1. The notion of a chief ethics officer for tech corporations is comical. It’s like asking a vegetarian fox to persuade the others to leave the henhouse before they’ve finished their meai.
2. The presumption is that somehow executives are ignorant of basic ethics - they are not. But they rarely see profit in being ethical beyond the (low) bar of the market. An ethics expert in some meetings will not change a corporation's rooted profit prioritization culture.
3. Creating a “VP of X” is a common ploy - it gives plausible deniability. That VP will have no functional power over products. But now the rest of the executives can say “Look! We have a VP of X!” when criticized for their lack of X. Its primary value is perception.
4. Historically corporations rise in ethics two ways: public outrage (that hurts profits) or government action. The history of seat belts in America is a great example (in part because it exposed how much profit there was in safety... if only auto companies had tried)
5. When I saw @karaswisher's piece (which gratefully is mixed/dubious about VP of ethics), I was surprised by the lack of mention of the long history of tech ethics experts and their advice, particularly Neil Postman. Why is this not common knowledge?
nytimes.com/2018/10/21/opi…
nytimes.com/2018/10/21/opi…
6. In 1997, during the rise of the web, Postman offered these 7 simple/powerful questions. Yet I don't think any of @karaswisher, @waltmossberg, @steveis or @DavidPogue, or others who made careers popularizing the work of tech corporations, explored them. Insisted on their use? 
