191–200 of 444 posts
As much as everyone wants to believe this is because all the applicants are suddenly taking strong ethical stances, I bet it has more to do with Facebook simply not being considering cool or exciting anymore.
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> "It's telling that a substantial portion of our candidates admitted to considering competing offers from Google, but literally no one was considering Facebook." intersting anecdote. google is a bigger concern for privacy and personal liberty, yet jobseekers are shunning facebook because of the more wide-ranging negative press.
>google is a bigger concern for privacy and personal liberty Big claim. Any proofs? With Facebook, what annoyed me was that they set up internal teams to help with political candidates social media campaigns - no matter who the candidates are. Extremely worrisome if you prefer to have people elected through a democratic process that is based on the discussion. This is not like understanding what people want or how do…
(EU citizen here): I would prefer corporations (especially ones with such depth of funds and breadth of influence) be kept entirely outside the electoral process. If that's not feasible, then the second best option is, indeed, that they provide the same service to all candidates, no matter who those candidates are.
Am I getting it right that you'd prefer they pick some candidates to help in detriment of others? Because that option does not sound very healthy to me, personally.
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>google is a bigger concern for privacy and personal liberty Big claim. Any proofs? With Facebook, what annoyed me was that they set up internal teams to help with political candidates social media campaigns - no matter who the candidates are. Extremely worrisome if you prefer to have people elected through a democratic process that is based on the discussion. This is not like understanding what people want or how do…
> With Facebook, what annoyed me was that they set up internal teams to help with political candidates social media campaigns - no matter who the candidates are. (EU citizen here): I would prefer corporations (especially ones with such depth of funds and breadth of influence) be kept entirely outside the electoral process. If that's not feasible, then the second best option is, indeed, that they provide the same serv…
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Just look at the amount of personal information Google knows/records about you. Your search history, web stats through Chrome, location history through Android, with whom you exchange emails if you're using GMail, which sites you visit and how long you stay on them through Google Analytics, probably online purchases with a combination of AdSense/AdWords & Analytics, everything you watch on YouTube etc. They definitel…
> The only reason they haven't faced the same shitstorm is because they don't seem to share all that data with 3rd parties. This is the whole point though, is it not? As far as we know, Google treats the data they collect more thoughtfully and responsibly than Facebook. And so they are (rightly or not) viewed as less of a threat to the public good. Of course, they could just be better at hiding their abuse of our dat…
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If you have time, can you elaborate why you believe Google is a larger threat to personal liberty and privacy?
I too was curious of this balance weighting. FB slurps in all of the data that users voluntarily post. Google just learns things through inference about users whereas FB is getting data posted directly by the user. Seems to me that FB is able to be way more invasive.
That seems likely to be a grand understatement. FB has the opportunity to collect a great deal of data about their users beyond what they explicitly post -- for example, data about when and how they use Facebook mobile apps, how they interact with the Facebook web site, and what external web sites they visit which contain Facebook Like widgets.
As a current student, I'm actually surprised by this. Maybe I just hang out with evil people, but I don't get the impression most young programmers care that much about ethics. Or they claim they do, but then the 6 figure salary, cushy benefits and signing bonus wins them over. Perhaps there's other reasons? I do joke with my friend who works at Bloomberg that the "evil" finance view has now flipped completely. Bloom…
Age is a proxy for putting value into such concepts as "ethics". When you're more or less senior and have your basic needs met, then you can afford to be picky on what you work. Fresh grads might not care because it takes to know evil to know good (see the story of the original sin and Tree of the knowledge of good and evil), and work experience is like a separate life experience. Heck, I've heard a theory that you s…
If you start from there, it follows that countries with poor social support systems will tend to generate less ethical workers and less ethical companies.
I grew up in Canada. When I came to California, I had zero debt. That made it relatively easy for me to choose ethical (even altruistic!) places to work starting from very early in my career.
Imagine how different the entire technology landscape would be if most American computer science grads had the same flexibility.
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I don't think that people who care about privacy could possibly affect what Facebook does by working there.
Why not? Tech firms work collaboratively and even new employees participate in (some) decision-making.
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> "It's telling that a substantial portion of our candidates admitted to considering competing offers from Google, but literally no one was considering Facebook." intersting anecdote. google is a bigger concern for privacy and personal liberty, yet jobseekers are shunning facebook because of the more wide-ranging negative press.
>google is a bigger concern for privacy and personal liberty Big claim. Any proofs? With Facebook, what annoyed me was that they set up internal teams to help with political candidates social media campaigns - no matter who the candidates are. Extremely worrisome if you prefer to have people elected through a democratic process that is based on the discussion. This is not like understanding what people want or how do…
>Big claim. Any proofs?
All this skepticism around Google's capacity to abuse their troves of data and invasive services is a clear indicator that this discussion has very little to do with real privacy. It is mostly a playground for various corporate, political and media shills.