Thanks to Samantha Cole at 404 Media, we are now aware that Automattic plans to sell user data from Tumblr and WordPress.com (which is the host for my blog) for “AI” products. In respon…
While the tone of the comment is dismissive, they have a point.
It’s not the engineers that are the problem, or even limited to the tech industry. Dark patterns are top-down business decisions, motivated by money.
It’s not that the “tech industry doesn’t understand consent,” but rather that greedy people do evil things. And software is just a low hanging fruit for that kind of business.
Okay, but what is the utility in taking the title so literally and ignoring the real content? It’s a vague and mildly provocative title that is quickly clarified.
The article doesn’t argue that the tech industry is uniquely evil. It is just spreading awareness about a specific phenomenon that is currently happening in the tech industry. That is what good journalism is. People can’t organise a response to something they don’t even know about.
Besides, the tech industry does have its own culture and that culture is full of problems. Capitalism is very top-down, but it’s our shared culture that allowed tech solutionist billionaires to be embraced as heroes for so long. The least we can do is dispel the bad ideas they hide behind so people stop waiting for tech to save them.
And sorry if my tone seems rude. It’s not intentional, it’s just a frustrating subject to think about.
Software engineering has no culture - shared or otherwise. It’s just a job, you clock in, you clock out, it’s the same prison as anything else but with the comfort of WFH. The only maybe cultural aspect is that people refuse to unionize, but that’s a different issue and a result of material pressures (far too much demand for jobs gives uneven bargaining power).
Bezos, musk, gates et al were never seen as heroes by those who don’t idolize capitalists and corpos to begin with, and are still seen that way by the rest.
The future is indeed tech solutions and always has been, not an-prim nonsense and tech will indeed save us (and already has from every problem tackled thus far in humanity’s history, every disease etc.), but those tech solutions have to be aligned with humanity’s interests, and to do that you need to remove the exploitation incentive and the way you do that is by changing economic systems to communism or anarchism.
Idk I don’t find it very frustrating, it’s very clean cut in my opinion.
Software engineering has no culture - shared or otherwise.
This is absurd. Everything about software engineering is culture. It’s built around shared cultural artifacts and texts. The idea of tech and a tech industry is a purely cultural delineation.
Bezos, musk, gates et al were never seen as heroes by those who don’t idolize capitalists and corpos to begin with, and are still seen that way by the rest.
Self-congratulating and utterly defeatist at the same time. Sorry but if you ever want a union it’s pretty important that your colleagues don’t think some CEO is the messiah. If you really haven’t noticed a shift in the perception of tech billionaires in the last 10 years I don’t know what to tell you.
The future is indeed tech solutions and always has been, not an-prim nonsense and tech will indeed save us
So you’re a historical materialist who thinks we need a communist and/or anarchist revolution to save us, but who also thinks that we can sit around doing nothing until someone invents one in their garage? What on earth are you talking about?
the way you do that is by changing economic systems to communism or anarchism.
Okay but HOW? You seem to think an article that documents the exploitative behaviour of capitalists is somehow actively obstructing this revolution.
Are you a moron? Because you sound like one. Are you really equating wageslaves working for Google instead of facilitating the sale of gazillions of far more unethical products at their local Walmart by being an associate customer success checkout wagie or smth to soldiers committing attrocities? Do you not even realize the “you hate prison, yet you participate in it - curious” levels of bullshit that view entails?
Because if you did that you’d be a moron. You are a moron.
We have limited options in what we can do to get money. I currently have a job where I’m proud of what I do, but it took decades of working for assholes to get there. Even now I’m not comfortable with everything I’m asked to do. I push back when it’s unethical, and sometimes that changes things. Sometimes it doesn’t and I just have to do as I’m told. What’s your life like?
I directly tell my managers that what they are asking for is illegal, and then I refuse to do it. So far, I’ve yet to be forced to “do as I’m told,” and I doubt that this will ever be a problem for me as I don’t intend to sign up for the military or any other organization that can actually force people to follow orders.
But you do sometimes get asked to do “unethical” things, and you’re “proud of what [you] do” even though “sometimes … [you] just have to do as [you’re] told.” Why? It sounds like you’ve chosen a compromised position “to get money.”
Because we’re all human beings and we all think slightly differently to each other. If I wanted to only work with people who exactly agreed with me about everything, then I would only be able to work alone.
I’m not talking about things that are red lines for me, just preferences. If it were something that caused me dissonance I’d move on again, I promise you.
I’m lucky enough to have the background and the aptitude to get a new job whenever I want. Most people aren’t that lucky.
While the tone of the comment is dismissive, they have a point.
It’s not the engineers that are the problem, or even limited to the tech industry. Dark patterns are top-down business decisions, motivated by money.
It’s not that the “tech industry doesn’t understand consent,” but rather that greedy people do evil things. And software is just a low hanging fruit for that kind of business.
Okay, but what is the utility in taking the title so literally and ignoring the real content? It’s a vague and mildly provocative title that is quickly clarified.
The article doesn’t argue that the tech industry is uniquely evil. It is just spreading awareness about a specific phenomenon that is currently happening in the tech industry. That is what good journalism is. People can’t organise a response to something they don’t even know about.
Besides, the tech industry does have its own culture and that culture is full of problems. Capitalism is very top-down, but it’s our shared culture that allowed tech solutionist billionaires to be embraced as heroes for so long. The least we can do is dispel the bad ideas they hide behind so people stop waiting for tech to save them.
And sorry if my tone seems rude. It’s not intentional, it’s just a frustrating subject to think about.
Software engineering has no culture - shared or otherwise. It’s just a job, you clock in, you clock out, it’s the same prison as anything else but with the comfort of WFH. The only maybe cultural aspect is that people refuse to unionize, but that’s a different issue and a result of material pressures (far too much demand for jobs gives uneven bargaining power).
Bezos, musk, gates et al were never seen as heroes by those who don’t idolize capitalists and corpos to begin with, and are still seen that way by the rest.
The future is indeed tech solutions and always has been, not an-prim nonsense and tech will indeed save us (and already has from every problem tackled thus far in humanity’s history, every disease etc.), but those tech solutions have to be aligned with humanity’s interests, and to do that you need to remove the exploitation incentive and the way you do that is by changing economic systems to communism or anarchism.
Idk I don’t find it very frustrating, it’s very clean cut in my opinion.
This is absurd. Everything about software engineering is culture. It’s built around shared cultural artifacts and texts. The idea of tech and a tech industry is a purely cultural delineation.
Self-congratulating and utterly defeatist at the same time. Sorry but if you ever want a union it’s pretty important that your colleagues don’t think some CEO is the messiah. If you really haven’t noticed a shift in the perception of tech billionaires in the last 10 years I don’t know what to tell you.
So you’re a historical materialist who thinks we need a communist and/or anarchist revolution to save us, but who also thinks that we can sit around doing nothing until someone invents one in their garage? What on earth are you talking about?
Okay but HOW? You seem to think an article that documents the exploitative behaviour of capitalists is somehow actively obstructing this revolution.
Too much :(
Just following orders, right?
Come on, that’s not how morality works.
Are you a moron? Because you sound like one. Are you really equating wageslaves working for Google instead of facilitating the sale of gazillions of far more unethical products at their local Walmart by being an associate customer success checkout wagie or smth to soldiers committing attrocities? Do you not even realize the “you hate prison, yet you participate in it - curious” levels of bullshit that view entails?
Because if you did that you’d be a moron. You are a moron.
Are you seriously suggesting knowledge workers have no responsibility for how their work is used?
We have limited options in what we can do to get money. I currently have a job where I’m proud of what I do, but it took decades of working for assholes to get there. Even now I’m not comfortable with everything I’m asked to do. I push back when it’s unethical, and sometimes that changes things. Sometimes it doesn’t and I just have to do as I’m told. What’s your life like?
I directly tell my managers that what they are asking for is illegal, and then I refuse to do it. So far, I’ve yet to be forced to “do as I’m told,” and I doubt that this will ever be a problem for me as I don’t intend to sign up for the military or any other organization that can actually force people to follow orders.
I don’t get asked to do illegal things fortunately.
But you do sometimes get asked to do “unethical” things, and you’re “proud of what [you] do” even though “sometimes … [you] just have to do as [you’re] told.” Why? It sounds like you’ve chosen a compromised position “to get money.”
Because we’re all human beings and we all think slightly differently to each other. If I wanted to only work with people who exactly agreed with me about everything, then I would only be able to work alone.
I’m not talking about things that are red lines for me, just preferences. If it were something that caused me dissonance I’d move on again, I promise you.
I’m lucky enough to have the background and the aptitude to get a new job whenever I want. Most people aren’t that lucky.
There are absolutely the problem, that’s actually the difference between a programmer and an engineer: the liability.