The only thing worse than an echo chamber is letting a self-created bad idea fester in the head.
I came to the conclusion a few months ago that software developers and coders who worked at Meta, Google, Amazon, etc are as culprit as their CEOs and the company itself. I will lay down my points below, but I understand that this might be a logical extreme of my distaste for these corporations.
Here’s my rationale:
- Actions of the company they serve: The corporations they serve actively disenfranchise users, track them, sell their private / personal information to unscrupulous parties without any care on how it affects the person, or the society. They thrive on engagement rather than content. They have “commodified” the fundamental right to privacy. This has real world implications that has directly resulted in the spread of misinformation, political unrest, threatened elections, riots, and deaths of thousands of people.
- Awareness of the consequences: By virtue of their position, these are people with the capacity to read, and think for themselves. There are news articles: across the political spectrum in all major news sites, that report how the platform/ company they serve negatively affects society. Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica fiasco, Snowden’s expose, etc are credible and well documented examples that even non-tech people are aware. Yet they choose to ignore all this, and continue working / seek to join these companies.
- Cowardice: It is often wrapped in the garb of “self-interest”, but they do not raise their voice when they know that the software and platform they’re told to develop is going to be used to spy on their brethren. They claim they’re trying to make a living, but can use their skills to develop counter products to these horrible companies, or work for those that are sensitive and conscientious towards customer’s needs and welfare.
It’s not new, but yeah.
I would work at them but im sorta glad for the tech places I have worked but then again can you work anywhere and not be adding to it? I worked at an onlinemarketplace for consumer to business that had a fair amount of competition and it was easy for new competition to spring up. As such they had to balance what their businesses wanted with what consumers wanted because one paid but there was a lot of competition to keep the consumers. The businesses themselves compete with each other so they also had to be very neutral there. Still it was integrated with all sorts of data broker cookies and pixels and whatnot. Im now working for business software in a regulated field so that helps. We are a framework so the data collection happens at our business customer level and not us but it still happens. How do you get away from it? I mean seriously I have about the best your gonna get private sector wise but everyone cannot work in the public sector.
cant talk you down when i agree with you completely
I generally agree. If you work for an Evil Corp, you are just as culpable.
At the end of the day people need to make a living. Also I am not sure why you are so upset by these companies. You don’t need to use there products.
Don’t you need to go really out of your way to not get caught in their web of data mongering by using any part of the internet?
You CAN take steps to limit your exposure in varying levels of effort, the problem is a lot of that means “not using the thing” (ie gmail, Facebook, etc) and most people are not about that life, gripe as they might.
I’ve paid for private email hosting for over 5 years, run grapheneOS on my phone, my fb is deactivated with messenger having limited perms on my phone and kept in an isolated container on desktop, self host a number of services like password management and storage - etc etc.
Am I safe from big tech? Not completely. There’s still 1000 ways your business gets out and about, and on desktop I still use YouTube logged in and all (no yt on phone though.) They’re still only getting a small fraction from me compared to other people though.
Sure, but if you really cared, then you’d put in the effort. Or are you “just following orders”?
The point is that he blames the people working for these companies with a blanket statement while not taking any responsibility for his own agency in the situation. It’s a lot more nuanced than just “why don’t these other people do x.” It’s like “vote with your wallet” vs. “no ethical consumption under capitalism.”
If you’re able to get a job at Meta/Google/etc, you’re also able to get a job at a less shitty company.
“No ethical consumption under capitalism” is the new “just following orders.” If you can afford the product, you can afford to buy something more ethical.
While I agree with the general ideas mentioned, each of them is much more complicated than that, except for the first point, that’s a point that’s nearly impossible to counter honestly.
Point 1 is, in my opinion, it 100% accurate, ad I mentioned above.
On point 2, pero everything, from my perspective, is absolutely correct, except for: “Yet they choose to ignore all this continue working / seek to join these companies.”. A lot of people don’t really have an option at the beginning. We all need to make a living, and finding well paying jobs is difficult enough across the board, and becomes infinitely harder if you get" picky" about where you apply or which companies you accept offer from. In a perfect world developers that get hired and well paid by any of these disgusting corporations would accrue some good cash to be financially secure for a few years and then quit and move to, like you said, creating the “counter-product/service” to what they were working on, adding the ethical factor. In reality, unless you’re loaded, we all need to start somewhere, and everything costs money.
Point 3, I would say there is some true to the cowardice side, but I also believe that, at least temporarily, some just don’t have a choice, for the factors mentioned in my response to point 2. “They claim they’re trying to make a living, but can use their skills to develop counter products to these horrible companies, or work for those that are sensitive and conscientious towards customer’s needs and welfare.”, as mentioned above, everything costs money. A more realistic approach would be getting that spiteful job, cashing out with a good sense of financial freedom, and then endeavoring into countering these companies.
It’s taken me 12 years to finally be in a place where I can make a slight difference in my industry by opening my own business, and after almost a year since I started, while my employees and contractors all earn good money and get paid always on time and gather pretty good benefits, and my clients are (I believe) the happiest in the industry, my wife and I (the owners) have still to get paid the first time. Imagine the shit show that my life would be I’d I had gone the ideallist way without considering all the financial aspects of trying to improve this industry.
I do not work in the tech sector, but we do use tech for everything. My platform is currently the most secure and private of the whole industry in the US, and that alone ate through around 75% of the starting budget, the rest has been allocated to pay staff and services while we bring this to cash-positive status.
It’s not as black and white as some may think.
I actually generally hear this phrase IRL from teenagers making minimum wage while trying to get some boomer to stop badgering them to accept an expired coupon.
You’re correctly assessing the situation but the conclusion you reach is wrong. Here’s how:
As another person said, just tack on no ethical consumption under capitalism and you’re golden. Soon you’ll be crunching through critiques of Goldman and speaking in ways that make normal ppl make the brotha eww face. But the big difference between just doing my job and just following orders is degrees of separation and situation.
Even though people in positions you describe at companies you’re talking about ought to be able to understand the connection between their work and the immiseration of all humanity, it’s very easy to imagine someone who through choice or ignorance doesn’t see that connection. Our higher education programs have been removing humanities and arts in favor of stem associated education and ideas like effective altruism are renewing the randian tradition. Further, the work of many people in engineering is partial and atomized. Who wouldn’t want to put in the time designing a hermetically sealed self oiling piston that never needs maintenance over a million cycles? Who wouldn’t refuse that job when shown the patent drawing in which it’s a crucial component of a captive bolt gun against a human head?
The situation itself can’t be undersold. Soldiers (and hired workers!) on trial for war crimes couldn’t claim they were just following orders because they saw directly what their labor wrought. There was no degree of separation. Our expectations for that closeness to atrocity are different than when there’s a few veils between us and the subject. We expect people to get a different job, to defect, to sabotage, to kill their COs.
Cuz you asked me to talk you down here:
If you expand upon the ‘trite’ phrase “theres no ethical consumption under capitalism” (which itself is talking about how capitalism as a system can not be ethical since any product you buy is owned by a company who “steals” most of the value the workers provide), there is also no ethical work.
in other countries and historically in the us, unions sought not only fair wages and compensation but also representation at the Csuite. The ability to affect the policy of the company.
But that’s long gone. How does one who hopes to work for a “ethical” company go about it? What is they are alright but one of their vendors is shitty? A company they choose to contact with? What if they merge with a shitty one 5 years after you start?
I’m saying, if you want to be talked down, How is what you’re asking of people even possible? I can’t even keep track of who owns the food i buy anymore! Speaking of, these ethical workers are gone burn out studying unethical companies to work at, be sheltered by and buy food from. that reminds me that yeah, there’s the whole thing about people needing to work to eat.
Don’t blame the little guy, they been using that trick to split us a loooong time. Blame them, those who have the power.
Europe does have some Union representation in the corporate org structure, fwiw. How much that helps… well… i’m not sure, i haven’t seen it up close.
There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism. And yet, we’re still forced into capitalism, with little choice but to participate or starve. You can object to a system and say that it’s unethical, but also necessarily play into that system.
We all gotta eat. Long as there’s our current form of capitalism, we all gotta pay rent (or mortgage). Until those needs relax, we’re essentially saying “pick between your needs and being a good person.” One of our strongest drives is to survive, and so if the only way for some to survive is off the backs of others, it’s the inevitable outcome.
Of course we should all be striving to change this. Effective change comes from slow, repeated effort though, not just fruitlessly chasing an ethical job. If you just stay where you are, then that’s fine. Do what you can from within, safely. We all do that, and we’ll slowly steer this ship.
I wouldn’t work at those companies, but I wouldn’t say the developers who work there are quite as evil as the directors at those companies. It’s true they were just doing their job, like they were just following orders, but people do need to work at the end of the day. Whether they work there for prestige, or for the pay, and sure you could argue nobody needs that pay, we have already seen people who stick their necks out at those companies get their heads chopped off. Not everyone who works there is going to be fine with (or worse, happy with) how evil the companies are, but also not everyone there is going to stick their neck out either. In summary, I don’t think it’s fair to blame the developers who work there. I once worked at a mid-sized advertising company, they hid that they were an advertising company and at that point it was too late.
Besides, not everyone has enough experience that they can quit their job at the drop of a hat, especially in this pro-business layoff-heavy economy.
Re 1: People keep lumping Google with Amazon and Meta, but Google does not sell your private data. People keep assuming that because the general tech community does this that Google does it too, but check their privacy policy or just ask anyone who’s worked there.
User data at Google is locked up tighter than fort knox. That’s why the Snowden leak was such a huge deal, because the NSA was taking advantage of a security flaw that Google didn’t know it had to scrape user data. Google patched it immediately after they found out.
Amazon, Meta, and Uber, are much less scrupulous.
If by “when asked” you mean “given a search warrant with very clear evidence that this man had stolen a car”, then… Yes? I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove here.
The ex-boyfriend had signed into the guy’s phone. It’s not like the police just cast a wide net and randomly got his data.
Yeah kinda sets up a dangerous quid pro quo situation where the govt gets to go around due process by asking nicely and so has no incentive to improve privacy rights
The government had a warrant, read the article.
It’s just made confusing by the fact that the thief had signed into the victim’s phone, so it makes for a good clickbait story “police got the wrong guy’s data”
My brother in Christ, you first.
The govt had a warrant:
that required Google to provide information on all devices it recorded near the killing, potentially capturing the whereabouts of anyone in the area.
Reiterating my point, it’s just as useful for the govt to not pass laws to protect private harvesting of our data as it is for the corporations selling it.
The police told the suspect, Jorge Molina, they had data tracking his phone to the site where a man was shot nine months earlier. They had made the discovery after obtaining a search warrant that required Google to provide information on all devices it recorded near the killing, potentially capturing the whereabouts of anyone in the area.
I hate Google as much as everyone here, but we shouldn’t equate complying with a warrant to “give it to the cops when asked.” They were required to give it.
Its a fair point, and definitely worth pointing out. They aren’t as bad as the others in that very specific way, which is commendable for now while it suits them. The moment they can make more money by selling vs. holding your data, I have no doubts they will pivot.
Google is as bad as the others but in different ways. I‘m dont have the time to research for you rn but just check monopoly cases against google. I hope they get broken up.
Look I never said I disagree. My point to OP is just please don’t make up shit that straight up isn’t true. Pick a real issue, not some made up paranoia.
The disturbing part about this is that people are able to trick themselves and others into believing this.
Even if (and thats a big if) google does not outright sell your personal data, their business is to use it to influence people in ways that have scientifically proven to not work in their self interest. This data is bei g collected illegally in part and „legally“ in others.
The issue here is giving third parties the tools to unnaturally mass influence the world towards interests that are contrary to the actual needs of the world (climate catastrophe comes to mind).
This was maybe a good point to make back during the pandemic when programmers actually had good job opportunities and could find somewhere else. Nowadays you will struggle to find a job as a programmer unless you have lots of experience. So people have to take any job they can get, whether they like it or not. Some people working in this field have gotten themselves into financial trouble doing things like buying houses based on their salary and then getting fired and only having lower paying positions available.
Do you blame the railway workers for putting down the rails that allowed nazi germany to move people into concentration camps highly efficiently?
The rails that exclusively went to the camps? Yeah.
but only if they carried the jews into the camps since other people did not suffer during WW2
?
No. But if u r a rail worker in Germany, Hitler is clearly talking about murdering minorities and u r aware of this information and yet u stay, then yes. U r complicit in the crimes of Hitler.
I once worked for a big finical company. Things were great I made lots of money they matched my 401k. Then COVID happened. After watching this big financial company continue to charge interest when, I my manager and his boss knew people couldn’t afford to even make payments on their existing debt. Debt they had when the word COVID didn’t even exist and when they had a job it effected me and my sobriety. People saying, “We’re all in this together” brought me to an indescribable rage. I still know people that work there but I don’t think I could call them friends. They’re still complicit in keeping the poor, poor and making the executives richer. I just checked they’re on $177 billion in assets and meanwhile charging interest during a pandemic.
If you work for an information broker as a free service you’re just as complicit in this fucked up system of self interest over collective success. Good post op.
If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Employees make a choice to work there and therefore choose to be part of that problem.
I generally agree but not everyone can choose where they work. For many people, the choice is starving on the street or work for Evil Corp.
Most, if not all, of those hired as a software developers at any of these companies has loads of other jobs they could take. The only thing setting them apart is the size of the paycheck.
For less in-demand skills I get your point though.
There are some major exceptions to that. Many people on work visas have almost no choice, like the theorized majority of people who stayed on at Twitter after Musk ruined the place. Their choice basically boils down to keep working for the company or be deported.
Don’t forget the best place to whistleblow and/or change the system is from within. Privacy minded people can better influence what policies and practices happen at a company when they work there.
cringecollective.io eh? I haven’t noticed that comm before
No one who qualifies to work for Evil Corp is going to fucking starve on the street if they decide to look for work elsewhere instead.
Exactly, if you choose to work for a company then that is in support and furtherance of that companies goals / operations.
We are not so helpless as we sometimes like to claim.
