Irony as Meta staff unhappy about running surveillance software on work PCs

I think expecting everyone else (which is, I believe, almost everyone working at facebook) not involved with any of these things to take a large personal sacrifice or be condemned is unlikely to result in many resignations. You're asking people to be hurt for the actions of others.

The best argument you have here is the moment someone starts working at facebook, after these things happen. I don't know that they should be condemned, but I can understand looking at them with some suspicion. Still, its hard to say its the worst thing in the world to do, accept employment under a shitty person. Who hasn't complained about their boss?

When you lump in people who have done nothing wrong (and in fact you have no information about what they are or are not doing to stop things like this) for failing to stop the actions of others together with those committing acts of evil, you are making a totalizing statement. There is nothing they can do to redeem themselves. They are morally equivalent to the people doing the terrible things. Which is absurd.

To claim that my analogies to countries are "non-working" is ridiculous. This is the exact same argument as "are citizens of israel complicit in the actions of their government" or "are citizens of the usa" or "are citizens of palestine" or "are citizens of iran". If anything, I feel citizens of a country have far more potential to change the course of what those countries do than an employee at a company like facebook. (they still have almost no power at all, so the point is essentially moot. But at least democracies are outwardly meant to follow the will of their citizens, and coordination is encouraged) What power workers may have, only works when they coordinate action (which I think should be encouraged. These people are your friend).

We need more rational, sober judgement in the world, not mob justice.

Every employment contract I’ve signed has included language that makes it clear that whatever I do on corporate time, on the corporate net, on corporate devices, is corporate property. This is why I never mix corp and personal data on my phone or join my phone to their WiFi.

Is it just the AI training angle that makes this newsworthy?

Ah yes. All those horrible things happened overnight, right? So that's why we don't expect people to take a large personal sacrifice of ... knowing about this shit for years, and still working for the company. Or knowing about all this shit, and still choosing to work for this company.

> When you lump in people who have done nothing wrong (and in fact you have no information about what they are or are not doing to stop things like this) for failing to stop the actions

Never once did I ask them to stop the actions of others. However, they chose to work for a company which is complicit in all of this.

> This is the exact same argument as "are citizens of israel complicit in the actions of their government"

You keep pretending that being born in a country is exactly the same as actively choosing to work, and keep working for a company especially when there are plenty of other options. "But where else will I find a 300k salary" is not a moral choice.

In Brazil, for example, without WhatsApp you are an outcast of modern society there, businesses communicate with customers on WhatsApp, whole families and friend groups only use WhatsApp.

> WhatsApp only has value because of the network effect. Quit the platform and make your contacts find you elsewhere. Every platform dies eventually. The users just need to leave.

The network effect is exactly what makes it really hard for any single user to decide "I'm leaving" and tell every single person they need to be in touch to contact on another platform they don't use. What you are suggesting is simply impossible on an individual level, the only way it happens is if the platform has major issues that bleed users because it isn't working or the platform is made inaccessible by the government. Even a better competitor appearing will have a very hard time to crack the market share of a established network exactly due to network effects.