In the vein of Kumail's critique, if it's useful to anyone, I wrote some thoughts about software engineering and ethics from my own experiences:
A serial tech entrepreneur in Silicon Valley once asked me to design a “social stockade” for his financial services customers. It would lock people out of their social media accounts and tweet out/FB share to their friends when they hadn’t paid a loan. He pitched it to prospective employees as meaningful work that would reduce the cost of loans for the needy.
I was horrified that his product was being built and that many others would likely take the role I was turning down. And he was hardly the first to pitch his “innovation” as providing only good.
Every software engineer I’ve worked with has had a strong sense of personal values and ethics, but the organizations we work for can take actions that are at odds with these. I’d like to highlight a few of the key challenges you’ll face and provide feedback for living your personal values. Most importantly, it’s critical that you think about the impact of your work and consciously set your personal values in advance of inevitable future challenges.
(Always available to discuss if valuable to anyone, feel free to email me encrypted messages, see my HN profile)
>Every software engineer I’ve worked with has had a strong sense of personal values and ethics, but the organizations we work for can take actions that are at odds with these. I’d like to highlight a few of the key challenges you’ll face and provide feedback for living your personal values. Most importantly, it’s critical that you think about the impact of your work and consciously set your personal values in advance of inevitable future challenges.
I'd agree with this assessment of developers. However I've come into these exact moral dilemmas myself in the line of working for various companies doing web programming. How did I resolve them? By making the decision that affected my own bottom line favorably. When looked at in isolation, it's impossible for a single developer to say no to the incentives of doing "evil" work. It won't be until the field of software engineering really matures and develops a set of standards bodies like other professions that engineers will have some sort of protection. Physicians can refuse to perform a procedure they're told to in the name of protecting their medical license. A software engineer should likewise be held to the same standard.
Every software engineer I’ve worked with has had a strong sense of personal values and ethics, but the organizations we work for can take actions that are at odds with these.
Do they though? I've noticed a trend where the strength of some developers' beliefs are proportional to how unethical the products they're paid to build are.
This makes me suspect that for many people, the ethical stance they take is a coping mechanism for excusing their own actions with the Yuppie Nuremberg Defense.
I love Stafford Beer's "The purpose of a system is what it does" here. It separates fact from intention when reasoning about systems. The engineers that Kumail catches offguard are (in my opinion) confused because the issues he raises are so far from their intentions.
tl;dr, this back-and-forth is unsettling to a Federalist:
>In response to a tough line of questions from Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Twitter’s acting general counsel, Sean Edgett, gave two conflicting answers within a couple of minutes. Cotton pressed Edgett on Twitter’s decision to cut off the CIA’s access to alerts derived from the Twitter-data fire hose, which is provided through a company it partially owns, Dataminr, while the companies reportedly still allowed the Russian media outlet RT to continue using the service for some time.
>“Do you see an equivalency between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Russian intelligence services?,” Cotton asked.
>“We’re not offering our service for surveillance to any government,” Edgett responded.
>“So you will apply the same policy to our intelligence community that you’d apply to an adversary’s intelligence services?,” Cotton asked again.
>“As a global company, we have to apply our policies consistently,” Edgett replied.
“We’re trying to be unbiased around the world.”
>Cotton then turned to WikiLeaks, which the Intelligence Committee has designated as a nonstate hostile intelligence agency, asking why it had been operating “uninhibited” on Twitter.
>“Is it bias to side with America over our adversaries?,” Cotton demanded.
>“We’re trying to be unbiased around the world,” Edgett said. “We’re obviously an American company and care deeply about the issues we’re talking about today, but as it relates to WikiLeaks or other accounts like it, we make sure they are in compliance with our policies just like every other account.”
I guess it is kind of cyberpunk-y. All we need now is for US Marshals to lay siege to some SF headquarters, facing contracted PMCs denying the validity of their warrants.
But Kumail's point isn't about whether these companies are patriotic, he's saying they lack any ethical framework of operation and presumes it's because people aren't challenging each other with ethical questions preferring to condone any behavior in favor of flexing engineering muscles and proving that, "yes, they can".
I don't think it's unrelated, and perhaps your point is that it's doubly clear no one has thought about ethics when you examine Sean's contradictory responses. But I think the lack of patriotism is more of an example.
Anyway, at the end of the day we're all people and we are the ones that depend on these companies and services. If you don't believe a company is behaving ethically, stop using their services. Make a damn sacrifice and live your virtue. Sure maybe we could argue that to some extent and in certain cases some companies have crossed the line and are harmfully exploiting customers to the extent that there should be legal ramifications, but the government does not exist to provide you an ethically sterile society. It exist to maintain and protect basic human rights--at least in the US as far as the formal documentation is concerned.
As far as I can gather based on armchair political philosophy over drinks.. most people don't actually care about privacy and rank convenience or safety (at the expense of said privacy) higher in their priorities. I find that unfortunate but at the same time I still haven't worked up the courage to totally disband my Facebook account and switch completely over to my proton mail accounts. So it's complicated.
If we could all agree that privacy is a fundamental human right which you would think would be supported by the constitution in the US then, we should actually act/rally to legislate such as other countries have done. Yet at the same time because these companies operate globally, they serve a diverse spectrum of users who may or may not share the same political and social values as we do in the US. This extends to the very employees who are "failing to ask the ethical questions" that Kumail can so obviously see are overlooked. This is globalization.
TL;DR: they do this because they can, and they can because you let them.
This is the second time that I read that WikiLeaks is classified as "hostile intelligence agency". Isn't the purpose of intelligence to gather information to gain advantage over adversaries? It sounds to me like a redundant term like "hostile military". And BTW WikiLeaks leaks are public so all other intelligence agencies and citizens can learn while state agencies try to keep things obscure as much as possible. Who's hostile?
>I guess it is kind of cyberpunk-y. All we need now is for US Marshals to lay siege to some SF headquarters, facing contracted PMCs denying the validity of their warrants.
I think the turning point was the SOPA/PIPA thing. After that event, it felt like the tech industry seemed to collectively figure out that just through sheer technical dominance, they actually wield tons of practical political power. Possibly more then the savviest Washington insiders.
I hate wikileaks, but I honestly don't see the contradiction in Twitter's behavior on this point.
Perhaps they were naive on whether RT was actually an aperture of Russian intelligence services. OK. Their KYC game could use some upping. OTOH, would anyone be surprised if the CIA were paying some little hedge fund somewhere to let them piggyback on access to Twitter's feed?
As far as Wikileaks' uninhibited operation goes, as far as I can tell, the CIA has not had its account banned from Twitter, just its firehose access. Does Wikileaks have access to that? What would they do with it if they did?
I mean it just seems like the line of questioning is, "Hey is it fair that you let them do X and won't let us do Y?" Maybe I can't see it because my silicon valley ass has no ethics.
"I guess it is kind of cyberpunk-y. All we need now is for US Marshals to lay siege to some SF headquarters, facing contracted PMCs denying the validity of their warrants."
I think this was all trash talk, nothing but an attempt to intimidate. If companies are following letters of the law then it doesn't matter who thinks/interprets what. and they better know they would be challenged in court of law.
That's a pretty ridiculous conversation. No wonder the Twitter guy was confused. Neither Wikileaks nor RT are intelligence agencies. The Intelligence Committee pretending they are doesn't change that.
Corporations, yes. But employees of those corporations, less so. As a developer making <insert ethically dubious thing here>, you could have qualms about it.
It's scary (Stanford prison experiment-like) how easy it is to convince a regular joe employee that what he's working on is "for the betterment of the world", while that statement is very very fuzzy to say the least (and as recent events have shown) where one man's Utopia is another man's surveillance state. We put waaay too much impetus on "world changing ideas" while completely ignoring the real life implications of them, as the article rightfully points out.
Reminds me of the statement that Noam Chomsky ended his recent talk at Google with (which I consider one of the nicest "burn" moments ever):
Interviewer: It's not everyday that a non-google gets to sit in a room full of people who work at google, and are s/w engineers, and are advertising experts, and are market experts in different fields. Do you have anything that you'd like to ask us?
Chomsky: <shrugs> Why not do some of the serious things?
This just in: actor discovers corporations don't have a soul.
Why don't you come over here to Europe, we have strong data protection laws. Oh btw you'll have to cut your your salary by 50%, because no Silicon Valley, and because strong data protection laws. Hows thats sound to you?
Most data protection laws just force ineffective bureaucratic processes on companies in the name of "doing something", usually in the form of outdated checklists. Meanwhile intelligence agencies, hackers, and ad companies are still consuming vast quantities of data uninhibited.
It really does largely just slow companies down and forces gov agencies, doctors, banks, and other critical industries to use old insecure software and inefficient corporate processes. RFP'ing a new system is suddenly 2x the cost.
I'm all for strong privacy and property rights at the consumer level, plenty of law in this area in most countries is very outdated and from another era. But the tendencies of european and modern US/UK/Canada/etc countries are to go well beyond the courts and intervene directly in company operations.
I've never heard anyone praise the fact they followed gov-mandated checklists as for why they prevented a hack.
It's always keeping up to date with the latest industry best practices and caring because there are real costs. Strengthened courts and a caring media will create real costs and incentivized best practices.
I've read the article and most of the comments here. Still not sure what ethically questionable things we're talking about. Is serving content related to your personal interests questionable? Or is collection of personal data for commercial (but benign and legal) purposes questionable?
I can see that selling and wide-scale distribution of personal data can be a problem unless explicit consent is obtained. Can someone clarify who's doing that and for what reason?
Seems like he didn't bother to specify exactly what he found so objectionable. Given that, it's impossible to evaluate his claim that executives were "confused" because "nobody ever asked them the questions". Maybe nobody ever asked them because the questions he was asking were stupid or ridiculous?
After all, it may sound dismissive, but I'm reminded of a quote by Patrick Stuart. "That's the biggest danger, you see: believing that you really are more important than everyone else. We're not, you know. We're just actors". Maybe if Kumail spent his life building things instead of pretending to be someone who builds things, he'd have a different perspective on technology and ethics.
I got into a conversation once that I think frames this well. We had WILDLY different views on whether going to Mars was a good idea (like, violently polar opposite views). The strength of our disagreement surprised me.
I was arguing that we should “race to Mars”, mainly because the value of having a second planet dramatically increases the odds of survival for our the human race, as a whole. Thus Mars is one of the highest importance activities we could possibly be focusing on.
My friend was countering that all the rich people escaping to Mars made them not care about Earth and their fellow citizens, and was just about the most abhorant act he could think of.
He’d rather see everyone die together on Earth than a small group people live (at least it’d be fair). I’d be happy to sacrifice 95% of the humans alive today as long as some live somewhere (I’m ambivolent about who they are, I presume there’s a formula to be found?).
I think my view is more that of Silicon Valley/entrepreneur/programmer types. These people (me, etc) want the best long term outcome and will take big actions towards that, even knowing it’ll cause some short term pain.
I don’t think ‘regular’ people think like that. They generally care more about the people around them, their own pain, their tribes, their cities, etc. (But not at all about trillions of as yet unborn humans.)
I think it’s easy to label Silicon Valley as “unethical monsters” who’re out for themselves. But Assuming we’re talking about the crime of “innovation without regard for effects” (as opposed to ACTUAL rulebreaking, like theft, assault, fraud, which I assume the Valley is no worse for than anywhere else in the world), the intentions of entrepreneurs aren’t evil or unethical, they just care more about the survival of the entire race than, today’s people.
I also think a lot of hackers/builders/entrepreneurs, for all the optimism they have about growth and innovation, are simultaneously very realistic/pessimistic about all the various ways our race is fundamentally screwed, and kinda recognises they need to be more powerful and have more resources in order to do anything about that.
Startups are more about “getting us out of this fine mess were in” than money.
There's enough straw in your comment to make an army of men, and almost too much cringe to handle.
For starters, you're putting a mountain of words in Kumail Nanjiani's mouth. It's odd that you must be told this, but when you use quotes to summarize your opposition's arguments, you're supposed to actually wrap them around words that were actually used. A quick Ctrl+F on that page leaves one having to guess at whether you're dishonest, careless, projecting your own securities, or all at once.
Then you go and draw a line in the sand and separate yourself from "regular" people who lack the capacity to see beyond their small and petty concerns. You applaud Silicon Valley entrepreneurs as holy warriors fighting for humanity's "best long term outcome" without providing a single example. You claim that people start businesses not to make money, but to save mankind itself.
All this grandiose talk while you fervently pat yourself (and your kind) on the back, but your only tangible anchors are imagined words and flimsy analogies to humans colonizing Mars.
You are the exact personality that Silicon Valley team expertly mocked in the first season.
"We're making the world a better place!"
And for the record, if you managed to get 5% of the human population on Mars, that would be ~350 million, more than the entire population of the United States. If we put that much energy into moving people to a planet that's currently capable of supporting life for zero humans, you'd think we could've built a pretty damn good defense system to knock asteroids off a collision course with Earth.
Why is it that so many people who describe themselves as forward-thinking are more attracted to the idea of terraforming a planet with a poisonous atmosphere than lifting a finger to keep our little oasis in decent condition? I'm not saying the entire human race should rise and fall on a single planet, but don't try to paint your Mars fantasies as an altruistic plan to save all the coarse-minded sheeple from themselves.
>Startups are more about “getting us out of this fine mess were in” than money.
I think this is a very naive view; novel new ways to share vapid content on the internet and unnecessarily internet-connected junk are getting nobody out of any sort of mess.
> My friend was countering that all the rich people escaping to Mars made them not care about Earth and their fellow citizens, and was just about the most abhorant act he could think of.
I'd argue that, far from being an escape, it's a great sacrifice to migrate from fertile earth to a sterile planet as an insurance policy against the possibility of the extinction of the human species (that is unlikely).
I'm with you, but I feel you still have a crush on startup ecosystem. I used to have it too, ~5 years ago. What I've learned since then is, the kind of idealistic forward-looking people you seek do not form the majority of startups.
Technology makes shitloads of money now. This attracted all kinds of people - the regular ones just looking to live their lives in comfort; the greedy assholes looking to become rich by scamming (er, advertising to) others or profiting off offloading externalities on the society. There are more of them than idealists. For each "actually help the world" startup, you have 10 "get $$$ through screwing the society" ones, and 50 "build things people will buy" ones.
Also, I feel most idealists have realized by now that startups are not necessarily a good vehicle for change, because by their nature, you trade control for money. Which means that even if you have good intentions and a great long-term idea, your investors may not share it, they need their shorter-term profits, and they just gave you money for control, so you'd better do what they want.
All in all, do seek out people who want to actually help everyone, instead of forever living in the world of tribalism and petty soap-operish nonproblems. But do not thing startups are where they gather - startups are just another flavour of mundane business world, no matter what the copy on their webistes says.
>I think my view is more that of Silicon Valley/entrepreneur/programmer types. These people (me, etc) want the best long term outcome and will take big actions towards that, even knowing it’ll cause some short term pain.
>I don’t think ‘regular’ people think like that. They generally care more about the people around them, their own pain, their tribes, their cities, etc. (But not at all about trillions of as yet unborn humans.)
And I think that both of you have a very peculiar taste for bullets, since you like biting them so much when there was otherwise no actual need. We can invent cool technologies, colonize space, and have an egalitarian society. In fact, in my view, those things go together: you can't really get a stable multiplanetary civilization going when people are constantly trying to tear out each-other's throats over socioeconomic inequality.
> These people (me, etc) want the best long term outcome and will take big actions towards that, even knowing it’ll cause some short term pain.
> I don’t think ‘regular’ people think like that.
> (But not at all about trillions of as yet unborn humans.)
> the intentions of entrepreneurs aren’t evil or unethical, they just care more about the survival of the entire race than, today’s people.
> Startups are more about “getting us out of this fine mess were in” than money.
I'm sorry, but too much of this leaves me scratching my head as to whether this is satire or not, and I will explain my position and not just be snarky about it, but truthfully after reading through the post having previously only glossed over it, I find some of the statements just very curious.
I take issue with the statement that SV/Entrepreneuer/programmer types just want what is the best long term outcome because more or less what they want is a long term profitable outcome most of the time. We can see examples of software and services which are produced for a better long term outcome; the Linux Kernel, software like ffmpeg, cURL, World Wide Web, etc. Not only are the statements from the founder clear on the goals and intentions of the software, but the software and services live up to their delcaration of intentions and look to solve a problem in a focused and sustainable way. There's always a lot of talk about "nothing wrong with making a little bit of profit while doing something great", but this is a pretty thin line to walk most of the time - Microsoft, for example, does have some very useful software solutions, but there's no doubt that everything about the procurement and design is meant to lock you into using it without question - it's not software to better the human, it's software to lock you in. Microsoft isn't the only guilty party here, they're just an easy example. When I see startups, when I hear about entrepreneuers and SV programmers, and heck I'll outright say it, when I hear about side-projects on HN, a lot of the times it's not software to enhance or improve life, it's software taking a stab at a share of the market.
Not everything has to be F/OSS; we don't all need to be Stallmanites with regards to our data and privacy, and I'm happy to pay out for software that does what it says on the box. I happily dropped $10 on DaisyDisk for macOS because it does exactly what it says it does without trying to lock me in further; I pay and it's done, no subscriptions, no limited functionality, no restrictions on what I can use with it. It serves its purpose very well. Sublime Text is much of the same, and it's such a good program that I've seen people here wish that new versions would require a new purchase just for another excuse to give the authors more money. The difference between these projects and most of the non-sense that gets released is that they're trying to serve an actual goal; they fulfill a need instead of creating one, and they do as promised.
This is what long-term betterment looks like; not subscription models, nag campaigns, constant notifications on what you're not getting, but instead providing a functional tool that makes your life better instead of trying to figure out more ways to get you to put out your credit card.
> I don’t think ‘regular’ people think like that.
I wonder if Doug Evans thinks much of the same thing and wonders why people don't understand he was just trying ot better their future. I take from statements like these a lot of hubris, that such Entrepreneuers know better than everyone else. Everyone at some time is guilty of thinking "if everyone just thought like me it'd be perfect", but it should be pretty obvious this just isn't how the world works. I think that indeed many of the 'regular' people do think very hard about the future, but they also think about how their 'now' will affect their and their children's future. It's not that they aren't trying to help the trillions of yet unborn humans, it's that they see a different way of getting there. For example, a programmer like you're describing wants to write a service to better the future of humanity - my friends in Seattle think we need trees and gardens everywhere. Whose solution now is going to be more important in 10 years? In 1000? In 1000? I'm not sure that you can confidently say the software is going to be impactful and important in 10 years, much less in 1 year, when more and more it seems we just get flashes in a pan.
Your conclusion that startups are concerned about survival and the human race, not just about money, isn't really supported by what the start ups are trying to do. They consolidate power instead of distributing it; they hoard information instead of sharing it. They try to lock you in instead of giving you freedom and options. This is what SV has come to represent with many of the startups you see; a new, more benevolent master, instead of a new tool to help you. There are dozens of new [Something]aaS every week, each one just fighting to lock you in to whatever cycle they have and to wring out a bit of money. These aren't there for the long term betterment of humanity, they're there for the quick buck and to make promises they can't deliver on.
[+] [-] nemild|8 years ago|reply
A serial tech entrepreneur in Silicon Valley once asked me to design a “social stockade” for his financial services customers. It would lock people out of their social media accounts and tweet out/FB share to their friends when they hadn’t paid a loan. He pitched it to prospective employees as meaningful work that would reduce the cost of loans for the needy.
I was horrified that his product was being built and that many others would likely take the role I was turning down. And he was hardly the first to pitch his “innovation” as providing only good.
Every software engineer I’ve worked with has had a strong sense of personal values and ethics, but the organizations we work for can take actions that are at odds with these. I’d like to highlight a few of the key challenges you’ll face and provide feedback for living your personal values. Most importantly, it’s critical that you think about the impact of your work and consciously set your personal values in advance of inevitable future challenges.
(Always available to discuss if valuable to anyone, feel free to email me encrypted messages, see my HN profile)
https://www.nemil.com/musings/software-engineers-and-ethics....
[+] [-] aphextron|8 years ago|reply
I'd agree with this assessment of developers. However I've come into these exact moral dilemmas myself in the line of working for various companies doing web programming. How did I resolve them? By making the decision that affected my own bottom line favorably. When looked at in isolation, it's impossible for a single developer to say no to the incentives of doing "evil" work. It won't be until the field of software engineering really matures and develops a set of standards bodies like other professions that engineers will have some sort of protection. Physicians can refuse to perform a procedure they're told to in the name of protecting their medical license. A software engineer should likewise be held to the same standard.
[+] [-] finnthehuman|8 years ago|reply
Do they though? I've noticed a trend where the strength of some developers' beliefs are proportional to how unethical the products they're paid to build are.
This makes me suspect that for many people, the ethical stance they take is a coping mechanism for excusing their own actions with the Yuppie Nuremberg Defense.
[+] [-] mmerlin|8 years ago|reply
http://fortune.com/2017/10/11/china-debt-evaders-loans-black...
[+] [-] tomjen3|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] transitorykris|8 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
[+] [-] Jun8|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leggomylibro|8 years ago|reply
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/11/are-f...
tl;dr, this back-and-forth is unsettling to a Federalist:
>In response to a tough line of questions from Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Twitter’s acting general counsel, Sean Edgett, gave two conflicting answers within a couple of minutes. Cotton pressed Edgett on Twitter’s decision to cut off the CIA’s access to alerts derived from the Twitter-data fire hose, which is provided through a company it partially owns, Dataminr, while the companies reportedly still allowed the Russian media outlet RT to continue using the service for some time.
>“Do you see an equivalency between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Russian intelligence services?,” Cotton asked.
>“We’re not offering our service for surveillance to any government,” Edgett responded.
>“So you will apply the same policy to our intelligence community that you’d apply to an adversary’s intelligence services?,” Cotton asked again.
>“As a global company, we have to apply our policies consistently,” Edgett replied. “We’re trying to be unbiased around the world.”
>Cotton then turned to WikiLeaks, which the Intelligence Committee has designated as a nonstate hostile intelligence agency, asking why it had been operating “uninhibited” on Twitter.
>“Is it bias to side with America over our adversaries?,” Cotton demanded.
>“We’re trying to be unbiased around the world,” Edgett said. “We’re obviously an American company and care deeply about the issues we’re talking about today, but as it relates to WikiLeaks or other accounts like it, we make sure they are in compliance with our policies just like every other account.”
I guess it is kind of cyberpunk-y. All we need now is for US Marshals to lay siege to some SF headquarters, facing contracted PMCs denying the validity of their warrants.
[+] [-] dcow|8 years ago|reply
I don't think it's unrelated, and perhaps your point is that it's doubly clear no one has thought about ethics when you examine Sean's contradictory responses. But I think the lack of patriotism is more of an example.
Anyway, at the end of the day we're all people and we are the ones that depend on these companies and services. If you don't believe a company is behaving ethically, stop using their services. Make a damn sacrifice and live your virtue. Sure maybe we could argue that to some extent and in certain cases some companies have crossed the line and are harmfully exploiting customers to the extent that there should be legal ramifications, but the government does not exist to provide you an ethically sterile society. It exist to maintain and protect basic human rights--at least in the US as far as the formal documentation is concerned.
As far as I can gather based on armchair political philosophy over drinks.. most people don't actually care about privacy and rank convenience or safety (at the expense of said privacy) higher in their priorities. I find that unfortunate but at the same time I still haven't worked up the courage to totally disband my Facebook account and switch completely over to my proton mail accounts. So it's complicated.
If we could all agree that privacy is a fundamental human right which you would think would be supported by the constitution in the US then, we should actually act/rally to legislate such as other countries have done. Yet at the same time because these companies operate globally, they serve a diverse spectrum of users who may or may not share the same political and social values as we do in the US. This extends to the very employees who are "failing to ask the ethical questions" that Kumail can so obviously see are overlooked. This is globalization.
TL;DR: they do this because they can, and they can because you let them.
[+] [-] sanbor|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mljoe|8 years ago|reply
I think the turning point was the SOPA/PIPA thing. After that event, it felt like the tech industry seemed to collectively figure out that just through sheer technical dominance, they actually wield tons of practical political power. Possibly more then the savviest Washington insiders.
[+] [-] notl4wy3r|8 years ago|reply
Perhaps they were naive on whether RT was actually an aperture of Russian intelligence services. OK. Their KYC game could use some upping. OTOH, would anyone be surprised if the CIA were paying some little hedge fund somewhere to let them piggyback on access to Twitter's feed?
As far as Wikileaks' uninhibited operation goes, as far as I can tell, the CIA has not had its account banned from Twitter, just its firehose access. Does Wikileaks have access to that? What would they do with it if they did?
I mean it just seems like the line of questioning is, "Hey is it fair that you let them do X and won't let us do Y?" Maybe I can't see it because my silicon valley ass has no ethics.
[+] [-] pmoriarty|8 years ago|reply
More surreal things have happened...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._U...
[+] [-] grad_ml|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peoplewindow|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmoriarty|8 years ago|reply
Even then many of them are happy as long as there's public perception that they're acting ethically, even if in reality they're not.
[+] [-] untog|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] madmax108|8 years ago|reply
Reminds me of the statement that Noam Chomsky ended his recent talk at Google with (which I consider one of the nicest "burn" moments ever):
Interviewer: It's not everyday that a non-google gets to sit in a room full of people who work at google, and are s/w engineers, and are advertising experts, and are market experts in different fields. Do you have anything that you'd like to ask us? Chomsky: <shrugs> Why not do some of the serious things?
https://youtu.be/2C-zWrhFqpM?t=59m16s
[+] [-] MrBuddyCasino|8 years ago|reply
Why don't you come over here to Europe, we have strong data protection laws. Oh btw you'll have to cut your your salary by 50%, because no Silicon Valley, and because strong data protection laws. Hows thats sound to you?
[+] [-] dmix|8 years ago|reply
It really does largely just slow companies down and forces gov agencies, doctors, banks, and other critical industries to use old insecure software and inefficient corporate processes. RFP'ing a new system is suddenly 2x the cost.
I'm all for strong privacy and property rights at the consumer level, plenty of law in this area in most countries is very outdated and from another era. But the tendencies of european and modern US/UK/Canada/etc countries are to go well beyond the courts and intervene directly in company operations.
I've never heard anyone praise the fact they followed gov-mandated checklists as for why they prevented a hack.
It's always keeping up to date with the latest industry best practices and caring because there are real costs. Strengthened courts and a caring media will create real costs and incentivized best practices.
[+] [-] thomastjeffery|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] starchild_3001|8 years ago|reply
I can see that selling and wide-scale distribution of personal data can be a problem unless explicit consent is obtained. Can someone clarify who's doing that and for what reason?
[+] [-] peoplewindow|8 years ago|reply
After all, it may sound dismissive, but I'm reminded of a quote by Patrick Stuart. "That's the biggest danger, you see: believing that you really are more important than everyone else. We're not, you know. We're just actors". Maybe if Kumail spent his life building things instead of pretending to be someone who builds things, he'd have a different perspective on technology and ethics.
[+] [-] dhoulb|8 years ago|reply
I was arguing that we should “race to Mars”, mainly because the value of having a second planet dramatically increases the odds of survival for our the human race, as a whole. Thus Mars is one of the highest importance activities we could possibly be focusing on.
My friend was countering that all the rich people escaping to Mars made them not care about Earth and their fellow citizens, and was just about the most abhorant act he could think of.
He’d rather see everyone die together on Earth than a small group people live (at least it’d be fair). I’d be happy to sacrifice 95% of the humans alive today as long as some live somewhere (I’m ambivolent about who they are, I presume there’s a formula to be found?).
I think my view is more that of Silicon Valley/entrepreneur/programmer types. These people (me, etc) want the best long term outcome and will take big actions towards that, even knowing it’ll cause some short term pain.
I don’t think ‘regular’ people think like that. They generally care more about the people around them, their own pain, their tribes, their cities, etc. (But not at all about trillions of as yet unborn humans.)
I think it’s easy to label Silicon Valley as “unethical monsters” who’re out for themselves. But Assuming we’re talking about the crime of “innovation without regard for effects” (as opposed to ACTUAL rulebreaking, like theft, assault, fraud, which I assume the Valley is no worse for than anywhere else in the world), the intentions of entrepreneurs aren’t evil or unethical, they just care more about the survival of the entire race than, today’s people.
I also think a lot of hackers/builders/entrepreneurs, for all the optimism they have about growth and innovation, are simultaneously very realistic/pessimistic about all the various ways our race is fundamentally screwed, and kinda recognises they need to be more powerful and have more resources in order to do anything about that.
Startups are more about “getting us out of this fine mess were in” than money.
[+] [-] sebular|8 years ago|reply
For starters, you're putting a mountain of words in Kumail Nanjiani's mouth. It's odd that you must be told this, but when you use quotes to summarize your opposition's arguments, you're supposed to actually wrap them around words that were actually used. A quick Ctrl+F on that page leaves one having to guess at whether you're dishonest, careless, projecting your own securities, or all at once.
Then you go and draw a line in the sand and separate yourself from "regular" people who lack the capacity to see beyond their small and petty concerns. You applaud Silicon Valley entrepreneurs as holy warriors fighting for humanity's "best long term outcome" without providing a single example. You claim that people start businesses not to make money, but to save mankind itself.
All this grandiose talk while you fervently pat yourself (and your kind) on the back, but your only tangible anchors are imagined words and flimsy analogies to humans colonizing Mars.
You are the exact personality that Silicon Valley team expertly mocked in the first season.
"We're making the world a better place!"
And for the record, if you managed to get 5% of the human population on Mars, that would be ~350 million, more than the entire population of the United States. If we put that much energy into moving people to a planet that's currently capable of supporting life for zero humans, you'd think we could've built a pretty damn good defense system to knock asteroids off a collision course with Earth.
Why is it that so many people who describe themselves as forward-thinking are more attracted to the idea of terraforming a planet with a poisonous atmosphere than lifting a finger to keep our little oasis in decent condition? I'm not saying the entire human race should rise and fall on a single planet, but don't try to paint your Mars fantasies as an altruistic plan to save all the coarse-minded sheeple from themselves.
[+] [-] vile|8 years ago|reply
I think this is a very naive view; novel new ways to share vapid content on the internet and unnecessarily internet-connected junk are getting nobody out of any sort of mess.
There are a few aspirational startups, but the vast majority follow The Cartman Plan: http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5457c9ae6bb3f7d33da...
[+] [-] scoot|8 years ago|reply
I'd argue that, far from being an escape, it's a great sacrifice to migrate from fertile earth to a sterile planet as an insurance policy against the possibility of the extinction of the human species (that is unlikely).
[+] [-] skybrian|8 years ago|reply
Treating people equally means it only solves 5% of the problem. Probably far less than that. It rounds to zero.
[+] [-] angersock|8 years ago|reply
But...that 95% already live here?
What do you think you'd be making that sacrifice for?
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|8 years ago|reply
Technology makes shitloads of money now. This attracted all kinds of people - the regular ones just looking to live their lives in comfort; the greedy assholes looking to become rich by scamming (er, advertising to) others or profiting off offloading externalities on the society. There are more of them than idealists. For each "actually help the world" startup, you have 10 "get $$$ through screwing the society" ones, and 50 "build things people will buy" ones.
Also, I feel most idealists have realized by now that startups are not necessarily a good vehicle for change, because by their nature, you trade control for money. Which means that even if you have good intentions and a great long-term idea, your investors may not share it, they need their shorter-term profits, and they just gave you money for control, so you'd better do what they want.
All in all, do seek out people who want to actually help everyone, instead of forever living in the world of tribalism and petty soap-operish nonproblems. But do not thing startups are where they gather - startups are just another flavour of mundane business world, no matter what the copy on their webistes says.
[+] [-] eli_gottlieb|8 years ago|reply
>I don’t think ‘regular’ people think like that. They generally care more about the people around them, their own pain, their tribes, their cities, etc. (But not at all about trillions of as yet unborn humans.)
And I think that both of you have a very peculiar taste for bullets, since you like biting them so much when there was otherwise no actual need. We can invent cool technologies, colonize space, and have an egalitarian society. In fact, in my view, those things go together: you can't really get a stable multiplanetary civilization going when people are constantly trying to tear out each-other's throats over socioeconomic inequality.
[+] [-] brokenbyclouds|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csydas|8 years ago|reply
I'm sorry, but too much of this leaves me scratching my head as to whether this is satire or not, and I will explain my position and not just be snarky about it, but truthfully after reading through the post having previously only glossed over it, I find some of the statements just very curious.
I take issue with the statement that SV/Entrepreneuer/programmer types just want what is the best long term outcome because more or less what they want is a long term profitable outcome most of the time. We can see examples of software and services which are produced for a better long term outcome; the Linux Kernel, software like ffmpeg, cURL, World Wide Web, etc. Not only are the statements from the founder clear on the goals and intentions of the software, but the software and services live up to their delcaration of intentions and look to solve a problem in a focused and sustainable way. There's always a lot of talk about "nothing wrong with making a little bit of profit while doing something great", but this is a pretty thin line to walk most of the time - Microsoft, for example, does have some very useful software solutions, but there's no doubt that everything about the procurement and design is meant to lock you into using it without question - it's not software to better the human, it's software to lock you in. Microsoft isn't the only guilty party here, they're just an easy example. When I see startups, when I hear about entrepreneuers and SV programmers, and heck I'll outright say it, when I hear about side-projects on HN, a lot of the times it's not software to enhance or improve life, it's software taking a stab at a share of the market.
Not everything has to be F/OSS; we don't all need to be Stallmanites with regards to our data and privacy, and I'm happy to pay out for software that does what it says on the box. I happily dropped $10 on DaisyDisk for macOS because it does exactly what it says it does without trying to lock me in further; I pay and it's done, no subscriptions, no limited functionality, no restrictions on what I can use with it. It serves its purpose very well. Sublime Text is much of the same, and it's such a good program that I've seen people here wish that new versions would require a new purchase just for another excuse to give the authors more money. The difference between these projects and most of the non-sense that gets released is that they're trying to serve an actual goal; they fulfill a need instead of creating one, and they do as promised.
This is what long-term betterment looks like; not subscription models, nag campaigns, constant notifications on what you're not getting, but instead providing a functional tool that makes your life better instead of trying to figure out more ways to get you to put out your credit card.
> I don’t think ‘regular’ people think like that.
I wonder if Doug Evans thinks much of the same thing and wonders why people don't understand he was just trying ot better their future. I take from statements like these a lot of hubris, that such Entrepreneuers know better than everyone else. Everyone at some time is guilty of thinking "if everyone just thought like me it'd be perfect", but it should be pretty obvious this just isn't how the world works. I think that indeed many of the 'regular' people do think very hard about the future, but they also think about how their 'now' will affect their and their children's future. It's not that they aren't trying to help the trillions of yet unborn humans, it's that they see a different way of getting there. For example, a programmer like you're describing wants to write a service to better the future of humanity - my friends in Seattle think we need trees and gardens everywhere. Whose solution now is going to be more important in 10 years? In 1000? In 1000? I'm not sure that you can confidently say the software is going to be impactful and important in 10 years, much less in 1 year, when more and more it seems we just get flashes in a pan.
Your conclusion that startups are concerned about survival and the human race, not just about money, isn't really supported by what the start ups are trying to do. They consolidate power instead of distributing it; they hoard information instead of sharing it. They try to lock you in instead of giving you freedom and options. This is what SV has come to represent with many of the startups you see; a new, more benevolent master, instead of a new tool to help you. There are dozens of new [Something]aaS every week, each one just fighting to lock you in to whatever cycle they have and to wring out a bit of money. These aren't there for the long term betterment of humanity, they're there for the quick buck and to make promises they can't deliver on.
[+] [-] irulebush|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] johnrichardson|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] john_teller02|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] rajam|8 years ago|reply
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