[bitL]

Sure, but our industry was never as corrupt as e.g. finances, doing back-channel financing of atrocities like wars/genocides, buying politicians to bypass popular sentiment, setting up drug distribution centers and prostitution rings nearby so that their employees can kill their inner humanity and have reward for corrupting themselves. My fear is that we are becoming the same and that change is happening right now.

[watwut]

IBM designed and maintained those machines that facilitated holocaust. Meaning, a lot of techies were on a place installing, training users and seeing wagons and facilities. Not just management. NSA spying runs on techies and backdoors don't make themselves. Blackhat is a thing too. Tech does not have as much power as finances through.

But most importantly, on the single average engineer level, which is more relevant, there are plenty of companies with backstabbing culture or individual bad actors in companies with otherwise good culture. For example, I have seen engineers badmouth other peoples work not because it would be bad, but to make themselves look good in comparison. Etc.

[bitL]

I guess most of those techies were on "need to know" basis, likely clueless about what was going really on and only the key players (bosses) were corrupt and aware. It's hard for many techies, by nature idealists, to fully grasp how the world truly works, until they are disposed of when their usefulness ends, or they have first-hand experience from war/hit or even from approaching share vesting date and their company going fully into Game-of-Thrones mode etc.

[watwut]

Nope, there is quite detailed book on that. They were on place, in Germany and occupied territories. Installing machines, designing punch cards with cooperation of users and training users. Some machines were directly in concentration camps and some on railways used to transport Jews. If you got there to maintain, you seen them. Some were used to sort people by race on occupied territories - and even if you not knew about holocaust you knew it is about finding and mistreating Jews. That much was clear to contemporaries.

Bosses were aware and managed operation. That is true.

> It's hard for many techies, by nature idealists, to fully grasp how the world truly works

Not all techies are idealists and it is not necessary to be idealist to have good hard skills. Also, idealists tend to be focused a bit less on those hard skills then pragmatics (being attracted to ideals). While some techies (on the spectrum) have hard time to grasp world, many many don't. Those who do were less likely to get goodies.

[tome]

Do you have any references for that? I'm quite incredulous that American IBM employees were on place, in Germany and occupied territories, during a time that America was engaged in war with Germany.

[watwut]

"IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation" by Edwin Black.

IBM had child company in Germany Dehomag, but transported machines and cards from outside too (including during war through not whole of it). The book however deals more with management and non-German citizens guilt which is harder to show. That people of all sorts in the Germany, including technologistics, were contributing to Nazi plans is easier to believe. It was just first example that came to my mind.

[darkerside]

Oh the poor little innocent ingenues! /s

Techies aren't idiots (any more so than anyone else).

[alexashka]

And what do you propose?

It doesn't take much to poke holes in the way things are - it's a lot harder to do something about it, other than 'raising awareness' aka complaining.

[bitL]

There are some things ongoing by people that realize what is happening, for example in the blockchain space. Blockchain beside attempting to solve cool tech problem of Byzantine generals was also motivated by increasing transparency, i.e. removing or disclosing corruption by money means. There is more work done right now to prevent dominant intermediaries like Amazon from increasingly abusing their position by removing the need to use their platform at all and move it to a p2p blockchain instead. There are now options to (or at least try to) put an end to millenia of horrible human behavior.

[tbrownaw]

There is more work done right now to prevent dominant intermediaries like Amazon from increasingly abusing their position by removing the need to use their platform at all and move it to a p2p blockchain instead.

So, those small online stores didn't used to all be on Amazon or Ebay. Which means those platforms must be providing something that the store proprietors think is worth losing some of their independence over.

What is that "something", and what does the blockchain do to provide it that just getting an account with a payment processor doesn't do?

[bitL]

For example not being kicked out from a platform for no reason, because some MBA needs to fill their quarterly quota of kicked out 3rd party sellers? Not giving sales data on what is selling well to your competitor that in turn would start manufacturing their "essentials" line, copying your product, and undercutting you? Please read what is right now happening with Amazon and tell me you like what it is becoming. Amazon used to be very useful for sellers when it allowed rotating shopping cart so that everyone got some throughput on a single marketplace, paying them some 15% of revenue for this "marketing". This is no longer feasible for most 3rd party sellers; instead Amazon is becoming very restrictive, siding with big brands, more and more rejecting honest businesses and locking them out of their platform.

[0xcde4c3db]

> This is no longer feasible for most 3rd party sellers; instead Amazon is becoming very restrictive, siding with big brands, more and more rejecting honest businesses and locking them out of their platform.

I'd be interested in reading more detailed first-hand descriptions of this, but searching for some key phrases from your description is just bringing up irrelevant product links. It's seemingly at odds with the rampant counterfeiting and listing spam (to confirm that my experience isn't outdated, I just went to the "Unlocked Cell Phones" category, sorted by lowest price, and found a listing for "Example Product Title" by "Example Product Brand", available from 3 sellers) on Amazon. I guess it's conceivable that Amazon is good at logistics/infrastructure but flagrantly awful at the "marketplace" component.

[bitL]

They recently opened up their marketplace to junk sellers from China and India, then adjusted their automated ML to be super restrictive to sort out the junk, and honest US businesses are now treated the same way as junk Indian ones, getting kicked out on mere suspicions of violations (i.e. presumed to be guilty by default). I guess it doesn't matter to them.