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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

#101

Post by 0xDEFC0DE »

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.

Yeah how do we ever find fault in auto accidents since we don't understand all of physics

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

#103

Post by bcrosby95 »

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…

If you think salaries are high now, just wait until every engineer needs a personal lawyer to review every change request their boss makes of them.

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

#104

Post by blackflame7000 »

0xDEFC0DE wrote: post #101
blackflame7000 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah how do we ever find fault in auto accidents since we don't understand all of physics

Some guy named Newton solved the physics problem you’re referring to. He never got around to computational theory though.

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

#105

Post by tluyben2 »

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…

Not very realistic for people who need to put food on the table and where the evil vs non evil is not that clear. Especially if you work on a very small cog in the machine, which most engineers do ofcourse.

Where do you draw the line? Maybe your company makes software that is nice but it is sold to companies using it for evil? I think this is too vague and not solvable by engineers unless in clear cut cases like you mention; not many of those really.

There are not infinite jobs either; most companies will, at some stage, do things that you might consider evil.

It is generally management that should be blamed; they have the oversight and make decisions about client base etc. In rare cases where an engineer knew they were wrong very clearly but still did it, then sure, punishment is ok.

Edit; I see you are from Eindhoven; I was born close to there and studied at the TUE under Dijkstra pupils. We had a little group at the time that believed in Dijkstra like thinking; software has to be proven correct and we added that it has to be ethical. It was an idea to somehow make software dev a gild. Then we grew up and saw nothing like that is possible unless you want the world to grind to a halt. The Netherlands would be a likely candidate for this kind of experiment though; you cannot really die of poverty there unless mentally ill, so it is easier to ‘just quit’ if you think your boss went satan on you.

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

#106

Post by blackflame7000 »

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.…

Democracy is not there one day and gone the next, it is eroded over time.

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

#107

Post by thanatropism »

Barrin92 wrote: post #24
aj7 wrote: post #14

Warning. Regulation almost always favors incumbents.

This argument is always repeated within the first ten minutes of these discussions, but I don't really understand why anyone assumes that competition is somehow the panacea to every problem on the planet. I don't want ten unregulated facebooks who all leak my data, I want one facebook that plays by reasonable rules. The dynamics of social networks which don't deliver value if they're fragmented has made the competiti…

> I don't want ten unregulated facebooks who all leak my data, I want one facebook that plays by reasonable rules.

At this point you should be wondering if it should be run by the government.

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

#108

Post by anovikov »

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOR38552MJA

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

#109

Post by blackflame7000 »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #58

Nothing more than a cynical play by Microsoft to get a seat at the table for the inevitable avalanche of regulation coming.

You know they are hoping they get looked at last since they already had to endure the anti-trust lawsuits before.

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

#110

Post by blackflame7000 »

aussieguy1234 wrote: post #23

If they pass a law requiring platforms to be responsible for content their users post, it'll be easy for big incumbents like Facebook to fall in line. It will be much harder, however, for new platforms with less resources to comply. They may have to shut down instead.

Yea but that would kill Facebook by a 1000 lashes overtime.
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