You are a human being. Having a gun put in your hand and $200000 shoved in your hands if you shoot the bagged individual in the head is not excusable under Pavlovian conditioning. Further, the starving artist is a counterexample to the entire vein of thinking.

Marketing/advertising is an industry dead set on convincing everyone that that (Pavlovian conditioning) is actually all there is to how it works though. I can only hope enough people wake up and grow a spine sufficient for us to start severely ostracizing and impacting those of us that keep making it easier for our fellow man to be targeted by immoral, power hungry autocrats.

> I can only hope enough people wake up and grow a spine

If that's all you can do, then I might as well go apply at Meta right now.

You seem to have edited your comment. Let me bring back what you seem to have dumped.

>You could also stop participating in the attention economy, rewarding advertisers and paying people who show you ads. But that? That's tough. It's much easier to hope that Meta realizes what a bad, bad boy they've been and judges all of humanity like the Third Impact.

Perhaps you think I haven't sworn off that bullshit? Perhaps you think you're talking to someone who hasn't snapped the Golden Handcuffs, and drawn a line in the sand that, goddamnit, this world may be eating itself, but I. Will. Not. Be. Complicit. Nor will I make life easy or fun for anyone who is.

You ultimately decide what your legacy is going to be, and if you're willing to let yourself be bribed into the damnation of your fellow men by building machines for those unworthy or completely untrustworthy in their use of them, that's on your soul. Not mine.

I'll starve and die to ensure what I could make, that could shackle everyone, does not get made. I'll suffer privation, hardship, and pain, that those who come after me, whether descended from me or not, can at least not have to retread the exact same ground, or suffer in bondage to some tech empowered autocrat.

Sleep well, sir, in your appeasement of the Golden Calf of our generation. But know well, that the smell of it will pervade everything you do, and your cruelty and callousness, and disconcern for your fellows will come around and be repayed sevenfold. The bank account ultimately changes nothing. The world has it's way of slamming down and humbling the high just as much as the low.

Or listen to the voice inside you desperately calling out that something is wrong about all this and start doing the hard and painful, yet right thing. Make the world hurt for these bastards. Stop taking the easy way out. Set your own bars lower, and chain your avarice. Refuse their baccanal call.

Sometimes, what we don't do matters more than what we do.

I don't care. I won't starve, live in my car or go hat-in-hand to my relatives to cover for rent. I did that for years while attending primary education and I will happily ruin whatever little middle-class pastiche you're so desperate to protect if it puts a roof over my head. I personally know dozens of people who would quit their job to subsume that compensation. The fact that it's all legal? I won't even remember who cares by the time my head hits the pillow. It's a problem for someone else.

You hate ads? Surveillance drives you nuts? This is the consequence of a dysfunctional government. You can protest the businesses all you want, it's their job to be apathetic. Make a big show of it, take off your flair and tell your AWS or Apple manager exactly how much all it sucks. They'll nod, write it all down on a legal pad, put it in a folder and refer to it when your next employer calls asking for cross-references. It would all make for a very touching scene of career suicide, and then your replacement can have a technical interview scheduled in by the end of the week. That is the sum of damages you can enjoy as the fruit of your protesting this company.

It's funny how much Americans care about their legacy while doing nothing worth remembering. A Microsoft employee who donates their disproportionate wage to an animal shelter is doing more to benefit the world than some shmuck who got mad at capitalism for the fly in his soup. John Carmack worked for Meta, and still has more of a legacy than every "hacker" on this site combined. If your identity is so shallow that it's defined by nothing other than the person who pays you, you have more serious issues than finding an ethical employer.