Simply put: Tech loves a performance. Diversity reports made beautiful with all kinds of graphic pretties to announce the same thing everyone’s known forever, that tech isn’t actually diverse. Announcements of “diversity companies” that will actually make tech worse, run by people whose goal is to make money, like Project Include, or that claim to be able to fix diversity at your company when they couldn’t find a Black person to work for them for many, many months (and tried to rip off a Black consultant who offered to tell them how), like Paradigm.
Tech loves to pretend they’re on the cutting edge of real change, but your favorite “tech guy” leaves a sob story about how his friend became a Nazi, and thus he FELT COMPELLED to donate money to the NCGOP, which is now using it to fight against new leadership. These same ppl refuse to donate to the multiple causes of queer and trans people ACTUALLY SUFFERING under the NC GOP as well.
The newest failure in Techland is neveragain.tech. My favorite is really the quote at the beginning by Sarah Kendzior.
“Write a list of things you would never do. Because it is possible that in the next year, you will do them.”
And the list is truly a list of things most of the people who have signed neveragain.tech would never do, don’t know how to do, and never will bother to pay someone to teach them how to do.
It is the epitome of useless posturing, a giant signboard saying “I SIGNED NEVERAGAIN.TECH, WHICH SAYS I’M A GOOD PERSON NOW!” while most of the members will do whatever they have to for the money they have and enjoy keeping.
The text itself involves a claim to have educated oneself on how tech has damaged people in other countries, citing examples, and yet no mention of the genocides that are happening right here in our own country, partially exposed thanks to tech, but also partially more in danger because of it.
“Together, [they] stand to say: not on [their] watch, and never again.”
Sure sure. Let’s look over what they promise. Most of which is invisible and unprovable if it ever happens.
We refuse to participate in the creation of databases of identifying information for the United States government to target individuals based on race, religion, or national origin.
We will advocate within our organizations:
— to minimize the collection and retention of data that would facilitate ethnic or religious targeting.
— to scale back existing datasets with unnecessary racial, ethnic, and national origin data.
— to responsibly destroy high-risk datasets and backups.
— to implement security and privacy best practices, in particular, for end-to-end encryption to be the default wherever possible.
— to demand appropriate legal process should the government request that we turn over user data collected by our organization, even in small amounts.
First off, okay, so great. You personally won’t build the database. Like I’ve said before: That’s fine. There are millions of white supremacists at all of your companies who will be happy to take that money. Your company may decide to do it without your permission. You may end up working on a prime piece of code that makes it into the database without knowing it. This is a nice sentiment, I’ll even admit that, but ultimately useless unless you do more than just refuse.
Second, advocating within your organizations: real quick, I need to throw this shot…many of y’all on this list “advocated” for diversity within your all white dudebro organizations and you see how that worked out. Sorry if I’m not particularly impressed.
But…mostly you just plan on doing your jobs the way you should have done them in the first place, you mean? You know, ethically. Wow. That’s…that’s just amazing. And you’re going to try to take back mistakes you’ve already made and just hope that no one’s storing backups.
I’m just really amazed at how this manages to list 5 things that should already be happening and then marks them as somehow revolutionary enough to sign off on. Because the likelihood is that people were keeping quiet about it to keep their damn jobs. If this was happening already, what do you need to sign this for, except as performance? And if it wasn’t happening already, why do you expect us to believe you now?
In addition, advocate for doesn’t mean success. Where are the provisions for what you’ll do if you fail and your company chooses to go ahead and do them anyway? There are a couple listed in the remainder of neveragain.tech…
If we discover misuse of data that we consider illegal or unethical in our organizations:
— We will work with our colleagues and leaders to correct it.
— If we cannot stop these practices, we will exercise our rights and responsibilities to speak out publicly and engage in responsible whistleblowing without endangering users.
— If we have the authority to do so, we will use all available legal defenses to stop these practices.
— If we do not have such authority, and our organizations force us to engage in such misuse, we will resign from our positions rather than comply.
— We will raise awareness and ask critical questions about the responsible and fair use of data and algorithms beyond our organization and our industry.
“Work with colleagues and leaders to correct the problem”, “use…legal defenses to stop these practices” and “if we do not have such authority, and our organizations force us to engage in such misuse, we will resign from our positions rather than comply”.
This is the only truly actionable part of the entire piece. But it relies entirely on a few things.
- That any individual signee truly understands what unethical tech looks like (which I don’t actually believe because it’s a majority of rich white people no Black or brown person in their right mind would trust sight unseen).
- That rather than be amused by the fun idea of putting their job at risk, they are actually willing to do so. (See what I mean by performance? You claim that you’ll actually risk your job, but go out of your way to make sure that doesn’t happen by complying in small ways!)
- That we’ll actually have some sort of way to track that these things are happening, and that a signee will actually know what their company is doing to be able to even say anything.
So what happens if some lower or new employees only find out what their massive company is doing through a whistleblower? Should we expect a mass exodus? C’mon. Tech has never, ever, ever…EVER been about making big strides unless the goal is to make money off of them. Most of their former “performances” have done very little to actually make things better for the marginalized; rather, they’ve been to HIDE the shitty things they’re doing against us.
Why are we buying this as anything but a nice little tech show along the lines of other tech shows?
Furthermore, the second bullet point lists “rights”…except the link only goes to rights in California. So I guess only Cali techies matter. As a Black femme software engineer nowhere near California with 0 interest in California, I find it really terrifying that I have to continuously remind people in Silicon Valley that they aren’t the only bull in the motherfucking rodeo, but here we are, again.
So at the end of the day, I’m supposed to trust a group of very rich people that they actually know what they’re talking about and how to help mine? When they won’t even listen to the multiple Black and brown techies saying that this is a terrible idea? I trust that they know tech. But ethical tech is something that you need to speak to the communities you’re taking data from, which techies notoriously don’t do, or do so poorly they might as well have not bothered. Or worse, I’m supposed to believe in the good will of the signees simply because they signed?
Please. PLEASE give me and every brown tech person who refused to sign this a break. Please give us Black and brown tech people who criticize this a damn break. Tech has never given us a reason to trust them. Many of us know that we’re hanging on by a tenuous thread that would be happy to boot us at any moment. If you are East Asian: you also need not speak on the Black and brown people complaining because WE are the ones with necks on the line, with the most to lose…not you.
And we know a goddamn repeat performance of solidarity with no substance. Tech has only had about a gazillion of them, year after fucking year, after all.
