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Comment by NelsonMinar | Hacker News Reader

I always wonder about the engineers at Facebook who implemented a feature like this. Someone like me, more or less. Did they stop to wonder why they were being told to bypass user privacy preferences? Did they raise any internal questions about ethics? Did any of them consider becoming a whistleblower? Or perhaps everyone who works for Facebook is convinced this kind of data sharing is OK?

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I think it's easier to understand how this happens as an aggregate effect instead of "one engineer looked the other way".

As a hypothetical example:

- Some engineer implements the Like/Share buttons to push more users onto Facebook.

- Some engineer working on the ads product realizes that the Like button is a great Trojan horse to gather info about a user's browsing habits. Thinks of it in terms of analytics - "understanding who the users are." Harmless enough, but now we're over the ethical hurdle of collecting that data.

- Another engineer working on the ads product realizes that using this data to target ads could get advertisers to pay more for the same ads. Now you're just using data we already have, right?

- Facebook signs a bespoke advertising deal with some companies which includes access non-anonymous data. Facebook already collects and uses it and users sign it over in terms of service, so... what's the problem with using it in a way that's still advertising, just specific to some new partners?

None of the steps look that bad if you don't look too closely. No engineer had to think too hard about the specific ethical problems, but the aggregate effect is the travesty we have today. If any decision maker along this path stopped to really think about it and cared enough to stop it, this might not have happened, but market competition and general indifference meant nobody really took a long, hard look at this chain of events as it was happening.

Most likely why they aggressively hire college grads and keep the developer workforce young. I doubt they teach corporate ethics in any comp sci program.

> I doubt they teach corporate ethics in any comp sci program.

Actually, when I was in school, there actually was an extensive ethics module in one of the required courses, and I think it was required by an accreditation body or the ACM. It also felt like it was used to satisfy some kind of writing-intensive course requirement, since it consisted of banging out 10-page papers on various topics.

Neither the professors nor the students took it very seriously because everyone was more interested in technology, not philosophy. It felt like it only existed to check-off a checkbox.

Most of the young people getting hired by FAANG are grads from big name schools so they've most definitely taken one or two ethics courses.

I think we're just seeing 22 year olds' ethics are collapsing when they're given $150k/year straight out of school.

It's one thing to understand right from wrong. It's another thing entirely to expect a 22-year old, struggling to get on their feet, to look their boss or a VP in the eye and say "this is not ethical." You're asking them to risk everything: their job, their income, their reputation when they've only just begun.

That's a big ask even for someone who has taken hundreds of ethics courses.

I can only speak for Stanford when I was there, but almost every CS graduate took "Computers, Ethics and Public Policy" as it was the best way to satisfy the degree's "Technology in Society" requirement.

In talking to friends and coworkers it sounds like taking an ethics course was more common than not.

If someone in their 20s doesn't know much about ethics, then we're doing something wrong, as a society.

I'd imagine the issue is more that a recent graduate doesn't necessarily know when or how much to push back

It may also be futile to try to have a meaningful concept and practice of professional ethics without professional autonomy.

The ABA and AMA take a lot of heat here on HN and other libertarian-leaning forums, and some of it is deserved, since they clearly do engage in cartel-like behavior.

However, it is important to remember that they have established a set of laws and practices that give the members of the profession the ability to resist unethical commands from "superiors". For example, generally speaking, a non-lawyer can't own a law firm. Same for physicians. A lawyer must be licensed to practice, and that right can be revoked. A lawyer isn't allowed to say "my boss made me do it", but at the same time, a lawyer can't have a non-lawyer boss, and that boss can't legally go hire someone who isn't a lawyer (and isn't bound by a code of ethics) to do it instead.

I want to be clear that I'm aware that in reality, it doesn't come close to working out this neatly. But the conceptual framework, at least, is there.

I do think programmers are in an untenable position, when they are stripped of any professional strength but called on to resist unethical demands of clients and bosses. And yeah, I do mean stripped, not just denied. A large section of the programming workforce is employed under visa conditions where their employer controls their right to live and work in the US, as well as their position in a very long queue for a green card application. So we aren't just ordinary workers with no special protections but no special liabilities either, we are often a workforce that is particularly vulnerable and unable to push back against the orders of people who aren't ethical and aren't part of our "profession".

This! Knowing that "this is wrong" is only half the battle. Having the political pull to actually push back and have fellow engineers behind you is the other blade of the scissors necessary to actually cut any wrongdoing.

We have a word for "when everyone who pushes back against wrongdoing must go out on a limb and do it at tremendous personal expense": Gomorrah. (I mean, in the sense of wanton immorality, not the dubious sexual mores.)

Ethics, labour, and politics are intertwined. A single parent risks blacklisting and imploding a means of income, for example.

Markets regulate themselves to a profit driven “ethics” solution that reverberates.

ABET requires an ethics course to get a computer science degree.

The question to ask is rather, how much money is OK to remain silent. Unfortunately for the majority it’s not in the millions. Almost any big corporation does some activity that are not strictly in the ethical norms. To me, strict laws must be passed and people must be held accountable to really see a change.

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