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Comment by wu-ikkyu | Hacker News Reader

>people have mortgages, families and other commitments. Some have social anxiety and find job hunting an impossibly scary prospect. Others might suffer from depression.

So what? Standing up for what you believe in is never easy, and almost always involves challenges like those. Imagine if Dr. King gave up because he was anxious and depressed with death threats coming in on a regular basis.

Failing to take a moral/ethical stand because you're worried you might lose money or have to withstand some social anxiety blatantly shows that you don't really believe in those morals/ethics.

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So, assuming you're tight on money, the job market is looking crap, but you got lucky and got a well paying job. Chances of getting another job are slim. You have a few responsibilities, a wife, say 2 kids, maybe even someone who needs medical bills paid.

Do you just say "fuck it", and quit, ignoring all your responsibilities? Over cookies?

Of course, when its not about cookies, but about something more drastic, say something ludicrous like giving google nuclear launch codes, then the whole thing looks different. Some things are worth the fight, some are not.

> Some things are worth the fight, some are not.

That argument goes both ways. If the Chrome team were unionized/organized in some form, and said "hell no" to the cookie change, then I doubt Google's management would shrug and replace the whole team with fresh H1B workers just to get this small change in.

I also find it fascinating that so many people bring up children as a reason to give up your ideals. My dad gave up a well-paying job for a more fulfilling one, and it would never occur to me to blame him for it; if anything it's inspiring. This was in Europe, with a reasonable safety net, but I don't think that Xooglers would hit rock bottom anyway.

This isn't just about cookies though. When Google designed HTTP/2 they kept cookies in favor of a separate authentication mechanism. Arguably because otherwise people would end up removing cookies altogether making themselves harder to track and with Google losing ad money in the process. Now Google have seemingly decided they want to have their cake and eat it too, just only for themselves. This isn't one incident but Google manifesting thier direction for themselves and the Internet. (Just recently they also disabled sign out from their YouTube app for instance). If you disagree with this direction that is certainly a good reason too quit sooner rather than later. Pretty much everyone I have ever talked to that ended up changing e.g. jobs because of a disagreement wish they did so earlier. It is very easy to sit in the same position and hope that things will get better and hard to see what else is out there even if it is very clear in hindsight.

>Do you just say "fuck it", and quit, ignoring all your responsibilities? Over cookies?

If you follow the news about Google at all, you'd know its obviously not just about cookies.

>Of course, when its not about cookies, but about something more drastic

It's about the the greatest surveillance apparatus in history encroaching towards total informational awareness.

for the individual developer getting asked to implement this, it is over cookies. The decision is "Do I implement this, or do I tell my kids I dont know how to feed them"

>for the individual developer getting asked to implement this, it is over cookies

No, cookies would be the straw that broke the camel's back. The context you're ignoring the the countless other straws beneath it.

>The decision is "Do I implement this, or do I tell my kids I dont know how to feed them"

False dichotomy

> Imagine if Dr. King gave up because he was anxious and depressed with death threats coming in on a regular basis.

I don't think anyone would blame him. I couldn't handle the pressure, how could I demand it of someone else?

You don't have a right to subject your children to homelessness just because you felt like taking a stance based on feelings.

Does one have a right to give a crappy life example to one's children?

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