[ChuckMcM]

I grew tired of arguments supporting fleecing the users that were basically "We aren't making them do this, they choose to do it." I have heard them put forward at nearly every company I've worked at, at various levels and through various departments. At Google it was always "We don't take an editorial stand, this might be just what some of our customers want." That has been the most interesting aspect of their recent moves to either sanction advertisers or block them. So somewhere in there it has gone from "If people don't want to see ads there are lots of adblockers out there to choose from." to "We need to take a stand against abusive advertisers." And that is a huge difference in approach.

Do engineers need a Hippocratic oath? I'm not sure they do, but if we forced some liability on companies for what the software they sell does, that would change a lot of things fairly quickly.

[kbenson]

> At Google it was always "We don't take an editorial stand, this might be just what some of our customers want."

It's an interesting choice for companies, and Google in particular. Either be proactive and get accused of forcing your customers behavior or having ulterior motives based on money (e.g. Google's ad blocking program), or let them do what they want and get accused of turning a blind eye because it makes more money.

That said, I have little sympathy for Google in this case. They made the choice to go for ad revenue as their business model years ago, and it may have been the most feasible path to success when they did so, but that doesn't mean the perverse incentives weren't obvious at every single step along that path.

I work in the event ticketing secondary markets. That is, I work for a brokerage and buys and sells event tickets for a profit. I mention this because a lot of people have a very negative view of this industry (some of it misinformed, some very well founded in the actions of some bad actors). We run an above-board shop and make money through lots of analytics and targeted investment, and I sleep fine I night. I'm not sure I would if I was employed in certain departments of Google or Facebook.

[Balgair]

Google can't take an editorial position, they are forbidden (sort-of) from doing so by law: 47 U.S.C. § 230, Communication Decency Act (1996).

Per the recent Wired article on FB: "This is the section of US law that shelters internet intermediaries from liability for the content their users post. If Facebook were to start creating or editing content on its platform, it would risk losing that immunity"[0]

The EFF has a good piece on the importance that this law be upheld[1]. Basically, from ISPs to Craigslist, the internet can repost/report on potentially horrific stuff without being in trouble themselves as the 'host'.

If Google were to take an editorial position, they are afraid they will run afoul of this law and be held liable.

[0]https://www.wired.com/story/inside-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-...

[1]https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230

[wanderer2323]

When you are training your search models you take editorial position all the time. There is no 'one single truth' of what the search results should be, let alone what the search-related artifacts (query suggestions, drill-downs, answers, etc) should be.

Real people go to work every day to label images as 'corresponding' or 'not corresponding' to a query, different people write guidelines for these labeling, other people curate which queries to label and which labeled results to train, etc etc.

In theory, all these people or at least their accumulated work produce some kind of 'neutral' result; in reality, a systemic bias on some of these levels can easily have an editorial effect that is impossible to prove.

[Balgair]

I'm certain that this is going to come up in anti-trust suits as a violation of Section 230. I can't see how it isn't editing the content that folk's see, despite the complexity of the ML. Judges don't like being told 'oh, it's too complex to understand, gee-shucks!' let us get away with it.

Surprisingly, such a ruling will have some philosophic ramifications about the ability for a computer to think and then edit. Though the case is unlikely to hinge on that semantic point, it will be talked about in lawyer bars.

[mulmen]

I'm curious, what value does your ticket brokerage create?

[kbenson]

For customers, liquidity and price accuracy, ticket availability, and the chance for discount tickets (in the case where brokers make a bad call or execute badly, which happens often).

For venues and promoters, guaranteed attendance and immediate cashflow (sell 50,000 tickets at an average of $80 immediately instead of spread over 9-12 months, that's money that can be invested back into their business or something else, and reduces risk).

For artists and promoters, the capability to hold back chunks of inventory for later sale on the secondary market at increased cost. This allows them to take advantage of a functioning market to make more money while also avoiding fan displeasure at high ticket prices. Also, the ability to say they sold out X size venue in Y time, which can denote popularity (or be used to claim a level of popularity).

Brokers take on risk for a possible reward. If you're buying tickets that aren't intended for immediate resale, and are holding them for 9-12 months (common), anything can happen in that time period. That artist may become less popular, or even just get sick and cancel much of the tour (in which case you just had your money tied up for months, at best losing out on other investments and at worst paying some percentage on a credit account), which is a loss.

It's not really all that different than other financial markets.

Edit: As much as some artists like to complain about the secondary market, there's a really simple solution that just works. Increase supply. Garth Brooks plays twice a night and multiple days in a row in the same venue at each stop on a tour. Kid Rock will play seven consecutive days in a row in Detroit. The downside? They move the risk from the brokers to the venue, promoters and artist, because they may lose money if they don't fill enough seats. This itself is an illustration of the role the secondary market plays, and indeed heavily bought events with inflated prices often get additional dates added which depress the market prices.

[throwawayjava]

Engineering ethics takes two forms: "what should I build" and "how should I build it".

I tend to prefer "engineering ethics" courses that focus on the second question because the first question is completely parametric in more general ethical and even political considerations.

It's true that engineers should take a course of study in pure ethics to learn how to think through questions of the first variety, but I'm not sure if engineering departments are the right ones to house/teach that particular course.

[logicallee]

>I work in the event ticketing secondary markets. That is, I work for a brokerage and buys and sells event tickets for a profit.

FYI you work for a ticket scalping shop, which is why you put so much verbiage there rather than saying so.

Based on what you've written, it's not clear what your firm adds to the world through its analytics and "investment". Which is why people don't like scalpers. Other than the scalpers, who else is better off if audience members pay a surplus over list price? (Or end up not going, as you've bought the last seats and priced them out.)

This is why "scalper" has worse connotation than "advertiser." (I don't work in advertising.)

By all means please let me know if you generate some value I am ignorant about, as you explicitly state is often the case ("misinformed").

[kbenson]

> Based on what you've written, it's not clear what your firm adds to the world through its analytics and "investment".

Perhaps if you read the thread a bit more, you would have found my answers to these questions, and you could formulate useful questions that didn't ask for things that have already been provided.

If you would like to follow up to that comment with questions or complaints about how I've presented myself or the industry I work in, feel free to do so. I would be happy to engage with you on any criticisms you have on the points I've presented, I only hope you approach it in a less hostile manner than you have here.

[logicallee]

The other comment by lovich says:

>I've worked in that industry as well and I have a very negative view of it still, even discounting the bad actors. Everything you do can be above board and still be douchey.

As far as your points, I have this specific question:

- Where you write, "For venues and promoters, guaranteed attendance and immediate cashflow."

Why is there "guaranteed attendance"? I don't understand what you could have meant by it.

[kbenson]

> - Where you write, "For venues and promoters, guaranteed attendance and immediate cashflow."

> Why is there "guaranteed attendance"? I don't understand what you could have meant by it.

That's an inaccurate description on my part for what I meant. It's not guaranteed attendance, it's guaranteed sales regardless of attendance (although generally the seats are sold, even if at an extreme discount). It's guaranteed money available early on in the event lifetime.

For an example of this, look at this TicketMaster event[1], and the corresponding StubHub page. All reserved seating is $45 on TM, and there's still plenty of tickets available, and the floor tickets are $49.50, and they are still available as well. Now look at the secondary market (StubHub, in this example), and you'll see Floor seats starting at $19, Orchestra seats starting at just under $30, Lower Balcony seats starting at under $11, and Upper Balcony at $29 (I'm not sure why it's higher, I suspect this market isn't very liquid, and/or those are mostly non-brokers selling expecting to get more money back than is likely to happen).

I have a few take-aways from this specific example (and it's by no means my job to make these assessments, I'm a software engineer, I write in-house tools and connect to APIs):

- People expecting to make money on the secondary market here are losing a lot of money. Exchange fees are generally between 7-10% of sale price for brokers, depending on volume, and TicketMaster initial display prices generally are not including all the other fees. A single Floor ticket (listed as $49.50) actually shows a subtotal of $67.45 if you attempt to purchase it through TicketMaster right now.

- The venue, promoters and artist have all that money put down for overbought tickets. Even if all the tickets held by brokers eventually sell, and even if they sold at a profit, those stakeholders have been able to make use of that money in the last three months since the tickets went on sale and most brokers invested, while the brokers have not. The artist and promoters have left money on the table in their pricing (which brokers attempt to capitalize on) but in exchange for that they get less risk (more sales at a low price) and more money at an earlier stage.

This example is fairly generous to brokers in that it's an event where they are subsidizing users, but I think it's an important example to bring up because so many people don't even account for this in their reasoning. Whether brokers make money or not, some of the same things apply, such as stakeholders getting money early and having a fairly good (most the time) accounting of demand for a sale by outsourcing that aspect to the crowd. It's an added benefit that artists and promoters (and venues) they can take large chunks of tickets that were never sold on the primary market and sell on the secondary market for additional profit.

In some aspects of what they do, ticket brokers are like high frequency traders, in other aspects, they perform other market functions (I'm a novice at best in the stock market, so I'd be hard pressed to explain this in detail).

1: https://www1.ticketmaster.com/event/1B005363D07BB554

2: https://www.stubhub.com/queens-of-the-stone-age-tickets-quee...

[logicallee]

Thank, this was very interesting. You should write a blog post about your understanding of the secondary ticket market, working in that industry. What you've written is an interesting contrast to the underlying assumptions outsiders have about it.

I can't speak to whether you accurately see the underlying trading strategies or not but your writing was interesting. Thanks for taking the time.

[lovich]

I've worked in that industry as well and I have a very negative view of it still, even discounting the bad actors. Everything you do can be above board and still be douchey

[batmansmk]

I signed one oath in my engineering school in France to get my degree. I loose my title if I'm caught not respecting it. The title gives me access to a few jobs that require it (state, secret services, C-level of a few companies) as well as a special tax cut for companies using employees with the title.

[throwawayjava]

> as well as a special tax cut for companies using employees with the title.

This is an interesting point in-between zero intervention and over-bearing puritanism codified in law. I'm having trouble finding more information. Could you share a link?

[platz]

Imagine the form of this logic applied to politics.

'We don't have any policy positions or visionary goals. Those come from what our voters want'.

Ostensibly, this is what the system is designed to do. But of one believes elected officials have no agency or accountability, they are fools.

Now politics is different from media, though. Maybe one way is that a media platform is remaining impartial which a politician cannot do. So maybe the OP quote is better targeted at non-social network companies re ads @ google

[zdragnar]

If "the system" you're referring to is the USA, then no, it's not designed for that.

We elect people based on ideology and character. They may have a few central policy platforms, but there are so many laws and resolutions passed that they cannot pre-advertise their positions or poll their constituents for every one.

Hence, why we are a republic (or representative democracy, if you will). We elect people on the basis of trusting they will do the right thing, because noone has the time to track municipality, state and federal votes.

Among the many experiments on local organization early communist China had was essentially a pure democracy (for local matters), and the inevitable result was there were so many votes that people were overwhelmed and disengaged.

[Caveman_Coder]

> "We elect people on the basis of trusting they will do the right thing"

That's not currently working too well for us...

[zdragnar]

We are a very diverse group. I detest living in big cities, and recently bought 2.5 acres out in the country. Couldn't be happier. Many of the laws and regulations in the big cities wouldn't make any sense to apply out here.

Likewise, purely popular votes on every issue would ultimately mean that the very tiny majority wins, every time, until the squishy "middle" voters get sick of it and switch sides again.

The net result is the same. One side feels left out at any given point, and the direction of the country zigs and zags.

The modern attitude of extreme hyperbolic reaction to every little detail could have many causes; my money is on social media (where speaking often is more rewarding than listening thoughtfully). It also doesn't help that our news sources are in such fiscal dire straits they seem to think the only newsworthy items are those that stoke rage or FUD.

Things are going reasonably well, all things considered. Lots of things could be going a lot better, of course, but I suspect that's always been true, and will continue to be true.

[kazinator]

Indeed, there is a problem with the "they choose to do it" argument: namely that if enough clueless people around you choose something that you don't want, the choice may be foisted upon you by social forces.

[TeMPOraL]

And, from another side, if you only have few providers (economy of scales, network effect, or other barriers to entry for competitors), it's the providers who choose, and users only get to pick from what little is available.

[skybrian]

For ads I thought Google's usual justification was "some ads are useful."

It will be interesting to see what happens in response to Chrome's new ad blocker. I'm not sure there's that much difference ethically between opt-in and opt-out, but certainly a big practical difference, and it will change the ecosystem.

[ben_jones]

All it takes for a 22 year old to write invasive ad tracking code, VPNs that spy on users, deceptive interfaces that steal tips or addict users, is around $150k combined compensation.

Can we stop pretending we (~tech/software) are superior to other industries? We are as bad if not worse then finance, big oil, etc.

[artificial]

>if we forced some liability on companies for what the software they sell does, that would change a lot of things fairly quickly.

Absolutely that would change things, especially the cost of software.

[kerkeslager]

I'm so tired of people saying stuff like this as if I should care. Go ahead, raise prices. If your product is solving a real problem, people will pay for it. If not, well, we didn't need you anyway. This is, incidentally, how capitalism is supposed to work.

If your business model doesn't work without you doing bad things, then it shouldn't work. You don't have a god-given right to make money and if you can't make money doing prosocial things, you don't deserve to make money.

Free software has been doing the right thing for decades. The internet of the 90s before everything was carefully tracked and to addict and display ads was better. There are lots of incentives besides money out there and if money is the only one you care about, I'm not on your side.

[artificial]

It isn’t necessarily that. What incentive do you have to risk your livlyhood for no compensation? For example there was a flaw with OpenSSL, the contributors would be on the hook for all the damages that businesses who used the affected software.

An operating system would be hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy. Look at how actual Engineers are licensed and bonded.

[thomastjeffery]

Usually the unethical things are designed to corner customers into spending more: DRM, proprietary game server hosting, etc.

The problem we have with capitalism now is that it is abused by large corporations who fight for their right to monopolize and abuse customers. What everyone else has lost is the right to compete without abusing customers.

[jakelazaroff]

> Absolutely that would change things, especially the cost of software.

In other words: the current cost of software is artificially low because companies treat users unethically.

[thomastjeffery]

It's also artificially high for the same reasons.

I would posit that prices are artificially high in more cases.

[jakelazaroff]

Are you saying that the cost of software is artificially high because companies are unethical?

That doesn't really make sense: consumers value both price and ethics, and are often willing to pay a premium to companies they perceive as more ethical. If a company could come up with a product that's both cheaper and more ethical than their competitors', they'd easily win over all their competitors' customers.

[thomastjeffery]

It depends where you look, and what you consider to be unethical.

One example is the game Battlefield 4: Dice/EA does not release the server software, so in order to host a server, you must rent one.

This means that only those who have a private deal with the company can host servers, leaving people in places like west Africa underserved (no servers under 100-200ms), and giving those who pay to host servers unneccessary authority over players (arbitrary rules, reserved slots, etc.).

This creates an artifical market based on copyright, and allows Dice/EA to get more money by abusing their customers.

> That doesn't really make sense: consumers value both price and ethics, and are often willing to pay a premium to companies they perceive as more ethical.

Perception is not reality. One problem is that people have been trained via propaganda to respect copyright abuses like DRM.

Because there are enough people respecting these abuses, I am forced to accept the abuses as status-quo.

There are plenty of other cases where a company constrains their customers liberty in order to coerce them into paying more. It's a problem that is exasperated by blind anti-regulation policies and setting monetary increase as the ultimate goal and ethos.