I am extremely imperfect and a hypocrite on many levels. I never practice what I preach, and if I'm being honest I can't say what I'd do if I had an offer from a company like Facebook or Google that promised to completely change my financial situation. I don't pretend to be better than anyone who has been in that situation and decided that the money was worth it. I'm not better than people who took the job because of the career opportunities, the social cache of working at a FAANG, or the chance at working with one of the world's richest datasets on the world's most powerful computers with some of the world's brightest minds. It would be a fair critique to say that my pronouncement smacks of self-righteousness borne of a moral framework that's never been challenged. Like a rich man who chastises the poor for stealing to feed their families, it's easy for me to moralize.
But, I do know that working for companies that are funded by advertising makes me feel uneasy. I know because I've worked at one or two. I also know that the company I currently work for charges our customers for the services provided, and I know there's a consensual quid pro quo in every customer agreement. I also know we don't track our customers beyond their consent. I would hope if my company ever started doing that I'd speak up, and if things didn't change I would hope to have the fortitude to leave and continue to speak up outside of the company.
I also have no doubt that my day to day work is automating away someone's job, somewhere. Where someone used to make a good living, my code will run instead. People might not get overtly laid off because of my code, but there's no doubt people who use my company's services hire less people... it's kind of the point. I definitely think about the moral implications of that. Sometimes I'm not super comfortable with the hypothetical effects of my code over a long time period. Even if I contribute less than 1% to my company's service, if my company's service saves our customers on average the equivalent of one salary a year I've been responsible for the, at best, lack of creation of hundreds of jobs. In a different world someone fed a family, bought a house, and lived a life with one of those salaries, and now that opportunity is forever gone. Sometimes that's a hard thing to grapple with, and I really hope that I'm not contributing to negative economic trends that hurt a large majority of the world's populace while enriching myself. Chances are I probably am, though.
However I am certain of a couple things. The mass collection of billions of people's information is putting upon yourself an incredible responsibility that I find hard to justify. This wasn't by accident, this wasn't dumb luck, this was a purposeful attempt to amass and control power. This power isn't inherently good or evil itself, but even in a vacuum one has a right to be suspicious of such power. Fortunately we don't live in a vacuum and over time Facebook has shown itself to not be a good steward of the power it's created. I have no doubt there are plenty of ethical people that work at Facebook, and there are definitely plenty of ethical, smart people who work in Facebook infosec. I don't blame them for the data breach. I blame the creator of this Pandora's box, I blame those who willingly continue the abuse of this power, I blame those who purposefully profit off the abuse of this power, and I blame those who refuse to realize that they will not change an organization that refuses to change. Until the use of Facebook's data is no longer rewarded with massive amounts of money Facebook will continue to collect and sell this data. The incentives are very clearly aligned. Working there, no matter your intentions, cannot change these incentives. I'm not saying everyone at Facebook is evil, but if the hiring reputation is true they are too smart to not understand these things for much longer. Facebook will continue to be morally bankrupt until its power is abolished or democratized, and since a Pandora's box cannot be closed I'll settle for democratized.