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Comment by ForrestN | Hacker News Reader

There must be many HNers who work at Facebook. Anyone willing to make a throwaway account and tell us how it feels from the inside for Facebook to be one the wrong side of so many ethical issues? It just seems like in so many dimensions they've been caught saying wrong things or appearing to outright lie, and I'm curious how developers who work for them think about aiding a company that seems to be so compromised at the moment. Now that it's fairly clear that the service doesn't serve any unique, unambiguously positive purpose, what world-changing mission can you possibly decide that Facebook is achieving these days?

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It's easy to forget on HN, but there is far from universal buy-in for the notion that having or collecting data on people is unethical. Some may even consider it noble to optimize and perfect the world and its institutions (including commerce, via efficient advertising) using large-scale personal data.

The impulse to make something better by applying a database engine that you might feel for business processes, can just as easily be felt for customer interactions or the world at large.

For an interesting (and very critical) look at this philosophy I recommend The Circle by Dave Eggers.

The problem is misleading the public about the nature of the information gathered and the shady ways that the information is sometimes used. If Facebook were only gathering information necessary to improve the experience of its users, and were not selling that information or lying about it, I don't think you'd see the same backlash.

> If Facebook were only gathering information necessary to improve the experience of its users, and were not selling that information or lying about it, I don't think you'd see the same backlash.

Facebook doesn't sell information, it sells ads. That's not the same thing.

They sell ads by offering this information in the form of targeting.

I've worked at an ad-serving company. Clients couldn't get our data out, it's behind the scenes to them. Business-wise, it would be undermining our own product to offer anyone's personal information. There are other companies that do this focusing just on the collection side, which sounds like what FB is buying - but for FB to protect their position they're going to try to keep lids on that.

The companies that try to sell those types of profiles, by IP or cookie syncing or whatever, seemed to get it wildly, wildly wrong - but the role of accuracy/auditing in the ads business is another discussion. FB seems to be buying a different sort of data than we were, since they know so much more (first/last/birthdate, etc).

Anyway, this is a problem that doesn't start or stop with FB, and the brokers are the dangerous part.

Starting a database with personal information on a large amount of personae. Without them knowing about it. Refusing to share the gathered information. All of this is legal in the US? In the EU???

The EU has restrictions on this kind of stuff - http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/data-collection/...

I worked for a few years at a company that provided a SaaS IVR product. Think call centre call routing, and PBX features on any dumb phone.

As people shy away from phone calls, and with the competition of VoIP, we gradually saw the erosion of the price per minute we could charge (roughly 40% drop over the course of 5 years).

The company tried to shift by looking at the data we had available. Millions of phone calls, and we knew exactly what kind of service was being called. Banks, airlines, airports, sex lines, restaurants, customer support, whatever. We could see when people called most, for how long, and we even knew which service inside the call centre they were talking to.

It wasn't long before the company wanted to exploit this, and they started working on the ability to play ads while people were waiting to get in touch with a service representative. Targeted ads.

Based on phone habits, we could tell whether the person calling was a stay-at-home parent, retiree, teen, young professional, etc. We could also tell their gender, in 60-70% of cases.

Because of the technology, we had access to actual phone number, even when people called with restricted identity. It's just how it works when you are registered as a "network operator".

This shift from "let's provide an amazing service" to "let's mine the crap out of everyone" definitely contributed in my leaving the company.

> I've worked at an ad-serving company. Clients couldn't get our data out

That's not really possible. Proof: Say Alice is your client, and her ad targets gay people (even though the ad or the advertised product itself is not necessarily related to being gay). Then using your data about sexual preference, you serve the ads only to gay people. Only gay people will see the ad, and thus only gay people will reach Alice's website. Hence Alice got the data out. QED.

They have to make money somehow, don't they?

The mafia defense? Really?

Why not, you are using their "free" services, and if you would care to read every word of the user agreements then it lays out exactly what they information they "collect". What they "collect" and what they "know" are two different things, using data analysis they can speculate many other aspects of a user with a pretty high degree of accuracy. They should not have to disclose this, the user has given them the data as agreed. If the media and privacy nuts didn't always put an evil spin on it people might actually realise that things in life aren't free. I know many people who enjoy using facebook for free, so why shouldn't Facebook make money from that. Just because they know alot about you doesn't mean that you absolve responsibility for giving out so much information in the first place.

mafia is free as well... you could not use their "service" but suddenly you realize you can't, because you're cut out (depending on where you live in Italy this could be literally true, you're just cut into pieces) if you don't.

Giving information directly to facebook is one thing. The article is about FB gathering info not directly given to them.

Imagine the government put a policeman on every corner and they recorded the movements of every person in the neighborhood at all times. 4:36pm Mr. Jones walked to newsstand, 4:43pm Mrs Jones opens front door, looks around, closes front door. 4:45pm Mr. Smith dog starts barking. 4:51pm Unknown man shows up at Mr. and Mrs Miller's house. Mr Miller is not home. She invites him in. 5:01pm Mrs Wayne tends to her tomato garden.

Many (most?) people would feel creeped out to know they are being constantly watched and all activities logged. And yet Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook and a bunch of others are trying to do exactly that through your computer, your online activity and through your phone and eventually they'll probably also do it with cameras and mics

It is rumored that some metro systems are utilizing face recognition technology. Also, I'm pretty sure our license plates are scanned and recorded as we drive throughout cities.

If you want your client/user/customer to be aware of something you put it on your front page or packaging in plain language and a large, legible font. T&Cs/TOS is where you obfuscate information that you're legally obliged to 'inform' people of, but you really wish you didn't have to and you hope they'll never see it. Nobody reads the T&Cs of every product they use. I know this, you know this, everyone knows this. To suggest otherwise is either naive or disingenuous. It may be commonplace but it's really not ok and we shouldn't accept it. To defend companies doing this is enabling and shameful IMO.

The problem I have with it is that Facebook decides what "improve" means -- it tries to groom me like cattle rather than ask me how I want to experience it or who I want to be "optimized" in to being.

And that's okay, so far as they're open about it. But I don't think they are, especially the sophistication of their psychology research (and experimentation).

If you don't like Facebook, don't use Facebook.

I think the problem rests more on the fact that as it stands Facebook profits regardless as to whether or not you use it. The same collection happens across numerous non-Facebook sites and apps, from data other people reveal about you, from apps and companies that are bought up by Facebook, and so on. The idea of "if you don't like it just don't use Facebook" becomes very difficult to implement when modern existence feeds into Facebook it seems.

It's the involuntary participation in facebook's arrangement that people are bothered by.

Not an option. They have a shadow profile about you anyway.

Aside from that this is as silly as "If you don't like organized crime don't buy stuff from the mafia and there's no problem."

Actually, if you don't like Facebook, litter it with disinformation until it becomes an unreliable and undesirable source.

> If you don't like Facebook, don't use Facebook.

And don't use any site with the Facebook "Like" thumbs-up thingy, which is tracking what sites you visit.

I blocked those pesky buttons using Ublock no social list.

I appreciate that, but most people don't know how they want to experience it. E.g. people will say they want to see everything in their feed, but if they do get everything, they complain about how much crap there is

The assumption being that this is not how people want to experience it?

If there's so much crap, maybe I want to be able to complain about it.

People might act on the tsunami of crap in manners that may not be profitable for Facebook.

The solution to undesirable, stupid, homeless, uneducated, etc etc isn't to hide it from your vision.

Surveillance could indeed have many beneficial uses in a benevolent, voluntarist sort of society. Unfortunately we don't live there. The world is still largely run by warlords, narcissists, and sociopaths.

The "standard" counterargument here is that warlords, narcissists, and sociopaths can only operate effectively in private, and their capabilities would be severely limited in a world where secrets are hard to keep.

I understand you don't necessarily buy into that argument, but allow me to offer a counter-counter.

That argument relies on the collected data being closer to the truth, than the absence of it. I think that may be true for (statistically) normal people. But for narcissists and sociopaths, it may also be a helpful tool for someone creating a fake alter ego of benevolence and 'harmlessness'.

Why would the warlords, narcissists and sociopaths get rid of their own privacy? Zuckerberg seems very keen on preserving his...

It may be good, but it's not democratic.

Seconded. I would gladly hand over my personal data if it means improved FB/search experience. I think there's a large number of people who share my viewpoint. If someone is concerned about protecting their online privacy they have the option of not using those services. (I know about trackers on third-party websites. It's pretty trivial to block them.)

mostly agreed. i would be okay of 1) the data never left facebook, 2) i had access to all the data, and 3) conversation content and contact data was specifically excluded.

So how do I prevent my friends from uploading my phone number when they share their contacts? What do I do when they take pictures at a party and upload them? Should I have to jump out of view every time somebody takes a phone out of their pocket? Give only "trusted people" my phone number?

You don't, and can't. Not beyond perhaps choosing better friends.

Information about you is not necessarily owned by you.

It's not even just unethical, it's also illegal in many places. Facebook (and Google and many others) are constantly violating European privacy laws and hide behind the Irish government who protects them against the rest of the EU. As an example, in Germany, data privacy is a basic human right and in theory things like the FB Like Button or Google Analytics just collecting data in the background without a user knowing is illegal. In theory, any site using Social Plugins/Google Analytics would need users to opt-into the data collection, but of course nobody does this and going against FB/Google for these kinds of things is near impossible right now. See http://europe-v-facebook.org/ for more information and examples.

The current EU data privacy guideline will be replaced by a regulation in 2018 and Safe Harbor has just been replaced by Privacy Shield for EU->US data transfer, but it will probably not change much.

Compared to the EU, in the US data privacy is hardly existent but people seem to accept it.

edit This is not even touching on the fact that all the data these US companies mine of European citizens is also accessible by the NSA in one form or another (no, Privacy Shield does not effectively prevent this) and the implications that arise from this.

> in Germany, data privacy is a basic human right

This! Seriously, there's moral relativism and there's squabbling whether a human right "would be nice to have". They/we don't call it a human right lightly. It's to shine a spotlight on something very important that people otherwise don't realise.

> This is not even touching on the fact that all the data these US companies mine of European citizens is also accessible by the NSA

Well in a way, it does. Total surveillance by governments that openly admit you have zero rights in their eyes (as do their citizens, by the way, many times, even on HN ...) is one of the many terrible implications of the existence of these databases.

Most likely simply don't think about it in enough depth to form a view either way. Collecting data to make the app make connections better is the "acceptable" view. The artificial bubbling is probably widely known - as it's recently hit mainstream thanks to all the fake news.

The implications and other uses and data transfers are not talked, or often known about. Just like when you look into food production or global supply chains you find many inconvenient truths there too. As age is so often correlated with cynicism it's probable that many tech applicants (to FB or anywhere) are simply not adequately cynical yet. There's quite a few cases of high profile techies suddenly and surprisingly (well according to reportage anyway :) becoming rather anti.

btw I thought The Circle far too gentle, and simplistic, about the criticism.

Perhaps it's the "cynical Brit" perspective as I felt very much the same about Black Mirror after arrival at Netflix.

It's not because one doesn't think it's unethical that it is ethical. The very existence of the question implies that there is an ethical issue here.

Moreover, in the age of information, the one who knows more about the other becomes a potential predator (every country has secret services and spies).

Facebook (and others) knows a lot more about me than I do myself because their computers don't forget, because they analyze what I do in a way I don't.

Moreover Facebook can be tied to other companies or institutions with my consent.

So although the optimization might seem like a good idea, I think it also needs to be put in context. Is this really a good idea. Is optimizing advertisement a noble goal ? It's useful for the advertisers, true. But is it useful for their targets ?

yes it's always unethical. even more if you don't ask me or hide the fact that you're doing it. it's only acceptable if it is for public research.

The US doesn't have the privacy parts is WWII in memory. Where govt workers had to scramble to destroy what data they could before it was seized, where fire fighters let document storage burn as long as possible because it had census data, where others where forced to go through govt. Data to sentence neighbors to death, and similar hero/horror stories.

I feel that the IT world is irresponsible in its collection of data, and doesn't treat it as the liability it is.

(What's the proper word for old data/information before computers)?

> I feel that the IT world is irresponsible in its collection of data, and doesn't treat it as the liability it is.

A lot of that is due to a lack of training. There's two major ways new people come into programming.

1. Go to college, get a computer science or engineering degree.

2. Self taught.

Neither of those prepares you to deal with the ethics of information storage.

I happened to have an entire course on the topic but only because I took an Information Science minor with my Computer Science major. That course wasn't even an optional elective for me otherwise.

A computer science degree trains you for thinking how to do something. It doesn't teach you how to figure if you should do something.

You can be lucky if a college education in CS/SE teaches you about open source licensing, even more so if it deals with privacy in any way.

IMO every SE curriculum should contain a mandatory course looking into historical precedents how information was used in genocides and oppressive regimes (Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic are two of the most obvious examples but there are plenty others).

It's ridiculous how it took Trump to get elected for the liberal techies in my Twitter stream to realise that the US government has the power to do really bad things with all the data FB & friends have been collecting.

What literature did the course provide? I would like to teach myself more too. The lack of any so far in my programme is making me really pessimistic.

>(What's the proper word for old data/information before computers)?

Files.

Yep. I also remember hearing "records" in addition to "files" back in "the day". The reason, of course, these terms have come into computing is by analogy with their "old-world" counterparts.

That said, I wouldn't consider it wrong, per se, to call it data or information these days. Strictly-speaking, old files and records do constitute data, whether they happen to be digitized or not.

If the ability to enumerate targets for holocaust is our concern, then tech companies are a bizarre place to start caring. The institutions we should be attacking are the DMV, voter registration, and the Social Security Administration

Why that? The data collection you're talking about is relatively constrained and transparent - all those institutions have a well-defined range of data they are allowed to collect, using well-known procedures.

On the other hand, the data private organisations collect is not restricted - neither what data is collected, nor how or from who.

If voter registration started to ask for skin color, there would be immediate public outrage. If credit scoring services include skin color as a scoring factor, it's a trade secret...

Why does the subject knowing about it make it any less useful for genocidal purposes?

You pretty much need a state ID or drivers license, which lists your skin color. Political contributions are a matter of public record for anticurruption purposes. Vital records offices are more than sufficient for tracing ancestry. Welfare offices know who is poor and medically needy. Telecoms and the post office knew who you communicated with.

There was more than enough information to mount a holocaust on any of those axes long before the current crop of tech companies.

Skin colour, religious and sexual preferences ... One can only hope the next dictator shares your lack of imagination.

Also it's a bit of a bizarre argument that tech companies are doing data collection on such a massively intrusive scale, we should really look at the government databases first because they're already more than enough to screw us over with? It's not even a "but they're doing it more!" ...

Different, though: Now its all in one place, stored forever, and in much more detail: your cell phone leaks your location continuously and in real-time, your photos and videos provide detail we are only just learning to harvest, your formerly secret or at least hard to track written communication is now trivial to record and analyze, and with the coming of IoT all this is just getting a bit more minuscule. Future governments seeking for unwanted persons will have an unprecedented dataset to profile whomever they might not agree with.

Again, this worst case scenario may not happen, but the fact that it can, even if only with a small chance, makes this massive data collection totally irresponsible.

In the end, it all boils down to persons and personalities, and most important uglyness and shortcomings. Part of their surface pretends to think it's noble, their real self know how they are inside, they live with themselves 24/7, and they know it's the shriek of a ghoul scrambling away from the light. They want a glove to interact with the world, not because the world is dirty, but because they are, and cannot face themselves. So we will make them for them.

The Circle is due to be released as a movie in April.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4287320

lmao the mental olympics needed to arrive at the conclusion "data collection to improve advertising efficiency" is noble.

Reminds me of one of the recorded AOL customer service calls from someone trying to end service.

AOL: Hi, this is John at AOL. How may I help you today?

Ferrari: I want to cancel my account.

AOL: OK. I mean, is there a problem with the software itself?

Ferrari: No. I don't use it. I don't need it. I don't want it.

John disputes Ferrari's claim that he never uses the account.

AOL: Last year, last month it was 545 hours of usage.

Ferrari: I don't know how to make it any clearer. So I'm just gonna say it one last time. Cancel the account.

AOL: Well, explain to me what is wrong.

Ferrari: I'm not explaining anything to you. Cancel the account.

It goes on like this for 5 minutes.

Ferrari: Cancel my account. Cancel the account. Cancel the account.

From: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/13447232/ns/business-cnbc_tv/t/how...

IIRC, from the audio the AOL rep. just goes on about how he's "just there to help you". To me, this is the same. "We just want to give you the best advertising that is relevant to you!" So possibly these people just take them at face value. Which is usually a bad idea when there's a profit motive.

> Some may even consider it noble to optimize and perfect the world and its institutions (including commerce, via efficient advertising) using large-scale personal data.

That's all great, but how can I opt-out? Even without a facebook account, they are collecting my data.

The Circle was an interesting idea wrapped in a really terrible book. Every page was full of terribly-paced plot development, one dimensional characters and cliched rip-offs of 1984.

> Some may even consider it noble to optimize and perfect the world and its institutions (including commerce, via efficient advertising) using large-scale personal data.

Data they don't own. So I suppose, "noble" in the Robin Hood kind of way.

Also, "efficient" in what way? What metric do they optimize that lets advertising benefit society?

About twenty years ago we probably surpassed Orwell's 1984. Until ten years ago, the secret services of the world's governments would have done just about anything to get this kind of personal data. Five years ago, Facebook & co (twenti in Spain, vkontake in Russia, etc.) started to convince people to hand that info over for free. Today people are saying that somehow improves their lives, or that they have "nothing to hide". What do you think will happen when, in a few decades in the future, your personal, detailed history ends up in the hands of a government that is rattled by debt, ever increasing poverty and unemployment, and political instability, in a world much like in the 1930s? Not that that scenario must happen, but it can, given today's outlook, and history tends to repeat itself...

NSA recruiters came to a class I had in college. I imagine Facebook employees would have the same sort of party line drilled into them.

Yes the NSA takes privacy very seriously. The NSA spies on everyone else but doesn't spy on Americans, period. Oh, well yeah of course we collect data from Americans but if we find out we are looking at an American's data we're supposed to throw it away immediately.

Throw in a harmless joke about "big scary NSA" to lighten the mood. Nice salary, nice benefits. Most of the students ask for applications after class, it's a career forum for area studies majors and this is by far the most lucrative job presented in the semester.

It's honestly pretty easy to make a deal with the devil, especially if you're smart enough to argue that he's not the devil.

> if we find out we are looking at an American's data we're —supposed— to throw it away.

Keyword emphasized, and anyway ahat safeguards are there to ensure that they won't turn against "undesirable" Americans at any point in the future?

Like how the American citizens of Japanese origin were more-or-less extra-judicially just herded into camps back around WWII, and the perceived "risk factor" of American Muslims right now.

I never got why HN are angry at NSA since they spy on Americans. Spying on me (non-American) is okay, but spying on an American is wrong?

I feel just as violated as any American by the thought of NSA spying me.

What astonishes me the most is the absolute double standards US government has on this issue. you are US government and it is perfectly fine spying and collecting data from people and organizations outside US jurisdiction. You are a person outside US jurisdiction and have an unauthorized look on US government data, and US government tries to get you extradicted to US and to face charges?!?[1] That just makes morally zero sense to me.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauri_Love

It's the same with drone strikes. If you look at the recent controversies about the drone program in the US, it's all about how Obama authorized drone strikes on an American. Illegally assassinating non Americans without any form of trial or due process is perfectly fine.

1. An American is anyone living in America, (?citizen or not?).

2. A US entity is tasked with info collection on the rest of the world (and is good at it).

3. US entities funded by the US have rules that prevent them from spying on those who fund them.

Completely understandable and predictable.

We are discussing morality and ethics here. Almost all such scenarios can be explained and accounted for by the unsymmetrical distribution of power, including that of the spying of US agencies on American citizens. Indeed, it is completely understandable and predictable given the way the US government is structured. Governments(or any institutions for that matter) tend to act in their own self interest first and foremost, not of their citizens.

> The NSA spies on everyone else but doesn't spy on Americans, period.

Ah, so that's settled then. So, spying on normal people and prying into their private lives is ethical - as long as they aren't American?

What about American expats? How does the NSA distinguish between them and non-Americans?

What about the Five Eyes? Perhaps the NSA doesn't read about your juicy personal life but GCHQ does because the NSA handed Americans' private data over to them?

You'd have to be pretty blind to not see they in fact are the devil.

I'm thinking a lot of people misread GP

An observation: I recently watched a presentation from a developer who works at a random adtech company. He was a nice, albeit naive guy. In order to explain the technical topic he gave a bit of context about the business. It was so creepy, you could feel the audience thinking - Oh-kay. He didn't even notice.

Now. I watched hundreds of technical presentations from Google and Facebook engineers. Did a presenter ever got into the details on how they track the user for what metric, and so on. Not a single freaking time.

Andrew Ng recently told in a presentation, that all data must be accessible in one place. Did he came across creepy? Not at all. He is such a professional person, that he can even weave in a remark about privacy just right beside the talk about the uber-data-warehouse.

That is professionalism. I expect Facebook to have a silent policy about talking about things developers and admins see on the inside.

Apart from this complex issue. Who inducts ethics for managers? Why do people come up with bad ideas (track all users all the time, or buying such data for that matter) in the first place? Hint: The problem is not developer ethics.

It is not wrong when you benefit from it.

This is a human trait, people do not see the wrong on the things you benefit from.

For example, did you ate beef or fish lately? When was the last time you thought about the animals that were killed in order for you to eat them. Have you seen the sacrifice of an animal needed for eating it. In Mongolia or Middle East nomads will sacrifice the animal in front of you before eating so you know what you eat is the best they have.

Imagine that cows were able to think like humans, and remember what you did to their veal. As a children I worked feeding cows and they are not as stupid as people believe, and they like horses have emotions and personalities like humans have.

When humans personally benefit from something it is very easy to just rationalize it. Humans rationalize everything.

Workers on facebook are multimillionaires that are pretty happy about their life becoming the new central intelligence of the World. They will rationalize it as a good thing focusing on this service being needed and useful for the world, as it is.

The problem is that even when the best of intentions, Governments, and secret services of countries want to use this service for nefarious purposes in the same way that if you centralize money in one place, some people want to take it by force if necessary, if you place too much personal information in some place, some people will want to take it for their own use.

Ironically I'm a vegetarian for just these reasons. I don't say that because I'm perfect (I am not yet fully vegan, for example) but because I do take ethics seriously. Maybe we do rationalize too often, but shouldn't we still try to work against that impulse? The fact that something unethical benefits me generally makes me more upset, not less upset.

Thats great of you, I am vegetarian by birth, became vegan by choice , Even in vegetarian people rationalise when they come to terms with messy aspects of dairy farming.

The question of ethics is weighing hard on me, even normally rational people who talk about human rights etc turn off their ethical circuits when question of meat comes up .. I think this points to a deeper question of how rationalising can affect morality ..

Does average human consider their wants above ethics he seems to subscribe? , why is hypocricy not making many upset? Many won't consider themselves as beings who put only themselves above others, they cry out for morality, but when question of ethical boundaries they themselves cross, it becomes question of rationalisation.

One has to really ponder, did a slaver in the past (sad that its not that ancient) who cared about ethics of his fellows , rationalised away his slavery?

If people really thing about this in terms of past people rationalising stuff away, if they feel upset about that, maybe it will lead to them thinking about ethical problems they too rationalise away

>This is a human trait, people do not see the wrong on the things you benefit from.

No, people very frequently do see that things have downsides. Only idiots think in black and white of 'right' and 'wrong'. For example, you just commented on a site that requires electricity to operate. This usage induces electrical demand and you have therefore contributed to global warming and assisted in killing polar bears. Will you choose to kill more polar bears to respond to me, or do you think it's not that simplistic now?

>Workers on facebook are multimillionaires that are pretty happy about their life

There are tons of people that work at facebook that are not millionaires at all. Most hires at facebook today are making standard SV salaries that could be made working for other companies.

  > When was the last time you thought about the animals
  > that were killed in order for you to eat them.

I don't think of them often but I grew on the farm so I could witness (and sometimes particpate) in the whole process. I see nothing wrong with that. I could even see more wrong in the attitude where people become veg(etari)ans for "ethical reasons". That's some fucked-up ethics, if you ask me.

Why it's fucked-up? If i feel bad eating an animal and i can live without eating one, what's wrong with that? <edit> (Hello from LT.)

So you think people who avoid unnecessary killing are ethically fucked up? Hitler, is that you?

cows are even more stupid than you think. Your view probably comes from interacting with them as a child, being not very smart yourself. I've grown up in the italian country farming animals and I've seen cows stupidity literally kill them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K38nFsZyY8Q

SoftGooFace: We can easily double your current salary.

Engineer: Oh

SoftGooFace: You don't have to worry about employment ever after

Engineer: Oh

Soft: We are so powerful, we can dump unwanted OS upgrades on people Goo: We are so powerful, people are terrified of linking to other sites Face: We are so powerful, even heads of state better watch out before criticizing us

Engineer: Uh..

SoftGooFace: Every time someone makes a critical comment about your employer, you can look at your bank account and tell them to f-off

Engineer: Uh..

SoftGooFace: And we open source everything

Engineer: Oh, where do I sign up?

And yet they underpay and also use their lobbying muscle/money to change laws to keep engineering pay down.

Note the sheer desperation to keep the pay secret so it doesn't turn into an auction for scarce resources for engineering talent the way it does with lawyers, bankers, MBA's. If you're in it fore the money don't work for facebrick.

payment is relative. to the rest ofnthe world, all of the SV engineers looks grossly over paid.

> to the rest ofnthe world, all of the SV engineers looks grossly over paid.

Only to people who don't understand economics. I know the salaries in NYC are high as well, but I understand the cost of living that drives that.

no, even to people who understand economics.

the only reason the cost of living is so high in SF is because of grossly over paid employees who drive up the cost of living. its a private little island of inflation.

Ive made a lower SV salary after my education in Bern Switzerland. I had to pay way less taxes, had benefits included, and cost of living was lower as well.

Lobbying to keep pay down? To what does this refer?

Open source is catnip for software engineers.

It's worth remembering that ethics go beyond software rights.

> open source everything

Sure. Like they open sourced their Blu-Ray cold storage system. Oh, wait, if they do that, people will realize they should be sued for using the word "delete", since you can't remove data from Blu-Ray.

The standard way to do this is to store the data encrypted, and store the key in something modifiable. Then when there's a delete you scramble the key.

So who is auditing Facebook, making sure they actually do that?

I have a friend at Facebook. Yes, they do understand that some data they collect is pretty ... private. But since it's good for Facebook -- it's good for them. In all personal discussions they defend the company to the point that I started feeling like there is some mind-washing going on. Of course it's just a feeling, but my point is -- they don't think it is bad.

Same, I have a friend who works there, often tells me about how good his stock prices are etc, never ever heard him talk about ethics, it's just not even on his radar. The other day I installed messenger (in the hope I never have to login to FB web again) and received a message about 15 seconds later saying, "Good boy, that's good for my stock prices" ha.

I know what you mean though, it's like they're trained not to discuss topics with outsiders or something?

>I know what you mean though, it's like they're trained not to discuss topics with outsiders or something?

Pretty standard amongst companies to discourage employees from talking politics about the product.

It's hard to work for any software bigco that doesn't have an ethics violation somewhere. Same as living in a country without an ethics violation attributable to it's govt. Google is probably the scariest one out there out of all of the bigcos because of how much data they have on the world, yet they cover themselves with a cutesy image.

There is no personal gain or advantage to dwelling on the bad things your company could be doing. So if you work at company X and company X does some bad things but you're working on something you consider not bad, you focus on what you're working on. Sure you'd do things differently if you ran the company but you don't, so you just ignore that stuff. Mental self defense at its finest.

You also don't want to rock the boat and bite the hand that feeds you (and your wife, children, etc.).

Such an odd impulse. I've known guys who sold heroin and meth on the small to medium scale, they don't defend the drug or their actions except to perhaps say "I'm trying to take care of my little girl". It might be a socioeconomic thing coming from a poor background nobody is really proud of what they do to make ends meet so nobody has to pretend to be.

Ideally, who speaks for your wants and desires? Realistically, who do you allow to speak for you on a regular basis? Your mom? Your boss? Perhaps an unhealthy narcissistic friend? Facebook?

Speaking for others is formulating emotional responses for someone else and then constructing a dialog that elicits those feelings in that person. Today, that can be done with software as has been shown time and time again with Facebook. In the past it's been the tool of choice for those who control others. Narcissistic parents or greedy corporations, the end result is the same: loss of choice for all.

I heard the urinals at Facebook have a sheet at eye-level where the week's "metric-to-hit" is posted.

Methods like this seem to be effective, but creepy and invasive.

I've been in the Facebook office and it's true that they have information posted above the urinals. Didn't really read it though.

That can become common at many larger tech cos. Usually its about some random technical fact, like how to write a better test or whatever else. It's community driven at about the sophistication level of a community newsletter.

The urinals at the rest stops among the highways here have sheets at eye-level telling people not to drive when they're too tired or drunk. Is that creepy and invasive?

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair.

I've talked with some FBers about this after one of them prompted me that I should apply for a job at FB. The rationale is entirely predictable (heavily paraphrased as most conversations involved alcohol):

* Zuckerberg has grown up and matured. We've all done stupid things at that age so we shouldn't measure him by his infamous line about how his early users were gullible idiots.

* There's no harm in retaining that kind of data. FB is handling the data responsibly because it's their competitive advantage. The only people who could get access are the government and we don't need to worry about the US government doing anything evil with it because that could never happen in the US.

* If you don't want to be on Facebook, don't use Facebook. Nevermind that Facebook will still track you with a shadow profile if any of your friends are on Facebook and staying off Facebook means you have no way to take down photos of yourself shared by others.

* If you don't want something about you ending up on Facebook, don't do it. If you have nothing to hide, you don't have to worry. And you can still ask for your information to be taken down if it does end up on Facebook.

* Facebook is just a company. They don't have any ulterior motive beyond creating a product users want. Market forces prevent Facebook from doing anything bad.

* Civil rights organizations like the EFF may be complaining about Facebook, but they just have a different opinion. They don't understand how Facebook works anyway.

* Who cares about politics? Facebook has a lot of interesting tech problems and it's a great opportunity. I can still go somewhere else if I decide I don't like it.

In other words: the Banality of Evil at work. Same reasoning that allows people to work for organisations like the NSA with a clean conscience.

Maybe I should add a disclaimer that all of the people I talked to were on the younger end of their 20s and most of them were likely drawn in by the opportunity to work on cool tech and the salary & benefits (like being hauled to conferences all over the world where speakers are often treated as celebrities).

I don't see how this is being on the wrong side of an ethical issue. Perhaps it is (somehow, after years of this being in the news) shocking that that data is collected about your life, but Facebook isn't doing the collection. Anyone can buy that data and many organizations do.

Facebook hasn't actually done anything here that is harmful, not with the non-shocking data collection from third parties and not with the data you willingly give them by using their service.

Even the fake news situation, which is another supposed reason why Facebook is evil, is purely a result of the hubbub over having human editors. When the human news editors were around, the news links were interesting, of decent quality and unbiased.

Facebook really hasn't been on the wrong side of any moral or ethical debate, just the wrong side of public opinion (or at least the opinions of writers who need clicks/pageviews).

> not with the data you willingly give them by using their service.

Imagine I am a producer of sugared water. Do I want you to delve into health issue associated with that? Not necessarily. As a owner of a site that lives from user interaction, do I want my users to go out without their phone and have fun without me? Well, do it, but only if you really must.

There is a conflict of interest here, but that's too disturbing to communicate. Period.

Most people don't have the time and money to check facts anyway, so let's just claim facebook is the internet (for example) - because, you know, without all this livestock, our investors get unhappy. Business as usual, I would say.

>Facebook isn't doing the collection

Who is it then that allows facebook like buttons and social widgets to be integrated into other sites?

Facebook does that data collection, but not the data that the article discusses - no social widget is responsible for figuring out your income or what you do at physical retailers.

> no social widget is responsible for figuring out your income

That is actually an intended purpose of many social widgets.

Not everyone agrees with your ethics.

I have no financial stake in Facebook (don't work there), but really don't see many moral problems with what it does. And I think their mission of connecting the world in a single easily discoverable network is absolutely world-changing and noteworthy. It's changed my world for sure.

I think a lot of fear is rightly grounded in history: it's clear that this much power in very few hands turns to shit at some point. Facebook may well be humanity's biggest concentration of power (knowledge being power). How do you keep an advantage when the other side knows >> than you could ever know? There's also the disparity in availability of AI, since large applications need powerful and thus expensive hardware.

To be clear, I don't think Facebook is flawless. All the issues you bring up are definitely true.

I just think it's unfair to assume that these issues automatically make Facebook evil and that there's no good they do.

They certainly could do good, theoretically. Problem is their business model, because manipulating people doesn't fall under "doing good". As long as they make profit by selling people, they're the opposite of good because their activity goes against peoples' interest.

i'm guessing to work for facebook the employees probably know what they're signing up for so it might not feel like "the wrong side" for them

Uber seems to be in a similar boat; HN comments from employees 100% defended the company:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13085098

Same for Google and its multiple violations of privacy. Great products, but everything revolves around selling user information to the highest bidder or general establishment Democratic/liberal cronyism.

Will we see a Democrat apply anti-trust laws?

Why is it Facebook's responsibility to discuss what your credit card will happily sell to literally anyone?

This story is utterly baffling.

Not a Facebook employee, but I don't see any particular ethical problem with the company. There's nothing in the law or Facebook's terms of use that obligates the company to release data they buy from third-party sources.

I'm not trying to agree or disagree with you here (for the record, I despise Facebook and anyone who works there), rather I want to point out that ethics often has no correlation with law. The difficulty in making ethical determinations is precisely that there is often no well-defined written criteria like a law or terms of use that dictate what are the ethical boundaries or what might be ethically or morally reprehensible.

And that's fine. Most of the "ethical" barbs I see being leveled about facebook are on the hypothetical/philosophical level, rather than the practical one.

As a general rule, I'm a lot more bothered by actual bad actions rather than hypothetical future ones. Facebook collecting all the data they want just doesn't even register as even sorta bad to me. (And no, I don't work there.)

I definitely disagree with you on Facebook being bad and there not being a practical component, however I'm willing to see what you are saying. There's a lot that can go wrong, but like you imply, it's mostly perspective. Sure it's hypothetical, but even those with the best intentions see the results of their work take interesting (evil) turns for the worst. Further, there's a lot that does go on that is not hypothetical and the problem tends to be that it is hard to educate yourself about if you are an outsider, i.e. not the person doing these things.

Regarding hypotheticals, if you collect data, it is always there for someone to abuse, whether they are technically "allowed" to do so or not by laws, company policy, or otherwise. It can and does happen more often than we believe as I came to find out from friends and family who work in government and legal roles. I am more of the cautious sort and would rather try to make a best effort that might not be perfect to simply mitigate and minimize the issue of the wrong thing happening. Though these cases may never happen, I am in the camp of "let's not make it easier."

As an aside, a lot of feelings towards these issues can be influenced by environmental and contextual reasons. For instance, I was raised in a family that lost a lot of people due, but not limited to things like data collection, humans selling each other short, supposedly good people making bad choices, and individuals acting highly in self-interest despite their "ethics." Further, I also grew up in a country more under constant and tangible threat than the US for part of my childhood and served in its army against very real threats during wartime. I'm certainly no action hero as my job was more of the engineering and intelligence nature, though I have seen first hand what people can, will, and tend to do with data, especially if there is money or physical security involved. Especially on the other side of things (i.e. our enemies) if they are losing. As such, I am more sensitive than most when it comes to people knowing things about me. I assume "they" know everything, but as I implied, I try not to make it easier than it needs to be and I actively throw in disinformation about myself. It helps if you know a thing or two about algorithms and the best ways to confuse them :)

Yes, I agree there can be unethical behaviour that is still lawful. But regarding the specific charge of deception it becomes much harder to convict Facebook if the company has done everything that they explicitly agreed to do.

In this particular case I cannot even see any shade of grey. I apply for a credit card. The application form states that the credit card company may pass the information about me to third parties. The credit card company tells Facebook my income. Facebook does not reveal to me that they know my income. Where is the deception?

Facebook has created a product that feeds an entire generation of low self esteem digital addicts their drug of choice. It perpetuates the idea of instant gratification without any substance. Facebook is digital cancer.

It probably feels pretty good from inside your very own Tesla.

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