https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)
I'll take a flight simulator hidden in Excel over widespread, systematic violations of privacy any day thanks. Want to maintain trust from your customers? Don't spy on them.
Seems like there are a lot of other practices they do which are far more harmful to user trust.
It wasn't like this was an either/or situation... a manager wasn't deciding between prioritizing not participating in PRISM or not making an Easter egg.... in fact, I can almost guarantee this person wasn't involved in the PRISM decision.
However, that would seem to be based on an idea of valuing which is absolute, and which accepts no trade-offs. Conceivably they could value user trust (at least, instrumentally value it), but value what they would get out of doing [prism] more, per amount of lost user trust, then they value what they would get from [easter eggs] per amount of (somehow?) lost user trust.
(Words in square brackets are abbreviations for the activity relevant to the words in the square brackets)
Since they participated in PRISM-level trust violation, they can't improve trust at the level of guaranteeing no easter eggs.
It would be like cheating on a spouse and then building back trust by promising and delivering on a "no practical jokes" policy.
Well, it’s a start
They aren't being paid to implement Easter eggs. The job is to produce software that effectively helps users within bounds of the law. The government says they have to spy on their users, so it isn't like Microsoft can do otherwise.
Yes.
You must be trolling me.
The article as written is completely different than the article as written plus something like what I quoted from you pasted at the bottom.
The article is arguing that there is a proper engineering choice to be made (Do I include Easter Eggs? No, primarily because it is an unnecessary bug vector that erodes user trust). The root of this thread is an argument observation that users shouldn't trust the software anyway. Fair enough, that is certainly true.
But there isn't a choice for MS about whether they help with PRISM. The US government is going to force them to. In a framework of what decisions the developer makes there are no choices to be made - they have to implement PRISM.
It isn't reasonable to argue about something outside their sphere of influence when assessing what principles are good and bad. PRISM doesn't erode anyone's trust in the competence of Microsoft's engineering, it is just a general erosion of trust in American software. Nothing MS can do about it.
I'm arguing that the article should be seen as trust in engineering competence. Not trust in the abstract.
You can even make a point that anyone who ever worked for them has become significantly less trustworthy.