Comment on Police Unmask Millions of Surveillance Targets Because of Flock Redaction Error
JollyG@lemmy.world 3 days agoAt no point in this conversation have I ever said that tech in an abstract sense is inherently good or bad. The point that I am making— and this is the last time I will make it— is that it is not interesting to talk about the ethics of some technology in an abstraction in cases where the actual tech is as it is actually implemented is clearly bad.
Saying “tech is neutral” is a dodge. People say that to avoid thinking about the ethics of what it is they are doing.
InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 3 days ago
But that is what you are doing and I am saying that it is people who are responsible for the implementation.
JollyG@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Saying “tech is neutral” is a dodge. People say that to avoid thinking about the ethics of what it is they are doing.
InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 3 days ago
People are the ones who do things with tech; hence they are responsible for the actions. Tech is just an object with no will of its own to do right or wrong.
JollyG@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Last attempt, I swear.
By digressing to abstraction, good people can and do justify building tech for immoral purposes. It is irrelevant that tech is not inherently good or bad in cases where it is built to do bad things. Talking about potential alternate uses in cases where tech is being used to do bad is just a way of avoiding the issues.
I have no problem calling flock or facebooks tech stack bad because the intentions behind the tech are immoral. The application of the tech by those organizations is for immoral purposes (making people addicted, invading their privacy etc). The tech is an extension of bad people trying to do bad things. Commentary about tech’s abstract nature is irrelevant at that point. Yeah, it could be used to do good. But it’s not. Yeah, it is not in-and of-itself good or bad. Who cares? This instantiation of the tech is immoral, because it’s purposes are immoral.
The engineers who help make immoral things possible should think about that, rather than the abstract nature of their technology. In these cases, saying technology is neutral is to invite the listener to consider a world that doesn’t exist instead of the one that does.