people about this pledge --- particularly people resistant to the pledge (I have conservative friends), the most notable thing I've learned is that people do this a…

It's impossible to "hold them to it" because it's so easy to get out of.

People changing jobs because they want better lunch isn't comparable. That's a choice they make on their time, at their leisure and having weighed up many other competing factors.

A pledge like this one in theory demands absolutism. Bad behaviour happens, you quit, regardless of how inconvenient or impractical it is for you at that time.

In practice, because the pledge has had absolutely minimal thought put into it, the authors filled it with weasel words to get a big list of signers. If someone was wanting to quit their job for lots of other reasons perhaps they can use this to justify leaving and make themselves out to be super virtuous. But if they didn't actually want to quit their job then they'll just say that they objected internally and were ignored, but that satisfies the pledge. Or that they made some token change that "minimised" the data collected.

Ethics is a deep, complex field of study. This is the opposite: a highly partisan and political document that exists only so people who don't like Trump can show that to the world, which I expect they were loudly doing anyway. It will only increase mistrust amongst conservatives, who will ask awkward questions like "Where were these tech guys when people were talking about databases on issues that matter to us, like gun control?". Why weren't they signing pledges in 2013 when Snowden revealed what the Obama administration was doing; why is this only a big deal now someone we like got into power?

Pledges like this speak for everyone in tech. They shouldn't do that.

Re: Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims

#299

Post by zigzigzag »

idlewords wrote: post #229
jerf wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have they destroyed any of this data yet? As much fun as it may be to pretend this is a Trump problem, it's a Silicon Valley problem. It's Silicon Valley waking up and realizing that it's all fun and games until someone you don't like gets the data that they have already painstakingly collected, polished, and devoted billions of dollars to processing and extracting features of interest. The existence of people you do…

You're complaining that "we need actions" in response to tech employees actually taking action. That's weird. I realize you want to see grander, significant results, but what do you think that looks like at the outset? People starting to do something in an industry that has been historically very wary of being "political".

Signing a pledge is not "action". Actually quitting would be action. But there are lots of signatures from people who work at large companies that make even larger databases. Why didn't they quit already? Why didn't they quit years ago? Why are the only issues the pledge talks about things that liberals care about? Why not also pledge to never make a database of gun owners, to make the conservatives feel included?

The industry is wary of being "political" for good reasons - engaging in shallow political campaigns and especially being seen to both biased and powerful is a good way to trash the reputation of the field. Software engineering isn't as respected as medicine, but it's at least better respected than journalism and politics.

The worst case scenario is that this kind of crap becomes widespread and software ends up being like the social sciences: riddled with political extremism (there are basically no conservative social scientists) ... yet unable to see it because all people with opposing viewpoints were systematically shit on and excluded for decades until the point was reached where there were none left.

Re: Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims

#300

Post by zigzigzag »

tptacek wrote: post #275
ryandrake wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would require a high degree of speculation, since I can't think of any example in history in any industry where "employees not willing to work for a company" managed to have a material impact on that company. I think this is uncharted territory.

This is a joke about HN, right? Hey. I'm getting some mileage out of this on Twitter and you're getting a little jumped on, but: if you're not joking, this is good news. It's kind of great news. It means all you have to do is learn a bit about the labor movement to see a whole new dimension of possibilities for intervening against a system we're widely concerned about.

Labour unions are backed by force of law, and campaigned primarily to get their members more money or benefits, not stop "unethical" behaviour (they invariably claim they're motivated by safety or conditions or whatever, but in practice it almost never is).
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