My impression of the ACM is that it’s basically a glorified academic publisher. Maybe a relatively non-evil academic publisher, but I’d rather not take ethical guidance from any of those bloodsuckers.

This! I think what I'm going to start doing is to not take any computer professional seriously unless they are an ACM or IEEE member (or similar org in your country).

EDIT: Getting downvoted, clearly not a popular opinion. Are people here not interested in having a strong corporate-independent organization to push the industry forward?

Contributions to the EFF (or maybe ACLU) might be a better predictor of responsible professionalism, than membership in ACM and IEEE Computer Society.

EFF, FSF, ACLU are all great organizations. ACM is unique here though because it's specifically a professional organization meant to push the industry forward. EFF, FSF, and ACLU are great and should be supported but aren't as broad as ACM.

If the ACM is really pushing professionalism and ethics now, that's great.

I've actually been a member or contributed to all the organizations either of us mentioned, and EFF has seemed to me likely a better predictor, but that's just a guess.

My biggest issue with EFF is that they often take pro-corporate positions and is lead by many actual executives and former executives (see board of directors https://www.eff.org/about/board), while the ACM comes more from an academic or tech worker strain (see https://www.acm.org/about-acm/officer-bios).

So while I agree with the EFF on many policies, their corporate leanings are a turn-off and isn't, imo, a solid ground for people doing day to day work in computing.

Yeah, even if the ACM or IEEE are not the organizations we need (and I'm not sure if they are or are not), we would be better off if we had a professional organization dedicated to promoting responsible practices.