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Mark in the Middle

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Re: Mark in the Middle

#141

Post by notacoward »

ryandrake wrote: post #134
thu2111 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you arguing that Facebook should be a website where people don't try to change each other's minds about things? It is absurd that on a website devoted exclusively to commenting on links there are people seriously arguing that people changing each other's minds via debate and links is dangerous.

No, I'm not saying should or shouldn't. I am narrowly pushing back on OP that what Facebook is cannot be disentangled from what its end users do. If we agree Facebook's users collectively do X, then we must agree that the purpose of Facebook The System is to do X. I'll let other people discuss whether that X is good or bad.

You're "narrowly pushing back" on a point I never made. I never made any claims about purpose.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#142

Post by linuxftw »

_qulr wrote: post #87

Politics aside, many Facebook employees come across as rather childish, incapable of taking care of themselves. The big complaint is about lack of snacks! Zuck has to scold them by asking rhetorically whether they joined the company for the free food. And one employee asks if they can go live on an island by themselves, apparently like Lord of the Flies. Of course one may fairly ask whether Facebook's hiring process…

I went on site for an interview with FB a few years ago. College atmosphere is exactly as I'd describe it. Free cafe for the kids, they were brewing beer in one corner of the office, they were keen to point out all the stuff they had available for just hanging out with the bros. If you want to work at FB, show up on a skate board, with beat headphones and a zip down hoodie. Don't show up looking like someone that works in an office.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#143

Post by throwaway0a5e »

charlesu wrote: post #126
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What is a "statistically high crime demographic"? Young black men This is drilled into the head of every cop before they leave the academy.

Interesting. According the FBI data in my previous reply, white men are far more likely to be driving drunk, statistically speaking. I guess we should teach cops to pull them over far more often than everyone else, right? That would be a similarly logical conclusion based on the statistics.

I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse but I have my suspicions. Blacks are convicted of violent crimes at far higher rates than whites. I will not postulate on how much of that conviction rate is a self fulfilling prophecy on the part of the police (much has been written about this possibility by people far more qualified than me) but the practical effect is that the police do not extend the benefit of the doubt to black people, particularly young black men, nearly as readily as they do for other demographics and this extends to all contexts which is a problem for black men who are trying to exercise a right that (in some jurisdictions) police are the gate keepers of.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#144

Post by linuxftw »

_qulr wrote: post #122
jhanschoo wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The big complaint is about lack of snacks! I don't think there's anything unusual about talking about that in a company-wide Q&A. It's minor, but people will want to know how they should adjust their budgets and how long. This is a good platform for such a question since it's something that affects everyone in the office.

> It's minor, but "A major sell to candidates is our office perks include free food" "with work from home, we’ve lost a huge financial part of our package" https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-En... Perhaps they don't know how much food costs, having never gone to the grocery store. ("How much does a gallon of milk cost" is the classic political gotcha question.) Or they don't know how to cook. T…

Young urbanites don't cook. They don't drive, how do they get groceries. They probably have a single frying pan. For these people, free food at work might be a large portion of their daily caloric intake, outside of the beer/booze.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#145

Post by sjg007 »

m0ck wrote: post #33
jsiepkes wrote: post #3

> "The community we serve tends to be, on average, ideologically a little bit more conservative than our employee base." If I had to pick one sentence of the article which sums up the entire issue it would be this one.

I would go even further in this argument - it's the small, altough very loud minority of FB (or other IT company) employees, living in their Twitter feeds and causing outrage totally disproportional to their group size. The "missing snacks" example in the article illustrates it beautifully. I would argue that it actually concerns more employees than content policy issues.

The irony is just delicious. It's just like the problem that very small minority of folks on FB have been given a megaphone to spread lies and hate.

All FB has to do is tone down the engagement algorithms. Put up a bunch of invisible walls.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#146

Post by sjg007 »

notacoward wrote: post #116
_qulr wrote: post #87

Politics aside, many Facebook employees come across as rather childish, incapable of taking care of themselves. The big complaint is about lack of snacks! Zuck has to scold them by asking rhetorically whether they joined the company for the free food. And one employee asks if they can go live on an island by themselves, apparently like Lord of the Flies. Of course one may fairly ask whether Facebook's hiring process…

Yes, it does seem like a college dorm. Sometimes it's even intentional, as in the design of the MPK campus. A lot of the perks serve the same purpose as a college dorm: eliminate the need (or even desire) to go off campus, maximizing time-on-task for the organizational purpose. That's not entirely a bad thing, though it does grate a bit for older employees such as myself (for two more days) sometimes. The "live on an…

"Living on an island" is an allusion to Randism.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#147

Post by ThomPete »

pjc50 wrote: post #124
ThomPete wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that there aren't "a lot" of transpeople I am not sure I understand your point is, care to elaborate?

That was an example of people who receive "disagreement" simply by existing. My point is that a lot of people have recieved what you call "disagreement" and what I and they call "prejudice".

You are talking about two very different things.

I am talking about our upbringing I am fairly sure most parents aren't prejudice against their children and I am pretty sure most kids aren't trans although it's certainly in vogue to call yourself to something of that effect in many youth circles.

So it's not a good example it's missing the point as most people we are talking about here aren't trans.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#148

Post by ThomPete »

pjc50 wrote: post #67
shiba_developer wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah, because trans people are living saints and can never ever be murderers.

The number of trans murderers is incredibly tiny - can you name even one? While trying to assert that being trans makes someone more likely to be a murderer is a slur.

Yeah don't think there are many of those.

But here is one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beate_Schmidt#:~:text=Beate%20....

Not sure what the point is though. The discussion I tried to start was about all the normal cis-gender if you like kids who are brought up in a well meaning home, getting the right education and the right jobs but being extremely intellectually fragile. Not sure why trans suddenly needs to get included into this.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#149

Post by tyingq »

"Facebook had given its employees $1,000 bonuses and said it would give them all top marks on their first-half performance evaluations, no matter how they had actually performed."

Giving everyone high performance evaluations isn't a perk. It's a disservice.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#150

Post by pcbro141 »

zimpenfish wrote: post #48
mensetmanusman wrote: post #38

Premise: Diversity is good. Diversity means diversity of ideas. Ergo, you will disagree vehemently with people, and this is a good thing under the framework of diversity. Do not confuse disagreeing with someone as that person being morally sub-human, and if you are able to do this your life will be more pleasant. Disagreement is a good thing, it is society’s mechanism for decision making in complex circumstances.

> Do not confuse disagreeing with someone as that person being morally sub-human If your disagreement with that person is about whether someone else is considered less of a human than they are (by dint of race, wealth, sexuality, whatever), it's probably ok to consider them morally bankrupt on that basis.

Yup, middle ground fallacy. Like saying we can find a 'middle ground' between "black lives do matter" and "black lives don't matter".
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