The only thing worse than an echo chamber is letting a self-created bad idea fester in the head.

I came to the conclusion a few months ago that software developers and coders who worked at Meta, Google, Amazon, etc are as culprit as their CEOs and the company itself. I will lay down my points below, but I understand that this might be a logical extreme of my distaste for these corporations.

Here’s my rationale:

  1. Actions of the company they serve: The corporations they serve actively disenfranchise users, track them, sell their private / personal information to unscrupulous parties without any care on how it affects the person, or the society. They thrive on engagement rather than content. They have “commodified” the fundamental right to privacy. This has real world implications that has directly resulted in the spread of misinformation, political unrest, threatened elections, riots, and deaths of thousands of people.
  2. Awareness of the consequences: By virtue of their position, these are people with the capacity to read, and think for themselves. There are news articles: across the political spectrum in all major news sites, that report how the platform/ company they serve negatively affects society. Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica fiasco, Snowden’s expose, etc are credible and well documented examples that even non-tech people are aware. Yet they choose to ignore all this, and continue working / seek to join these companies.
  3. Cowardice: It is often wrapped in the garb of “self-interest”, but they do not raise their voice when they know that the software and platform they’re told to develop is going to be used to spy on their brethren. They claim they’re trying to make a living, but can use their skills to develop counter products to these horrible companies, or work for those that are sensitive and conscientious towards customer’s needs and welfare.
  • boonhet
    11·
    21 days ago

    The issue is that you lump people closer to the peasant class in with the modern feudal lord class.

    The CEOs and major shareholders of said companies already have all the wealth they could ever need. They do it just to make number go up. They COULD spend their money and time on enterprises that benefit humanity, but that’s just not profitable so it’s not fun. Most employees, however, could last maybe a year or 2 without their salaries if they’ve been saving up a lot. Or maybe a week if they haven’t. Average case for software engineers at huge companies, probably a few months.

    They claim they’re trying to make a living, but can use their skills to develop counter products to these horrible companies, or work for those that are sensitive and conscientious towards customer’s needs and welfare.

    There’s just a lot less money in that, and thus fewer jobs (and the ones that DO exist, pay worse).

    If you want to retire early, or if you have kids whose future you want to secure, you want to get the best paying job possible. It’s well known in my country that the online casino software companies pay way more than most non-casino software companies. You know when people start looking into those jobs? When they start families.

    Let’s take a look at an example here: You’re currently being paid to work on the Windows operating system itself. Certainly spies on its users, puts ads everywhere, etc. Good news, there ARE companies that develop counter products. You could work at Apple (comes with its’ own ethical issues), or at one of the companies working on desktop Linux distros. So mainly Red Hat or Canonical, because most desktop Linux distros are community-driven, but Fedora and Ubuntu are two great examples that have paid devs.

    Canonical is trying to be the Microsoft of the Linux ecosystem (through enshittifying the desktop with snaps and ads, as well as selling you on Ubuntu Pro), whereas Red Hat is… trying to be the Microsoft of the Linux ecosystem (by reducing source accessibility of their enterprise offering, though at least they’re not doing that with Fedora). Oops!

    What IS the alternative here? Work on desktop Linux software for free, in your free time. But that doesn’t put food on the table, so you’ll still have to work at one of those evil corps.

    Similarly for Meta. Facebook is huge. What are the alternatives? Lemmy for Threads, Friendica for Facebook itself. What are the devs being paid? Nothing, really. I think Dessalines is slowly starting to approach a livable salary for Lemmy, looking at his Patreon. Friendica’s Tobias doesn’t even seem to have a donation page anywhere.

    If you’ve got the luxury of plentiful free time, definitely contribute to open source alternatives to commercial projects. But if you don’t, you have to put bread on the table somehow…