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Re:How Google Discovered the Value of Surveillance by rkagerer on Monday September 23, 2019 @12:47PM (#21050687)
One way developers and product managers can help craft the world you envision is to exercise good moral judgement when confronted with choices that may lead to degraded sovereignty of personal data. The same way a civil engineer ought not sign off on a bridge design that's compromised.

I realize not everyone is in a position to take a stand, and some will argue others will inevitably step in to do the shady deed. Keep in mind bold actions of integrity will often inspire others.

Re:How Google Discovered the Value of Surveillance by brenden2 on Monday September 23, 2019 @12:55PM (#21050779)
It's really, really hard to do this when it goes against the bottom line, no matter how good of a person you are.

The company will eventually act in ways that serve to increase revenue. Thus, if your incentives are misaligned, the actions you take to increase revenue will be harmful to users.

Re:How Google Discovered the Value of Surveillance by behringer on Monday September 23, 2019 @02:13PM (#21051735)
Sometimes doing what's right lands you in prison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio
Re:How Google Discovered the Value of Surveillance by uoaei on Monday September 23, 2019 @03:16PM (#21052489)
It's important to reiterate that this isn't an issue with companies, nor with people per se. The issue is that the bottom line is the only incentive in capitalist economies.

One can dream up other forms of economies where the incentive would not be there. Some have already been discussed in great detail over the past couple centuries.

Re:How Google Discovered the Value of Surveillance by rkagerer on Saturday September 28, 2019 @02:25PM (#21101999)
It's interesting to see number of ultra-wealthy individuals who refocus their lives on philanthropy. Perhaps there's a point at which reputation and "good karma" became a more valuable commodity.
Re:How Google Discovered the Value of Surveillance by TeMPOraL on Monday September 23, 2019 @04:47PM (#21053440)
The extra problem here is: can the alternative forms of economy survive in competition with capitalism? If not, then they're unfortunately a non-starter.

(It's like with what is said about early humans discovering agriculture. Settling down and growing crops led to worse health and less happy life than hunter-gathering, but still gave people competitive advantage over the societies that did not make the transition.)

Re:How Google Discovered the Value of Surveillance by uoaei on Monday September 23, 2019 @05:23PM (#21053858)
This is exactly the reason the USSR fell. Sure, a lot of morally reprehensible actions were performed on innocent citizens, but that's not what actually ended it. The US et al. fought the USSR by destroying their crops and imposing high tariffs. The USSR couldn't produce everything it needed and so suffered because it still had to defer to the capitalist nations for the rest (who were, measured using the capitalist GDP metric, accelerating far in front of the USSR). The "communism" employed by the leaders of the USSR wasn't as profit-hungry as other strategies and so the federation suffered.
Re:How Google Discovered the Value of Surveillance by maximente on Monday September 23, 2019 @01:45PM (#21051383)
there are corporate structures that allow for decisions that aren't profit-seeking above all else. private corps and social purpose corps, are just two types:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_purpose_corporation

Re:How Google Discovered the Value of Surveillance by caseysoftware on Monday September 23, 2019 @03:41PM (#21052755)
There's a HUGE difference in those.

A civil engineer can analyze a structure an say "based on dimensions, projected load, etc, etc this is likely to fail in these ways" and there are estimates, measurements and equations to back up the conclusion. More importantly, since they're based on physical principles, other civil engineers can repeat the analysis and should get the same conclusion.

But "good moral judgement" is an entirely subjective term. Whether you grew up atheist, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, agnostic, etc, etc or have a drive to improve the world or silence dissenting or harmful ideas or or or.. will have a major impact in what you consider, how you analyze, and therefore the conclusion you come to. And my conclusion - or even your conclusion a year from now - may not be the same.

Ethics and morality is not science and can't be reduced to a simple, repeatable equation.