FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord • Hacker News Board

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#211

Post by wmf » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 11:25 PM UTC

jgacook wrote: post #175

wmf wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm convinced that discussing ethics or politics inside Facebook or Twitter will have literally zero effect. Employees should either quit or get back to work.

Why are you convinced of that? Unionized protests frequently accomplish institutional change - why do you think Facebook or Twitter would be exempt? If anything a unionized tech force striking would have more bargaining power than other groups since they are educated, specialized, and difficult/expensive for either company to replace en masse.

I agree that unions could be effective, but I also doubt that Facebook/Twitter employees could ever unionize. And for anything less than a full strike, leadership will just ride it out.

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#212

Post by davisr » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 11:28 PM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #47

davisr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, of course, censoring political discussion is the answer!

Censoring is when an authority removes content without your consent. Installing something that lets you decide what content to see (or not see) on a site is not censorship.

It is, however, sealing one's self in a chamber of like-minded opinion.

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#213

Post by dahart » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 11:29 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #191

dahart wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Isn't making people aware of laws how you abide by them? The risk of not educating people and being caught ignoring abuses is fairly serious. Broadly speaking, some of the laws we're talking about are laws that specifically require making employees aware of their existence.

I think they are talking about meetings at work which do not focus on the law or workplace etiquette, but serve to raise awareness of for diversity/minority/social justice issues outside the workplace.

Where is that happening? And are you sure we're not actually talking about people who misunderstand the purpose and legal requirements of diversity training programs?

As far as I can tell, this is the first comment in the thread to suggest we're talking about widespread mandatory "social justice" meetings that are political in nature and unrelated to the workplace's legal obligations. That's not what I got from @daok's comment or anything in between, and there are widespread mandatory diversity training programs in the U.S. that explain all the comments above, from my perspective.

I've never seen that (mandatory meetings unrelated to work) myself, across employment at 2 multinational corporations, several mid-sized companies, and a handful of startups. The mandatory diversity training programs in most companies are there to meet the legal obligations of discrimination law, whether they tell you that or not. Usually they tell you that.

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#214

Post by rsynnott » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 11:30 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #76

rsynnott wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd give that about 10 minutes before someone started claiming that their baby was immune to covid, and then you're right back where you started.

> claiming that their baby was immune to covid Some people are indeed immune to covid, babies too, most probably. I've personally heard of numerous cases of persons not getting the virus at all while their spouse was in intensive therapy or worse.

While it’s possible that some people might be immune, your anecdata is certainly irrelevant to determining that.

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#215

Post by randallsquared » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 11:37 PM UTC

mehrdadn wrote: post #207

shard wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like Rush says in Free Will, "If you choose not to decide, You still have made a choice".

Taking that logic at face value, it would mean "if you choose not to take a political stance, then you still have made a choice". Okay, so you've chosen not to make a decision. Yet I don't see how having made the choice implies you've still made a decision ("you have still taken a political stance"). If anything it seems like you just argued against the point?

Choosing not to restrict what political things people can say (or to whom) is definitely a political choice. In many contexts today in 2020, choosing to allow others to speak about their opinions without restriction or opposition is seen as, not only a political choice, but an active attack.

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#216

Post by Udik » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 11:38 PM UTC

not2b wrote: post #209

sevilo wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what happened... the early days of FB you're still somewhat close to your friend circle and therefore most of the content were personal updates. At then at some point Facebook started suggested links, posts that you have not explicitly followed, news articles that may or may not have been verified. Now every time I check the comments under such posts, it's people arguing with each other, and then people shar…

Worse: Facebook decides that the "most relevant" comments on such posts are the most inflammatory comments, because their algorithms select for engagement, so they want to show me something that will anger you, so you write an inflammatory reply.

But do they decide? Can they actually read the comment and decide it's inflammatory? Or do they just expose comments that people like to engage with (filtering out only the most obvious insults)?

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#217

Post by secondcoming » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 11:40 PM UTC

I'm not surprised. US political 'discussions' are ruining the internet as it is, having to endure it in the workplace must be unbearable. Reddit is fucked from it, Twitter should be avoided by everyone and it's here on HN too. It's also on Slashdot even though it's dead, the San Fran office of The Register seems intent on pulling that site down too.

The sooner this fucking election is over, the better. No more having to read about Marxism, Trump, Racists, Snowflakes and Trannies.

I downloaded nVidia Broadcast a while ago, it's really quite good.

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#218

Post by sidlls » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 11:42 PM UTC

jgacook wrote: post #159

fgrtr3terwy wrote: post #85

Facebook wants their employees to stop talking about politics, even though Facebook by its nature takes stances on deeply political topics. How exactly do you avoid political discussion when you're asking what constitutes hate speech, whether a US president should be allowed to violate Facebook's content guidelines, or to what extent governments can spread misinformation in other countries? If you work at Facebook, y…

Well put! My parents are very much of the "no politics at work" generation and I really question why that cultural strain has carried itself into 2020 since it only serves company board members/executives and categorizes rank and file employees as automaton code monkeys who should "shut up and type". Armchair thought: in this odd period of history where, ostensibly, capitalism "won" as the political system of choice…

Counterargument: a workplace is, at best, a poor environment in which to advocate for one's political causes. Most people engaged in labor for a company do so because they are not financially independent--that is, they have to in order to simply live. The larger the organization the more likely the employee base will span incompatible political views. Also, very vocal proponents (regardless of what political view they're advocating) will tend to dominate and effectively marginalized the more soft-spoken: a poor outcome in other contexts; why not this one?

On a more personal side: I honestly cannot stand when most people discuss politics in the Slack at work. The vast majority of comments are snarky, are unsupported (by data) opinions, or are caustically dismissive of opposing views. It's bad enough when people holding political views I disagree with engage in that behavior, but it's much worse when people I do otherwise agree with do. And it happens in just about equal measure, as far as I've experienced.

Work is already stressful enough without adding to it with political fights.

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#219

Post by Ancapistani » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 11:42 PM UTC

beefalo wrote: post #46

hirundo wrote: post #12

If we were to discuss politics at work at any length we would be at immediate risk of losing valuable people. We all pretty much know where we stand on politics, and it is not together. And many of us feel very strongly about our irreconcilable positions. But by carefully not talking about them (or engaging when someone less in tune starts) we get along just fine. That's not official policy but it is a good one.

political views !== who you think deserves human rights

Right, which is why ID requirements for purchasing firearms are immoral.

Re: FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

#220

Post by saghm » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 11:43 PM UTC

lozaning wrote: post #82

saghm wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You'd have to remove groups, pages, public profiles, and sharing Or they could just not show posts to groups you're not in and from pages and public profiles you don't follow! Allowing something to interject into your newsfeed should be opt-in, but right now it isn't even opt-out, except for not logging on at all. It would also be cool if there were a way to opt-out from seeing shared posts selectively for people o…

I don't really use FB all that much these days, because the people I care to keep up with have largely moved on from it. But when i do log in, I get mostly the experience you want with the https://www.fbpurity.com/ chrome plugin I've spent the time to heavily customize. My timeline shows as strictly chronological, and only text and photos posted by my immediate friends. No groups, ads, publisher's bullshit, promoted…

Yep, back when I still used Facebook, I used that extension. I think that installing a third-party extension is probably a lot more than the average person knows to do, though. I was mostly making a point that if Facebook finds discussion over politics and the like too divisive for their internal company chat, maybe they should consider what they can do for the rest of us to keep things similarly sane.