reminder that managers and engineers promoted, developed, and shipped these changes at all of the companies listed in the article, knowing exactly how this change was going to affect people working in these roles. pathetic.
Certainly designing and developing such systems violates the codes of ethics of professional societies such as the ACM and IEEE.
Every time I encounter such a piece of software or read a story like this HN post, I think "who on earth would think that writing software like this is even remotely OK?"
It's disappointing that there seem to be so many ethical lapses in our profession.