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We need to nip this in the bud. Maybe it's time to create a Hippocratic Oath for developers to publicly commit to? A future Path developer could then refuse t
by bitcartel 13y ago
We need to nip this in the bud.
Maybe it's time to create a Hippocratic Oath for developers to publicly commit to?
A future Path developer could then refuse to implement an unethical "feature" by pointing out that the company had hired them with the full knowledge that the oath had been undertaken.
I don't think the company would pink slip the developer, as they would probably want to avoid any attention being drawn to the unethical "feature" in a tribunal or other legal setting.
- mikeash 13y agoWhat difference would that make? Path could still fire him, oath or no oath, and I can't see their decision being much influenced there.
- criley 13y agoPublicity. He writes a blog "Path fired me for not breaking the oath" and then communities like this one will rally around that whistle-blower.
- mikeash 13y agoHow would this be any different from the situation today, where he writes a blog post titled, "Path fired me for not spamming millions of people's phones" and the community rallies around the whistle-blower?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mjolk 13y agoYeah, that negative publicity around Foxconn's workplace conditions really tanked Apple.
- eksith 13y agoI get your point, but these guys don't have anywhere near the same clout that Apple has. Path is young (and building a service, not a device/OS) and it can be abandoned for something similar since all they're keeping is data. Once you buy a gadget, that's an investment on your part which will make a lot of people hesitant to give it up and the culture it that surrounds it. And I wouldn't bet that Apple will be able to survive scandal after scandal and still survive unscathed. Cook is no Jobs.
- mcherm 13y agoMaybe not, but Apple changed their practices pretty darn quick. They now review suppliers much more closely than they did before, and Foxconn's practices have changed a bit as well. You can argue it didn't have ENOUGH effect, but you can't claim it made no difference.
- pullo 13y agoThe goal was not to tank apple, but to improve the working conditions at the factory floor and transparency on apple's part. Apple' supply chain is much more transparent after the noise. On another note, our outrage/disagreement cannot be outcome based. We hope the bad publicity will change things. many times it does not.
- lobotryas 13y agoThis assumes that Path (or any company) would be foolish enough to make their intentions clear. If a developer refused to implement a feature due to their ethics then the company would do the following: * Move engineer to different project * Set unrealistic goals/deadlines/expectations * After engineer fails, voice concern about performance * Set up performance review and improvement plan * After causing engineer to fail a second time due to unrealistic expectations, fire them due to poor performance Even if that engineer writes a blog post, enough has happened between his initial refusal and termination as to make conclusive proof impossible. The discussion will be a he-said-she-said affair as his former employer makes a counter-blog post explaining the engineer's poor performance. A lawsuit is similarly out of the question as most companies have sufficient funds to cause delays in court, thereby causing you to spend all your money on attorney fees and bleeding you dry.
- steveklabnik 13y agoYup. SOP in the food service industry is to give employees who are underperforming 4 hours per week, on the slowest shift, and just leave them there until they quit.
- criley 13y agoHonestly, if you refuse to do something on ethical grounds and then are moved around, you know what's going on. Most people aren't clueless to office politics and at that point it's your decision to blow the whistle or shut up and watch it happen in spite of your oath. It's not like hospitals haven't contended with this exact thing for a very long time. The wills of surgeons/doctors and their hospital administrators do not always match up.
- mortenjorck 13y agoThey certainly could. The talent pool would certainly hear about it as well.
- darxius 13y agoI think that's a great idea. Drafting a version of it right now.
- darxius 13y agoI wrote up something quite quickly: http://maxmackie.com/2013/04/30/The-Turing-Oath:-The-Promise-to-Develop-Ethical-Software http://maxmackie.com/2013/04/30/The-Turing-Oath:-The-Promise... "The Turing Oath" is on Github (https://github.com/maxmackie/Turing-Oath/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/maxmackie/Turing-Oath/blob/master/README....) and I recommend people contribute and we grow this to become something people recognize.
- bane 13y agoWhile I viscerally agree with this: But I'm not sure if Turing, who is not well known for having had anything to do with privacy is the right person for this oath.
- microtherion 13y agoArguably, the root cause of Turing’s persecution was that his privacy got invaded, and subsequently the government did not think he had a right to his private conduct. Though admittedly, no technology was involved in the whole matter. Also, Turing’s wartime exploits involved a breach of privacy in the service of a good cause.
- bane 13y agoArguably, the root cause of Turing’s persecution was that his privacy got invaded, and subsequently the government did not think he had a right to his private conduct. Actually, come to think of it, if viewed in that way, he's the perfect name for an ethics oath regarding privacy. I hadn't considered it that way.
- darxius 13y agoFair enough, have another candidate in mind? Feel free to email me -- I want to see this be known.
- mjolk 13y ago>Maybe it's time to create a Hippocratic Oath for developers to publicly commit to? This is silly. Stop trying to add grandeur to writing some code at X,Y startup/company. People don't die or get harmed when some social-messaging application spams someone. Code is a way to implement an idea. Most applications exist to make money. If this a shock to you, read the user agreement before installing/upgrading, uninstall the application, or realize that in social networking, your personal data what the company uses to make a profit.
- darxius 13y agoI disagree. As a computer engineer in Canada, I must swear by the Code of Ethics because what I do (or potentially don't do) can cause harm. Ethics in computer-science-related fields are important and I think we do need a set of rules we can dogmatically follow like the Hippocratic Oath. Of course, the HO is different in that failing to follow can cause physical harm. However, the world is progressing quickly and more and more information is hosted online -- personal information. I think it's our jobs to make sure we don't promote poor practice and un-ethical behaviour.
- nnnnni 13y agoSo you wear the ring then, eh?
- smsm42 13y agoSo in Canada, software engineers never cause harm to anyone? Nice to know. >>>> I think we do need a set of rules we can dogmatically follow like the Hippocratic Oath. So you don't actually have to employ your own brain and your own moral judgement, because somebody already did it for you and wrote this nice set of rules, that you swore by Apollo to faithfully execute, without thinking, not unlike that box of wires and silicon chips you are paid to play with? Nice arrangement, I suppose. >>>> I think it's our jobs to make sure we don't promote poor practice and un-ethical behaviour. And you need to sign an explicit oath to do that?
- __alexs 13y agoThe ACM and IEEE both have a "code of ethics" http://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html http://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html http://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics http://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics
- seiji 13y agoA "Hippocratic Oath for developers" sounds like a great idea, but we vastly underestimate the number of jerkbags in the world. People want validation. Line-level employees want praise from coworkers and bosses. Executives want praise from their peers, investors, industry, and press. Concepts like ethics, "right," or even this-is-good-for-thie-world isn't a concern when faced with "X will increase my social status and happiness with my peer brogrammers." What's X? It's anything possible, regardless of legal, right, wrong, or ethical. A nontrivial number of companies use unethical methods (spam, false invites, false installs, phone and email address book capture, fake attractive profiles) to increase their vanity metrics. Employees see those methods as either: "this is bad, but it's sooooo good for us — look at all the lame n00bs who fall for our tricks" or "this is bad, and I'm ashamed to work here." The ones who feel shame would take the Hippogrammer Oath. Those who revel in manipulating others and standing on their broken bodies will rake in all the profits while the good guys just sit around and "play nice." Even the tech darlings of today used spammy methods to grow their initial user base. How do you grow your userbase to ten million when you're growing at a constant 5,000 per day? Obviously you want to "go viral." How does one just on a whim "go viral?" You can either become a meme, a social phenomenon, or spam and manipulate unsuspecting people. Spam is less work than creativity.
- danielweber 13y agoHaven't seen this mentioned yet, but ... http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/11/01/922449.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/11/01/92244... I often find myself saying, "I bet somebody got a really nice bonus for that feature." "That feature" is something aggressively user-hostile,...
- hkmurakami 13y agowow, I (like many others, obviously) have experienced many of the things described in the msdn blog article you linked to, yet never really thought critically that those things don't have to be there! Things are going to look different to me now when I'm on a windows machine.
- jimbokun 13y ago
- declan 13y agoTwitter essentially created a Hippocratic Oath for patent usage (that is, for its employees who are developers concerned about unethical offensive use of software patents): https://blog.twitter.com/2012/introducing-innovators-patent-agreement https://blog.twitter.com/2012/introducing-innovators-patent-... The patent language says it's "a commitment from Twitter to our employees that patents can only be used for defensive purposes." Extending this more broadly would say "a commitment to our employees that the code they write can only be used for non-spamming purposes." The problem, of course, is that it's pretty easy to tell whether a patent is being used defensively or offensively. Defining spam (or more difficult yet, privacy) is a bit more slippery.
- angersock 13y agoUsed that in some contract work last year--it's a good thing.
- cousin_it 13y agoHippocratic Oath for developers? Here's a nice post from 2005 on this exact topic: http://glyf.livejournal.com/46589.html http://glyf.livejournal.com/46589.html . Choice quote: > Who would knowingly submit themselves to a doctor, knowing that they might give you a secondary, curable disease, just to ensure they got paid?
- samstave 13y ago"Shippocratic Oath" FTFY
- tedks 13y agoDoes this mean that we can't write software for drones anymore? What about software for missile guidance? Is that okay by this oath? Or do we as a community value not texting people at 6AM more than we value not killing people?
- jrabone 13y agoStrawman. And anyway plenty of software developers (and other engineers) won't work on armaments.
- tedks 13y agoSo should a software developer's code include armaments, or not? If it does, it would never get mainstream acceptance; if it doesn't, but does cover the topic of this post, it will be ethically absurd. I don't see how this is a straw man; when building a professional code, one has to choose what actions to allow or disallow, and this seems like a topic that would obviously come up. What do you think about this scenario misrepresents the idea of a developer's professional code?
- EvanKelly 13y agoThis is an internal debate I've had with myself since reading Bernard William's Objections to Utilitarianism [0]. I've never had to actually face the ethical dilemma of developing weapons, but what if the development improved precision on a missile? If we can ignore the question as to whether a missile is ethical or not, developing a better guidance system for a missile will help limit collateral damage, but could increase the "comfort-level" of using the weapon for those who decide such things, therefore increasing overall death/destruction. Utilitarianism is hard, because taking all factors into account is impossible. Kind of like machine learning. I will never scoff at someone who turns down work for ethical objections, but some people are more pragmatic than others. Both of Williams examples are really hard to wrap your head around if you accept the situations as presented. They are similar to a Sophies Choice [1] [0]: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/williams-bernard/#Day http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/williams-bernard/#Day [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie%27s_Choice_(novel) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie%27s_Choice_(novel)
- padmanabhan01 13y agoif there were such an oath, programmers would write the code and the business will fill it with content.. //It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/05/your-favorite-programming-quote.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/05/your-favorite-progr...
- thisjustinm 13y agoWe don't need an oath. We need to stop using Path. We need to get everyone we know to stop using Path. No need to over complicate things.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- samweinberg 13y agoGetting everyone to stop using Path is pretty over-complicated. We need them to change their ways, not disappear.
- signalsignal 13y agoTwo words: Government Regulation. Once Congress puts a bill forward to deal with this issue, it will be the beginning of the end for this type of behavior. I'm sure Obama will get behind it as well, as it will help the computer market immensely.
- jff 13y agoI'm a member of the Order of the Engineer. Their oath is a pledge of responsibility in engineering, in the interest of the public good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Engineer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Engineer
- thezilch 13y ago"Don't be evil" has never really worked, despite best intentions, depending on your vantage point. You don't need an official Oath or for the company to know or base their employment on such an Oath. Either way, the bottleneck is the employee drawing attention to the company doing something unethical; no Oath has to get in the way of that. There's already a sub-thread on top-secret/weapons/armaments jobs. What about political ethics? And religious? Marriage / gay rights? Porn? "Sexism?"
- freshhawk 13y agoEngineers have this system already and have had it forever. In Canada (the one I'm familiar with) it is the P.Eng (Professional Engineer) license. I think the system should be licensing and involve losing that license if you commit an ethics violation. There would be unlicensed developers of course, but connecting the incentive to not do unethical things with the incentive to be part of the elite class in your profession has worked pretty damn well for Engineers, Doctors and Lawyers.
- duncan_bayne 13y ago> has worked pretty damn well for Engineers, Doctors and Lawyers. ... and has pretty much screwed over the rest of society, at least in the latter two cases. The legal and medical cartels have done incredible harm to their customers over the years. See http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=51 http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=51 (law) and http://mises.org/daily/4276 http://mises.org/daily/4276 (medicine) for details.
- thesz 13y agoI have to say that your link about medicine is short of laughble. Even if there was some bad "allopathy" back in the day, there is more bad eclictics and homeopathy right now. And to practice medicine you have to understand scientific method, especially falsifability. And I also have to say that the "free market" idea isn't falsifable. "Let it to free market" rarely works.
- freshhawk 13y agoParts of the "free market" idea are falsifiable. They assume rational actors (people making decisions based on their own self interest). That's been falsified (when applied to humans). Most variations of the efficient market hypothesis have been disproved as well, for the same reasons: Humans have cognitive biases and other types of irrational behaviour. But anyone linking to mises.org is probably a follower of the church of the free market. And they generally strongly disagree with the idea that humans have cognitive biases (because their faith requires it not to be true). I'm glad someone else laughed at the pro-homeopathy / conspiracy theory around the history of snake oil salesmen content on there.
- dredmorbius 13y agoComputers attempted various guises of "can't we all just get along". At one time, it was cooperative multitasking and memory management. Programs were supposed to behave themselves and get out of one anothers' way. Except that, due to bugs or malice, some didn't. We called this world "DOS" (or pre OSX Macs). Microsoft still attempts to allow vendors to install programs whereever the hell they want, and to, pretty please, not overwrite other program's infrastructure or system-level DLLs. Yeah. Right. In the Linux world, we've solved this problem, if done right, though distro-managed, well, distributions. Any program can be included if it meets qualifications (generally limited to licensing requirements), and a sponsor steps up. Once included, the package gets the benefits of being included in the package lists, distributed over archive mirrors, and included in bugtracking and support systems. However it's also got to play along with the requirements of Debian Policy as to how it behaves on a system. The proper way to address the issues of app privileges is to control privileges centrally on the device and grant them to specific apps. If a user doesn't wish to give an app, say, addressbook access, then they can deny it (or feed it a bogus addressbook). The app vendor can decide what they're going to do at this point, but what they can't do is override the user's explicitly stated limits.
- swamp40 13y agoHas anyone considered that perhaps Path did NOT violate any ethical boundaries? Perhaps the guy checked a box that said "Please notify all of my contacts via text message". Then all the messages went into queue that was delayed a bit. Then the phone companies converted text messages to voice calls.