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Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech

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Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech

#91

Post by jhall1468 »

skrebbel wrote: post #87
jhall1468 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moment you open that door you have created the ultimate scapegoat in every corporate decision. Now every engineer is personally responsible for corporate decisions. It's easy when you look at VW and Facebook, but the more nuanced these things get, the more that what your advocating for is that programmers have to be lawyers as well. This horrible precedent and pushes the blame for everything downstairs. Meanwhile…

I don't advocate that corporate execs have shielding and the engineers don't. Where did you read that? It sounds to me that you're misreading my comment on purpose, to make an us-vs-them argument that I fundamentally disagree with. This isn't about engineers vs bosses, it's about doing the right thing no matter what's on your business card. The argument "if we can't shift the blame up, it'll automatically go down" si…

I read that by the fact that you only talked about punishing engineers.

And I'm not misreading your comment on purpose, trust me I had to read it 4 times just to make sure I wasn't crazy and I was actually reading what I thought I was: someone advocating that bottom of the food chain employees be criminally liable for code they write.

You are making an us-vs-them argument, to be sure. Your "us" is consumers and your "them" are employees, rather than corporate executives that make the decisions.

I'm not a lawyer. I expect if I'm being asked to do something, it's been vetted by our corporate legal team. I should not be expected to know every aspect of criminal and civil law to protect myself from my employer.

What you are suggesting is absurd, but fortunately, I think most would agree with me on that.

Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech

#92

Post by warbird »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #65
treebeard901 wrote: post #46

The claim that big tech itself is a threat to democracy needs to be debated. While they do manipulate their customers and sell their personal information for profit, the companies themselves have also been manipulated by the various groups in the world that are the actual threat to democracy. The political polarization might not be caused by technology but instead only amplifies it. One example where the tech compani…

The only part of your argument that's relevant is the part about selling personal information for profit. The rest is immaterial to the problem with unregulated industry, and in fact incorrect when it comes to the end-result of things like "political polarization". Governments and private companies are more than happy to see the mass organization and demonstrations of the 20th century turn into yelling at auntie on F…

The article itself barely touches upon the titular "stake." NPR inserts "election interference" and Smith is quoted in reference to personal data acquisition as a potentially dangerous wealth transfer/concentration.

Since election interference is widely reported and understood to have been an intel operation aimed at polarizing U.S. public opinion with legitimate and illegitimate information, I dont see how treebeard is irrelevant.

Sidenote: It's still unclear, to me anyway, just how effective the influence was. In these crazy times, I should clarify that I'm not denying it occured.

Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech

#93

Post by PavlovsCat »

treebeard901 wrote: post #46

The claim that big tech itself is a threat to democracy needs to be debated. While they do manipulate their customers and sell their personal information for profit, the companies themselves have also been manipulated by the various groups in the world that are the actual threat to democracy. The political polarization might not be caused by technology but instead only amplifies it. One example where the tech compani…

I don't like the term "polarization" because the reduction to a spectrum, much less a one-dimensional one with two poles, doesn't represent most issues well or at all, and even where it might be applicable, the reason why someone is "at one of the poles" matters a lot more than what opinion they have. Someone is adamantly against the death penalty as a result of a lot of weighing and reflection, and is able to argue their opinion, is very different from someone who just holds it because their peers do, and is unable or unwilling to think things through for themselves. So I'd say where people get "more radical" just by being exposed to different views that kind of shows there is something more than just deliberation going on, and that issue seems orthogonal to the world seeming more confusing and confused because we see more of it (which I agree plays a role).

And though I agree without reserveration that technology doesn't cause that per se, the way we use it for the most part (and which we seem to have accepted as the way to go, or at least as somehow unavoidable), turn things into headlines and TLDR and memes, and those into things to "share" or "like", seems like an already existing problem put on steroids to me.

Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech

#94

Post by 0xDEFC0DE »

skrebbel wrote: post #70
GreaterFool wrote: post #52

> that governments need to put some "guardrails" around engineers and the tech titans they serve The evil engineers! Not the managers, CEOs and so on, but engineers. The true root of evil. Finally someone recognizes who's really at fault

Stop pushing the blame upstairs. If you knowingly build software that hurts people, you share the blame. The job market for programmers has never been better. "My boss told me to do it" is not an excuse. I, for one, hope more engineers involved in fraud (eg VW), privacy breaches (eg Facebook) etc get tried and punished. It might help make programmers realize that yes, your work actually affects real humans and yes, y…

>I, for one, hope more engineers involved in fraud (eg VW), privacy breaches (eg Facebook) etc get tried and punished. It might help make programmers realize that yes, your work actually affects real humans and yes, you're partly responsible for getting it right.

You can't do this without a lot of ethical backing, supportive law resources, whistleblower protections, and better controls on letting people into the industry.

It will be an utter disaster if you don't have those protections.

Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech

#95

Post by brandonmenc »

> For one, he argues, it's time to reform the U.S. law that says Internet platforms are not liable for just about any of the content running through their pipes — hate speech, death threats and ads for counterfeit goods or illegal guns.

Only if it comes with full regulation of said platforms as publishers, which they would then be - and imo already are today.

Enough with this having it both ways.

Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech

#96

Post by makomk »

DanBC wrote: post #42
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #13

Once upon a time public opinion was manipulated by TV and the big newspapers; now it is manipulated by new media companies. My stupid question is: where is the big difference?

Newspapers are responsible for what they publish and the owners can be sued for defamation or held to account. Big tech companies off-load that burden by saying "our users are arseholes and it's impossible to police what they say". The most extreme example are the lengths BackPage went to in order to keep taking money to place ads for children that had been kidnapped and drugged and were being offered for rape.

Newspapers in the US have extremely strong protections against defamation lawsuits. This is especially true when the falsehoods in question are targeted against politicians they disapprove of, but even spreading partisan lies about kids that lead to the kids in question receiving a torrent of death threats and a large number of people plotting to make them unemployable for the rest of their lives is not sufficient grounds for a defamation lawsuit. The anti-big-tech folks, for the most part at least, seem to have absolutely no problem with this.

Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech

#97

Post by Fricken »

equalunique wrote: post #76
Fricken wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had something like a consensus reality when big newspapers framed the terms of debate. Now we're retribalizing. Different groups are working not only with different beliefs, but also different sets of facts to cement their beliefs. By the time that a society recognizes that a new medium has changed them, it's too late.

Too late for what? To change it? The people who have a problem with this are the ones who cling to the consensus reality la-la-land. If their worldview was so fragile, then maybe they don't deserve to be the ones who dictate it for everyone else.

Functional societies are founded on trust, shared beliefs, and shared goals. You can reject the consensus reality la-la land, as a great number of people have in the last decade, but you're just trading in for a non-consensus reality la-la land.

We don't really do objective reality well beyond the scope of our own immediate shit. We're like the six blind men and the elephant. We each have our own little fact about the elephant, but no one is able to see the elephant as a whole, and trying to paint a complete picture out of the disparate bits of information can yield outcomes very different from objective reality.

Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech

#99

Post by blackflame7000 »

0xDEFC0DE wrote: post #94
skrebbel wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop pushing the blame upstairs. If you knowingly build software that hurts people, you share the blame. The job market for programmers has never been better. "My boss told me to do it" is not an excuse. I, for one, hope more engineers involved in fraud (eg VW), privacy breaches (eg Facebook) etc get tried and punished. It might help make programmers realize that yes, your work actually affects real humans and yes, y…

>I, for one, hope more engineers involved in fraud (eg VW), privacy breaches (eg Facebook) etc get tried and punished. It might help make programmers realize that yes, your work actually affects real humans and yes, you're partly responsible for getting it right. You can't do this without a lot of ethical backing, supportive law resources, whistleblower protections, and better controls on letting people into the indu…

The halting problem shows that it is impossible to verify a program is bug free. Therefore anyone could say that some feature X that harms the user is actually just a bug and you would be hard pressed to beat reasonable doubt

Edit: I love downvotes without rebuttal.

Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech

#100

Post by dontbenebby »

GreaterFool wrote: post #52

> that governments need to put some "guardrails" around engineers and the tech titans they serve The evil engineers! Not the managers, CEOs and so on, but engineers. The true root of evil. Finally someone recognizes who's really at fault

There is a type of person who will always walk right up to the line of what is legal and peer across. Too often these types hold leadership roles in companies.

It is important to guard against these types, by ensuring our laws reflect our shared norms to those who will ignore norms unless compelled.

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