Hacker News Reader

The suggestion from the link is that some people involved didn't fully understand what they were working on. And obviously they weren't able to keep word spreading in this case.

But obviously a number of people must have known. I don't know how they approach and recruit these people, it's above my paygrade.

View on HN

You just get asked to work on project blah. And you're like okay, what do I do? Figure out this system for them, okay. And you work and focus on the technical details.

I mean, I really appreciate all of you who seem to dig in and dive into the what and why of every system you work on, but I often just do work. I get tunnel vision and do the things I have to do. I don't really care about much outside of that spectrum unless it impacts what I have to accomplish.

Oh, I do that too-- especially those times I have to drill down several layers deep into the ugly undocumented guts of an abstraction some other developer left knots in.

But somehow I never climb back out to find the bug I just fixed is part of a giant censorship machine.

Are you saying there is a greater than zero chance that you've accidentally done work on a similarly unethical system?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com