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Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

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Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#221

Post by TeMPOraL »

NoGravitas wrote: post #56
johan_larson wrote: post #54

You have a job, right? If your employer solves a useful problem for its customers at a reasonable price, obeys the law and treats its employees and suppliers fairly then it is doing good and you are doing good through it. Do your work conscientiously and go home happy.

This is precisely what I meant when I said this was the wrong place to ask. Thanks for providing an example.

No. This is you not understanding that while this answer has huge caveats attached to it, it is also a solid point worth talking about and taking into account. A lot of "mundane" jobs are actually socially beneficial in some way.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#223

Post by TeMPOraL »

valarauca1 wrote: post #50
jerf wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sort of intrigued at your belief in the existence of "social action" that somehow manifests without any individual doing "anything" to "help". As if it is some sort of ontological force that exists independent of the individuals participating in it?

I incorrectly worded my post. And placed too much focus on the individual, when I was as attempting to stress the individual AS A software developer. But nonetheless I do agree with the final output. An individual is largely incapable of doing anything ALONE. Only thought organized and mass action are things accomplished on societal scale. Change requires work... this is physics. A large change requires a lot of work…

Organizations are made of people. People in organizations do things, and the sum of those things create change. Some of those things need technology, or could be done much better if technology was applied to them. OP is looking for such people and organizations in which he could help by doing the things that require or benefit from technology.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#224

Post by bradyo »

devrandomguy wrote: post #217
bradyo wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the dream. OpenStreetMap is another great example of such an idea. To take it a step further, I'd encourage setting the non-profit up as a worker's cooperative. Just imagine all of the big companies out there organized as open-source, co-operative non-profits. We could kill a lot of redundant work, retain people's privacy, and really empower the employees of these companies to ensure the company works on thin…

Tools for automating the mundane tasks of running a co-op, sounds like a great idea for a project. Something along the lines of the GNU tool suite. How does one build and maintain a co-op? Could anyone recommend a book on the subject, that covers a variety of nations or regions?

I'm not sure about resources for starting a co-op outside the US, but here are some resources I've found on how to start a co-op. Web searching will find more.

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14135068

- https://electricembers.coop/pubs/TechCoopHOWTO.pdf

- https://www.coops.tech/

- Tech co-ops mailing list: https://npogroups.org/lists/info/tech-coop

I talked briefly with this co-op whose set up in Europe and seems to have members from all over, so they might provide good insight: https://camplight.net/

Also, talking to nonprofit founders, I've heard that starting a non-profit yourself can be pain in the ass. However, you can essentially outsource the management of the nonprofit to another nonprofit via 'fiscal sponsorship.' Web searching for that will bring up more details. For example, http://grayarea.org/incubator/fiscal-sponsorship/. I met the founder of this organization that started providing fiscal sponsorship recently as well: http://blog.hacker.fund/fs/

And finally, there are actually some co-ops that are trying to make this process easier. For example, this co-op alternative to kickstarter: https://snowdrift.coop/ and this co-op that makes software for making decisions within co-ops easier: https://www.loomio.org/

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#225

Post by asciimo »

lazerwalker wrote: post #124
tacostakohashi wrote: post #12

Work as a programmer for whoever will pay you the most. Invest, and donate money to causes you care about.

I went through a similar period of soul-searching as the OP (or so I would imagine) back in November, and this is the conclusion I ultimately came to. Even if you're willing to take e.g. a 50% paycut to write code at a nonprofit, you're likely doing more good taking the obscenely high-paying industry job and donating that half of your salary, as unsexy as that is. Which isn't to say there aren't meaningful social pro…

50% is a conservative estimate. If you are a software engineer in the SF Bay Area you can expect a 75% pay cut or more.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#226

Post by simplicitea »

pc86 wrote: post #153
falcolas wrote: post #24

Warning - strong opinions ahead: Provide services and tools without the strings attached. That is to say, provide email services that don't mine data for profit. Provide a social interaction space that doesn't attempt to manipulate moods, opinions, or sell its user's eyeballs. Provide an aggregation service with strong filtering tools in place of strong moderation. Provide a code repository with great tooling that do…

Is "Facebook without advertisements" really the bar for social good now?

Why not? If we're being realistic and ideal simultaneously, one recognizes the immense social impact and shift driven by Facebook, as a social media platform as well as a lexus of modern web programming, at the same time as one recognizes that the user is the product to be sold and could imagine the potential negatives of that paradigm. So why not?

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#227

Post by simplicitea »

kolbe wrote: post #197
pc86 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is "Facebook without advertisements" really the bar for social good now?

yes. the world would be a much much better place had a non-corporate version of facebook had become facebook.

I'm not convinced yet that a non-profit is capable of doing what Facebook does. I'd love to read about it if you have any lit on the topic.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#228

Post by ChuckMcM »

peacetreefrog wrote: post #216
ChuckMcM wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Bill Gates is an interesting data point here. For a lot of his life he was reviled by many, and yet in the past 15 years he has used his wealth to do great good.

Agree that he's done a ton of good with his charitable giving, but point is that he bettered humanity (probably even more than his charity) even before that with Windows (giving the masses an easier way to interact with computers, allowing individuals and companies to create other valuable things in turn), the whole software not hardware paradigm (led to rapid development in terms of the type of programs and function…

I think 'bettering humanity with Windows' is open for debate. Some would argue that Windows, and the security problems it brought to the Internet, was the enabler for the single largest source of income for criminal enterprise outside of the drug trade.

Now it is much more nuanced than that, network based criminal activity has existed since the invention of the telegraph, but I would be willing to wager even on a per capita basis of Windows, Mac, UNIX, and 'other' users of the network, it stands out.

That said, those days are largely behind us (caveat Wannacry and poor update policies) and I consider properly patched operating systems from all of the major vendors to be credibly defended from exploitation. I reason to that point of view by using the price offered for 'zero days' as an indicator of the challenge of finding them.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#229

Post by simplicitea »

devrandomguy wrote: post #217
bradyo wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the dream. OpenStreetMap is another great example of such an idea. To take it a step further, I'd encourage setting the non-profit up as a worker's cooperative. Just imagine all of the big companies out there organized as open-source, co-operative non-profits. We could kill a lot of redundant work, retain people's privacy, and really empower the employees of these companies to ensure the company works on thin…

Tools for automating the mundane tasks of running a co-op, sounds like a great idea for a project. Something along the lines of the GNU tool suite. How does one build and maintain a co-op? Could anyone recommend a book on the subject, that covers a variety of nations or regions?

If you're located somewhere near Seattle, I would recommend going in to Central Co-Op and trying to talk to them about their story and business needs.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#230

Post by devrandomguy »

adamsea wrote: post #175
threepipeproblm wrote: post #163

Although it sounds like they are working on some important issues, I'm not sure I'd want to work for an organization who posts racially targeted messages -- which presumably they think are ok with some races filled into the blanks, but not others. https://twitter.com/JazmynLatimer/status/864585574581059584 It seems like non-racist messaging would be a better approach!

A little history-and-context-free, are we? First, this is the text of the tweet in question: "Any black or brown engineers wanna work at Code for America on criminal justice? Come code to keep people out of jail, it's worth it." Your assumption that the poster is not OK with non black/brown engineers is an assumption. I'd add, your comment is context-free and somewhat disingenuous, considering that we live in a socie…

Thank you for explaining. That tweet would almost certainly be considered unacceptable within my own society, because it reinforces division by a highly visible, but ultimately misleading metric: skin tone. I get that there is a persistent segment of the population that needs help to achieve economic and educational parity. Surely, the group targeted by this tweet could have been identified by a label that is specific to the relevant issues, and supported by logically sound metrics?

"underprivileged" is a term we use around here, and the social systems do seem to have a sensible set of filters for it: low household income, mental illness or physical disability, lack of formal education, refugee status, etc. The good thing about a label like "underprivileged", is that a person can truly overcome it and put it behind them. It does not have to be a part of their cultural identity, it is just an environmental problem to be solved.

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