Yes, absolutely. I think it's very common for people to make ethical decisions in how they make their money and how they spend their money.
If you're asking if every citizen living in Germany from 1933-1945 did only evil things, the answer is obviously no. If you're asking if every person who was ever in the nazi party was a uniquely evil human being, also no.
Actually there are us who would consider what impacts our employers have. E.g. I avoid working for adtech, and sure as hell would not want to work for a company providing government surveillance software.
For example, your job at the ad tech company could be anonymizing data and protecting people’s privacy. Your job at the children’s charity could be scamming old ladies.
This only happens because companies need to adhere to regulations, not because they're doing it out of respect for people.
And by simply not working in adtech, I don't need to go through some mental gymnastics to justify what I spend 40 hours a week building. The beauty of being a programmer is there's a bunch of work out there that doesn't involve crappifying the internet.
Nobody involved in that decision is motivated by respect? You're sounding pretty pessimistic for such a big emphasis on morals.
Go ahead and share what industry you work in then. I guarantee it is not unambiguously good.
“And when the scribes and Pharisees saw him eat with publicans and sinners, they said unto his disciples, How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners?”
You are not a moral person for working at an elementary school instead of a car manufacturer. The question is actually what you do, what talents you have, and how that affects other people.
Computer ads aren’t evil, surveillance, spam, and scams are evil.
I honestly don't have a clue how what I said could be interpreted as arguing that all buying and selling is immoral, so I wouldn't even know how to begin addressing that line of thinking.
I am not. Palantir not only brands themselves as providing data analysis for governments but they also actually sell those tools too.
Do you call your gas company to make sure they didn’t buy from OPEC?
The impact is exactly what is pointed out in the article - someone in the local police department could use it against me.
> Do you call your gas company to make sure they didn’t buy from OPEC?
No, because that doesn't affect me.
See, you keep clinging to some morality claim, and I am explicitly not. I am saying that there is potentially a direct impact on abuse against me personally.
“Moral” in quotes is a tell, too. You’re arguing that morality is illegitimate unless someone has done a full “utilitarian” breakdown of everything they do in their lives. And of course you will only accept that breakdown if you deem it sufficient.
This shallow label analysis (oil bad, palantir bad, non profit good) is not “morality”, it’s politics.
Most people espouse a utilitarian ethics, but rely on media and social cues rather than harm to determine their choices.
If your job is to pour barrels of oil into the ocean, I think that’s worth evaluating. If your job is to do accounting for the oil company, I’m not sure you’re causing harm relative to other accounting employment.
It’s also valid to decide image is important to you, but don’t tell me it’s because you are a Good Samaritan.