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FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

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

#451

Post by kelnos »

fxtentacle wrote: post #395
an_opabinia wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a chance of that happening or does it already happen? Nah. Every Facebook employee I've met, every one that I'm reading, they are sincere about what they're angry about. It's a bad look, to assume some Facebook employee's opinions are being co-opted by... fucking Google? Apple? That's ridiculous. I'm not even going to speculate why anyone questions some random Facebook employee's sincerity. Instead I offer…

"some idiot outraged over the removal of master/slave nomenclature" Since GitHub repositories renaming their master branch did cost us significant money and almost caused downtime, I would be fully understanding if someone else is feeling outraged about it. I belive you need to work on your example of a bad person ;) How about we go with? And then in the same breath that gal defends selling people's secrets for penni…

> Since GitHub repositories renaming their master branch did cost us significant money and almost caused downtime, I would be fully understanding if someone else is feeling outraged about it.

I think "outrage" is an inappropriate response. We're talking about removing nomenclature that has been (and continues to be) used to oppress an entire segment of society. I think removing that is worth a little money and downtime, if it comes to that. People who are "outraged" that it cost them some time and work probably could stand to show some compassion for their fellow humans.

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

#452

Post by kelnos »

dahart wrote: post #326
BeetleB wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your whole argument is predicated on "The law is vague. Society has decided such phrases make people unwelcome, and thus companies can be penalized for it." Unfortunately, the only way to know is to test it in the courts. We differ as to where society currently stands on such matters, and it is certainly not clear that were this to go to court, rulings will be made to penalize companies utilizing the lexicon in the m…

> Your whole argument is predicated on "The law is vague. Society has decided such phrases make people unwelcome, and thus companies can be penalized for it." No, my argument is predicated on my experience and discussions with company HR and lawyers at multiple companies. It sounds like your experience differs, and that's fine. My explanation for why the words you chose aren't specifically listed in the law is becaus…

> You have said multiple times that it is "not about the law" and you haven't offered an alternative explanation.

In addition to what the parent says about PR, there are some actual good reasons:

1. Some companies are starting to understand and believe that having a diverse team is a competitive advantage when it comes to designing and marketing products intended for a diverse audience.

2. Some companies are starting to believe that it's just the right thing to do to try to increase diversity in their ranks, to attempt to combat systemic sexism and racism that historically has kept certain groups on the sidelines for some roles.

Whether you agree with these things or not, companies are increasingly believing in them, and that's at least a part of why they go far beyond what the law requires when it comes to anti-discrimination. I find it unlikely that a company would lose a court case for not pushing to hire more diverse candidates, or not having implicit-bias training, or not removing terms like master/slave or whitelist/blacklist from their internal lexicon. It does not seem like companies are doing this because they are afraid of running afoul of the law.

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

#453

Post by kelnos »

dahart wrote: post #344
s1artibartfast wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think just the fact that companies are increasingly hiring executives that head diversity/inclusion departments (mine does as well) shows that they're aiming for a lot more than just compliance with anti-discrimination laws.

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

#454

Post by kelnos »

hnreader998 wrote: post #329
dahart wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you referring to?

I should have been more clear. Like someone else mentioned, these diversity (and inclusion) discussions are not related to discrimination laws and equal opportunity. They are always related to increasing diversity in the company by hiring more underrepresented people (previously this just meant women in eng but now it's been expanded to POC). In order to achieve this, companies are actively discriminating against non…

I don't think you're looking at it from the right perspective, or have the right base assumptions in place.

The thesis here is that current hiring practices are biased (often implicitly and unintentionally) against women and POC. Since removing implicit bias is exceedingly difficult, actively requiring hiring managers to hire more people from underrepresented groups is a way to put your thumb on the scale in order to equalize them.

I can understand how you'd see that as discrimination against white men, and if you squint at it in just the right way, it really seems like it is, but what it's really doing is attempting to reduce an unfair advantage that white men have. No, it's not perfect, and I'm sure occasionally a white male does legitimately get discriminated against. But that's a small price to pay to lift a ton of other people out of the status quo of discrimination they're usually stuck in.

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

#455

Post by kelnos »

throwaway1777 wrote: post #369
wmichelin wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is not your average workplace. If your platform is profiting off of active political misinformation, you have an obligation to not only discuss these issues, but solve them. If you determine that you can't solve them, it's time to stop accepting the money.

Most employees at Facebook are doing nothing of the sort. They are working on databases and internal tools and changing the color of buttons. If you work on an integrity team then yes, you'll have to discuss such issues, but most employees don't.

That feels disturbingly close to a "just following orders" defense. Just because you're in the basement keeping the boiler running, it doesn't mean you can ignore what goes on upstairs. If what they're doing upstairs is unethical, it's unethical for you to keep the lights on for them.

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

#456

Post by kelnos »

thu2111 wrote: post #425
ketzo wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correction: they never brought up politics to you . You don't know that they weren't political in their discussions with other colleagues. Perhaps it is worth considering why that might be the case. People whose existences are deeply politicized (and they do indeed exist) are not often excited to have political conversations with people who say things like "'existence is political' thing is just a bullshit phrase." I…

You've set up an unfalsifiable belief there. No matter what evidence is brought up to the contrary, you can just blow it off by claiming said people never reveal the truth to whoever is arguing with you. It's a fallacious way to shut other people down and that is, kind of, a little bit dickish.

I don't think that's the case here, though. The parent admitted that they fell into the exact same trap: assuming that certain conversations didn't go on because they weren't a part of those conversations, but later learning that wasn't the case, and it was their attitude that kept them out of those conversations.

It's of course not universally true that's the case for everyone, but I think it's worth thinking about. If your attitude is dismissive of someone's lived experience, it's not likely that they're going to go out of their way to include you in conversations about it; on the contrary, I'd expect them to explicitly exclude you in order to protect themselves.

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

#457

Post by kelnos »

lmm wrote: post #332
jsabo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on if your existence is political I suppose. Ask some of your LGBT colleagues, especially trans colleagues, if they feel like can just leave politics at the door.

Demanding that other people describe you a certain way is not "your existence".

In some cases perhaps it isn't, in others it is. Who are you to decide for them? Grow a little empathy and compassion, perhaps. No one is asking you to use particular pronouns in order to piss you off; they're doing it in order to feel comfortable in their own skin. It's petty, selfish, and inhuman to deny someone that.

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

#458

Post by fxtentacle »

kelnos wrote: post #451
fxtentacle wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"some idiot outraged over the removal of master/slave nomenclature" Since GitHub repositories renaming their master branch did cost us significant money and almost caused downtime, I would be fully understanding if someone else is feeling outraged about it. I belive you need to work on your example of a bad person ;) How about we go with? And then in the same breath that gal defends selling people's secrets for penni…

> Since GitHub repositories renaming their master branch did cost us significant money and almost caused downtime, I would be fully understanding if someone else is feeling outraged about it. I think "outrage" is an inappropriate response. We're talking about removing nomenclature that has been (and continues to be) used to oppress an entire segment of society. I think removing that is worth a little money and downti…

Surely it is very easy to take the moral high ground on these issues. But if you're the one working over-hours to fix the resulting mess, you start to wonder why those knights in shining armor forgot to show you the same compassion.

Usually, when open source projects introduce a breaking backwards-incompatible change, they will first deprecate things and then wait some months to give people time to update. After this nomenclature had been in use for 10+ years, I can't help but wonder why there was no time to take the user-friendly path in this instance.

So to the people who are fixing the mess, it certainly feels more like you got kicked because someone else wanted to show off his/her moral superiority.

There existed a reasonable way to change the nomenclature, but it wasn't taken.

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

#459

Post by kelnos »

dexen wrote: post #428
luckylion wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such as ... food production? "But your food is consumed by literal fascists"... water supply? "Did you know that evil people also drink the water you are providing and hydrate their bodies so they can do more evil things?" For people who believe that everything is political, there are no projects with less moral ambiguity, it's just more or less openly visible.

Upon reading your, and GP, it occurred to me that we've lost the idea that it is the buyer that is responsible for the purchases . It used to be that people and organizations making unethical purchases were the ones we considered, and held, responsible. For a long time we've had good, positive movements centered on informing the buyer. We added expiration dates, ingredient lists, nutritional value information, crashw…

> Most of the services (FB and the likes) we're discussing here are morally neutral by their nature

I don't think that's the case. Is it moral to exploit human psychology when developing addictive features that pull people into the site over and over? Is it moral to sell user information to advertisers so they can emotionally manipulate you into buying crap you don't need? Is it moral to design interactions that evoke outrage and disagreement in order to increase engagement? Is it moral to track user activity across the web, outside the company's site?

I don't think any of these things are moral. These practices might not be necessary for a site like FB (then again they might), but this is the model they all seem to choose. And that's what actually matters.

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

#460

Post by kelnos »

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…

It's great that y'all discuss this sort of thing internally, but at the end of the day, FB and similar platforms have increased polarization, addicted users, eroded privacy, and allowed state actors to influence elections. And that's the incredibly short list.

Whatever internal discussions you're having, they're not working. I'd posit that they can't work, because FB's entire business model is predicated on user-hostile, polarizing behavior, whether anyone internally will admit it or not.

It frankly does not matter one bit what things are like internally when externally we can see the harm FB has caused, and there is zero evidence that harm is going to stop.

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