[mjolk]

>Maybe it's time to create a Hippocratic Oath for developers to publicly commit to?

This is silly. Stop trying to add grandeur to writing some code at X,Y startup/company.

People don't die or get harmed when some social-messaging application spams someone. Code is a way to implement an idea. Most applications exist to make money. If this a shock to you, read the user agreement before installing/upgrading, uninstall the application, or realize that in social networking, your personal data what the company uses to make a profit.

[darxius]

I disagree. As a computer engineer in Canada, I must swear by the Code of Ethics because what I do (or potentially don't do) can cause harm.

Ethics in computer-science-related fields are important and I think we do need a set of rules we can dogmatically follow like the Hippocratic Oath. Of course, the HO is different in that failing to follow can cause physical harm. However, the world is progressing quickly and more and more information is hosted online -- personal information.

I think it's our jobs to make sure we don't promote poor practice and un-ethical behaviour.

[mjolk]

>I think it's our jobs to make sure we don't promote poor practice and un-ethical behaviour.

No, it's our responsibility as decent people. I don't need to sign some online pledge to keep myself from pushing people in front of trains. If I was the sort to harm others, why would I care about some meaningless online campaign?

[AYBABTME]

An engineer holds a license such that they can profess, which license is conditional to the respect of their code of ethics (and a bunch of rules). If they do not follow those conditions, their license can be revoked.

So what if they lose their license? They can still write code and do harm.

Yes, indeed. As it stands right now, the reality of the engineer's license is such that it doesn't fit very well the software world. The vast majority of companies couldn't give less of a damn whether you are licensed or not. However, it depends.

Regulations might eventually come in place to force software producers to hire only licensed engineers if the nature of their business is prone to put the public in danger. And as technology grows ever deeper into our lives, the danger that consumer apps can cause on the public is ever growing as well. For instance, breaching a user's privacy can be enough info to grant an ill-intended operator access to the user's e-mail through social engineering, from which it is then often trivial to gain access to that user's bank informations. You don't need that much imagination to figure out a scenario where a user's life can be turned to shit by some software abuse.

Given that this risk is ever growing, the possibility of a code of ethic on software business is plausible. Say in X months, the government of country Y decides that companies hoping to run a social network available on their territories must hire licensed software-engineers, and have them all sign-off any code that is presented to the public. That software engineer they'd hire would have to put their license and career in jeopardy if they were to implement some evil feature.

Before Québec's bridge, engineers didn't need a license to build infrastructure. The parallel between the current situation and the past isn't too hard to make.

[freshhawk]

"No, it's our responsibility as decent people"

Well, yes. But there is a reason that every profession that has tackled this problem has used a system of oaths and certification. Engineers, Doctors and Lawyers are the canonical examples.

You need something that is given and can be taken away for bad behaviour in order to change behaviour at this level. Damn human brains.

[pekk]

Taken away by whom and on what basis? I would dispute that you need the ability to take away other individuals' ability to lawfully write software. That ability is bound to be abused for political reasons (which is also what it looks like when people have reasonably different ethical systems and one imposes his by force).

Anyway, the issue at hand is bad corporate behavior, not bad programmers. I don't see why we need to start licking our chops about the prospect of forming a blacklist against individual programmers.

[freshhawk]

This is just a bonding/licensing arrangement, it's in use by every other profession that has this exact problem.

So go ahead and try and stop bad corporate behaviour, everyone else can use a proven system so that programmers can easily say "no" when asked to do something unethical and not be fired for it.

I'm often confused by how often programmers completely reinvent the wheel when faced with social problems. The idea of looking to other similar industries never comes up, even if the problem is exactly the same.

[darxius]

There's nothing to sign and it's not a campaign. You're right, it is our responsibility as decent people to uphold a certain level of moral and ethical behaviour, especially when the software we write is in control of sensitive information.

The Oath is there to remind you to act in the best interest of the user. There are no formalities and although it seems common sense to people like you and me, others might not see it so clearly.

[tripzilch]

> I don't need to sign some online pledge to keep myself from pushing people in front of trains.

Neither do doctors really need the Oath of Hippocrates to stop themselves from harming people.

[mpyne]

Which is convenient, because the Oath of Hippocrates has not actually stopped doctors from harming people.

[nnnnni]

So you wear the ring then, eh?

[darxius]

Soon :) I'm just entering my final year of study.

[nnnnni]

I'm not sure where you are, but... be sure to wear a lot of layers of clothes with at least one all-black layer on the finals day.

Seriously. I hope that you'll see this in time!

[smsm42]

So in Canada, software engineers never cause harm to anyone? Nice to know.

>>>> I think we do need a set of rules we can dogmatically follow like the Hippocratic Oath.

So you don't actually have to employ your own brain and your own moral judgement, because somebody already did it for you and wrote this nice set of rules, that you swore by Apollo to faithfully execute, without thinking, not unlike that box of wires and silicon chips you are paid to play with? Nice arrangement, I suppose.

>>>> I think it's our jobs to make sure we don't promote poor practice and un-ethical behaviour.

And you need to sign an explicit oath to do that?

[darxius]

I think you're missing the point. The oath is to remind you to use your head, your best judgement and a body of ethics and to act in the interest of the public. Sure engineers still make mistakes, but the code of ethics isn't some magical document that eliminated human error.

Also, I think you're sort of merging the HO with the Code of Ethics for engineers in Canada -- two very different documents and I suggest you give them a read. And no, no one still thinks they're swearing to Apollo.

[smsm42]

>>>> The oath is to remind you to use your head, your best judgement and a body of ethics

Why you need an oath for that - shouldn't it be always the default behavior?

>>>> and to act in the interest of the public.

"Interest of the public" is a very dangerous thing. I can remember a lot of very bad things that were done "in the interest of the public". You can make almost anything pass as "in the interest of the public" if you want to. Murder? Millions were murdered "in the interest of the public", because they were of the wrong ethnicity, class, physical features or just in the wrong place in the wrong time. Robbery? Millions were stripped of their property and reduced to utter poverty because it was claimed it is "interest of the public" to do so. And so on, and so forth.

I would rather steer clear of anything that has "interest of the public" written on it, at least until it's very clear what is underneath. Too many things that were underneath such writing proved to be a disaster.

>>> no one still thinks they're swearing to Apollo.

Swearing to a document composed by a faceless bureaucracy is no better. If you have code of ethics, live by it, if you do not - get one. What Apollo or his modern equivalent, the almighty bureaucracy, has to do with it?

[base698]

Because that's how humans work?

bookoutlines.pbworks.com/w/page/14422685/Predictably%20Irrational

One more variation: Nina, On, and Ariely conducted a similar experiment. But, one group was asked to write down 10 books they had read in high school, and the other group was asked to try to recall and write down the 10 Commandments. When cheating was not possible, the average score was 3.1 When cheating was possible, the book group reported a score of 4.1 (33% cheating) When cheating was possible, the 10 Commandments group scored 3.1 (0% cheating) And most of the subjects couldn't even recall all of the commandments! Even those who could only remember 1 or 2 commandments were nearly as honest. "This indicated that it was not the Commandments themselves that encouraged honesty, but the mere contemplation of a moral benchmark of some kind." Perhaps we can have people sign secular statements--similar to a professional oath--to remind us of our commitment to honesty. So Ariely had students sign a statement on the answer sheet: "I understand that this study falls under the MIT honor system." Those who signed didn't cheat. Those who didn't see the statement showed 84% cheating. "The effect of signing a statement about an honor code is particularly amazing because MIT doesn't even have an honor code."

[smsm42]

Interesting experiments, the question is if this persists - i.e. if you read the 10 commandments at the beginning of the semester and take the test at the end - would the difference still remain.

[jimbokun]

"So you don't actually have to employ your own brain and your own moral judgement, because somebody already did it for you and wrote this nice set of rules, that you swore by Apollo to faithfully execute, without thinking, not unlike that box of wires and silicon chips you are paid to play with? Nice arrangement, I suppose."

So I assume you never use any open source code in any of your programming projects, since you are fundamentally opposed to adopting any ideas that are not exclusively your own?

[smsm42]

You assume wrong, this in no way follows from what I have said and I never said that I am "fundamentally opposed to adopting any ideas that are not exclusively your own". You must have by accident commented in a wrong branch.

[angersock]

You really come off as an amoral jerk here.

What happens if an app for job seekers texts your boss? What if a casual hookup site texts your new girlfriend--even though you signed up a year before meeting her? What happens if your app calls an old person and they crack a hip trying to answer a phone--when everyone that knows them personally knows not to call until they're awake and their caretaker is in?

These may sound far-fetched, and we all mostly don't pretend we're as disciplined as structural engineers, but "we do it for the money lulz" is a shitty and stupid argument.

[mjolk]

>You really come off as an amoral jerk here.

I'm okay with this. I'd rather be calculating than have my head in the sand about the business models of social networking what-have-you applications.

>What if a casual hookup site texts your new girlfriend--even though you signed up a year before meeting her?

While I don't and won't have to experience this, your imagined relationship suffers more from lack of trust and honesty than "some dumb app does some dumb, annoying thing."

>"we do it for the money lulz" is a shitty and stupid argument.

Don't Straw Man me. If my code was going to be used for something I perceive as evil, I'd leave the job.

Our industry doesn't need yet another pointless, embarrassing ethics/integrity campaign when the people writing the code don't care.

[saraid216]

> Our industry doesn't need yet another pointless, embarrassing ethics/integrity campaign when the people writing the code don't care.

When was the last one?

[gjm11]

> People don't die or get harmed when some social-messaging application spams someone.

Of course they get harmed: their time is wasted, and perhaps their concentration disturbed. This is a small harm to each victim, no doubt about it, but if you write code that makes your social-messaging application spam people then you're delivering that small harm to a large number of people. If your code wastes 10 seconds each, just once, for a million people, that's about three person-months of aggregate time you've stolen that will never come back.

It's quite true that "in social networking, your personal data what the company uses to make a profit". But if it were near-universal practice for new software engineers to swear a solemn oath not to use their powers for evil, who knows? perhaps some other business model for social networking might have had a chance to succeed.

[disgruntledphd2]

Its also true that in search, your personal data is what the company uses to make a profit. And yet, one hears less complaints about that.

I'm not justifying either approach, by the way, just observing what I regard as a strange disconnect.

[ern]

People don't die or get harmed when some social-messaging application spams someone.

I disagree. This case reminds me of Geni. You would put a relative's email address in to invite them, and they'd then receive a torrent of spammy "updates", until they registered to unsubscribe.

My less tech-savvy father added many relatives from his address book to Geni. Lots of hate from deranged relatives, and some less technically-inclined relatives are probably still being spammed, 6 years later-it made family gatherings awkward for a while. There are real-world, harmful consequences to this kind of scummy, unethical tactic.

[Shish2k]

> People don't die or get harmed when some social-messaging application spams someone

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/8284...

[nollidge]

Of course people get harmed. The harm just has vastly less depth and vastly more breadth.

[huckleberries21]

This response assumes that joining all social networks is user choice. Unfortunately, we live in a world where it hurts consumers NOT to be on some networks. LinkedIn (which also has had a history of horrible spamming in the past) is an example - sure, you can choose not to be on it, but you'll probably get dinged by hiring managers because your credentials somehow seem less legitimate if not corroborated by LinkedIn.