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We have been talking about "ethics" in tech for a while and I am not saying that that's irrelevant. But I feel like talking about "politics" is more relevant: Ethics tells you not to do or to do a thing. Politics explains why someone wants to build a thing and allows questioning that, challenging that. But we let tech hide behind "being neutral" or whatever BS they call it.
@tante I mean this is the classic "do artefacts have politics" thing right (yes). It's been a part of the discussions of ethics for a long time (was my introduction to it!). I don't think you can divorce ethics from politics quite so easily. I think ethics also requires that sort of reflective questioning. Otherwise how do you get to the "do or do not"?
@CatherineFlick my feeling right now is that we kinda settled on a set of "ethical princinples" whose politics are often largely unexamined (like privacy/data minimization or whatever). That's why the EFF still gets to shape so much of digital discourse while mostly being a libertarian org who doesn't share too many values with many of the organizations basing their thinking on their work.
@tante I mean I don't disagree with you, but I'm not sure what you mean by "largely unexamined" principles. Having written quite a few of them (e.g. ACM Code of Ethics) there was quite a lot of examination at the time of writing! But I think the issue is that it's sort of considered a "solved problem" rather than the start of an ongoing conversation. That's why you get big companies with useless "Responsible Innovation" teams or "trust and safety" teams that have no teeth.
@CatherineFlick @tante "industry unbound" is a really really good book by @ariezra on how compliance teams and regimes even those staffed by really motivated individuals become reduced to box-checking and decentered through decision-making by "engineering fiat"
@hipsterelectron @tante @ariezra I'll add it to the list! thanks for the rec