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posted by
martyb
on Tuesday November 22 2016, @08:04PM
from the "code"-of-ethics-needs-debugging? dept.
from the "code"-of-ethics-needs-debugging? dept.
Earlier this week, a post written by programmer and teacher Bill Sourour went viral. It's called "Code I'm Still Ashamed Of."
In it he recounts a horrible story of being a young programmer who landed a job building a website for a pharmaceutical company. The whole post is worth a read, but the upshot is he was duped into helping the company skirt drug advertising laws in order to persuade young women to take a particular drug.
He later found out the drug was known to worsen depression and at least one young woman committed suicide while taking it. He found out his sister was taking the drug and warned her off it.
By sake of comparison, take a look at the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (Adopted by ACM Council 10/16/92.)
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Programmers Talk About the Unethical and Illegal Things They’ve Been Asked To Do
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Everyone hates me because I'm paranoid.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 22 2016, @08:39PM
An auto dealership once convinced me to trade my old explorer in rather than scrap it, a few months later I saw photos of it having been in a major accident caused by component wear and failure and included some injuries. Is it my fault for not scrapping it? No I just sold it to someone else.
I do not plan to RTFA but unless they told him to put the marketing BS on the website, it is not his concern.
That said if they told him to do it and against his conscience he did it anyways, then he deserves to live with his regret. I have walked away from multiple jobs when they put me in unethical situations and I plan on doing this as long as I am working. At the end of the day I have to live with myself. When I was stuck living out of a van with a propane torch to make ramen, it was worth it because at the very least my actions never harmed someone else (other than all that greenhouse gas).
And before someone responds with "well someone else will just do it for them", that's fine, they can live with themselves if they want to. But I will still be able to sleep at night and to me that's what matters.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 22 2016, @08:51PM
You are a good human being. Continue being alive!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Tuesday November 22 2016, @10:20PM
If they enabled something they didn't expect, certainly. On the other hand if you build someone a weapon knowing how they plan to abuse it, then you carry a share of the responsibility of that abuse. Similarly if you create a tool that you know can be easily abused for great gain - human nature being what it is the existence of that tool nearly guarantees it's abuse, and you bear a responsibility for bringing it into the world, even if you're confident that those who will initially control it have no intention of doing so.
And before you think I'm arguing we should stop advancement for fear of what *might* happen, I'm not. But if your creation gets twisted into something evil then it's right and proper that you should feel guilty about the monster you helped create. *Especially* if you saw that potential before you created it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @12:05AM
THat's clearly what happened. The article is maybe twice as long as the comment you wrote. You should really just read it.