Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 240 posts

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

#221

Post by anigbrowl »

jhall1468 wrote: post #208
anigbrowl wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The top comment referenced a line in the article criticizing both 'engineers and tech titans' and then only addressed the first half with a 'poor me' argument, which seems to have distorted this entire thread. 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 emp…

I made no mention of my personal ethics. I said vetted legally. Rest assured your principles almost certainly do not align exactly with the law. You may do something illegal without the knowledge you have. You may have contributed to some illegal because you weren't privy to the sum of the parts. Which is exactly why this is such a horrible idea.

Yeah but there are a ton of protections for that legal situation, and there's lots of things that are legal but deeply unethical because laws are unjust. This is an primarily an ethical issue.

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

#222

Post by SmileyRedBall »

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…

@skrebbel: “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.”

What planet are you from, my boss told me to do it and I said no, so now I am out of a job and shunned within the industry.

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

#223

Post by jkp56 »

Brad Smith clearly wants to corner software engineers and leave them no choice, but to unionize. I understand that this is not Brad's idea and he just delivered the message from the MS board meeting.

However the big tech does need regulation and this regulation is called GDPR. We need laws that make it a criminal offense to use user data without an explicit written consent in a standard form set by law per each use of this data.

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

#224

Post by throwaway2048 »

jkp56 wrote: post #213
avianlyric wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

this is complete nonsense that denies the factual agency these people absolutely have.

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

#225

Post by CM30 »

barry-cotter wrote: post #26
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?

The people who used to be able to manipulate public opinion are really, really pissed off that others are doing it and they’re even more pissed off that manipulating public opinion has become more difficult and people who aren’t respectable members of the elite are being listened to by the public. Before the internet Sanders, Trump, AOC, Yang, they would never have gotten anywhere. The ruling class is pissed off that…

Yeah, pretty much this.

And to be honest, as someone who's both done independent journalism and known people who do the same, it's honestly kind of worrying. I suspect the old guard despise the new media sites and creators the internet has brought about, and the competition it's giving them, and are trying everything they can to try and make them go away.

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

#226

Post by sebastianconcpt »

mch82 wrote: post #60
mattmcknight wrote: post #44

The threats to democracy arguments are so overblown. We're about to have a huge election. There is no literal threat to democracy. Hmmm...it must be some kind of metaphor. So what do people mean when they say this? The NPR piece says Smith suggests "the Internet giants will cannibalize the very fabric of this country". This metaphor seems hyperbolic as well. To use "cannibalize" means that something will eat itself.…

> There is no literal threat to democracy. What would you consider a threat to democracy?

Overt and covert censorship. Training ML models with ideological biases. Covert subversion of the concept of justice. Weaponization of cultural symbols. Promotion of histeria and false allegations to increase cultural subversion.

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

#227

Post by bcrosby95 »

0xDEFC0DE wrote: post #145
salawat wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, Doctor example isn't the best seeing as there is an entire industry in existence to handle the possibility that a doctor in the course of doing their job may end up causing harm, unintentional or not. I.e. malpractice insurance. I find this push of responsibility to the engineers encouraging. Finally may come the legislative framework through which I can shoot down an employer's design knowing that in all odds an…

We would need a similar-in-principle industry for engineers if they are legally and professionally responsible for code. It would likely be smaller and cheaper since most of us are not responsible for lives though. You definitely wouldn't need a lawyer on retainer.

If you work at a place like Facebook or Google it would probably be more expensive. You would be looking at liabilities in the hundreds of millions for a single bug.

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

#228

Post by Diesel555 »

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…

Agreed. Doesn't work in the military. "Following orders" is not a reason to do something unlawful. You only have to follow lawful orders. IMO the same principle applies here. Knowingly doing something wrong is not okay because you were paid to do it and someone else made the decision.

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

#229

Post by mattmcknight »

mch82 wrote: post #60
mattmcknight wrote: post #44

The threats to democracy arguments are so overblown. We're about to have a huge election. There is no literal threat to democracy. Hmmm...it must be some kind of metaphor. So what do people mean when they say this? The NPR piece says Smith suggests "the Internet giants will cannibalize the very fabric of this country". This metaphor seems hyperbolic as well. To use "cannibalize" means that something will eat itself.…

> There is no literal threat to democracy. What would you consider a threat to democracy?

New limitations on which candidates can run for election.

New limitations on which citizens can vote.

Interference with the vote collecting and counting processes.

Not respecting the outcome of an election.

Those would all be threats to democracy. What isn't a threat is Google, Facebook and Amazon trying to guess which ads you'll click on.

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

#230

Post by euroPoor »

jhall1468 wrote: post #83
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…

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…

There’s a reason we have vocabulary for this kind of situations, ie. Nuremberg Defense.
Post reply on HN