It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!
Opt-out is bullshit, it’s unethical. Unless people specifically give their consent to their content being used for training data, and are compensated if they wish to be compensated for that privilege, then it’s just not morally defensible. Legally defensible? Sure, maybe so. But we don’t like to support companies who are merely abiding by the letter of the law, we want them to abide by the spirit of the law and of treating their customers with respect and consideration. This is not that at all. 😕
Hey, non-FOSS internet, how is it going?
…
Yeah.
The tech industry understands consent just fine, the corpos will ignore the idea however if it means less revenue and can’t have that because capitalism.
I’m giving the benefit of the doubt to every one of these shitty clickbait article authors about “tech industry” and “software engineering circles” that the authors aren’t dense and know random code monkeys aren’t evil or too stupid to figure out opt-in is more ethical, they just work for corps that have to make money because capitalism, but they post their stupid garbage anyway because it gets clicks.
Don’t post it here.
Why would you discourage interesting, original journalism over such an obtuse nitpick?
They are clearly criticising the same capitalist structures that you are. They single out the tech industry because the article is about the misuse of tech, not because they think rank and file tech workers are deviants.
Frankly it comes off as fragile and dismissive, and if that’s what we’re doing we could have just stayed on reddit.
While the tone of the comment is dismissive, they have a point.
It’s not the engineers that are the problem, or even limited to the tech industry. Dark patterns are top-down business decisions, motivated by money.
It’s not that the “tech industry doesn’t understand consent,” but rather that greedy people do evil things. And software is just a low hanging fruit for that kind of business.
It’s not the engineers that are the problem, or even limited to the tech industry. Dark patterns are top-down business decisions, motivated by money.
Just following orders, right?
Come on, that’s not how morality works.
Are you a moron? Because you sound like one. Are you really equating wageslaves working for Google instead of facilitating the sale of gazillions of far more unethical products at their local Walmart by being an associate customer success checkout wagie or smth to soldiers committing attrocities? Do you not even realize the “you hate prison, yet you participate in it - curious” levels of bullshit that view entails?
Because if you did that you’d be a moron. You are a moron.
Are you seriously suggesting knowledge workers have no responsibility for how their work is used?
We have limited options in what we can do to get money. I currently have a job where I’m proud of what I do, but it took decades of working for assholes to get there. Even now I’m not comfortable with everything I’m asked to do. I push back when it’s unethical, and sometimes that changes things. Sometimes it doesn’t and I just have to do as I’m told. What’s your life like?
I directly tell my managers that what they are asking for is illegal, and then I refuse to do it. So far, I’ve yet to be forced to “do as I’m told,” and I doubt that this will ever be a problem for me as I don’t intend to sign up for the military or any other organization that can actually force people to follow orders.
Nowhere in the article does the author pin blame on individual employees. “Tech industry” obviously refers to corporations, not individual contributors. The title isn’t clickbait.
“Tech industry” does not mean that, it could just as well mean “people in the tech industry” which means “people who work in the tech industry”. The author uses this because it’s the boogeyman du jour with Sam altman and such but his entire essay is dancing around the point that it’s capitalism and has nothing to do with tech or is even specific to it. They would’ve probably had more of an article if they tried to specifically tie it to Nestle than the Tech Industry but it wouldn’t get them those precious clicks.
This also isn’t only the tech industry, it’s any industry. Pushy door to door salespeople aren’t in the tech industry.
