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Comment by jszymborski | Hacker News Reader

Given how different their missions are, I'm surprised to see Facebook on this list.

This comment really demonstrates the divide between those with a casual working understanding of Mozilla due to peripheral awareness vs those who are or were once heavily involved with the project. (Side note: it's hard to read discussions about Mozilla on HN for this reason.)

Mozillians at Facebook is not new or novel. There was a time when it seemed like everyone was leaving Mozilla for Facebook. If someone collected the data, tallying every subsequent company worked at for every employee departed, it would be would be pretty unsurprising if the results showed Facebook as the biggest employer of former Mozillians.

I thought that people working at Mozilla were passionate about privacy, open-source, trust, and were working at Mozilla for the values.

But you say many of them would work to the company with opposite values.

The reality is that most people like working with smart peers and cool technology. Being paid is also nice.

Any moral or ethical values is somewhere in the middle of the pyramid of needs.

Like any company's employees: they're all different people! They each have their own reasons for where they work and their own goals and ambitions.

Any job you take is going to be a blend and balance across your personal passions, values, talents, desire for impact, financial goals and responsibilities, risk tolerance, and alternative available opportunities.

Is it so surprising that one of the largest employers in the bay has attractive opportunities across a range of reasons?

Employee motivations have zero relevance when discussing corporate actions where those actions are contrary to those motivations.

The reverse is not true.

IIRC Facebook has more than 100 privacy engineers (it's been a few years since I spoke to recruiters there). Facebook has challenges, but it also presents an opportunity to work on security and privacy challenges in way that doesn't exist in many places in the world.

Interpretations of other peoples values is largely skewed by their perception, and rarely takes into account the practical realities of working on privacy and security in tech.

Considering Facebook's business model, I would guess that these engineers are there for privacywashing (like greenwashing).

That's one interpretation, and I am by no means trying to defend Facebok, or their privacy team, but it is an extremely uncharitable interpretation.

There are many, many, many folks who work in positions that allow them to provide for themselves, their families, and their communities while working for objectionable organizations.

Look at all of the public servants who are keeping the lights on and trying to keep the US government running. I guarantee you there are folks who absolutely abhor how the system is run, and despise the leadership and politicians (regardless of which leader is in power), but they show up every day and do their job, and try to help people.

It's not ideal, but when you get a burger it wasn't made from a spherical cow of uniform density either...

Are you under the impression that Facebook doesn't have privacy guidelines and strategies for its users just because its privacy goals don't align with yours? Just because they aren't the bastion of privacy doesn't mean they disregard privacy completely. Simple example: If I set my profile to be viewable by friends-only, that is a privacy feature. There are 800 more examples like that pertaining to protecting user data.

Facebook is the opposite of a privacy bastion. If you have such privacy features, it's only to stay relevant in the market and maintain some degree of trust so users continue to publish their data. Facebook do not care about privacy, they track people everywhere they can. They accumulate data and sell the knowledge they collected.

Engineers who really care about privacy do not work for Facebook like engineers who really cares about peace do not work for the army.

That's great and all, but I was responding to your message that all the engineers focused on privacy at Facebook are just there for privacywashing. You don't seem to get that privacy is not a binary. I totally get that facebook "doesn't care about privacy" from the perspective of someone who actually cares a lot about privacy. But that's not the argument here, and it's strange for you to bring it up in your response. Nothing you've said actually supports the idea that Facebook doesn't need to have engineers who legitimately work on privacy.

The CTO of FB is an ex-Mozillian. There are quite a few ex-Mozillians here, including myself. Despite Mozilla's public posture that FB is enemy #1, the internal technical culture is more similar than different.

They'll probably work with the same customers too, except instead of helping them fight Facebook tracking they will help Facebook track them better.

Enemy #1? I hear more about Facebook in the Firefox default startpage than _everywhere else I look_.

Today, in fact, there is a huge pseudo-advertisiment (at least in fr_FR) about "how I should not feel guilty about browsing Facebook [through Firefox]" , which almost made me puke.

As a person who doesn't care about Facebook whatsoever, I didn't get the impression that FB was enemy #1, but rather I assumed FB was paying them money like Google is...

I can actually see FB being happy to just give money away to Mozilla, just to influence them away from Google.

That full page ad was advertising the Mozilla made Facebook container. Based on absence of Mozilla made Google container, I think that ad was paid by Google.

I believe what you saw was a promotion of https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-cont...

That extension is described as:

"Prevent Facebook from tracking you around the web. The Facebook Container extension for Firefox helps you take control and isolate your web activity from Facebook."

What about the ethics culture?

I was a bit surprised too, but presumably the priority right now is helping their former employees.

I think this confirms that at least Mozilla PR team was very effective in their job

Eh, they need to hire, Mozillians need jobs, typically people who make what a Mozillian made will have a lifestyle that demands they find a new job pretty quickly, so they may not get to be that picky.

Capitalism 101.

Ethics is great and all until the money stops flowing

A job is a job.

Agree

I am critical of some fb practices, but if it was a choice between having a job and not having one, the decision is not hard

It's a big company, with multiple areas. Find a less contentious area and go for that

It’s easier to make change from the inside than out. I imagine more Mozillians probably means a stronger push towards E2E encryption, more data controls, stronger auditing, etc.

Facebook is not a democracy. There can be no change from the inside.

Even a dictatorship has middle managers

That have to do what upper management does or get fired.

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