[runawaybottle]

To add to your point, there’s not a soul in tech that ever went ‘I wonder if the results of this A/B test are ethical?’. Our industry is just not built with this sensibility, the same way Finance is not self-aware of greed.

If it makes money in Finance and meets regulatory guidelines, all is fair.

If it’s the optimal solution in tech, and doesn’t break laws or cause a noticeable usage drop-off, all is fair. When the FB algos drop engagement, we’ll see quasi-ethics from the company (perceptively to us, to them, it’ll just be an optimization).

[mgraczyk]

This isn't even close to being true. For example, when we ran A/B tests at Instagram, we would often dig into the results with breakdowns by important protected demographics. Engineers and data scientists who cared about justice would go out of their way to build tools and spend time ensuring that "good" changes didn't adversely affect small groups which were hard to measure.

I personally ran analysis like this to detect high and unexpected latency on people with cheaper cell phones (disproportionately minorities in the US). The results of my analysis led to changes that reduced this disparity (although the changes were minor and helpful for other reasons).

[prancer_or_vix]

> I personally ran analysis like this to detect high and unexpected latency on people with cheaper cell phones (disproportionately minorities in the US). The results of my analysis led to changes that reduced this disparity

Something tells me that "the poors" not having access to the problematic content/software isn't the the ethical dilemma that's being discussed.

That's like saying "I ran the analysis that determined that powder cocaine being expensive was causing a disparity in access, so I helped invent crack cocaine so that even minorities could experience cocaine addiction".

[jedberg]

Definitely not true. There were tests we ran at Netflix that would be considered "successful" based on metrics but were not implemented for social reasons, most often because they increased engagement with kids too much.

[dleslie]

> To add to your point, there’s not a soul in tech that ever went ‘I wonder if the results of this A/B test are ethical?’.

Speak for yourself. I've definitely done this.