“Ethics” and Ethics(ia.net)
ia.net
“Ethics” and Ethics
https://ia.net/topics/ethics-and-ethics
12 comments
If you work at Facebook these days, people don’t like you very much at the bar, the wedding or on the train. That you earn a lot doesn’t really help you when everyone dislikes you.
“You’re an asshole.”
“No, I’m right, I earn more than you.”
I’m not a Facebook employee, but: I doubt it? The vast majority of people have no problem with Facebook or what it does. People with a big focus on privacy don’t like it, but the existence of Facebook as a profitable enterprise is proof that there are plenty of people outside this set.
I think the big issue that is often swept under the rug here are that different people have different morals, especially at the margins. Sure, almost everyone agrees on murder. But there are legitimate disagreements in the privacy space, especially when no concrete harm has been demonstrated.
For example, my personal moral stance on privacy is that, if someone is voluntarily using a platform, and that platform had terms that include some items which would tend to reduce the person’s privacy, that’s fine. As long as there is responsible disclosure, adults should be free to use or not use services as they see fit.
“You’re an asshole.”
“No, I’m right, I earn more than you.”
I’m not a Facebook employee, but: I doubt it? The vast majority of people have no problem with Facebook or what it does. People with a big focus on privacy don’t like it, but the existence of Facebook as a profitable enterprise is proof that there are plenty of people outside this set.
I think the big issue that is often swept under the rug here are that different people have different morals, especially at the margins. Sure, almost everyone agrees on murder. But there are legitimate disagreements in the privacy space, especially when no concrete harm has been demonstrated.
For example, my personal moral stance on privacy is that, if someone is voluntarily using a platform, and that platform had terms that include some items which would tend to reduce the person’s privacy, that’s fine. As long as there is responsible disclosure, adults should be free to use or not use services as they see fit.
> The vast majority of people have no problem with Facebook or what it does. People with a big focus on privacy don’t like it, but the existence of Facebook as a profitable enterprise is proof that there are plenty of people outside this set.
Most people don't have enough knowledge to make an ethical judgement about it. So we do what's convenient and assume it's ok.
That's why I prefer to have proficient regulatory bodies with domain expertise to set rules, rather than expect for market forces ("vote with your dollar") to select for ethical options. Consumers can't be expected to make those choices, not at scale.
So I'm not convinced that "privacy" is really so controversial, even if people keep using Facebook. They don't know how facebook works, or in which ways its business practices "innovated" beyond the status quo that preceded it. Also, most people aren't interested in taking part in a futile boycott of something, even if they'd prefer for it to be restricted/banned for everyone.
Most people don't have enough knowledge to make an ethical judgement about it. So we do what's convenient and assume it's ok.
That's why I prefer to have proficient regulatory bodies with domain expertise to set rules, rather than expect for market forces ("vote with your dollar") to select for ethical options. Consumers can't be expected to make those choices, not at scale.
So I'm not convinced that "privacy" is really so controversial, even if people keep using Facebook. They don't know how facebook works, or in which ways its business practices "innovated" beyond the status quo that preceded it. Also, most people aren't interested in taking part in a futile boycott of something, even if they'd prefer for it to be restricted/banned for everyone.
> Most people don't have enough knowledge to make an ethical judgement about it.
I can’t say I agree. People are more than sufficiently knowledgeable to form broad strokes viewpoints about the morality of Facebook. Of course, the details would need to be fleshed out if it were determined that FB were operating outside the popular moral framework. That’s what regulatory bodies are for.
The formation of a regulatory body should be contingent on the presence of a widely held moral viewpoint. If such a viewpoint is not widely held, then the regulatory body does not reflect the will of the people, and its mandate is suspect.
I can’t say I agree. People are more than sufficiently knowledgeable to form broad strokes viewpoints about the morality of Facebook. Of course, the details would need to be fleshed out if it were determined that FB were operating outside the popular moral framework. That’s what regulatory bodies are for.
The formation of a regulatory body should be contingent on the presence of a widely held moral viewpoint. If such a viewpoint is not widely held, then the regulatory body does not reflect the will of the people, and its mandate is suspect.
When asked most people would tell you that they have nothing to hide. People who voluntarily share all of their personal details online (most people) aren’t likely to be super privacy focused. And that’s ok, we don’t need regulations we need to treat people like adults and allow them to make their own decisions.
The article is meandering, but I think at its core it has some key points that are worth considering, at least to me:
1) Organizations are built of individuals, and while the individuals can hold strong moral standpoints, it is difficult for an organization as a whole to do so. It is also difficult for individuals to promote taking a moral standpoint as an organization, or in many cases to even notice the incongruity between their personal morals and the morals of their organization.
(This points reminds me of the banality of evil. And I think it is a valid point, and something we should be on guard about if we want our personal values to match the values of the products we create.)
2) It is easy to dismiss moral concerns in business as being something that the market will figure out for you. That is not necessarily the case.
(I have found throughout my own career that many companies are willing to appeal to a morality that is somewhere along the lines of "whatever we can get away with is our moral boundary." Measuring the morality of a decision by public approval of/success in sales as a result of that decision. That is far removed from actual moral judgment, particularly when public approval is so easily swayed by factors that are separate from whether the subject in question is helpful or even actively harming them. See cigarette lobbying until their false claims were finally debunked and their lobbying efforts exposed in the 90's. [As a side note, I'm curious who would argue that the efforts the cigarette industry made throughout the last century to spread misinformation should be considered "free speech" and their ability to do so a preservation of "personal liberty"? Let's see what pops up in the comments.])
3) We have a duty to think more actively about whether our morals align with the morals of our company, and to make that known if we would like to see that change.
There are other points that might be more interesting to those with a design-oriented focus toward the bottom of the article, but these three were the points that I took home from it.
1) Organizations are built of individuals, and while the individuals can hold strong moral standpoints, it is difficult for an organization as a whole to do so. It is also difficult for individuals to promote taking a moral standpoint as an organization, or in many cases to even notice the incongruity between their personal morals and the morals of their organization.
(This points reminds me of the banality of evil. And I think it is a valid point, and something we should be on guard about if we want our personal values to match the values of the products we create.)
2) It is easy to dismiss moral concerns in business as being something that the market will figure out for you. That is not necessarily the case.
(I have found throughout my own career that many companies are willing to appeal to a morality that is somewhere along the lines of "whatever we can get away with is our moral boundary." Measuring the morality of a decision by public approval of/success in sales as a result of that decision. That is far removed from actual moral judgment, particularly when public approval is so easily swayed by factors that are separate from whether the subject in question is helpful or even actively harming them. See cigarette lobbying until their false claims were finally debunked and their lobbying efforts exposed in the 90's. [As a side note, I'm curious who would argue that the efforts the cigarette industry made throughout the last century to spread misinformation should be considered "free speech" and their ability to do so a preservation of "personal liberty"? Let's see what pops up in the comments.])
3) We have a duty to think more actively about whether our morals align with the morals of our company, and to make that known if we would like to see that change.
There are other points that might be more interesting to those with a design-oriented focus toward the bottom of the article, but these three were the points that I took home from it.
Freedom of speech and individual liberty are absolutely moral and ethical values. They just don’t align with the politics of the author.
The moral crisis is people trying to reign in those values, not in the construction of platforms that enable them.
Calls to further regulate content on the internet are immoral to many.
The moral crisis is people trying to reign in those values, not in the construction of platforms that enable them.
Calls to further regulate content on the internet are immoral to many.
Nothing in this article mentions anything about government regulation: it is talking about self regulation, and asking your company to consider its moral principles in the face of psychologically manipulative practices. Did you read the article? Or are you choosing to falsely equivocate self regulation based on principles held within a body of employees or an organization with government regulation?
I’m saying that techies aren’t as amoral as this article claims. It choses to ignore popular ethical positions and instead claims people are operating without morals.
When I read it, it felt more about the banality of evil than an explicit choice to be amoral - he actually explicitly goes into it a few paragraphs down. And it is a genuine problem in our industry. It's very easy for us to have our heads down and not think about how our personal morals misalign with the morals of our company (the latter of which often doesn't have a stated set of principles aside from the examples in the products, services, and marketing it creates). We can be moral people as individuals, but overlook it at an organizational level.
But none of that really comes into play with liberty and freedom of speech in a way that I can mesh. That much is a tangential subject. I'd be more concerned on that end if the article's conclusion was that the government should tell us what is moral, but it is asking us to think more about what we consider to be moral.
If your morals tell you that the way your company makes money is okay, then your morals are in alignment and the article doesn't really apply in your situation.
But none of that really comes into play with liberty and freedom of speech in a way that I can mesh. That much is a tangential subject. I'd be more concerned on that end if the article's conclusion was that the government should tell us what is moral, but it is asking us to think more about what we consider to be moral.
If your morals tell you that the way your company makes money is okay, then your morals are in alignment and the article doesn't really apply in your situation.
> If your morals tell you that the way your company makes money is okay, then your morals are in alignment and the article doesn't really apply in your situation.
Yep, this is the point I was making. I think a lot of people are in this situation. It’s not that they’re cogs in an amoral machine, it’s that they are actually morally aligned with their company and striving to make the world a better place (in their vision).
Yep, this is the point I was making. I think a lot of people are in this situation. It’s not that they’re cogs in an amoral machine, it’s that they are actually morally aligned with their company and striving to make the world a better place (in their vision).
Given a certain situation where a company is acting in what you perceive as being a non ethical way there is absolutely zero chance of you finding out the causes, never mind solutions. Even for a "small" 400 people company there are so many variables, interconnections, processes, etc, that a human mind cannot create a reasonable working model and then debug it even if all the cards are on the table facing up. Which they are not.
Instead what I think works is looking at the big picture: do you agree with the end result? Is the service/product of decent quality, are customers happy, are they being taken advantage of, are workers ok, etc. If not, the same beast will eat you too and any thought of changing it is pure fantasy.
This way of thinking too has obvious problems. If you apply it to government departments for example you would quickly leave only the cynics there making it worse. In some cases you have to work from within. But in many cases draining the brains from a tech company will kill it fast enough.
But an even deeper problem seems to me that modern people are quire amoral. They keep buying/using service/product or work for a company if it benefits them financially while complaining in small talk discussions.