Open Web Rant

The Web is Being Polluted by Capital

I believe that the internet should be a freely available utility for all people. In itspurest form, the internet is the technology that enables the web - a portal through whichevery global citizen can access the totality of human knowledge for free. Insantaneousfree access to knowledge is the clearest facilitator of education we have witnessed sincethe invention of the printing press, and should be embraced as a tool forcourse-correcting centuries of global inequality deliberately inflicted by therestriction of knowledge to elite groups. When corrupted by the financial allure ofcentralization, the internet becomes a platform for exploitation and manipulation of theleast privileged members of society. My personal aspiration is to act in some way toreverse the trend toward this reality.

Stop Helping Them

I am greatly concerned about the consolidation of corporate control over the underlyingphysical infrastructure and technical implementation that powers the web. As a softwaredeveloper, I am deeply troubled that many of my peers are forced by financial necessityto work for organizations which are actively destroying the vision of the open web somany of us share. For this reason, I have taken an ethical stance to remove myself fromthe process of building a user-hostile web - I refuse to work for typical Silicon Valleycompanies who place shareholder value over social responsibility; I will no longer buildinfrastructure for any arm of the military industrial complex, nor will I assist in thecolonization of the web for the wealthy. I urge my peers who are in similar positions ofprivilege to join me in this pledge.

We deserve to spend our engineering talent workingfor organizations that create meaningful, accessible products & services without cannibalizing thesociety which enabled them to grow in the first place. The world will be a better placewhen engineers are poised to solve the immediate crises of our time - climateinstability, discriminatory allocation of housing & food, and the hijacking of computernetworks to enable state-sponsored surveillance and propaganda. You are not responsiblefor the circumstance you are born into, but you are the only one with the power to getout.

IEEE Computer Society Code of Ethics

For starters, let’s take a look at the Code of Ethics from a prominent professional societywithin one of the largest (and oldest) computingorganizations in the world - The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) ComputerSociety! The preamble begins below:

Computers have a central and growing role in commerce, industry, government, medicine, education, entertainment and society at large. Software engineers are those who contribute by direct participation or by teaching, to the analysis, specification, design, development, certification, maintenance and testing of software systems. Because of their roles in developing software systems, software engineers have significant opportunities to do good or cause harm, to enable others to do good or cause harm, or to influence others to do good or cause harm. To ensure, as much as possible, that their efforts will be used for good, software engineers must commit themselves to making software engineering a beneficial and respected profession. In accordance with that commitment, software engineers shall adhere to the following Code of Ethics and Professional Practice. IEEE CS

I’d like to highlight the inclusion of the line “To ensure…that their efforts will beused for good, software engineers must commit themselves to making software engineering abeneficial and respected profession” as by now it has become clear to the average citizen that weas an industry are quite far from this goal. Facebook harvests your data to sellhypertargeted ads - discrimination laws be damned, Google is courting China with political censorship, Amazon ignores the health and safety of its warehouse workers during a global pandemic, and virtually every major social network is laden with state-sponsored propaganda.

Is this because software engineers lean libertarian or simply have a laissez-faire attitudetoward technology’s impact on society? No. While I believe the responsibility lies with usengineers, the Big Tech oligarchs (and their profit-driven boards) are at ultimately atfault. The leader of an organization sets the tone for every member below them, and forthe entirety of my life, massive corporate giants have pushed knowledge workers to theprecipice of treason in the name of infinite growth, feeding their egos with missionstatements to “change the world”, disguising the chance to architect platforms of oppression as those of expression, and numerous other forms of tactful misdirection.

What follows this paragraph is a list of 8 principles that IEEE CS suggests embody the spirit of ethical software development. Critically, the first responsbility we have is to the public interest!

1. PUBLIC – Software engineers shall act consistently with the public interest.

2. CLIENT AND EMPLOYER – Software engineers shall act in a manner that is in the best interests of their client and employer consistent with the public interest.

3. PRODUCT – Software engineers shall ensure that their products and related modifications meet the highest professional standards possible.

4. JUDGMENT – Software engineers shall maintain integrity and independence in their professional judgment.

5. MANAGEMENT – Software engineering managers and leaders shall subscribe to and promote an ethical approach to the management of software development and maintenance.

6. PROFESSION – Software engineers shall advance the integrity and reputation of the profession consistent with the public interest.

7. COLLEAGUES – Software engineers shall be fair to and supportive of their colleagues.

8. SELF – Software engineers shall participate in lifelong learning regarding the practice of their profession and shall promote an ethical approach to the practice of the profession.

Public interest is priority number one, above employers and product and even self.If you are a user of the proprietary platforms mentioned above, ask yourself whethertheir leadership (Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, etc) has ever acted in thepublic interest. If you can find an example, consider that good deed against the backdropof violations - in some cases the total subversion of democracy - and drop me a line at anthony@symkowick.org.

Sources:

Code of Ethics: IEEE Computer Society. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.computer.org/education/code-of-ethicsCopyright © 1999 by the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. and the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc.

Day, M. (2020, June 5). Amazon’s heavily automated HR leaves workers in sick-leave limbo amid coronavirus crisis. Retrieved from https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazons-heavily-automated-hr-leaves-workers-in-sick-leave-limbo-amid-coronavirus-crisis/

Hern, A. (2017, June 19). Facebook and Twitter are being used to manipulate public opinion – report. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/19/social-media-proganda-manipulating-public-opinion-bots-accounts-facebook-twitter

Kao, J., & Li, M. S. (n.d.). How China Built a Twitter Propaganda Machine Then Let It Loose on Coronavirus. Retrieved from https://www.propublica.org/article/how-china-built-a-twitter-propaganda-machine-then-let-it-loose-on-coronavirus

Vincent, J. (2020, May 26). YouTube is deleting comments with two phrases that insult China’s Communist Party. Retrieved from https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270290/youtube-deleting-comments-censorship-chinese-communist-party-ccp