Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mark Zuckerberg faces employee blowback over ruling on Trump comments

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 410 posts

Re: Mark Zuckerberg faces employee blowback over ruling on Trump comments

#291

Post by SauciestGNU »

slantyyz wrote: post #156
dirtydroog wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. I can't imagine working for either company, especially in SV. I would be walking on eggshells lest someone hear, or overhear, something 'toxic' and my career gets ruined. It'd be safer to just not talk to anybody, or limit conversations to work topics only. That's an awful work environment. My demographic would make me a target, not a colleague.

> limit conversations to work topics only. That's an awful work environment. Ok, maybe it's because I'm older (but not a boomer), but I don't think that's an awful work environment. I use dinner party rules on social media and at the workplace. That means I avoid talking about politics, religion, etc. It's not because I'm afraid of being outed for my views or anything, it's because I look at work as work, and not a p…

I'm an older millennial and I don't bring my "whole self" to work. Work is for work, I'm not there to share my beliefs or values with my colleagues. It's really not a terrible way to operate, and I think it's often foolish to "show your hand" at work as it can give people ammunition against you.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg faces employee blowback over ruling on Trump comments

#292

Post by jhowell »

drevil-v2 wrote: post #246
rswail wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your choice of words is demonstrative of your political point of view. I would have used the words "anti-abortion", not pro-life, and "Monocultural", not "Traditional". But there is bias in all of us.

Ditto

Is there bias in objectivity even if expressed by others?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg faces employee blowback over ruling on Trump comments

#293

Post by MagnumOpus »

keiferski wrote: post #289
deegles wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you categorize anti vaccine, flat earthers, and people who believe BillG wants to implant people with microchips? This is the paradox of tolerance. Some ideas are worth debating, some are not. We all have limited time and energy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance Edit: the irony of getting downvoted while trying to have a discussion about being able to express ideas...

No, the paradox of tolerance is relevant when you have radical political factions inflicting violence on the population and preventing opposing opinions, not when some small group of people has crazy ideas that have little-to-no impact on society as a whole. The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Craz…

> Crazy people thinking that the Earth is flat doesn't prevent you from circumnavigating it

Crazy people believing that vaccines are a Democrat/BillG/CIA plot will prevent you from achieving herd immunity, if they are numerous enough.

Crazy people who think the Earth is flat will deny your circumnavigation project government funding, if there are enough of them.

In any organisation that is not a totalitarian autocracy, crazy people hurt the organisation's goals. The more numerous and organised, the bigger the gridlock.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg faces employee blowback over ruling on Trump comments

#294

Post by seneca »

slantyyz wrote: post #156
dirtydroog wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. I can't imagine working for either company, especially in SV. I would be walking on eggshells lest someone hear, or overhear, something 'toxic' and my career gets ruined. It'd be safer to just not talk to anybody, or limit conversations to work topics only. That's an awful work environment. My demographic would make me a target, not a colleague.

> limit conversations to work topics only. That's an awful work environment. Ok, maybe it's because I'm older (but not a boomer), but I don't think that's an awful work environment. I use dinner party rules on social media and at the workplace. That means I avoid talking about politics, religion, etc. It's not because I'm afraid of being outed for my views or anything, it's because I look at work as work, and not a p…

I'm 100% aligned with you on this. The problem is that many people, especially younger millennials, don't follow these social rules. Aside from it being exhausting to listen to them preach their political beliefs at work, you can also be "outed" just by not agreeing with them vocally enough. I've had friends have to leave teams because of this dynamic.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg faces employee blowback over ruling on Trump comments

#295

Post by thu2111 »

deegles wrote: post #285
keiferski wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This line of argument is really tiresome and comes up every single time in discussions like this. It's been done over and over and over again and I'm not really interested in arguing about it. What I am talking about is the culture of defending free speech. The cultural value of defending the right of people you dislike to express ideas that you disagree with, because the value and importance of free expression goes…

How do you categorize anti vaccine, flat earthers, and people who believe BillG wants to implant people with microchips? This is the paradox of tolerance. Some ideas are worth debating, some are not. We all have limited time and energy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance Edit: the irony of getting downvoted while trying to have a discussion about being able to express ideas...

So don't debate with flat earthers. Nobody is forcing you to.

Anyway, you've listed three things and one of them isn't like the others. I'll give you a hint: hate anti-vaxxers or not, there have been vaccines in the past that had extremely severe side effects. That is an absolute fact. Everything from that point on is about risk tolerances, tradeoffs and group safety vs individual freedoms, i.e. things debated for thousands of years.

Lumping people who are scared of vaccines into the same category as people who think the earth is flat is the kind of tactic that makes so many of us think ... fuck it, just let everyone say what they want. Total freedom of speech everywhere. Why, because trying to institutionally determine what's "true" is a complete waste of time. Everyone who thinks it's easy ends up causing massive collateral damage by shutting down legitimate and important debate. See how Wojcicki at YouTube has been deleting videos of epidemiologists and Nobel Prize winning scientists for "misinformation". See how she's been forcibly upranking outlets like CNN in recommendations, even though people don't want to watch it and it makes Google lose money. See how Facebook has shut down groups for people who think lockdowns are a harmful policy. See how Google is now censoring "communist bandit" globally.

This kind of childish behaviour doesn't make the tech industry look smart, it makes us look like arrogant fools.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg faces employee blowback over ruling on Trump comments

#296

Post by spamizbad »

commandlinefan wrote: post #133
spamizbad wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of location, Facebook is hiring from demographics that typically don't support Trump. Young, STEM-educated people skew left. If you want Trump supporters to even things out you're probably going to either: A) hire older devs from less traditional software dev backgrounds. B) Still pull from Young+STEM but filter out anyone whose social media indicates them as being left-ish.

> Young, STEM-educated people skew left. That's a surprising conclusion... I always thought they skewed libertarian.

Kinda surprised this isn't common knowledge here, or that people think its localized to SV?

Here's a link: http://verdantlabs.com/politics_of_professions/

Software Engineers: 79 Democrats for every 21 Republicans. Similar story for engineering overall (The most "conservative" engineering profession being chemical engineering)

IT: 71 Democrats for every 29 Republicans.

You can blame it on SV but the truth is our industry's age skews young: We are 38 years old on average compared to the workforce average of 43. Source: https://www.visier.com/clarity/four-common-tech-ageism-myths...

Young voters and college-educated tend to vote more Democratic: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/e...

You could argue the fact that the profession is predominantly male might mitigate some of this but the problem there is that the gender gap closes once you look at genders on a college-education basis: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/11/08/the-2018-mi...

What I'm trying to say is that if we assume political affiliation does not correlate with skill (it doesn't AFAIK), and you hire based on merit, and you hire nation-wide, your software development team will skew left. And if your hiring focuses on major urban hubs it will skew even more left.

If you want to introduce artificial "balance" you are going to have to do affirmative action for political beliefs. This is challenging, as it's trivial for any individual to lie / reinvent themselves as a desirable political hire. If I wanted a job bad enough, and I knew they preferred hiring a certain political persuasion, I absolutely would pretend to be whatever they wanted me to be.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg faces employee blowback over ruling on Trump comments

#297

Post by Simulacra »

pdimitar wrote: post #265
ethagnawl wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you didn't leave yet you won't leave over this either. You have no idea why people have stayed and/or how their minds have changed over time. Everyone has their breaking point and this could very possibly be it for some people. Also, your quote should be attributed to Upton Sinclair.

True, everyone has their "enough of that" point. But it seems to me that the people who work at Facebook are after the good money, the prestige and the stable job that is mostly immune to tremors (like the pandemic). I can't generalise all of them of course. But we never had historical data of people mass-leaving big corps over such issues so I'm tempted to believe in my generalisation.

Is there an employee version of Karen? "I am not shopping here anymore!" and yet they typically do come back to shop there. "I will not work for this company is X" and they still work there.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg faces employee blowback over ruling on Trump comments

#298

Post by mnm1 »

keiferski wrote: post #281
znpy wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People misunderstand that quote as much as people misunderstand the concept of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech means that the police can't raid your house for what you think or say or a judge cannot rule against you for what you think or say. But freedom of speech doesn't mean that other people are forced to either listen to you or provide with their own private means (like content hosting or bandwidth) for you…

This line of argument is really tiresome and comes up every single time in discussions like this. It's been done over and over and over again and I'm not really interested in arguing about it. What I am talking about is the culture of defending free speech. The cultural value of defending the right of people you dislike to express ideas that you disagree with, because the value and importance of free expression goes…

In the US, it depends on whether the violence incited is "imminent" or not. In this case, I'd say that it was and the government failed to act (surprise! /s) to enforce its own laws because the president is indeed above the law while serving, as the Mueller report found. Lamenting society's loss of free speech in a situation where that free speech isn't even legally protected seems strange to me.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg faces employee blowback over ruling on Trump comments

#299

Post by jb775 »

GhostVII wrote: post #80
phone8675309 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Who the hell should be the truth police? You? People that have the same beliefs as you? Except Facebook is a private platform. That people use it does not make it a public platform. That would be like arguing that Six Flags over Georgia can't remove you from their park because you started protesting in it. Yes, there are people there, but no, just because they're there and it's a popular place doesn't mean they can'…

Facebook is not required to preserve free speech on their platform, I don't think there are many people who would argue that they are required to do so. That doesn't mean they shouldn't given how widespread Facebook is.

Hence the executive order to take the first step towards protecting free speech. Similar to anti-discrimination laws, "private" companies should have to respect free speech. Especially when a handful of those companies control the dialogue of the populace.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg faces employee blowback over ruling on Trump comments

#300

Post by jb775 »

petee wrote: post #275
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google using their massive resource tried to make a better platform than Facebook. They failed spectacularly. Are you suggesting Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp doesn’t have a monopoly on what each is?

They do not provide a necessary public service; it's not drinking water or heat, you would be perfectly fine existing without Facebook. It's their private platform, they should do what's morally right by them, which is apparently doing nothing.

I respectfully disagree. When a handful of "private" companies control the dialogue of the populace, it becomes a defacto public service. Similar to anti-discrimination laws, "private" companies should have to respect the underlying principles of free speech.
Post reply on HN