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1. Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Monday, 22-May-2023 16:41:54 JST Aral Balkan

   • Timnit Gebru (she/her)

   “[You] don’t want someone like me who’s going to get in your way. I think it made it really clear that unless there is external pressure to do something different, companies are not just going to self-regulate. We need regulation and we need something better than just a profit motive.” – @timnitGebru

   https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/may/22/there-was-all-sorts-of-toxic-behaviour-timnit-gebru-on-her-sacking-by-google-ais-dangers-and-big-techs-biases

   Remember this next time someone tells you they work on “ethical this or that” in Big Tech. If they still have a job there, they’re doing PR.

   #BigTech

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Monday, 22-May-2023 18:23:09 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Andreas, DJ3EI, he/him

     @dj3ei Deutsche Bahn is a state-owned company. It is hardly what I would call Big Tech.

   • Andreas, DJ3EI, he/him (dj3ei@mastodon.radio)'s status on Monday, 22-May-2023 18:23:11 JST Andreas, DJ3EI, he/him

     in reply to

     • Timnit Gebru (she/her)

     German rail (DB) is a big company operating one if the most heavily utilized rail nets in the world. I was working on a big tech project with them that tries to squeeze even more traffic on the existing and future new tracks.

     A lot of traffic needs shifting from roads to rails to fight climate catastrophe. So I thought my job had an ethical component and was a good job, overall.

     You seem to imply big tech is always bad, @aral . Here, too?

     @timnitGebru

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Monday, 22-May-2023 20:33:20 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Andreas, DJ3EI, he/him

     @dj3ei Dude, ok, if you can’t tell the difference between a VC-funded trillion-dollar Silicon Valley corporations owned billionaires and a state-owned organisation that (theoretically at least) belongs to us all that’s on you.

     Just don’t fucking call criticism of Big Tech “hate speech.” You can fuck right off with that kind of right libertarian rhetoric.

     Good bye.

   • Andreas, DJ3EI, he/him (dj3ei@mastodon.radio)'s status on Monday, 22-May-2023 20:33:21 JST Andreas, DJ3EI, he/him

     in reply to

     @aral

     What we did in that project sure felt like big tech. (Having been starved financially for decades, DB is often underestimated...)

     A privately-owned rail company could have a similar project going on, don't you think? So the same project is ethical if the company doing it is state-owned, and unethical if not? Makes no sense to me.

     "There is no such thing as ethical [projects/jobs in] Big Tech."

     Isn't that populist hate speech, illegitimately moving from "most are unethical" to "all"?