You are totally right, I honestly agree with you. It's an important question, it's worth asking and we should all be asking it. I think there's a lot more grey in software development, grey people may not have as much of in other fields. But that does not mean we can simply ignore the question and it certainly doesn't diminish it's importance. More than that, it doesn't diminish our responsibility.

My concern really revolves around the scapegoating and protecting developers from situations where there is more grey than black or white. But that is not a sheild from personal responsibility or moral obligation, the questions you raise are important in their own right.

I definitely think the ethical concerns are a little more abstracted with software than general engineering. I mean it is more obvious how a bridge affects people than a social network.

But because of that I'm not calling for legal obligation. But I'm calling for more people thinking about the abstraction and how what they write could be abused. But it is no easy matter. Ethics are hard.