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That, historically speaking, is not enough. People will find a away to screw up advertising, whether intentionally or not, so long as there is revenue to earn.

That, historically speaking, is not enough. People will find a away to screw up advertising, whether intentionally or not, so long as there is revenue to earn. Perhaps things have gotten better but when I used to dig into that code for work some years ago it was near negligent incompetent. If you are going to recommend regulation the only thing that works, as exemplified by every other profession, is credentials: licensing and certification. There would be less bad software in the world if there were less bad software developers employed writing software and everybody else held to a minimum ethical standard. Right now, at least before COVID, there was no motivation to write good software. Many developers, at least web developers whether front or back end, only goal was employability which often meant tooling to a tech stack and trying not to write original software. Edit: I anticipate this will be downvoted extensively, because regulating minimal developer competence is always heavily down voted. It’s curious though that people claim there is a problem they want fixed only until they realize the fix applies directly to them, at which point the problem is no longer worth the effort.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nine_k 6y ago
If anything, this is one measure directly at odds with democratizing the Web. You wrote a brilliant app but lack a license? No audience for you. Also, if you have to produce an MVP to the same building code as a house with 50 years of expected use requires, this is death to all but exceptionally well-funded innovation.
- austincheney 6y ago
  Software is bigger than just the web. You can be your own lawyer or your own medical doctor without a license, but it’s generally a bad idea. Even lawyers know better than that and hire other lawyers to represent them. > Also, if you have to produce an MVP to the same building code as a house with 50 years of expected use requires That is not an MVP.
  - nine_k 6y ago
    Not all lawyers are specializing in the same area in which they need a representation in court; this is how an accomplished OS kernel engineer may hire someone to build a good Web frontend. If everything you build should be built to last in order to ever be exposed to public, the rate of experimentation will slow down a lot, so finding a product-market fit would become very hard. Look at the glacial pace of progress in, say, light aviation where Cessnas with engines from 1980s still rule, because certification of a new engine is so hard.
    - austincheney 6y ago
      > If everything you build should be built to last in order to ever be exposed to public I suspect this becomes more true the closer you get to the metal. As a web developer I have never seen web application code that is built to last, at least in the corporate world. I know its possible to build software in this space that is built to last, because web standards are solid and almost always backward compatible. Developers in this space are more interested in employable criteria, such as well known named frameworks and tools from NPM. I have heard all kinds of excuses to justify that behavior as somehow credible, but its never based on evidence. The reasoning and excuses always ultimately exist solely to serve the needs of the developer and not the business or product, which is an ethics violation. The near universal presence of that behavior does not make it qualified.
pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
Regulation is a start. In the short history of the commercial internet, we have seen that any notion of "self-regulation" is a joke. The reason some of these particularly acute problems in your industry exist is because there is zero regulation. It is also why the industry is so profitable, and why those profits can be channeled to a select few particpants without much resistance. The conflict of interest that stands in the way of changing the status quo is insurmountable without having at least some rules. History so far has shown there is no practical way to restrain this type of activity without some legal basis. No amounts of money from advertising and investors are going to solve these problems. No one wants regulation but without it, a few large companies are going to be the ones making the "rules". The future of the internet's design will be crafted to fuel their continued survival. I have been watching this happen since the birth of the web. It is easier to see when you do not work in the industry. Imagine if advertising did not subsidise your work and you had to sell your software. How much would people pay? Yes, there would be motivation to write original, quality software. But this is a terrifying idea to today's software "engineers". The hell with good software, they want to get paid. Advertisers can make that happen. If someone really believes the internet and advertising are like chocolate and peanut butter -- they go great together -- just look at what has happened to "news", a profession that, like today's "tech" industry, relies on advertising to survive. Every day people come to HN to complain about the ridiculous headlines, bias, sensationalism, etc. We are losing serious journalism. We are also losing serious software. From where I sit, we are losing a lot. Whatever we are gaining seems like a poor tradeoff.
searchableguy 6y ago
I mean I would agree with your position if most institutions were able to produce competent software engineers and didn't cost a life. And even if they did, I wonder how many of them work for an ad network while they certainly can work at any other job with good pay. On the other hand, other industries with certification and oaths are much more shady. You can't hammer ethics through academics. If anything, current academical culture encourages being unethical and liar while disguising as opposite. In my own experience, people who seem obsessed with degrees and accredition were the most unethical I had seen. They usually are in management position or law/government stuff. So I downvoted this comment despite agreeing because this doesn't seem practical. This is unnecessary gatekeeping that will disproportionately affect "poor" people and increase status quo for no benefit in return.
- austincheney 6y ago
  > I mean I would agree with your position if most institutions were able to produce competent software engineers and didn't cost a life. Likewise, not everybody who graduates law school should be a lawyer. Education in other industries is just a prerequisite of a larger process and certainly not a qualifier. Other industries solve for this problem with either broker/agent relationships or through forced internships. Those filtering criteria are built into the licensing process and result in forced mentoring at the liability of a license holder.
- pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
  I think you misunderstood what I am suggesting.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

nine_k 6y ago

If anything, this is one measure directly at odds with democratizing the Web. You wrote a brilliant app but lack a license? No audience for you. Also, if you have to produce an MVP to the same building code as a house with 50 years of expected use requires, this is death to all but exceptionally well-funded innovation.

austincheney 6y ago
Software is bigger than just the web. You can be your own lawyer or your own medical doctor without a license, but it’s generally a bad idea. Even lawyers know better than that and hire other lawyers to represent them. > Also, if you have to produce an MVP to the same building code as a house with 50 years of expected use requires That is not an MVP.
- nine_k 6y ago
  Not all lawyers are specializing in the same area in which they need a representation in court; this is how an accomplished OS kernel engineer may hire someone to build a good Web frontend. If everything you build should be built to last in order to ever be exposed to public, the rate of experimentation will slow down a lot, so finding a product-market fit would become very hard. Look at the glacial pace of progress in, say, light aviation where Cessnas with engines from 1980s still rule, because certification of a new engine is so hard.
  - austincheney 6y ago
    > If everything you build should be built to last in order to ever be exposed to public I suspect this becomes more true the closer you get to the metal. As a web developer I have never seen web application code that is built to last, at least in the corporate world. I know its possible to build software in this space that is built to last, because web standards are solid and almost always backward compatible. Developers in this space are more interested in employable criteria, such as well known named frameworks and tools from NPM. I have heard all kinds of excuses to justify that behavior as somehow credible, but its never based on evidence. The reasoning and excuses always ultimately exist solely to serve the needs of the developer and not the business or product, which is an ethics violation. The near universal presence of that behavior does not make it qualified.

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago

Regulation is a start. In the short history of the commercial internet, we have seen that any notion of "self-regulation" is a joke. The reason some of these particularly acute problems in your industry exist is because there is zero regulation. It is also why the industry is so profitable, and why those profits can be channeled to a select few particpants without much resistance. The conflict of interest that stands in the way of changing the status quo is insurmountable without having at least some rules. History so far has shown there is no practical way to restrain this type of activity without some legal basis. No amounts of money from advertising and investors are going to solve these problems. No one wants regulation but without it, a few large companies are going to be the ones making the "rules". The future of the internet's design will be crafted to fuel their continued survival. I have been watching this happen since the birth of the web. It is easier to see when you do not work in the industry. Imagine if advertising did not subsidise your work and you had to sell your software. How much would people pay? Yes, there would be motivation to write original, quality software. But this is a terrifying idea to today's software "engineers". The hell with good software, they want to get paid. Advertisers can make that happen. If someone really believes the internet and advertising are like chocolate and peanut butter -- they go great together -- just look at what has happened to "news", a profession that, like today's "tech" industry, relies on advertising to survive. Every day people come to HN to complain about the ridiculous headlines, bias, sensationalism, etc. We are losing serious journalism. We are also losing serious software. From where I sit, we are losing a lot. Whatever we are gaining seems like a poor tradeoff.

searchableguy 6y ago

I mean I would agree with your position if most institutions were able to produce competent software engineers and didn't cost a life. And even if they did, I wonder how many of them work for an ad network while they certainly can work at any other job with good pay. On the other hand, other industries with certification and oaths are much more shady. You can't hammer ethics through academics. If anything, current academical culture encourages being unethical and liar while disguising as opposite. In my own experience, people who seem obsessed with degrees and accredition were the most unethical I had seen. They usually are in management position or law/government stuff. So I downvoted this comment despite agreeing because this doesn't seem practical. This is unnecessary gatekeeping that will disproportionately affect "poor" people and increase status quo for no benefit in return.

austincheney 6y ago
> I mean I would agree with your position if most institutions were able to produce competent software engineers and didn't cost a life. Likewise, not everybody who graduates law school should be a lawyer. Education in other industries is just a prerequisite of a larger process and certainly not a qualifier. Other industries solve for this problem with either broker/agent relationships or through forced internships. Those filtering criteria are built into the licensing process and result in forced mentoring at the liability of a license holder.
pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
I think you misunderstood what I am suggesting.