The heart of the problem is that popular communication networks are centralized and unencrypted.
How would you make a decentralized, encrypted twitter? How would it be better for society?
A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley
51–60 of 109 posts
Re: A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The social media companies (FB and Twitter) in particular seem to care nothing about the quality of their service otherwise they would be working to keep fake news and astroturfing campaigns off their platforms. I find that weird, or at least telling about how they feel about their relationship to users of the platform (yes I know 'the user is the product'). The lack of ethics need not be narrowed to a lack of patrio…
I think user engagement is much more important to these companies than any ethical qualm about truth and fairness. It was pretty obvious when Facebook killed its human news editor program because they kept spiking viral but fake news stories from sites like Infowars and Breitbart and conservative media outlets complained about bias against them.
Re: A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley
#53I 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'…
I doubt you would classify other members of the five eys as hostile, for example.
Re: A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
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'…
"Hostile" as in "currently harmful to my political party".
Hostile as in, currently harmful to US efforts worldwide.
Hostile as in, attempted to influence US elections.
Re: A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley
#55In 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…
>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…
It is possible to say no to the incentives of doing evil work; I would describe those who say no as the people with "a strong sense of personal values and ethics". This phrase has no meaning if you apply it to people who routinely violate their own beliefs in order to make more money, especially in a highly-compensated profession with a booming job market and plenty of available positions that don't require unethical behavior.
Re: A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley
#56I 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." More surreal things have happened... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._U...
That would put them on par with the right wing crazies who pop up from time to time.
Those guys end up dead, imprisoned, on watch lists, etc...
Re: A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley
#57I 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…
Or when google was facing anti-trust issues and they solved them with a bit of lobbying and some promises.
I'm so glad to see the tide turning. People finally waking up to the things these companies do.
Re: A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 o…
> I've ejected my fair share of clients Thank you! > a line employee who has to make rent every week Some sort of software development guild or professional association could help. Like a PE's duty to disobey their boss when a project isn't safe, explicitly defined external obligations can give the employee some power (and organizational support).
Professional associations do have codes of ethics and ethics-focused committees and societies, but they don't seem to do a very good job of publicizing them, because I see comments like yours here with some regularity. Heck, I have been a member of IEEE since 1997 and yet I only learned of their Society on the Social Implications of Technology a few years ago. The Order of the Engineer, which is entirely focused on professional ethics, seems to be equally unknown.
Re: A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
It is possible to say no to the incentives of doing evil work; I would describe those who say no as the people with "a strong sense of personal values and ethics". This phrase has no meaning if you apply it to people who routinely violate their own beliefs in order to make more money, especially in a highly-compensated profession with a booming job market and plenty of available positions that don't require unethical…
Every job I've had wanted to work me to the bone. I'd violate my personal ethics for stress-free work that'd pay my mortgage.
Re: A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley
#60In 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…
>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…
> I'd agree with this assessment of developers. However I've come into these exact moral dilemmas myself in the line of working for various companies doing web programming. How did I resolve them? By making the decision that affected my own bottom line favorably.
That would be _not_ having a strong sense of personal values and ethics. If your good morals always lose out to the promise of more money, that's you not having good morals. Just own up to it instead of pretending the real culprit here is a lack of governing bodies that should be protecting you from all the evil money out there.