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Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

306 points by andrewvc 7y ago

oldjokes 7y ago
Tech has had many conscientious objectors, I've watched them come and go over the decades. Most of them drive trucks now. A few lucky ones became artists or writers, but mostly a lot of bad outcomes. One of these failed truck drivers even makes deliveries to the house of the person who forced him out sometimes, a fact which he loves laughing about.
- itronitron 7y ago
  >> the person who forced him out Worth noting that probably everyone here has seen something like this happen. Not sure if it is specific to tech, but some of the egos and pathologies are extreme.
  - patrec 7y ago
    I have never seen up close someone risking and losing their livelihood over moral issues with a business. It clearly does happen, but I would have assumed it to be rare, maybe more so in IT. So if you or GP have some details they can share about cases you witnessed, I'd love to hear.
    - itronitron 7y ago
      Oh, I meant more generally seeing someone getting forced out by a single other person in the organization. I think taking a moral stance usually leads people to move on of their own volition, as they tend to know the rules (and want them followed) and don't want to be associated with the fall out or with an organization that enforces them selectively.
- taurath 7y ago
  I'm kind of curious - how can this functionally happen, outside of the executive level? What prevents them from going across the street?
mfoy_ 7y ago
I've long thought that tech needs like.. a guild or trade union, or a professional association of some kind. The problem though, is that it's so easy to get into, so there's no easy way to "police" ourselves, because tech has been democratized so well-- Anyone can do a code boot-camp and be up and running within weeks. Not that that's a bad thing, it just makes it harder to hold developers to a code of ethics or anything like that... Maybe we just, as a society, need to adopt morality and ethics more deeply into our cultural DNA.
- halfmatthalfcat 7y ago
  We have the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) but it's not promoted or advertised near enough in my opinion to people in the field.
  - mempko 7y ago
    This! I think what I'm going to start doing is to not take any computer professional seriously unless they are an ACM or IEEE member (or similar org in your country). EDIT: Getting downvoted, clearly not a popular opinion. Are people here not interested in having a strong corporate-independent organization to push the industry forward?
    - neilv 7y ago
      Contributions to the EFF (or maybe ACLU) might be a better predictor of responsible professionalism, than membership in ACM and IEEE Computer Society.
      - mempko 7y ago
        EFF, FSF, ACLU are all great organizations. ACM is unique here though because it's specifically a professional organization meant to push the industry forward. EFF, FSF, and ACLU are great and should be supported but aren't as broad as ACM.
        7y ago
TACIXAT 7y ago
I am honestly surprised that Dragon Fly is the last straw for people at Google. The company is the embodiment of surveillance capitalism. Why is there no talk about changing that model? It just seems the activists there are piling on the "China Scary" bandwagon (see: Huawei and ZTE losing hella business due to US pressure) rather than changing the revenue source in order to improve privacy and reduce data collection.
- 0815test 7y ago
  Do people actually care about privacy or data collection these days, though? It's not clear that most do - see the amount of people who freely interact on Facebook, even though they surely must be aware that everything on that site will ultimately be something that Facebook knows about. Google just doesn't seem very different by that standard.
  - heretoo 7y ago
    I really want to tell you that you're wrong, but you're not.
  - dekhn 7y ago
    There is a small and very vocal privacy contingent that speaks so loudly that many people think it's representative, but it's not. Internally, with the exception of some product managers focused on growth, most googlers are very protective of privacy, probably more so than their users.
  - closedgrave 7y ago
    I feel like they could care, but the network effects are so strong, and the negatives are hidden for now. This is because for the most part the people designing and implementing the tech are not classically or obviously "bad" people, nor are they designing it for those purposes. Plus its complicated, so many people defer to social proof, which is a stacked metric because the strong network effects are involved. I don't know that its a "care/not" care dynamic instead of a "what where the incentives acting on those who taught you" dynamic.
  - 7y ago
draw_down 7y ago
Lots of businesses do, there is nothing special about tech companies in this regard. NYT really could have used some conscientious objectors in 2003, just as one example.
Aunche 7y ago
Tech needs fewer conscientious objectors, not more. These people rarely know anything about what they're protesting, and resort fearmongering and populism to get what they want without even attempting to resolve things civilly. The most recent example is Google's AI ethics council debacle. Activist employees were so stubborn that they can't won't even let people have a discussion about AI ethics because one of them held views they disagree with. Half the authors of the American Constitution thought that slavery should be legal, but they managed draft the foundation of modern day democracy anyways.
- nrb 7y ago
  ...and all it took was 200 years of rancor & malice and one of the bloodiest wars in the history of our country to begin to resolve. That’s a pretty extreme reduction of the founding of America with regard to those deep disagreements among the founding fathers. Those who “disagree with” the Heritage Foundation probably take offense by their propensity to outright lie and manipulate to achieve their objectives, most of which run contrary to the values of those working on Google’s AI teams. In light of that, I highly doubt they see Heritage as good-faith actors.
  - Aunche 7y ago
    My point about the Constitutional convention is that they were able to postpone resolving a contentious issue in order to make progress on things they can agree on. That's what it truly means to be progressive. IMO, the activists outright lie to and manipulate the public to achieve their objectives by overly simplifying the positions of the Hertitage Foundation. Regardless, it doesn't really matter because the Heritage Foundation represents the beliefs of a large proportion of the population, so their voice is important.
- geofft 7y ago
  > Half the authors of the American Constitution thought that slavery should be legal, but they managed draft the foundation of modern day democracy anyways. This is a story of democracy happening in spite of the founding fathers, not because of the founding fathers. It was, as you may know, a long (multiple centuries) and bloody (a pretty big war, plus lots of extrajudicial lynchings etc.) road from what they drafted to universal suffrage. It's still in progress in many ways, and a lot of people were hurt in the progress. So this seems like a pretty good argument that we should not let people who have views that are contrary to the long-term goal be setting the direction of how to get to the long-term goal.
ETHisso2017 7y ago
It's worth remembering that most of the directly attributable harm we associate with tech was created by small entities like the NSO Group and Cambridge Analytica. Instead of conscientious objectors applying pressure to large companies, it might be better for tech employees who come across small companies doing shady activities to report them. Many times, these smaller firms are more susceptible to pressure anyways, so this is a double benefit.
- ben509 7y ago
  Being smaller, though, those companies can simply be up front about what they do during recruiting and people who don't like it won't sign up for them. Succinctly, prudes don't work in porn.
  - geofft 7y ago
    Is there a name for this phenomenon in general? Your phrasing is quite clear but apparently novel, and I think it happens a lot - anti-war clergy don't apply to be military chaplains, so soldiers and commanders hear biased opinions of whether their work is incompatible with their religion compared to civilians of the same faith; people who don't think self-driving cars are a good goal tend not to apply for self-driving car companies; people who think on-prem is better than public cloud tend not to apply for companies that are all public cloud; a company that is known for a certain work culture will tend to get applications who don't think that culture is hostile; etc.
    - pdimitar 7y ago
      Selection bias, filter bubble, self-selection -- all these could apply to a varying degree.
      - geofft 7y ago
        "Filter bubble" is almost right but some of those seem somewhat intentional - the phenomenon here is that even if a porn studio wants to have its employees' prudishness reflect the general population, it can't. Even if the military wants to hire chaplains whose views on just war reflect the general population, it can't. You can usually turn off a filter bubble and you can usually actively avoid self-selection because you're doing it yourself: the phenomenon here is that the selectees are doing the filtering for you.
mc32 7y ago
I think this is s bit naive. Americans and EU citizens could conceivably follow some protocol such that what they produce will not go against certain principles (if we even presume no such thing as dual use tech), but that would do little to stifle and control developers outside this sphere. Vladimir, Jinping, Jeong-Un, Narendra, etc., aren’t about to handicap themselves and have some realization, oh, you know what guys, we should be respecting human rights, we gotta stop.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  At least they won't be handed solutions to make their dictatorship more effective and harder to avoid. Much less to combat.
  - joejerryronnie 7y ago
    You’re right, soon we’ll be using their solutions.
- eeZah7Ux 7y ago
  "If I don't do such bad thing somebody else will" is an obvious logical fallacy.
  - mc32 7y ago
    So you’re saying the export control policies with regard to encryption were good. Interesting.
    - int_19h 7y ago
      Those export control policies affected access to strong encryption by citizens of repressive states, not just by their leadership. I'd say the balance is positive here, especially since many such states also (try to) regulate access to crypto.
    - eeZah7Ux 7y ago
      Pure strawman.
kevintb 7y ago
Disheartening to see so many apathetic or downright hostile responses on here. I applaud this article for taking a stand.
- Retra 7y ago
  There's no point in taking a stand if it means relinquishing responsibility. You'd rather have weapons in the hands of pacifists than warmongers, but that won't happen if pacifists "conscientiously object" and throw down their arms; police brutality isn't eliminated by making it a job that appeals only to bullies; and software development doesn't become ethical by asking everyone with a sense of ethics to quit. What you need is for people to communicate and understand the world well enough that they can find solutions that are as ethical as they are effective.
  - int_19h 7y ago
    I don't see "asking everyone with a sense of ethics to quit" software development, though. I'm seeing a call to refuse working on things that are unethical. Most software engineering does not involve working on projects that have immediate side effects that significantly impact human rights and freedoms. To build on your police analogy, this is about asking police officers to refuse to enforce policies such as "stop and frisk".
    - Retra 7y ago
      You can't ask individuals to make that decision; they'll just be replaced with ones who are willing. Leadership needs to agree with you. You can't ask people to work at a place while undermining their companies' business plans.
      - int_19h 7y ago
        Of course you can ask individuals directly working on such stuff to make that decision. Implementers (who are aware what they're implementing) are just as much responsible for it as the people who gave them directions. In fact, this is just a rehash of the "just following orders" defense, except in this case it's not even orders, since you can walk out on them. Not only that, I seriously doubt that Google would punish anybody who would simply request to not work on that particular project, instead of accommodating them by reassigning to a different team. So this is a very low bar to clear. Does it mean that somebody else will do it? Probably, but responsibility matters. If you're the one who assists in illegal or unethical activities, then you're personally responsible for them.
hnruss 7y ago
While I agree that individuals should consider the ethics of the projects that they work on, I think it's unfair to place the entire burden on them. Those in management who make the product requirements in order to sell the software are in the best position to evaluate the ethics of how software will be used. Why haven't I read a story about management conscientiously objecting to something?
- sokoloff 7y ago
  I’m in management (at a company that doesn’t make anything where conscientious objection could be relevant). When we make other ethics-based judgment calls, we don’t go crowing about them generally. They’re simply “how things are done around here.”
  - pdimitar 7y ago
    Maybe you should tell the world about it. More people need inspiration to stand up to morally bankrupt leaders. Your story might just push them in the right direction.
ABCLAW 7y ago
I think the imposition of this burden on engineers is the result of our belief that our legislators are too incompetent or unwilling to act in the fact of clear moral hazards. Tech has a very strong history of conscientious objectors. They're not the problem. Other institutions need to do their part.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  Guess who pays the most lobbyists. That on the point of moral hazards.
  - Retric 7y ago
    That’s less sinister than you might think. New legislation is more common for new industries. Consider the internet began as the Arpanet is just 50 years ago. For much of that time the idea that the average person would be online from their own home would have seemed like crazy science fiction.
    - AstralStorm 7y ago
      The thing is, the legislation is tweaked to the benefit of the giants, not against them. At least in general. Not even federal government with their delusions of absolute control can do anything. (Say, FISA insanity.) Net neutrality was a contest between two big corps. Patent battles ruled to support American business despite clear violations? (Qualcomm et al.) The used to be laws considering encryption to be munitions. Silly attempt to sabotage it AKA Clipper. Yet somehow AI systems to discriminate explicitly sold to opposing regimes are not despite being much more applicable. On the other hand, there is Comcast and Time Warner.
      - Retric 7y ago
        I think the public benifits from that to some degree. A search engine index is inherently a derivative work and without updated legislation could easily qualify as copyright infringement. I am not saying is fair, but other industries which get away with actually killing people (ex: fine particle pollution from coal power plants). So, bias is somewhat expected from how our system works, it’s just not all bad.
throw2016 7y ago
Discussions about ethical, privacy, surveillance issues often get hand waved and diluted here. See yesterday's thread on Google's retaliation as an example. We need a diversity of communities that can represent the the software industry in more dimensions than the VC funded side of things, growth hacking and the singular focus on success that are often in heavy conflict with any kind of value dimension and ultimately greed and opportunism crowds out every other concern. There is also often a extremely selfish mercenary view of the world this is disturbing and can jade most of us and needs some maturity to handle without letting it poison ones worldview.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > Discussions about ethical, privacy, surveillance issues get hand waved and diluted here. Do they? I tend to find that Hacker News often has a lot of discussion of ethics, especially with respect to technology.
  - Karunamon 7y ago
    Entirely one-sided discussion (to put it kindly), with dissenters finding their comments invisible. For as good as the discussion around here usually is, there are some topics that even HN cannot have an open discussion on, and that happens to be one of them. Try an experiment: Argue in a thread that Facebook/Google/etc. are anything less than mustache-twirling-villian levels of evil, or that the people that work for those companies sometimes make actual human mistakes.
    - vorhp 7y ago
      Arguing against the mainstream position can even get your comment flagged. Doing it a few times (even about unrelated topics) will get your account banned for being "incendiary". HN is an echo chamber. But that's not surprising, all Internet communities are an echo chamber to some point.
  - ionised 7y ago
    On HN I see lot of hand-waving away of ethics and a lot of defence of straightforward greed.
deleted 7y ago
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debatem1 7y ago
I worked at Google and frequently found myself acting in this capacity. I think I did well at it and was explicitly promoted for doing so. At the time I admired the way the company walked the walk in that regard.
malvosenior 7y ago
What I object to is mass media and political activists trying to shame or force me to agree with their idea of "ethics" and political positions. I'll decide that for myself thank you very much. When you see activists making noise you can bet there are plenty of people who disagree with them. Unfortunately when you have outlets like the New York Times and mobs of Twitter journalists adding fuel to the fire (for one side of the debate only), speaking out for what you believe becomes incredibly dangerous if you don't go with the mainstream message. So yeah, I object to everything this article says and stands for. Sadly I can't do that under my real name because I need to keep my job.
olalonde 7y ago
This article is premised on the idea that basically everything the Chinese government does is unethical, which is debatable. For one, the Chinese government is largely supported by its population. There might actually be engineers working on Dragonfly who do not believe the project is unethical. It's not that black and white...
- ghda 7y ago
  How would one know if the Chinese government was supported by the population or not, given that anyone expressing a contrary opinion is likely to be killed?
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  That does not give any moral right to corporation to suppress clear facts. No matter how bad they are for their PR.
- klez 7y ago
  No, it's not premised on that only. If that was the case they wouldn't be talking about JEDI and Maven.
- britch 7y ago
  No not everything the Chinese government does unethical. I think it's fair to say most of the surveillance technology they're buying is not being used to help people. Do not forget, the Chinese government is, right now, using surveillance technology to imprison Uighurs. https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=553463964 https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...
- stendinator 7y ago
  How would one know if the Chinese government was supported by the population or not, given that anyone expressing a contrary opinion is likely to be a thorn in the eye that is China's surveillance state?
  - olalonde 7y ago
3xblah 7y ago
"We are a small - as-of-yet unincorporated - nonprofit providing pro bono consulting on algorithmic and policy issues arising from the proliferation of: Statistical inference / Automated decision making - often called 'AI', ..." From the author's website, listed at the bottom. Imagine if journalists and other people posting to the www called "AI" what it actually is, instead of constantly portraying it as something futuristic to capture people's imaginations. Even terms like "statistical inference" and "automated decision-making" could probably be explained using more common language to be comprehensible to the general public.
- stendinator 7y ago
  How would you rewrite that short passage in a way you think is optimal?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - laughinghan 7y ago
    Your parent comment was praising that passage and wishing more journalists and others would take that as an example of how to describe about AI.
- learnstats2 7y ago
  I once saw a lecturer teach "AI" that turned out to be statistics techniques first invented circa 1925 written incorrectly in code. "AI", if it means anything at all, is fast becoming a way of identifying snake-oil products. The explanation is necessary.
AndyMcConachie 7y ago
I wrote an article on why this kind of thinking is naive a while back. I still think it is naive. https://ctsp.berkeley.edu/ethical-pledges-for-individuals-and-collectives/ https://ctsp.berkeley.edu/ethical-pledges-for-individuals-an...
- chillacy 7y ago
  Yea I frequently see sentiments like “if only everyone would stop working for X”. It’s true but when we’re all locked in a game of the prisoners dilemma, moralizing isn’t going to get us to move, laws and changed incentives will. I think americans finally figured that out about climate change, which is why we’re looking at carbon taxes instead of just public pressure.
- lern_too_spel 7y ago
  The article itself listed a few cases where worker dissent had the desired effect. All you really need is a critical mass of dissenters or bad press.
oedmarap 7y ago
I've always ended up with, and still reach the conclusion that there are only two tenable options which will work against a corrupt and unethical system. 1. Infiltrate, subvert, and implode the system from within (that's meant to be as Tzu-esque as it sounds). 2. Using parallel propaganda to get the public to realize that they have the ability to disable the system if they can collectively wield a moral, objective, and ethical compass (with all the McLuhan-esque difficulties that come with it). I prefer the former. As dangerous as it is, I think it's strategically easier to wield covert action as a tool for effecting change than it is to attempt a unification of the masses. But, maybe a combination of both these approaches would be ideal.
- neilv 7y ago
  It's tricky. It's really easy for "I'll change things from within" to be a convenient rationalization for $400K total comp. I considered it once again myself last year, when I talked with a big-name company, and my version that time was "I can do good work on good stuff, promote that over the not-as-good stuff, and generally be a positive citizen of the company". Of course, I was also thinking I could really use the big-corp money. But when they insisted that I'd have to do the new-grad hazing rituals, I decided I was kidding myself that I was being considered for any position where I'd have any input into goodness, and they were really only considering me as a junior frat pledge.
- pedro2 7y ago
  Option 2 gives the other side time to fight back, with much more resources than you have. Option 3: pick the lesser evil, not the best option. Cut the money/power flow for the incumbent parties. Force them to compete. It is my hope for democracy's purpose - to force competition at governent level.
mrspeaker 7y ago
I remember drafting up a blog post a decade ago where I theorized/ranted that tech workers would end up being the bad guys in history. I didn't post it because it seemed so unrealistic at the time (and because I don't really know what I'll do when tech is killed... maybe some kind of appliance repair?). It's quite amazing the difference 10 years makes!
learnstats2 7y ago
I know plenty of conscientious objectors in tech, they just /don't work in tech any more/.
randomacct3847 7y ago
As someone who has worked in sf tech for 5-6 years I feel like I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve become too critical of the industry to continue working in it.
Not_anchovie 7y ago
Tech has plenty, but tech also has censorship.
6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
For my part, I'm just not interested in working at facebook or google or certain other companies because I disagree with their practices. Luckily, I'm far enough along in my career that I don't need to take just any job, even if it is limiting to be a privacy conscious data scientist. I do worry that people like me just staying out of these places leads to an echo chamber, and change from within is great. I wonder whether my individual impact on social good is greater trying to be moral at a moral company, or trying to be moral at an immoral company. Luckily I don't have to twist my logic around to justify staying and vesting.
- x3n0ph3n3 7y ago
  Yeah, it's hard to be a conscientious objector when you never put yourself into the position of working for a company whose goals you need to object to.
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
    Huh, I would have said it's easy to. Would you mind expanding on that?
newscracker 7y ago
Compensation, including perks, is usually very good in tech in comparison to many other industries. Most people rationalize and convince themselves that they're not really doing bad things, and that it's someone else who's the problem. In some companies, the culture is also that of being oblivious (or acting oblivious) to the harm caused by the work. Facebook is the best example of this. Has there been any conscientious objector in that company? People like the WhatsApp and Instagram founders, who grew a conscience after getting billions in their pockets, don't count (even if one or two left some money on the table when quitting). Money tells many a true tale of what goes in in people's minds. The article, sadly, does not mention Facebook and all the surveillance that it enables and grows, along with oppressing people by forcing them to use "real names".
- seppin 7y ago
  > Has there been any conscientious objector in that company? No it's a cult. They wouldn't hire you unless you drank the koolaid.
  - opportune 7y ago
    Usually in articles with a lot of facebook bashing, some facebook employee comes out of the woodwork and tries to spin it as "haters" being the problem somehow (for not doing anything, for (potentially) using the service?)
- drak0n1c 7y ago
  Many software engineers conscientiously object to working at social or information platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google. They simply have never worked there or tried to work there, just like how most wartime conscientious objectors avoid enlisting in the first place. Objectors' reasons are diverse and not as unified as NYT makes it seem - some believe that big tech's arbitrary censorship and subtle political bias is immoral, while others believe that big tech's inability or lack of incentive to limit ads, fake news, or distasteful speech is immoral.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  I doubt anyone sensitive to the privacy issue would apply to work at facebook in the first place. Even if the technology and know-how might be promising.
natalyarostova 7y ago
I'm very uncomfortable with how we are importing Chinese censorship into our lives, due in part to tech companies needing to build services that can operate in both regions. At an object level, it's an important point to make and re-iterate. On a meta-level, I am annoyed at how much special pleading I see from the NYtimes about the evils of tech, while it's simply par for the course for -- say -- Finance to act with near impunity when managing, fund raising, and dealing with autocratic and communist regimes.
ArtDev 7y ago
Coding is a craft. I wouldn't work on something I had moral issues with. There are grey areas for sure, but for me, work for the defense industry or a local gun shop.. nope.. go find someone else. There will always be someone that doesn't have any moral compass about their work or income. That person is simply not me.
- spunker540 7y ago
  Do you feel defense contractors should go out of business and that the work they do is immoral? Or is it just not for you? I don’t know what country you’re from but would you prefer you had no military or weapons or defense? Like it or not there will always be other countries with weapons and they may not always be friendly towards you or your interests. I wouldn’t want my work to have anything to do with killing people either, but I also think the defense industry (while unfortunate) is probably here to stay, for good reasons too.
TallGuyShort 7y ago
There are plenty of people who don't work at these companies for these reasons. There could be more of those people. But there will still be enough who are willing to do it for the right price or who actually support the morality and ethics of doing it, that it will still get built even if the vast majority of the tech industry conscientiously objected.
deleted 7y ago
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ggm 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener
1e-9 7y ago
Encouraging dissent is a small piece of what is needed. Developers must certainly consider the moral and ethical consequences of their work, but most situations are not going to be black and white, and no matter how diabolical a project might be, there is always a way to rationalize it. What is most needed is widespread public debate among those who understand the technologies in order to form consensus on appropriate directions of development. Any consensus then needs to be effectively communicated to the public and to policy makers. This helps everyone, including developers, make better decisions about what they should or should not support. Forums such as HN and various blogs can foster debate, but there seems to be a need for a more consolidated approach that someone needs to establish. As far as communicating consensus goes, I think that nonprofit organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation can be a good conduit, but they need more widespread support from the technical community.
phs318u 7y ago
Perhaps one day, we'll see lists like this [0] for companies that helped the Chinese government detain entire ethnic populations, or for those that provided assistance to the Turkish regime during its purges and disappearances of opponents, or those that facilitated states, such as Russia, to politically interfere in the democratic functioning of their rivals, and the extra-judicial killing of their opponents. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_...
malandrew 7y ago
The NY Times and other media companies need more conscientious objectors too.
bentona 7y ago
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" [0] I believe that it is dangerous to conflate job choice with conscientious objection. Everyone should be held accountable for what they spend their day contributing to - this shouldn't be a special case. Comparing this to a situation in which someone doesn't want to participate in compulsory murder, and in some cases risks being killed themselves, is not helpful. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientious_objector#cite_note-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientious_objector#cite_no...
- roenxi 7y ago
  On the one hand, I agree with you that it isn't helpful. But on the other hand, there is a plausible parallel. The reason for strong controls on privacy is because every couple of generations governments tend to do a lot of damage to their own citizens. If I thought the worst that was going to happen was the risk of being wrongly accused, public shaming or something, then privacy isn't really worth it. I trust law enforcement to be generally correct in assessing the situation, and if you are doing something shameful you may as well be shamed. Privacy is important because it is one layer of protection against institutions participating in the murder of citizens, seen in Germany, China, Russia in the last generation and China + others this generation. Who knows for next generation? Change is very quick - there is no law of nature that says it won't be an Anglophone country. We can get thingy about whether a conscientious objector has to be the last person pulling the trigger or not, but in practice that distinction is not an important one.
_lessthan0 7y ago
It really does, if you look at different engineering companies like Rolls Royce whilst the military takeover in Chile, a group of engineers in Scotland stopped working because they knew where their product was being sold too. HN seems to think that Programmers can and should get away with everything. Disturbing to say the least.
chriselles 7y ago
I respect the choices of tech sector workers who choose to protest against certain company policies and even refuse to perform certain types of work that enhance mass personalised surveillance and the enhancement of military lethality. It’s a different world from 30 and 70 years ago. 70 years ago nearly all R&D spent was specifically military in nature. So it was pretty clear from the point of hire that you were(or weren’t working on military or related(surveillance) projects. 30 years ago military and commercial R&D hit parity and it was still quite easy to known going into an employment contract what side of the fence one was on. Today, almost all R&D is commercial in nature, but with vast duel use military/surveillance potential. So it’s much more convoluted and nebulous to delineate project output, perhaps a major contributing factor to recent decisions and actions. Combined with the long standing low supply, high demand for talent enhancing leverage. I agree that tech talent conscience is critical. I only hope we see the same from Chinese software engineers working at Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei, etc. I wonder if the future will see a convoluted analog to the Manhattan Project, the Rosenbergs, and apex talent migration out of 1930’s fascist countries.
maxheadroom 7y ago
When Google's internal turmoil surfaced about the work on Project Jedi, it did not ultimately kill the project[0]. As long as there's someone else still willing to compromise their moral grounds for the value returned, it's still going to get made. That's just how capitalist societies work: People need to make money and someone is going to fulfill that objectional need because they have a need to fill their own coffers. One need only look at the fervor against Facebook and realise that they still employ over 35k people to understand that, at the end of the day, people are either willing to do the task or they're in a position that they have no other choice (considering that the US doesn't have much of a social safety net). So, while "conscientious objectors" might be good for a single business direction, it - sadly - does nothing for the overall scheme of things. ...but even if all of the engineers organised in North America to create manifestos, under psuedo or actual unions, which dictated what the future of tech should be used for, this does nothing to dissuade the partners (e.g.: 5Is) from doing the same and then sharing that technology back to their own government. I concede that maybe I'm misunderstanding the author's intent but to me, the posit seems too idyllic to be fruitful (overall) in modern society. [0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-23/pentagon-s-designer-of-10-billion-jedi-cloud-is-stepping-down https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-23/pentagon-...
drak0n1c 7y ago
The educational Youtube channel SmarterEveryDay made a video about his day job as a military rocket engineer. It's an insightful how-and-why explanation for those wondering why there aren't more conscientious objectors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOTYgcdNrXE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOTYgcdNrXE
objector-000001 7y ago
I conscientiously object here on HN with shitposts, because I think HN is slightly too pretentious, and something important is lost in the dry demeanor. At some point, @jcs of lobste.rs complained of, quote: "capricious modding" and I think that much rings true. Perhaps most crucial, is the undeniable reality, that once you place a comment on HN, you are no longer the owner. You lose the ability to delete or edit very quickly, and the statements posted here become locked and permanent. With this, it is ill-advised that an authentic persona should ever become attached to any user name on HN. If your opinions run contrary to political winds in this climate, real problems could come your way, and in an emergency, there is no way to disentangle yourself for data that exists on this site. That's okay, since HN is decidedly low-fi in many ways. But based on this, you'de hope for a lighter, more permissive hand on the moderation. Not so. Not at all. So, with an iron fist in play, why pull ones own punches. Let the harshest opinions fly, if they'll assuredly be stamped out by such stifling interference. No need to feel guilty for resisting the iron fist. After all, opinions on the internet aren't really what's wrong with the world right now. It's just an oh so popular scape goat. How do you like my objections to HN's subculture? Conscientious enough?

306 points by andrewvc 7y ago

Tech has had many conscientious objectors, I've watched them come and go over the decades. Most of them drive trucks now. A few lucky ones became artists or writers, but mostly a lot of bad outcomes. One of these failed truck drivers even makes deliveries to the house of the person who forced him out sometimes, a fact which he loves laughing about.

itronitron 7y ago
>> the person who forced him out Worth noting that probably everyone here has seen something like this happen. Not sure if it is specific to tech, but some of the egos and pathologies are extreme.
- patrec 7y ago
  I have never seen up close someone risking and losing their livelihood over moral issues with a business. It clearly does happen, but I would have assumed it to be rare, maybe more so in IT. So if you or GP have some details they can share about cases you witnessed, I'd love to hear.
  - itronitron 7y ago
    Oh, I meant more generally seeing someone getting forced out by a single other person in the organization. I think taking a moral stance usually leads people to move on of their own volition, as they tend to know the rules (and want them followed) and don't want to be associated with the fall out or with an organization that enforces them selectively.
taurath 7y ago
I'm kind of curious - how can this functionally happen, outside of the executive level? What prevents them from going across the street?

mfoy_ 7y ago

I've long thought that tech needs like.. a guild or trade union, or a professional association of some kind. The problem though, is that it's so easy to get into, so there's no easy way to "police" ourselves, because tech has been democratized so well-- Anyone can do a code boot-camp and be up and running within weeks. Not that that's a bad thing, it just makes it harder to hold developers to a code of ethics or anything like that... Maybe we just, as a society, need to adopt morality and ethics more deeply into our cultural DNA.

halfmatthalfcat 7y ago
We have the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) but it's not promoted or advertised near enough in my opinion to people in the field.
- mempko 7y ago
  This! I think what I'm going to start doing is to not take any computer professional seriously unless they are an ACM or IEEE member (or similar org in your country). EDIT: Getting downvoted, clearly not a popular opinion. Are people here not interested in having a strong corporate-independent organization to push the industry forward?
  - neilv 7y ago
    Contributions to the EFF (or maybe ACLU) might be a better predictor of responsible professionalism, than membership in ACM and IEEE Computer Society.
    - mempko 7y ago
      EFF, FSF, ACLU are all great organizations. ACM is unique here though because it's specifically a professional organization meant to push the industry forward. EFF, FSF, and ACLU are great and should be supported but aren't as broad as ACM.
      - 7y ago

TACIXAT 7y ago

I am honestly surprised that Dragon Fly is the last straw for people at Google. The company is the embodiment of surveillance capitalism. Why is there no talk about changing that model? It just seems the activists there are piling on the "China Scary" bandwagon (see: Huawei and ZTE losing hella business due to US pressure) rather than changing the revenue source in order to improve privacy and reduce data collection.

0815test 7y ago
Do people actually care about privacy or data collection these days, though? It's not clear that most do - see the amount of people who freely interact on Facebook, even though they surely must be aware that everything on that site will ultimately be something that Facebook knows about. Google just doesn't seem very different by that standard.
- heretoo 7y ago
  I really want to tell you that you're wrong, but you're not.
- dekhn 7y ago
  There is a small and very vocal privacy contingent that speaks so loudly that many people think it's representative, but it's not. Internally, with the exception of some product managers focused on growth, most googlers are very protective of privacy, probably more so than their users.
- closedgrave 7y ago
  I feel like they could care, but the network effects are so strong, and the negatives are hidden for now. This is because for the most part the people designing and implementing the tech are not classically or obviously "bad" people, nor are they designing it for those purposes. Plus its complicated, so many people defer to social proof, which is a stacked metric because the strong network effects are involved. I don't know that its a "care/not" care dynamic instead of a "what where the incentives acting on those who taught you" dynamic.
- 7y ago

draw_down 7y ago

Lots of businesses do, there is nothing special about tech companies in this regard. NYT really could have used some conscientious objectors in 2003, just as one example.

Aunche 7y ago

Tech needs fewer conscientious objectors, not more. These people rarely know anything about what they're protesting, and resort fearmongering and populism to get what they want without even attempting to resolve things civilly. The most recent example is Google's AI ethics council debacle. Activist employees were so stubborn that they can't won't even let people have a discussion about AI ethics because one of them held views they disagree with. Half the authors of the American Constitution thought that slavery should be legal, but they managed draft the foundation of modern day democracy anyways.

nrb 7y ago
...and all it took was 200 years of rancor & malice and one of the bloodiest wars in the history of our country to begin to resolve. That’s a pretty extreme reduction of the founding of America with regard to those deep disagreements among the founding fathers. Those who “disagree with” the Heritage Foundation probably take offense by their propensity to outright lie and manipulate to achieve their objectives, most of which run contrary to the values of those working on Google’s AI teams. In light of that, I highly doubt they see Heritage as good-faith actors.
- Aunche 7y ago
  My point about the Constitutional convention is that they were able to postpone resolving a contentious issue in order to make progress on things they can agree on. That's what it truly means to be progressive. IMO, the activists outright lie to and manipulate the public to achieve their objectives by overly simplifying the positions of the Hertitage Foundation. Regardless, it doesn't really matter because the Heritage Foundation represents the beliefs of a large proportion of the population, so their voice is important.
geofft 7y ago
> Half the authors of the American Constitution thought that slavery should be legal, but they managed draft the foundation of modern day democracy anyways. This is a story of democracy happening in spite of the founding fathers, not because of the founding fathers. It was, as you may know, a long (multiple centuries) and bloody (a pretty big war, plus lots of extrajudicial lynchings etc.) road from what they drafted to universal suffrage. It's still in progress in many ways, and a lot of people were hurt in the progress. So this seems like a pretty good argument that we should not let people who have views that are contrary to the long-term goal be setting the direction of how to get to the long-term goal.

ETHisso2017 7y ago

It's worth remembering that most of the directly attributable harm we associate with tech was created by small entities like the NSO Group and Cambridge Analytica. Instead of conscientious objectors applying pressure to large companies, it might be better for tech employees who come across small companies doing shady activities to report them. Many times, these smaller firms are more susceptible to pressure anyways, so this is a double benefit.

ben509 7y ago
Being smaller, though, those companies can simply be up front about what they do during recruiting and people who don't like it won't sign up for them. Succinctly, prudes don't work in porn.
- geofft 7y ago
  Is there a name for this phenomenon in general? Your phrasing is quite clear but apparently novel, and I think it happens a lot - anti-war clergy don't apply to be military chaplains, so soldiers and commanders hear biased opinions of whether their work is incompatible with their religion compared to civilians of the same faith; people who don't think self-driving cars are a good goal tend not to apply for self-driving car companies; people who think on-prem is better than public cloud tend not to apply for companies that are all public cloud; a company that is known for a certain work culture will tend to get applications who don't think that culture is hostile; etc.
  - pdimitar 7y ago
    Selection bias, filter bubble, self-selection -- all these could apply to a varying degree.
    - geofft 7y ago
      "Filter bubble" is almost right but some of those seem somewhat intentional - the phenomenon here is that even if a porn studio wants to have its employees' prudishness reflect the general population, it can't. Even if the military wants to hire chaplains whose views on just war reflect the general population, it can't. You can usually turn off a filter bubble and you can usually actively avoid self-selection because you're doing it yourself: the phenomenon here is that the selectees are doing the filtering for you.

mc32 7y ago

I think this is s bit naive. Americans and EU citizens could conceivably follow some protocol such that what they produce will not go against certain principles (if we even presume no such thing as dual use tech), but that would do little to stifle and control developers outside this sphere. Vladimir, Jinping, Jeong-Un, Narendra, etc., aren’t about to handicap themselves and have some realization, oh, you know what guys, we should be respecting human rights, we gotta stop.

AstralStorm 7y ago
At least they won't be handed solutions to make their dictatorship more effective and harder to avoid. Much less to combat.
- joejerryronnie 7y ago
  You’re right, soon we’ll be using their solutions.
eeZah7Ux 7y ago
"If I don't do such bad thing somebody else will" is an obvious logical fallacy.
- mc32 7y ago
  So you’re saying the export control policies with regard to encryption were good. Interesting.
  - int_19h 7y ago
    Those export control policies affected access to strong encryption by citizens of repressive states, not just by their leadership. I'd say the balance is positive here, especially since many such states also (try to) regulate access to crypto.
  - eeZah7Ux 7y ago
    Pure strawman.

kevintb 7y ago

Disheartening to see so many apathetic or downright hostile responses on here. I applaud this article for taking a stand.

Retra 7y ago
There's no point in taking a stand if it means relinquishing responsibility. You'd rather have weapons in the hands of pacifists than warmongers, but that won't happen if pacifists "conscientiously object" and throw down their arms; police brutality isn't eliminated by making it a job that appeals only to bullies; and software development doesn't become ethical by asking everyone with a sense of ethics to quit. What you need is for people to communicate and understand the world well enough that they can find solutions that are as ethical as they are effective.
- int_19h 7y ago
  I don't see "asking everyone with a sense of ethics to quit" software development, though. I'm seeing a call to refuse working on things that are unethical. Most software engineering does not involve working on projects that have immediate side effects that significantly impact human rights and freedoms. To build on your police analogy, this is about asking police officers to refuse to enforce policies such as "stop and frisk".
  - Retra 7y ago
    You can't ask individuals to make that decision; they'll just be replaced with ones who are willing. Leadership needs to agree with you. You can't ask people to work at a place while undermining their companies' business plans.
    - int_19h 7y ago
      Of course you can ask individuals directly working on such stuff to make that decision. Implementers (who are aware what they're implementing) are just as much responsible for it as the people who gave them directions. In fact, this is just a rehash of the "just following orders" defense, except in this case it's not even orders, since you can walk out on them. Not only that, I seriously doubt that Google would punish anybody who would simply request to not work on that particular project, instead of accommodating them by reassigning to a different team. So this is a very low bar to clear. Does it mean that somebody else will do it? Probably, but responsibility matters. If you're the one who assists in illegal or unethical activities, then you're personally responsible for them.

hnruss 7y ago

While I agree that individuals should consider the ethics of the projects that they work on, I think it's unfair to place the entire burden on them. Those in management who make the product requirements in order to sell the software are in the best position to evaluate the ethics of how software will be used. Why haven't I read a story about management conscientiously objecting to something?

sokoloff 7y ago
I’m in management (at a company that doesn’t make anything where conscientious objection could be relevant). When we make other ethics-based judgment calls, we don’t go crowing about them generally. They’re simply “how things are done around here.”
- pdimitar 7y ago
  Maybe you should tell the world about it. More people need inspiration to stand up to morally bankrupt leaders. Your story might just push them in the right direction.

ABCLAW 7y ago

I think the imposition of this burden on engineers is the result of our belief that our legislators are too incompetent or unwilling to act in the fact of clear moral hazards. Tech has a very strong history of conscientious objectors. They're not the problem. Other institutions need to do their part.

AstralStorm 7y ago
Guess who pays the most lobbyists. That on the point of moral hazards.
- Retric 7y ago
  That’s less sinister than you might think. New legislation is more common for new industries. Consider the internet began as the Arpanet is just 50 years ago. For much of that time the idea that the average person would be online from their own home would have seemed like crazy science fiction.
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    The thing is, the legislation is tweaked to the benefit of the giants, not against them. At least in general. Not even federal government with their delusions of absolute control can do anything. (Say, FISA insanity.) Net neutrality was a contest between two big corps. Patent battles ruled to support American business despite clear violations? (Qualcomm et al.) The used to be laws considering encryption to be munitions. Silly attempt to sabotage it AKA Clipper. Yet somehow AI systems to discriminate explicitly sold to opposing regimes are not despite being much more applicable. On the other hand, there is Comcast and Time Warner.
    - Retric 7y ago
      I think the public benifits from that to some degree. A search engine index is inherently a derivative work and without updated legislation could easily qualify as copyright infringement. I am not saying is fair, but other industries which get away with actually killing people (ex: fine particle pollution from coal power plants). So, bias is somewhat expected from how our system works, it’s just not all bad.

throw2016 7y ago

Discussions about ethical, privacy, surveillance issues often get hand waved and diluted here. See yesterday's thread on Google's retaliation as an example. We need a diversity of communities that can represent the the software industry in more dimensions than the VC funded side of things, growth hacking and the singular focus on success that are often in heavy conflict with any kind of value dimension and ultimately greed and opportunism crowds out every other concern. There is also often a extremely selfish mercenary view of the world this is disturbing and can jade most of us and needs some maturity to handle without letting it poison ones worldview.

saagarjha 7y ago
> Discussions about ethical, privacy, surveillance issues get hand waved and diluted here. Do they? I tend to find that Hacker News often has a lot of discussion of ethics, especially with respect to technology.
- Karunamon 7y ago
  Entirely one-sided discussion (to put it kindly), with dissenters finding their comments invisible. For as good as the discussion around here usually is, there are some topics that even HN cannot have an open discussion on, and that happens to be one of them. Try an experiment: Argue in a thread that Facebook/Google/etc. are anything less than mustache-twirling-villian levels of evil, or that the people that work for those companies sometimes make actual human mistakes.
  - vorhp 7y ago
    Arguing against the mainstream position can even get your comment flagged. Doing it a few times (even about unrelated topics) will get your account banned for being "incendiary". HN is an echo chamber. But that's not surprising, all Internet communities are an echo chamber to some point.
- ionised 7y ago
  On HN I see lot of hand-waving away of ethics and a lot of defence of straightforward greed.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

debatem1 7y ago

I worked at Google and frequently found myself acting in this capacity. I think I did well at it and was explicitly promoted for doing so. At the time I admired the way the company walked the walk in that regard.

malvosenior 7y ago

What I object to is mass media and political activists trying to shame or force me to agree with their idea of "ethics" and political positions. I'll decide that for myself thank you very much. When you see activists making noise you can bet there are plenty of people who disagree with them. Unfortunately when you have outlets like the New York Times and mobs of Twitter journalists adding fuel to the fire (for one side of the debate only), speaking out for what you believe becomes incredibly dangerous if you don't go with the mainstream message. So yeah, I object to everything this article says and stands for. Sadly I can't do that under my real name because I need to keep my job.

olalonde 7y ago

This article is premised on the idea that basically everything the Chinese government does is unethical, which is debatable. For one, the Chinese government is largely supported by its population. There might actually be engineers working on Dragonfly who do not believe the project is unethical. It's not that black and white...

ghda 7y ago
How would one know if the Chinese government was supported by the population or not, given that anyone expressing a contrary opinion is likely to be killed?
AstralStorm 7y ago
That does not give any moral right to corporation to suppress clear facts. No matter how bad they are for their PR.
klez 7y ago
No, it's not premised on that only. If that was the case they wouldn't be talking about JEDI and Maven.
britch 7y ago
No not everything the Chinese government does unethical. I think it's fair to say most of the surveillance technology they're buying is not being used to help people. Do not forget, the Chinese government is, right now, using surveillance technology to imprison Uighurs. https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=553463964 https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...
stendinator 7y ago
How would one know if the Chinese government was supported by the population or not, given that anyone expressing a contrary opinion is likely to be a thorn in the eye that is China's surveillance state?
- olalonde 7y ago

3xblah 7y ago

"We are a small - as-of-yet unincorporated - nonprofit providing pro bono consulting on algorithmic and policy issues arising from the proliferation of: Statistical inference / Automated decision making - often called 'AI', ..." From the author's website, listed at the bottom. Imagine if journalists and other people posting to the www called "AI" what it actually is, instead of constantly portraying it as something futuristic to capture people's imaginations. Even terms like "statistical inference" and "automated decision-making" could probably be explained using more common language to be comprehensible to the general public.

stendinator 7y ago
How would you rewrite that short passage in a way you think is optimal?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- laughinghan 7y ago
  Your parent comment was praising that passage and wishing more journalists and others would take that as an example of how to describe about AI.
learnstats2 7y ago
I once saw a lecturer teach "AI" that turned out to be statistics techniques first invented circa 1925 written incorrectly in code. "AI", if it means anything at all, is fast becoming a way of identifying snake-oil products. The explanation is necessary.

AndyMcConachie 7y ago

I wrote an article on why this kind of thinking is naive a while back. I still think it is naive. https://ctsp.berkeley.edu/ethical-pledges-for-individuals-and-collectives/ https://ctsp.berkeley.edu/ethical-pledges-for-individuals-an...

chillacy 7y ago
Yea I frequently see sentiments like “if only everyone would stop working for X”. It’s true but when we’re all locked in a game of the prisoners dilemma, moralizing isn’t going to get us to move, laws and changed incentives will. I think americans finally figured that out about climate change, which is why we’re looking at carbon taxes instead of just public pressure.
lern_too_spel 7y ago
The article itself listed a few cases where worker dissent had the desired effect. All you really need is a critical mass of dissenters or bad press.

oedmarap 7y ago

I've always ended up with, and still reach the conclusion that there are only two tenable options which will work against a corrupt and unethical system. 1. Infiltrate, subvert, and implode the system from within (that's meant to be as Tzu-esque as it sounds). 2. Using parallel propaganda to get the public to realize that they have the ability to disable the system if they can collectively wield a moral, objective, and ethical compass (with all the McLuhan-esque difficulties that come with it). I prefer the former. As dangerous as it is, I think it's strategically easier to wield covert action as a tool for effecting change than it is to attempt a unification of the masses. But, maybe a combination of both these approaches would be ideal.

neilv 7y ago
It's tricky. It's really easy for "I'll change things from within" to be a convenient rationalization for $400K total comp. I considered it once again myself last year, when I talked with a big-name company, and my version that time was "I can do good work on good stuff, promote that over the not-as-good stuff, and generally be a positive citizen of the company". Of course, I was also thinking I could really use the big-corp money. But when they insisted that I'd have to do the new-grad hazing rituals, I decided I was kidding myself that I was being considered for any position where I'd have any input into goodness, and they were really only considering me as a junior frat pledge.
pedro2 7y ago
Option 2 gives the other side time to fight back, with much more resources than you have. Option 3: pick the lesser evil, not the best option. Cut the money/power flow for the incumbent parties. Force them to compete. It is my hope for democracy's purpose - to force competition at governent level.

mrspeaker 7y ago

I remember drafting up a blog post a decade ago where I theorized/ranted that tech workers would end up being the bad guys in history. I didn't post it because it seemed so unrealistic at the time (and because I don't really know what I'll do when tech is killed... maybe some kind of appliance repair?). It's quite amazing the difference 10 years makes!

learnstats2 7y ago

I know plenty of conscientious objectors in tech, they just /don't work in tech any more/.

randomacct3847 7y ago

As someone who has worked in sf tech for 5-6 years I feel like I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve become too critical of the industry to continue working in it.

Not_anchovie 7y ago

Tech has plenty, but tech also has censorship.

6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago

For my part, I'm just not interested in working at facebook or google or certain other companies because I disagree with their practices. Luckily, I'm far enough along in my career that I don't need to take just any job, even if it is limiting to be a privacy conscious data scientist. I do worry that people like me just staying out of these places leads to an echo chamber, and change from within is great. I wonder whether my individual impact on social good is greater trying to be moral at a moral company, or trying to be moral at an immoral company. Luckily I don't have to twist my logic around to justify staying and vesting.

x3n0ph3n3 7y ago
Yeah, it's hard to be a conscientious objector when you never put yourself into the position of working for a company whose goals you need to object to.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
  Huh, I would have said it's easy to. Would you mind expanding on that?

newscracker 7y ago

Compensation, including perks, is usually very good in tech in comparison to many other industries. Most people rationalize and convince themselves that they're not really doing bad things, and that it's someone else who's the problem. In some companies, the culture is also that of being oblivious (or acting oblivious) to the harm caused by the work. Facebook is the best example of this. Has there been any conscientious objector in that company? People like the WhatsApp and Instagram founders, who grew a conscience after getting billions in their pockets, don't count (even if one or two left some money on the table when quitting). Money tells many a true tale of what goes in in people's minds. The article, sadly, does not mention Facebook and all the surveillance that it enables and grows, along with oppressing people by forcing them to use "real names".

seppin 7y ago
> Has there been any conscientious objector in that company? No it's a cult. They wouldn't hire you unless you drank the koolaid.
- opportune 7y ago
  Usually in articles with a lot of facebook bashing, some facebook employee comes out of the woodwork and tries to spin it as "haters" being the problem somehow (for not doing anything, for (potentially) using the service?)
drak0n1c 7y ago
Many software engineers conscientiously object to working at social or information platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google. They simply have never worked there or tried to work there, just like how most wartime conscientious objectors avoid enlisting in the first place. Objectors' reasons are diverse and not as unified as NYT makes it seem - some believe that big tech's arbitrary censorship and subtle political bias is immoral, while others believe that big tech's inability or lack of incentive to limit ads, fake news, or distasteful speech is immoral.
raxxorrax 7y ago
I doubt anyone sensitive to the privacy issue would apply to work at facebook in the first place. Even if the technology and know-how might be promising.

natalyarostova 7y ago

I'm very uncomfortable with how we are importing Chinese censorship into our lives, due in part to tech companies needing to build services that can operate in both regions. At an object level, it's an important point to make and re-iterate. On a meta-level, I am annoyed at how much special pleading I see from the NYtimes about the evils of tech, while it's simply par for the course for -- say -- Finance to act with near impunity when managing, fund raising, and dealing with autocratic and communist regimes.

ArtDev 7y ago

Coding is a craft. I wouldn't work on something I had moral issues with. There are grey areas for sure, but for me, work for the defense industry or a local gun shop.. nope.. go find someone else. There will always be someone that doesn't have any moral compass about their work or income. That person is simply not me.

spunker540 7y ago
Do you feel defense contractors should go out of business and that the work they do is immoral? Or is it just not for you? I don’t know what country you’re from but would you prefer you had no military or weapons or defense? Like it or not there will always be other countries with weapons and they may not always be friendly towards you or your interests. I wouldn’t want my work to have anything to do with killing people either, but I also think the defense industry (while unfortunate) is probably here to stay, for good reasons too.

TallGuyShort 7y ago

There are plenty of people who don't work at these companies for these reasons. There could be more of those people. But there will still be enough who are willing to do it for the right price or who actually support the morality and ethics of doing it, that it will still get built even if the vast majority of the tech industry conscientiously objected.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

ggm 7y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener

1e-9 7y ago

Encouraging dissent is a small piece of what is needed. Developers must certainly consider the moral and ethical consequences of their work, but most situations are not going to be black and white, and no matter how diabolical a project might be, there is always a way to rationalize it. What is most needed is widespread public debate among those who understand the technologies in order to form consensus on appropriate directions of development. Any consensus then needs to be effectively communicated to the public and to policy makers. This helps everyone, including developers, make better decisions about what they should or should not support. Forums such as HN and various blogs can foster debate, but there seems to be a need for a more consolidated approach that someone needs to establish. As far as communicating consensus goes, I think that nonprofit organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation can be a good conduit, but they need more widespread support from the technical community.

phs318u 7y ago

Perhaps one day, we'll see lists like this [0] for companies that helped the Chinese government detain entire ethnic populations, or for those that provided assistance to the Turkish regime during its purges and disappearances of opponents, or those that facilitated states, such as Russia, to politically interfere in the democratic functioning of their rivals, and the extra-judicial killing of their opponents. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_...

malandrew 7y ago

The NY Times and other media companies need more conscientious objectors too.

bentona 7y ago

A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" [0] I believe that it is dangerous to conflate job choice with conscientious objection. Everyone should be held accountable for what they spend their day contributing to - this shouldn't be a special case. Comparing this to a situation in which someone doesn't want to participate in compulsory murder, and in some cases risks being killed themselves, is not helpful. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientious_objector#cite_note-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientious_objector#cite_no...

roenxi 7y ago
On the one hand, I agree with you that it isn't helpful. But on the other hand, there is a plausible parallel. The reason for strong controls on privacy is because every couple of generations governments tend to do a lot of damage to their own citizens. If I thought the worst that was going to happen was the risk of being wrongly accused, public shaming or something, then privacy isn't really worth it. I trust law enforcement to be generally correct in assessing the situation, and if you are doing something shameful you may as well be shamed. Privacy is important because it is one layer of protection against institutions participating in the murder of citizens, seen in Germany, China, Russia in the last generation and China + others this generation. Who knows for next generation? Change is very quick - there is no law of nature that says it won't be an Anglophone country. We can get thingy about whether a conscientious objector has to be the last person pulling the trigger or not, but in practice that distinction is not an important one.

_lessthan0 7y ago

It really does, if you look at different engineering companies like Rolls Royce whilst the military takeover in Chile, a group of engineers in Scotland stopped working because they knew where their product was being sold too. HN seems to think that Programmers can and should get away with everything. Disturbing to say the least.

chriselles 7y ago

I respect the choices of tech sector workers who choose to protest against certain company policies and even refuse to perform certain types of work that enhance mass personalised surveillance and the enhancement of military lethality. It’s a different world from 30 and 70 years ago. 70 years ago nearly all R&D spent was specifically military in nature. So it was pretty clear from the point of hire that you were(or weren’t working on military or related(surveillance) projects. 30 years ago military and commercial R&D hit parity and it was still quite easy to known going into an employment contract what side of the fence one was on. Today, almost all R&D is commercial in nature, but with vast duel use military/surveillance potential. So it’s much more convoluted and nebulous to delineate project output, perhaps a major contributing factor to recent decisions and actions. Combined with the long standing low supply, high demand for talent enhancing leverage. I agree that tech talent conscience is critical. I only hope we see the same from Chinese software engineers working at Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei, etc. I wonder if the future will see a convoluted analog to the Manhattan Project, the Rosenbergs, and apex talent migration out of 1930’s fascist countries.

maxheadroom 7y ago

When Google's internal turmoil surfaced about the work on Project Jedi, it did not ultimately kill the project[0]. As long as there's someone else still willing to compromise their moral grounds for the value returned, it's still going to get made. That's just how capitalist societies work: People need to make money and someone is going to fulfill that objectional need because they have a need to fill their own coffers. One need only look at the fervor against Facebook and realise that they still employ over 35k people to understand that, at the end of the day, people are either willing to do the task or they're in a position that they have no other choice (considering that the US doesn't have much of a social safety net). So, while "conscientious objectors" might be good for a single business direction, it - sadly - does nothing for the overall scheme of things. ...but even if all of the engineers organised in North America to create manifestos, under psuedo or actual unions, which dictated what the future of tech should be used for, this does nothing to dissuade the partners (e.g.: 5Is) from doing the same and then sharing that technology back to their own government. I concede that maybe I'm misunderstanding the author's intent but to me, the posit seems too idyllic to be fruitful (overall) in modern society. [0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-23/pentagon-s-designer-of-10-billion-jedi-cloud-is-stepping-down https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-23/pentagon-...

drak0n1c 7y ago

The educational Youtube channel SmarterEveryDay made a video about his day job as a military rocket engineer. It's an insightful how-and-why explanation for those wondering why there aren't more conscientious objectors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOTYgcdNrXE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOTYgcdNrXE

objector-000001 7y ago

I conscientiously object here on HN with shitposts, because I think HN is slightly too pretentious, and something important is lost in the dry demeanor. At some point, @jcs of lobste.rs complained of, quote: "capricious modding" and I think that much rings true. Perhaps most crucial, is the undeniable reality, that once you place a comment on HN, you are no longer the owner. You lose the ability to delete or edit very quickly, and the statements posted here become locked and permanent. With this, it is ill-advised that an authentic persona should ever become attached to any user name on HN. If your opinions run contrary to political winds in this climate, real problems could come your way, and in an emergency, there is no way to disentangle yourself for data that exists on this site. That's okay, since HN is decidedly low-fi in many ways. But based on this, you'de hope for a lighter, more permissive hand on the moderation. Not so. Not at all. So, with an iron fist in play, why pull ones own punches. Let the harshest opinions fly, if they'll assuredly be stamped out by such stifling interference. No need to feel guilty for resisting the iron fist. After all, opinions on the internet aren't really what's wrong with the world right now. It's just an oh so popular scape goat. How do you like my objections to HN's subculture? Conscientious enough?