Well, to be honest, the negative beliefs about Facebook and Palantir are pretty common; I suspect rather a lot of people here would agree that Facebook is "poisoning the very communities that gave them opportunities to thrive" and Palantir is creating "a nightmare surveillance state".

If that is the case, it seems like Stephen would be just a little less hypocritical than most, trying to convince programmers to actually follow through.

A short while back, I mentioned here that Henry Petroski said that the origin of engineering ethics is that engineers shouldn't compete solely on price. That hasn't been the case for a long time, not since some bridge fell down and killed a bunch of people. Now, engineering ethics involves saying "no" when you boss wants you to do something you feel is unethical, illegal, or just plain stupid. Nobody wants to do that. It hurts. But some people think it's a part of professional behavior.

I'm certainly not going to argue against your points here, since I agree with them, by and large. I personally am not a fan of FB or Palantir, and I suspect I dislike the surveillance state more than the average HN reader. My comment was more on his word choice (which I find to be a bit hyperbolic)

twitter isnt the place for reasonable nuanced discussion, if you think facebook et al. are bad then you are supposed to agree with the hyperbolic black and white language.

although this isnt twitter, i sometimes feel like the commenters on HN have spent too much time on twitter. i cant stand opinionated twitter "personalities" that tweet more than they code, and it's been bleeding over to other places as well.

> "What exactly is the point of all of your long codes of conduct and community guidelines if the primary use for your language is the creation of a nightmare surveillance state?"

That is a weird point of view, but unfortunately not all that uncommon (when applied as a general worldview) right now. I think it's worth noting that it's generally anti-open source and free software, as it generally boils down to "you should control this thing you created as a group" as opposed to "we all created this and anyone can use it for anything, but maybe we require you to share changes so it's self perpetuating".

In my personal opinion, it's the worst type of small community social pressure taken to unhealthy extremes brought wholesale to the internet age. That is, poorly rationalized, aimed people that associate with the target rather than the target, and in this case "associate" is so tenuous as include the people that made a better hammer because someone used it to build something objectionable.

When I find this I find myself wondering if these people even really believe this, or they just express this as a strategy to influence people? I don't know enough about Dielh to know what I think is more likely.

> include the people that made a better hammer because someone used it to build something objectionable.

This is exactly why I find his argument absurd. Programming languages are just tools, there is no moral judgement attached to them. You don't get mad at people who manufacture other tools that are used for nefarious purposes.

That's very relevant context. I had an impression that he considers Cardano worse than Facebook, while IMO it's mostly harmless project compared to major software employers.

I find it ironic that he should criticize Plantir and Facebook for creating a surveillance state, yet also crypto for allowing anonymous monetary transactions.

I didn't see in this article any criticism of cryptocurrency for _allowing anonymous monetary transactions_.

The criticisms that are made are:

1) That cryptocurrency's "entire existence is purely predicated on the appeal as a speculative investment first and not on its efficacy to transmit value".

2) That crypto exchanges are "effectively digital gambling sites, in which unsophisticated investors trade unregulated products on markets that are directly manipulated by exchanges with no oversight".