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Comment by burnished | Hacker News Reader

What a bizarre attitude. If you change people's minds they behave differently.

Hell even in your example, there is a difference between some programmer who tells themselves this and some person who raises a stink; suddenly doing unethical shit slows you down, costs political capital, and approaches being more trouble than its worth. Fewer shit things will get done because there will be less energy to pursue them.

I'm not even suggesting you go out and be some citizen activist - just be normal. You'd have feedback for other kinds of stupid idea.

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It's ultimately on developers as the last, ethical line of defense: They're the ones typing in the code at the end of the day. Without them, the bosses couldn't implement these things. Unfortunately, for every good developer who draws a line in the sand, there's Bob, two desks down, who is happy to implement whatever dark pattern boss tells him to. Fuck Bob.

What we really need is some kind of Hippocratic Oath for Software, that we all agree to and can collectively use to resist this shit. Not going to happen, but one can dream.

Or a Union like the writers/actors guilds.

I don't think asking for a sign up is unethical, at least not on the same magnitude as the actual Hippocratic Oath is concerned with. I'd envision the Hippocratic Oath for Software might have something to say about writing software for ICE or despotic regimes but not asking the user to sign up. One is unethical, the other is just annoying.

At what point does the constant, ever-present, insistent barrage of annoying become significant to you?

People are literally committing suicide because of code software developers write. Not for ICE or despotic regimes, but for Facebook.

Now I'm not sure a ransom signup pattern reaches that level, but the idea that dark patterns can't reach that level isn't in evidence. While the impact of a piece of software you write on a given individual is usually small, a decision made in software has the power to reach many more people than a decision made by a doctor about a specific patient.

Software developers need to take responsibility for their actions and stop blaming their bosses or society for their actions. What we do, does matter.

> What we really need is some kind of Hippocratic Oath for Software, that we all agree to and can collectively use to resist this shit. Not going to happen, but one can dream.

Why spitball about a "Hippocratic Oath" when the ACM code of ethics exists?

You could promote the one that does exists instead of dooming that nobody will write or follow such a standard.

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