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Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

businessinsider.com

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Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#231

Post by insickness »

dbasedweeb wrote: post #230
insickness wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let me get this straight: You expect the police and military to use their weapons to defend you. You're willing to pay taxes to pay for those weapons. But you're too ethical to get paid to make them? I just want to be clear where on the spectrum your outrage falls.

When was the last time the military defended anyone in this country from an external threat? WWII? edit I’m saying that deterrence and defense are different words with different meanings, and you used the word, “defend” somput down the goal posts.

Simply the existence of our military has kept us from being attacked. You're saying we don't need a military?

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#233

Post by wenttomarket »

zemo wrote: post #219
kfrzcode wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would working at Uber be a detractor on a resume? It's major company with assuredly hefty tech - regardless of the HR issues rampant, shouldn't the hire be based on merit not association?

If you work for someone that does a bad thing, you are helping them do the bad thing. You are actively making the bad thing happen, and by doing so, you are also doing a bad thing. I think Uber is a bad thing. If you work for Uber, you have helped create a bad thing. At that point, I do not trust your judgement, and I do not want to work with people whose judgement I do not trust.

Accessible transportation and flexible and life changing job opportunities for millions is a bad thing. Classic HN logic.

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#234

Post by olleromam91 »

tzakrajs wrote: post #176
eric_b wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great that you've got a set of principles that you live by, and are able to stick to them. However, your principles are not everyone's principles, and what you consider moral and ethical is not universal. Grellas had a great comment on working for the military industrial complex a few days ago, that I think is worth a read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16759324

Read the comments in reply to that unnecessarily verbose comment. The follow-up comments destroy the original comment quickly.

So what is your alternative solution? If it ends up with "someone else can have better weapons than me"...I think you may want to reconsider.

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#236

Post by fred_is_fred »

kcorbitt wrote: post #13

I left YouTube about a year ago, in part due to cognitive dissonance between my values and the company's objectives. If you're a current employee of a similar company and you're considering your options, I understand the struggle and am happy to talk about it! Everyone's circumstances are different, but for me personally the TL;DR is that I'm much happier working somewhere where I can get 100% behind the mission. Any…

As a parent, thank you. YT is like crack for kids and they take everything on there at face value. The sheer amount of fake or conspiracy videos that show up in the suggestions makes it beyond unusable. I've found myself in the seemingly backwards position of telling my kids to just go watch some normal TV if they want to watch something.

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#237

Post by hw »

rm999 wrote: post #153
rout39574 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. My basis is the conversations I had when I interviewed there. They did not extend an offer, so read what you will into my own biases. :) But a repeated theme of the conversations was me trying to get inside their heads: I said: "Your job is to figure out when I'm going to be making a decision, purchase or whatever else, and make sure that your advertisers' message is in front of my eyes just as it's occur…

I'm not one to normally defend Facebook, but I disagree. Advertising was not prioritized for a huge chunk of Facebook's history, so I'd argue it's not part of their core ethos (it's a necessary evil, if you will). While a lot of their more recent product decisions have been made around revenue generation, I don't think that's what keeps their leadership up at night. Keeping a monopoly on user attention (euphemism is…

You're right in what keeps the leadership up at night - figuring out how to keep users glued to Facebook. That however, is also core to their business model, in that without user attention, advertisers wouldn't pay to advertise on Facebook.

Given that FB is now a public company, it needs to prove to shareholders, beyond anything else, that it's growing its revenues and profits. Turn FB into a company that puts its users first instead of its profits, and its stock price would probably be 1/3 of what it is today.

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#238

Post by hw »

ryanSrich wrote: post #14
saagarjha wrote: post #3

> Facebook engineers are quitting or trying to transfer to Instagram or WhatsApp I find trying to transfer into another product hilarious: it seems to me that they just don't want to have the stigma of working for "Facebook, the product", without really solving the issues working for "Facebook, the company".

Yes. Silicon Valley is turning on Facebook. Employees are realizing this and do not want a tarnished resume. If you actually believe this is for ethical reasons then you're not equipped for the world.

I doubt having Facebook on your resume would tarnish it. I'm sure Facebook engineers would not have trouble finding jobs at other companies like Apple, Google, etc if they have the right skillsets and technical smarts. I certainly would not pass up on a Facebook employee who checks the right competency boxes regardless of Facebook's image.

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#239

Post by peoplewindow »

saagarjha wrote: post #162
peoplewindow wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it doesn't look great if those accomplishments end up having a negative impact on society You're assuming all employers (a) believe in and (b) care about Cambridge Analytica. That likely isn't the case. It requires quite a leap to begin with, to believe that CA could actually "influence elections". But this is just the latest iteration of a very, very biased political viewpoint emanating from Dems-in-Denial. Back in…

You're assuming that I'm even referring to Cambridge Analytica. I'm talking about the general sentiment towards Facebook in general as being an unethical company, of which the "leak" of data to Cambridge Analytica is a small part. There are other bad-faith things that Facebook has done, especially with regards to their users' privacy, that certainly have a negative impact on society.

So replace "Cambridge Analytics" with "ads".

The vast majority of people do not consider advertising unethical. Nor do they consider social networks to be unethical.

I always struggle to figure out what classical rules of ethics Facebook (or Google) are supposed to have violated, but nobody can ever give me one. Instead there's a lot of begging the question.

Re: Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

#240

Post by raverbashing »

sametmax wrote: post #73
raverbashing wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bomb was initially built against the Nazis, and with the understanding that they would be building something similar. Japan came later. Also the group was sequestered to a remote lab (Los Alamos?) and working under strong secrecy. You either try to keep a good atmosphere or you go crazy.

If you are capable of building the most powerful weapon on earth, you are capable of guessing it will be used on something else than your current designated target, later. But they didn't think about that. They don't mention that they thought that they were working on something that could literally end humanity. And the thing is, we didn't even use the bomb to win against the Nazi. That the bomb was a good decision o…

> If you are capable of building the most powerful weapon on earth, you are capable of guessing it will be used on something else than your current designated target, later.

Yes, however the point is moot if your adversary hits you with it before you are finished.

Pacifists get shot first.

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