Ask HN: Why do I have this weird feeling that noone working at FB posts on HN? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why do I have this weird feeling that noone working at FB posts on HN?

37 pointsfdeage79 comments

I see many Googlers, Applers (?), Amazonians or Netflixers posting and commenting on HN - but almost nobody working at Facebook/Meta. This is weird, because FB employs ~60K people, including lots of engineers (and probably good ones, according to the company's average salary), so there's definitely a lot of FB people reading HN.

I wonder if, because Facebook regularly gets very bad press here (stories about Facebook are overwhelmingly negative, and so are comments), FB people don't feel confident to speak. Do you share that feeling?

View on HN

I work there but there's no way I'm saying so on my usual HN account. I'm just in it for the interesting technical challenges and the paycheck, and I've no interest whatsoever in defending my employer in whatever PR nightmare they've become embroiled in, yet again. Even pseudonymously.

Still, it's a great place to work for in many ways, and while a lot of the criticisms from outside somewhat exaggerate and misrepresent things a bit, I kind of agree with a lot of them too. A few years back I worked for Microsoft and felt quite similarly when they got bad press for whatever.

To be honest, I don't get why some people go out of their way to cheerlead for their employers. Not that it happens here much, but when it does, it's quite sad to see such naïve fealty. Personally I prefer the mercenary state of mind when it comes to employment, it's good to keep a healthy work-life attitude.

> "To be honest, I don't get why some people go out of their way to cheerlead for their employers. It's quite sad to see such naïve fealty. I have a good life outside of work and prefer the mercenary state of mind when it comes to employment."

I've thought a lot about this, and I think it has to do with the innate human desire to belong to a tribe. I also think that's why army's will tend to recruit people on the younger side of adulthood, but also why companies that require a lot of hard work and long hours will do the same. Younger adults with less life experience (the under 25s), generally speaking (obviously there are always exceptions), will tend to be the target audience for companies and armies simply because they are much more likely to develop some form of loyalty/tribalism. I also think a part of it is due to the fact that most humans are still developing their worldview at that point, and so if you get them at this stage, you're much more likely to mold them to buy into your vision.

> To be honest, I don't get why some people go out of their way to cheerlead for their employers

Imagine for a second that you felt passionately about internet social networking - all the possibilities it represents and all the problems it solves. And, you then discovered that there was a company solving social networking problems and they pay really well. And, they hire you, pay you well for the kind of work that you want to do.

Then, maybe you'll cheerlead for your employer.

You could also choose to work for some other company that's doing amazing work and perhaps doesn't pay as well but is better aligned with your values.

I see what you mean, though I think that one doesn't necessarily follow from the other. A person can feel proud of their work and the impact it has, without succumbing to what is essentially corporate patriotism.

On shared values, I think it's wise to be skeptical of a company's declarations of their values, especially the tech giants. It's typically just a veneer over their actual values of making the largest profits possible and dominating whichever market they enter.

Shared values at any company I’ve been at (5-5000+) have always been bullshit. It’s always just internal marketing.

I worked there until earlier this year, and often posted on HN while I was there.

The biggest reason you don't see comments from Facebook employees is exactly what others here have pointed out: HN is overwhelmingly negative in its attitude toward Facebook.

This leads to a super pragmatic reason not to post. If you post anything neutral or positive, you typically get downvoted a lot. If your comment somehow avoids going negative, then you get a ton of replies accusing you of being a paid shill, and people stalking you on other social media trying to "out" you as a shill. That's not fun and I assume it's enough to discourage most people from posting.

That being said, I used to post a lot about FB and still do, even when it gets me downvoted. I worked on recommendation ML and contributed to a bunch of different surfaces, so I think I have an unusually well informed perspective on how things actually work at FB and what sorts of processes/motivations lead to the negative outcomes that cause bad PR. I think FB has a lot of problems, but as an insider with no extreme political views, it was very difficult for me to convince myself that anything FB has done is morally wrong.

HN has some decent flamewar prevention automation to prevent me from spending too much time arguing here, so at the end of the day its a decent way to vent and represent an alternative point of view besides "FB bad Zuck evil".

I left FB (well WhatsApp) in 2019. I didn't necessarily care about downvotes, but commenting on work related matters is generally a no go, I wasn't authorized to speak about work stuff, and I didn't want to say anything that's going to get me in trouble at work.

Also, while I might sometimes have wanted to mention something, I certainly didn't want to answer follow up questions, and that provides unsatisfying dialog.

>so I think I have an unusually well informed perspective on how things actually work at FB and what sorts of processes/motivations lead to the negative outcomes that cause bad PR.

Could you enlighten as to what those are?

>I think FB has a lot of problems, but as an insider with no extreme political views, it was very difficult for me to convince myself that anything FB has done is morally wrong.

My personal complaints would be:

- Mass censorship over certain topics (e.g. Kyle Rittenhouse)

- Forcing previously purchased goods (e.g. Oculus headsets) to be tied to a Facebook Account

- Paying for zero-day exploits of the Tails operating system

- the Real name policy

- Shadow profiles created by inserting hidden pixels into unaffiliated webpages

> Could you enlighten as to what those are?

Generally speaking, I believe company leadership is directionally correct on most issues, with one very important exception (pre-CA data openness). The metrics that company leadership cares about are pro-social and correlate well with user happiness long term.

Because of hierarchical delegation, teams and individual's sometimes have incentives that aren't well aligned with company priorities. For example, suppose the company wants to encourage people to share more pictures they take in the app's camera. Sharing these pictures is (IMO) well aligned with user happiness. However, you can't task most ICs with causing users to share more videos, it's too hard to directly influence. So instead you task somebody with increasing the number of images captured (not only shared) because this is easier to change. The result? Lottery-style "which are you" camera effects that encourage users to take 10s of pictures for each share.

Stuff like that often plays out without leadership noticing for months or years. I think FB is getting much better at noticing these sorts of things and intervening more quickly, but it's not possible to fix everything instantly.

I'm not going to debate your other points, this isn't the right venue for that.

Almost all of us on HN are here for ourselves as individuals and I don't think they should or have to identify with any of the workings of their employer.

Most of us come here for free spirited discussion and interaction of ideas, and ultimately to optionally contribute and mostly to learn.

On that note I have seen many identify where they see relevant that they work at Meta/FB just as much as any of the other FAANG participants.

I do see some FB engineers sometimes, but mostly working on open source projects there.

I am not a Facebook / Meta employee, but does anyone think that shame factors in for some people? That overwhelmingly negative and very bad press come from the work that these folks do.

For some, posting "I work at FB" is an admission that "I am part of the $PROBLEM" for any of the many, many ills people attribute to Facebook / Meta which garner that negative opinion and bad press.

Probably. But I am afraid that losing valuable contributions from FB people leads to groupthink and ideological bubbles. I realize that I myself have a very negative opinion of FB the company, and I think this is mostly due to the stuff I read on HN. Most of my friends don't see the problem and consider Facebook as yet another big company, ruthless and profit-seeking maybe, but not more than the other ones, and that's probably true.

EDIT: typo

As far as I can tell all social media companies (FB, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit) receive a lot of dislike in general as being a source of societal ills.

I think people just don't like having a mirror held up to the very negative parts of human nature.

Social media as an industry may be joining tobacco, oil, "wall street" finance, gambling, and weapons as one where if your employment is involved in it, some people in some way will feel you're profiting from exploiting society and making it worse.

I personally don't think Facebook does anything wrong aside from being a normal social media company.

But any social media that wants to be "successful" in terms of revenue and usage will have to exploit vulnerabilities in human nature like our increased interest in negative rhetoric about "out-groups". Any of the other companies in the stigmatised industries will either have to exploit human nature to be successful or be regulated such that their competitors can't do the same (like with tobacco advertising being heavily regulated). Regulation of social media seems to be the only real solution for society if we aren't happy with the status quo.

As an aside, I think if people can be so easily misled with "fake news" and radicalised along partisan lines, the issue lies with the U.S. education system and culture rather than the site that simply hosts the content.

At what point do people have to take responsibility for their own reaction to a world full of misinformation and tactics that seek to exploit them? If anyone reading this wants to post happy stories and accurate information on Facebook all day there's nothing stopping you, so why won't that fix the problem? Because of the issues with the users themselves.

I've personally stopped using Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, ect. because I've seen the harmful effects it has on my psyche. If consumers aren't smart enough to recognize that and willingly give it up, the issue is with the individuals who lack the education, cultural standards, and willpower to do so, and Facebook is not responsible for how 300+ million Americans were raised and educated such that they can't consume media healthily.

>But I am afraid that losing valuable contributions from FB people lead to groupthink and ideological bubbles

Perhaps then maybe FB will understand why it's unwise to create and maintain such bubbles.

I certainly self censor like this on a different subject: I'm one of the only people who thinks the tech interview process is actually pretty good (I'm also very good at it, so that could be why). But anyway, only an idiot wouldn't know that a positive statement about tech interviews would garner a thousand downvotes. People seem to think HN is some sort of bastion of free speech but really it's just an echo chamber of slightly different opinions than, well, other echo chambers.

I think it’s fair to distinguish an echo chamber from a place of familiar discourse. I see this for example in the skeptic circles I run in. Amongst peers we might talk more dismissively about some pseudoscience topic we’ve all seen hundreds of times, but would be more willing to engage someone in good faith at, say, a family dinner.

You get downvoted because there’s actual evidence the interview process is deeply flawed and essentially a proxy measure for tolerance of anxiety (and of course raw intelligence), but does not correlate well to actual performance. You shouldn’t necessarily be downvoted, especially since there might be some merit to the overall thrust of your argument in defense of the tech interview. However at some point it’s entirely possible you sound like the person espousing homeopathy to the local skeptic club.

Free exchange of ideas does not mean each is given equal weight. That’s only a lie those who spread misinformation and peddle pseudoscience propagate.

Yes and no - I've seen people defend stereotypical tech interviews, and not get downvoted. But only when it's sufficiently nuanced and adding to the discussion, i.e., "I think they do a good job at filtering for false positives, but as with any such measure it creates a lot of false negatives. My experience has been that the people who -do- get through tend to be pretty good, or at least, have put in a lot of work to clear the bar, which translates pretty frequently, but recognize it doesn't say anything for the people who don't." vs "Pff, the interview process is great; if you're not clearing it you're just not good enough to work there"

HN, as anywhere, has an echo chamber, sure, but it also does have better dialog even around the sacred cows than others (i.e., perhaps the biggest one here, "startups are great!", is balanced with "They're lotteries. Go to a FAANG if you want to get rich, and anywhere established if you want better work/life balance")

Or perhaps they value their job (read: fat paycheck) over arguing with random people on the internet?

There are plenty of Googlers, Applers (?), Amazonians or Netflixers posting on HN but not identifying themselves as such. Likewise some FBers do identify themselves as such. I only see it in technical posts (open hardware, folly, oculus etc) because I find the discussion of social networks being good/bad boring.

But definitely if there were a post about why fb is evil and I worked at fb I probably wouldn’t mention that. You don’t see that many google rms defending google on HN either.

I'm a Googler, but I don't talk about it on HN, mostly because the Google-related articles are almost entirely negative, and I'm not about to be in the trenches on HN defending my employer. There's plenty of other good articles to read instead. I imagine some FBers probably feel similarly.

Except that the sentiment toward Facebook is considerably more negative than toward Google - at least that's my feeling, but I don't have data to back it up. Is there an opinion poll somewhere about "which one of the FAANG (or however they are called nowadays) companies do you hate the most"?

"Except"? I feel you mean "Especially".

There is, but it's pre-pandemic data and about the general public, not the HN crowd: https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/2/21144680/verge-tech-survey...

Wow, that's both much more favorable towards all brands than I would have expected, and definitely in a different order than I would have expected based on the mainstream media stories I consume. Amazon on the top? Apple in the middle? Wow.

Note that the popular press articles about “big tech” are often articles by people who feel threatened by it (traditional journalists) or articles about some politician complaining that some topic they care about is or is not being censored.

I’m not saying journalists are scum by any means, just saying it’s kind of a natural outcome.

Meanwhile most people are looking at dog photos and pictures of their friends’ kids and not worrying about these issues. Or saving money on Amazon even as their downtown hollows out.

Thanks! That confirms my hunch about Facebook and Google, but I didn't expect Amazon to come out at the top (even pre-pandemic, I would have though their treatment of warehouse and delivery workers and their threat to retail shopping would have affected the public opinion more negatively). Also, Apple in the lower half, below Microsoft?! Guess their users are devoted, but also critical? Also, that was the time of the butterfly keyboard debacle, maybe that played a part...

One of my all-time favorite rebuttals is from an FB employee.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21772401

It’s a fresh perspective on targeted advertising in what is normally a boring discussion with the same predictable comments. Whether you agree with the post or not doesn’t matter. It’s a candid insider’s view that drives curiosity and precisely the kind of content that keeps me returning to HN.

Yeah that's a good comment, and you can see from the replies why somebody would want to post that anonymously (the replies are basically "you are lying").

I'm happy to endorse that comment using my real-world identity.

Facebook does not do "hypertargeting". The marginal cost of running text processing on messages or image processing on photos for specific users exceeds the value of that information for targeting by many orders of magnitude. Facebook literally cannot afford to "listen to your conversations".

The way I typically explain targeted advertising is something like this. You go to a website, you put something in your cart, but you don't buy. Facebook shows you an ad for that website the next day, you go back and buy the thing in your cart. That basic pattern probably accounts for 20-30% of ad revenue for Facebook, and the only "personal information" required is that you recently visited a particular website. The next 70-80% is similarly banal stuff, like "you're the sort of person who buys outdoor gear and you're likely to buy this quarter".

I used to work for Facebook until a couple of months ago, and I know for a fact that a lot of FB employees still post here.

The problem is that presenting yourself as a Facebook employee gives you a deluge of angry HN responses that are normally unrelated to your current post. It's not the bad press alone, but the design of HN and other comment ranking systems make it harder for "unpopular" commenters to get a good signal to noise ratio.

Also, there's the media. Everyone has seen too many clickbait stories based on a single anonymous comment by an FB employee to risk writing anything.

HN has a very clear anti-Facebook bias. It doesn’t matter what the news story is - If it has Facebook in the headline the comment section will be half low-effort comments from people bragging about quitting Facebook years ago or snide remarks about Zuckerberg. They rarely last long on the front page because they seem to trigger HN’s quality filters very quickly.

So why would any Facebook employees volunteer to be part of that? If you say anything neutral or even positive about Facebook as a non-employee your comment will attract rapid downvotes here. Imagine commenting as an employee on the inside of the company.

FWIW, I know several people at FB who also comment on HN. They have no interest in discussing FB on HN because we all know exactly how the discussion will go regardless of the veracity of any claims or content.

> HN has a very clear anti-Facebook bias. So why would any Facebook employees volunteer to be part of that?

I mean... refusing to look at things you don't like or don't fit your narrative/content bubble is pretty much the reason Facebook exists. Stands to reason it applies to HN too.

I view being a contrarian as a positive thing for the society. Casting it in the light of FB's toxic culture feels like an insidious, contemptful and oppressive stance to take. Facebook/Twitter/Tiktok culture has nothing to do with "not fitting in the narrative". If you want the society fit in the narrative, you'll find that well exercised in oppressive regimes such as North Korea.

For the most part, HN does a great job of criticism and opposing viewpoints when it comes to technical topics. But for political viewpoints, it is a cohesive, tightly bound and impenetrable monoculture primarily echoing Silicon Valley zeitgeist.

Could you please stop posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments? You've unfortunately done it a lot and we're trying for something else here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Fair enough. It wasn't meant to come across as flamebaity but I can see how it might. Apologies.

I don't know if this was reason it existed, but last I have been on Facebook, I got to see mostly content I do not like nor want to see, between suggested dumb videos to ads for product I don't need... a pretty different experience than the one I have on HN

I find it funny that Tiktok which is basically equally toxic, but universally praised on HN. Most people don't even know who the founder is for a social media company on-par with Facebook and working on massive scale.

The love of tik tok is odd to me. Seems to be the exact same. And the ads I see on Twitter for it basically amount to sex appeal for a lot of it. Not unlike Hollywood it general show business.

For this thread, though, I'm not sure the negative slant is enough to explain it. There is a ton of negative on most every topic.

I don’t know about everyone else but in my eyes, FB is more of a concern because they are much more massive and are more strongly viewed by the voting public.

Privacy, algorithmization of feeds, etc. are important to me but I’m much more afraid of opinions being seeded now, which get turned into votes, which determines the people we elect, which in turns determines the type of policies we enact, which then plays out in 5-20 years, when I’m still alive and also the people who come after me.

For example, we have to deal with the TSA now because of a series of many unfortunate events that transpired since WW1. You can’t go back and undo certain mistakes.

Facebook is unfortunately where a lot of people seem to get their news and that is scary. Primary sources should be people’s news sources.

But... I'm not sure why tik tok can't do the same things? It is almost certainly being used by the same organizations for recruitment and general reach.

If not, why not?

I get a general fear of social media. And I am not trying to give anyone a pass. I don't see a distinction, though.

I never find my TikTok stream to be negative or divisive. I only find my FB feed to be negative and divisive. That’s the difference in my mind.

> Through that one powerful signal, TikTok can learn your most hidden interests and emotions, and drive users of any age deep into rabbit holes of content—in which feeds are heavily dominated by videos about a specific topic or theme. It’s an experience that other social-media companies like YouTube have struggled to stop.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-algorithm-sex-drugs-mino...

NYTimes would never do a serious negative story about Tiktok because it goes against their political bias. It matches exactly with HN's bias. Here is a praise-worthy Tiktok story that boggles the mind: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/10/arts/TIK-TOK....

It is all partisan and not very objective. I think all social media is terrible for the society.

Three quarters of adults believe FB is making society worse[1]. Maybe a moral panic has taken hold of the world, or maybe the world has recognized that FB is the business equivalent of the Paperclip Maximizer, optimizing growth metrics with zero regard for actual human happiness and societal well-being. In any case, FB--er, Meta-- doesn't have a HN problem, Meta has a national public opinion problem.

1. https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/10/business/cnn-poll-facebook/in...

Now do the same polls in the same questions for TikTok, Twitter, and the like, you'll have same results.

Clearly the campaign against FB is to get Zuck to censor more, the media lackeys at CNN are on the case!

> zero regard for actual human happiness and societal well-being.

You said nothing actionable. "Actual human happiness." Lol. "Societal well-being" Whoa.

Have you compared their happiness output levels to other social media companies?

Where's the study that the societal well-being meters for Twitter are better than FB?

Form a clear criticism of what you want FB to do. I assume it has something to do with censoring dissent?

-- edit --

Cute, you linked a Wikipedia article about whataboutism. Linking to it doesn't make it relate to this though.

Please expand on your criticisms so we can debate them, everything you said is subjective and obscure so I'm trying to figure out what exactly you are taking issue with, hence the other social media services offered as a comparison. Do they do that too in your opinion? Is it Facebook only? Did you see them sacrificing babies? Do you want them to censor more?

Comparisons are how you find contradictions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contradiction

(look I can do that too!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

-- edit --

Them: Facebook is bad You: What about Twitter and TikTok ?

I'm pointing out that you are not refuting their point while still defending Facebook.

It seems you believe social medias are the way they are because that's all they can be.

It shows a lack of imagination and understanding of how they influence each others rather than compete to the benefit of users and society.

I commented this on an HN post about FB 2 years ago in response to a comment much like yours. Pasting it here:

I don't understand accusations of whataboutism. They oftentimes seem hypocritical: accusing someone of whataboutism is as relevant (and therefore, by its own logic, as rhetorically valid) as the thing it seeks to criticize.

Why is exposing double standards and hypocrisies via a relevant example not a valid form of argumentation?

They have no point to refute. What specific point are you talking about? I've been trying to pull it out.

I believe social media behemoths have been biased in their moderation / censorship and they should make their mod logs public.

That's a specific criticism and suggestion. What is your specific criticism and suggestion?

Crying whataboutism is a cop-out, you only replied to my comparisons. I said much more, including questions trying to drill their point out of them.

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

> HN has a very clear anti-Facebook bias.

Is it a bias if it is a representative sample of coverage of the company from around the web?

Are there positive stories about the company being posted that somehow don’t make it to HN? I never, ever come across anything positive about the company - HN or elsewhere.

What’s the positive angle that we are missing?

I think it is biased, because generally HN is more rational and level headed than media coverage and popular opinion.

For example, in the US >20% of people are unwilling to take a covid vaccine, citing reasons ranging from fear of unknown side effects, to intentional government orchestrated mass steralization, to nanobots controlling their minds. I doubt more than 5% of the HN crowd is anti-vaccine, and those that are probably stick to the more realistic objections (side effects).

On the other hand, rationality is basically thrown out the window during discussions about FB (and to a lesser extent other big companies). All of a sudden, large conspiracies with thousands of people keeping silent for years are possible, impossibly sophisticated mind control technology exists, pure-evil or amoral actors pull on hidden strings to control society, etc.

By all means, if there are stories about the positive impacts of FB on society, please post them! I don’t think HN would downvote those the same way that it would download Anti-vax articles. I think pro-FB articles aren’t posted because they don’t exist because FB is legitimately a bad actor with no moral compass. No conspiracy needed.

You're right they would not, because it's not possible to downvote posts on HN :P

In reality, people aren't interested in those posts, so nobody upvotes them and they die. Also most content like that would be created by FB itself, and even I don't want to read self-aggrandizing crap.

> For example, in the US >20% of people are unwilling to take a covid vaccine, citing reasons ranging from fear of unknown side effects

Somewhat related: I remember seeing some stats where ~25% of Americans thought there's a 10% change you die if you get Covid...

did you mean "anti-Meta bias"?

> It doesn’t matter what the news story is

Alternatively, news about FB is overwhelmingly negative, possibly because they actually are that bad.

If you go down the to stories: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=facebook

it's virtually all either FB doing something unethical or someone taking action against FB (because they're unethical).

Facebook and social media get a lot of shade here. It's not just HN though, the shame is fairly universal, even to prospective employees. I had a junior ask me if it was wise to go work there and I had to tell him this: "In this day and age there are no clean companies. All the places you think are heroes will become villains and the villains advertise themselves as heroes. The best you can do as a talented person is to earn your money and one day try to work on problems you're passionate about for companies that couldn't afford the price tag you deserve."

All in all, I don't like what most of these companies do, but I also don't like moralizing employees directly for it. Rarely if ever do they work on the things that make those companies a problem. That requires coordination that engineers are not typically involved in.

There is nothing wise about cynical amorality. The best you can do as a talented person is look to where you can apply your talents to make the world a better place.

Morality is not a requirement in my world. Ethics in a given paradigm do matter to me though, and discriminating based on my morals about someone's employment history would be a clear violation of ethical hiring practices.

The phrase "making the world a better place" is also lost on me. How many startups have said this, only to make it better for some people but worse for others? It's an illusion we tell ourselves.

I've had a lot of "weird feelings" about the visitors on HN over the years. Enough time elapses and you realize most of it is in your head and typically leads to a dark forest of subsequent thoughts.

This attempt to bind HN participation to employer is confusing to me. Is this not a (mostly) anonymous board? I usually have zero idea who anyone is working for at any given moment unless explicitly mentioned in whatever comment.

A more likely middle ground conclusion is that you are partially correct - perhaps most FB employees who post on HN just don't disclose who their employer is at the same frequency as others, so the aggregate perception is that fewer FB employees frequent this board.

I think similarly and also see with interest when someone writes "<insert FAANG>er here". Personally I'm happy to write what I think without having to worry what employers might think. (Probably it's different when you have a lot of public exposure anyway)

That said, probably most people are aware that most companies are ambivalent - in fact even some NGOs. The more you find out the worse it gets. But still most people continue using those companies products or open source creations. Speaking of React, Angular etc. etc. Although in theory it would be possible to slalom around that.

I'll add my two cents as someone who works at Uber (another company that people here like to take potshots at).

For the vast majority of employees, it's just tiresome to keep hearing negative hot takes being parroted over and over by people who don't have any insider insight, and often times not even the decency of verifying their sources before jumping on a bandwagon to bash some strawman for some internet points.

A lot of times, these hot takes are clearly victims of egregious cognitive biases, like suggesting that working for X employer must necessarily mean that you share the company ideology, or that getting paid more money is somehow directly associated with being morally corrupt. There's also armchair "hiring managers" who boldly claim they would never hire FB people (an actual hiring manager knows how hard it is to find talent and knows they don't really have the luxury of flaunting arrogance, and they certainly know that discrimination - even of non-protected classes - is a no-no). These threads often devolve into what-about-isms galore and I-dont-use-X-because-reason anedoctes that frankly are not very snowflakey or insightful at all.

These employees get it, they've heard them all. It's like asking which twin is older: people think they're so clever for having the "insight" that one must necessarily have come out first, but that's literally the first thing everyone and their brothers asks. So, put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself what you would do if literally everyone that met you made a remark about a facial feature of yours or something like that. Chances are, you'd grin awkwardly, roll your eyes and find some way to change the subject to something less tiresome. On the internet, you'd just find another less bothersome thread to spend your precious attention span in, and that's exactly what people do.

Lots of companies you can get fired for saying certain things or have HR policies against social media or speaking in public about your company unless you are an authorized person. That’s what CEOs are for. You may not be allowed to even discuss your tech stack.

Even when people say who they work for, they need to be cautious of the content they write. Defending a company against negative press is the role of CEOs and other personnel.

Life is complicated. Not everything is wholly good or wholly evil, Facebook included.

Who here is upset with some of the decisions of their employers? Who else is upset that the management they work under are scumbags? I would dare say most of us fit that category.

I used to work for a company whose product is pretty good, but the CEO and CTO behave unethically. They are fine with lying and cheating if they can get away with it.

For example, it was discovered that in some cases the company was double-charging customers. When it was fixed, the CEO and CTO noticed a drop in revenue and told the employee to "unfix" it. That employee has ethics and thus refused revert the change.

All my previous coworkers are good people trying to make a living. I was happy that my efforts were providing the users a good product and that the company was financially supporting my coworkers. I was unhappy that my efforts were enriching scumbags.

I generally never mention my employer because I feel like if I say I work for X, my opinion will be considered representative of X, while I do not work for Facebook I would not be surprised if many Facebookers feel the same, especially since theirs is a very public company, unlike mine

> I wonder if, because Facebook regularly gets very bad press here (stories about Facebook are overwhelmingly negative, and so are comments), FB people don't feel confident to speak. Do you share that feeling?

I share that feeling, but also... Apple, Amazon and Netflix have some halfway decent customer support, whereas Google and Facebook have next to none so I think part of the cause may be people tired of being abused as unpaid customer service / "grievance counselor".

I've seen a couple posts here from people claiming to work for Facebook.

It seems that most people on here don't post who they work for, Facebook or otherwise.

You can know where I work and get the safe version for each of my comments or not know where I work and get more truth. Most people are not trying to be completely anonymous but it’s different when you call out your employer in a comment. It could be seen as you are representing the company. When I was at Apple we had regular training video sessions that made it super clear they prefer we didn’t do that. Plenty of Apple engineers on here too but you are not going to see them mention it often. It’s just not worth it. People prefer not to disclose where they work so they can be more open. Unless it’s extremely relevant to the comment. Most of the time it would be relevant to know is something that would likely be a problem for the poster as well.

You also have to remember that these are public companies and engineers often work on stuff the public hasn’t learned about yet. There are too many land mines to be super open.

If you really want to see more anonymous posts from employees at these companies teamblind.com is a better place.

I would hesitate to post on a public forum where I work or any identifying personal information for obvious reasons.

This. I've actually had someone take their disagreement with me out by leaving negative reviews of my company online. Thankfully my company at the time agreed with my personal views and nothing came of it. But after that experience, I never mention my current employer in public forums. Especially with how easily mobs and vigilantes can be triggered by opinions they don't like these days.

I imagine that if you work at Facebook, then pretty much every Facebook story that comes up on Hacker News is going to offer you some awfully harsh cognitive dissonance if you're not absolutely Machiavellian about your employment.

I work for Facebook and try to disclose it when it's relavant.

I see people do this, but I also found people that i know to be facebooker not disclose it probably due to unrelated comments made on fb more so than topic on hand.

Anything about FB becomes so toxic and pointless and ultimately very boring, that I more or less flag/hide anything touching on the subject

They are too busy counting their money.

Pretty much this. Every friend I have who has gone to work there admits that they've sold their soul and acknowledges that the company is doing harm.

They care more about the money that they're making.

Yes because all other software companies are saints and FB is just killing people left and right.

Personally Twitter is more of a stain of society, but for some reason HN has a stiffy for anyone who shits on FB.

We have some awesome stuff because of FB open source; React, PHP, HHVM, JSX, etc.

I agree they should stay out of politics, but they seem the most reserved of all services w/ the censoring.

Maybe that's why they are hated? They don't censor enough and that's where the conservatives are?

> Yes because all other software companies are saints and FB is just killing people left and right.

I didn't say anything of the sort -- was just talking quoting my friends who work at Facebook.

> Personally Twitter is more of a stain of society, but for some reason HN has a stiffy for anyone who shits on FB.

I don't have any friends at Twitter.

> We have some awesome stuff because of FB open source; React, PHP, HHVM, JSX, etc.

The Church has tons of good causes but also has priests that literally fuck kids. Should they be above criticism for it? Should we give them a pass even though they actively covering up such vile villainy? Facebook's actions are a fairly good analogue...

> I didn't say anything of the sort

Yeah, you didn't say anything of substance, just slander.

> admits that they've sold their sold (soul)

> and acknowledges that the company is doing harm.

> They care more about the money that they're making.

None of those are quotes btw, they are secondhand anecdotes mixed in with your opinion.

> The Church has tons of good causes but also has priests that literally fuck kids

Yeah well until you break the case that FB is fucking kids how about you find a better analogy.

Or maybe come up with an actual reason you want to state about why you don't like FB and why you are singling them out over other terrible social media companies.

> Should we give them a pass even though they actively covering up such vile villainy?

Vile villainy. Good one. Care to expand? Nothing you said is specific, just angry feelings.

What do YOU really want them to do?

-- edit --

None of that was clear until your last comment, it's still not fully clear.

You kept saying FB, not social media companies.

It seems you have a generic issue with social media, not FB.

Does that stop at forums, news aggregators, or what?

Is Reddit included, is Hacker News? What's the core issue for you?

I've said repeatedly in comments going back years that social media companies shouldn't be legal enterprises, period.

The same way that dumping toxic waste isn't legal.

I've been perfectly clear in expressing my intentions. I don't know what this political bias you're accusing me of is from but if you look at other comments I've made you'll see you're way off the mark.

Because of the employee shaming.

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