
Let’s Get Better at Demanding Better from Tech - magoghm
http://locusmag.com/2018/03/cory-doctorow-lets-get-better-at-demanding-better-from-tech/
======
YeGoblynQueenne
>> The reality is that these early “techno-utopians” were keenly aware of
these risks. They founded organizations like the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, and the Free Software Foundation, not because they were convinced
that everything was going to be great – but because they were worried that
everything could be terrible, and also because they saw the potential for
things to be better.

Yeah, but then Google, Facebook et al started throwing six-figure salaries to
CS graduates to steal your data and, well, that's what happened to hackers'
ethics and technology morality.

~~~
shanev
> Yeah, but then Google, Facebook et al started throwing six-figure salaries
> to CS graduates to steal your data and, well, that's what happened to
> hackers' ethics and technology morality.

I think it's more than the money. Many engineers view FB and Google as kind of
a rite of passage in tech. Ex-Googlers and ex-FBers are highly regarded. Your
startup is safe hiring them because they have been vetted already.

I turned down an opportunity to interview at FB in 2008 when they were just
starting to build their native mobile team. I was even offered a free flight
from Chicago and was told I'd get to meet Zuck. Some of us have refused to
work for companies that exploit user data and have always put ethics first.
But "person who refused to interview at Google" doesn't sound as nice as "ex-
Googler" to most.

~~~
dizzystar
I turned down a phone screen at Facebook.

About a week later, a tech recruiter called and asked me if there was any sort
of company I wouldn't work at. I said, yeah, I wouldn't want to work in any
social media company. He challenged me by pointing out that the money and
prestige has to be tempting, right?

I told them Facebook contacted me the week before and I declined.

The hem and haw, followed by 'uhhh.... well" and silence was revealing.

To be fair, I have zero chance of getting into Facebook, especially for what
they contacted me for.

~~~
zamber
Isn't "fake it 'til you make it" a common mantra among CS grads entering the
work force in the US?

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
>It may sound improbable, but revolutions always rely on fifth columnists who
change sides. In China Miéville’s October, a masterful, novelistic history of
the Russian Revolution, he recounts how the Cossacks, the Czar’s most brutal
shock-troops, took the revolutionaries’ side, refusing to mount cavalry
charges on protestors and keeping their horses perfectly stationary while
protesters openly crawled between the mounts’ legs, technically complying with
their officers’ orders to “hold the street and do not move from your
positions.”

Unfortunately, for the Cossacks, the Soviets basically committed genocide
against them.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decossackization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decossackization)

This goes to show you that before you switch sides, sometimes the devil you
know is better than the devil you don't know.

~~~
sp332
That also depends if your goal is self-preservation, or living in a principled
way.

~~~
oldcynic
I wonder how many would maintain their principles if they knew the
consequences, not just for themselves, but for their family too. Not too many
I think

~~~
aalleavitch
Your username is perfect.

------
maxxxxx
I would like to hear the same demands on business people. In the last few
decades it has slowly become accepted that business should behave like total
psychopaths that should only be concerned with enriching themselves. In the
end the people with power (money) will always find people doing dirty work for
them, be it tech or something else. I think that's the real problem that needs
to be addressed.

~~~
nicolashahn
That the most powerful have been the ones that are a combination of selfish,
good at deception, and able to toe the line of morality has been the case at
least since mammals evolved.

------
ninorena
This is a great reminder that it always helps to think deeply about a problem
before spouting out a solution. I appreciate that Cory moves beyond the
"protech" and "anti-tech" rhetoric and allows for us to be humans together on
the same journey.

However, I find it increasingly frustrating that there are many voices out
there involved in this "techlash" yet there seems to be little thought given
to the actual ethics and morality they continue to cite. Who gets to define
what is right?

~~~
Y_Y
Who gets to define what is right?

Indeed this is the right question to be asking. I think moral relativism has a
lot to offer here. As SSC put it, you have to think about whether people with
different moral aims than you are just not clever enough to see you're right,
or know they're wrong but hope to profit (mistake vs. conflict). Too rarely
does anyone consider that from where the other party stands, things might look
different. You can have two good-faith actors with good (but not totally
overlapping) information take up totally opposed positions because they don't
see the same thing as being "right".

~~~
Torwald
I've found your comment very interesting:

"As SSC put it, you have to think about whether people with different moral
aims than you are just not clever enough to see you're right, or know they're
wrong but hope to profit (mistake vs. conflict)."

Regarding "dumb v. evil", I've lately encountered this distinction:

"dumb people don't use moral concepts to get their way. They just sort of use
brute force, bullying, you know they'll call names. But the smart people are
the people, who use moral concepts in the service of evil. "

I've heard it in this video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-0V-gUuvW8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-0V-gUuvW8)

(at 18:15 min)

I transcribed the segment at my blog over here:
[http://tribeone.net/morality/how-to-malice-
stupidity/](http://tribeone.net/morality/how-to-malice-stupidity/)

(If you like reading better.)

------
sinak
Cached version:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-S8H-gz...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-S8H-gzazOMJ:https://locusmag.com/2018/03/cory-
doctorow-lets-get-better-at-demanding-better-from-
tech/&num=1&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1&vwsrc=0)

~~~
azdle
Since this is an article on privacy in tech here's a mirror not hosted by one
of the top invaders of online privacy:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20180305203213/http://locusmag.co...](http://web.archive.org/web/20180305203213/http://locusmag.com/2018/03/cory-
doctorow-lets-get-better-at-demanding-better-from-tech/)

------
news_to_me
Reminds me of the Scuttlebutt culture docs, which I found recently:
[https://coolguy.website/writing/the-future-will-be-
technical...](https://coolguy.website/writing/the-future-will-be-
technical/modern-design.html)

------
none_to_remain
I would like to draw attention to Gallup's "Business and Industry Sector
Ratings" as polled in August of 2017.
[http://news.gallup.com/poll/12748/Business-Industry-
Sector-R...](http://news.gallup.com/poll/12748/Business-Industry-Sector-
Ratings.aspx)

"Computer Industry" ranks first in net approval, while "Internet Industry"
ranks fifth (in between are "Restaurant Industry", "Farming and Agriculture",
and "Grocery Industry").

I don't particularly buy into this "techlash" as a prevailing phenomenon.

------
Elzair
When I try to access the site, I get "Error establishing a database
connection" Let's indeed demand better from tech!

~~~
tyingq
I'm guessing that eventually, Azure and Google Cloud put enough pressure on
AWS that the whole elastic solution situation is affordable enough that people
stop skimping on affordable hosting.

At the moment, there's a fair amount of pennywise/poundfoolish behavior
because of crazy high cloud egress costs.

There's a huge pricing chasm between, for example, a cheap Digital Ocean non-
elastic hosting solution and AWS. Digital Ocean, though, is moving closer to
an actual cloud, and the big 3 seem to be starting to compete on price.

------
cromwellian
Maybe we could get better at demanding better from Gun Manufacturers, Fossil
Fuel and Chemical Companies while we’re at it?

The tech community has to get better at avoiding navel gazing. Hyperbolizing
threats from tech, some theoretical and far off, while ignoring serious
threats that affect he lives people everyday.

The majority of the real, actual suffering going on right now has little to do
with tech. It’s the people turner into refugees thanks to geopolitics, it’s
the DACA kids afraid ICE is just around the corner to break up their family,
it’s the women being systemically assaulted, it’s the malnourished and
maleducated kids among America’s poor. I wish half the attention spent on net
neutrality or vertical search was targeted at lower items of the hierarchy of
needs.

~~~
ethbro
That's the No True Scotsman fallacy.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman)

 _> The majority of the real, actual suffering going on right now has little
to do with tech._

 _> It’s the people turned into refugees thanks to geopolitics, it’s the DACA
kids afraid ICE is just around the corner to break up their family, it’s the
women being systemically assaulted, it’s the malnourished and maleducated kids
among America’s poor_

Tech has non-trivially contributed or stood idly by while all these happened.

~~~
cromwellian
Everyone has stood by while this has happened, more so than Tech in many
cases, for example, with respect to immigration, the major tech companies have
filed amicus briefs with courts, lobbied politicians, and pleaded with the
Trump administration to stop what they're doing.

And while tech companies have been accused at various rates of sexual
harassment, do we really think the big tech companies aren't trying to
mitigate these issues to a greater degree than say, Hollywood or Wall Street
Investment Banks (or the VC industry)? Are tech companies destroying the
environment as fast as Koch Industries, or are they actually trying to be
carbon neutral? Are they at least trying to cleanup their supply chain's
bloody parts, or are they lobbying politicians to legalize pollution and
bloody exploitation. (e.g. Apple and blood minerals vs Union Carbide/Dow)

Your usage of the fallacy is incorrect BTW, this isn't a No True Scotsman
fallacy, no where did I assert that tech companies don't do things which could
harm society. My point is, the focus of HN is to obsess about tech companies
behavior and avoid the far greater harm that non-tech (i.e. non-software) have
done, principally because their interests are primarily talking about tech and
how it relates to everything, and it is a myopic view of tech as the center of
the universe: it either is the center of great harm, or the utopian solution
to everything.

The real problems of the world require messy, political problems that don't
include the skills of geeks or silicon valley, they include things you can't
calculate, engineer, or apply rigid principles to.

So at worst, you can say my fallacy is "whataboutism", but in this case, the
"whataboutism" is real. Lots of people crying about AI Skynets and full
spectrum surveillance, and none about basic inequality. Why? Because a tech
geek can imagine a way to filter cookies, or implement Asimov laws, but they
can't imagine how to convince millions of people to stop voting for candidates
who promise not to raise their taxes and stop giving money to "freeloaders"
The real squishy, soft problems can't be solved with code on GitHub.

Yes, we can tackle both issues, both what tech companies are doing wrong and
what non-tech companies are doing, but it is a false equivalence to say
they're causing equal levels of damage, right now we haven't even cleaned up
the historical legacy damage caused by the old economy, and we're talking
about paying large amount of attention hypothetical threats and damages?

~~~
jackfraser
> Everyone has stood by while this has happened, more so than Tech in many
> cases, for example, with respect to immigration

First, I don't think that's the case, because it's impossible to open any
media website, tv channel, or newspaper without being inundated with a very
uniform opinion with regards to what Trump is doing. The folks who do not like
what is being done are doing anything but idly standing by. Whether their
protestations will or should be heard is a different question.

Second, what Trump is doing - or at least, what it can be proven that he is
doing - is so far entirely within the scope of the powers of the office and is
within law. What sort of things can be done about the actions of the President
as long as he's acting within the law?

Let's not forget that roughly half the country wanted this - what of them?
It's easy to act as though the opposing side's argument has no merit, but what
if you actually consider their idealized motivation, from at least a
sympathetic-for-argument's-sake mindset? These are not fools and monsters, and
they do have their reasons for feeling and thinking the way they do.
Discounting that from the outset leads only to enmity.

> Lots of people crying about AI Skynets and full spectrum surveillance, and
> none about basic inequality. Why? Because a tech geek can imagine a way to
> filter cookies, or implement Asimov laws, but they can't imagine how to
> convince millions of people to stop voting for candidates who promise not to
> raise their taxes and stop giving money to "freeloaders"

What if the geeks themselves see inequality as a natural outcome of any
possible system that enables people to advance themselves? What if there do
exist freeloaders, in an innumerable multitude of forms? What if someone
doesn't believe that a government that we can all agree is incapable of
handling infrastructure maintenance or any meaningful reorganization of itself
shouldn't be trusted to take even more money and "redistribute" it to whomever
it deems most worthy at any given moment?

I don't think that folks with these ideas necessarily want the worst for
anyone. I think they just have very different ideas about what is needed and
what is feasible in terms of improving quality of life for everyone.

If you want to play at whataboutism, you must know that it can be fired back
just as easily. It's not entirely useless or without merit as a discussion
method but it doesn't really lead us to answers.

~~~
cromwellian
> what Trump is doing - or at least, what it can be proven that he is doing -
> is so far entirely within the scope of the powers of the office and is
> within law. What sort of things can be done about the actions of the
> President as long as he's acting within the law?

What can be done is exactly what's being done: Challenge him in the courts,
lobby congress to make changes, vote in the midterms to change congress.

>What if the geeks themselves see inequality as a natural outcome...

What if the geeks themselves are people who read Atlas Shrugged as teenagers,
fantasized about revenge for years of bullying in school, and now feel
justified in their new status as meritocratically earned and confirmation of
their inherent worth.

In other words, people with a false theory of meritocracy, that justifies
their own serendipitous gains in life, grants little weight to those unlucky
enough to be born in unfortunate situations (e.g oh, you were born to bad
parents in a crack infested neighborhood? The fact that you're not rich is
obviously your fault for not studying in school hard enough, and your claims
that I need to pay more taxes so your family can freeload for generations is
unfair to me)

What if people who believe in libertarianism have no scientific data to back
up their claims of efficacy? That there's no correlation between say, marginal
tax rates and economic growth? That views on government incompetence are self
fulfilling? What if they're completely wrong about the ability of the market
to account for negative externalities and self correct before irreparable
damage in rendered to the environmental or society?

What if meritocracy is bullshit, and that the people who ride at the top of
the pyramid get there based on who they know, and not what they personally
achieve? What if two people who work equally hard and are equally smart,
results in one being in abject poverty and the other being fantastically rich
because the latter had met a wealthy and connected family friend when they
attended Stanford?

What if claiming that opposition to laissez-faire capitalism doesn't mean
you're a Marxist and doesn't mean you want to punish success? What if you see
a crisis in capitalism coming from automation that will cause vast swaths of
humanity to be structurally unemployed and that Universal Basic Income (the
dreaded "redistribution" word) might be necessary in the end?

What if the predictable consequence of Trump's tax cuts is a $2 trillion
deficit, and the vast majority of the corporate profits plowed into stock
buybacks and executive compensation, and the bottom 10% ends up worse?

What if either-or is a logical fallacy, and that a system can enable and
incentivize advancement without being winner-take-all? What if people won't
stop trying to be entrepreneurs and get rich, even if you raise their taxes by
10% to pay for universal health care, or college? What if a vibrant social
safety net encourages more people to take entrepreneurial risks because
failure doesn't mean destitution?

What if Silicon Valley Techno-Libertarians, especially of the Peter Thiel
type, have a dogmatic, unsupported view of success and failure, ascribe too
much of their own situation only to their own volition and actions they're
taken, and then go on echo chamber sites arguing against redistribution,
affirmative action, and other attempts to limit the most damaging negative
externalities of a winner-take-all system?

------
tytytytytytytyt
Did the site do down?

------
taeric

        Our technology can make our lives better, can give us
        more control, can give us more privacy – but only if 
        we force it to live up to its promise. 
    

Not only can it. It has. Any talk to the contrary is completely ignoring how
much higher our bar has risen for quality of life.

~~~
hueving
For privacy and control? Definitely not. A huge chunk of my family uses
Facebook as the means of communication which means private correspondence is
being mediated and read by Facebook's platform. At any whim they can ban a
user, delete a message, etc. The same applies to Gmail but at least there is
an escape hatch to a different email provider if you are using a custom
domain.

The centralization of stuff into Amazon, Google, and Facebook's offerings has
been extremely destructive to the status quo for control and privacy.

~~~
stickfigure
At a whim, you and your family/friends can stop using Facebook and use any of
literally _hundreds_ of other excellent options for communication.

 _That 's control._ And privacy is much better now than it was in the
"glorious early days of the internet" when your two choices were SMTP and IRC
and both were subject to monitoring by local sysadmins and pretty much any
node your packets passed through.

Just because the present is not perfect does not mean the past was better. I
much prefer the privacy and control of today's internet over yesterday's
internet.

~~~
bsder
Facebook tags photos with my face in it _without my permission_. How do I as a
non-Facebook user stop that?

How do I prevent Google from reading my email conversations when a huge chunk
of the destinations are on the Gmail platform?

I _DON 'T_ have control. And I _DON 'T_ like it.

~~~
stickfigure
You can't stop it because you don't control your friends. These are _their_
pictures, _their_ email conversations.

I fear the set of Orwellian rules that would be required to make you happy.

~~~
bsder
I don't mind that my _friends_ have access. Controlling that would be
Orwellian.

I mind that Google and Facebook have access. They are already Orwellian, and
figuring out how to control that would be anti-Orwellian.

