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A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley

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Re: A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley

#11

Post by emacsgifs »

sanbor wrote: post #4
leggomylibro wrote: post #2

I think that a better look at this subject is a recent piece in The Atlantic titled, "Are Facebook, Twitter, and Google American Companies?" https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/11/are-f... tl;dr, this back-and-forth is unsettling to a Federalist: >In response to a tough line of questions from Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Twitter’s acting general counsel, Sean Edgett, gave two conflicting answers wi…

This is the second time that I read that WikiLeaks is classified as "hostile intelligence agency". Isn't the purpose of intelligence to gather information to gain advantage over adversaries? It sounds to me like a redundant term like "hostile military". And BTW WikiLeaks leaks are public so all other intelligence agencies and citizens can learn while state agencies try to keep things obscure as much as possible. Who'…

The "hostile" framing device is a fairly naked attempt to build an ongoing narrative.

I doubt it needs pointing out that the reason WikiLeaks exists is because many (most, all?) organs of "public " service are anything but.

Re: A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley

#12

Post by mljoe »

leggomylibro wrote: post #2

I think that a better look at this subject is a recent piece in The Atlantic titled, "Are Facebook, Twitter, and Google American Companies?" https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/11/are-f... tl;dr, this back-and-forth is unsettling to a Federalist: >In response to a tough line of questions from Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Twitter’s acting general counsel, Sean Edgett, gave two conflicting answers wi…

>I guess it is kind of cyberpunk-y. All we need now is for US Marshals to lay siege to some SF headquarters, facing contracted PMCs denying the validity of their warrants.

I think the turning point was the SOPA/PIPA thing. After that event, it felt like the tech industry seemed to collectively figure out that just through sheer technical dominance, they actually wield tons of practical political power. Possibly more then the savviest Washington insiders.

Re: A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley

#13

Post by untog »

pmoriarty wrote: post #6

Corporations only worry about ethics if they think it'll affect their reputation or bottom line. Even then many of them are happy as long as there's public perception that they're acting ethically, even if in reality they're not.

Corporations, yes. But employees of those corporations, less so. As a developer making , you could have qualms about it.

Re: A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley

#14

Post by cyberferret »

untog wrote: post #13
pmoriarty wrote: post #6

Corporations only worry about ethics if they think it'll affect their reputation or bottom line. Even then many of them are happy as long as there's public perception that they're acting ethically, even if in reality they're not.

Corporations, yes. But employees of those corporations, less so. As a developer making , you could have qualms about it.

As an owner of a software development business, I've ejected my fair share of clients who have asked me to do ethically questionable things. But I wonder if a line employee who has to make rent every week and put food on the table can make the call.

I don't know - I've always made the call myself, and informed my employees so I've never had an employee come to me with concerns about working with a particular client or on a particular project?

Re: A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley

#15

Post by et-al »

untog wrote: post #13
pmoriarty wrote: post #6

Corporations only worry about ethics if they think it'll affect their reputation or bottom line. Even then many of them are happy as long as there's public perception that they're acting ethically, even if in reality they're not.

Corporations, yes. But employees of those corporations, less so. As a developer making , you could have qualms about it.

Except when things are convenient and we're benefitting from it, it's easy to explain away the negative consequences that befall others.

Think of all the engineering effort to create dark patterns or make it easier for people to buy stuff. I won't work on ads, but a lot of other engineers are okay with it, especially if the money is good.

Re: A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley

#16

Post by abandonliberty »

dcow wrote: post #8
leggomylibro wrote: post #2

I think that a better look at this subject is a recent piece in The Atlantic titled, "Are Facebook, Twitter, and Google American Companies?" https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/11/are-f... tl;dr, this back-and-forth is unsettling to a Federalist: >In response to a tough line of questions from Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Twitter’s acting general counsel, Sean Edgett, gave two conflicting answers wi…

But Kumail's point isn't about whether these companies are patriotic, he's saying they lack any ethical framework of operation and presumes it's because people aren't challenging each other with ethical questions preferring to condone any behavior in favor of flexing engineering muscles and proving that, "yes, they can". I don't think it's unrelated, and perhaps your point is that it's doubly clear no one has thought…

>TL;DR: they do this because they can, and they can because you let them.

You may be passionate and well informed enough to have the strength of conviction to take appropriate action, but most people are not.

Nothing will change unless you can affect the behavior of others. You will be fought every step of the way: for the company, this is a fight for survival.

>they can because you let them.

What does this statement reveal about your internal dialogue? You can't expect people who don't understand or who aren't involved to take action. You are delegating your responsibility. Perhaps it is good for your ego, but I can tell you how it turns out.

A more appropriate statement would be, "because I let them."

Re: A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley

#17

Post by transitorykris »

I love Stafford Beer's "The purpose of a system is what it does" here. It separates fact from intention when reasoning about systems. The engineers that Kumail catches offguard are (in my opinion) confused because the issues he raises are so far from their intentions.

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

Re: A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley

#18

Post by nemild »

In the vein of Kumail's critique, if it's useful to anyone, I wrote some thoughts about software engineering and ethics from my own experiences:

A serial tech entrepreneur in Silicon Valley once asked me to design a “social stockade” for his financial services customers. It would lock people out of their social media accounts and tweet out/FB share to their friends when they hadn’t paid a loan. He pitched it to prospective employees as meaningful work that would reduce the cost of loans for the needy.

I was horrified that his product was being built and that many others would likely take the role I was turning down. And he was hardly the first to pitch his “innovation” as providing only good.

Every software engineer I’ve worked with has had a strong sense of personal values and ethics, but the organizations we work for can take actions that are at odds with these. I’d like to highlight a few of the key challenges you’ll face and provide feedback for living your personal values. Most importantly, it’s critical that you think about the impact of your work and consciously set your personal values in advance of inevitable future challenges.

(Always available to discuss if valuable to anyone, feel free to email me encrypted messages, see my HN profile)

https://www.nemil.com/musings/software-engineers-and-ethics....

Re: A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley

#19

Post by ben_jones »

untog wrote: post #13
pmoriarty wrote: post #6

Corporations only worry about ethics if they think it'll affect their reputation or bottom line. Even then many of them are happy as long as there's public perception that they're acting ethically, even if in reality they're not.

Corporations, yes. But employees of those corporations, less so. As a developer making , you could have qualms about it.

All it takes for a 22 year old to write invasive ad tracking software for FB/Google is ~150k combined compensation. Also a software developer wrote this [1] at some point...

Why do software developers have a presumed sense of moral superiority? Because some guy named Linus distributed an operating system for free? We're for hire just like everybody else.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

Re: A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley

#20

Post by tomjen3 »

nemild wrote: post #18

In the vein of Kumail's critique, if it's useful to anyone, I wrote some thoughts about software engineering and ethics from my own experiences: A serial tech entrepreneur in Silicon Valley once asked me to design a “social stockade” for his financial services customers. It would lock people out of their social media accounts and tweet out/FB share to their friends when they hadn’t paid a loan. He pitched it to prosp…

I am curious as to what your issue is with the loan setup. Inn my mind out is an alternative to a traditional loan, how is that bad?
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