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Comment by et-al | Hacker News Reader

> For example, your job at the ad tech company could be anonymizing data and protecting people’s privacy.

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.

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> This only happens because companies need to adhere to regulations, not because they're doing it out of respect for people.

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.

I work in an industry with a small handful of software companies, so not going to out myself. But the 13 year old edgelord I was wouldn't be able to criticize what I'm working on now, so I can rest easy here.

Motivated by respect?! While working in Adtech?

Did you get confused by two opposing morally charged labels in the same sentence?

“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?”

Everything being "not unambiguously good" doesn't mean it's all equivalent. Even if we can't quantify things perfectly, we can still make reasonable comparisons. I don't know precisely how much an adult tiger or raccoon weighs, I'm still pretty sure about which one is heavier.

That’s what I’m saying. The moral labeling game causes black and white thinking.

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.

I don't disagree with you that working for a certain industry isn't sufficient to make someone moral, but I do think that working for certain industries is sufficient to make someone _immoral_. I can't conclude you're moral or immoral just from the fact that you work at an elementary school, but if you making your living from scamming innocent people or something, I don't think I need to know what specific skills you have to decide that you're immoral. At some point far enough along in the spectrum, things stop being ambiguous, and everyone will draw the line differently. The parent commenter considers adtech to be on the wrong side of that line, and although I think reasonable people might disagree, I don't think their perspective is unreasonable either.

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