<story><title>GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract</title><url>https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2019-10-31/github-ice-contract-defense</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>manfredo</author><text>I think you&amp;#x27;re misrepresenting the argument of people who don&amp;#x27;t think developers should interfere with the usages of their product.&lt;p&gt;The most compelling arguments I found is that just because we happen to work in a field that lets us exert our influence over society doesn&amp;#x27;t make our moral sensibilities any better than the rest of society. What us privileged few who work in technology see as using our position of influence for good, many other people may see as a small minority abusing their power to manipulate society for the worse.&lt;p&gt;I think many technology worker do understand the power they have, and make the deliberate decision that refraining from exercising that power is the morally optimal choice.</text></item><item><author>dcposch</author><text>&amp;gt; I question how much an employee should concern him&amp;#x2F;herself with how a product is used
&amp;gt; Where do we start? Where do we stop?&lt;p&gt;Often when moral question pops up on HN, the top comment is some variation of&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; But where do we we draw the line?
&amp;gt; I wonder whether we should even try.&lt;p&gt;Counterpoint: cynicism is too easy. Actually giving a shit is harder, it&amp;#x27;s uncomfortable, it involves compromise.&lt;p&gt;Yes, there&amp;#x27;s ambiguity.&lt;p&gt;Yes, the line the law draws is very loose. Github can&amp;#x27;t legally let someone from Iran or North Korea host repos, but just about anything else is legal. If Golden Dawn (the greek fascist party) wanted to use your product, nothing &lt;i&gt;legally&lt;/i&gt; prevents you from having them as a customer.&lt;p&gt;This is no excuse to avoid the question.&lt;p&gt;Every person has to decide for themselves the boundaries of who they&amp;#x27;re willing to work for. If you work for a company, you have a voice in that company&amp;#x27;s decisions. I think many tech workers underestimate how much power they have. Good engineers are in tremendous demand.</text></item><item><author>supernova87a</author><text>I question how much an employee should concern him&amp;#x2F;herself with how a product is used once it&amp;#x27;s created.   You have to let certain control go after a point.  Or if your product is open to everyone, you&amp;#x27;ll have to live with the fact that people may use it in ways you disagree with.&lt;p&gt;Xerox or Canon (or whoever) probably makes copiers that ICE uses to make copies.  Lenovo or Apple probably makes hardware that they use also to further their functions.   Ford&amp;#x2F;GM probably supply ICE with vehicles.  Farmers grow crops that get into their the meals that ICE personnel eat.  Pilots and flight attendants probably have knowingly transported ICE employees.&lt;p&gt;Why don&amp;#x27;t the employees at all these other companies object like Github employees?  Why do Github employees get a special right to withhold consent for their product to be used in a setting they might object to?   Why is ICE the only company that they object to?   Why do some causes get their favor and not others?&lt;p&gt;Where do we start?  Where do we stop?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aeturnum</author><text>&amp;gt; just because we happen to work in a field that lets us exert our influence over society doesn&amp;#x27;t make our moral sensibilities any better than the rest of society.&lt;p&gt;I agree this is problematic. However, programmers are uniquely well situated to create a system for asking &amp;quot;the rest of society&amp;quot; questions about what kinds of systems they would like a programmer to support.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; make the deliberate decision that refraining from exercising that power is the morally optimal choice.&lt;p&gt;Quitting would be (as close as one gets to) refraining from exercising power. What you&amp;#x27;re describing is cooperating with the status quo, which is definitely an exercise of power.</text></comment>
<story><title>GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract</title><url>https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2019-10-31/github-ice-contract-defense</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>manfredo</author><text>I think you&amp;#x27;re misrepresenting the argument of people who don&amp;#x27;t think developers should interfere with the usages of their product.&lt;p&gt;The most compelling arguments I found is that just because we happen to work in a field that lets us exert our influence over society doesn&amp;#x27;t make our moral sensibilities any better than the rest of society. What us privileged few who work in technology see as using our position of influence for good, many other people may see as a small minority abusing their power to manipulate society for the worse.&lt;p&gt;I think many technology worker do understand the power they have, and make the deliberate decision that refraining from exercising that power is the morally optimal choice.</text></item><item><author>dcposch</author><text>&amp;gt; I question how much an employee should concern him&amp;#x2F;herself with how a product is used
&amp;gt; Where do we start? Where do we stop?&lt;p&gt;Often when moral question pops up on HN, the top comment is some variation of&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; But where do we we draw the line?
&amp;gt; I wonder whether we should even try.&lt;p&gt;Counterpoint: cynicism is too easy. Actually giving a shit is harder, it&amp;#x27;s uncomfortable, it involves compromise.&lt;p&gt;Yes, there&amp;#x27;s ambiguity.&lt;p&gt;Yes, the line the law draws is very loose. Github can&amp;#x27;t legally let someone from Iran or North Korea host repos, but just about anything else is legal. If Golden Dawn (the greek fascist party) wanted to use your product, nothing &lt;i&gt;legally&lt;/i&gt; prevents you from having them as a customer.&lt;p&gt;This is no excuse to avoid the question.&lt;p&gt;Every person has to decide for themselves the boundaries of who they&amp;#x27;re willing to work for. If you work for a company, you have a voice in that company&amp;#x27;s decisions. I think many tech workers underestimate how much power they have. Good engineers are in tremendous demand.</text></item><item><author>supernova87a</author><text>I question how much an employee should concern him&amp;#x2F;herself with how a product is used once it&amp;#x27;s created.   You have to let certain control go after a point.  Or if your product is open to everyone, you&amp;#x27;ll have to live with the fact that people may use it in ways you disagree with.&lt;p&gt;Xerox or Canon (or whoever) probably makes copiers that ICE uses to make copies.  Lenovo or Apple probably makes hardware that they use also to further their functions.   Ford&amp;#x2F;GM probably supply ICE with vehicles.  Farmers grow crops that get into their the meals that ICE personnel eat.  Pilots and flight attendants probably have knowingly transported ICE employees.&lt;p&gt;Why don&amp;#x27;t the employees at all these other companies object like Github employees?  Why do Github employees get a special right to withhold consent for their product to be used in a setting they might object to?   Why is ICE the only company that they object to?   Why do some causes get their favor and not others?&lt;p&gt;Where do we start?  Where do we stop?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>patcon</author><text>&amp;gt; What us privileged few who work in technology see as using our position of influence for good, many other people may see as a small minority abusing their power to manipulate society for the worse.&lt;p&gt;Nevermind &amp;quot;good&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;bad&amp;quot; by the select judgement of a few privileged people -- it&amp;#x27;s whether you even bother to _consider_, or instead just claim &amp;quot;this is hard&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;We can create influencing machines, or consensing machines. Your rightful concern is applicable to influencing machines imho. A consensing machine has no centre it&amp;#x27;s drawing people into. It&amp;#x27;s a technology for users to find and coalesce around the centres that work for them.&lt;p&gt;The things the OP is implying unnavigable are the same class of challenges we navigated hundreds of years ago with intellectual property. We thought ownership was worth controlling access over, and we made arbitrary laws to propagate that regime in the world. We could deign it worth creating processes to collectively negotiate moral right&amp;#x2F;wrong together (without presupposing the will of the steward of the tech is right&amp;#x2F;wrong) and hold ourselves to that.&lt;p&gt;The fact that we don&amp;#x27;t even bother to consider the question of &amp;quot;should we do this&amp;quot; and instead fall on &amp;quot;this is challenging&amp;quot; -- that speaks volumes to how some of us are limited in our imagining of what the sickness in society might be.</text></comment>