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Comment by blibble | Hacker News Reader

that advert is just so horribly manipulative it's borderline evil

how can normal people go to work and produce this output?

(I suppose everyone that is prepared to work at Amazon corporate is... a certain type of person)

It's not really about the individual people. They're probably all pretty normal interpersonally. Our systems reward this behavior, so people do it. Surveillance is desired by the politically and economically powerful, and the contravening forces are weak and largely unorganized. Do we punish politicians or businesses for bad behavior? No? Then they'll engage in whatever behavior advances their interests.

You could purge the world of every single person with evil intentions, and things would maybe get better for a little while, but without fundamentally changing the underlying rules of the system the same thing would play out again with different actors.

> Surveillance is desired by the politically and economically powerful

It's also desired by consumers. Parents love tracking their children, spouses track each other. Everyone wants to get a camera to catch porch pirates. Let's not pretend this is something being forced on us by some external evil. The evil is coming from inside the house.

this is entirely misses the point about exactly what makes it dangerous

there's nothing bad with having a camera to spot porch pirates, as long as the data stays private

it becomes problematic when everyone's hooked up to one central place (plus the "AI")

same as the common talking points about CCTV, which always miss the distinction that there's minimal risk if it's only going to some video recorder in the back of the store

it only becomes dangerous when every shop and house are fed back to one central location

and the general public do not understand the difference

> there's nothing bad with having a camera to spot porch pirates, as long as the data stays private

It's still surveillance, and it's subject to subpoena so it can become government data as needed. The centralization makes things worse, sure, but the desire to monitor others often comes from individual actors.

I can walk down my street and I will be recorded every step of the way by someone. The government didn't mandate this, each homeowner decided they "needed" a camera.

>there's nothing bad with having a camera to spot porch pirates, as long as the data stays private

I'd be more inclined to accept this if the cameras were pointed only at the person's porch and not out onto the public and other people's property

I like your take. I see this same thing playing out across many parts of the world.

Dont hate the player hate the game

It is about incentives and rules of the "game" that drive things. Sure, there are a few evil people but the vast majority of it is normal people responding to broken rules/incentives. Probably you and I both fall in this category :)

> Dont hate the player hate the game

To be clear, you can absolutely hate the player in addition to the game. That's for you to decide on a case-by-case basis. It's just important to recognize the broader context, especially if want to leave a positive impact.

Especially as we could all... stop playing, and then the game would end.

> It's not really about the individual people. They're probably all pretty normal interpersonally. Our systems reward this behavior, so people do it.

Sorry, but people who do things they normally wouldn't because they are rewarded are not good people. They may be 'normal' in a distribution sense, but that doesn't mean the behavior becomes acceptable through it becoming commonplace.

The idea is compelling to consider though - I just saw a clip of comedian Romesh Ranganathan saying that a reason he hasn't cheated on his wife is lack of opportunity; another side of the same idea.

Perhaps we would all be shit-head billionaires if given the opportunity.

Most of us stay within our ethical lane, but then we don't have the money to afford a private island to abuse people on; we don't have to resist the temptation to incite an insurrection, or to shift gold markets by threatening a war ... perhaps we'd be tempted?

> Perhaps we would all be shit-head billionaires if given the opportunity.

Statistically, if we were living in WWII Germany, most of us would not become freedom fighters. We'd keep our head down and support the regime. I think most people like to think of themselves as the exception but that's just "cope".

> They're probably all pretty normal interpersonally.

have you seen the cult like statements they make you emit if you want to pass the interview?

I had a colleague that interviewed there (and was accepted)

over the space of that month he completely changed

(and not for the better)

You pay a third party to make something like this for you. They can best be described as nihilists.

Because if you don't do what you are told at work, you may be forced to uproot your family, spouse, kids, and leave the country. You may be forced to abandon your pets and never see them again, forced to send your kids to suddenly school in a different, foreign-to-them language. You may be forced to pay tens of thousands in moving expenses. You may be forced to pay mortgages for a house you are not allowed to live in. All it takes is one unhappy manager at Amazon, or falling it the wrong bucket at stack ranking time.

Or you can do what your manager asks you to do, over-deliver on it year after year, and you won't have to deal with the above. You may be unhappy with what you do at work, but your kids and spouse will live happy lives, and you can keep your pets and house.

Sorry, just a dose of reality.

Wealth should be a source of power and agency, not an excuse for getting dogwalked. On the bright side, given that kids and houses and spouses are all becoming luxury items, there may be fewer people in the future who have to make that choice.

"Learn to live on lentils, and you will not have to be subservient to the king"

> Wealth

Working at Amazon isn't wealth.

Wealth is not having to work in order to live.

> Learn to live on lentils

I'd rather not be vitamin deficient, even if it means being subservient to the king.

Guarantee me health, food, water, shelter for life, and then maybe we can talk about the ethics of the king.

Grow a spine, you don't get a pass to do unethical things because your job depends on it.

Huh? Another dose of reality:

I need to pay rent, pay medical bills, eat, and survive. As long as I'm dependent on an income to do that, I do whatever the employer wants as long as it's legal.

When I'm financially free, I'll have the space to think about the ethics of my work.

You want better? Fix the system so that I'm financially free earlier in life. Tax me less, charge me less rent, give me free healthcare, and let me save up cash for the rest of my life. When the system has delivered that OKR to me, I'll be able to put ethics first going forward.

Until then, I still need to earn money to survive.

I worked for Amazon for a couple years. Not on the above project, but nevertheless, I did what I was told. One of the reasons I went there was that I needed a surgery to replace my implanted defibrillator, which my life depends on, and (a) Amazon's sponsored health insurance would pay for it (b) Amazon's cash comp would be enough to hire lawyers to fight with insurance if necessary. Insurance companies usually pay what they're supposed to if there is a big tech HR behind it; they have a habit, in my experience, of not paying out what they're supposed to if they don't have something to fear. I was in startup land before, and often couldn't pay my medical bills (because insurance would cop out and not pay, and I didn't have money for lawyers to fight them) and had to forgo critical cardiac imaging procedures during that time.

> I worked for Amazon for a couple years.

why am I not surprised

Does it have to be that particular employer though?

Not everyone has their pick of employers, especially during mass layoffs. I arguably joined the most ethical of the offers I actually got at the time.

If you're against me joining an employer, maybe send me an alternative offer and then we can talk. Otherwise it is not constructive.

I'm currently unemployed myself because I didn't want to work for a big tech company that announced a public partnership with Palantir.

I get the "family to feed" etc angle. But at some point we have to realize that this is not some kind of abstract moral dilemma, not when that software is actively hurting other people.

as a species, we are fucked if there's many people that fit your description

your kids have to live on this earth too, and they'll suffer the consequences of cowardly people like that

> we are fucked if there's many people that fit your description

The reality is 95% of people, especially outside the HN community, fit that description, that's why I wrote it.

The number of people in the greater world who would put employer ethics before survival and livelihood of their family is vanishingly miniscule. Legal systems are how employers stay in check, not people caring about ethics.

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