| ▲ | testfrequency 12 hours ago |
| If you’re not awake already, you support what’s happening. Blind, which I realize is a bit of the wild west, is full of racist anti-immigration/pro ICE hatred. Obviously, you can see where users work/worked, and it’s every company you could imagine. The sad reality is that a lot of people will do what they can to support racist agendas, possibly even motivate them to work at certain companies as it feels moralizing to their hateful beliefs. |
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| ▲ | andsoitis 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > you support what’s happening. I don’t know that things are that black and white. Do you feel the same about the billions of consumers who buy and use the products these companies make? |
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| ▲ | dns_snek 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | No because employees are making the actual thing that inflicts harm while consumers' actions are completely diffused and many steps removed from the harm they cause. That's why ad-tech is so effective in the first place. Consumer pays $1.10 for a can of coke, $0.10 of that goes to ad-tech, the consumer watches some coke ads, ad-tech pays $0.05 to the publisher and the consumer receives $0.05 in benefits in the form of "free ad-supported content" (which they already paid $0.10 for). The only way for consumers to avoid this is to just stop spending money with any brand that advertises online, which is completely unrealistic and a much taller ask than asking employees to give up their deal with the devil (and work for just about anyone else except big tech). | | |
| ▲ | reactordev 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Replace “tech” in this scenario with “ammunition”. Does your argument still hold up? >”employees are making the actual thing that inflicts harm while consumers' actions are completely diffused and many steps removed from the harm they cause.” “employees are making the actual thing that inflicts harm while consumers' actions directly cause deadly harm.” I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t be voting with our wallets and supporting these people but your initial argument is flawed. They produce goods precisely because consumers buy them… | | |
| ▲ | hamdingers 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Replace “tech” in this scenario with “ammunition”. Does your argument still hold up? Can you explain why you think it wouldn't? Tons of principled engineers choose not to pursue opportunities at military contractors, for instance, and this is not widely seen as unreasonable. | |
| ▲ | dns_snek 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I didn't say "tech", I said "ad-tech" and "big tech" (meaning ad-tech like Google, not TSMC) which aren't morally neutral like ammunition is. Invasion of privacy and exploitation of private information is an inherent part of their business model. |
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| ▲ | lukan 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | "The only way for consumers to avoid this " Or they could stop drinking coke? But I guess that is too much to ask. | | |
| ▲ | account42 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That's what gp said, except Coke isn't the only thing that funds the advertising industry - it's pretty much every product you can buy. | | |
| ▲ | cogman10 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's not perfect, but you can go a pretty long way by prioritizing store brands when possible. Stores still fund the advertising industry but to nowhere near the extent that name brand goods do. |
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| ▲ | dns_snek 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You can avoid coke but approximately every brand in the supermarket is funding ad-tech. And even if you can find brands that don't, your supermarket is likely funding ad-tech to advertise itself so you can't go to there at all. Maybe you still have a farmer's market but chances are that they're advertising online. You can't buy a car or any smartphones you've ever heard of, you won't find an ISP that doesn't advertise online, and good luck finding a decent job without supporting ad-tech. | | |
| ▲ | cogman10 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There's a large difference in the magnitude of spending. A big chain like kroger, for example, is spending around 10 to 100M. Coke is spending around $5B. Avoiding national branded products goes a long way in avoiding contributing to the problem. Things don't need to be all or nothing. | | |
| ▲ | homeslice69 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Coke is always a discretionary purchase. Basic food staples are not. Kroger relies on national brand advertising to lure people from the perimiter of the store into junk food land. | | |
| ▲ | cogman10 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Most (maybe not all) basic food staples have store brand alternatives. Even junk food does. Sometimes (maybe even often) those products are just repackaged version of the name brand. If the goal is to decrease money going into advertisement budgets, then the best thing you can do is buy store brand when possible. Even if both products are ultimately made from Nestle corp, the cheaper store brand will send less money into Nestle's pockets which means less money for advertising. That's what I mean by "avoiding nationally branded products". A package of "signature frozen peas" will taste just as good as the "birds eye green peas" without sending money to a major company (Looks like all the major companies have spun off their frozen food departments, but at one time this was a Nestle brand. I spent too much time looking into major frozen food brands :D). The advertisement budgets for the grocers are simply a lot smaller than that of the national brands across the board. It also doesn't seem (to me at least) to have been really spent on invasive advertisements. |
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| ▲ | cindyllm 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | cindyllm 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | Paracompact 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There are degrees of culpability in any discussion. Generally, this is approximated by how much damage you individually are doing to your society compared to the alternative. You have to consume a lot of a company's products before your impact is comparable to working for them. | | |
| ▲ | Eddy_Viscosity2 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Exactly. If you have regular meetings on how to best progress development of the torment nexus, then you can't claim innocence just because you aren't the one deploying the torment nexus for torment-purposes. |
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| ▲ | testfrequency 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Consumers less so. They are the victims, not the source. | | |
| ▲ | amelius 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | Fully agree. If you want to put the blame on consumers, at least show them on your adverts, product packaging, etc. all the morally abject methods used in the production of the product. If you hide it from them, all the blame is on you. |
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| ▲ | cucumber3732842 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Black and white thinking is a large part of what got us here. |
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| ▲ | Diti 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| With the sorry state the software industry is currently in, I’m not surprised that developers would sell their soul in exchange for the peace of mind of being able to pay rent and food. Working for those companies does not make people “do what they can to support racist agendas”. |
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| ▲ | hackable_sand 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I can pay rent and feed myself without hurting people Everything else is an excuse | |
| ▲ | testfrequency 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Is this your way of sharing that you work at X or are open to hurting people in exchange for cash? Also, you can retain your morals and choose a career, it is optional to select where you work as it’s hopefully voluntary. | | |
| ▲ | surgical_fire 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | There's nothing voluntary when your options are homelessness and starvation. The bank won't accept your morals in lieu of money when accepting mortgage repayments. Thankfully I don't live in the US and I don't work for anything even remotely related to this. I don't know if I would have the fortitude in the current US job market (based on what I read here) to threat the well being of the wife and daughter by taking principled stances. | | |
| ▲ | RGamma 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Dilapidating the world for an easy buck is gonna bite you and/or your kids eventually. We have reached technological sophistication where certain kinds of mistakes are not allowed if civilization as we know it is to survive. | | |
| ▲ | surgical_fire 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | When the bank reposseses the house because you are not paying the mortgage, this will bite you and your kids too. You can call it an "easy buck", and it is just coping. An easy way to make some poor schlemiel creating a miserable report with user location data during his sprint into a greedy bastard that is just enriching his bank account out of the suffering of plenty. | | |
| ▲ | RGamma 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Atomization enables this. Any number of individuals are individually weak against their employer/some org, but a big group of them can be quite powerful. If many were to sacrifice their morals out of financial pressure easily (the control over which is in increasingly few hands) the path the US is treading becomes pretty deterministic... We've seen it in the movies and read it in the books. You guys seem to need collective action and civil disobedience. Then again.. maybe the will for collective action comes only after the repossessions... | | |
| ▲ | surgical_fire 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | > You guys One of the reasons I chose to move to Europe is because I value the mininal safety nets and labor protections on this side of the pond. Yes, I make less money and pay more taxes but I believe this is how society should work, I reject the hyper individualism that ignores any sort of collective. But I am also not naive. Expecting individuals to take the burden for decisions way beyond their control is silly. It takes immense fortitude to threaten the well being of those dear to you based on principle, when the only outcome is your own suffering (the company will likely find another employee right away anyway). | | |
| ▲ | jacquesm 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The best way to evaluate any society is to look at what happens to people without power in the system. Inmates, illegals, the poor and children. | |
| ▲ | TitaRusell 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Actually the social safety net has allowed Europeans a level of individualism that is completely unimaginable for the rest of the world. No charity from church or family needed. Just the State- and it does not care about your religion or sexual preferences. |
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| ▲ | testfrequency 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You chose the most absolute and extreme predicament possible to cast your “money is money” belief. You do realize this is what most criminals of the world just so happen to say as well, right? Where is the line? | | |
| ▲ | surgical_fire 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | There's nothing extreme in what I said, it is actually how the world we live in works. It's an extremely unfair system based on coercion - you are beaten down into submission by the implicit threat that without work you won't be able to make ends meet. Maybe you have a family that can support you financially. Maybe you already own the place where you live and could save up money over an extended period that you can weather a storm. If you are in these situations, that's great, but it is also an extremely privileged position to be in. | | |
| ▲ | account42 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Absolutely no one with the skills to work in the software industry is in a position where working for unethical mega-corporations or literally starving are their only options. |
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| ▲ | umanwizard 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Okay, I'll accept your point for those software engineers that have a choice between working at an immoral company or "homelessness and starvation". Thankfully, that isn't most of them. Despite the job market not being as good as it used to be, the vast majority of software engineers in the US could still find another job to pay the bills before becoming homeless and starving. | | |
| ▲ | surgical_fire 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | If that's the case, great then. I did work for a company I find morally objectionable in the past (i.e.: evil), and I eventually found my way out. At the time I was still paying rent and needed employment to keep my visa. I also had little savings, and an ill parent that depended on me. I certainly couldn't take the principled stance of "fuck this, I'm out". My point is that if you are in the position to take a principled stance, good for you. Maybe you already own your home, maybe you had time to accumulate savings, maybe you can do a few interviews and land a less evil job even in the current market (and perhaps a pay cut won't be a massive blow in you life). All that is awesome, but also a position of relative privilege. Prescribing principled stance as universal without recognizing this is just cruelty though. | | |
| ▲ | Kim_Bruning 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | I sympathize with your situation, and I'm not calling you a monster. But "I had no choice, I had people depending on me" is the exact reasoning that has enabled every atrocity carried out by ordinary people; it's the banality of evil. None of the individual acts seem evil. Conducting a census isn't evil. Collating the data isn't evil. Arresting people with the wrong papers isn't necessarily evil. Driving a train isn't evil. Operating a switch isn't evil. Processing paperwork isn't evil. Look what's proposed now: Adtech has the data, this would feed into ICE systems leading to arrests, flights are conducted, and people get put into prison camps like CECOT where they have no recourse and where people are already talking about forced labor. So no, I'm not saying to these folks "you're literally causing Auschwitz". That's a famous Vernichtungslager, and that's not true yet. But people getting locked up in Concentrationslager or Arbeitslager (like historically : Mittelbau-Dora, Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, and Monowitz). I think we're getting there. I guess the question is: at which point do you decide maybe to wear extra layers or skip a meal instead? We're not there yet. The chain has many links. Eternal vigilance is needed to make sure they don't actually link up. (ps. Imagine if I was posting this in 2024! Can I exchange this timeline for another please? ) | | |
| ▲ | jacquesm 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > That's a famous Vernichtungslager, and that's not true yet. But it may well become true soon. | | | |
| ▲ | surgical_fire 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I understand quite well. The banality of evil is a thing because most people have actual very little power to enact meaningful change. Risking yourself for the well being of complete strangers is commendable, but often has an obscene cost for the individual. I reject that societal and systemic issues can be fixed by individual action, unless as an individual you are extremely powerful (and the ones that are typically are the ones causing the societal and systemic harm). As an common man you can do small things. Do a lousy job when processing the paperwork of evil. Malicious cooperation to the powers that be. Small acts of charity. That sort of thing. Systemic change can only be achieved through collective action. Easier said than done. The world is cursed. Life is tough even at the best of times. The system as it is ensures compliance through coercion and threats. I honestly believe we would agree more than disagree on the current state of things. I just reject the approach that individual action is a way out of this sort of mess. | | |
| ▲ | Kim_Bruning 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | My father keeps asking me why I don't I ever apply to $BIGCO and earn more money. I certainly have the ability, he says. But I ask him, "But would you work for Lex Luthor?" He doesn't have a good comeback to that. Anyway, I (mostly, hopefully) try to make my small corner of the world a happy place. And I hope everyone else does for theirs. | |
| ▲ | computerthings 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | computerthings 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | ljm 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Perhaps to show the level of privilege I enjoy as a software engineer with some level of seniority, I have had zero problem resigning from a position (more than once in fact) because I objected to something my employer was doing. It's been enough for me to filter potential opportunities exclusively to tech-for-good concerns. Sure, I don't earn half a million a year total comp to kiss some billionaire's ass, but I still have a very comfortable lifestyle that is well above the median. | | |
| ▲ | account42 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yeah, software is perhaps one of the industries where the "I got bills to pay" argument is the least justifiable. If your lifestyle can only be sustained by working for unethical companies then your lifestyle is unethical. You certainly don't need to sell your soul to FAANG to live a comfortable and happy life. |
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| ▲ | AlecSchueler 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > With the sorry state the software industry is currently in, I’m not surprised that developers would sell their soul in exchange for the peace of mind of being able to pay rent and food You really think adtech is the way to avoid starving on the street? There are a hell of a lot of jobs between entry level and adtech dev that could give you the same basic peace of mind. | |
| ▲ | watwut 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | There was never shortage of developers who "would sell their soul" for higher salary in conditions where job with slightly lower salary was easily available. I really do not think we have to pretend to our selves that if one of us does it, it is because he/she is poor and the kids would starve. Also, layers are resining from positions in doj they find unethical. It is not like the jobs for them were easier to find. |
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| ▲ | satvikpendem 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Blind is like 4chan, not representative of the vast majority of software engineers but rather their own self contained bubble. I wouldn't use Blind as exemplary of anything in this case. |
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| ▲ | rkomorn 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | I spent enough time in FAANG and adjacent to realize that some of the senior engineers and directors around me held 4chan/Blind-like beliefs. Some of those folks were cultural leaders in the orgs I belonged to. Some even passed for nice people. |
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