Feels like accident forgiveness from insurance, right

I have no problem calling flock or facebooks tech stack bad because the intentions behind the tech are immoral.

And did those assemble themselves to be evil? Or did someone make them that way?

To go back go my openCV example it is just tech. It does not become a lpr with a cop back end until flock configures it that way

The engineers who help make immoral things possible should think about that

Yes, exactly my point.

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.

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.

But that is what you are doing and I am saying that it is people who are responsible for the implementation.

People who have literally made tools to do bad things justified it by claiming that tech is neutral in an abstract sense

Bold a keyword there for you

This issue with asserting that technology is neutral is it lets the people who develop it ignore the impacts of their work.

I don’t see how that is the case. The tech is neutral, but the engineers know what the application they are hired for is. That is determined by people and subject to morality.

Would you say openCV or the people working on it are evil? I wouldn’t. I would say that once someone takes that project for flock is evil.

I think this framing is more important when talking with the general public as they are likely to walk away thinking that its the tech that creates problems and not the for profit corporations who will be free to continue doing the same, so long as they don’t use that tech.

You are doing harm through the technology you help to develop.

All technology has that potential. Some more than others. The issue is that institutions, like flock, exist solely for the evil applications.

to make it easier for corporations and the state to invade the privacy of individuals.

And that is what we need to focus our messaging on. The evil people and institutions enabling this as those are permanent. Tech comes and goes (and should not be anthropomized). Focusing on the tech just means in institution looks for another path. Focusing on the institution is to block the at the source.

Uhh okay? Language and its use changes. If you want to be effective in getting your point across you need to keep up. The choir in lemmy isn’t who needs to be persuaded.

Feel free to be technically correct, but I would like to see the idea take mass adoption instead.

Your phrasing seems to imply I said it was, but I never said that.

I am aware, but i am using it in a colloquial sense. And you understood my point; which is exactly how the general public that needs to be swayed will interpret it.

Yup, and its important to communicate that or we risk losing our voice in the general public and look like Luddites

That’s going to be unpopular to say around here, but the truth is that technology is largely amoral.