I can not imagine the mental gymnastics of people working for Clothoff
this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2025
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They have two types of people:
- Software Engineers and Computer Scientists that don't care who gets hurt as long as they get to work on their interesting problem. I call them the Wernher von Braun club.
- The ones that are also prospective customers
The Venn Diagram might be close to a circle.
There is a 3rd type: people desperate for work / experience who are simply taking the best paying job they can find. It is actually the most common type of working in the US.
Can't believe this is the first time I hear the expression "Wernher von Braun club", fantastic.
Yeah I think a lot about the guy I knew that took a job at palantir. When asked about working on questionable stuff, he just shrugged. He was always nice to people he knew personally, so far as I can tell, but bigger picture stuff didn't seem to matter to him
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
—Upton Sinclair
That's the thing, Software Engineers have choices.
Yes, all big companies will do some dubious things.
But then you have big tech that does all those dubious things and is also breaking democratic institutions everywhere with a sledgehammer.
And then you have Palentir, which are literally Hollywood movie villains.
At this point they are light years of their livelihood depending on it. There's no way they don't notice where the bombs are falling, they had plenty of time to look around and have decided they don't care.
These are all Eastern European software developers, per the article.
the Wernher von Braun club
LMAO. Except even dumber, they're the von Brauns of the "fake illegal nude" world
FWIW, probably not a lot of devs willing to tarnish their reputation (well at least tarnish it THAT much) they pay (unlikely very well), and they probably figure people are going to do it anyway (on their own hardware, or on a competitor) so they might as well make money off of it while they can.
And they definitely use it themselves.
Oh god I had not even thought about the last part.
Their staff is either 100% male, or a disaster waiting to happen. Probably both. I would not feel safe there that's for sure.
Wonder if they'd like it if the same app was used on their sister/mom/wife etc
I'd have no problem if someone did me, for the record. Seems only incrementally different from mental imagery or writing a fanfic.
At this point I'm clearly in a minority, though.
No but you see those are people
I think the kind of people who think working for a deepfake company is acceptable are more likely to say "No, but those are my objects!"
You’re assuming they need to feel like they’re doing good? Some people don’t give a crap and will trample on anyone for a buck.
For some people, definitely. But finding an entire startup worth of those people is (IMO) more difficult/unlikely than at least some of those starting there and talking themselves into not feeling guilty (if not for us, someone else would do it; we are not being as terrible as those others would be; it's a tool, it's not our fault people are applying it to minors etc.!; ...)
I mean look at musk and his dge group, he got nerds to help screw people over no problem, I'm sure people would feel less bad about fake porn without even thinking of the sources
Yeah but they can at least buy their bullshit, i.e. "we help gut overspending and Make America Great Again". What's the supposed mission here? "We help you fap to people that don't want to he fapped to"?
Yeah or money, think of like telemarketers or scammers, even those door to door people trying to lock you into bad contracts for solar, people do whatever for money, they just think about getting paid
Is this implying that Reddit is some kind of moral bastion?