I work at Amazon, and do not hate it. But yes I agree it's obvious to anybody that they have the worst reputation as an employer among the biggest tech firms. I felt like I had to write this as a disclaimer but it wasn't really the part of your post I wanted to respond to.
>If we're talking ethics and it has to be FAANG...
I wasn't really talking about ethics, that was more of an aside. I was trying to make the point that not only is the metaverse (and using metaverse here I mean a virtual reality controlled by a private company) completely unproven ground as a market, and is easily 5-10 years away from being even somewhat practical and not a complete gimmick with technology, it also would make most of the big unsolved problems our society is still grappling with around technology way worse
Like platform control. Facebook And Epic both say Apple has too much power. Apple hurt FB's ad business by limiting tracking. Epic sued to try to force a change in IAP rules etc... Then you've got Republicans saying the exact same thing about Facebook and other social platforms - that they have too much power and got mad when they banned Donald Trump. Republicans right now are pressuring Google to stop marking their shady campaign emails as spam in Gmail.
And I agree with them, but I also agree with Apple that it would be hard for iOS to be as secure as it is if they didn't have that level of control. Smart phones are computers. And for a lot of people, it's their only computer. It's a really tricky issue that has not been solved yet.
In a hypothetical scenario where people spend most of their lives working and after work in a "metaverse" controlled by a private company, that's even worse. What if you get banned from the metaverse, and it effectively cuts off your ability to live a normal life or participate in society? Hey, it's their platform so first amendment doesn't apply but every job in your field uses the metaverse as a remote workplace. You don't get to see your friends or family nearly as much. Your agency and autonomy as a human being is controlled down to what physical movements you can make, who you can speak to, it can all be recorded and controlled. Of course, even if control was handed to the government that would be handing them more direct power over people than any government has ever had.
I don't know why Mark Zuckerberg thinks that he would be trusted with this amount of control even if he got the tech down when the level of trust people have in FB as an entity has deteriorated an extreme amount over the last 7 years and they've faced vicious criticism from both parties in the United States.
There's a huge "ethics" gulf between writing code that is unambiguously good for the world (or whatever) and building... that. Like I said in my original post, I think a lot of the criticism Facebook got as a result of the 2016 election was unfounded. I don't think Facebook is an "evil" company (whatever evil even means here) but I don't think it's an ethical or moral one either.
It's especially odd because when Mark talks, he seems to really make a point to talk about Facebook's "vision" and "goal" to "connect people" - which is super vague. But it's like he expects that to be enough to inspire people. It's not. People choose to work there because they pay more and like you said, have a good rep as being a good place to work for and great on a resume.
Which brings me back to my original point: I don't think Mark Zuckerberg is a competent leader for a company of Meta's size and scope. When Bezos wanted to do spaceships, he didn't rename Amazon and start pushing in that direction, he spun off a separate company. It's clear Mark is passionate about this. He's hanging out doing videos with his R&D team. He should find someone else to head Facebook and focus on what he's passionate about. He wouldn't necessarily need to leave Meta, just transition his leadership so he's not CEO anymore.
This isn't responsible behavior from someone who leads a very large publicly traded company and I think it's part of why their stock is so volatile.
Facebook and it's portfolio of companies is threatened by TikTok and whatever comes next, but not existentially. TikTok will never offer what Facebook does in terms of things like groups, marketplace, a decade + of curated personas that people have on there. I had to create a Facebook account when I moved out of the United States because there were ex-pat groups on there and it was a reliable and non sketchy way to find things like long term housing.
One path for Facebook was/still is to become the "Oracle" of social media. Profitable, reliable and dependable but not new and exciting. Instagram, WhatsApp and FB are all profitable and stable businesses. Instead, it's like he's stuck in this mindset where he still thinks social media is all about "what's next" and FB will become MySpace if he can't keep 13-20 year olds on his platforms. Social media as a space has matured. Meta should mature with it.
Facebook was severely harmed when Apple made their platform changes. Imagine if Google's only revenue still came from search ads and they didn't have Android, YouTube, Google Cloud, Google Suite or the many other things they've done. Or if Amazon's revenue came from selling products to consumers online instead of AWS and Advertising.
Why has Facebook not able to diversify it's revenue and seemingly the only strategy has been acquiring competitors? Bad executive leadership. I don't understand why it's not discussed more.