211–220 of 224 posts
This long article doesnt address the most critical point. If employees have an ethical issue with working there, why don't they quit? This isn't a new dillemma. People working for tabacco companies have always been in the same boat.
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> Maybe the electoral college isn't really that democratic Presumably you know this, but it's not supposed to be democratic. That's literally why it exists, to curb majority rule by cities at the expense of rural voters, who occupy the majority of the land and—more importantly—are cannon-fodder for our military and thus need a seat at the table if we city-goers hope to continue sending them off to die.
> Presumably you know this, but it's not supposed to be democratic. Yes, that's why it's bad. I don't think occupying a lot of land or joining the army at a higher rate entitles rural voters to more power than anyone else. If we're going down the route of determining whose vote should count for more, those two qualities seem to be near the bottom of the list.
We could just go back on our agreement. After all, people in flyover country are just a minority with little economic power and very little representation. I doubt anyone that matters would care if they have what little power they do have reduced.
This long article doesnt address the most critical point. If employees have an ethical issue with working there, why don't they quit? This isn't a new dillemma. People working for tabacco companies have always been in the same boat.
> People working for tabacco companies have always been in the same boat. That's not a very fair comparison - there aren't exactly any huge positives associated with tobacco use. So it's not like someone could work for a tobacco company and say "sure some people die from consuming our product but on the other hand look at all the good we're doing..." That's very different than Facebook where yes there may be some neg…
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> People working for tabacco companies have always been in the same boat. That's not a very fair comparison - there aren't exactly any huge positives associated with tobacco use. So it's not like someone could work for a tobacco company and say "sure some people die from consuming our product but on the other hand look at all the good we're doing..." That's very different than Facebook where yes there may be some neg…
The positives you listed are features of most social networks, not just Facebook. If Facebook disappeared overnight, another platform(s), hopefully more ethical, would quickly take over its role, and it could be a net positive for the world.
But it's simply not going to happen, so this is all moot.
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As long as the editors are "our guys" and not any of "their guys"
On the contrary, I regularly read articles and watch videos edited by "their guys". I don't have much interest in listening to people scream on social media, but I'm genuinely happy to learn the perspectives of people who don't think the same way as me.
If it's just politics with no direct relevance to your life-- are you really better off that way? Is being more right or just more open minded about something that you have no influence do you any good if it alienates you from friends or family at all?
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On the contrary, I regularly read articles and watch videos edited by "their guys". I don't have much interest in listening to people scream on social media, but I'm genuinely happy to learn the perspectives of people who don't think the same way as me.
A consequence of this is that you may find yourself changing your views-- or at least being more open minded about things your friends don't approve of. If it's just politics with no direct relevance to your life-- are you really better off that way? Is being more right or just more open minded about something that you have no influence do you any good if it alienates you from friends or family at all?
I of course don't begrudge anyone who feels they have to keep a closed mind in order to maintain a reputation in their community.
I feel like all of this debate is painfully missing the point. The problem is not some content moderation policy, the problem is that social media has changed social conversations from small local interactions into monstrous virtual fight clubs between millions of people simultaneously, and where the most extreme opinions are rewarded with the most attention. Boring level headed opinions used to at least have a chanc…
This long article doesnt address the most critical point. If employees have an ethical issue with working there, why don't they quit? This isn't a new dillemma. People working for tabacco companies have always been in the same boat.
> If employees have an ethical issue with working there, why don't they quit? Always super easy to say for someone else. Why haven't most of the people in the US government quit by now? In fact, insecurity about getting an equivalent job is a real thing. Not wanting to abandon a project you've worked on and expertise you've developed is a thing. Not wanting to abandon people you've worked with is a thing. Thinking yo…
but i consider myself lucky! there are many people who experience all sorts of work-related insecurity with real gravitas. folks on work visas. folks paying off student loans or other debt. folks who had been working much worse tech jobs before and feel their FB offer was a lucky break. also the many folks at FB not on the tech side who don't earn stereotypical tech comp.
i have no idea how many people there are who satisfy these conditions or similar ones, but my guess is that if you're ever thinking to yourself, "why don't more people just quit?" it's because you're underestimating the scale of folks in that group.
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It took him 9 years of collecting a fat paycheck and enabling Facebook to find his moral compass. Is it wrong to be skeptical of these millionaire developers who ride off into the sunset to retire but leave a final "oh btw, lots of problematic stuff at my former employer" message?
It's not wrong to be skeptical. I do think there's a sort of boiling frog effect, though. Internal company culture never matches public perception, and you're always able to tell yourself a story that the public misunderstands what drives the company. After all, you hang out with your colleagues and you know they aren't bad people. But then some big controversy snaps you out of it and you realize that the company's i…
i joined FB for the first time as an intern almost a decade ago. i suspect i have a substantively different view of the company and the people who built it—even compared to many other employees, and certainly compared to folks who have not been in the ~room where it happens~ (heh).
even accounting for some amount of insider bias, i think there's still a material discrepancy between how the public viewed certain major FB "scandals"—via the lens of media spin and profitable reporting—and how many folks like myself, who were privy to additional context and private information, viewed them. to some people, the recent discord around hate moderation might seem like just more of the same FB badstuff. not so for me!
even folks at FB who don't work directly on certain products and policies are often immersed in discussion about them (unless they aggressively unsubscribe). these discussions, again, have their bias, but i hope we can concede that it's still a lot of passive brain cycles being spent swimming among these topics. folks develop deeper intuitions for how troubling X or Y publicized issue actually is, relative to all the things (of all flavors) that happen at FB and among its users. there's also a ton more discussion of legitimately positive societal work and how to extend those successes, whereas those rarely make good media narratives.
the good doesn't cancel out the bad—that's never how it works—but you do have to consider both together at every decision point.
in the leaked audio of my internal video post, i say that my long road to the door started in 2019. i still stand by that inflection point, and feel that before the, FB—while clearly on the back foot for some time due to rampant abuses by powerful groups of its product—was on balance moving in a direction i supported.
you may have made a different choice—or you may feel you would make a different choice, though you may not have the full slate of inputs right now to be sure you would, in situ. but, at least for me, i have reasons why the questions around the 2016 election or fake news or data breaches were things which, to me, seemed categorically different from the questions concerning hate moderation.
feel free to DM any earnest questions about why these things don't all congeal into one mass of problem for me (and i suspect other current and former FBers).
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It's possible to be an employee at what you think is an immoral company but be doing some innocuous that's just a part of a bigger whole. Does improving an internal observability tool as your job make you just as culpable as Mark? At what point do your actions become immoral? Just working for the company? Building anything for the company while an employee? Maybe you have to be the last step implementor of some bad p…
> At what point do your actions become immoral? When your livelihood is funded by this kind of vile deception and manipulation, your actions are undoubtedly immoral.
you might not like the messy reality, but there are lots of my former coworkers who feel inclined to stick around because of their work visa, or to pay off their loans, or because they felt their FB offer was a lucky break and they want to best support their kids.
if you're not responsible for all violence or oppression in your nation as a citizen, trust me—folks employed by a given employer are likewise not wholly culpable for the actions of their companies.