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A Facebook request: Write a code of tech ethics

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Re: A Facebook request: Write a code of tech ethics

#111

Post by Glyptodon »

7402 wrote: post #29

See ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct at https://ethics.acm.org/code-of-ethics/ Here are the main points: 1. GENERAL MORAL IMPERATIVES. As an ACM member I will 1.1 Contribute to society and human well-being. 1.2 Avoid harm to others. 1.3 Be honest and trustworthy. 1.4 Be fair and take action not to discriminate. 1.5 Honor property rights including copyrights and patent.…

You linked to the 1992 version, which was replaced in 2018.

Among other things, section 1.5 was always a disaster because copyright and patent are not natural rights, but special privileged statuses granted to (in theory) promote the accrual public benefit, and there's no reason practitioners should be required to subscribe to copyright or patent maximalist perspectives.

Section 2.8 was too broad because it didn't take into account security researchers, stuff like insulin pump hacking, etc., (which also ties back to 1.5 being too heavy handed).

Not that the 2018 version is tons better, but it tries more.

Re: A Facebook request: Write a code of tech ethics

#112

Post by reallydude »

> unjustified physical or mental injury

I don't subscribe to "mental injury" as a quantifiable or philosophical harm. There is no way to protect against interpretation or experience, that necessitates increasingly complex and ineffective measures to adapt to subjective and possibly aberrant, mental states. This will always devolve into a discussion of normality, which is immoral at the core.

> 2.6 Perform work only in areas of competence.

This perhaps, can be salvaged. I would not agree to this as-is. How anyone measures competence is too open, given the state of software development.

Re: A Facebook request: Write a code of tech ethics

#113

Post by uxp100 »

overthemoon wrote: post #100
Bartweiss wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single time I've seen a public call for a code of tech ethics, the call is justified by discussing professional standards, but quickly switches to calling for legal entrenchment of the author's personal ethics. On the blogs of notable programmers, best practices for security sit next to demands for closed-shop union membership. In comments sections (like this one), avoiding malicious dark patterns comes alongsi…

Personal ethics vs what? What do you consider universal, and why?

In their post they are contrasting personal ethics vs professional standards (which would pertain to how work is done, I would say).

A code of professional standards could say, for example, You have to keep clear notes for decisions made for each revision for a period of 5 years. A list of compilers that a serious "Software Engineer" will use. Establishing norms that might improve the overall quality of work done.

To some degree, I think a code like that one is really a kind of personal marketing or branding or something.

Re: A Facebook request: Write a code of tech ethics

#114

Post by shawnz »

mieseratte wrote: post #104
shawnz wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I said previously: Nobody is claiming that white people can't suffer from poverty. But no white American was ever forced into poverty solely on the basis of their being white. White people can face poverty but being white does not cause poverty. Similarly just because black Americans are disproportionately affected by poverty doesn't mean that every black American is poor.

See, here is my problem. The parent post claimed that blacks, specifically, face classes of problems that no other group does when attempting university and that this is problematic because it may exclude non-traditional routes to learning "ethics" which in turn may exclude them from software jobs. My point of contention is that, in this day and age, these problems apply equally and to single out a race is wrong. I'm…

> The parent post claimed that blacks, specifically, face classes of problems that no other group does when attempting university

Right, they face the specific socioeconomic problem of being disproportionately likely to be affected by poverty. It's true that white people can also be affected by poverty and that would make it harder for them to be successful in university just the same, but a white person is not made specifically more likely to be impoverished just by being white. That is the specific problem which black people face that white people don't. That doesn't mean that every single individual black person is going to be affected by that specific problem, or that no white person will face the same consequences in spite of not facing the same underlying causes.

> My point of contention is that, in this day and age, these problems apply equally

Again: the parent never claimed that other races aren't affected by poverty. Just that other races do not face systemic issues that push them into poverty. That aspect of the issue does not apply equally. You say you are not debating the fact that black people are in a disadvantaged position but that is literally the point being made here, that they are in a disadvantaged position which makes them disproportionately affected by class barriers. Nobody is saying we shouldn't be addressing these problems as they apply to white people or impoverished people in general, just that the classful nature of the request is especially heinous because it has the potential to disproportionately affect people who face specific class barriers (which is something that white people in fact do not face).

> You're derailing the conversation.

I disagree. The conversation wasn't really about race until you made it so. The parent was simply pointing out how creating barriers which depend on class is going to disproportionately affect people that face systemic class barriers, such as black people. White people do not face systemic class barriers but that doesn't mean they can't be impoverished or struggle to achieve success in education, and nobody is claiming the contrary. However it seems like you are being blinded from seeing their actual point by some kind of desire to make sure white people aren't getting unfairly criticized.

Re: A Facebook request: Write a code of tech ethics

#115

Post by mountainofdeath »

Jtsummers wrote: post #55
randomdata wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that unless there is a licensing body that enforces adherence the ethics, they will be ignored. Doctors and lawyers have such licensing requirements, tech does not. The question is not what the ethics should say, but whether or not tech should require licensing to be involved in it.

Then establish something comparable to the PE concept for software engineers, and require it for certain categories of software (aviation and medical software already have to get certified, have a Professional Software Engineer on the hook too, and then extend this to other types of software systems like certain financial, legal, or personal data systems).

+1 I've long advocated for a higher degree of professionalism and credentialing to establish a minimum bar of competence. Unfortunately, people who only work on yet-another-Rails-SaaS thing complain that excludes those that are not formally credentialed. Even then, try asking a customer of said SaaS product if they would trust something not built with a high degree of professionalism.

Re: A Facebook request: Write a code of tech ethics

#116

Post by mountainofdeath »

Bartweiss wrote: post #86
krisrm wrote: post #37

I don't disagree that perhaps software developers should be on board with a code of ethics, but this is a false dichotomy between the decisions of doctors/lawyers when providing services, and the decisions of technology companies on the whole. Companies that exist to make profit, in this case generally by monetizing user data in some (often questionable) form. It seems to me like the ethical responsibility bit lies m…

I frequently see people dismiss this with "programmers have an obligation to think about the possible uses of their work". That's not false, but I think it seriously underestimates the depth of the problem. The simplest difference between professions with clear ethical codes (doctors, lawyers, civil engineers) and ones without is that professions with strong codes provide outcomes . A doctor treats a specific patient…

The case I like to bring up was the Volkswagen emission scandal. The executives where pointing fingers at "well shucks, these engineer's must have done it and not told anyone". Having a strong sense of ethics would be to stand up and say "I can't do that lest I risk my license so fire me".

Re: A Facebook request: Write a code of tech ethics

#117

Post by Wohlf »

mindcrash wrote: post #83

Not needed, we hackers - more or less - already have one for about 35 years: 1) Access to computers - and anything which might teach you something about the way the world really works - should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative! 2) All information should be free. 3) Mistrust authority - promote decentralization. 4) Hackers should be judged by their acting, not bogus criteria such as degre…

>All information should be free.

>protect private data.

How do you reconcile these? Data is information. Or is this another free vs Free (Kostenlos vs Frei) situation?

Re: A Facebook request: Write a code of tech ethics

#118

Post by yellowstuff »

elliekelly wrote: post #88
yellowstuff wrote: post #84

Professional ethics is not the right approach to fixing the problem with user data. As the Equifax hack shows, the problem is not limited to the tech industry, and it's a problem of incentives at the corporate level, not the individual contributor level. We need corporate regulation. User data is an asset, because you use it to make money, and it is a liability, because it can be stolen and misused. Companies current…

> If user data had to be insured then there would be a financial incentive to only keep what's needed, and to treat it more carefully. Interesting thought, how would you imagine this would work in practice? Insurance against what? In the event of loss, who would make a payment to who? There are "cybersecurity" insurance policies available to companies now but they really only cover the cost of mailing notification le…

The insurance payouts for a breach could go to the affected users or to the government, I don't think it would matter much. The important part is that companies need to pay to retain user data. The insurance would have to be mandatory for large companies.

Re: A Facebook request: Write a code of tech ethics

#119

Post by Bartweiss »

uxp100 wrote: post #113
overthemoon wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal ethics vs what? What do you consider universal, and why?

In their post they are contrasting personal ethics vs professional standards (which would pertain to how work is done, I would say). A code of professional standards could say, for example, You have to keep clear notes for decisions made for each revision for a period of 5 years. A list of compilers that a serious "Software Engineer" will use. Establishing norms that might improve the overall quality of work done. To…

Thank you, that's exactly the contrast I'm trying to draw.

I hope neither of your examples makes it into an ethical code for software developers, but that doesn't make them bad examples - those are the sorts of things that appear in other fields. If a professional code more detailed than the ACA & IEEE ones were to arise, I'd hope to see more timeless things like "best practices for authentication" (e.g. passwords salted and strongly hashed) or "not unduly exposing personal information" (e.g. don't accept identifying information without SSL).

A lot of professional codes are definitely branding exercises more than standards of behavior. In particular, codes with lots of concrete requirements or specific corporate backers usually aren't much different than becoming an MCSE or Certified Scrum Master. Legal and medical codes are substantially better, but they're also much older and enforced by government-backed licensing cartels. Civil engineering is probably the most recent and broadly accessible field to get a strong code, but the parallels are obvious: engineers own specific projects with known uses, and their errors are directly lethal. Realistically, I don't expect software to see an Iron Ring sort of obligation unless the field's best practices stabilize and errors with real-world harms become common.

Re: A Facebook request: Write a code of tech ethics

#120

Post by vokep »

Wohlf wrote: post #117
mindcrash wrote: post #83

Not needed, we hackers - more or less - already have one for about 35 years: 1) Access to computers - and anything which might teach you something about the way the world really works - should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative! 2) All information should be free. 3) Mistrust authority - promote decentralization. 4) Hackers should be judged by their acting, not bogus criteria such as degre…

>All information should be free. >protect private data. How do you reconcile these? Data is information. Or is this another free vs Free (Kostenlos vs Frei) situation?

Using the first part of the "protect private data" line

Make public data available.

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