Shareholders. Devs are just trying to not get fired
It seems like a lot of this perception originates in the gaming industry where in some cases the devs actually do have quite a bit of control over user experience. In the rest of the software world, this stuff is driven by product management / marketing / whatever title they give to the people who define requirements.
Well yeah if we’re applying that to atrocities and murder it wouldn’t be a valid argument. But these are workers that don’t have a union that are sometimes living paycheck to paycheck. They’re just trying to not be homeless.
I don’t work at YouTube but speaking as a tired, underpaid dev who works for a company he hates, I am just trying to get by. I don’t even have PTO right now. I do plan to form a union in my area though.
I’ve worked a number of tech jobs and quit all of the ones that involved me directly contributing to or outright directly performing an immoral act.
I have no respect… pity, sure, but no respect for anyone that knowingly contributes to making the world worse for other people.
You are trying to form a union, that is commendable, an actual step toward positive change.
Most people?
They knowingly contribute to systems that make the vast majority of people worse off, and then bitch about other people doing the same thing in another field.
Or they don’t know or care about any harm their work causes, but still bitch about everyone else doing the same thing.
First, do no harm is apparently too difficult to apply to one’s own life.
If we all keep acting as cogs in the machine that makes everything worse… everything will obviously get worse.
In the long run, its not that different.
We’ve already seen how the mass proliferation of targeted advertisements on corporate social media platforms promulgates mis/disinformation, radicalizes and stupifies and enrages society … to the point that all they understand is pathos, and then they vote for a fascist.
there’s a difference between making a bad UI and orchestrating a genocide, yknow
Yes sacrifice your livelihood so that someone else can implement the feature anyway.
Just use an ad blocker.
Yes sacrifice your livelihood so that someone else can implement the feature anyway.
Yes, that’s called having a backbone, aligning your actions with your own moral code.
This is the same logic as ‘well if I had quit my executioner job, someone else would have done it, therefore I am a morally blameless and non hypocritical executioner who is against the death penalty.’
Just use an ad blocker.
Obviously this is the easy solution for yourself personally. Costs you nothing, benefits yourself, allows the systemic bad practice to continue.
The actually accurate analogue would be to contribute toward actually creating or maintaining a free and widely usable adblocker, an alternate platform, to do something that helps other people overcome the problem.
