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Comment by valona | Hacker News Reader

Why would any developer or engineer who has even an iota of consideration for privacy, web standards, and, indeed, humanity want to work for such a repugnant company as Facebook?

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Repugnant is entirely your opinion and there are lots of people who disagree with you. It might be an amazing opportunity for some.

I think willingly abusing user privacy for profit and lying to your government makes using the word “repugnant” pretty quantifiable.

How are they abusing privacy? Because it doesn't align with your views of privacy that constitutes abuse? You may have an expectation of privacy and we can argue whether or not that is valid. (not really IMO, facebook doesn't owe you anything for using their service. What a private company does with their service is really not abuse)

Lying to the govt. is pretty vague. What lie in particular are you referring to?

I think the original statement included this detail:

> engineer who has even an iota of consideration for privacy

I think it isn't hard to say current practices in tech willfully deceive users about the usage and the value of their data because that would be orthogonal to their business interest.

I think framing it like that is vastly more honest. Not down-playing expectations of privacy.

OK, but by this definition of "willful deception" all social media companies and related engineering jobs can be lumped into a "repugnant" category?

I think that is reductive of engineers opinions for one, and over-stating the behavior of these companies. How are people being deceived? Are they being lied to in the privacy agreements? That would be obviously deceptive and I can agree they should be transparent, but it's very public that data is part of the revenue generation for these places nowadays.

I think if people just expect to have a free service and give nothing up in return that isnt really a reasonable expectation anymore, so I don't find it deceptive or repugnant. Maybe there is an alternative where social media platforms don't rely on personal data and advertisements and I'd be all for that, but it doesn't exist now.

> facebook doesn't owe you anything for using their service

I do not use their service, and yet they stalk me around the web, with countless tracking pixels and like buttons, assembling my shadow profile. Yes, they are abusing privacy as much as real-world stalkers are.

So the websites you visit use their service then?

Justified opinion argued for with evidence. Like your unjustified opinion isn't. You can remedy that if you want to make your case properly though. Please do.

Because a lot of people aren't privileged enough to be able to quit their job on the spot.

I would argue that at least engineers working at Facebook likely have the monetary means to change jobs.

Pretty sure working for facebook is proof or that you are in the upper 1% worldwide.

Except for all those moderation jobs, and everyday office jobs, oh wait are they just people too and not "1%ers" ???

Yeah they aren't facebrick employees - according to facebrick. To really screw people working for you hire a contracting service to be the pointy end and do the thrusting for you. Every single thing about facebrick is absolutely vile. Nobody has yet considered all the dimensions in which they are repugnant. The more you find out the more sick you feel.

OP never said anything about quitting on the spot. The question was why would one go to work for such a company knowing, as one must these days, how vile that company is. Another facet to the question is why wouldn’t one look for and take another job after they realize how disgusting a company like Facebook is?

Probably makes them more money I gues.

I wouldn't personally – I'm about as anti-Facebook as it gets, but a lot of people (especially people not coming from a "tech" background) don't really appreciate the kind of shit Facebook pulls.

Not a FBer myself, but I do know that people do worse things for less pay.

Features, userbase, talent; the same reasons a developer or engineer would work with any company.

Let's play a game; how many degrees separated from Facebook is HN and YC? You go first, take a guess!

I can't be certain how many degrees separated the two are, but I have established a lower bound on the answer

Let d:(x,y)->n be the degrees of separation between x and y. Since d(x,y)=0 implies x=y, and we know that FB and HN are not identical, we have d(FB,HN)>0.

Then, since d takes integral values we know that d(FB,HN)>=1 in any case.

"They are not the same company" is, while true, not a guess. Come on, take a real guess! When was the last time Zuck spoke at YC? When was the last time YC worked with Facebook? How many of the folks at YC either come directly from Facebook or have invested in Facebook at one time?

Your hands aren't clean here, if you actually cared about avoiding Facebook at all costs, you wouldn't be here. The fact is, you don't (nor should you).

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