A Working Library
aworkinglibrary.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2010
Mandy Brown, a writer and editor, writes essays on work, technology, reading, and organizations.
What HN saysHN links it for the accountability sinks post, discussed alongside AI and corporate systems, and for her pieces on tech unions and audience.
37HN people shared it
12linked it in comments
37stories submitted
616story points
3 months agolast shared
2010people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Accountability sinks11 people · 519 points · first shared 2024 · 306 comments on HN
- 2Coming Home3 people · 4 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 3A Unified Theory of Fucks2 people · 17 points · first shared 2024 · 7 comments on HN
- 4Artificial intelligence is not a technology2 people · 10 points · first shared 2025 · 1 comments on HN
- 5Legalese2 people · 7 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 6Reading is the art of attention. What a mess we've made of that word2 people · 3 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 7Designed to be specialists2 people · 2 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 8Against Optimization1 people · 21 points · first shared 2024 · 3 comments on HN
- 9The Case for Rereading1 people · 3 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 10You keep using that word1 people · 3 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 11Reading Matters Deeply1 people · 3 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 12What are we making together?1 people · 2 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 13I wrote you a short letter1 people · 2 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 14Storytelling as Practice1 people · 2 points · first shared 2024 · 1 comments on HN
- 15No one is “non-technical”1 people · 2 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
jamietanna · 2025-06-03
Gonna recommend folks read https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/you-deserve-a-tech-union
Very much believe that unions, and power to the workers, are very important!
kmfrk · 2010-09-18
Mandy Brown from A Working Library had a great blog post on this to emphasize your point: http://aworkinglibrary.com/library/archives/on_audience/.
AlienRobot · 2026-05-24
>In The Unaccountability Machine, Dan Davies argues that organizations form “accountability sinks,” structures that absorb or obscure the consequences of a decision such that no one can be held directly accountable for it. Here’s an example: a higher up at a hospitality company decides to reduce the size of its cleaning staff, because it improves the numbers on a balance sheet somewhere. Later, you are trying to check into a room, but it’s not ready and the clerk can’t tell you when it will be; they can offer a voucher, but what you need is a room. There’s no one to call to complain, no way to communicate back to that distant leader that they’ve scotched your plans. The accountability is swallowed up into a void, lost forever.[0]
This, but web scale.
- https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/accountability-sinks
Terr_ · 2026-02-10
POSIWID [0] and Accountability Sinks [1] territory, I'm sure LLMs will become the beating hearts of corporate systems designed to do something profitably illegal with deniability.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does
[1] https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/accountability-sinks
tipsysquid · 2025-12-29
The most maddening part about this experience is the helplessness. Its inconvenient, sure. Ive been late because of traffic, etc. Being carried along well beyond my will without a breakglass: Fine, I'll just walk! option makes my skin crawl.
Events like this seem to only be explained by accountability sink[0]. Naming it gives me some brief sense of sanity.
I appreciate that there is a safety concern; where's the humanity in large systems, especially as we trend towards more automation?
[0] https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/accountability-sinks
yoz · 2025-11-20
Dan Davies wrote a whole book on this topic, The Unaccountability Machine [1]. In it, he creates the concept of "accountability sinks": organisational structures or systems which abstract the source of a decision away from individuals so that no specific person can be held accountable.
Davies writes: "For an accountability sink to function, it has to break a link; it has to prevent the feedback of the person affected by the decision from affecting the operation of the system."
For a good short overview, see this piece by Mandy Brown: https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/accountability-sinks
[1] https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/U/bo252799883.html
Dilettante_ · 2025-11-18
"Accountability Sinks"
https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/accountability-sinks
rincebrain · 2025-09-27
I think my problem with codes of conduct is that, in my experience, they're usually just accountability sinks[1].
e.g. "all violations must be reported to the committee" => "we will forbid anyone taking action without the committee's prior approval, and insist that disclosing any reports to us is a violation of policy, then refuse to take any action on reports".
So a thing that was supposed to explicitly communicate shared expectations and norms, instead becomes a way to minimize risk of bad PR for the project by silencing anyone who believed they were operating in good faith.
[1] - https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/accountability-sinks
wting · 2025-07-29
Visa, Mastercard, payment processors, banks, etc act as accountability sinks[0] for governments and political group by design. They are arbiters for moving/blocking money, not taking principled stances; there is no net neutrality equivalent for financial networks.
There's a lot of wasted discussion talking about an intentional design decision because they're arguing from consumers' perspectives, ignoring the huge benefit to political organizations (e.g. freezing Russian assets).
0: https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/accountability-sinks
nikanj · 2025-05-10
Accountability sinks are a huge issue with large corporations. The people you can reach are not allowed to act due to policies and processes, and the people setting the policies are not reachable to a regular customer - nor would they change the policies just to accommodate one out of their millions of users
https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/accountability-sinks
gsf_emergency · 2025-05-03
Related discussion (517 pts):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41891694
https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/unaccountability-machine
(A very short overview of Dan Davies' book, quoted in TFA, that came up with the term)
EDIT: complementing book mentioned in that thread
Cathy O'Neil's "Weapons of Math Destruction" (2016, Penguin Random House) is a good companion to this concept, covering the "accountability sink" from the other side of those constructing or overseeing systems.
Cathy argues that the use of algorithm in some contexts permits a new scale of harmful and unaccountable systems that ought to be reigned in.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41892299