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Comment by aczerepinski | Hacker News Reader

I once wrote code that checks location before hiding/showing the cancel button. It’s really absurd that the nice experience exists on all subscription sites by now but you only get to see it if your state demands it.

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Same with websites like Airbnb. Last I checked, their search results only showed the 'real' prices (eg including fees) for certain states and countries. In some states you have to click into the listing before learning that there's an extra $500 cleaning fee on top of the nightly rate :)

Airbnb is so confusing for me because of this. I find the per night price easier to think about.

> In some states you have to click into the listing before learning that there's an extra $500 cleaning fee on top of the nightly rate :)

And the “house rules” still require you to clean the place before you leave.

I have no context of who you are/your position here, but the responses you're getting seem absurd to me.

I just don't understand people placing the blame on you when it should be on your company. Most people in the world are just trying to keep their job - you did it. It wasn't something illegal, it was something that if you didn't do, you would have risked your job and then someone else would have done it anyway.

Exactly. Those low quality comments are an example of the sad erosion of quality of comments on HN that I and others have complained about in recent times.

It's perfectly valid in our increasingly enshittified world to be angry with all those responsible for it. As much as you're right to point the finger a the C-suites, ultimately ALL of these user-hostile features, every single one, only exists because devs keep putting fingers to keyboards in exchange for checks.

Tech workers had a time where unionization and getting a voice in our companies was very much on the table, and the biggest voices among us shouted down the others in the name of rockstar salaries and free beer at the office. The "top contributors" at huge companies were scared shitless that they might have to accept a wage too much like the REST of their software engineer coworkers. The horror.

This is a deeply ignorant comment. Do you understand how much money you have to have IN SAVINGS in order to be able to weather even a moderately short hospital stay in the United States when you’re uninsured?

Because the difference between what he's done and, say, the practice of the people who peddled opioids for a paycheck is one of degree, not kind.

Yeah, but it's multiple orders of magnitude apart.

Are we also going to start putting LLM engineers to the fire because they're accelerating the enshitification of our world? Probably not.

That’s not a good example, since you can argue that LLMs have utility to humanity. Hiding the cancel button has none, except for rent seeking.

The bigger difference is that the net utility for LLMs could turn out to be massively negative

Maybe! But that’s certainly debatable. “I thought I was doing the right thing” is anyways a much better defense than “I was just following orders” anyways.

Rockets have value to humanity too, but some people that worked on rockets ended up working for people that did not want to use rockets to improve human life.

Obviously the difference of degree on the spectrum between the two in this case does vary greatly, but your comment reminded me of an interview with a journalist who had compiled a collection of interviews with midtier drug dealers in various cartels and one thing that stood out to him was that almost all of them, when asked why they did what they did, would respond by saying that if they didn't someone else would.

The difference between my sins or your sins and much greater sins is also one of degree, not kind.

You never lied or went along with something dubious? At least this person is being honest and reflective.

> You never lied or went along with something dubious?

…no?

Certainly not where it impacted more than just me and one other person.

Why would that be normal?

Seriously? No white lies or going along with anything that you didn't fully agree with, in your life, in all contexts? We're talking about kind and not degree here, per the comment I responded to.

Have you been fired from a job for standing on these ironclad principles?

Left my best job/title for them.

Had my place to sleep as a young person threatened, for doing the right thing in the family business.

I don’t even feel good about Santa…

Ok, well respect to you for whatever happened there, sincerely.

But all of us have compromised at some time or place, I have in some places and faced consequences for not doing so in other places. If you haven't compromised yet, then wait until you have a family to take care of.

I prefer being honest about the times I did compromise and took OPs comment in that vein. A true psycho would see nothing wrong and also not be reflective about it.

> then wait until you have a family to take care of.

I’ve also kept from having a family until I’m able to have one without directly* harming someone else to do it.

I’m reflecting. Mostly on what others have, materially, that I do not, but also what I have that they cannot.

Environmental externalities of the existence of my entire country/society notwithstanding - before this goes off into the weeds further.

"I was just following orders" is not, and has never been, a credible defense of unethical behavior.

Unless you were in the US. There it always worked.

It's always worked everywhere. It even worked for the original people who used it, except for a few of them.

I see it everyday

Saying no is always an option, and this seemed like the opportunity for this. Highly paid devs consistently choosing to do this and using the "following orders"/"food on the table" defense should be socially unacceptable. However, the parent seems to feel no guilt despite the many comments blaming him, so I think protecting his feelings is not necessary.

You don't know anything about them. Do they have kids? On a visa? Both? Need health insurance?

Yes, "just following orders" was not an excuse for the holocaust but we're talking about a subscription here. I for one appreciate the honesty.

90% of my coworkers are H1B and are basically perpetually terrified of being deported. I completely disagree with your assessment.

> so I think protecting his feelings is not necessary.

No, just the barrage of completely lacking-of-empathy responders need your white-knighting. It’s a good thing you’re here for them.

> using the "following orders"/"food on the table" defense should be socially unacceptable...the parent seems to feel no guilt despite the many comments blaming him

Wild to compare implementing dark UX patterns to working at a concentration camp. Why not blame the electorate for voting poorly?

Blame should fall on both. The deliberate evil at the top and the banality of evil at the bottom.

Ohh, I need to VPN into nyc or california before trying to cancel my new york times subscription.

There are guides floating around suggesting VPN locales which offer best terms / conditions / deals on various commercial experiences.

Why would you do something so immoral?

To get paid, obviously. We're all self interested actors here.

Same reason people lobby for fracking or sell mass surveillance software.

Nuremberg defense.

I thought the HN crowd at least pretended to be somewhat better.

Oh definitely not. Many of us work in tech. Many of us are the people that wrote the code that other people on this website complain about as anti-patterns, dark patterns, etc.

Be here long enough and you will find people bragging about their captcha solving services, or how they found a clever loophole in anti-gambling laws. Posts about certain unmentionable topics are flagged minutes after being posted, post titles are changed to protect in-groups, and human rights are sometimes up to debate.

The rule is that you have to be polite about it all.

GGP didn't break the law (in fact he conformed wtih it), he just didn't disobey his orders (risking his salary) in order to go the extra mile in order to make a negligible positive impact in the world. Seems rational.

Ever speed on the way to/from work? That's a worse offense than a strictly-compliant website - you're increasing danger for yourself and others and breaking a law, precisely for your own benefit.

We are not all selfish actors here. Who have you surrounded yourself with in your life, that you would end up believing that we're all self-interested actors here?

You should ask that question to the workers at palantir

They're asking it right now to a worker at a newspaper site

Nothing wrong with working at a newspaper site.

Specifically the one who disabled the cancel button in places that don't legally require it.

They commented upthread that they actually enabled it for the two states that legally require it.

That was harder than enabling it for all states. They went out of their way to ensure that users from 48 states could not cancel.

Actually they went out of their way to make sure someone in California could cancel (a lot of work) online. They only restricted use of the feature to a subset

It used to be nobody could cancel online, and after my commit two states could. I think you may be overreacting here.

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