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Comment by raizu | Hacker News Reader

I also have some questions to Facebook engineers. How do you feel about working on something that is destroying the free and open Web? How do you find satisfaction in developing a virtual cage for humanity? Do you ever become depressed when thinking about that you are using your best years, working at an extremely unethical company whose only purpose is to tricking people into clicking on ads?

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Not only is this not really an appropriate response for the topic, but I'd imagine its presence will also make FB employees feel unwelcome and less like answering the OP's question.

I'm not the biggest fan of everything FB does, but you're basically wrecking someone else's sincere "Ask HN" post here.

It would still be nice to hear Facebookers thoughts on this though.

Do you really want my thoughts?

The question isn't asked in good faith, so it doesn't deserve a good faith answer. The account was also created just to make that post. And yet it was upvoted by the community. And that speaks poorly of said community's ability to have a good faith conversation on the topic too.

For better or worse, this isn't a place that this conversation can happen productively, so it doesn't. There was a time that I and others would have happily had this conversation on HN but the community has changed quite a bit from then till now.

What is this mythical "appropriate conversation" you are alluding to?

That Facebook's primary incentive is to create as much detailed information about the individual as possible, in order to broker that information to advertisers and surveillance regimes?

I think you just don't want to have that conversation :-)

I am not a huge fan of Fb or other soc media, but I consider this data mining era as unavoidable and from other hand, some day all that info might even help humanity (or damage it, of course). So, we can consider this power as a Pandora's box and I am pretty happy that it is only there in FB (well, and Google, Microsoft, etc.) and i am pretty sure you, as well as many others would like to open that box and see inside. Good is that you, or me, or anyone else cant do that. Good is that if something will go very wrong, we will know who to blame. But nothing will go wrong as long as bad guys (who afraid surveillance) does not have a chance to touch that box.

Eh? No comprendo! Nothing is unavoidable. If you really are from Lithuania you should go and ask some older people what they think about personal data collection. Having lived under USSR I'm very sure that they don't like that, as they have seen it can suddenly be used against them.

Yes. That's what I posted in my comment.

Ah, you must be part of the Facebook 'Humanize' group managing my controversial post. Think about it, it's actually scary as hell a internal group like that exist. It's like something in Scientology. Thanks to the former employee telling about this in another post.

Yes, I created this account to post as I never had one before. One post has to be the first. How long should I wait before I'm allowed to ask critial questions related to Facebook? You attacking the HN community for upvoting my post and using this as a reason to close the whole conversation down is simply amazing.

Your comments in this thread have been breaking the HN guidelines. We ban accounts that do that, so please read and follow them when commenting here. That means posting civilly and substantively, or not at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

Disclaimer: I work at Google.

Facebook is far from being the first company to have these criticisms leveled at them, and it won't be the last.

There are people who work at Facebook and Google who care about having a free and open web. That's how you get the Open Graph Protocol, Download Your Info, GMail Email Markup, and Google Takeout.

But living in a free and open web is really something only hetero white men can do. Virtually anyone else (women, lesbian/gay/bi/trans, ethnic minorities) needs tools to protect their privacy and manage/block/prevent harassment at scale.

Ads are a way of paying engineers' salaries. Many ads suck, and one way to help make the world a better place is to work on weeding out the bad ones (the ones that install malware) or making it easier to create good ones. The good ads are the ones that are relevant, that inform, entertain, and make you feel good. Heck, I'd argue that half the articles on the front page of HN on any given day are native ads that serve this purpose.

I don't understand how your response addresses the question asked. I don't understand your hetero white men comment either. I would argue that Facebook and its ilk are destroying the ability to keep a private life (nevermind "harassment at scale"), and that's uniformly true for minorities as well as majorities.

Good answer about ads though. And working in this business seems more morally defensible than working in the defence sector, although the more you think about it the less that holds up. (and Google is definitely not Facebook, which works to normalize the panopticon existence)

Come now, Facebook is more than that. For example, it also helps governments spy on their own citizens as well as other governments.

I support FOSS initiative and open web but as a software engineer, working for company like FB is pretty challenging. It's exciting to work on a software used by billion of user, you learn a lot, you cannot argue against that.

It's not by developing this kind of software you support the capitalization of internet but by using it.

Makers are not necessarily users.

It's a loaded question, sure, but let me play devil's advocate here for a sec. You're basically using the same argument that NSA engineers use to validate the creation of spy software.

I'm not saying FB is inherently evil, or that it's immoral to work there. Just pointing out the similarity in your specific base of argument.

Woooooow hahahahaha

Someone didn't get the call back from FB recruiters.

But really, bringing this kind of vitriol to an Ask HN is counter productive

All three questions you pose are loaded questions.

I'm no fan of FB either, but come on, what are you hoping to accomplish with this sort of vitriol?

We don't think that's what Facebook is doing :)

That was my first question as well!

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

I don't think that applies. There is been ethical questionability in almost every company. If not their business model then some of their actions. "It's just business" is the mantra. I think most people are smart enough to understand even if they are taking a salary from the company.

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