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Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

Imagine that software development / engineering was a profession along the lines of law or medicine - no one could "practise software" without belonging.

Now imagine we are drawing up the ethics code for that profession - is what facebook did something that could reasonably be banned? Is there direct harm involved?

In my (very personal) view Facebook is just an example of an externality - this loss of control over data is a form of pollution, and the costs are rarely direct harm to individuals, even though society as a whole seems to be being harmed.

So rather long windedly, i don't think this is something to beat up on individual Facebook employees - this is something for society level regulation - look to the GDPR and its successors

Medical ethics jumping off point: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_ethics

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The IEEE Computer Society and ACM jointly adopted just such a code of ethics.

https://www.computer.org/web/education/code-of-ethics

None of it gives Facebook engineers any comfort.

They are responsible for the fruits of their efforts. Recent revelations are of degree, not kind. The consequences of engineering work were reasonably foreseeable and the consequences were not at arm's length. Facebook's business model has been clear and well-understood for years and years now. This is not technology being misapplied by someone several steps removed from you. This is technology misapplied by Facebook and Facebook's immediate customers and Facebook engineers enabled it.

Technology work has dimensions beyond "it's interesting" and "they pay me a lot". I hold us as professionals. We have duties which go beyond our own self-regard.

I am unsympathetic to anyone at Facebook feeling moral disquiet. I think you know what you ought to do.

I am dubious about the value of a "public interest" clause as the basis for everything - that tends to be "whatever we agree post-hoc".

Look at medical ethics ideas of "do no harm" - or the more modern interpretation "do more good than harm"

It is perfectly arguable that Facebook has been doing more good than harm. And that is not something one should ban under a code of ethics.

NB I personally do not think that Facebook's actions have been correct, or worthy or defensible. They have hoovered up everything and left it lying around for anyone to collect - it breaks every Data protection rule set since the 1980s (due care etc). They can and will pay at some point down the line.

But data is like ... oil. It has massive externality costs, but wow has society benefited. From the data footprints we leave we can (if it is well managed(!)) expect improved medical research, improved mental well being, reduction in crime, improved trade, greater econmic equality. Yes there will be costs. And we need to manage those as only externalities can be managed. But the mass collection and processing of our PII data is not just negative cost.

Edit just to be clear this is not an attempt to justify ends with means, or defend facebooks actions - but to note that just because JP Getty was unethical it did not stop ambulances getting petrol engines, generators lighting hospitals and plastics encasing artificial hips.

It's complicated.

> I am unsympathetic to anyone at Facebook feeling moral disquiet. I think you know what you ought to do.

I don't work at Facebook and I actually don't know what Facebook employees ought to do, but I'm curious to know what you think about that.

Resign? Blow the whistle (to a society that really, really didn't seem to care until last week)? Try and find ways to put pressure the non-engineers in charge of product decision to do something? Unionize? Something else entirely?

Also, are you talking about all Facebook engineers or only some? Do you put those who work on React, Flow, Haxl, Hack, ReasonML, Mercurial, Occulus, etc. in the same basket?

Edit: Thanks for the link. Good read.

I'd upvote this ethical response to the top if I could.

> 1. PUBLIC - Software engineers shall act consistently with the public interest.

> 1.01. Accept full responsibility for their own work.

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