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I find this issue much more pressing in the defense industry. I (thankfully) have the freedom to choose where I work. I will never willingly work on weapon systems. There are those that do though. Engineers who design things to kill other people. What the actual fuck.
Um you are aware of why SV exists - massive defense spending.
It's never too late to quit Facebook as a user, as a contractor, or an employee. Better yet, become a whistleblower and leak to the press.
Leaking corporate data or trade secrets to the general public is not the solution for a couple of reasons. - Depending on the actual contents of the leak, people might panic; this is basically never useful. - Depending on the outlet, the contents may get distorted before being published in order to fit some narrative -- potentially causing a panic. See above. - You or the original leaker may be traced back using even…
So if they are doing something illegal, and therefore one is protected from prosecution, they should absolutely "leak" it to the authorities.
Doesnt matter if you are unemployable if you recieve millions in a whistle blowing reward from the government.
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Exactly. And I doubt it's a mass exodus either. If you read "Surely you're joking Mr Feynman", the author clearly states that when making the bomb, they had a lot of fun. Lots of budgets. Only smart people. Working on the coolest projects. He even plays with the censorship and security practices. They never really thought too hard about the ethic part of it: they need to end the war, and that's it. They really said "…
The bomb was initially built against the Nazis, and with the understanding that they would be building something similar. Japan came later. Also the group was sequestered to a remote lab (Los Alamos?) and working under strong secrecy. You either try to keep a good atmosphere or you go crazy.
But they didn't think about that. They don't mention that they thought that they were working on something that could literally end humanity.
And the thing is, we didn't even use the bomb to win against the Nazi.
That the bomb was a good decision or not is a hard debate that I still think about sometime.
But there was not that much debate reported from the people building it.
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Count me as one. Who can say if I'd have passed their interview process, but I was recruited by them and immediately said "no thanks", and told their recruiter I didn't like that they subjected their users to psychological experiments without their knowledge[1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-tinke...
There are a lot of reasons to dislike Facebook, but I don't think their (public) research on the effect of social media on their users is one. You're exposed to psychological experiments on every large website you use, although typically the psychometrics are more limited to things like "did you click the button that gives us money?" instead of questions like "how does the emotional content of the news feed affect ou…
I have lots of other reservations about working for Facebook, that was just the one I specifically cited to the recruiter.
I wonder how many new hires pass up Facebook because of ethical concerns. Whats scary is if even internally people are moving departments because of ethics, that basically filters so that the least ethical people are on the teams with the most ethical concerns. If there's a real net effect on their hiring, they'll have to increase salaries to lure people in, which will take in even more unethical people (of course, n…
I find this issue much more pressing in the defense industry. I (thankfully) have the freedom to choose where I work. I will never willingly work on weapon systems. There are those that do though. Engineers who design things to kill other people. What the actual fuck.
It's not clear to me which one will cause more human death. Civillian aircraft is a significant cause of anthropgenic climate change.
This is sort of surprising information, from my view. The information about their business model and data practices which people seem to be so surprised by was/is common knowledge among people who work with these technology stacks. Going to work for Facebook seemed like it would have meant supporting and abetting those practices; they were very clear about what they were doing, and the roles were in no way ambiguous.…
Exactly. And I doubt it's a mass exodus either. If you read "Surely you're joking Mr Feynman", the author clearly states that when making the bomb, they had a lot of fun. Lots of budgets. Only smart people. Working on the coolest projects. He even plays with the censorship and security practices. They never really thought too hard about the ethic part of it: they need to end the war, and that's it. They really said "…
In fact Feynman's IQ was merely "above average" according to Feynman himself, who got a look at his score after taking the test in school.
But if you're using "IQ" as a proxy for actual, you know, intelligence then yeah, I agree :-)
> Facebook engineers are quitting or trying to transfer to Instagram or WhatsApp I find trying to transfer into another product hilarious: it seems to me that they just don't want to have the stigma of working for "Facebook, the product", without really solving the issues working for "Facebook, the company".
Now the pendulum swings hard opposite, and foolish as the kids where, they wanted the prestige 3 months ago and should suffer that choice today?
Even though I'd never work for Facebook, I can acknowledge the people who work there are working on some tough problems.
I'll be fully convinced when every Facebook product is removed from every website, including React.
This is sort of surprising information, from my view. The information about their business model and data practices which people seem to be so surprised by was/is common knowledge among people who work with these technology stacks. Going to work for Facebook seemed like it would have meant supporting and abetting those practices; they were very clear about what they were doing, and the roles were in no way ambiguous.…
Exactly. And I doubt it's a mass exodus either. If you read "Surely you're joking Mr Feynman", the author clearly states that when making the bomb, they had a lot of fun. Lots of budgets. Only smart people. Working on the coolest projects. He even plays with the censorship and security practices. They never really thought too hard about the ethic part of it: they need to end the war, and that's it. They really said "…
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As sure as it's still a developer's market and FB controversy doesn't erase technological accomplishments of individuals. Those accomplishments are easily untied from the politics of the situation. You may lose a small amount of jobs that would come your way, but you'd still likely have dozens of offers to choose from from companies that don't view you as 'tainted'. Software engineering doesn't have the same ethical…
> FB controversy doesn't erase technological accomplishments of individuals It doesn't, but it doesn't look great if those accomplishments end up having a negative impact on society. Do you really want to have "I wrote an novel algorithm to track people" on your resume? > Software engineering doesn't have the same ethical consequences and motivations as other fields (medicine, law, etc.). It doesn't make much sense t…
You're assuming all employers (a) believe in and (b) care about Cambridge Analytica. That likely isn't the case.
It requires quite a leap to begin with, to believe that CA could actually "influence elections". But this is just the latest iteration of a very, very biased political viewpoint emanating from Dems-in-Denial. Back in Obama's time it was "elections can be bought with campaign spending", then it became "elections can be controlled with Twitter spam" and now it's "elections can be controlled through some vaguely specified process involving years-old data from Facebook profiles". The mechanism keeps changing but the underlying belief that voters who don't vote left-wing are just marionnettes on string remains.
If you don't believe that, and believe / know that voters make up their own minds consciously, based on the information they have, then this entire Facebook story would make no impact on your hiring decisions because the idea that Facebook is some sort of sordid unethical power broker seems ridiculous to begin with.