The gut reaction of too many geeks is "I can't believe you'd install a smart fridge in your home". But we need to think about this differently. Imagine if vehicles had no mandatory safety checks. How many people know anything about car safety? You'd get people barrelling down the highway with broken suspension, bald tyres or worse. We are the professionals. It's our responsibility to keep the public safe and stop shit like this happening. The software engineers who implemented this at Samsung should be struck off. Well, we could start by having something to be struck off from. I'm done with assuming individual developers will be scrupulous. We need real consequences to come from higher up. It's way past the point that this is fucking with people's lives.
> You'd get people barrelling down the highway with broken suspension, bald tyres or worse.
You have this in most of the US, and people rail against any attempt to bring it in because they're frightened that garages will not give them their cars back if they think it's got something wrong with it.
I've seen people driving cars in the US that you wouldn't even be able to get a scrapyard to take in the UK, they'd tell you to just sweep it into a bag and put it in the recycling.
It also falls apart over when more and more products become "smart" to the point where you can't really even buy one without things like this, like TVs now or cars for that matter. I'm dreading the day where I end up forced to watch an ad before starting my car.
I do think some kind of ethics training/education/licensing/organization is long overdue for software devs.
It's the smug superiority too many "tech smart" people have.
"Why would you buy HP? Everyone knows that it stands for Horrible Product."
"Serves you right for getting a TV with built in Netflix, everyone knows that it's a backdoor to botnet!"
I don't think it's apologetics for dogpoop corporate behavior, directly. But it has that effect because those of us with knowledge enjoy being smart asses or belittling those whose ignorance rewards trends we disagree with.
People should be able to go into a store and buy a thing without researching how evil it has become in the decade or two since the last time they did. Or move into a house pre-furnished. That is a failure of legislatures, not of average Joe.
Real consequences from higher up... for ads on a fridge? Corporate execs only care about money. Engineers aren't going to get themselves fired every time someone asks for a feature they don't agree with. Government? We don't need more nanny laws.
What we need is for people to think for themselves. The powers that be aren't going to save you from all the bad things. Call out the bad things to educate people, and vote with your wallet.
There's a whole growing class of people that do not have the ability to vote with their wallet. Fridges, TVs etc will all be at their cheapest because they're subsidized by ads. Or worse, if you're a renter then there's a big incentive for apartments to put up smart fridges in every room both as a selling point and for ad revenue.
How would you propose to deal with apartments having every fridge be a smart one?
I'll admit, I hadn't thought of subsidized fridges. What a bleak and depressing idea! I suppose I'd just tape over the screen or "accidentally" break it and complain to my landlord.
Not discounting mental health effects of advertising assault, but both of those things can have direct life-threatening impact, so I'm not sure they're a valid comparison to choosing a refrigerator. You don't even need certification to be an auto-mechanic in my country. That said, the previous response about subsidized refrigerators forced me to reconsider the issue as a purchasing choice.
I still don't think it's realistic to expect the software engineers implementing questionable features to refuse to do so, or be punished for following orders. Sure some might choose to quit and work elsewhere, but their seat will be filled by someone else.
If it's not a consumer choice issue, in a future where most refrigerators are subsidized by ads, I could see a case for regulation, but my hopes are low tbh. We already have ads everywhere, so why would an appliance like a fridge or washing machine get special treatment? Personally I'd love a world where there's no ads except in dedicated opt-in places, both physical and digital. I have zero faith I'll ever see that.
How do you propose we stop our impending doom? Where are your proposed consequences coming from? I think this is an interesting social issue, I'm open to having my mind changed, and I'm trying to have a real discussion, but if you've just got more snide "bro" comments, we can leave it here.
Real professionals don't get to use the Nuremberg defence. A pharmacist cannot blindly give an absurd prescription, no matter what the doctor orders. A nurse is expected to double check dosages. An electrician can't just short circuit a fuse that keeps breaking just because you tell them to do it. These professionals can be held criminally liable if they don't follow regulations and good practice.
As an industry we need to grow up. The stuff we do has a real effect on people's lives. It's not just fun and games any more. Other industries have things like professional registers and regulators. We need to accept that being a software engineer is a powerful and privileged position and with that has to come responsibility. Privilege without responsibility is an injustice.
As for how to actually implement this I would start with ethics and safety being considered a primary concern in software engineering. Computer science is academic, but if you want to be software engineer you need to demonstrate some understanding of ethics and safety. I'm talking certifications, professional bodies and registers etc. Things other professions have had for decades.
The free market approach seems lovely in practice. Do you know what the definition of a free market is? Part of it is that consumers have perfect knowledge. That is, they know everything they need to be able to make the correct decision. How many people do you know with perfect knowledge of anything? You've already identified the other problem which is a free market requires low barriers to entry, which fridges and electronics do not. A free market is a theoretical concept. It's no more real than my hypothetical regulatory system.
I agree the industry needs to grow up. The YOLO move fast, what tests, what security, sucks. I'm having a hard time seeing your vision of individually licensed professionals though. I hear what you're saying, but it seems totally unrealistic IMO.
Your comparisons (pharmacist, nurse, electrician) are all part of specific regulated industries, in roles where the individual's actions can mean life or death. Software engineers, and the greater IT domain, cover an incredibly wide area, reaching into most other industries. Most of these people have very little chance of directly influencing a life or death situation.
Say you take a subset of software folks, create a regulated standard for licensing your real professionals, they get ethics and safety training, take tests, get certs, etc.. They're hopefully good, quality engineers, perhaps sought after by regulated industries. How are those individuals going to stop ads in your fridge? It's not their call. A business dude at Samsung or whoever is going to pitch the latest invasive ad idea with projected revenue, execs will smell profit and direct engineering to implement. Unless there's regulation of the home appliance industry or the advertising industry, Samsung won't give a shit about hiring your expensive licensed engineers for the job.
I don't know what you're talking about regarding perfect consumer knowledge in a free market. To my understanding, a free market is just dynamic pricing based on supply and demand and competition between sellers, but I'm not particularly educated in economics. Regardless, you don't need perfect knowledge to be informed or make a purchasing decision.
I replied to your original post because it's common sentiment I see often, where outrage sparks an appeal to some authority to fix things, which I find frustrating because it's often not actionable or realistic. I applaud the spirit of your call to the community to do better, but I don't agree with your specifics and the vague wish for consequences from above.
Our views aren't completely incompatible though, you're angry, I'm angry, and we're talking about it which is a win in my book. I'm promoting a different type of grassroots resistance, but by all means fight the fight to enact your vision of regulation somehow.
