5 ms·

Seriously, who are the people writing these features? As 'software is eating the world' I think we'll need an ethics board/bar association or something soon.

soverance 7y ago
For real. I am always amazed to hear about such fraud, because it means somewhere, a programmer with zero ethics decided he didn't care what he was doing as long as the paycheck cleared. Gross.
- Fjolsvith 7y ago
  As if ethics was a prerequisite for being able to sling code.
- anfilt 7y ago
  Also I would not be surprised to find a lot this stuff was out sourced. Someone in other cointry might be more desperate for money. So lying to the final end user might be pretty low on their I won’t do this. You can also have people who are “I dont want to lose my job by making a big a stink.” I am not sure people would risk their fincial stability over lying unless said lying would also affect them in other ways
eswat 7y ago
Mentioned in a few related threads about Facebook and e-commerce dark patterns: we don't put our peers to task enough and make them aware about the potential harm they do. Another comment here also mentioned that consequential actions are abstracted in large companies; group diffusion of responsibility gently removes most bad decisions that would normally make a person think remorsefully about what they’ve done. Having an ethics board would be a top-down solution. The bottom-up, which I’m more fond of, is releasing literature and material to anyone working in tech about how their work could actually affect their end users; we need to help each other develop more self-awareness of the results of our work instead of the breadth of material about the work itself.
- kevin_b_er 7y ago
  I strongly feel these are not "peer" decisions but managerial dictates on what to do. A board could still help to give the engineer a reason to be able to say no other than "no, please fire me"
tomxor 7y ago
> As 'software is eating the world' I think we'll need an ethics board/bar association or something soon. This seems so unnatural to me, programming is not as close to something like law as people make out. If a company decides to implement fraudulent process, it is the responsibility of the company. Whether that is via software or calling people over the phone or speaking to people in person. If you want to argue that every person involved in implementing "something" should answer to an ethics board, then your argument goes way way beyond programming. Law is a special case, and they use "legal ethics" which do not attempt to encapsulate some universal ethical code for reality, they are to prevent abuse of the imperfect system that is "the law", the closest thing to that in programming is linting or compiler warnings.
tomp 7y ago
Ethics are complicated. Some people think that Google is evil. Others think that Facebook is evil. Yet thousands of programmers and non-programmers work there, many from HN. Some think all ads are evil. Others think ads are good because they pay for freely accessible content online. It's complicated.
- decebalus1 7y ago
  Umbrella statements are complicated (Google is evil, Facebook is evil, etc..). Individual actions, not so much. Using a user's 2FA phone number as a way to send menial account notifications or as a means for your profile to be found is evil. Scraping all data on public wireless networks when you're photographing the streets is evil. Sending unsolicited messages to all your contacts without telling you is evil. Making it as hard as technically possible to cancel a membership is evil. Tricking users into upgrading their license using blatantly false information (see Turbotax) is evil. That's not at all complicated.
- ionised 7y ago
  'Evil' tends to pay very well.

soverance 7y ago

For real. I am always amazed to hear about such fraud, because it means somewhere, a programmer with zero ethics decided he didn't care what he was doing as long as the paycheck cleared. Gross.

Fjolsvith 7y ago
As if ethics was a prerequisite for being able to sling code.
anfilt 7y ago
Also I would not be surprised to find a lot this stuff was out sourced. Someone in other cointry might be more desperate for money. So lying to the final end user might be pretty low on their I won’t do this. You can also have people who are “I dont want to lose my job by making a big a stink.” I am not sure people would risk their fincial stability over lying unless said lying would also affect them in other ways

eswat 7y ago

Mentioned in a few related threads about Facebook and e-commerce dark patterns: we don't put our peers to task enough and make them aware about the potential harm they do. Another comment here also mentioned that consequential actions are abstracted in large companies; group diffusion of responsibility gently removes most bad decisions that would normally make a person think remorsefully about what they’ve done. Having an ethics board would be a top-down solution. The bottom-up, which I’m more fond of, is releasing literature and material to anyone working in tech about how their work could actually affect their end users; we need to help each other develop more self-awareness of the results of our work instead of the breadth of material about the work itself.

kevin_b_er 7y ago
I strongly feel these are not "peer" decisions but managerial dictates on what to do. A board could still help to give the engineer a reason to be able to say no other than "no, please fire me"

tomxor 7y ago

> As 'software is eating the world' I think we'll need an ethics board/bar association or something soon. This seems so unnatural to me, programming is not as close to something like law as people make out. If a company decides to implement fraudulent process, it is the responsibility of the company. Whether that is via software or calling people over the phone or speaking to people in person. If you want to argue that every person involved in implementing "something" should answer to an ethics board, then your argument goes way way beyond programming. Law is a special case, and they use "legal ethics" which do not attempt to encapsulate some universal ethical code for reality, they are to prevent abuse of the imperfect system that is "the law", the closest thing to that in programming is linting or compiler warnings.

tomp 7y ago

Ethics are complicated. Some people think that Google is evil. Others think that Facebook is evil. Yet thousands of programmers and non-programmers work there, many from HN. Some think all ads are evil. Others think ads are good because they pay for freely accessible content online. It's complicated.

decebalus1 7y ago
Umbrella statements are complicated (Google is evil, Facebook is evil, etc..). Individual actions, not so much. Using a user's 2FA phone number as a way to send menial account notifications or as a means for your profile to be found is evil. Scraping all data on public wireless networks when you're photographing the streets is evil. Sending unsolicited messages to all your contacts without telling you is evil. Making it as hard as technically possible to cancel a membership is evil. Tricking users into upgrading their license using blatantly false information (see Turbotax) is evil. That's not at all complicated.
ionised 7y ago
'Evil' tends to pay very well.