Comment by jedahan
3 days ago
Reminder if you work for any of these companies (not unlikely on this site) you are actively enabling this. If your first reaction is doubt, deflection, rationalization or discomfort, there are ways out.
3 days ago
Reminder if you work for any of these companies (not unlikely on this site) you are actively enabling this. If your first reaction is doubt, deflection, rationalization or discomfort, there are ways out.
Or perhaps when Amazon facilities security encounters someone doing destructive or harmful things, then sharing that information with other companies in the city is a perfectly reasonable measure?
This is functionally no different than sharing your encounters with disruptive people on NextDoor.
Depends on what they consider "destructive", and it's not like there isn't already a way for contacting law enforcement when the circumstances warrant it.
The Nextdoor analogy is even more apt because it's kind of notorious for being used by people to complain about all sorts of ridiculous things that don't deserve attention
Sure, but nobody tries to portray NextDoor as an "intelligence sharing network operation" and a "nationwide surveillance apparatus".
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> Or perhaps when Amazon facilities security encounters someone doing destructive or harmful things, then sharing that information with other companies in the city is a perfectly reasonable measure?
If only there were a way to address people doing destructive or harmful things.
We could even make it reachable using a telephone, with a very convenient to dial, short, easily remembered number sequence.
I don't know about you, but in my area, NextDoor is mostly "I saw non-white errrrr I mean, uh, 'someone who doesn't look like they belong here' person in my neighborhood" and general witch-hunting any time it's mentioned someone gets arrested for
Also, we have concepts like "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law" for a reason. Corporatizing law enforcement is not a good thing.
If Amazon wants to work with the PD they can show up to a community relations meeting like everyone else?
Innocent until proven guilty only applies to the government. Again, say you run a store in the city. You encounter someone who smashes some merchandise. The police don't make an arrest because the person insists it was accidental, but you're confident it was intentional. Is it wrong to share this experience with other shopkeepers?
The irony is that curbing this "private intelligence network" would require infringing on the free speech of private people.
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If you make open source used by any of this companies for this network, would you also characterize it as actively enabling this?
If your retirement fund owns stocks of the s&p 500, does that make you an enabler?
Are there really ways out?
Are those things you are personally struggling with (if you are considering quitting open source contribitions wholesale: don't let this make you) or is this a showcase of rationalization?
> If you make open source used by any of this companies for this network, would you also characterize it as actively enabling this?
That's a pretty strange conflation. It's pretty commonly discussed exactly how rare it is for people to make open source to get compensated by companies that use their projects. I find it hard to imagine that you genuinely think that there isn't an obvious distinction that most observers would draw between that and direct employment.
> Are there really ways out?
Not with that attitude
Its very personal and situation dependent, but I truly believe that if you work at Amazon or Facebook and do not want to support this, you can.
Yes.
No
Yes
Maybe
If you work for any company, you're actively enabling injustices against someone, so just make a living and don't worry so much.
This is the kind of rationalization I am referring to.
“Software is eating the world”, but also “not working on antisocial tech is too difficult aaah”.
Is it though? Finding some ethically neutral Crud gig?
So work for mercenaries, and tell people “it’s just a job?”
Maybe there are shades of gray between black and white.
> ...he said, shovelling orphans into the crushing machine
this is the high quality content that I come to HN for
this is like arguing that laws are useless because theyre not bulletproof. please stop with this pseudological thinking
"There are lots of bad things" does not imply "all bad things are equally bad and therefore it's not worthwhile to try to prevent any of them"
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Do you feel the same way about the warehouse workers?