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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

#491

Post by dntrkv »

kelnos wrote: post #466
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should Google's targeted advertising also be prohibited? Should Google's algorithmic filtering of content also be prohibited? Should Doubleclick/Google's surveillance practices (which almost certainly include some kind of "shadow" profile) be prohibited? Also, people have been talking about shadow profiles for at least a decade now, and yet no disgruntled FB employee has revealed all. Why do you think that is?

Yes, Google's similar practices should also be prohibited. You ask as if it's obvious that someone would say no and show themselves to be a hypocrite, which is weird.

How do you define "algorithmic" filtering?

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

#492

Post by daveFNbuck »

vl wrote: post #422
daveFNbuck wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they have an unlimited supply of labor and we're living in a corporate hellworld, why do they pay so well and include so many perks? They sure seem to be acting like a company that's competing for a limited talent pool.

Because it makes business sense to hire best of the best. Football clubs have unlimited supply of players, yet they pay ridiculous amounts of money to their players.

If it makes sense to hire the best of the best, then leaving it should actually hurt Facebook when the employees leave.

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

#493

Post by daveFNbuck »

greencabs wrote: post #436
daveFNbuck wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they have an unlimited supply of labor and we're living in a corporate hellworld, why do they pay so well and include so many perks? They sure seem to be acting like a company that's competing for a limited talent pool.

In short: to keep doing whatever they want without you opening your mouth. To elaborate: They don’t all pay well. Not even close. And none of them pay workers in other countries well, and they can outsource endlessly with no repercussions. But they want to keep their home in the US (the world military empire) because it lets them do whatever they want. And they don’t pay migrants nearly the same because migrants are…

It sounds like you're saying that Facebook has a lot to lose when employees in the US get upset enough to leave.

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

#494

Post by luckylion »

jakear wrote: post #475
luckylion wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook and Twitter could literally make the world a better place simply by disabling those kind of features. Just remove them. I'm not sure about that. I agree that the world might be better, but I'm not sure they could just disable them. The next smaller competitor who won't will have more user engagement and grow. If something is a very effective advantage, I believe you can only remove it by coordinated action…

This doesn’t need to be a secret flipped switch. It could be a very public announcement, which lots of supporting data and arguments. Nobody is going to build a successful competitor to FB based off of “we’re doing the same thing that Facebook just very publicly stopped doing because they took a stand against its society-destroying implications”.

Maybe, but I have doubts. Nobody likes predatory lending, but it's still a blossoming industry. I believe that works for small things, but if the advantage is large enough, somebody will step up and do it.

And it's not like people don't like it. They "want" to be engaged, to feel anger and surprise etc, those systems work because they're catering to peoples' instincts and desires.

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

#495

Post by tha0x5 »

ketzo wrote: post #280
travisoneill1 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have worked with many LGBT colleagues who never bring up politics at work. This "existence is political" thing is just a bullshit phrase that the obnoxious people who can't go an hour without bringing that crap up use to justify it.

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…

>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."

It is a bullshit phrase though. They don't want to bring it up because any skepticism is viewed as a direct attack on their ideology, and their ideology is the core of their existence/identity, so, calling out the illogic of their ideology is a political attack on their existence.

They want to TELL you, they don't want a discussion.

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

#496

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #359
gabereiser wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this, I’ve worked at places where we could talk politics and have disagreements and it’s totally fine. It’s when those discussions become toxic it’s an issue and management would rather avoid those hard conversations all together. Having said that, I have also worked places where it’s been banned. I also remember certain mailing lists just as toxic for non-political (maybe political in the engineering world) reasons.…

A problem with suppressing unrelated discussion (like politics and public policy) for all the right reasons such as those mentioned above, is that the suppression alone can be validly interpreted as the bosses/mods/admins reinforcing the status-quo if the workers/employees/users already feel oppressed or marginalised. Advancing progressive politics necessarily requires upsetting the status-quo, whereas if someone is…

You're not entirely wrong, but I think the endpoints you're picking obscure the problem. Few people mourn the loss of ethnonationalist discussion, but Facebook's Overton window is going to exclude a lot of mainstream right-wing and centrist thought that goes beyond identity politics. (For example, I wouldn't advise Facebook employees to tell their coworkers about opinions like "welfare programs are bad" or "all responsible people should own a firearm".) That's not just "fodder for the pundits" - it's a real problem if huge swaths of the political spectrum are unwelcome as employees of a major communications platform.

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

#497

Post by dahart »

kelnos wrote: post #453
dahart wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Almost made the same comment myself, I totally agree. Such positions didn't used to exist.

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

#498

Post by stale2002 »

ghaff wrote: post #328
stale2002 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or wearing a t-shirt Or wearing a "vote for Trump/Biden" t shirt. In that situation basically everyone would agree that it would be ridiculous to say that the grocery store should ban people for wearing that t-shirt. I think that most people would not call refusing to ban someone for wearing this t-shirt as a "political" decision. Most people would agree that it is not political to refuse to ban someone for wearing…

It's hard to parse all the double negatives. But, in general, businesses businesses should generally have a fairly wide latitude as to what the t-shirt slogans they allow customers to wear. (Though I think we can imagine various slogans a business might deem objectionable.) At the same time, businesses can reasonably have a fairly narrow latitude as to what employees should wear, even barring an official dress code,…

> to what the t-shirt slogans they allow customers to wear.

But the point is that basically nobody would call it a "political" decision if a store allowed customers to wear "vote for Biden/Trump" shirts.

Nobody would call that political, if a store allowed customers to wear those shirts in their store.

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

#499

Post by triceratops »

kelnos wrote: post #470
triceratops wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the phone company finds out you're running an illegal/scammy robocalling operation from their phone line, they absolutely will cut you off.

Cutting you off entirely is not the same thing as chopping up what you're saying and selectively passing through parts of it and not others.

It's not a 1:1 comparison. The point is the phone company can and does take steps to prevent misuse of their network.

Would you prefer it if social networks went straight to bans for rule infractions?

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

#500

Post by booboolayla »

I'd just like to state for the record that 90% of conversation on this topic is super-smart people arguing the best ways to censor opinions they find harmful politically or socially.

I want to keep this comment for when the pancake turns over and political and social opinions these people hold become "non grata" and heavily censored.

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