Ask HN: What tech companies do you think have a good moral compass?

None, all the big tech companies were build with the idea of fast growth as their primary guiding principle. Grow at all cost as long as their actions are not prohibited by law. This means that the companies' culture was build around that idea. It's very hard for companies' to change even when they want to do it but at this point I doubt they even want to change. So the answer is, not a single one.

Morality is opinionated.

Just tell me what you stand for, and you will see corporations that respect that.

I can’t think of any, but I am trying some stuff and open to building one together.

I like communication, real time systems, and building cool apps.

Proton and Firefox. Mapquest:-)

I think generally European (tech) companies are less capitalistic and look out more for the user's interests.

Good, I couldn't say; no for-profit company is good. If you're asking for better than average and than its competition, I'd say Valve.

I wouldn't trust a public company.

Sadly I fear any Large and well known company that has a 'good moral compass' runs the risk of being taken advantage of by other companies and people who are slimy.

I know a lot of people have good opinion about Costco, especially because of their 'trust people' return options, then you hear about the jerks who abuse it.

Gandi SAS (France).

Time and Date AS (Norway).

Any tech company, ten plus years ago

Wow, I had multiple names pop up in my mind yet with most of the names, I found a recent controversy which weirded me out.

There are two things: Tech companies which actually do have a good moral compass & Tech companies which are perceived/advertised as such.

As much as I'd like to think that I cannot be persuaded by adverts, I think that with the recent case of proton, it does shatter a bit to what I had thought was a tech company with a good moral compass.

It almost seems that every single one of the company that I trusted with is going through some deep disturbance within the force.

For what its worth, I have huge respect for Lavabit, also I have lots of respects to small VPS providers who are keeping it an affordable price. You might not know their names as some are even 1 man shops but TNAhosting and xhosts.uk seem extremely fine companies to me.

My interpretation: You need structural alignment with what you and what the company wants because incentives are much harder to overcome even if one has good moral compass and vice versa as well as a company with bad moral compass but one where your incentives are perfectly aligned can be good. Companies might start with good intentions but it is really really hard to preserve that as you grow and involve more people and bureaucracy and as those people come with their own incentives which might or might not align with the incentives of the company or that of the consumer.

Anthropic, for obvious reasons. Hard to imagine a more moral founding story, corporate vision, or governance structure, even if they've engaged in quite a few questionable projects along the way. Can you imagine any other company willing to get blacklisted from government contracts for 3+ years minimum just to take a moral stand?

Various companies dedicated to open source, workers coops, etc. -- but they might not count as "tech", depending on your priors. They certainly don't pay as much! Still, 80,000 hours is a great resource for anyone interested in the mainstream of that kind of thing: https://80000hours.org/

Google certainly has a good moral compass in the small, incidental things; the fact that their empire is maintained via monopolistic behavior and weapons of war more than outweighs that though, as does the fact that they are far less well-intentioned than they used to be. Watching videos of old AdSense training seminars in 2022 was a pretty radicalizing experience, I won't lie.

Microsoft has been leaning into moral arguments for their new AI branch to a unique degree, but I don't even give em partial credit there. They seem to just be cynically taking advantage of the popular sentiments about AI in the west (read: deep, virulent hatred), kinda like what people accused Meta under Le Cunn to be doing but real this time.

Otherwise... uh... nothing comes to mind. A company has to be a non-profit to truly qualify, or (like Anthropic) a Public-Benefit Corporation[1]; without that, they are ostensibly obligated to be immoral in the quest for profit, with the exact limits of that law being vague and extreme at best.

[1]: For clarity: the latter designation is 5% substantial legal justification for unprofitable moral decisions and 95% virtue signaling, yes, but virtue signaling is important! If a company can't be bothered to do some paperwork to show they're moral, they probably don't care all that much about it either as an honest intention or as a cynical strategy.