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Comment by throwaway613834 | Hacker News Reader

What sucks is I can't just tell my friends "you're working for an evil company -- just look at {insert 5 evil things they did in the past couple years}". It sucks even more that these are some of the kindest and most caring people I know, with better moral character than myself -- I almost feel they somehow got brainwashed into their jobs. But who would enjoy hearing that? At best they would ignore it; at worst you'd just lose friends. How can you possibly tell them they're making the world worse when you know they'd never do this intentionally?

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If you're a friend, you won't try to control them. Debate in search for truth; admit you might be the one who's wrong. Especially to yourself. But never control.

That's a philosophy that bit me hard when I didn't follow it, so just trying to pass it along.

I think techies are far too used to wielding power. Assume for a moment that the world is evil. What now? Historically, the answer was "Accept it." The idea that we could even do anything to meaningfully change the situation is very recent.

Concretely, starting a startup is one of the few ways you can influence the world. Failing that, there's nothing you can do, so you shouldn't worry about it. Once the cake is in the oven, it'll turn out however it'll turn out.

> If you're a friend, you won't try to control them.

Damn straight. But also not relevant to what throwawayN's post. He/she/it is worried about offending people and not worried about a lack of control.

I say buggrit, don't worry, just tell it like you imagine it its. That is in no way an attempt to control.

I'm a Googler, and glad to be one. But if you want to tell me that Google is evil, well that's great. We could dive deep and find out about what your objections are, and have a great time talking about what is right and wrong about your thoughts and right and wrong about my company.

But if I were the sort get all outraged by our mere opinion, then it would be me trying to control you. In which case, why would my feelings be worth damn?

Yeah, nothing is exactly what I've been doing so far. I'm just wondering if that's really the best I can do.

Well, that sort of begs the question: Why did you feel you could do anything in the first place?

It sounds like a dopey question, but it's at the root of a lot of these feelings. I used to feel similarly to you: a general sense of malaise, a discomfort with the world, a plan for doing something concrete to change it.

But everyone has limited ambition. If you don't focus it like a laser, you won't get anything done. Then suddenly your time is gone.

I suppose my point is, relax and enjoy yourself. Choose whatever goal you really care about, and focus on that one thing. What Facebook does was never up to us in the first place. Besides, they're far less evil than Microsoft was at its peak. America isn't so bad right now.

I think it's important to focus on a goal you really care about, but at the same time: be open to other people who've chosen other goals, trust them that they're doing the right thing, and if you can help them with little effort, help them.

If you're focusing on fixing one thing, but you can't get anyone to follow you, you're not going to accomplish anything. Doing the small and low-effort things that, together with other people doing the same, also improve the world - that's really underrated, in my opinion.

Without getting into whether Facebook is more or less evil than peak MS, I think the problem even if an internet company is only a little evil, that evil has much more reach. Peak MS really just affected other tech companies and user choice.

> Well, that sort of begs the question: Why did you feel you could do anything in the first place?

I don't know if I can... that's why I'm asking if I can. If feeling hopeless is the best I can do then so be it, but I'm thinking maybe people have had better success.

It's funny. Many years ago, I left academia for NGOs, thinking that I could make a difference. That kept me busy for a decade or so. But looking back, nothing that I accomplished actually made any difference.

Now I'm a privacy fanatic. And my goals are far less grand. I get that most people have little privacy anymore. And I get that there's little hope for them. So I focus on raising awareness, writing how-to guides, etc.

That's not exactly "feeling hopeless". It's more like being realistic.

> Concretely, starting a startup is one of the few ways you can influence the world

...until you get funding. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

What's the point of having an opinion if it's not a morally normative one? /s

My response to you would be the following:

1. Working for a company doesn't mean you agree with everything they do. 2. Just because some of the work you do is used by someone else for something you don't agree with doesn't mean that you're evil by default. 3. Try to find a tool that can't be used for "evil". Seriously, I doubt you can find a single thing, whether a device or an application that can't both do good and bad. Should your friends refuse to create anything because it might be put to a use they don't agree with? 4. How do you know they haven't stopped things that you would have considered even worse? Pretty much any job is going to have stuff that you can't talk about, whether for IP, legal, or other reasons.

And at the end of the day, your friends have their own moral codes, just like you do. If they feel that the work they do fits their code, then that's their decision.

My replies would be the following:

1. Right, I realize this. That's one part of why they're still my friends!

2. I never said my friends are evil because of this. I in fact said quite the opposite.

3. The question is not whether something can be used for "evil", but whether it is. If it is, ideally people shouldn't be contributing to it.

4. I have no idea. I'm also not sure how this comes into play.

> 3. The question is not whether something can be used for "evil", but whether it is. If it is, ideally people shouldn't be contributing to it.

This is difficult, though. If a thing is used for evil, but also for good, where do you draw the line and say the bad is outweighing the good and the thing has to go?

> This is difficult, though. If a thing is used for evil, but also for good, where do you draw the line and say the bad is outweighing the good and the thing has to go?

That's secondary to the question I'm asking. The question I'm asking is how to even bring up the topic in the first place. If I can get that far I think I've already done pretty well.

My advice would be to start by ditching the word 'evil'. It's ambiguous, and has religious connotations that probably only serve to confuse rather than clarify. Try describing your issues with these companies in more precise terms.

> And at the end of the day, your friends have their own moral codes, just like you do. If they feel that the work they do fits their code, then that's their decision.

That's either vacuous or bullshit.

If you mean that they do in fact decide what they do ... well, yeah? But that does not say anything about whether they should be doing it, nor whether I should agree with it, nor even whether I should try and do something to prevent it.

On the other hand, if you mean that it's acceptable because it is compatible with their own moral codes ... now, that's some dangerous bullshit. If your moral code says that you should kill witches, that does not justify anything at all.

>If your moral code says that you should kill witches, that does not justify anything at all.

Although I agree, I think it's worth asking "why not?" to introspect our own position. I'll take a stab at it from my perspective.

We might say it doesn't justify anything because we have some moral code that we think everyone should abide by, and part of that might be "Don't go around killing people". Some people turn some parts of the collective moral code into laws so they can be tangibly enforced.

But at a level above law, what is the authority that determines that killing people is absolutely wrong and not just personally repugnant to the majority of the world's population? In other places and times laws might say, for instance, that to combat overpopulation we need to euthanize those under a certain threshold of contribution.

To fight this, we either need to come to terms with the idea that morals and laws are just a matter of personal taste, in which case there's nothing really justifying our own position either and we're just fighting for our personal preference, or we need some higher authority beyond ourselves/consensus/law that justifies our "don't kill people" position and condemns their "euthanize the parasites" position.

To me, morality seems to fall prey to Tarski's undefinability theorem. There can be no definition of moral truth within the system of morality. We need some external system to define moral truth.

> But at a level above law, what is the authority that determines that killing people is absolutely wrong and not just personally repugnant to the majority of the world's population?

I believe that you can strongly believe that witches should be killed and also know that you shouldn't do it, without having to subscribe to some universalising authority that tells you what to believe.

Generally speaking, people should act on their strong beliefs, but they need to do so aware of the fact that any one of their strong beliefs could be wrong. When it comes to something as serious and permanent as killing, then you should know that even a small chance of your strong belief being wrong is unacceptable and strong belief is therefore not a sufficient reason to do such a thing.

> Although I agree, I think it's worth asking "why not?" to introspect our own position.

Well, sure, nothing wrong with asking the question, though the direct answer is pretty trivial: Because justification is by definition about reducing one claim to another (set of) claim(s), while "my moral code says I should kill witches" is simply a synonym for "I think I should kill witches", and as such just structurally is not a justification at all (as opposed to a bad or insufficient justification) when the question is "Why do you think you should kill witches?" because it just rephrases the same claim in different words.

> But at a level above law, what is the authority that determines that killing people is absolutely wrong and not just personally repugnant to the majority of the world's population?

That question doesn't really make sense to me. What does "absolute wrong" even mean? That seems like an undefined term to me. And why would this standard of an "absolute wrong" be something that we would have any use for?

> In other places and times laws might say, for instance, that to combat overpopulation we need to euthanize those under a certain threshold of contribution.

So?!

> To fight this, we either need to come to terms with the idea that morals and laws are just a matter of personal taste, in which case there's nothing really justifying our own position either and we're just fighting for our personal preference

That's both false and kindof self-contradictory.

A major part of justification is exactly about convincing other people, or you could say "fighting for our personal preference". In that regard, exactly that which convinces other people is the justification.

Another component of justification is about self-consistency and consistency with knowledge about the external world: Independently from trying to convince other people, you can try and find ways to falsify your moral claims, either by trying to find contradicting evidence in the external world, or by trying to identify internal inconsistencies within your moral framework. If you don't find any inconsistencies, that is a tentative justification for yourself.

> or we need some higher authority beyond ourselves/consensus/law that justifies our "don't kill people" position and condemns their "euthanize the parasites" position.

How would that solve anything? You just have pushed back the problem of justification to the question of why this particular authority should be the one to use as the standard, haven't you? I don't see how that would possibly be an alternative?!

> There can be no definition of moral truth within the system of morality. We need some external system to define moral truth.

That seems like a category mistake to me?! Why is moral truth something that needs to be defined, let alone defined within itself, rather than just something that needs to be discovered, and formulated as tentative conclusions subject to revision, as all empirical discovery is?

This is something I've been wrestling with as well. Several of my friends work for Google or Facebook.

I've discussed this at length with some of them. Several seem to object strongly to, for example, Congress's block of the FCC's proposed ISP privacy rules. Yet they work for companies which implement forms of tracking which are substantially similar. Some work directly on implementation of said tracking.

I find it frustrating since each and every one of them has other options. In the words of Jeff Hammerbacher: "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks."

People are more responsible for what they do than what their company does. I'd invite you to judge your peers more based on their individual choices than who pays them. If you are an American are you responsible for the evil of that nation? You'd probably say no. So goes with your tech friends.

Best advice is don't do this. Your friends are adults, and 1000 people work for a company for 1000 different reasons. It is a job after all. Not everyone is comfortable being given moral lectures.

Which justifies doing evil or letting people do evil how exactly?

Depends. If they are just writing regular code for some subsystems' subsytem, why is that evil? TBH, calling out a person to quit just because one don't agree his/her employer's deeds before having a full understanding whether that person is directly involved or not, tells quite a lot about one's hubris.

> If they are just writing regular code for some subsystems' subsytem, why is that evil?

Why should it be relevant whether you are "writing regular code for some subsystems' subsytem"? Shouldn't the relevant question be whether your contribution is "net evil" or "net good"?

How would you suggest we defend against an institution dividing the work to build some hypothetical ultimate evil into thousands of "regular small pieces"? Would it help any of the victims of the ultimate evil that is was built by many individuals, each one of them building a "regular small piece", instead of by one mastermind alone?

Not everyone draws the line at the same spot. Everyone's constraints in life are different.

Also, talking from a position of "I know I am right. Why are you not thinking the same way as me?" is generally not effective at getting other people to see things from your perspective.

> Not everyone draws the line at the same spot.

Which is correct, but not a justification?

> Everyone's constraints in life are different.

In which case those constraints might be the justification, not simply the fact that their contribution is a small contribution, wouldn't it?

> Also, talking from a position of "I know I am right. Why are you not thinking the same way as me?" is generally not effective at getting other people to see things from your perspective.

Nor is staying within the constraints of the preconceived notions that make it impossible to see the problem with someone's position. But feel free to suggest alternative approaches to this problem that you have experience to be working better.

The use of the word 'justification' tells me that you have already judged the actions and are looking for people to explain them. This ties into the last point I was trying to make. From this, it appears (to me) unlikely that our conversation will lead to us being in agreement: we see the world quite differently.

EDIT: Since you brought up the subject of what I could suggest, I'd like to add this: I'd just talk to people and see what they think: not in terms of "explain your actions" but in terms of "help me understand".

> The use of the word 'justification' tells me that you have already judged the actions and are looking for people to explain them.

Well, how else could things possibly work? Without any judgement on my part, I couldn't even know whether there is even anything I don't understand or that I disagree about, and what could I possibly expect other than that people explain their position to me?

> From this, it appears (to me) unlikely that our conversation will lead to us being in agreement: we see the world quite differently.

Which seems like a weird reason to me?! Aren't you essentially saying "we probably won't be in agreement because we are not in agreement"?!

> Since you brought up the subject of what I could suggest, I'd like to add this: I'd just talk to people and see what they think: not in terms of "explain your actions" but in terms of "help me understand".

Which are essentially synonyms? I mean, I can see that wording can make a difference in how people react, but I fail to see the fundamental difference between "explaining" and "helping to understand"?!

As for why I think we can't come to an agreement, it's not because we are already in disagreement but because I believe (from this tiny conversation) that our views on things are so far apart that it's hard to bridge that gap in this medium and in a short period of time.

As for the last part, I'd like you to consider why people react differently to those wordings.

I've also observed that the wording doesn't matter if only the wording has changed but the attitude hasn't.

> As for why I think we can't come to an agreement, it's not because we are already in disagreement but because I believe (from this tiny conversation) that our views on things are so far apart that it's hard to bridge that gap in this medium and in a short period of time.

In which case I still don't see the point of bringing it up?! I mean, either you think it is worthwhile to discuss something, then you do, or you don't, then you don't. What's the point of engaging about something and then wasting bandwidth with explanations of why you think it's a waste of bandwidth?

> As for the last part, I'd like you to consider why people react differently to those wordings.

Now, are we talking about people as in "people out there" or as in you?

Because while I can see that different approaches are more useful when trying to reach different people, it seems to me a bit like you are trying to reject arguments on purely formal grounds even when you understand them perfectly well, which ultimately is just evasion and not sincere communication, and I don't see it as my job to overcome that artificial burden.

> I've also observed that the wording doesn't matter if only the wording has changed but the attitude hasn't.

So, what is the attitude that you imagine and how is it a problem?

I agree. This conversation is a waste of bandwidth. I did say that it is going to be one. I tip my hat to you and leave this thread.

I once asked a guy who worked on control systems for missiles what he thought about the ethics of it. He looked confused and said 'I've never really thought about it until now'. We left it at that, but I consider it a win.

There's no reason to assume by default that any worker has thought about the ethical side of his job and is in it for anything more than a good paycheck and self-interest.

Techies included (and HN is good proof of that)

1. s/self-interest/short-sighted self-interest/

2. still, never thinking about it guarantees that you won't notice anything is wrong, so getting someone to think about it at all is a good thing in any case, for it opens the chance that they do

Is every single job at those companies really making the world worse in a way that other jobs aren't? How about all the technologies and research that have come out of specific teams' work?

I don't know how to respond to this. If you're a software engineer with a typical role at {insert "evil" company here} who is just trying to do the best in their role, are you making the world a better or a worse place? It's not like they're making the product decisions (and that's what I've been telling myself -- they're not the ones making the decisions; they're just implementing them), but it's also not like they aren't contributing to the "success" of their company. And certainly they could be working somewhere else that has a more positive role in making the world a better place. How do you draw a line?

What is the level of culpability for a foot soldier in the army of an evil dictator? What is the level if they committed no atrocities? How about if they were an active participant? How about if they were zealous and inspired new levels of atrocious behavior?

I don't have an answer and those are rhetorical questions. The point I'm laboring to make is that there are varied levels of culpability. There are also varied levels of evilness.

We like to see the world in binary fashion, I think. This may not be new, but it is getting a lot more visible. Look at the political arena and the divisions between the politically active.

Hmm... How to describe this?

If I make a post that supports the right of Nazis to speak freely, I'm assumed to be as evil as they are (by some) and should be punched in the face. Yet, if I am speaking with White Nationalists and post a comment that supports the right for AntiFa to speak freely, I'm called everything from a Jew to communist.

They don't actually take the time to stop and think that I'm not actually any of those things, that I'm just supporting the right to free speech - for everyone. If I'm not supporting Hillary, I'm supporting Trump - even though I voted for Stein.

So, there are varied levels of evil and good - yet people seem to often focus on the extremes. Is Google evil? Maybe, but they've made mountains of information easily discoverable at no direct financial costs to the end user. Is Facebook evil? Maybe, but they've enabled broad communication with family and friends you might never have had the means to maintain on your own. Is Microsoft evil? Maybe, but they've done more to make the personal computer ubiquitous than any other company.

It's very much a sliding scale and no company is completely evil, as is no one person. Well, except Oracle - they are pretty evil!

I guess where you draw the line is a personal thing and, like the rest, is on a sliding scale. It's easier to try to place things into boxes and label them good and evil, but that's intellectually lazy and not very accurate. Even the most evil companies aren't entirely evil.

shrugs

That's my takeaway, for what it's worth. I also try really hard to not judge or to control. I do have lines that can be crossed, but I try to be understanding and have empathy.

I'm not sure if this helps, but it works for me.

It seems to me that the basically religious concept of "evil" causes a lot of confusion.

What Google, Facebook, and Amazon are is primarily extremely powerful.

The U.S. government, say, does a lot of nasty, undesirable things; it also does a lot of benevolent, desirable things.

Working in these institutions means, to varying degrees, aligning yourself with the motives of extremely powerful entities.

But of course it also means potentially influencing that power in a way that you and your peers would recognize as benevolent.

Neither Google, Facebook, nor Amazon have core missions that are obviously bad, i.e., they are not directly opposed to a free society, they are not fundamentally violent, they are basically not the Nazi Party.

But they do share a core mission that is enormously expansive, kind of like the East India companies. Operationally, they are very likely to use some foul tactics in order to grow and compete.

As long as we have the global kind of capitalism where for-profit corporations grow into hyperobjects, it seems like we will have a top layer of quasi-monopolies using information technology and capital accumulation to dominate.

And according to the ideology, you can't really stop that without violating the principles of liberty. Basically to prevent such formations you need a powerful state, and that state will itself be such a formation, except with elections (hopefully, and maybe only nominally).

You might even need a global state-like entity, right?

If we use the word evil to describe Google, Facebook, and Amazon, I think we should rather say that the structure of capitalism is evil, and that'll get you into trouble.

Especially because this is a forum topically and structurally centered on the very impulse to launch exponentially growing IT firms.

This site is a promotional and educational wing of Y Combinator, which in its essence desires to be a recursively powerful generator of new mega-corporations, structurally bound to the multiplication of accumulated capital.

So, umm, yeah.

The main issue with this argument is that you can't really choose the government you live in, especially if it's under a strong dictator (e.g. you can move from the US, you can't just from North Korea), but you can choose who you work for, especially when it deals with tech companies.

> Is Google evil? Maybe, but they've made mountains of information easily discoverable at no direct financial costs to the end user. Is Facebook evil? Maybe, but they've enabled broad communication with family and friends you might never have had the means to maintain on your own. Is Microsoft evil? Maybe, but they've done more to make the personal computer ubiquitous than any other company.

Or have they?

Just because a monopoly provides a useful service, doesn't mean that without that monopoly we wouldn't have that useful service, in which case their net contribution to society would not actually be that service, but just their monopoly power over the service, which is not exactly a net positive.

Soldiers typically have a duty to refuse immoral orders.

And what if the soldier was never given immoral orders but was a simple cook who fed those who carried out the orders?

I know what you're saying, but that's why I listed all those example questions. I listed them to show there are various levels of culpability and various levels of evil.

Where you draw the line is a personal thing and I'm not qualified to suggest where you draw it on an individual level.

Really, the important question is: What realistic chance did they have to not contribute without killing themselves? I guess one can argue about whether people should also be required to kill themselves to prevent evil, but that certainly is a good minimum.

A duty to whom? In most armies and wars, insisting to refuse an order, moral or not, will get you in front of a firing squad (or, if it's a really civilized army, in jail).

The allied powers collectively decided that I was just following orders was not a credible defence of anything during the Nuremberg trials.

I kind of see their point - under this defense, the only person you could really convict would be Hitler (everybody else was following orders). I'm guessing the logic here is that if you were for example a commander a Nazi death squad that was doing mass murders of Jews in Eastern Poland, then yeah, you were following orders, but you could have also asked to be transferred to something else.

I'm not sure this logic would hold for Soviet genocides though (not that they were tried at Nuremberg), as I suspect a hint of hestitation from say NKWD commander would probably result in him being promptly sent to Gulag to die. During Stalin's rule, pretty much everybody was operating with a gun to their heads at all times.

I think the logic during the trials was that even if disobeying orders meant punishment such as torture or death, that was preferable to committing the crimes for which they were standing trial.

As in, your potential death or suffering at the hands of your superiors is also not a credible defence for what you did.

That obviously makes a lot more sense in the context of war crimes and crimes against humanity though.

Well, it does depend on the army, I admit. And "immoral" was probably not a good term. More like "an order that seems to violate policy". But following illicit orders can also get you in trouble.

That sounds very much like the "just following" orders defence, also known as "Superior Orders". More details @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders

Yeah I know. But it's also true that if they tried to do the opposite of what they were told (or if they just refused) then they'd get fired. So what do you do?

Just stop pretending that working at {Google, Facebook, Amazon, ...} is the highest goal that a tech person can strife for. A see a lot of students who seem to have that as their goal in life.

Also, we have to be honest with ourselves. While we (as a community) were hating Microsoft, we made Google our tech darling. Now they are ethically probably as rotten as Microsoft were in the early ~2000s. We should stop putting companies on pedestals. Then they might suck less talent out of other potential startups, academia, and non-profits and create a healthier economy.

I think practically this means investing in open standards, open source, and open networks (Mastodon for Twitter, MusicBrainz for CDDB, Openstreetmap for Google/Apple maps, etc.). Also, tech people and journalists should continue to expose bad behaviour of companies.

This is the thing I don't get. While certainly Google, Facebook, and Amazon are working on a lot of interesting problems, they're also big behemoths and your individual contribution isn't going to be all that noticeable.

At this point in my career I could likely get a job at any of the three of them if I wanted to and worked at it, but I'm not really sure I want to. I'd rather work at a smaller company where what I do every day actually matters as to whether or not the company will succeed or fail.

I guess that's just my preference, though; perhaps people like at G/F/A because they get to work on interesting projects without the stress associated with their output being a make-or-break for the company. And there's certainly more job security at a larger company than one that could more easily slip into hard times.

> Just stop pretending that working at {Google, Facebook, Amazon, ...} is the highest goal that a tech person can strife for. A see a lot of students who seem to have that as their goal in life.

It's not, you have to admit, a terrible goal. Granted, a lot of the people at the big 4 do rather mundane things but there are also opportunities at those places to build software that (literally) affects the whole world and leave lasting contributions to the software engineering field for those with the talent and drive.

> Also, we have to be honest with ourselves. While we (as a community) were hating Microsoft, we made Google our tech darling. Now they are ethically probably as rotten as Microsoft were in the early ~2000s.

I'm incredibly amused to see people starting to say this because I've been around enough to remember when IBM was the "ethically rotten" behemoth and Microsoft was the tech darling who saved us from their evil clutches; the more things change, the more they stay the same. I don't think people will stop putting companies on a pedestal; it makes for too compelling a narrative.

Who will be the new tech darling to save us from Google's evil clutches?

A see a lot of students who seem to have that as their goal in life.

I wonder if that really is their goal? I think if you pushed them on it you'll probably find that their true life goal was to earn a massive salary while hanging out with smart people and fucking around with cool tech. It just so happens that (they believe that) {Google, Facebook, Amazon, ...} will offer them that.

I suspect there is a good reason that Google, Facebook etc. structure their work setting on an idealized version of the university campus.

I wonder if that really is their goal?

The aspects that you mention definitely count as well, but I think that prestige is a large part of it (both in the field and among family/friends).

They will also provide free food, a laundry service, etc. It's basically like having your mother look after you!

The most productive thing: Voice dissent. Ensure the higher-ups have thought through their position and the consequences. Assume they know things you don't. Ultimately, follow the order.

Once it's their call, you're absolved of any responsibility. Both morally and in every meaningful sense.

Once it's their call, you're absolved of any responsibility. Both morally and in every meaningful sense.

Uhm, no? You have another choice: not working for companies that work as privatised spying agencies.

> Once it's their call, you're absolved of any responsibility. Both morally and in every meaningful sense.

WTF? There are still people who haven't grasped that that is basically the recipe for all man-made humanitarian catastophes in human history?

You need to draw the line somewhere, though.

As an extreme example, if a company I worked at decided that they were going to murder someone, I would certainly voice my dissent. If they decided to continue to go through with it, I'd quit.

Sure, that's a bit hyperbolic, but consider companies like Palantir that work on things that actively erode citizen privacy. I'd never work at a company like that, and if my employer suddenly shifted gears to work on things like that, I'd quit.

"Following orders" is for the military... and even then I would hope someone in the armed forces would refuse to comply with an unlawful or otherwise morally horrible order.

Okay, so how do I get my friends to do that is the question. Conveying this requires getting them to admit there is something wrong with what their employer is doing in the first place, and at that point I'd be already past the obstacle I'm trying to figure out how to overcome.

After reading most of the comments, I think you tell them bluntly what you're thinking.

If they listen to you, maybe they'll quit. If you lose their friendship, you can make new ones who don't work for evil companies.

And if they keep doing evil things for a living but still want to be your friend, maybe you should be the one to end the friendship. I've done that a few times. It gets easier with practice.

If they listen to you, maybe they'll quit. If you lose their friendship, you can make new ones who don't work for evil companies.

This is what I meant by "Don't try to control your friends."

If you don't let your friends have radically different beliefs from your own, you're just making an echo chamber for yourself.

If your intent is to improve the world, and not just act superior, I don't see what this accomplishes. Hear dissent without action long enough and it becomes noise.

That sounds ridiculously cynical and half-arsed to me.

This accomplishes nothing.

Higherups will usually defend by hiding behind the process - aka the virtual will and orders of the social golem that is a company.

And nobody alone is responsible for the process. There is not necessary a feeling of responsibility on top- just because powers are granted by the process.

As Lord Varys convinced himself- "I am not the one doing it."

Search makes the world better, using search placement to drive competitors out of the market makes the world worse. So the same company could have both good and evil parts. The internal decision makers shape the overall alignment of the company.

Market can't fix that, especially when there are almost monopolistic positions. Regulations can. Maybe there are other ways but don't count on boycotts or things like that. See how much people is ready to give away for convenience (e.g. privacy.)

Technologies are, to some extent more neutral. These people might not be doing much to make the world worse, but they are still pedalling along a bit.

Most of the research coming out of SV tech companies nowadays is yet annother chat platform, and reimplementing broken C code in broken JavaScript code.

Is it making the World a better place? I don't think so. Is it making it a worse place? Only for other developers :)

> Most of the research coming out of SV tech companies nowadays is yet annother chat platform, and reimplementing broken C code in broken JavaScript code.

I don't think so, there is a lot of stuff happening in a place that called SV. Maybe you are referring to the cool startup bunch?

Indeed I do, but also many other unnecessary innovations came out of SV, as well as some interesting Research, which end up used for solving problems which don't exist.

What's wrong with unnecessary innovations? There were lots of inventions/discoveries that didn't solve any existing problem during their time of discovery.

Their marketing is annoying me.

Thing is, if not me, then someone else. At least I am aware of the issues and can try to limit them as much as possible. I'm still bound to my salary, but at least I have ethics. The next one they get might not.

What do you consider an evil company though? Are Google and Facebook evil, because they don't preserve your privacy? I certainly don't consider them evil, but you might. Maybe they just have a different idea of evil than you. Or maybe they don't really care too much, and are OK working for an "evil" company if they are making tonnes of money doing it.

> It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!

- Upton Sinclair

You understand that they are employees and not employers? Are you self-employed/entrepreneur or do you have a passive income?

> It sucks even more that these are some of the kindest and most caring people I know, with better moral character than myself

Evidently not? I'd really be curious how you come to that conclusion, when they apparently don't have the first clue as to how to recognize evil, nor do they seem to care? Are you sure that that's not just the image they promote of themselves, rather than an actual assessment of their behaviour?

> Evidently not? I'd really be curious how you come to that conclusion

Uhm... what sort of a response are you expecting that could convince you here?

> when they apparently don't have the first clue as to how to recognize evil, nor do they seem to care?

How are you so certain that I'm recognizing the evil correctly in the first place? Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to first question that before questioning my assessment of my friends' character?

> Are you sure that that's not just the image they promote of themselves, rather than an actual assessment of their behaviour?

How high of a bar is "sure" for you? I'm not even "sure" I understand all of my own parents' motivations in life well, let alone my friends'. The way you phrase your question I don't get the impression I could meet that bar realistically about anyone. I can say I'm "sure" enough that I'm considering the possibility of them getting brainwashed as significantly more likely than them having poor moral character. Not sure what other metric I can use really.

> Uhm... what sort of a response are you expecting that could convince you here?

Well, some sort of reasoning? Like, what do you observe about these friends that leads you to that conclusion?

> How are you so certain that I'm recognizing the evil correctly in the first place? Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to first question that before questioning my assessment of my friends' character?

I'm not sure why there should be a priority between those question?! It's certainly a valid question, but I just accepted your premise in that regard for the sake of the discussion. After all, I am not trying to come to a conclusion about your friends (whom I don't know anyway), but rather I am trying to understand how you reconcile your observation that they are doing something that you would consider evil with the conclusion that they are of "better moral character than [your]self". To me it seems like that would be a contradiction in terms.

I guess I could also just ask what you mean by "good moral character", that this does not cause a contradiction?

> How high of a bar is "sure" for you? I'm not even "sure" I understand all of my own parents' motivations in life well, let alone my friends'. The way you phrase your question I don't get the impression I could meet that bar realistically about anyone.

I guess I meant something along the lines of "reasonably sure". But also, this wasn't so much a question about your friends, but a question about you: How do you come to the conclusion that they are of "better moral character"? What about those friends makes you think that? And have you considered whether your conclusion isn't more based on what they claim to be, rather than on what you have actually observed them to be?

> I can say I'm "sure" enough that I'm considering the possibility of them getting brainwashed as significantly more likely than them having poor moral character.

I guess that goes back to the question of what your definition of "moral character" is, but wouldn't brainwashing impair moral character?

This is dangerous.

You are slipping in an assumption that the moral character of people is well reflected by the social institutions they belong to. Nothing I have seen about the world, or read about history gives the slightest hint favouring that assumption.

Worse, you are implying that people should be judged by what social context they exist in. It seems far more likely that good people and bad people can end up in all sorts of situtions.

> You are slipping in an assumption that the moral character of people is well reflected by the social institutions they belong to. Nothing I have seen about the world, or read about history gives the slightest hint favouring that assumption.

Do you think that still holds when you only consider those cases that people actually realistically had control over, and also exclude those who intentionally worked to subvert the institution they were nominally a part of? After all, being the member of a totalitarian state that doesn't allow you to leave the country is a bit of a different thing than signing an employment contract in the US, and I highly suspect that the people we are talking about here also are not in the class of people intentionally subverting the companies they work in, because chances are friends who care about this would know.

> Worse, you are implying that people should be judged by what social context they exist in. It seems far more likely that good people and bad people can end up in all sorts of situtions.

Well, not as black and white as you make it out to be, that's just a simplification for the sake of being able to discuss things at all. But I absolutely think that social context is significantly correlated with how people should be judged, yes.

Also, what exactly do you mean by "moral character"? I don't think it's a particularly well-defined term.

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