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.
If you are aware of criminal or unethical actions by your employer… By staying and contributing… You are as guilty as those doing those actions.
If your ethics can be altered for money or power or success
They weren’t really your ethics. Their Just lies you tell yourself
Do you blame the railway workers for putting down the rails that allowed nazi germany to move people into concentration camps highly efficiently?
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.
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
?
This is an extremist take on a correct conclusion. Just like how “vote with your wallet” and “no ethical consumption under capitalism” can co-exist, so can the idea that there are people in these jobs who simply don’t care about the harm as well as people who do but don’t have the power to do anything about it - even something as simple as changing jobs.
An easy example is the people left at Twitter. When employees started quitting in droves after Musk started tearing the company apart, I saw people quickly theorizing that the people still working there fell into 2 groups: those who were morally bankrupt enough not to care, and those on work visas who couldn’t quit because they risked being deported.
The majority of these companies are based in the US, where workers’ rights and protections are often tenuous at best. Whistleblowers have almost no protections and, more often than not, end up serving years or even lifetime sentences in federal jails for their efforts. In most states, it is completely legal for companies to fire you for whatever reason they feel like, and even if you get severance, it can take years of legal battles to get what you’re owed. Add to that how long it can take to find a new job (the average time in the video game industry is 2 months), and it’s easy to see how that can quickly spiral into putting people into a dangerous financial situation for daring to speak out.
It’s easy to lay the blame at other people’s feet, but just like saying, “Well, just don’t use their products then,” it’s never that simple.
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.
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.
The issue is that you lump people closer to the peasant class in with the modern feudal lord class.
The CEOs and major shareholders of said companies already have all the wealth they could ever need. They do it just to make number go up. They COULD spend their money and time on enterprises that benefit humanity, but that’s just not profitable so it’s not fun. Most employees, however, could last maybe a year or 2 without their salaries if they’ve been saving up a lot. Or maybe a week if they haven’t. Average case for software engineers at huge companies, probably a few months.
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.
There’s just a lot less money in that, and thus fewer jobs (and the ones that DO exist, pay worse).
If you want to retire early, or if you have kids whose future you want to secure, you want to get the best paying job possible. It’s well known in my country that the online casino software companies pay way more than most non-casino software companies. You know when people start looking into those jobs? When they start families.
Let’s take a look at an example here: You’re currently being paid to work on the Windows operating system itself. Certainly spies on its users, puts ads everywhere, etc. Good news, there ARE companies that develop counter products. You could work at Apple (comes with its’ own ethical issues), or at one of the companies working on desktop Linux distros. So mainly Red Hat or Canonical, because most desktop Linux distros are community-driven, but Fedora and Ubuntu are two great examples that have paid devs.
Canonical is trying to be the Microsoft of the Linux ecosystem (through enshittifying the desktop with snaps and ads, as well as selling you on Ubuntu Pro), whereas Red Hat is… trying to be the Microsoft of the Linux ecosystem (by reducing source accessibility of their enterprise offering, though at least they’re not doing that with Fedora). Oops!
What IS the alternative here? Work on desktop Linux software for free, in your free time. But that doesn’t put food on the table, so you’ll still have to work at one of those evil corps.
Similarly for Meta. Facebook is huge. What are the alternatives? Lemmy for Threads, Friendica for Facebook itself. What are the devs being paid? Nothing, really. I think Dessalines is slowly starting to approach a livable salary for Lemmy, looking at his Patreon. Friendica’s Tobias doesn’t even seem to have a donation page anywhere.
If you’ve got the luxury of plentiful free time, definitely contribute to open source alternatives to commercial projects. But if you don’t, you have to put bread on the table somehow…
Red Hat works for the US military among other things, too. Not the greatest.
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.
You’re not wrong. The whole system is governed by fear. It is the operating principle by which this world operates.
Anyone that says “I’m just doing my job” living their life based on fear, and not reason. All it does is give the psychopaths running everything more power.
We need to stop being afraid. Believe it or not, it is a choice. You can wake up every morning happy, and at total peace. No matter what is happening in your life. Mind over matter, as they say.
I’m more concerned about the sociopaths that try to run everything: the ones who have no qualms running through anybody who tries to get in their way.
Being poor never helps. Quiet quit / be overemployed
problem here is you want to keep learning and growing which has the unfortunate consequence of improving the software.
Improve your software, not theirs.
I generally agree. If you work for an Evil Corp, you are just as culpable.
Well I threw all my criticality out the window I guess because I totally agree with you.
Imagine working at Microsoft. What do you even tell your family and friends so they’re not ashamed of you? Make up a fake company? Say you’re unemployed? Say you’re a prostitute?
“I work on a Linux competitor”
Perfect :D
“I make online honeypots.”
I’ve been an engineer for about two decades now and pretty much everyone I’ve ever worked with has expressed that they would never work for Facebook, betting companies or defense companies.
Amazon is probably next on the shit list and then Google, but each to a much lesser extent than the ones before. Working for Google still holds a level of prestige for some people.
Sports betting is an interesting one. It’s a growing industry in the US. While things like Amazon are sort of nebulously evil, I think more people can agree betting is dangerous. I was unemployed from about July 2023 to Feb 2024. I turned down a sports betting job early on because I didn’t wanna do it for moral reasons but months later I pursued a different one because I was more desperate for a job. Luckily they turned me down and I found a different job. That sucks, but at least I don’t have to feel like I’m doing something wrong.
Loads of people working for these companies are also on special visas that have been described as modern slavery… so maybe they are culpable of signing up for such jobs/visas, but once you are in such a setup the threat of immediate deportation to some 3rd world country is quite real.
I work at Microsoft and it’s well known that you get paid way more at Facebook and Amazon. We like to call it a “sin tax”. Their employee retention is basically how long you need to stay to get your whole signing bonus.
Microsoft is far from perfect but I thoroughly enjoy working there in gaming.
How hard is it to get into Microsoft?
The privacy nutter part of my brain hates them about as much as the other (insert acronym here) companies. The “I have a family” part wants me to get paid enough to secure our future, so I’m looking into getting a US tech job in the next ~5-10 years (I’m aware that it’s a PAIN of a process if I need sponsorship, but luckily Microsoft has EU offices too)
Not anymore!
I’m not gonna talk you down. U rite
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).
