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Comment by redwards510 | Hacker News Reader

As much as everyone wants to believe this is because all the applicants are suddenly taking strong ethical stances, I bet it has more to do with Facebook simply not being considering cool or exciting anymore.

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Sure, but one of the biggest reasons it isn't considered cool or exiting anymore is all the negative press.

Really? Obvious data privacy issues finally becoming mainstream is what is finally convincing programmers to not want to work there?

Hasn’t all of this stuff been obvious forever to programmers?

> Hasn’t all of this stuff been obvious forever to programmers?

Yes, but it wasn't at the "oh crap elections were manipulated, democracies toppled, dissidents tracked down, and genocides enabled" level.

The fact that Apple, the world's richest company in the world, now has a mainstream marketing campaign around privacy tells you it is now officially mainstream mainstream, not just programmer mainstream.

Yes, I think we're finally getting to the state of engineering and medicine in the 1800s, where bridges and buildings were collapsing, snake oil salesmen and physicians were indistinguishable to the layman, etc. Enough catastrophe will eventually motivate society to regulate the upstarts.

None of those things have happened though, have they? Which democracies has Facebook toppled? Which genocides did they "enable"? And as for "elections were manipulated", I'll give you that one, but the only actual evidence I've seen of Facebook manipulating elections is shutting down the pages and followers of actual conservative political parties. The whole Russia story turned out to be smoke and mirrors, and based on rather huge assumptions about the efficiency of political advertising to begin with.

Apple use privacy as an attempt to differentiate themselves from Google despite in the phone market having very little actual differences between them. It doesn't seem to have helped: Android is globally dominant.

> Which genocides did they "enable"?

Mynamar

> It doesn't seem to have helped

yet. Also Apple's goal with the iPhone isn't global dominance.

It's possible now, that this information has gone mainstream, programmers worry about how their non-tech friends view them for working there.

> Hasn’t all of this stuff been obvious forever to programmers?

I don't think so, considering all the devs who called others "paranoid" before for raising these issues.

I think this story is submarine PR paid for by Facebook to garner sympathy.

Agreed. I would argue that Facebook is not considered cool as a direct result of all the outrage surrounding it.

Facebook was uncool before the outrage really took off. It's bloated and fewer young people from each cohort take to it each year.

Its ML research is exciting. I would like to work with Yann Lecun

And the root cause of its suddenly "not being considering cool or exciting anymore" would be?

Limited upside for the stock?

... not really innovating? its main product is still centered in social signaling and gossip ... just like day 1. Also the social craze is not so crazy anymore (I wonder, how are the other social apps doing?)

Yeah, it's seen as the platform your parents (or worse, grandparents) use. Pretty much a step above Next Door. Why would you want to work for that over some of the other companies out there?

Facebook is also instagram and whatsapp, two platforms used by young people

My teenagers have pretty much moved on from those.

> My teenagers have pretty much moved on from those.

Out of curiosity what have they moved on to?

TikTok is pretty popular these days, for one.

Honestly they don't want to tell me :-) They really, really don't want their parents on their apps.

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