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

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

#211

Post by r00fus » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 9:19 PM UTC

walshemj wrote: post #158

r00fus wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

While my tone may imply it, I don't think everyone will (or needs to) agree with me.

The "just war" argument can be taken to places it's not fit for, is all I'm saying. I'm not denying that it has it's place and time.

It is simply too powerful/useful to be assumed to be legit all the time.

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

#212

Post by bronson » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 9:24 PM UTC

mrec wrote: post #116

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 "…

> And we are talking about brilliant minds with very positive personalities. Do you think "very positive personalities" were a plus in this case? Obviously you don't want homicidal sociopaths on the team, but someone whose first thought was "What's the worst possible thing that could happen here?" might have come in handy.

The worst possible thing that could happen here was the Germans create the bomb first.

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

#213

Post by tzakrajs » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 9:28 PM UTC

dsacco wrote: post #199

tzakrajs wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they continue to work for Facebook after CA it shows that they are willing to be paid an income despite the clear and studied effects of their work (directly or indirectly). There are lots of businesses that don't have the luxury of hiring for culture on issues as granular as this, but is it ideal to be able to? I think so.

What are those "clear and studied effects"? More importantly, just how "indirectly" do one of those 20,000 employees need to be tied to the work you dislike before you'd acknowledge that rebuffing them is silly? Are there other companies you'd indiscriminately never hire from? What about Google? How is their data mining materially different, in your view? What about a subcontractor for Facebook? Would you hire engine…

> What are those "clear and studied effects"?

https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/01/effect-social-media-dem...

https://hbr.org/2017/04/a-new-more-rigorous-study-confirms-t...

> More importantly, just how "indirectly" do one of those 20,000 employees need to be tied to the work you dislike before you'd acknowledge that rebuffing them is silly?

It's not their work that is important, but rather their understanding of Facebook's impact. I think it would be kind to give conscientious quitters and H-1B employees extra points as their situation varies.

> Are there other companies you'd indiscriminately never hire from? I never advocated for such a draconian policy. I was stating that having this information could help with culture fit in an ideal hiring situation (in either direction, depending on your business). Maybe these people are hired less or more in highly sensitive, privacy-related roles based on the company's prerogatives.

> What about Google? How is their data mining materially different, in your view?

Google's mission is to "To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Their first value is to "focus on the user". Facebook's mission is to "Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together." Their first value is to "be bold".

Facebook's stated mission is to be in the business of social information. Google's stated mission is to be in the business of information more generally. Materially, this general mission leads Google to lean less on people's personal information to achieve their mission.

> What about a subcontractor for Facebook?

Direct contractors are typically employees in all but name, but if they were working for a company hired by Facebook I would think it only reasonable to take that into consideration as their will may not have been aligned with the business decision.

> Would you hire engineers from a startup which advertised on Facebook? If so, why are they not complicit?

Again, to be clear, I would hire engineers directly from Facebook so certainly I would hire their partners employees. It is one of many data points to consider when hiring. They may be complicit in Facebook's misdeeds, but still can have value to a business.

edit: grammar

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

#214

Post by sudoke » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 9:34 PM UTC

barkingcat wrote: post #154

bagacrap wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No electing trump was the bomb going off.

You obviously didn't have relatives killed from the actual bombs. How about you try to be a bit more sensitive before you compare a democratically election that you didn't like the outcome of with hundreds of thousands of people getting killed in an afternoon in august...

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

#215

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 9:34 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#216

Post by superioritycplx » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 9:42 PM UTC

meri_dian wrote: post #84

While data security is an issue Facebook must reckon with, it is not the major issue Facebook's existence poses to democracies around the world. The real issue in my mind is that the platform can be used by bad actors to spread misinformation. It's as if during WWII the Nazi's had the ability to publish editorials in leading newspapers throughout the US. While this is a feature/bug of the internet in general, the vas…

Do you really think Russia was the first to use Facebook for political gain and that no homegrown entities ever thought about it? Obama in 2012 maybe?

13 Russians spent $50K on ads AFTER (according to Facebook's VP of ads himself) the election. Hillary's campaign cost $1.2B. Where do you think that money went?

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

#217

Post by yuhong » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 9:45 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #54

I have a lot of respect for someone who chooses to not work at a place because that place is doing bad things. There are so many things that go into that decision, how "important" is it to be employed, how "bad" is the business behavior, how "costly" to a reputation is it to leave or to stay. It is the kind of question that puts a persons character and self image on trial, and in my experience few people emerge on th…

How often does this kind of thing gets escalated to Larry/Sergey in general, BTW?

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

#218

Post by kfrzcode » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 9:53 PM UTC

zemo wrote: post #171

jiveturkey wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

related: does having uber on your resume tarnish it? At $JOB-1, my boss (only good boss in the whole company, TBH) got fired soon after I left. As a knee-jerk reaction by upper mgmt. (poorly run company.) His replacement knows 1/10 of what he knows, and hails from Uber.

> does having uber on your resume tarnish it? depends who's evaluating it and what their values are. If their values are aligned with Uber's values, then no. If their values are opposed to Uber's values, then yes. I'm squarely of the latter. Uber would be a major negative to me. But everyone is different. Some people might view it positively.

Why would working at Uber be a detractor on a resume? It's major company with assuredly hefty tech - regardless of the HR issues rampant, shouldn't the hire be based on merit not association?

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

#219

Post by zemo » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 10:09 PM UTC

kfrzcode wrote: post #218

zemo wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> does having uber on your resume tarnish it? depends who's evaluating it and what their values are. If their values are aligned with Uber's values, then no. If their values are opposed to Uber's values, then yes. I'm squarely of the latter. Uber would be a major negative to me. But everyone is different. Some people might view it positively.

Why would working at Uber be a detractor on a resume? It's major company with assuredly hefty tech - regardless of the HR issues rampant, shouldn't the hire be based on merit not association?

If you work for someone that does a bad thing, you are helping them do the bad thing. You are actively making the bad thing happen, and by doing so, you are also doing a bad thing.

I think Uber is a bad thing. If you work for Uber, you have helped create a bad thing. At that point, I do not trust your judgement, and I do not want to work with people whose judgement I do not trust.

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

#220

Post by tzakrajs » Tue, Apr 10, 2018, 10:11 PM UTC

msangi wrote: post #197

tzakrajs wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they continue to work for Facebook after CA it shows that they are willing to be paid an income despite the clear and studied effects of their work (directly or indirectly). There are lots of businesses that don't have the luxury of hiring for culture on issues as granular as this, but is it ideal to be able to? I think so.

> clear and studied effects Cough cough https://god-knows-what.com/2018/03/27/why-almost-everything-...

For those that don't have time to read it, the article you linked debunks misconceptions about the CA privacy breach. I think the article goes to show the type of culture that allows for such a privacy breach to occur.

A quote from the article you linked:

> Asked what kind of control Facebook had over the data given to outside developers, he replied: “Zero. Absolutely none. Once the data left Facebook servers there was not any control, and there was no insight into what was going on. Parakilas said he “always assumed there was something of a black market” for Facebook data that had been passed to external developers.