Blind, which I realize is a bit of the wild west, is full of racist anti-immigration/pro ICE hatred. Obviously, you can see where users work/worked, and it’s every company you could imagine.
The sad reality is that a lot of people will do what they can to support racist agendas, possibly even motivate them to work at certain companies as it feels moralizing to their hateful beliefs.
I don’t know that things are that black and white.
Do you feel the same about the billions of consumers who buy and use the products these companies make?
They are the victims, not the source.
If you want to put the blame on consumers, at least show them on your adverts, product packaging, etc. all the morally abject methods used in the production of the product.
If you hide it from them, all the blame is on you.
Consumer pays $1.10 for a can of coke, $0.10 of that goes to ad-tech, the consumer watches some coke ads, ad-tech pays $0.05 to the publisher and the consumer receives $0.05 in benefits in the form of "free ad-supported content" (which they already paid $0.10 for).
The only way for consumers to avoid this is to just stop spending money with any brand that advertises online, which is completely unrealistic and a much taller ask than asking employees to give up their deal with the devil (and work for just about anyone else except big tech).
Does your argument still hold up?
>”employees are making the actual thing that inflicts harm while consumers' actions are completely diffused and many steps removed from the harm they cause.”
“employees are making the actual thing that inflicts harm while consumers' actions directly cause deadly harm.”
I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t be voting with our wallets and supporting these people but your initial argument is flawed. They produce goods precisely because consumers buy them…
Can you explain why you think it wouldn't?
Tons of principled engineers choose not to pursue opportunities at military contractors, for instance, and this is not widely seen as unreasonable.
Or they could stop drinking coke? But I guess that is too much to ask.
Stores still fund the advertising industry but to nowhere near the extent that name brand goods do.
You can't buy a car or any smartphones you've ever heard of, you won't find an ISP that doesn't advertise online, and good luck finding a decent job without supporting ad-tech.
A big chain like kroger, for example, is spending around 10 to 100M. Coke is spending around $5B.
Avoiding national branded products goes a long way in avoiding contributing to the problem.
Things don't need to be all or nothing.
If the goal is to decrease money going into advertisement budgets, then the best thing you can do is buy store brand when possible. Even if both products are ultimately made from Nestle corp, the cheaper store brand will send less money into Nestle's pockets which means less money for advertising.
That's what I mean by "avoiding nationally branded products". A package of "signature frozen peas" will taste just as good as the "birds eye green peas" without sending money to a major company (Looks like all the major companies have spun off their frozen food departments, but at one time this was a Nestle brand. I spent too much time looking into major frozen food brands :D).
The advertisement budgets for the grocers are simply a lot smaller than that of the national brands across the board. It also doesn't seem (to me at least) to have been really spent on invasive advertisements.
Also, you can retain your morals and choose a career, it is optional to select where you work as it’s hopefully voluntary.
Thankfully I don't live in the US and I don't work for anything even remotely related to this. I don't know if I would have the fortitude in the current US job market (based on what I read here) to threat the well being of the wife and daughter by taking principled stances.
You do realize this is what most criminals of the world just so happen to say as well, right?
Where is the line?
It's an extremely unfair system based on coercion - you are beaten down into submission by the implicit threat that without work you won't be able to make ends meet.
Maybe you have a family that can support you financially. Maybe you already own the place where you live and could save up money over an extended period that you can weather a storm. If you are in these situations, that's great, but it is also an extremely privileged position to be in.
You can call it an "easy buck", and it is just coping. An easy way to make some poor schlemiel creating a miserable report with user location data during his sprint into a greedy bastard that is just enriching his bank account out of the suffering of plenty.
If many were to sacrifice their morals out of financial pressure easily (the control over which is in increasingly few hands) the path the US is treading becomes pretty deterministic... We've seen it in the movies and read it in the books.
You guys seem to need collective action and civil disobedience.
Then again.. maybe the will for collective action comes only after the repossessions...
One of the reasons I chose to move to Europe is because I value the mininal safety nets and labor protections on this side of the pond. Yes, I make less money and pay more taxes but I believe this is how society should work, I reject the hyper individualism that ignores any sort of collective.
But I am also not naive. Expecting individuals to take the burden for decisions way beyond their control is silly. It takes immense fortitude to threaten the well being of those dear to you based on principle, when the only outcome is your own suffering (the company will likely find another employee right away anyway).
No charity from church or family needed. Just the State- and it does not care about your religion or sexual preferences.
Thankfully, that isn't most of them. Despite the job market not being as good as it used to be, the vast majority of software engineers in the US could still find another job to pay the bills before becoming homeless and starving.
At the time I was still paying rent and needed employment to keep my visa. I also had little savings, and an ill parent that depended on me. I certainly couldn't take the principled stance of "fuck this, I'm out".
My point is that if you are in the position to take a principled stance, good for you. Maybe you already own your home, maybe you had time to accumulate savings, maybe you can do a few interviews and land a less evil job even in the current market (and perhaps a pay cut won't be a massive blow in you life). All that is awesome, but also a position of relative privilege.
Prescribing principled stance as universal without recognizing this is just cruelty though.
None of the individual acts seem evil. Conducting a census isn't evil. Collating the data isn't evil. Arresting people with the wrong papers isn't necessarily evil. Driving a train isn't evil. Operating a switch isn't evil. Processing paperwork isn't evil.
Look what's proposed now: Adtech has the data, this would feed into ICE systems leading to arrests, flights are conducted, and people get put into prison camps like CECOT where they have no recourse and where people are already talking about forced labor.
So no, I'm not saying to these folks "you're literally causing Auschwitz". That's a famous Vernichtungslager, and that's not true yet.
But people getting locked up in Concentrationslager or Arbeitslager (like historically : Mittelbau-Dora, Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, and Monowitz). I think we're getting there.
I guess the question is: at which point do you decide maybe to wear extra layers or skip a meal instead? We're not there yet. The chain has many links. Eternal vigilance is needed to make sure they don't actually link up.
(ps. Imagine if I was posting this in 2024! Can I exchange this timeline for another please? )
But it may well become true soon.
From the angle of your 2015 post, I can at least see where you're coming from. Modern adtech is much more granular and up to date than a census ever was.
And hopefully the worst case can be prevented.
I reject that societal and systemic issues can be fixed by individual action, unless as an individual you are extremely powerful (and the ones that are typically are the ones causing the societal and systemic harm).
As an common man you can do small things. Do a lousy job when processing the paperwork of evil. Malicious cooperation to the powers that be. Small acts of charity. That sort of thing.
Systemic change can only be achieved through collective action. Easier said than done.
The world is cursed. Life is tough even at the best of times. The system as it is ensures compliance through coercion and threats.
I honestly believe we would agree more than disagree on the current state of things. I just reject the approach that individual action is a way out of this sort of mess.
But I ask him, "But would you work for Lex Luthor?"
He doesn't have a good comeback to that.
Anyway, I (mostly, hopefully) try to make my small corner of the world a happy place. And I hope everyone else does for theirs.
Also, layers are resining from positions in doj they find unethical. It is not like the jobs for them were easier to find.
You really think adtech is the way to avoid starving on the street? There are a hell of a lot of jobs between entry level and adtech dev that could give you the same basic peace of mind.
Everything else is an excuse
Sure, I don't earn half a million a year total comp to kiss some billionaire's ass, but I still have a very comfortable lifestyle that is well above the median.
Some of those folks were cultural leaders in the orgs I belonged to. Some even passed for nice people.