Opt-out is bullshit, it’s unethical. Unless people specifically give their consent to their content being used for training data, and are compensated if they wish to be compensated for that privilege, then it’s just not morally defensible. Legally defensible? Sure, maybe so. But we don’t like to support companies who are merely abiding by the letter of the law, we want them to abide by the spirit of the law and of treating their customers with respect and consideration. This is not that at all. 😕
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!
The tech industry understands consent just fine, the corpos will ignore the idea however if it means less revenue and can’t have that because capitalism.
I’m giving the benefit of the doubt to every one of these shitty clickbait article authors about “tech industry” and “software engineering circles” that the authors aren’t dense and know random code monkeys aren’t evil or too stupid to figure out opt-in is more ethical, they just work for corps that have to make money because capitalism, but they post their stupid garbage anyway because it gets clicks.
Don’t post it here.
Nowhere in the article does the author pin blame on individual employees. “Tech industry” obviously refers to corporations, not individual contributors. The title isn’t clickbait.
“Tech industry” does not mean that, it could just as well mean “people in the tech industry” which means “people who work in the tech industry”. The author uses this because it’s the boogeyman du jour with Sam altman and such but his entire essay is dancing around the point that it’s capitalism and has nothing to do with tech or is even specific to it. They would’ve probably had more of an article if they tried to specifically tie it to Nestle than the Tech Industry but it wouldn’t get them those precious clicks.
This also isn’t only the tech industry, it’s any industry. Pushy door to door salespeople aren’t in the tech industry.