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Comment by whalesalad | Hacker News Reader

I can't believe anyone was unable to see through the bullshit on FB from the very very beginning. Does ANYONE there now, or at any time in the past, have any real belief that what they're doing is connecting the world? It's a money making machine, plain and simple. (Money making machines are not bad, as long as there is never any dog and pony show about being some higher form of existence)

I think that the people leaving also knew this all along, but now they are finally coming to terms with the impact that FB has really had on people, the world, privacy, and the way it has desensitized everyone to this type of behavior.

Facebook hasn't changed, that's not why people are leaving. They're leaving because they've finally been able to look in the mirror and realize that this isn't worth the paycheck anymore. That's gonna be a tough pill to swallow for most.

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It's easy to believe the bullshit when that money machine is funding your six figure salary, free meals, unlimited vacation, recreational and health services, and 401K and Roth. That's why there are engineers at Google right now working on a censorship machine at the directive of the Chinese government. I find it highly doubtful that they would still believe the project is a net good on the world and not motivated by pure greed if they weren't getting paid so well. Similarly at Facebook.

Human morality is cheap and SV has showed that.

> That's why there are engineers at Google right now working on a censorship machine at the directive of the Chinese government

It's already been built for the US government, so why not profit by selling a US supervised version to the Chinese? Better than China building its own tech.

I think you underestimate the degree to which Google is a top defense contractor and in building this stuff for China is acting at the behest of the US Government.

I would be careful not to assume that your morality is the only morality. The world is a big place and there are diverse ideas and beliefs all around.

It's not his morality unless he works at Facebook.

That's just nihilism, if there are "other moralities" that are just as valid and that I can freely choose, there might as well be none.

No moral relativism does not entail moral nihilism. People can have different morals (in fact they do), that doesn't imply that all morals are meaningless.

You can also choose (if you decide you are free to choose) the set of morals that makes you the most happy (hedonism) or give you the most utility. Or you can decide to be a nihilist.

So it's not the same.

That might be true for whatever moral principals you personally choose for yourself, however if I can't hold anyone accountable for immoral behaviour, because they might have just chosen another set of morals for themselves, that's nihilism.

Let's be honest it's not looking in the mirror and realizing the paycheck isn't worth it. It's looking in the mirror, then at their bank account balance, then realizing they don't need the paycheck at all.

It doesn't really matter who leaves.

These are people who were part of the first scaling out of single platform to 2 billion people. Their skill was in building out such a network and keeping it running. The skills required to do that well, came from people with business and compsci backgrounds. That work is done.

Now what matters is who joins. And what happens next to such a network.

Compsci and biz people won't make a difference to vision. The next phase will be driven by ideas from social sciene, ecology, history, psychology, economics, politics, religion etc. People who have a deep understanding of the value of human networks and what they can do, will drive the next chapter of where Facebook goes.

It's humorous to see someone call Facebook a money making machine from the start when even after its IPO the conventional wisdom was that it would struggle to make money: https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/22/a-look-back-in-ipo-faceboo...

I remember using Facebook before it even had ads. So maybe not the very very beginning.

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