Do people still readily tell that they work at FB? With more and more shit coming to light and no impression that Facebook is seriously interested in fixing things, I suspect people would question ones judgement to keep working there? At least I do, to be honest.
While I neither work for nor really use Facebook products beyond WhatsApp, I do think they have added tremendous value to the world and would encourage you to also explore viewpoints different from the standard narratives.
After deleting my facebook profile it never felt like I lost something. I don't want to know what's going on with everyone's life everyday. I just use phone call to connect with people I care about and few real friends now. It feels much better.
All of your “maybe they...” rhetorical questions have a firm answer outside your bubble. You’re not going to like them
> I suspect people would question ones judgement to keep working there? At least I do, to be honest.
You're part of a small minority. 99% of people you talk to in the real world still just think Facebook is a fun app for memes and baby pictures.
The main reasons are ads, fake news, data stealing, tax evasion from Facebook and in general a dislike of big American tech companies thinking they are better than everyone else (the importance of those factors obviously varies depending on the person).
The countries we live in do lots of bad things but we can still be proud of our country, pay taxes, and keep ourselves away from the ethically dubious activity. Similarly, someone working away on React in Facebook doesn't have to get involved in face tracking or whatever.
Are you saying that is the case with Facebook? Can you explain?
(I'm not a Facebook apologist. I think they deserve every bit of criticism they get. I just think the previous poster makes a solid point.)
That problem does exist with countries. The mechanisms for trying to fix that with regard to countries, are things like democracy, revolutions, investigative journalism, and international pressure. We tend to be conservative about how we try to change our countries because most people’s livelihoods and even lives depend on our decisions.
This is absolutely not the case for a social media company. It’s just a capitalist corporation. One of the asserted benefits of capitalism is that we have competition and companies can simply fail if they don’t serve our needs or be shut down if they end up being harmful.
I.e. We have to tolerate countries that do bad things and the struggle to fix them is long and hard, because the costs of a failed state are enormous.
Unlike with states, don’t have to tolerate bad companies, in not tolerating them, we create the opportunities that lead to something better emerging.
jwz says it best:
> If you work for Facebook, quit. It is morally indefensible for you to use your skills to make that company more powerful. By working there, you are making the world an objectively worse place. I'm sure you can find a job working for a company that you don't have to apologize for all the time.
It's about making ethical decisions when a choice is available. One of the advantages of being a software engineer is that there are too few of us to go around: if you are halfway competent then you get some choice as to where to work. Involving some ethics in that decision is appropriate. It would be different if you were unskilled and needed any job to pay the bills.
You don't get to choose what country you are born in. You do get to choose who you vote for (in many countries), and that's the place where your ethics comes in.
People's career decisions tend to be motivated by money. If you're looking to maximize your compensation, the options are Big Tech (Google and Amazon have similar levels of ethics issues as Facebook) or finance (depending on your views, potentially even less ethical).
I'm not saying working at one of these places is the right decision, but it's very much an understandable one.
Isn't maximising your earnings supposed to be a means to something greater, not an end in itself?
The only goal for your career? Some people would say yes. Some others would say it's not the only goal but is important enough to compromise on other goals.
What year is it?
I've always found the idea of 'being proud of your country' to be a strange one. Pretty much all of my country's accomplishments were before I was born, and even the ones after I was born were done without any involvement by me.
So what's left? Should I be proud that I happeend to be born on this patch of land? Why?
“The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen.
The man who is endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short, since their failings will be constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.”
— Arthur SchopenhauerHis answer was something along the lines of: "I don't use facebook, the problems I have to solve are interesting, and it's management that makes those decisions."
I left it at that, I've known the guy for a long time and I think that goes pretty well with his mindset. It might be a different story if he was working on a data gathering team.
In fact, now I'm challenging you to cite this. Why say things like this if they're not true? Any broader point about Facebook doesn't even hinge on the veracity of this claim, I don't get it.
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? / “That's not my department" says Wernher von Braun
Since name above is quite far from moral person from most news I was able to see related to him/FB, what you state is most probably correct.
No, just the actively bad ones.
The ones who bobble along regardless because their individual tasks are not evil would bobble along just the same in a regime that does care more about doing the right thing (or, at least, doing the wrong thing less).
Unfortunately the actively bad ones are probably good at hiding behind the more apathetic, throwing a few of them under the proverbial bus every now and then.
Facebook is toxic because it fundamentally makes money in an exploitative way that is bad. There is no way for Facebook to both be a business and not be sleezy. I think it's potentially possible we could build something Facebook-like as a non-business, but if we expect it to make a return for investors, it absolutely has to do fundamentally objectionable things to its users and society.