Giving Compass' Take:

• On Medium, Doteveryone discusses the ways people working in tech can keep to a standard of ethics, offering resources in which they can do so.

• With the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal still fresh in people's minds and concerns over privacy protection rampant, it's helpful for the tech community to begin advancing ideas like this; nonprofit partners can offer support.

• Here are details on how big funders are supporting independent research into Facebook and democracy.

Tech ethics is suddenly a topic reaching more folks  —  there are whole ethics tracks at software conferences, new meetups, and articles. But how do we convert the rhetoric into action?

Would an Hippocratic oath for tech would be an answer? It is certainly being considered in some quarters, although this is often without thinking about what that oath is, or how it’s used in the modern era.

There are more examples of unethical practices, or at least unprofessional behaviour, entering the public sphere from the tech sector than ever before. But it’s much easier to criticise others than to figure out what to do yourself to be better.

What do you do, as a developer, designer, manager, working in tech if you’re concerned about ethics and want to apply all this talk to your work?

You could check out the ethics codes already out there, that we’ve recently reviewed at Doteveryone, like the ACM code, currently being revised, or the Engineering Council’s principles, and put them into practice. Or perhaps you could commit to a personal pledge relevant to your work, either directly about ethics, or simply good practice.

But it’s not always obvious how to do this ... We can make it easier to help find ethics resources for specific technologies, such as principles of ethical robot design, guidance for data science, algorithm design ethics tools, and so on. At Doteveryone we’ve also been compiling a list of ethical tech initiatives  —  a mix of personal pledges, research, and principles, but there is quite clearly a lack of practical support and tools for businesses, so please add any others you know about!

Read the full article about sticking to tech ethics in practice by Laura James at Doteveryone, via medium.com.