Today I looked at the source code of Chrome where this is implemented, so I'd understand it better.
It made me realize that there is indeed (of course) software engineers (meaning: people) working on this who actually write that code. Does a high salary justify working on such features, or are modern day software engineers more like factory workers? I think not because most software engineers have a choice.
People around the world build machines that melt skin off of children in Middle East for quarter of that pay. Even in America. And they're proud of it too.
> People around the world build machines that melt skin off of children in Middle East
There is a problem with that statement and I will try to highlight it by creating a couple more of the same:
- There are people working to build software to allow people to share child porn without getting caught (about Moxie and anyone working to bring e2e-encryption to the masses)
- there were people working in factories that created hammers that were used to crush peoples skulls in Cambodia
I see where you are going and OP's overly emotive language damaged the credibility of his point.
However not all technology/engineering is neutral even compared to other technology.
For example I made the decision years ago that there are some lines I won't cross for software development - one of them been gambling systems (even though they are quite lucrative) - (Note: I'm not saying they should be banned (that is not for me to say)) because morally I can't see an acceptable use that outweighs the bad.
Same with weapons systems (though of course one mans freedom fighter is anothers terrorist).
Your examples refer to tools that are being misused, whereas weapons or tracking software is a negative for humanity precisely when they're working as intended
Weapons are tools too. Mostly to scare away an attacker before they strike but sadly sometimes also to strike back.
Double sadly they also come with the possibility to strike first.
But in the choice of us being armed and Russia and China and the middle East being armed or everyone being armed except us I take the first option. Every time.
Edit to add: modern weapons are actually about reducing the chance the skin is melting of children.
It is fully possible to think that your country should have access to the best conventional weapons possibly while still voting for politicians that want us to stop weapons sales to madmen.
Think: if you try to remove all guns overnight the ones you get is the ones from the good guys. If you make guns illegal only criminals will have guns.
Also: the biggest crimes against humanity have typically been made by the local rulers: Hitler can be discussed, Stalin, Pol Pot and a number of others cannot.
Good guy with a gun tends to hit a bystander, or cause dangerous escalation in situations that don't warrant it, or have their gun stolen.
> If you make guns illegal only criminals will have guns.
That's one way to look at the very short term. But then since "criminal" is not an immutable quality of a person, millions of people that weren't criminals that then commit a crime will have no gun.
Trying to sort people into "good guys" and "bad guys" is a terrible idea in general.
It doesn't matter what you call the groups, or even how many groups you come up with. The point is that some are more compliant than the others - the conformists, the law-abiding etc - and it's those that you'll disarm first. The ones who don't actually care about the laws beyond the extent to which they can be meaningfully enforced will retain the means for violence. The only way to pretend-break this recursion is to outsource the violence (e.g. to the police and the military), and then claim that the rest of society is peaceful. But that's a sham - if you back a law that ultimately results in a cop enforcing it breaking the nightstick on someone's back, you're complicit in that act of violence.
The goal isn't to pretend there's no violence, the goal is to reduce the number of violent deaths.
And the police are going to need some weapons whether or not you have gun control.
So sure, some groups are more willing to give up guns than others. And we should perform a cost/benefit analysis while keeping that in mind. Plans don't have to meet some standard of ideological purity before we can evaluate them.
Look, I understand your point. But this bizarre handwringing over "how dare you work on advertising?" just feels like there's something wrong with worlds perception of the poster.
There are literally millions of people that deliberately do jobs that knowingly hurt people (and are built AROUND hurting and scamming people) and asking yourself "why would anyone try to improve on an ads tracking system while keeping ads around?" just really really comes out as horribly naive and oblivious. Not to mention that there are even millions more of jobs where significantly more harm is done as a side effect that doesn't come close to showing a damn ad based on their amazon purchase.
There's two sides to every story. Reducing the amount of third-party tracking cookies on the web, and implementing a novel application of federated learning are definitely things some engineers would do, money aside, because they're technically challenging.
FLoC does reduce tracking: instead of many third parties building a thorough picture of your activity server-side, your page-level activity stays in the browser. Which already needs to know that, so it can maintain your history and turn links purple. Only the aggregated "cohort" is available to sites.
(Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)
When one of those cohorts is narrow enough to reveal something specific and highly private (like a specific disease / medical / legal / societally high interest issue) - what then? Sites get to learn that you are associated with that very private concern.
No. I am against any and every form of personalized AND aggregated categorization, because until the associations created are no longer used as criteria by others, no form of tracking is neutral.
Cookies AND FLoC and any other replacement all need to stop.
And those who want to characterize others need to stop, because the information WILL be abused.
If this were to succeed, then not too far out any website a user visits on the Internet can basically reverse engineer to a high degree (and at least approximate) the sites a Chrome user was on.
Additionally, combined with just IP address its probably a 99+% precise user identifier.
> It uses SimHash, so any website a user visits on the Internet can reverse engineer the sites a Chrome user was on.
How so? A user's cohort is shared by many other users, and for any individual site you have visited it is very likely there will be another user with an identical cohort who has not visited that site. This means you cannot tell exactly which sites any individual has visited.
> combined with just IP address its probably a 99+% precise user identifier.
IP address alone is already a massive fingerprinting leak, and needs to be addressed if browsers are to prevent cross-site tracking. Chrome is also working on this: https://github.com/bslassey/ip-blindness
> I think not because most software engineers have a choice.
most people care more about their own interests than the interests of society in general. Only when collectively devising laws would society take the interest of society over individuals.
Therefore, software engineers are fully justified at making software that is deemed unethical, but still take the stance that it is unethical. You might call it hypcracy but i say it's practicality.
Legislation should be introduced to perform the function of ensuring ethical standards, not altruism on the part of the individual.
They’re allowed to take that stance, sure, but I’m allowed to judge them for it. Ignoring your own morals just to make a buck isn’t a good thing. Otherwise we should all just become drug dealers.
It made me realize that there is indeed (of course) software engineers (meaning: people) working on this who actually write that code. Does a high salary justify working on such features, or are modern day software engineers more like factory workers? I think not because most software engineers have a choice.
Been thinking about this a lot afterwards.