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Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

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Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#151

Post by Marsymars »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #147
Marsymars wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well kinda trivially, asides from secular ethics, you'll find that typical Muslims decline a number of jobs/projects for ethical reasons.

As do Christians. Jews. Hindus. I was asked to help with creating what seemed like a human trafficking app to Christian me, but that to the Muslim founder was 'just an app to get the best payment for an arranged marriage' and just improving something that he said already happened all the time in his culture (he was from Pakistan I don't know if that is actually a thing there or he was just trying to justify his messe…

> As do Christians. Jews. Hindus.

Yes, absolutely. To elaborate a bit though, if you live in the West, Muslim ethics are more likely to stick out when applied to our regular practices. e.g. I know a Muslim programmer who declined to participate in a project involving billing interest to customers. (Which is decidedly non military and non killing, as posed by the post I was replying to.)

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#152

Post by SpaceNoodled »

chanchowancho wrote: post #71
zaphirplane wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know of anyone declining to work on a project For ethical in their view ( non military non killing) ? I’ve led a sheltered life and never met one, people have told me they wouldn’t apply for a role with a company for ethical reasons maybe they even believed they would get the job

Yes! I once met a highly paid contract tech lead who had walked out of a lucrative contract with a supermarket after he became aware the new credit card product he was working on was to be exclusively targeted at customers in poor areas. The moral fortitude on that man! I applaud his actions, but genuinely do not know if I would have the stones to leave my job if I was in a similar position!

Half of it is stones; the other half is cash.

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#153

Post by code_biologist »

TheNewsIsHere wrote: post #109
Aurornis wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience, it’s more likely that the engineers who got far enough in the company to be working on this code believed that their willingness to work on nefarious tasks that others might refuse or whistle-blow made them a trusted asset within the company. In industries like this there’s also a mindset of “Who cares, it’s all going to corporations anyway, why not send some of that money to the corporation that…

I have noticed that in addition to this perspective there are scores of developers who espouse the idea that “we just create, what people do with our work isn’t our business.” I understand the utilitarian qualities of the argument, but I submit that there’s a reason that capital-E-Engineering credentials typically require some kind of education in ethics-in-design.

I agree that we're responsible for what we create. I would also submit that corporate culture has been under intense selective pressure over the past 10 years to get good at creating compliance with ethically problematic software projects. I'm curious how many people left Google because they dropped the "don't be evil" motto.

There's lots of carrots (compensation, high quality desk jobs) and sticks (promotion structures, threat of offshoring). The really annoying and egregious aspects of corporate speak are easy targets for ire and take the heat, while the subtle euphemisms make the actual questionable projects easier to live with day to day.

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#154

Post by orwin »

xnx wrote: post #51

The entire affiliate "ecosystem" is cancer. I'd love to see Amazon turn it off entirely.

I think affiliate links are the most fair/ethical advertisement can be. If i go on a random carpentry or painting blog, i'd rather have affiliate links to product they use rather than random google ads.

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#156

Post by charcircuit »

rundev wrote: post #72
charcircuit wrote: post #68

>And the effort Honey expended, to conceal its behavior from industry insiders, makes it particularly clear that Honey knew it would be in trouble if it was caught. The same could be said about yt-dlp. They know what they are doing youtube doesn't like. But yt-dlp itself is legal.

The difference being that yt-dlp isn't a business partner (and/or competitor) of YT.

Many people using yt-dlp have a YouTube account or even an adsence account. Yes, YouTube could ban their partner for breaking the rules. Youtube has issued 1 year temp bans from watching videos for accounts that have downloaded videos. Similarly Honey could be banned for breaking the rules.

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#157

Post by [deleted] »

bryan_w wrote: post #22

I used to work for an ad tech company (which I know already makes me the devil to some around here), and even I think that they crossed a line with this. A lot of industry terms are coded in corporate speak to make them sound better (think "revealed preferences" or "enabling personalization"), but I would genuinely like to know what the engineers thought when doing design reviews for a "selective stand down" feature.…

[deleted]

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#158

Post by milkytron »

bedelman wrote: post #48
ZoneZealot wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For context, Ben Edelman the author of the blog post was in the video at https://youtu.be/qCGT_CKGgFE?t=1980 Their personal site is also linked in the video description https://www.benedelman.org/honey-detecting-testers/

Ben here. My real (substantive) write-up is https://vptdigital.com/blog/honey-detecting-testers/ . Happy to discuss / answer questions / etc.

In your interview with MegaLag posted in the video, you say something along the lines that civil courts are probably the most likely place any lawsuits would be held (I forget the exact wording used).

If you had used Honey, would you join a civil or class action suit against them?

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#159

Post by dogleash »

bryan_w wrote: post #22

I used to work for an ad tech company (which I know already makes me the devil to some around here), and even I think that they crossed a line with this. A lot of industry terms are coded in corporate speak to make them sound better (think "revealed preferences" or "enabling personalization"), but I would genuinely like to know what the engineers thought when doing design reviews for a "selective stand down" feature.…

>I used to work for an ad tech company (which I know already makes me the devil to some around here)

everyone sets the bar below what they do

>even I think that they crossed a line with this

everyone sets the bar below what they do

>I would genuinely like to know what the engineers thought when doing design reviews for a "selective stand down" feature. There doesn't seem to be a legit way to spin it.

everyone sets the bar below what they do

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#160

Post by greiskul »

ndriscoll wrote: post #149
immibis wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly "marketing is all bullshit and hopefully this destroys it faster" It's not like any crime was committed, and civil liability falls squarely on the business here, not its employees. And the whole dispute is only about which marketing company receives marketing revenue - something where the world would improve if they all disappeared overnight. Doesn't really seem that evil to me. Underhanded, yes. I think the…

Yeah I'm not seeing any ethical issue with what Honey did/does. They reduced transaction costs (part of what went to middlemen now goes to the buyer) and helped block some level of surveillance. Sounds good to me. Far more ethical than the people running the tracking/ad programs in the first place.

So when a review channel goes and does lengthy and honest reviews of multiple brands of hardware, a consumer uses this resources to figure out what exactly they want to buy, clicks on the reviewers affiliate link to purchase, oh, thank goodness Honey is there to make sure the customer gets back 89 cents while it keeps the entire commission.

That is absolutely not ethical. And if it is legal, it shouldn't be.

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