Amir H. Payberah - 2025-05-18
How are "values" recognized, practiced, and acted upon in the everyday work of technology practitioners?
This was the core theme of our journal club discussion yesterday. We began with "Who Should Act?" [1], which offers a framework for thinking about ethics in practice. It argues that ethical responsibility in tech is not simply about applying abstract principles like fairness or transparency, but is shaped by emotional labor, organizational dynamics, and how practitioners frame their own roles. The authors identify three recurring stances: (1) the I-stance, where individuals take personal responsibility and often experience emotional strain, (2) the we-stance, where responsibility is distributed across teams or organizations but may become diluted, and (3) the they-stance, where responsibility is shifted onto external actors like ethicists or users. These positions are not fixed but fluid, revealing how responsibility can be both claimed and deflected depending on the context. The paper shows that even well-intentioned practitioners may feel disempowered when institutions lack the structures to support ethical action. Systemic change, not just individual awareness, is necessary to make responsibility real and sustainable.
This framework helped us read the next two papers as real-world examples of these dynamics. In "It's About Power" [2], the authors zoom in on software engineers and reveal how ethical concerns, from privacy violations to manipulative system design, are widespread but tightly constrained by workplace hierarchies, financial insecurity, and a dominant culture that prioritizes profit. The engineers interviewed are often aware of ethical issues and want to act, but their options are limited. Some leave, some try to push from within, but many end up burned out or disillusioned. What becomes clear is that ethical intention alone is not enough, and engineers need the power, support, and collective structures to act on their values.
The third paper, "Whistleblowers and Big Tech" [3], focuses on these issues through the stories of whistleblowers, especially women of color, who have spoken out against harmful practices. The paper shows how raising ethical concerns within powerful tech firms often leads to retaliation, dismissal, or silencing through NDAs. These individuals spoke out against surveillance, racial bias, political manipulation, and extractive labor practices not just as acts of dissent, but as commitments to care and justice. Their experiences show how companies often use ethics initiatives to maintain a positive public image, rather than to confront or address systemic problems. While some whistleblowers aim to reform the system from within, others push for more fundamental change, drawing on feminist and anti-racist critiques to challenge the deeper structures of tech power.
Taken together, these three papers remind us that ethics in technology is not just a matter of individual conscience or compliance. It is a political and collective practice, shaped by who holds power, who is allowed to speak, and what forms of resistance are made possible.
[1] Who Should Act? Distancing and Vulnerability in Technology Practitioners' Accounts of Ethical Responsibility, K. Popova et al., Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 8, CSCW1, 2024
[2] It's About Power: What Ethical Concerns Do Software Engineers Have, And What Do They (Feel They Can) Do About Them?, D.G. Widder et al., Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT), 2023
[3] History In The Making: Whistleblowers And Big Tech, M. Hicks, First Monday, 2025