351–360 of 635 posts
Even after two grilled Senate hearings in this year, Facebook has not taken things seriously
Said this yesterday in the other Facebook thread, and I'll say it again. Working for Facebook is a morally bankrupt position. If you are an engineer you have plenty of job opportunities available to you and there is no excuse for you to continue contributing your labor and time to a wholly malignant organization. At a certain point one has to ask how we as an industry will start dealing with those who continue to tak…
So is working at Google, Amazon and probably 90% of the big corps of the world in many sectors - from oil to finance to pharmaceutical to telecommunications and so on. And we can include the government. If you're a subcontrator or sold in body rental (modern IT slavery) you're also in the same position as an employee, so you're enabling their evils. Also, if one of those companies is a client of your company you're a…
While Google and Amazon both have their ethical problems and serious anti-trust issues, Facebook is in a league of its own. The complete, cavalier disregard for the consequences of its own actions as long as they get theirs is utterly unconscionable.
Unlike Google or Amazon, they add nothing of real value to society to balance the abuses they bring with them. All their labors are geared towards extracting the utility of other creators (their acquisitions like Instagram or WhatsApp) or to suck the time and attention out of people through addictive mechanisms. If Facebook disappeared tomorrow a hundred federated online platforms to function as generic address books and life-updaters would crop up over night, and just about every one of them would be better.
You would have to look at lines of business like Big Tobacco to find another field of similar moral perfidy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would it be remarkable that a few popular technologies come out of a big, rich technology company? People who create such technologies work at places like that. But there’s nothing about React or GraphQL that makes them only possible at Facebook.
A big, rich technology company has the resources to put people on the project full time and a revenue stream to justify such broad architectural project. There's also financial support for building a community around improving the tech, by encouraging outside contributions via meetups, conferences, social events, better technical documentation, etc. At smaller scale startup an engineer is surely welcome to work on hi…
This discussion is mostly irrelevant to the fact that this particular company is completely reckless and unethical. The technology they accidentally produce while building a dystopia to make people click on ads[1] does not justify anything.
2.23 billion active users, 50 million affected. ~2% of their user base. Wow, that's a lot of people affected, and somehow just a tiny sliver of their user base.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Use of the platform is entirely voluntary No it's not. Do you know Facebook creates shadow profiles of you by tracking your online activities? Even if you discount that, what about when all your friends use Facebook? Then you are going to be forced into a situation where you either use Facebook or stay disconnected from you friends.
Do you know Facebook creates shadow profiles of you by tracking your online activities? How would they do this if you never visit the site or download the app? If you're referring to the use of a pixel, compared to the full-fledge use of cookies used by other ad networks (the Gizmodo article from yesterday itself noticeably had ads all they way down the page based on sites I'd recently visited), surely that alone doe…
Said this yesterday in the other Facebook thread, and I'll say it again. Working for Facebook is a morally bankrupt position. If you are an engineer you have plenty of job opportunities available to you and there is no excuse for you to continue contributing your labor and time to a wholly malignant organization. At a certain point one has to ask how we as an industry will start dealing with those who continue to tak…
Look friend. If I lose my job, you aren't going to do anything to augment my lack of income. You're not going to do anything to provide health insurance. And you're not going to do anything to help me find new employment.
There is no "We".
Here's an idea. If this topic is something that you feel is important, then perhaps you can set aside half your income to a general fund to help provide benefits for employees who leave facebook for morality reasons. Maybe if it gets enough momentum others will also provide funds. Given enough time perhaps this will help the "industry" to become more ethical.
You know what's not going to convince anyone to leave facebook now? Trying to setup some sort of ad hoc lynch mob to "deal" with people who are trying to pay a mortgage.
Said this yesterday in the other Facebook thread, and I'll say it again. Working for Facebook is a morally bankrupt position. If you are an engineer you have plenty of job opportunities available to you and there is no excuse for you to continue contributing your labor and time to a wholly malignant organization. At a certain point one has to ask how we as an industry will start dealing with those who continue to tak…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Man this post made me angry. Being human is a morally brankrupt position. Accumulating wealth is a morally brankrupt pastime. If you want to be a morally pure human, starve yourself -- that's the only way.
I've always liked this line, even after becoming quite wealthy: And again I say to you: It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. --Matthew 19:24
As an adult, I heard someone talk about one of the gates in the wall to Jerusalem was named the "eye of the needle" because of its shape. If a camel was loaded up that exceeded a certain height, the camel could not fit through the gate. It was this situation that the biblical passage was supposedly referring. So as with most things, context really helped.
2.23 billion active users, 50 million affected. ~2% of their user base. Wow, that's a lot of people affected, and somehow just a tiny sliver of their user base.