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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

#341

Post by thurn »

throwitawayfb wrote: post #281
baby wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suggest you try and talk to some people who actually get positive value out of Facebook for an alternate perspective. The HN audience (mostly young, nerdy white men) have always been one of the worst demographics for social networking products, and they might give you the impression that it's strictly bad for society because they don't personally derive any benefit from it. But if you step outside of that group, you will find there are actually a lot of people whose lives are enriched by social products.

Incidentally, this is why Google+ failed -- it was a social network marketed to the kind of people that hate social networking :)

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

#342

Post by NoodleIncident »

throwawaysea wrote: post #249
eli wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed! We all take political stances every day and it is certainly not possible to run an apolitical social network. The word is probably not very useful. But being able to reflect on “sensitive” issues is extremely useful and, I would argue, necessary.

And yet any random person on the street can easily flag something as being political or not political. I don’t accept that everything is automatically political. That is just an unrealistic argument that doesn’t match the reality of how the word is used.

You're correct. Almost everyone can efficiently categorize things they disagree with as "politics", while categorizing things they agree with as "common sense".

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

#343

Post by monocasa »

hartator wrote: post #236
not2b wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be more specific: you're in Myanmar (aka Burma), and there are Facebook groups calling for, and even organizing, massacres of the Rohingya minority. We should wait for a judge to shut that down? When the relevant judge is part of the people organizing the massacres? And no, this isn't hypothetical, this happened, and it happened on Facebook.

Is not about stopping the post of fb anymore but arresting these people. Yes a judge should make that decision.

The state of Burma allowed the massacres though. You can't trust a judge to shut it down.

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

#344

Post by dahart »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #334
dahart wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have had department meetings at my workplace in California in the wake of the BLM movement, which also happens to be a multinational with 10s of thousands of employees. Groups of 20 or so employees were put together and encouraged to share stories of how social and racial injustice has impacted their personal lives and ideas for what can be done. I have a peer who had similar meetings at their firm and the VP of Di…

Okay I totally would expect the VP of Diversity to say things to encourage people to participate in their new diversity program. :P

That's interesting, and I might be out of touch with this year's corporate response to the riots.

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

#345

Post by throwawaysea »

NoodleIncident wrote: post #342
throwawaysea wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet any random person on the street can easily flag something as being political or not political. I don’t accept that everything is automatically political. That is just an unrealistic argument that doesn’t match the reality of how the word is used.

You're correct. Almost everyone can efficiently categorize things they disagree with as "politics", while categorizing things they agree with as "common sense".

Again this is hyperbole and is not how people think. The politicization of everything and denying that some ideas are apolitical are tied. The latter is a false justification for the former.

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

#346

Post by x3n0ph3n3 »

forgotmysn wrote: post #204
eli wrote: post #202

I wonder what the people who justify working for Facebook because they’re “changing it from the inside” think about this.

are there really people that naive at fb?

_Absolutely_ there are.

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

#347

Post by ThomPete »

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…

i dont think they want them to stop, they want thrm to focus on the job not take advantage of their well payed and flexible jobs to be activist.

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

#348

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#349

Post by lopmotr »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #146
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Yankees and Red Sox fans regularly got into shouting matches on the ESPN software development mailing lists, I expect they'd be told to knock it off, and I wouldn't see that as a contradiction of the idea that sports is important.

Even so, in the grand scheme of things sports is utterly inconsequential, politics isn’t. If your team won the Super Bowl or your nation took home a lot of gold at the Olympics, how does that affect you materially?

If politics is consequential, then one of the worst ways to handle it is have people digging themselves into entrenched extreme positions just to "win" the ideological war against their dehumanized imaginary enemy. Better to shut them up so at least they have a chance to engage their brain in peace without the endless emotional need to fight for whatever unreasonable nonsense somebody goaded them into getting angry about.

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

#350

Post by emtel »

chmaynard wrote: post #193
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…

Consult a lawyer for advice on the legal implications of being directed to work on projects that either violate the law or your own ethical principles. The lawyer can help you draft an employment contract that protects you from retaliation if you object. If Facebook refuses to sign the contract, walk away.

Someone should make a museum of bizarre advice found on HN.

No normal company is going to sign _any_ contract provided by a prospective full-time employee (except perhaps if you are a sought after celebrity being hired at a VP level or above), so it would just be a waste of time and money for someone to take your advice.

Even if the hiring manager personally wanted to, there is no process for doing this. They don't have lawyers standing by to review such contracts. It would probably be hard to even find out who would have the authority to sign such a contract.

Further, retaliating against whistle-blowers is already illegal, as is ordering employees to break laws, so I don't know what additional protection you imagine you would get from such a contract.

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