It takes two things for programs like "Jedi Blue" to happen.
First, you need sociopaths in leadership positions who champion this 'great idea' they've figured out. These people often rise up in large companies because they are willing to do this sort of thing without any remorse.
But second, you need developers to build it. A large number of them, usually, for a big project like this.
Dozens of people like us knew they were building a piece of software that was obviously illegal. Oh sure, management had probably told them some version of "but you see, it's legal because...". At a company that spent decades claiming they only hire the smartest people in the world, that doesn't pass the test for me- they had to know.
Which means that the people who built this fall into two categories, in my mind. Those who understand they're doing something illegal, but don't care- future sociopath leaders themselves. And those who know it's illegal but are too cowardly to walk away, to whistle blow, to do something about it.
I believe financial crime like this is far easier to be "on terms" with, if you're already in a system/team that condones it, since it has no direct victims. X Bank and AdTech startup Y might hurt, but there's no real impact.
There's also the fact that by the time you notice that something's off, you might already have implicated yourself in the crime and are afraid of getting in trouble. Probably not what happened in this case, but it does happen.
Blaming the developers is blaming the guys in the trenches. Developers are not lawyers, and the law is so complicated and so divorced from any sort of common sense that I don't think if I were in the position of one of those developers, I would have been able to tell that it was illegal. There is no such thing as software that is "obviously illegal" outside of cases like DMCA circumvention or cryptography export laws, and maybe not even then.
You are assuming that developers really know the implications of what they're doing. The reality is that, apart from a few that made the effort to understand the whole situation, most are kept on the dark about the real implications of each piece they're building. That's the "genius" of modern management, and why they want to make each software engineer a little cog in their machine.
Why would they care? Write this code that will make us more money and cost the advertisers some. Don't tell anyone.
I don't now when this goes from being illegal to being just aggressive business. As long as I am not in trouble, I can also sleep well at night, even if some advertisers make less than they otherwise would have.
What you are saying is that morals and laws are the same thing, which they are not. Laws can very well be immoral, and sense of morality depends entirely on each one of us.
All this presupposes that what the AG has written is correct, and that what happened was actually illegal. Generally a court of law decides that.
Since none of this has been proven, maybe it would be prudent not to throw all of the folks who work there under the sociopath or coward bus?
A cursory reading belies the authors don’t fully understand the mechanics of the industry (eg, the broken analogy comparing an ad exchange to a stock exchange), so I’ll reserve judgement personally.
First, you need sociopaths in leadership positions who champion this 'great idea' they've figured out. These people often rise up in large companies because they are willing to do this sort of thing without any remorse.
But second, you need developers to build it. A large number of them, usually, for a big project like this.
Dozens of people like us knew they were building a piece of software that was obviously illegal. Oh sure, management had probably told them some version of "but you see, it's legal because...". At a company that spent decades claiming they only hire the smartest people in the world, that doesn't pass the test for me- they had to know.
Which means that the people who built this fall into two categories, in my mind. Those who understand they're doing something illegal, but don't care- future sociopath leaders themselves. And those who know it's illegal but are too cowardly to walk away, to whistle blow, to do something about it.