recently interviewed at Facebook (didn't pass the in-person) and one thing I was looking for was a job that WASN'T based on ads. I didn't want to come across negative so I was circumspect in my asking ("Tell me about the positions at Facebook that I as an outsider don't know about - I know ads, messaging, and events"). I wasn't really excited by the answers I got - ads seemed worked into everything they brought up, b…
I find it interesting that you would absolve yourself for working for Facebook just because you wouldn't be working directly on ads. Facebook is an ad company with services attached (a fairly reprehensible one in my opinion). If you work for them, you are helping them achieve their goals, which ultimately is about serving people ads, it doesn't matter what particular role you are doing there.
That facebook is doing bad things because ads are their only real source of income is a problem because of the bad things, not the ads. At the time the primary concern was "what should facebook be doing about de facto empowering hate speech and (actual) fake news?" and that's a tricky problem that I don't think has a resolved answer, and I sympathize with those that empower communication and only later realize people have more desire to trash things than apply rational caution. Since then much more has come out about some FB practices (and Google), and the question of whether ads-as-your-primary-revenue-source is too much incentive to be "evil" is being implicitly raised, but is likewise not yet resolved.
That said, I do think there are lines to draw and lines not worth drawing. There's very few jobs that don't end up supporting bad things. I don't think it's right to pretend that if you aren't doing it directly that you AREN'T supporting such things...but I also think it's sometimes unrealistic to make your situation worse to deny an indirect support. Deciding where that line lives is an individual decision, and one I have to regularly re-evaluate. To expand my point in the previous post, the news coming out about FB practices definitely made me feel like I'd have been uncomfortable even if I wasn't working directly in ads.