How Do Developers Handle Moral Dilemmas?

DwightFagen asks: "I'm curious to know how developers in the Slashdot community handle situations in which they are given a project that rubs against their moral borders. I was recently hired as a Flash developer for a design and development company and am just beginning my second project. This particular assignment is to build the video portion of an online magazine. This magazine deals with various topics and is by no means a pornographic site (although some content may border on that), but it seems one of its key tenets is to be untethered by social moral values. Though I do not believe such things should in any way be censored or banned from the internet, I do not wish to actively support something I believe to be an exploitation of human beings. What would you in the Slashdot community do in such a situation? Have any of you dealt with something like this before?" "For the sake of clarity, I'd like to mention that I'm all for the freedom of expression on the internet and that I do not in any way judge people based on the media they choose to consume.

If this were a clear cut case of pornography, my choice would be simple; but that is not the case. I do still hold myself to certain standards and believe in the value of integrity and I would also like to do work that my family and friends can be proud of (or at least work that I could show them). However, I would also like to keep my job and would not want to put my small company of very nice people in a difficult position (as the deadline is not so far off)."

Comments

Re:Well, for those of us who care about REAL moral

[QuantumG]

Why do you feel the need to post shit like this? How does it contribute to the conversation? Go away.

No, YOU'RE missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

The point isn't whether you think porn is evil, the point is that naked people isn't porn. Porn involves a sex act. Otherwise, every time you stepped in the shower, you'd be creating porn. And the fact that maybe you're working on a Maxim-like site that features girls in bikinis with see-through t-shirts isn't porn, doesn't involve "morals" in the sense that you or the original poster is trying to portray makes both of you sound pretty shallow. Trust me. Jesus doesn't care if there's a picture of a girl with her top off. Imagine God being so shallow that he says "Oh, I created you to like looking at women's breasts, but if you actually do look, you're sinning!". You people can be so smart when it comes to programming a computer, but so dumb at obvious stuff.

Or another poster above who thought it was a moral dilemma because the t-shirts they used for their team looked like an x-box symbol. Christ. We're so pampered that we no longer understand moral dilemmas any more! That's not even worth of the time it took to mention the event.

Here's an example of a moral dilemma for you... your company is considering moving manufacturing overseas, but if they do, they'll put 200 people out of work. But if you don't do it, the whole company might go out of business.

Here's an example of a non-moral non-dilemma for you... your company is doing a web site for Cosmo magazine that features girls in see-through tops and a lot of articles on "how to please your man in bed".

So please stop the fiction... this facade that somehow this is a moral dilemma.

Libertarian moderators can suck my left nut

[spun]

Hey, mod this down too, assholes. I have more karma than I can possibly burn through. That's the libertarian way: stifle any dissent and call it a consensus. You obviously can not refute anything I have to say, and are so scared of other people reading it and understanding what a crock of shit your failed iddeology is that you must mod me down.

Well, I have made tons of anti-libertarian posts for the last ten years on Slashdot and for the most part they get modded up because most sensible people can see how ludicrous libertarianism is. I will continue to make anti-libertarian posts and get modded up for them. Try as you might, you can't make black into white and you can't make libertarianism into something sensible, logical, or workable.

Why is libertarianism the only political ideology that has never been tried in the real world? Two reasons: first, libertarians are all such selfish assholes that you could never get a group of them to agree on what libertarianism is, let alone put it into practice. Second, libertarians know that as long as libertarianism remains purely theoretical, they can go on being theoretically right. As soon as it was put into practice, the world would see it as the failure it is and libertarians would have to shut the fuck up.