Comment by short_sells_poo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by short_sells_poo | Hacker News Reader

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short_sells_poo

The finance industry gets (often rightfully) vilified for having flexible morals and reckless profit seeking, but this is not something unique to finance. Finance was traditionally the environment that enabled this sort of behavior, but the root cause is that fundamental human behavior is still fairly reptilian in nature.

As technologists we like to think that we are above this behavior, but we are not. All it takes is someone to wave enough dollar bills in front of our eyes and we'll mostly justify our actions with a mixture of whataboutism and by saying "I'm just a lowly cog in the machine".

I'm seeing a great many parallels in the short term predatory and risky behavior in the financial machinations of the past and the behavior of tech firms including FAANG today. Even with the best intentions, the system eventually evolves to a point where the show is being run by fundamentally the same sort of people in both industries. Perhaps it is because it is these sort of people who strive in a cut-throat corporate environment that is itself in a cut-throat capitalist environment.

I'm not saying this as some sort of hard line leftist either - hell, I work in systematic trading so I'm as much part of the system as one can be. Yeah sure, I should hold true to my morals, but what about all the others who are willing to replace me at a moments notice? I'm just a cog in the machine, my action will not make an ounce of difference and only cause hardship for myself.

Oh the irony!

I agree partially. First of, I don't think the finance industry gets vilified for having flexible morals, they attract hate for having no morals at all.

Certainly, you're right that we depend on each one to say "no, I won't do that", but I feel like there's a difference in quality: evil intent vs willful ignorance/negligence. There might be borderline illegal tax-dodging with large tech companies, there might be irresponsible data security, but there's not a lot that is comparable to the cum-ex-trades that large banks engaged in: no active defrauding of the government and/or citizens. Granted, it may happen once tech corporations have as strong a grip on governments as banks do, and feel secure enough that they won't have to face repercussions if it blows up.

Plenty of banks, and not just the large, global ones have actively engaged in tricking their customers by selling them junk and hiding and/or downplaying important details to get their sales provision, and it wasn't something that was "only known at the top". I've yet to hear of scandals of a similar magnitude in tech. Chrome doesn't contain any hidden crypto-miner, and if it ever will, I doubt that an investigation would reveal everybody on the team knew about it - it would likely just reveal a security breach or a small amount of people subverting the processes.

I do completely agree that tech isn't all sunshine, however. Behind pretty much every large scale data leak is an engineer that said "well okay if you want me to put this database server on the public internet and remove the password, I'm happy to do it" instead of refusing, and behind every horrible overreach in surveillance is an engineer that just blocks out the impact his work has on real people. There are people working on killer drones after all, and I don't think any of them are naive enough to believe that "they only target the bad guys".

> Certainly, you're right that we depend on each one to say "no, I won't do that", but I feel like there's a difference in quality: evil intent vs willful ignorance/negligence.

Oh so you are saying that the willful and deliberate exploitation of people's private data, the willful and deliberate ignorance of laws by companies like Uber, the willful and deliberate "research" done by tech companies to determine the most addictive products to entice people to buy in and stay on particular platforms, the willful and deliberate exploitation of minors by tech companies to get them to spend their parent's money on whatever stupid game or product is the fad of the week, or the fact that there are tech companies running targeted campaigns to influence voter opinion based on stolen private data is all just ignorance/negligence?

I strongly disagree. There is just as much rotten in tech as is in finance, the only difference is that many of the shenanigans enabled by tech have not been outlawed yet. Borderline illegal tax-dodging by large tech companies is business as usual compared to the other crap that they do, but being disruptive and breaking things is hip and cool, and it's Us doing it, and not Them, so we let it slide.

You say that banks are willfully selling junk to customers, and this is true. But this is exactly the whataboutism I was talking about. Tech companies mining people's most private data to get them to buy stuff they don't need is just as insidious, if not more in my book.

I don't see Facebook openly admitting to their users that every single bit of their and their loved one's lives will be exploited to the max to allow thirds parties to influence their opinions based on the wishes of the highest bidder.

I don't see them warning their users that right now they are (maybe) not being profiled by governments for thought crimes, but the data is all there, so if in 10, 20 or 50 years time the government changes, this is a definite and very real risk.

No, I'm not saying that at all. There are _some_ companies that run targeted campaigns to influence elections, sure, but they are a tiny minority in the world of tech. I don't like Uber's business tactics either, but I don't see them as the face of the tech industry - in fact, I don't really see them as a tech company. Count everybody who's main source of income is driving for Uber as an employee and the percentage of employees working tech roles is pretty small. Many large companies (including banks) have more and more complicated tech than Uber.

Again, let me make that clear: I'm not arguing that every company in the tech industry is staffed by angels, but that intentional bad actors in tech are the exception, not the norm.

> Borderline illegal tax-dodging by large tech companies is business as usual

And I haven't said it wasn't, I've merely compared it with what the largest banks have been involved recently. I don't know if it got worldwide coverage - this is what I was referencing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CumEx-Files

> I don't see them warning their users that right now they are (maybe) not being profiled by governments for thought crimes, but the data is all there, so if in 10, 20 or 50 years time the government changes, this is a definite and very real risk.

And I'd love for them to be legally required to explain privacy considerations to their users in such a way that informed consent can be given. Again: I'm not "pro big tech", I'm saying that big tech still has some room if they want to rub shoulders with big finance when it comes to amoral business practices. Big tech operates in a grey area, big finance hasn't seen anything but #000 in decades.

> Again, let me make that clear: I'm not arguing that every company in the tech industry is staffed by angels, but that intentional bad actors in tech are the exception, not the norm.

Just to be completely clear, are you arguing that the opposite is true in finance - i.e., that the norm is to be intentionally malicious?

I'm much closer to that position than the opposite.

This doesn't go for day to day interactions between you and a bank clerk, but rather for product development, sales etc. Fortunately, the industry is much more heavily regulated that the tech industry.

And in finance, they've developed entire management wings called "compliance" to watch over things and make sure that laws are not broken/the firm is not put at risk. I wonder if that will happen here (there is a distinctly smaller set of laws that can be broken, but Zuck apparently is asking for that now...)

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