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I'm honestly pretty baffled by the whole "techies hate privacy and undermine consumers" genre. I mean, sure, engineers built Echo/Alexa and the Equifax website

I'm honestly pretty baffled by the whole "techies hate privacy and undermine consumers" genre. I mean, sure, engineers built Echo/Alexa and the Equifax website. But engineers also built Signal and HIBP. Programmers vary in their concern for privacy, just like any other group, but my general experience is that they skew more privacy-conscious than the general consumer. The writers who admit that often frame it as hypocrisy, but that's the usual sloppiness of conflating individuals with group averages. I doubt the people who wrote VTech's godawful software are particularly privacy-focused in their personal lives, while the engineers using encrypted messaging and password managers also tend to have scruples in the office. At a certain point the whole thing feels like blaming mechanical engineers for the military-industrial complex. Sure, someone found a team that would build Predator drones, but that tells us less about mechanical engineers than it does about the government.

leggomylibro 9y ago
Right; it's suits that hate privacy and undermine consumers, but they only do it because they think it's the best way to wring money out of you, and it's their job to figure that out without any sense of empathy, remorse, or morals. Techies generally like privacy in my experience, but most of them also value a steady paycheck more than they value your privacy. Sort of like how many factory workers like fishing, but they value a steady paycheck more than they value the health of your river. And again, the suits just see the river as a free way to get rid of otherwise expensive waste.
wolco 9y ago
It was always this way the people who actual wrote softwate were always more privacy minded. The products geeks who get excited over new products were the ones who never cared about privacy. There is a price to pay to be an early adopter and most are willing to trade in intangable things like time or stability or privacy. They set the norm for the average customer group that follows through feedback in the alpha/beta stages.
- goialoq 9y ago
  You know it was geeks who invented all the insecure technologies that still plague us today: DNS and SMTP to name a few.

leggomylibro 9y ago

Right; it's suits that hate privacy and undermine consumers, but they only do it because they think it's the best way to wring money out of you, and it's their job to figure that out without any sense of empathy, remorse, or morals. Techies generally like privacy in my experience, but most of them also value a steady paycheck more than they value your privacy. Sort of like how many factory workers like fishing, but they value a steady paycheck more than they value the health of your river. And again, the suits just see the river as a free way to get rid of otherwise expensive waste.

wolco 9y ago

It was always this way the people who actual wrote softwate were always more privacy minded. The products geeks who get excited over new products were the ones who never cared about privacy. There is a price to pay to be an early adopter and most are willing to trade in intangable things like time or stability or privacy. They set the norm for the average customer group that follows through feedback in the alpha/beta stages.

goialoq 9y ago
You know it was geeks who invented all the insecure technologies that still plague us today: DNS and SMTP to name a few.