Thread by @jonst0kes

After a walk, I have rethought my reaction to this paper.
Reading it was what prompted my "maybe I'll give up & become a troll" tweet. But I'm now encouraged by it.

https://twitter.com/jonst0kes/status/1374856583008620545

First, the depressing aspect: a whole section of this paper traffics in ancient techbro stereotypes, plus one new one they've invented themselves. These snidely offered stereotypes are basically offered up unsupported, as if we ALL KNOW AMIRITE? And this is an ACM paper!

So I'm like, this sneering collection of techbro tropes was published by the ACM, which means the citadel has fallen. It's all over. Stick a fork in American tech leadership. But then I thought about their "Ethics Unicorn" archetype, & it hit me: they're eating their own.

They hate the "Ethics Unicorn" because he's actually trying to do the right thing. He's trying to do better, & to do a bunch of ethics stuff at his dev job. But this just makes him a "white savior" type of figure (they don't use that racialized language, but that's the paradigm).

This is friendly fire. They now hate the person who is trying to do the thing they've been complaining that engineers won't do, i.e. be ethically aware, & incorporate that into their process.

So now I think maybe since this is a type of "eating their own" behavior, it's more terminal and the whole thing is closer to just imploding in a YA-literature-style circular firing squad of one-upsmanship, recriminations, & ruined careers. Here's hoping.

Actually, on re-checking it I see that this is just a FAccT conference paper, so not fully peer reviewed & pretty much par for the course for FAccT. So maybe the citadel has not quite fallen, yet.

https://twitter.com/jonst0kes/status/1374873683966238720