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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

#211

Post by dontbenebby »

wallace_f wrote: post #111
dontbenebby wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>It is important to guard against these types Don't doubt for a second that MS knows what it's doing when it adks for this. Facebook as well is doing the same, asking for more regulations. They're trying to capitalize on what is called Regulatory Capture, which will entrench their market power through government force. Sometimes this is more obvious, such as the case in finance where industry leaders smoothly swap ro…

Yes which is why I will also continue to push for strong consumer legislation as a private citizen.

I am a resident of a swing state and I vote in primaries.

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

#212

Post by 0_gravitas »

hd4 wrote: post #9

Why can't big tech self-regulate? Why must it always be a solution that depends on big government instead? Why should anyone trust the government given the last few thousand years of history?

why should anyone trust companies given the last few thousand years of history?

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

#213

Post by jkp56 »

avianlyric wrote: post #152
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…

> This horrible precedent and pushes the blame for everything downstairs. It’s already been set in other industries, the financial industry springs to mind. Everybody in a bank is responsible for detecting and preventing money laundering. Failure to report money laundering if you suspect it is a criminal offence (this is true in the UK, I assume similar laws exist in the US). If your boss refuses to acknowledge your…

Neither engineers not execs really make decisions to be good or evil. They implement the will of major shareholders who actually run the company. Satya Nadella has maybe 100s of millions, while the capitalization of MS is 1 trillion. This means that Satya isn't the decision maker. Only in small companies CEO and the owner is the same person.

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

#214

Post by colejohnson66 »

blackflame7000 wrote: post #197
colejohnson66 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So killing any startup’s chance of hosting user created content is ok as long as it kills Facebook?

You are most certainly putting words in my mouth. The words on the internet should be protected under the 1st amendment no matter how disgusting and no one should have to shoulder that burden except the members of society themselves in how they go about their conduct. In my opinion, it is not people's responsibility to be unoffensive, but rather it is our own responsibility to not let offensive thoughts permeate our…

My apologies. I went back and reread your comment and I clearly misread it

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

#215

Post by erik_seaberg »

blackflame7000 wrote: post #99
0xDEFC0DE wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

By construction, there's at least one program whose behavior is undecidable. But there's a big subset of all possible programs that always halt (and others that never do), and we can choose to only ship decidable programs and avoid the weird edge cases as unreliable.

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

#216

Post by esotericn »

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…

100% agree.

The problem of course is that most people paint themselves into a corner from which it becomes incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to actually act as a free agent (and therefore a moral being).

I don't really know how they can live with themselves - I guess I'm just not wired that way - but they do.

As far as software devs go specifically.. If you're 21 or whatever, fair enough. If you're 30, in good health, and you're still using this excuse that you just can't survive without always taking the maximally profitable job and sucking up to whatever bossman says, sorry, that's just not right.

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

#217

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

esotericn wrote: post #216
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…

100% agree. The problem of course is that most people paint themselves into a corner from which it becomes incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to actually act as a free agent (and therefore a moral being). I don't really know how they can live with themselves - I guess I'm just not wired that way - but they do. As far as software devs go specifically.. If you're 21 or whatever, fair enough. If you're 30, in good…

> If you're 30, in good health, and you're still using this excuse that you just can't survive without always taking the maximally profitable job, sorry, that's just not right.

After 30 you're probably looking to settle down, get a house and have kids and unless a generous inheritance is waiting for you, there is no way you can afford kids and a mortgage in any major city without constantly taking the highest salary because other people will, pricing you out.

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

#218

Post by jhall1468 »

eropple wrote: post #173
slowmovintarget wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because making the crowbar is part of the crime? No, I don't think that makes a lot of sense. Many young engineers can't see societal potential in what they do. They see solving the technical problem and completing the task. Senior engineers with a lot more experience have insight into "why" but that's often the point when they're given responsibility to guide others. The "should we do this?" question rests on the sh…

> Many young engineers can't see societal potential in what they do. Then they are defective citizens. Citizenry before a job is just not that complicated. Everyone is complicit in dirty work and I've very happily fired clients and quit jobs for being dirty. Do thou likewise or have your fellow citizens find you wanting for it. It's not hard.

The problem here is dirty isn't well-defined. You are playing the moral superiority card without knowing what your particular moral/ethical line is.

Seems HN is primarily comprised of people without families that can just quit their job and it's not big deal, all in the name of their particular set of moral standards. You can tell when they say things like "it's not hard" when deciding to quit their job.

For the fast majority of people, it is hard. Most peoples ethical guidelines shift rapidly when the alternative means harming their loved ones.

It's definitely not hard to proclaim things aren't hard. Reality is often different.

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

#219

Post by esotericn »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #217
esotericn wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree. The problem of course is that most people paint themselves into a corner from which it becomes incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to actually act as a free agent (and therefore a moral being). I don't really know how they can live with themselves - I guess I'm just not wired that way - but they do. As far as software devs go specifically.. If you're 21 or whatever, fair enough. If you're 30, in good…

> If you're 30, in good health, and you're still using this excuse that you just can't survive without always taking the maximally profitable job, sorry, that's just not right. After 30 you're probably looking to settle down, get a house and have kids and unless a generous inheritance is waiting for you, there is no way you can afford kids and a mortgage in any major city without constantly taking the highest salary…

> The problem of course is that most people paint themselves into a corner from which it becomes incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to actually act as a free agent (and therefore a moral being).

Indeed.

I think your example is a bad one because to be honest most people are priced out of that anyway. I don't know anyone who has or expects that life any more. The economy broke.

Amongst my "old friends", I'm the only one that could even theoretically afford it, and I've noped out of major metropolitan areas entirely, at least for the time being, because it precisely means either living in a microscopic shoebox or conforming to an economic system that is deeply flawed.

Ultimately, you own the consequences of what you're doing. If you don't care about the ethics of what you do because it feeds your family and that's what you want, great. I don't have to respect that; and in fact I reject the premise.

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

#220

Post by pilsetnieks »

blackflame7000 wrote: post #205
pilsetnieks wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same way that harming people intentionally via software engineering is not regulated now, negligent harm isn't regulated either. I'm not expressing my support either way because this is a complex issue I haven't explored nearly enough - I'm just pointing out that current laws have stipulations for unintentional action or inaction as well. Claiming ignorance, incompetence or other factors that might lead to uninte…

There isn't a single software engineer alive that hasn't made a negligible error. It's like penalizing doctors if their patient dies. The halting problem specifically prohibits a programmer from ever even knowing if they are without negligence or simply one iteration away from complete negligence. (ie integer overflow that occurred because the system was used longer than the original developer intended). Also, I woul…

> It's like penalizing doctors if their patient dies

Doctors should be punished if their patient dies for reasons caused by doctor's own fault or by some unintentional action or inaction. That's why malpractice insurance is a thriving industry.

> In that case who's fault is it if they both built half a bridge that doesn't line up?

The chief engineer or the architect, the ones who signed off on the project. And again, that's why those industries have professional liability insurance.

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