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Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

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Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#31

Post by salawat »

delusional wrote: post #16

Likening any of this to Volkswagen emissions compliance scandal does a huge disservice by treating "Affiliate Marketing" as far too important. "Who gets a kickback on this toothbrush" is a much MUCH less important question than "do you pollute the air we are all breathing".

These are the same types who have poisoned the well of information that was the Internet you can actually find things on for the sake of the ad driven model. Far as I'm concerned, the moral injuries are the same even if the physical details are different.

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#32

Post by cowpig »

Waterluvian wrote: post #26
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.…

> what the engineers thought when doing design reviews for a "selective stand down" feature. Possibly a version of, “I lack the freedom to operate with a moral code at work because I’m probably replaceable, the job market makes me anxious, my family’s well-being and healthcare are tied to having a job, and I don’t believe the government has my back.”

Ah yes let's be sure not to judge anyone for anything they do

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#33

Post by fragmede »

the_snooze wrote: post #4

Original MegaLag video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCGT_CKGgFE You'd think that if you were an engineer building and maintaing a system like this, you'd have an "are we the baddies?" moment, but guess not.

Capitalism is great at washing its hands of evil. I don't know how much slavery went into making the smart phone that I'm posting this from, but I'm sure it's not zero. I'm ethically complicit in the whole scheme. The C in ACAB stands for Capitalists. Which unfortunately, is all of us.

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#36

Post by asimovfan »

cowpig wrote: post #32
Waterluvian wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what the engineers thought when doing design reviews for a "selective stand down" feature. Possibly a version of, “I lack the freedom to operate with a moral code at work because I’m probably replaceable, the job market makes me anxious, my family’s well-being and healthcare are tied to having a job, and I don’t believe the government has my back.”

Ah yes let's be sure not to judge anyone for anything they do

People do not make choices in a vacuum.

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#37

Post by golem14 »

quesera wrote: post #13
arionmiles wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's something seriously wrong with this archived link. It's not staying still for one moment. It's constantly twitching and the text scrolls to weird positions. It's unreadable because of this. Is it the archive at fault or is the original webpage this way?

Disable JavaScript, reason #99e99. Works for me here, and in 90% of the cases where someone complains of annoying page behaviour (cookie banners, revenue optimizations, subscription solicitations, "click here to ...", paywalls, ads, et alii ad nauseam). Seriously, just disable JavaScript on unknown/untrusted/undeserving sites. It makes the web tolerable.

Is there actually a whitelist of sites where it's OK/necessary to enable JS ? I'd love to use that (although, I don't know how to load that list into safari or chrome.)

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#38

Post by doctorpangloss »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #19

Apparently this thing got approved for the chrome store, which confirms that "store" approvals are near worthless for malware filtering.

one point of view is why bother with any of this, google knows exactly what honey is doing, they could remove honey from chrome with the stroke of a pen, and that would be that.

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#39

Post by zaphirplane »

Aurornis wrote: post #29
Waterluvian wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what the engineers thought when doing design reviews for a "selective stand down" feature. Possibly a version of, “I lack the freedom to operate with a moral code at work because I’m probably replaceable, the job market makes me anxious, my family’s well-being and healthcare are tied to having a job, and I don’t believe the government has my back.”

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…

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

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#40

Post by Spivak »

cowpig wrote: post #32
Waterluvian wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what the engineers thought when doing design reviews for a "selective stand down" feature. Possibly a version of, “I lack the freedom to operate with a moral code at work because I’m probably replaceable, the job market makes me anxious, my family’s well-being and healthcare are tied to having a job, and I don’t believe the government has my back.”

Ah yes let's be sure not to judge anyone for anything they do

You can still judge them evil even if the parent was accurate as to the motivations for their actions. Villains are more interesting when they're sympathetic.

You're in the planning meeting discussing this feature, you ask "Hey, are we allowed to do this? I thought stand downs were contractural." and your PM says yes, they got the okay from legal. Now what do you do?

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