SRE for Good: Engineering Intersections between Operations and Social Activism
summary
Engineers are told to prevent harm by acting early: catch biased models (one government classifier was changed so it if true return detain), stop platforms that correlate with violence (a one‑standard‑deviation rise in certain Facebook group use links to a 50% increase in anti‑refugee attacks), and harden incident response (keep minimal logs, refuse overbroad warrants by handing compiled binaries). Collective tactics include 5% of engineers willing to halt projects, coordinated escalation paths, and treating ethics as continuous engineering rather than a checkbox.
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chapters (29)
- 0:00Intro
- 3:14Working Conditions
- 4:39Product Ethics
- 5:45Ethics of Tech Ecosystem
- 7:06Intersections
- 8:04Tech's Ethical Crisis
- 9:11ICE Software always recommends DETAIN
- 11:42Your Ethics Matter
- 12:44We've had a few successes.
- 14:53Learn from events
- 15:19The St. Paul Principles
- 17:24Principles of Organizing
- 19:53Company Cultures
- 20:25Industry Ethics Codes
- 20:47Engineers are valuable
- 21:42Local Labor Laws
- 22:10Whistleblowing
- 23:07Be prepared for the worst.
- 25:54Early awareness
- 26:34Building Employee Networks
- 27:01Venting vs. Problem Solving
- 28:15Identifying Decision-Makers
- 28:35Effective Persuasion
- 29:21If all else fails...
- 31:277. Avoiding Burnout
- 32:268. Virtuous Cycles
- 33:29Strategic Tactical
- 33:43Parallels to Privacy Engineering
- 33:53No Bandaid Solutions
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