Ongoing discussion at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16626318
Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
311–320 of 418 posts
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Who teaches developers that it's okay to work for anyone as long as the tech is cool and the salary is great? Who teaches them otherwise? Absent parental/primary-school-instilled ethics, rather a lot of engineers operate in a bubble of like-minded (and similarly-employed) people, making large amounts of money, and are often insulated (voluntarily, deliberately, or accidentally) from the impact of their work. What c…
Make your new hires watch the multiple camera feeds and lidar of that woman being run over again and again until they really really understand that they're working on life-critical systems.
That might help if you're making something that, if broken/misused, can directly physically harm people.
What about if you're making a social media app, and the ethics are less clear-cut? It's not like you can show every new hire footage of Trump and drive home the negative impact of data mining/sharing--the causal link is tenuous, the viewer might sympathize politically, or they just might not care about politics.
Ethics in the abstract is very hard to teach; object lessons are easy.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#313Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#314How the fuck could people be surprised? Open a software job board. 50% of offers are by companies trying to optimize some data harvesting and analysis to better target some ads. Ads, the direct child of propaganda. So to everyone working in those kind of companies: you're not better ethically than people working on missile software. I'd say you're worse because you can argue missiles can be used as deterrent.
> So to everyone working in those kind of companies: you're not better ethically than people working on missile software.
Yikes.
I agree with your points, don't get me wrong! Spot on-- this optimized data harvesting is widespread and terrible, and ads are dangerous.
Yet, I think your analogy is a little bit much and takes away from your argument. Missiles' purpose is to kill people, they tear apart families, bring chaos to countries-- they are built with the explicit purpose of terrorizing at best, and ending anyone not terrorized at worst.
Ads are meant to sell things. Sure, they are terrible when used as propaganda, but they're still just meant to be an efficient way do deliver feelings+ideas, and one that can be escaped with skepticism and critical thinking.
I personally don't think that a Google engineer working on Google Maps, a Youtube intern helping with creator tools, or even a Facebook employee making face filters for Instagram are in nearly the same ethical level.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
I up voted because your point is relevant. However, Software development is not a Profession, in the proper use of the term. It is not self-regulating the way Medicine, Engineering, Law, and a few others are. There is no formal standard of ethical conduct in software for practitioners to use as a baseline for their own behaviour.
Ahem: http://ethics.acm.org/code-of-ethics/software-engineering-co... >1.03. Approve software only if they have a well-founded belief that it is safe, meets specifications, passes appropriate tests, and does not diminish quality of life, diminish privacy or harm the environment. The ultimate effect of the work should be to the public good. edit: this version is from 1992 . And I should point out my courses at least h…
I would suggest that something people theoretically had dim awareness of in the DOS era before many current programmers were even born, doesn't govern how this industry works today.
If it did, we'd have heard from it again in the last 26 years.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
What exactly would Net Neutrality do to Facebook?
Basically the same effect supporters were asking from NN for telecoms: http://thehill.com/policy/technology/359499-franken-condemns... “No one company should have the power to pick and choose which content reaches consumers and which doesn’t,” said Franken. “And Facebook, Google and Amazon, like ISPs, should be neutral in their treatment of the flow of lawful information and commerce on their platform.” And then one…
Is there any reason to believe that Facebook had anything to do with releasing the pictures of him groping a woman?
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#317Wow. “react only when the press or regulators make something an issue, and avoid any changes that would hurt the business of collecting and selling data.” From: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/opinion/facebook-regul... The scary part is the cat is already out of the bag if you authorised any app. They could have a wealth of your data that is being sold.
You are assuming these same people, with everything to gain through just this behavior, have been utterly and scrupulously well-behaved this entire time all while nobody really questioned them.
'If you authorized any app'? I'm sure there are workarounds for that. If you touch them or pages where their invisible Facebook gif is present, they've probably got all your data that's gettable.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
... or not http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/magazine/the-obama-campaig... ... the campaign literally knew every single wavering voter in the country that it needed to persuade to vote for Obama, by name, address, race, sex and income. ...the digital-analytics team, led by Rayid Ghani, a 35-year-old research scientist from Accenture Labs, developed an idea: Why not try sifting through self-described supporters’ Facebook pages i…
Quoting a conservative source:
[1] How did Facebook react to the much larger data harvesting of the Obama campaign? The New York Times reported it out, in a feature hailing Obama’s digital masterminds:
The campaign’s exhaustive use of Facebook triggered the site’s internal safeguards. “It was more like we blew through an alarm that their engineers hadn’t planned for or knew about,” said [Will] St. Clair, who had been working at a small firm in Chicago and joined the campaign at the suggestion of a friend. “They’d sigh and say, ‘You can do this as long as you stop doing it on Nov. 7.’ "
In other words, Silicon Valley is just making up the rules as they go along. Some large-scale data harvesting and social manipulation is okay until the election. Some of it becomes not okay in retrospect. They sigh and say okay so long as Obama wins. When Clinton loses, they effectively call a code red.
[1] https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/cambridge-analytica-s...
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#319All the self-serving memes are out on parade here: "This not news", "what did you expect?", "anyone paying attention should have known", "it is the new normal", "it could not be any other way", "everyone benefits"... Actually, as of posting, the "Apple/Google/Microsoft are just as bad" version has not yet put in an appearance.
One could argue that Apple and Microsoft are not as bad, because Apple and Microsoft sell products, not advertisements.
Apple wants to be a walled garden. Can't be a walled garden without walls: their self-interest and marketing direction lies elsewhere. Also, in the case of the iPhone, hardware is the product, and in the case of the app store, the devs and apps are the product (some of the time, anyway).
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#320How the fuck could people be surprised? Open a software job board. 50% of offers are by companies trying to optimize some data harvesting and analysis to better target some ads. Ads, the direct child of propaganda. So to everyone working in those kind of companies: you're not better ethically than people working on missile software. I'd say you're worse because you can argue missiles can be used as deterrent.
> So to everyone working in those kind of companies: you're not better ethically than people working on missile software. Yikes. I agree with your points, don't get me wrong! Spot on-- this optimized data harvesting is widespread and terrible, and ads are dangerous. Yet, I think your analogy is a little bit much and takes away from your argument. Missiles' purpose is to kill people, they tear apart families, bring ch…
Also, you mention missiles at their best are used as a deterrent. That might keep one nation safe, but is is still about spreading terror to others and tends to just fuel arms races.
Ads at their best (aka, furthest removed from propaganda) are about informing people of things they would otherwise not know about. Think, mom and pop sops, some new organization, or a science fair.
It's easy to paint things black and white, and there's a line that can be crossed in terms of tracking, optimization, and attempts to control the population/public opinion. IMHO though, I really do think engineers working on companies in the ad space are not as ethically removed as those working on machines meant to kill.