"Why I Work on Ads"

A hackernews working in an unethical field explains why doing so is not only ethical, but beneficial to the world. Several other hackernews join in to note that their jobs, too, depend on this unethical field, and that they, too consider it a net benefit. A few commenters try to derail by discussing the use of complex technical workarounds to allow the unethical field to continue, while laundering the ethical issues into technical ones. In the end, nothing is done, and it is generally agreed that a planetary system of ubiquitous surveillance is the only way a modern economy can be run.

The article

The comments

I found three takeaways from the article:

1) they don't see ads as unethical

2) the tooling they work on is improving privacy in ads

3) they donate 47% of what they earn to effective charities

I think you engaged with their first point, and I hold similar views to you that normalising these systems of surveillance is detrimental. jefftk does not discuss this issue in 'Why I Work on Ads' or their other defense 'Effect of Advertising'. However, jefftk's point (2) & (3) seem to appeal to me strongly to why I believe they may be doing a net positive.

I think you also didn't give a charitable view to HN comments. The current top six root comments (by kingsuper20 adriand drcongo baby-yoda thrwaeasddsaf kelnos) are are disagreeing with jefftk, some who directly raise a similar point to that which you made

starbreaker

It's Y Combinator's groupthink incubator. What did you expect?

tatterdemalion

I just wanted to try my hand at writing in the style of n-gate.