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But the buggy / fallen humans are already the people implementing the platform itself: writing algorithms to detect spam, writing the "algorithmic timeline," pr
by geofft 8y ago
But the buggy / fallen humans are already the people implementing the platform itself: writing algorithms to detect spam, writing the "algorithmic timeline," prioritizing some features over others, measuring and responding to engagement metrics, planning capacity expansions for particular APIs, etc. They already have some idea of what they expect platform usage to look like and are building a system that supports that. It'd be better if the incorruptible were doing this, sure, but sinful man already is designing the platform and its intended uses.
If you offer people a platform that lends itself to certain forms of abuses, those abuses are your responsibility, even if you didn't set out to cause them - just like outages are your responsibility even though you almost certainly did not set out to cause them. Sure, before the Fall, Adam could write code that never crashed. That doesn't mean we can absolve ourselves of the responsibility to attempt to fix and prevent crashes, even though we won't succeed perfectly. Nor can we absolve ourselves of the responsibility to make sure our platforms are being used for things we want them to be used for.
- smsm42 8y agoThe problem is not buggy code - i.e. code that is meant to do one thing but actually does the other. The problem is buggy goals - e.g. goals that is meant to foster thoughtful discussion but actually create echo chamber increasingly intolerant to dissent and incapable of considering new ideas on merits instead of panicking on any deviation for the orthodoxy. Unless conscious and constant effort is taken to avoid it, it is very easy to get into such failure mode. Not because people are evil but because people are buggy and weak.