A couple years ago @odannyboy tweeted about being tired of consultants & ppl at agencies giving talks on ethics in tech. That if it wasn’t informed by the trade-offs of in-house decision making, it was theorizing. I was at an agency & giving talks on ethics. Kinda offended. But..

...there is definitely something to that critique. Going in-house has complicated my easy prescriptions for ethical practice. There are different perspectives, values, & agendas at play. Good & just people may see the same decision differently. And resource constraints are real.

Ethics are about negotiating trade-offs and navigating gray areas. They are refined and tested in conflict. I’m reminded of Mike Tyson saying “everybody has a plan until they get hit.”
(Though corporate culture conflict is usually much more passive aggressive.)

At the same time, companies make it hard as hell for employees to give the talks Dan Saffer was talking about. We’ve gotta jump through hoops to give talks and many of my friends have talks reviewed by people whose primary function is to de-risk corp comms into pablum.

That’s why I’m so impressed by people like @baxterkb, @daniellecass, @emilyewitt, who are pushing ethics in tech forward from within companies.
Question: Are there other ethicists in industry I should follow?

(BUT ALSO, the people who inform my work are mostly those operating outside the constraints of conflicted corporate culture. We NEED academics and ppl at think tanks & consultancies & agencies to inspire those of us working in-house.)

(And I need to find more in-house ethicists.)