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Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

businessinsider.com

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

#151

Post by itakedrugs »

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.…

Maybe it's because the a large portion of the population started to care and it changed their minds

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

#152

Post by CodyReichert »

rout39574 wrote: post #138
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.…

I disagree. My basis is the conversations I had when I interviewed there. They did not extend an offer, so read what you will into my own biases. :) But a repeated theme of the conversations was me trying to get inside their heads: I said: "Your job is to figure out when I'm going to be making a decision, purchase or whatever else, and make sure that your advertisers' message is in front of my eyes just as it's occur…

This is just you trying to get an answer you knew you wouldn't get.

"Connecting the world!" is indeed the job of almost all employees at Facebook. You can have a large majority of the company focus on this one goal, and also know that the byproduct of that goal allows you to expand another part of a bigger goal: to make more money on ads.

A company in a capitalist economy must make money, of course. No one is arguing that and no one is saying that Facebook doesn't want - indeed must - make money.

It's like asking an Uber driver what is job is: "to transport people!". Of course, that much is obvious. If you ask someone in the "growth" department (or whatever) what their job is - the description will necessarily be much different.

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

#153

Post by rm999 »

rout39574 wrote: post #138
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.…

I disagree. My basis is the conversations I had when I interviewed there. They did not extend an offer, so read what you will into my own biases. :) But a repeated theme of the conversations was me trying to get inside their heads: I said: "Your job is to figure out when I'm going to be making a decision, purchase or whatever else, and make sure that your advertisers' message is in front of my eyes just as it's occur…

I'm not one to normally defend Facebook, but I disagree. Advertising was not prioritized for a huge chunk of Facebook's history, so I'd argue it's not part of their core ethos (it's a necessary evil, if you will). While a lot of their more recent product decisions have been made around revenue generation, I don't think that's what keeps their leadership up at night. Keeping a monopoly on user attention (euphemism is "connecting the world") is their biggest challenge, especially in the ever-evolving social industry.

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

#154

Post by barkingcat »

bagacrap wrote: post #78
sametmax wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. And I doubt it's a mass exodus either. If you read "Surely you're joking Mr Feynman", the author clearly states that when making the bomb, they had a lot of fun. Lots of budgets. Only smart people. Working on the coolest projects. He even plays with the censorship and security practices. They never really thought too hard about the ethic part of it: they need to end the war, and that's it. They really said "…

So maybe the Cambridge Analytica hullabaloo is the equivalent of the bomb going off?

No electing trump was the bomb going off.

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

#155

Post by mmrezaie »

droidist2 wrote: post #141
luckydude wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless I'm mistaken, I tested out at 140 a long time ago. There is no friggin way I'm remotely as intelligent as Feynman was so there goes any faith in IQ tests being meaningful. Most of the people who have worked for me are demonstrably smarter than me and none of them are close to Feynman. Smart people but not at his level IMO. RIP IQ tests :)

Doesn't it depend a lot on what age you take the test though? Like I was very smart for my age as a child and I tested very high. Later in life I'm probably not much higher than my peers.

I think the whole point of IQ test is being stable independent of age.

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

#156

Post by ygaf »

zdragnar wrote: post #15

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.

It feels like a decade ago now, that FB and Google had data deletion buttons that were protected by how bad the interface was to find them.

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

#157

Post by heedlessly3 »

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…

>I wonder how many new hires pass up Facebook because of ethical concerns

haha, i bet very few

>If there's a real net effect on their hiring, they'll have to increase salaries to lure people in

Facebook already offers the highest compensation among Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Amazon ~~on average~~. They'll be fine.

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

#158

Post by walshemj »

r00fus wrote: post #68
ThemalSpan wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this issue much more pressing in the defense industry. I (thankfully) have the freedom to choose where I work. I will never willingly work on weapon systems. There are those that do though. Engineers who design things to kill other people. What the actual fuck.

> Engineers who design things to kill other people. What the actual fuck. The popular rationalizations are "it will help save lives of armed services" or "prevent the big terrorist attack". Ther are dozens of reasons people make up to convince themselves and others that it's ok. Judgement as to whether their reasons hold up to the light of day are left as an exercise to reader.

which you seem to think automatically is exactly the position you believe :-)

So you have read Aquinas and have a reasoned argument against the concept of Jus ad bellum - please I am sure hn readers would like to see your argument.

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

#159

Post by dsacco »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #40
hayksaakian wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cynic in me wonders if these employees are just responding to how others are starting to view their positions, more than ethical or moral quandaries. I think you hit the nail on the head. I doubt it has to do with moral qualms as employees. More to do with your friends and family giving you crap for working at a company that's getting bad press.

The best way to summarize FB employees, from @numair from 8 months ago: > Having known so many people involved with Facebook for so long, I have come up with a phrase to describe the cultural phenomenon I’ve witnessed among them – ladder kicking. Basically, people who get a leg up from others, and then do everything in their power to ensure nobody else manages to get there. No, it’s not “human nature” or “how it work…

This is an exceptionally poor way to "summarize" the employees of any large company, including Facebook. Your personal ethics aside, whenever you're about to describe an entire company's staff using phrases like, "these sorts of people" and "mind-virus", you should stop and reconsider what you think you know about the world.

You are making an uninformed judgement based on a generalization of over 20,000 people.

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

#160

Post by saagarjha »

dsacco wrote: post #134
saagarjha wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FB controversy doesn't erase technological accomplishments of individuals It doesn't, but it doesn't look great if those accomplishments end up having a negative impact on society. Do you really want to have "I wrote an novel algorithm to track people" on your resume? > Software engineering doesn't have the same ethical consequences and motivations as other fields (medicine, law, etc.). It doesn't make much sense t…

> Do you really want to have "I wrote an novel algorithm to track people" on your resume? If the algorithm is truly novel then yes, absolutely.

So where do you draw the line? How many of these would you put on your resume?

"I wrote software that took advantage of addictive behavior in new ways" "My new flagging mechanism, tailored to prevent users from leaving the platform, led to someone committing suicide after being unable to block an abuser" "My relevancy algorithm, based on what had the most engagement, led to a genocide"

I've made these purposefully extreme, but these are all based on reality. Making something "novel" isn't always a good thing.

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