I was just following orders, I can’t be held responsible!
Comment on YouTube devs be like
candyman337@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Shareholders. Devs are just trying to not get fired
sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
candyman337@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Well yeah if we’re applying that to atrocities and murder it wouldn’t be a valid argument. But these are workers that don’t have a union that are sometimes living paycheck to paycheck. They’re just trying to not be homeless.
I don’t work at YouTube but speaking as a tired, underpaid dev who works for a company he hates, I am just trying to get by. I don’t even have PTO right now. I do plan to form a union in my area though.
sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
I’ve worked a number of tech jobs and quit all of the ones that involved me directly contributing to or outright directly performing an immoral act.
I have no respect… pity, sure, but no respect for anyone that knowingly contributes to making the world worse for other people.
You are trying to form a union, that is commendable, an actual step toward positive change.
Most people?
They knowingly contribute to systems that make the vast majority of people worse off, and then bitch about other people doing the same thing in another field.
Or they don’t know or care about any harm their work causes, but still bitch about everyone else doing the same thing.
First, do no harm is apparently too difficult to apply to one’s own life.
If we all keep acting as cogs in the machine that makes everything worse… everything will obviously get worse.
ora@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
Two main points: Workers individually are powerless, that’s the point of unions. I work in the media industry and if I quit a job with no notice it’ll take me minimum 6 months to find a new one. That’s 6 months of grabbing an income wherever I can, and if we rule out shareholder owned entities that’s easily 6 months without an income entirely.
candyman337@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
You’re getting massively downvoted, but you have some valid things you’re saying, but also some shortsighted things, I think.
To be able to quit a job if they wanted you to do something that would contribute to making someone else’s life worth is a place of privilege, most people are living paycheck to paycheck. At least in the US. Because of that, most people, even in the tech sector, don’t necessarily like their job they just like not being homeless. So they stay quiet and get the job done. I don’t think it’s that they don’t care, I just think it’s that they don’t realize that if they were to unionize and defend themselves they could get a lot of change done. To make people realize that takes a good leader and/or someone to take initiative, and those types of things are conveniently left out of our education. We are taught to be good workers and to be grateful of the bosses for paying us. It can take quite some effort to make people realize that they generate the revenue of the business and they are the most valuable asset in the company: the workers. Especially down in the south of the US where I live.
nicknonya@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
“ads are the same thing as being a nazi!!!”
sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
In the long run, its not that different.
We’ve already seen how the mass proliferation of targeted advertisements on corporate social media platforms promulgates mis/disinformation, radicalizes and stupifies and enrages society … to the point that all they understand is pathos, and then they vote for a fascist.
carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
there’s a difference between making a bad UI and orchestrating a genocide, yknow
sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
If your bad UI makes money by profiting off of the mass distribution of advertisement for political propoganda and politicians and social movements that want to create a totalitarian fascist society…
It’s just genocide with extra steps.
Voyajer@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Yes sacrifice your livelihood so that someone else can implement the feature anyway.
Just use an ad blocker.
sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
Yes sacrifice your livelihood so that someone else can implement the feature anyway.
Yes, that’s called having a backbone, aligning your actions with your own moral code.
This is the same logic as ‘well if I had quit my executioner job, someone else would have done it, therefore I am a morally blameless and non hypocritical executioner who is against the death penalty.’
Just use an ad blocker.
Obviously this is the easy solution for yourself personally. Costs you nothing, benefits yourself, allows the systemic bad practice to continue.
The actually accurate analogue would be to contribute toward actually creating or maintaining a free and widely usable adblocker, an alternate platform, to do something that helps other people overcome the problem.
RandomVideos@programming.dev 5 weeks ago
Sacrificing your livelihood is much more comparable to killing people than to adding some extra ads on youtube
jaybone@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
It seems like a lot of this perception originates in the gaming industry where in some cases the devs actually do have quite a bit of control over user experience. In the rest of the software world, this stuff is driven by product management / marketing / whatever title they give to the people who define requirements.
criss_cross@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Deva are beholden to customers.
And the highest paying customers are enterprises that want to advertise. No one cares about the lemmings that actually watch videos.