dkqwj's comments

You chose to do this. You are accepting money in exchange for a service that potentially harms other people and democratic society. Nobody is under the gun to provide you with another job in order for you to make more ethical choices.

Show concern about the data that is collected, how it is collected, how it benefits others, how it is safeguarded. Offer operational alternatives that have a lesser negative impact with comparable benefit. Challenge people to show how that their algorithms treat people equitably and don't exacerbate existing disparities. Get a job somewhere else in an industry that helps people or positively impacts society in some way. Quit and quietly wage cyber-war against your former employer from an abandoned missile silo? Just spitballing here.

Horrendous abuses at companies like Uber and the lackadaisical approach to protecting user data demonstrated in the seemingly weekly security breaches show that there is plenty of low-hanging fruit.

This is a very sad way to view the world.

Everyone doesn't need to stop simultaneously. Some people need to stop and convince others that it's worthwhile to do so. People who refuse to stop should be shown the consequences of what they're doing and be forced to make a decision that they otherwise might not have been aware of. Some people will still make that decision and will be able to justify it completely, some people will change.

Your part in all of this, even though you don't believe change is possible, could be to be less dismissive and condescending when it's brought up.

The tech workers of today are building the future that we will all live in. None of this stuff is appearing out of thin air. Someone, an individual human with morals and values needs to sit down and say 'today I will program something that will benefit a corporation/government at the expense of a person' and then carry on.

How many people here work for companies that threaten democracy in this way? How many people have a google or facebook tracker on their personal site? This kind of change is the sum of small individual responsibilities.

The early dream of the internet was one of free expression, but people -not corporations or governments- have worked very hard to undermine that.