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Developers only have themselves to blame. We allowed our technology to be used to spam, cheat and steal from our non-tech family and friends. We made tools that

Developers only have themselves to blame. We allowed our technology to be used to spam, cheat and steal from our non-tech family and friends. We made tools that helped the bad-guys and did very little when our non-tech family and friends threw their hands up in confusion and cried for help. We sighed. We called them idiots and rolled our eyes. We now have to live with a bunch mostly sensible though occasionally over-sensitive rules to make sure we don't try to trick and cheat our non-tech brethren. We of course still have plenty of other super-techy places we can play—: Linux, Raspberry Pies, Embedded Devices, the whole of server-side internet. Yet we still moan because someone has walled a bit of it off to protect ordinary people from charlatans. Boo-hoo.

TAForObvReasons 8y ago
You were downvoted but this is spot-on, and you see this debate happening everywhere in tech. The entire GDPR was rooted in the (correct) observation that the tech sector could not self-regulate, that actual laws with nontrivial punishment were required to force tech companies to stop shady behaviors. Even YC isn't clean in this regard. They funded a startup called InstallMonetizer that promulgated the drive-by installer problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711 . There's a great quote from that post: > You can make a lot of money doing all kinds of popular things -- pimping women, selling drugs, selling 'likes' on facebook, selling botnets that create fake clicks on advertisers, ponzi schemes, etc. Some are illegal, some are just barely legal, but they are all damaging to someone. This line of business is known as 'scummy' and InstallMonetizer is plain 'scummy'. Yes we have to blame those who perpetrate the behavior, but we also have to blame ourselves for not being more aggressive in sounding the alarm. For many influential people who could have put a stop to this, the Upton Sinclair quote applies: > It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
- amelius 8y ago
  The problem is that either policing is not a role for a company, or there should be laws that protect both the developer and the user, like in a normal market. Governments are partly to blame here, for not addressing platform economies. But some are working on it [1]. [1] http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/image/document/2016-7/uclouvain_et_universit_saint_louis_14044.pdf http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/image/docum...
skybrian 8y ago
The idea that "we" have the power to prevent software from being misused is nonsense. Most software (and all open source software, by definition) can be used for things the author of the software doesn't approve of. For services, there is more scope to prevent misuse, but it's a never-ending battle.
im3w1l 8y ago
Speak for yourself

TAForObvReasons 8y ago

You were downvoted but this is spot-on, and you see this debate happening everywhere in tech. The entire GDPR was rooted in the (correct) observation that the tech sector could not self-regulate, that actual laws with nontrivial punishment were required to force tech companies to stop shady behaviors. Even YC isn't clean in this regard. They funded a startup called InstallMonetizer that promulgated the drive-by installer problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711 . There's a great quote from that post: > You can make a lot of money doing all kinds of popular things -- pimping women, selling drugs, selling 'likes' on facebook, selling botnets that create fake clicks on advertisers, ponzi schemes, etc. Some are illegal, some are just barely legal, but they are all damaging to someone. This line of business is known as 'scummy' and InstallMonetizer is plain 'scummy'. Yes we have to blame those who perpetrate the behavior, but we also have to blame ourselves for not being more aggressive in sounding the alarm. For many influential people who could have put a stop to this, the Upton Sinclair quote applies: > It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

amelius 8y ago
The problem is that either policing is not a role for a company, or there should be laws that protect both the developer and the user, like in a normal market. Governments are partly to blame here, for not addressing platform economies. But some are working on it [1]. [1] http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/image/document/2016-7/uclouvain_et_universit_saint_louis_14044.pdf http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/image/docum...

skybrian 8y ago

The idea that "we" have the power to prevent software from being misused is nonsense. Most software (and all open source software, by definition) can be used for things the author of the software doesn't approve of. For services, there is more scope to prevent misuse, but it's a never-ending battle.

im3w1l 8y ago

Speak for yourself