The Tech Industry Doesn’t Understand Consent - Dhole Moments
The Tech Industry Doesn’t Understand Consent - Dhole Moments
Thanks to Samantha Cole at 404 Media, we are now aware that Automattic plans to sell user data from Tumblr and WordPress.com (which is the host for my blog) for “AI” products. In respon…
The tech industry understands consent just fine, the corpos will ignore the idea however if it means less revenue and can't have that because capitalism.
I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to every one of these shitty clickbait article authors about "tech industry" and "software engineering circles" that the authors aren't dense and know random code monkeys aren't evil or too stupid to figure out opt-in is more ethical, they just work for corps that have to make money because capitalism, but they post their stupid garbage anyway because it gets clicks.
Don't post it here.
Why would you discourage interesting, original journalism over such an obtuse nitpick?
They are clearly criticising the same capitalist structures that you are. They single out the tech industry because the article is about the misuse of tech, not because they think rank and file tech workers are deviants.
Frankly it comes off as fragile and dismissive, and if that's what we're doing we could have just stayed on reddit.
While the tone of the comment is dismissive, they have a point.
It's not the engineers that are the problem, or even limited to the tech industry. Dark patterns are top-down business decisions, motivated by money.
It's not that the "tech industry doesn't understand consent," but rather that greedy people do evil things. And software is just a low hanging fruit for that kind of business.
Nowhere in the article does the author pin blame on individual employees. "Tech industry" obviously refers to corporations, not individual contributors. The title isn't clickbait.
"Tech industry" does not mean that, it could just as well mean "people in the tech industry" which means "people who work in the tech industry". The author uses this because it's the boogeyman du jour with Sam altman and such but his entire essay is dancing around the point that it's capitalism and has nothing to do with tech or is even specific to it. They would've probably had more of an article if they tried to specifically tie it to Nestle than the Tech Industry but it wouldn't get them those precious clicks.
The corpos and gaffers ARE the tech industry. We all know that coders don't make decisions like that, and the article does not blame them. I'm all for raising awareness of the problems with "opt-out" and fluid license agreements.
The article says "software engineering circles" so yes it does mean coders absolutely and primarily.
random code monkeys aren't evil or too stupid to figure out opt-in is more ethical
Coming in with a hot fucking take, they very much are that evil and/or stupid. They're not at fault for how the software is structured, but judging by the crazes around tech hype (crypto, AI, NFTs) and my personal experience with average code monkeys, they would happily support "unethical" solutions (like opt-out tracking) if asked
I try to fight some battles about ads, accessibility and an open web but I’m a failing don Chiosciotte; best I can actively do is test mainly for Firefox and make sure everything works properly there but for more business related decisions (see: ads, consent etc) there is little to nothing I can do
"I was just following orders"
Lol you already commented this with your alt https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/6909435 lmao
Absolute lunatic m8
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!
Opt-out is bullshit, it's unethical. Unless people specifically give their consent to their content being used for training data, and are compensated if they wish to be compensated for that privilege, then it's just not morally defensible. Legally defensible? Sure, maybe so. But we don't like to support companies who are merely abiding by the letter of the law, we want them to abide by the spirit of the law and of treating their customers with respect and consideration. This is not that at all. 😕
Hey, non-FOSS internet, how is it going?
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Yeah.