Hacker News Reader

Comment by meitham | Hacker News Reader

I struggle to see how software developers can willingly do work on a project that goes against all values and morales!

I have previously worked with developers in start-ups and was amazed to hear some of their backgrounds. One previously worked for a company that bundles spyware with freeware MSI products. Another worked for an airline agency, where they advertise fake a discount on tickets when the price was in fact higher than market. Needless to say, their actions outside the work environment matched their actions inside.

View on HN

I struggle to see how software developers can willingly do work on a project that goes against all values and morales!

A $200k/year graduate starting salary is enough to get a lot of people to set their values to one side for a while.

> I struggle to see how software developers can willingly do work on a project that goes against all values and morales!

Personally, this doesn't really go against my morals or values. They installed the app. No one forced them to. Not everyone has the same set of morals and values you do. If it's not illegal and no one is harmed. I don't care so much.

It's the "no one is harmed" part I strongly disagree with. Perhaps they signed up for something and have perfect knowledge of how Facebook will use the information they collect (doubtful) but the rest of us will be impacted, manipulated and harmed in some way by what Facebook ultimately ends up doing with the data that their guinea pigs willingly gave up.

> It's the "no one is harmed" part I strongly disagree with.

I can't prove a negative. So you would have to prove the positive, what harm came from this app?

> what harm came from this app?

Would you say that the current political climate has been harmful? I would. I would not only say that, but I would also say that it's come about specifically because of data collection practices which have enabled data analysis of entire populations in a way which has never been seen before.

While analysis of populations is not inherently bad by itself, the outcome certainly has been, particularly because the abilities and effects are so new that there's little or no law governing people towards positive effects for society as a whole. Without those laws, the effects become geared toward benefiting people at the top either directly (company CEOs) or indirectly (capabilities sold to those who can afford them).

> Would you say that the current political climate has been harmful? I would. I would not only say that, but I would also say that it's come about specifically because of data collection practices which have enabled data analysis of entire populations in a way which has never been seen before.

Seriously, look at the state of peoples finances. That's the cause. Look at the amount of money the rich have compared to those who voted for Trump, Brexit, etc. Look at the quality of life. This has been coming for a long, long time. Blaming on Facebook and Twitter is not very insightful of the state of affairs in the world today.

You don't think the data collection policies these companies have meaningfully enabled and/or contributed to the wealth gap?

No... That would be banks and governments with decades of lax tax laws. This wasn't created overnight, 2008 just highlighted it.

Isn't Cambridge Analytica enough proof that harm has been done by Facebook's data collection and allowing others to access it? That's the very tip of the iceberg.

What harm came from that exactly? More people voted? Is voting harm? Just because you don't like the way someone voted doesn't make it harmful.

My understanding is the entire Cambridge Analytica thing is about privacy and not actual harm from the Facebook aspect.

It was about having enough data to specifically target people with messages that would influence their vote.

At scale, such behaviour cannot possibly be good for democracy.

For me, everything is about, that it could be harmful. And that's true it could be. Lots of things could be harmful. But right now, it's not really provable by anyone that it is. What we need is proper laws to control what companies can do. And in some areas of the world we're getting them. They're not great but like all tbings they will improve.

But it seems very much like there is an attitude like working for Facebook or Google is amoral. That I don't believe. Especially when there are companies sell software to track phones secretly to countries like Iran. That's on the border of amoral.

It was used to figure out which parties were most susceptible to being manipulated with misinformation and outright lies so that they would vote for people whom would ultimately harm their own interests. For example figuring out which groups of liberals could be pushed towards a third party candidate with propaganda so that that a conservative candidate could win the election and disadvantage the same folks. This is straightforward harm even if the election was still technically democratic it was swayed by manipulation partially funded by our enemies and those who aligned themselves with Americas enemies to get a president elected by the minority to harm the interests of the majority in order to enrich a much smaller minority.

>can't prove a negative.

Then why do you assert it as being truthful?

The history of FB's data collection practices is replete with "harm".

I didn't assert that anything was truthful?

And prove the "harm" in its data collection practices. Since you've been very specific in data collection, I will expect your response to be about data collection.

I'm not the original poster but the harm would logically follow from USE of that data now and in the future not the process of collection much like the harm from a long fall doesn't come from the journey but rather the sudden stop at the end.

Voter/election manipulation

I struggle to realize why we expect Software engineers to be bellwethers of morality and ethics. They are flesh and blood, and like any other profession, if there's money in something, there will be someone to do it

We expect all engineers to care and most people, who call themselves engineers take a course of ethics as part of their certification.

It’s an ongoing source of debate and confusion as to what Software ‘Engineer’ means.

Engineers do (like civil, mechanical, electrical) but most software engineers come from a CS background, where there isn’t as much focus on professional ethics.

For one, as professionals and engineers, SEs should absolutely be attuned to and deeply reflective of ethics. That said, we can and should expect everyone to consider ethics in their daily lives and work.

Someone likely will do nearly every unethical thing, but that doesn't mean it is right for anyone to do it.

Correct. There is nothing intrinsically noble about technologists. No Hippocratic oath, no unifying moral code. They’re susceptible to the same pitfalls of professional disregard as anyone. Understanding that will help you temper any unearned trust in software and technology companies.

We should expect everybody to care about the morality and ethics of their actions. That's a pretty low fucking bar IMO. In software, this is one way that manifests.

Other professions are self regulating, if you do unethical things your peers (the AMA or legal boards) will strip you of your license to practice and then you can’t find a job.

It would be too much to expect engineers to somehow be angels without the threat of punishment when even doctors need these systems.

But on the other hand, imagine if you heard about this agile thing but you can’t legally apply it because waterfall is mandated and if you apply agile you might be stripped of your license to practice software engineering.

I am not condoning the unethical practices, but every profession has people who are below the bar you talk about. The reasons why they do it are as varied as the peoples of the world.

>We should expect everybody to care about the morality and ethics of their actions.

This isn't a very meaningful statement as people widely disagree about what the ethical action is.

There was a YC funded company a few years ago that had a similar startup bundling shitware, and pg himself was on here defending them and claiming that users are “choosing” to install the software willingly. It’s astonishing how much one’s decision making framework is tied to their financial incentives. People find a way to rationalize anything if they’re getting paid, and they don’t even realize that they’re doing it.

One of the interesting ideas out there is the evolutionary development of morality, basically it exists to serve our survival, and historically has changed in the right ways to compliment the technology of the time (and the tribes which fail to update their morals die out). So that might just be a feature, not a bug.

Software developers are human beings. This analogy may seem inadequate, but don't you also struggle to see how certain human beings are willing to physically hurt or kill other human beings? This also goes against all values and morales, yet people do it. It's just that your set of values is not the same as other people's. Our world has always been a dark, cruel place, and yet for some reason a lot of western people seem to have forgotten this very apparent fact.

It's almost as if people have different morals and values...

A case like this can be sold to developers in odd ways. Devs typically think that people who download things have way more insite than they do and can assess what putting the certificate on the device means. The team that started the project likely feels that this helps them build a better experience for their users.

Facebook in general seems to have good intentions and terrible awareness of what is crossing a line. They really wanted their platform to be the center of everyone’s lives and now appear completely unprepared for the consequences of pushing that agenda so hard.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

-- Upton Sinclair (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair)

I know a reasonable number of Facebook employees. Their opinions on the last year range from “don’t care/getting paid” to “everyone does it.”

These are good people. They just don’t care.

> These are good people. They just don’t care.

I think these two statements contradict each other.

Or maybe people are a lot more complicated than simplistic notions of what makes a good person.

You should edit that to 'These are people who don't care. It's not good.'

Both comments express this sentiment. I’m pretty judgey myself, but I’ve known these people for ten, twenty years. They are good people but even good people have blind spots.

We love labels don't we? No one is purely good or purely bad. Or purely left or purely right, etc.

Like most things, these things are points along a spectrum, not absolutes. Even that is probably too simplistic - points in n dimensional space I guess :)

> Needless to say, their actions outside the work environment matched their actions inside.

It's a given assumption that anyone who once worked for a shady company is also shady?

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

To any HN readers who work at Facebook: your company is morally decrepit and you are complicit. If you go to LinkedIn and indicate that you're looking, you'll have 20 leads in your inbox by lunch. You don't have to work there.

From Google, MS, Instacart, Uber et al? The reality is that every major tech company does scummy stuff. There are vanishly few tech companies that don't.

There are a fuckload of tech companies. You don't have to work for a big name.

One day you're working for a plucky start up. The next you're working for a big name that's stealing tip money.

There's a reason that these companies do what they do. Fraud, breaking the law, and dark patterns are way easier ways to make money than doing so do ethically and legally. Companies either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain.

I'm exaggerating a bit, but realistically the list of ethical tech companies is a lot shorter than the list of unethical ones.

This really isn't true. The vast majority of tech companies are ethical, at least a far sight more so than Facebook. They don't make headlines so you have a bais.

Glad you’re a moral bastion but I gotta pay the bills and big companies have better work life balance than unicorn startups.

There are lots of ethical companies which are in the middle, too. But that's okay, your moral lackings are definitely excused by your lazy approach to job hunting.

Whataboutism doesn’t help.

There are levels and degrees of bad behavior.

Facebook is rotten from the head down.

Maybe it's just me but I don't think Facebook is particularly bad. They acquire user data and sell it to anyone who wants it. They should better limit the data they collect and who they sell it to. But compared with stealing tip money or literally killing someone? It's just not nearly as bad.

Stealing is bad, but limited in scope. A number of people lost some money.

The data collection gives power to those who hold the data. Having all data on someone gives absolute power. It can be both looking at intimate data to directly manipulate or dominate a person, or apply data science to an incredible detailed corpus of data, and in the future learn things about individuals and groups that we can't even fathom.

What about their dubious involvement in recent elections does that bother you?

> literally killing someone

You’ve presumably not read about Myanmar or fbs involvement in organising genocide?

>What about their dubious involvement in recent elections does that bother

It mostly bothers because it seems like a great deal of the recent hate towards FB is because people blame them for Trump. If Clinton wins I don't think people care.

That said, yes I think FB should do a better job of "know your customer" when selling ads. Obviously they shouldn't sell ads to Russian intelligence. But it doesn't bother me all that much. For one, I don't think it had that big of an impact. For two, it's a dangerous path to go down when you start questioning if your political opponents have the right justifications for their votes.

>You’ve presumably not read about Myanmar or fbs involvement in organising genocide?

Which part of that involved a FB employee going out and literally killing someone?

I was mainly thinking of Brexit, followed by US elections.

In relation to fb, do you see any problem with what happened in Myanmar? They allowed the organising of a genocide.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com