Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#11

Post by ILikeConemowk » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 4:56 PM UTC

Too little, too late. Well, perhaps not, it's never too late, but still.

You built this behemoth, we told you so, you insisted because it was too hard to resist, deal with it.

For the record, the situations in which some people find themselves are complex and not everyone has the freedom a high salary or stocks or other perks grant some of us.

Nevertheless, for those of us who choose to make the world, our world, a nastier, less friendly, more neurotic place, I have zero sympathy. Reap what you sow, in my case it's disdain.

I apologize for the hard tone but I'm not exactly known for accepting "sorry not sorry" kind of apologies.

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#12

Post by hartator » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 4:56 PM UTC

stolson wrote: post #4

"Over Ethical Concerns" Maybe over concerns that their department is in limbo due to the general public's concern, but I can't imagine they have been working on their projects and only now found ethical issues with them.

Yes, that’s a bit hypocritical.

Also, it’s not something new. Facebook data has been used and abused in other past elections.

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#13

Post by kcorbitt » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 4:58 PM UTC

I left YouTube about a year ago, in part due to cognitive dissonance between my values and the company's objectives. If you're a current employee of a similar company and you're considering your options, I understand the struggle and am happy to talk about it! Everyone's circumstances are different, but for me personally the TL;DR is that I'm much happier working somewhere where I can get 100% behind the mission. Anyway, email's in my profile.

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#14

Post by ryanSrich » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 4:58 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #3

> Facebook engineers are quitting or trying to transfer to Instagram or WhatsApp I find trying to transfer into another product hilarious: it seems to me that they just don't want to have the stigma of working for "Facebook, the product", without really solving the issues working for "Facebook, the company".

Yes.

Silicon Valley is turning on Facebook. Employees are realizing this and do not want a tarnished resume. If you actually believe this is for ethical reasons then you're not equipped for the world.

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#15

Post by zdragnar » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 5:00 PM UTC

How many times have there been privacy settings changes which undermined user intent or resulted in surprising defaults? How many snafus have we witnessed since its inception? I am astounded that employees are just now deciding they've had enough.

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#16

Post by idunno246 » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 5:00 PM UTC

leggomylibro wrote: post #7

This is sort of surprising information, from my view. The information about their business model and data practices which people seem to be so surprised by was/is common knowledge among people who work with these technology stacks. Going to work for Facebook seemed like it would have meant supporting and abetting those practices; they were very clear about what they were doing, and the roles were in no way ambiguous.…

It’s also just one tweet. It’s an article based off a single sentence in the nytimes article. Maybe people are transferring, maybe this is a reason or an excuse, but the support in this article is pretty flimsy.

having worked in Facebook games in 2012, I think some today forget how much worse for privacy Facebook used to be than it is today

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#17

Post by FLUX-YOU » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 5:02 PM UTC

ryanSrich wrote: post #14

saagarjha wrote: post #3

> Facebook engineers are quitting or trying to transfer to Instagram or WhatsApp I find trying to transfer into another product hilarious: it seems to me that they just don't want to have the stigma of working for "Facebook, the product", without really solving the issues working for "Facebook, the company".

Yes. Silicon Valley is turning on Facebook. Employees are realizing this and do not want a tarnished resume. If you actually believe this is for ethical reasons then you're not equipped for the world.

Working for FB itself during this controversy won't tarnish your resume anyway.

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#18

Post by verandaguy_alt » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 5:02 PM UTC

thinkcomp wrote: post #2

It's never too late to quit Facebook as a user, as a contractor, or an employee. Better yet, become a whistleblower and leak to the press.

Leaking corporate data or trade secrets to the general public is not the solution for a couple of reasons.

- Depending on the actual contents of the leak, people might panic; this is basically never useful.

- Depending on the outlet, the contents may get distorted before being published in order to fit some narrative -- potentially causing a panic. See above.

- You or the original leaker may be traced back using even editorialized data, or without the corporation seeing the data. This would land you and/or the original leaker in a lot of legal hot water.

- A side-effect of that is that you'd become unemployable in many cases, and you might find yourself running from the law in other cases.

So, yeah -- quitting facebook probably isn't a bad idea as a user. Refusing work as a contractor or an employee may be difficult, but because absolute morality doesn't exist, it's really up to the person in that position to make the call about quitting.

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#19

Post by hw » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 5:07 PM UTC

So now, FB employees all of a sudden have 'ethical concerns' over their job and what they were building. Let's be real - Facebook (the product) has always had the goal of collecting as much data from users as possible, and displaying as many relevant ads to users as possible from data that users provide. The product, throughout all these years have been tailored and designed to do just that.

Facebook isn't a billion dollar business like it is today because they take steps in protecting your data and ensuring transparency and not selling out to advertisers. Transferring to Instagram or Whatsapp isn't going to absolve you of ethical issues if the leadership is the same. It'll be a matter of time before FB finds a way to monetize all the messages you send via Whatsapp

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#20

Post by pxeboot » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 5:07 PM UTC

taurath wrote: post #5

I wonder how many new hires pass up Facebook because of ethical concerns. Whats scary is if even internally people are moving departments because of ethics, that basically filters so that the least ethical people are on the teams with the most ethical concerns. If there's a real net effect on their hiring, they'll have to increase salaries to lure people in, which will take in even more unethical people (of course, n…

There are companies like cigarette makers who's entire business is generally considered unethical, and others like big banks that could be ethical but often aren't. I would expect this to make a big difference in the type of workers they attract.

Could Facebook exist without selling as much personal data to advertisers as possible? It doesn't look like it currently, but it is at least hypothetical possible.