[beedeebeedee]

> This is not a rhetorical question, How do you expect all software engineers to be unified on a single solution to ad bombardment, given the internet is international, driven by market dynamics and capitalism and a non-trivial number of programmers are beholden to tyrannical managers

By developing a consensus that it is not ok to do that type of behavior (bombardment of ads, surveillance capitalism, etc) and changing the culture

[bell-cot]

> By developing a consensus that it is not ok to do that...

That sounds cool...but such coordinated, idealistic behavior never occurs in human beings.

[beedeebeedee]

Yes it does- it happens all the time. It happens through talking about it publicly and coming to agreement.

[shiroiushi]

Maybe we can apply this line of reasoning to crime too...

[beedeebeedee]

We do, and it mostly works

[shiroiushi]

So there's no criminals now? News to me!

[beedeebeedee]

There are still criminals, but did you commit a crime today? How about your friends and family?

[shiroiushi]

I don't understand your point. You say you want to change the culture, and that this has successfully been done in the case of crime, but this is blatantly false: every country has prisons with many criminals in them. In the US in particular (since most HNers probably live there), there are well over 1 million people in custody according to a quick google search, and over 5 million in corrections (so I assume most of those are on parole). Obviously, changing the culture hasn't worked, for there to be so many prisoners, and crimes committed so often that so many police officers are constantly needed. If your "change the culture" thing had worked, you wouldn't need police, or at least not many.

Changing bad behavior by corporations (esp. adtech/advertisers) is likely to be about as successful: it's not going to be done by "changing" the culture, but only by changing the laws, and then enforcing those laws and punishing offenders. Just like a rapist sees nothing wrong with raping a person, or a serial killer sees nothing wrong with murdering many strangers, or a "porch pirate" sees nothing wrong with stealing your Amazon delivery, an ad-tech corporation sees nothing wrong with feeding you psychologically manipulative advertising and blatant malware in search of profit.

[defrost]

> You say you want to change the culture, and that this has successfully been done in the case of crime,

No. They did not. They explicity said "mostly works".

> but this is blatantly false:

Of course it is. You set up a blantantly false strawman. Please don't use obviously piss weak rhetorical tactics, they make you look bad.

> every country has prisons with many criminals

And every country has varying incarceration rates, they are not all equal.

What should be looked at is countries by cultural attitudes towards crime and incarceration rates .. and the harder question of just how innately criminal imprisoned people are in various countries and whether they are just there from systemic features of a culture.

Again, there are no one size fits all answers and people aren't homogenous.

[beedeebeedee]

> If your "change the culture" thing had worked, you wouldn't need police, or at least not many.

Who said that police are not part of the culture?

I'm not arguing whether or not we need police, I'm arguing that if we come to a consensus (i.e., we agree that surveillance capitalism, etc, is not ok), then we can stop the problem. That may mean we even criminalize certain behaviors if we believe it is necessary. But the foundation is consensus. So let's do that- I firmly believe that surveillance capitalism and the bombardment of ads is not ok. What about you?