
Snowden: Tech Workers Are Complicit in How Their Companies Hurt Society - elsewhen
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxqx8q/snowden-tech-workers-are-complicit-in-how-their-companies-hurt-society
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AndrewKemendo
It is intentionally naiive to dismiss the concept that your actions, however
small, have societal impacts.

Whether you intend them to, or are aware of the extent that they do, is a
function of your personal curiosity and ability/data to analyze the causal
impacts of your actions on broader outcomes.

I always see a lot of "I'm just a cog trying to make ends meet" responses, to
these kinds of challenges. This is a willfully ignorant cop-out. Which is
different from embracing some form of existential nihilism.

It might sound trivial but the quote from Socrates applies:

"The unexamined life is not worth living"

~~~
machinehermit
What about if I just don't care?

I totally understand if you think less of me for this perspective but at least
I am honest.

I legitimately do not care.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Outside of people with severe psychotic disorders, I have yet to meet anyone
who had no consistent desires.

So I'd say you likely just don't know what you actually care about. Much like
the vast majority of humanity since forever. So, you're in good company!

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WheelsAtLarge
He talks about tech workers but he leaves out users. We users decide what
companies survive. Tech workers work because they need to eat. Users use the
tech because it's cool or convenient. We can make plus arguments or minus
arguments for both sides but only users decide what companies succeed. If we
don't use the tech there is no way for it to succeed. At some point we need to
decide if using a service is really worth the overall impact it has in society
and decide whether it's worth using.

It's time that we as users take more responsibility on what tech is deployed.
Is the convenience of tech worth the impact it's having in our society? By
most measurements, we are saying yes, emphatically. It's important that we
stop saying that the power lies with someone else. We have the power to change
the situation too.

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
And Raytheon, Palantir, Lockheed-Martin, et. all? They make most of their
money with direct government contracts.

There's no grey area when directly working on missiles

~~~
WheelsAtLarge
Well, this is where things get very gray. We are the users of that tech too.
The government is us too. "We the People of the United States, in Order to
form a more perfect Union...", as the Constitution says, decide what our
government does. It's time we tell our representatives what we want. No more
military contracts? Then make sure that no representative that's for those
contracts gets elected. It's a matter of getting involved. Like I said, we
have the power. It's time we use it.

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
Electoral politics has failed the people time and time again. The only way to
prevent these technologies is to organize and strike.

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throwawaysea
I disagree with Snowden's notion that "all work is political work". That
requires a stretch of semantics that most people simply would not agree with.
The word 'political' has a definition. It doesn't just mean "everything".

If we're saying everything affects everything else, then that's not really
interesting or useful to note. Meaningful decision making and meaningful
discussion requires compartmentalization. Words like 'political' do have
boundaries.

I remain in favor of workplaces that stay out of politics and the culture
wars, and instead adopt as close to ideologically neutral stances as they can.
This is very possible and is where businesses largely were just a few years
ago. If people have an issue with where they work, they should quit. But leave
political warfare to the sphere of actual public-facing politics.
Increasingly, overt ideological warfare is taking over every space - work,
media, leisure activities, etc. It's unnecessary.

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
How can we separate politics from work when making products for people?

Being ideological neutral is still a political stance, because it's an
implicit backing of the status quo.

~~~
Nasrudith
That "with us or against us" status quo stance is sophistry not logic. At very
best it may be strategy.

One example that is should be especially obvious in the era of a pandemic that
some tasks are effectively neutral because everybody needs it to not die. Food
production, limiting the spread of disease and treating it, etc. Even those
"against the status quo" don't usually support everyone dying of starvation.
Putting aside that said binary is useless as a descriptor. Where Q = the
status quo !Q includes all of "pay workers more","steal the businesses and
give a share of the profits to the workers instead of a paycheck" ,"enslave
the workers" , and "kill literally everyone" as against the status quo. I
guarantee that those related !Q are not one big happy family.

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
Nowhere did I mention "with us or against us". The status quo is a multi-
dimensional set of normative values.

Being "apolitical" is still a political stance, you're signaling that the
current set of norms is acceptable.

~~~
machinehermit
What am I signaling if I say I don't believe in Santa Claus?

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lipstone
The bar for the tech work activists to not consider a company "evil" is
impossible high. It seems like any attempt to actually operate like a business
(and actually.. you know.. make money?) is met with open hostility. I really
don't condone furthering the insistence that these mega-corps pretend to be
something that they're not.

That being said, the people with the megaphones that constantly send emails
about politics that somehow jump through five hoops to ensure every issue is
directly tied to race should put their actions where their mouth is. If 1000
people give an ultimatum that they'll quit if something isn't done, maybe
something will actually be done. If not, then the biggest propagators of
political distractions are gone. And then those of us that are confused how
politics (of a certain slant) became actively encouraged in the workplace can
stop aggressively adding email filters for the latest cause of the week.

~~~
_bxg1
Each of us has to decide individually where to draw the line. The important
thing is to keep your actions aligned with those words, and to not warp your
moral system to accommodate a cushy job.

Personally I would never work for Facebook, but I might work for Microsoft (at
least, on ethical grounds). That's based in my belief that Facebook causes
more harm to the world than good, and that Microsoft (probably) doesn't. At
least not to an egregious level.

If someone presented me a genuine moral argument for why they still believe
Facebook isn't a net negative for the world, as their reason for continuing to
work there, I could respect that. If someone said they're continuing to work
there just because they don't care or don't like to think about it, I cannot
respect that.

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paulus_magnus2
I am ever surprised how much self loathing the tech workers can take on
themselves.

If you fix 1 bug related to privacy are you complicit? What about a bug not
related to privacy but in a company that is later found out to be a bad actor
(Wirecard).

How about we make the managers accountable? I worked for many large
organisations and in each of them when work is presented to the developer, all
decisions have been made.

There is at least as many decision makers as devs: managers, functional
analysts, POs, feature engineers, chapter leads, enterprise architects,
customer journey experts etc. They spend countless hours explicitly conspiring
to develop these features. They get internal agreements something will be
built. It is impossible to unknowingly push an evil feature through all the
approvals a bigco requires.

Sure, If you find yourself directly developing immoral code you probably
should leave the company but please, there are 10 decision makers who should
be held accountable. But don't blame the developers. The management is already
doing the blaming [1].

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/volkswagen-
pulls...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/volkswagen-
pulls-2016-diesel-lineup-from-us-market/)

~~~
Krasnol
"I've been just following orders" didn't work out in Nürnberg last time
someone tried it.

Also: nobody says that ONLY the devs are responsible. It's a straw man.

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js8
I like the last quote: "It’s not enough to read, it’s not enough to believe in
something, it’s not enough to write something, you have to eventually stand
for something if you want things to change"

I think for engineers and scientists, it's an ego thing. We tend to believe
that intelligence is super important, but standing for something is about
courage. It can even be irrational (or dangerous) from a selfish perspective.

And I am guilty as charged. Having courage is difficult. And it cuts across
all disciplines and levels of intelligence (if there is such a thing).

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mac01021
I haven't watched the video yet, but the article itself doesn't tell me much
about how the companies that employ tech workers are hurting society.

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laughingbovine
"Everyone above me is looking the other way, why arent they held responsible?
I'm not responsible, they are."

Can't you see how this attitude results in EVERYONE looking the other way
unless we have 100% virtuous exec boards? So many people in this thread mad
that Snowden is putting this at their feet. How much are your morals worth?

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seesawtron
Is quitting such companies out of good faith really a good idea? I am not
sure. They will find someone else to do the job you had with "lower" morality
standards and the wheel goes on.

Is it better to stay, unionize and make a difference from within by standing
up against the morally corrupt policies? Maybe.

~~~
sprafa
Thats the Nuremberg defence “we were just following orders” and “we didn’t
make the decisions”.

Hannah Arendt nailed it when she saw Eichmann “evil is when good men do
nothing”.

~~~
seesawtron
As Chomsky always says "Unionize!". You can't unionize and rebel against the
companies' policies when you quit. Quitting is the easier choice. Staying in
the company AND refusing to do what's against your moral code of conduct. That
might end up having you fired eventually but might shake things up.

~~~
searchableguy
What does HN think of police unions now?

~~~
GloriousKoji
I think that tech/dock/office/factory workers unionizing won't result in an
increase of civilian deaths.

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xtiansimon
Coal power. Fracking. Big agriculture. Logging--you name it. Compartmentalized
work. Compartmentalized minds. People are unmoved. I don't see Snowden has
added anything to the conversation.

~~~
laughingbovine
But hey, at least there IS a conversation.

~~~
xtiansimon
Ok. Conversation is good, when people are not talking. But we need progress on
hard topics. Compromise.

How long do you need to talk before you get to: I don’t care. I’m taking care
of my family. End of discussion. Or, our firm needs to grow in order to be
competitive (and other economic ideologies of continual growth)? Or,
government regulations are too burdensome. Let this be decided by the people
who live (upstream) here.

I’m not inclined to be generous for half a discussion. If Snowden wants to
lead, then lead.

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igravious
Leans back in rocking chair, tamps pipe.

When I was younger I used to code in C and C++. Borland compiler and IDE tools
were my favourite. From what I recall Microsoft stomped all over them. It was
my first introduction Big Tech. I loved DOS (yes DOS!) and I was getting to
learn Windows but I felt that Microsoft was stifling its competition by
abusing its dominance of the PC OS market. I was young and naive and had never
heard of Free (as in freedom) Software and Open Source was a term that was yet
to be coined.

(I'm going somewhere relevant with this.)

When Linux came along it made a few small ripples, I jumped on board when it
was maybe six or seven years old – a beat up PC running Slackware was being
used as a router connected to an ISDN line in a business park I interned at.
Some dude explained roughly how it worked and gave me a burnt CD. I had to
figure out how to load CD drivers manually, compile the kernel manually, I
learned so much. And in time I learned about FOSS and GNU and Stallman and the
GPL. I thought, wow – that's a neat hack – using the legal system to guarantee
freedoms. Giving people control over their devices, and way less of an
opportunity for a big company to stifle it. I was a convert.

We're been at the Ad/Data Lock-in/Surveillance Tech equivalent of Stallman and
the mythical printer for over a decade now. I personally think our modern
Borland moment was when Facebook was allowed to buy Instagram (2012). That
should _never_ have been allowed by regulators. Not to mention WhatsApp
(2014). Same for Google buying Android (2005), DoubleClick (2007), or Nest
(2014). Not to mention Amazon aquistions. Nor Apple. I'm sure there are many
more such examples. Someone mentioned this article
([https://promarket.org/2019/12/09/the-lack-of-competition-
has...](https://promarket.org/2019/12/09/the-lack-of-competition-has-deprived-
american-workers-of-1-25-trillion-of-income/)) recently about the
concentration of corporations in the US, I made a point of bookmarking the
link. And that's before we even get on to the topics that Snowden brought to
light.

It's hard not to become totally cynical. We need the contemporary equivalent
of Stallman and Torvalds to do to Big Tech what GNU/Linux has done to
Microsoft – and it was for Microsoft's own good, they're a much better company
now! Linux could not have succeeded without the GPL. Do we need another legal
hack to spread from the USA to the rest of the world? I'd say probably. Back
in the day there were calls to break Microsoft up into a PC OS and Office
tools divisions. There appears to be a complete unwillingness in the US to
break up or prevent the formation of abusive monopolies in tech. Until
antitrust regulators get their you know what together I think we need to
legally mandate that key tech standards are federated. I cannot think of any
other solution. We need to force Facebook and Twitter to plug into an ITU
([https://www.itu.int/en/Pages/default.aspx](https://www.itu.int/en/Pages/default.aspx))
like standard for a start. (I think we can fix Amazon (and a whole lot more)
by forcing them to pay their lowest paid workers and sub-contractors a whole
lot more – but that's a whole other topic.) Google I don't know what to do
about – possibly get them to divest Android? Force Android to be more open?
It's already quite open though. And so is Chrome. They do have a complete
monopoly on video streaming and censor and demonetise content in
unpredictable, illiberal, anti-democratic and un-free ways – Facebook and
Twitter are both unacceptable in this regard also in my eyes.

And it'll only get worse. Microsoft didn't change until they were forced to
change. The lack of uptake of Mastadon and Diaspora prove that the FOSS model
is not enough. We need FOSS++.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:List_of_mergers_and_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by)

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subaru_shoe
Wow what a revelation.

People who build guns are complicit in how their companies hurt society.

People who sell tobacco are complicit in how their companies hurt society.

People who make plastic bag are complicit in how their companies hurt society.

People who work in fast food are complicit in how their companies hurt
society.

And on and on ....

Hell he is no saint.

~~~
ta17711771
No. The only thing needing regulation for these companies is their marketing
messaging, and packaging messaging.

