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FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

wsj.com

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

#281

Post by throwitawayfb »

baby wrote: post #226
throwitawayfb wrote: post #168

I've just been given an offer from Facebook and I have a few days to decide to take the job or not. The ethical implications of what I'm doing are intense. On one hand, a near 400k total comp package is very nice, but on the other hand I don't want to make the world worse off. I think if I could make that kind of money working from home for another company it'd be an easier decision. Unfortunately, I have to play the…

I’m obviously biased since I work there, but I had the exact same concerns before starting two years ago. In reality things are much more different that what HN makes it sound like. There’s all sorts of people, and not everyone agree, and much like the current climate in the US people are getting more and more polarized. I think it’s pretty awesome that everyone in the company is free to express themselves and debate…

Thanks for your perspective, it helps.

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

#282

Post by throwitawayfb »

jballer wrote: post #256
throwitawayfb wrote: post #168

I've just been given an offer from Facebook and I have a few days to decide to take the job or not. The ethical implications of what I'm doing are intense. On one hand, a near 400k total comp package is very nice, but on the other hand I don't want to make the world worse off. I think if I could make that kind of money working from home for another company it'd be an easier decision. Unfortunately, I have to play the…

I work at FB. I wouldn’t want to be working alongside people who think I’m a mercenary abdicating my moral precepts. And I wouldn’t expect that of my colleagues. So my guess is that you could get away with it easily, but you‘d be doing a disservice to yourself and your team.

No, I certainly wouldn't think of my coworkers as mercenaries for hire, as that's a very simplistic worldview that I don't subscribe to. My net concern is: Will me working at FB be a net good, neutral, or bad for society? I'm fine with neutral, I just don't want it to be a net bad.

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

#283

Post by chillacy »

claudeganon wrote: post #113
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's reasonable for someone working on, say, scaling the photo storage service to say that their work is apolitical and these debates aren't relevant to them. The performance characteristics of Facebook photos aren't going to incite a genocide or contribute to the global rise of authoritarianism.

I don’t want to go all Godwin’s law, but the “I was just scaling capacity for processing census punch cards” argument doesn’t pan out very well, historically.

Seemed to work out pretty well for all the scientists in Operation Paperclip. So historically, maybe it does pan out.

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

#284

Post by themacguffinman »

sg47 wrote: post #57
themacguffinman wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forcing others into debate and spreading conspiracy theories are two different matters. The former impinges on the basic freedom of speech and association for other people, while the latter affects no one's freedoms. The former is a matter of principle, the latter is a subjective judgement.

Where's the proof that others are being forced into debate?

Unsure what the GP was referring to, but the article suggests that the pressure comes from activists spamming work feeds:

> “What we’ve heard from our employees is that they want the option to join debates on social and political issues, rather than see them unexpectedly in their work feed.” [said Facebook spokesman Joe Osborne]

Others have organized to skip work in an act of defiance, affecting colleagues who are not engaged in their political cause:

> a group of employees staged a virtual walkout in early June to protest Facebook’s decision to leave up a post from President Trump about social unrest

Not exactly a "gun to your head" type of forced, but nonetheless these are actions designed to foment a political clash with other employees to engage with certain political causes when they may not want to concern themselves with that at all. What makes this particularly problematic in the workplace is that many employees rely on work feeds and teamwork to earn a livelihood for themselves and their families, so they cannot realistically avoid it.

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

#285

Post by refurb »

gfodor wrote: post #53
beefalo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

political views !== who you think deserves human rights

And this is the reason things have changed so much: Step 1: first, identify truly evil people (like self-avowed white supremacists) Step 2: find a unfalsifable or weak method to associate non-evil people with the evil ones. Step 3: once this method becomes part of the zeitguist, infer the association implies agreement. Step 4: once agreement is assumed when stating the association, imply the person's agreement is in…

This should be a top comment. It nicely summarizes how we got to where we were and why many people just keep their mouths shut.

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

#286

Post by adamsea »

Thorentis wrote: post #210
mikenew wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Facebook, by it's nature, is designed to filter content. It turned everyone and everything into a content generator, even down to the level of "Jimmy liked a post by Burger King!". It gives everyone access to this unfathomable ocean of content, and then filters it down to something a person can consume. Some of filtering is based on what the user wants to see, some of it is based on some notion of how "good"…

This is a fair point, but I think the political aspect is an "emergent property" if you will, rather than an inherent one. If Facebook limits the filtering to engagement, then it isn't the fault of Facebook that political content is engaging. That's just human nature. Disasters, outrage, politics, polarizing topics - these are all popular topics both online and off-line, and apread quickly as town gossip well before…

1. This sounds like a somewhat naive take on filtering algorithms.

2. Does it matter if it’s Facebooks “fault” or not? The issue is their power.

Imho ideally they would acknowledge and accept responsibility for their power and in the US at least there would also be some laws regulating them in this regard.

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

#287

Post by adamsea »

Thorentis wrote: post #261
jschwartzi wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could it not be the fault of Facebook when Facebook designed the algorithms that are creating all of the divisiveness on Facebook? If I build a bridge intending it to stay up and it happens to fall down 6 months later, I'm responsible for it. Facebook created an algorithm that divides people politically and that surfaces content that is provably fictional. So they should be held responsible for it regardless of t…

Truth is not the point of social media. Facebook isn't an encyclopaedia. Humans already gravitate towards groups that validate their opinions. It makes sense for Facebook to show people content they want to see. It is incredibly Orwellian to say "Facebook should only show people content which corrects their wrong views". Facebook isn't a social conditioning tool. I find the alternative to "misinformation" much scarie…

IMHO we as a society and species are still figuring out mass communication.

Propaganda, misinformation and deception have always been human issue - mass media magnified them as it does everything else.

And I think we all have the right to critique social media, just like we can critique the news, books, movies, etc.

We don’t have to agree but the discussion is a valid one to have!

We get to help shape our society and world, after all :).

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

#288

Post by kerng »

This seems like a wrong move. The idea seems to disassociate employees from the problems of Facebook, and the problem the platform creates...

When you work at Facebook you should know what's going on and what the company is doing and causing and trying to help fix it.

It sounds like leadership is asking employees to put the head in the sand - shouldn't a leader propose the opposite? What happened to move fast and break things?

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

#289

Post by adamsea »

mikenew wrote: post #244
Thorentis wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fair point, but I think the political aspect is an "emergent property" if you will, rather than an inherent one. If Facebook limits the filtering to engagement, then it isn't the fault of Facebook that political content is engaging. That's just human nature. Disasters, outrage, politics, polarizing topics - these are all popular topics both online and off-line, and apread quickly as town gossip well before…

I agree with what you're saying; pointing a finger at one particular thing and saying "this gets suppressed" is a bad solution. In fact it probably opens the door to a whole new category of problems. But... I think what we're seeing with political content is just a symptom of the real problem. > Disasters, outrage, politics, polarizing topics - these are all popular topics both online and off-line, and spread quickly…

Agreed. It’s all pretty new stuff in a lot of ways and we are just starting to figure out what it actually is.

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

#290

Post by shard »

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?

If you choose not to decide on a political stance, you have chosen to accept the current political climate as it is.
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