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Comment by norswap | Hacker News Reader

I don't think the issue with big social networks (and other big tech actors) is one of ignorance. It seems to me many of the bad things they do are very deliberate.

Sometimes the things they don't care about are also very deliberate. Google is perhaps the champion of causing harm by not caring about things. This is sometimes ascribed as being caused by their "engineering-centric culture", but I fail to see how engineering excellence can mesh with the real world experience of using their products. A broken clock is still broken even if all its gears are beautiful.

More to the point, I really wonder how exposure to the social sciences may help fix any of this.

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Strongly agreed. Exposure to social sciences won't fix problems caused by your business model, because market competition is stronger than individual morals. Even if you decide not to proceed in harmful way, there will be a competitor who's less moral and will corner the market in your place.

The more I participate in the "tech won't fix social problems" kinds of discussions, it dawns on me that it's not the tech that's the problem, but the business models behind that tech's development and deployment. Sure, in small companies, the "tech person" and the "business person" are sometimes the same individual, but I still can't think of a single example where harmful technology was irresponsibly deployed "because it would be elegant/useful/cool" - the problems happen when the motivation is, "because it's easy money".

But that line of thinking reduces the issue to the usual problems of society run by market economy, which is already a well-trodden ground, so you can't find new scapegoats there.

I agree that the market economy is the underlying problem of it all. However, I wouldn't completely dismiss computer scientists' lack of knowledge in social science as part of the reason. I'm hopeful enough to think that, knowing the incredible harm the software they are writing could inflict on other people or society as a whole, some computer scientists would be less willing to participate in it.

Try to avoid generic phrases like "causing harm".

"Google is the champion of circumventing long established norms, such as the prohibition on wiretapping, and evading responsibility for doing so" says a lot more than "causing harm".

Blaming Google for that is some bizzare history retconning bullshit. You want the DHS, FBI, CIA, and NSA for that.

Calling Google wiretapping would be like calling your bank a wiretapper because they log every transaction. Those previously listed bad actors with badges agencies doing so would be business as usual.

It is utterly exasperating to see "Big Tech" magically become the magnet for blame of things they don't even remotely do and see people believe any ole bullshit that confirms their preconceptions.

Your hostility is a little weird. Maybe you think *.gov are worse and should be mentioned before Google. That is a legitimate position to have.

On the other hand, Google drove surveillance vans all over the world, hoovered up people's home network wifi frames, and promoted the engineer who "accidentally" introduced that "bug". If that isn't circumventing a norm against wiretapping, I'm not sure what is.

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