Jason Antic

This is going to offend a lot of techies, but if you accept that high paying job in exchange for looking the other way as you work for a company that is destroying democracy, then yes, you're one of the baddies. And yes I realize it's not an easy decision. Been there done that.

I think ultimately we, the engineers, the people writing those lines of code, making those tools, whatever, are responsible for what these lines of code and tools produce; however far from us they might feel like. I also agree that isn’t easy and there are a *lot* of grey areas.

So the person who invented the hammer is responsible for all wrong done with hammers? If you want a scalable moral model, it’s easier to put responsibility at the user of the tool rather than the builder.

When you have unseen factors that drive behavior, like algorithms that drive clicks with conspiracy theories because they're popular, then you've entered the realm of mass manipulation. That is to say, social media is not just a neutral tool for users to be "responsible" with.

I fully agree. Technology is not neutral. Data is not neutral. The problem imho is not so much putting responsibility at either the producer or user but rather putting responsibility in technology. Let tech make decisions rather than humans, that is truly scary and worrisome.