[philderbeast]

the programmers sleep at night because doing this is the only thing that lets them feed there families.

like it or not, there are always people who will see this as the lesser evil because of their personal circumstances don't give them other options.

[benwad]

I'd agree if we were talking about low-skill work where people are just scraping by. Programmers have the luxury of choosing from a wide range of places to work. We're all in a position where we can refuse work we find unethical, even if it means taking a pay cut.

[tibbon]

Yes, but… I’ve seen that it is often just shades of bad. There are so few morally pure companies out there- they are all willing to do bad things for money. Or the vast majority of them. And it is hard to evaluate that upfront. Even the most virtuous will bend privacy for the right stakeholders

I should go work for Google? Because they clearly value privacy?…

[actually_a_dog]

You say that as if we all started out fresh from college with the ability to pick and choose the kind of dev work we do. Not everybody has the kind of safety net starting out that implies the ability to do that.

[bmazed]

you are right but then you should work to get to a point where you can and will do whatever you want..you can destroy a system 2 ways, within or create your own

[bmazed]

yup if you are that talented enough where companies will continue to offer you $$ to program whatever they say, then yea you do have a lot of POWER and can say NO to whatever you want

[mkmk3]

True, as long as there's money in it, but I'd bet the majority of people in adtech aren't in terrible positions, so I don't think that's the root of this. Do people generally care about acting ethically without circumstances forcing them to? Beyond paying lip service. And if you think so, do you think they generally care in the context of surveillance, where most of us haven't had first or second hand experience of any obvious cost?