alt Hacker NewsI had no safety net and nearly became homeless after draining my savings helping a family member in the months after this happened. I come from a very poor background and have no family to rely on. I spent several years as a teenager and in my early 20s homeless, without parents or anyone to help me financially. I starved and was very ill.
I say this to make it clear that I didn't make this decision free of consequences, and it was unthinkable at the time for many from better backgrounds than I. I have experienced worse conditions than most of my peers ever will and my soul is still not for sale. There is no excuse. Selling heroin on a street corner is more ethical than what is going on at Google and Meta.
I did not mean to imply that you did not face any consequences. Sorry if that came across that way. But my point stands. While I heavily disagree with almost everything Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, etc. stand for, I cannot hold the developers in these companies to the same level of judgment as I would politicians, lobbyists, and managers. You may compare selling heroin on the street to whatever stuff is going on at these companies, and I might agree or disagree. But the fact is — selling heroin on the street is illegal, while training a recommendation model is not. Quite the opposite. And the complacency and failure to put reins on this situation 15 years ago is a deep failure of our civilization. As long as we train people at university for these positions and pull them in with such incredibly high salaries, I can't not forgive them to a large degree. I do not forgive the policymakers that enable this madness, however. I understand that's just moving the blame to a higher level — that's not the intention. It's a systemic failure, and it needs systemic change.