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Comment by raxxorraxor | Hacker News Reader

If you work for meta you shouldn't have a problem with invading the privacy of others.

Of course this is not ok, but you should really quit your job if you have ethical or moral problems with that.

Of course quitting can be in the cards, but I'd much rather see a successful pushback from meta employees against this new policy; maybe this could be a good cause to form a union over.

Exactly. Meta spent 15 years mining user data and now mines its own staff to build the agents that'll replace them. If you're still there complaining about privacy, you're not the victim rahter the training set

There isn't exactly a surplus of jobs today. While some may have this option, many do not.

At this point, Meta's opinion on privacy has been widely known for decades. Working for Meta is a personal choice. There is no excuse.

^ this! Ever since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, people who decide to work there make the statement that they are ok with it. Same with Palantir, X, Grok, Tesla etc

Yes. It's worth pointing out that the Cambridge Analytica scandal was in 2016 - that's 10 years ago! At that point, FB resp. Zuckerberg already had a bad reputation.

Eh - if you have Meta on your resume it's not that tough out there right now.

TBH if I see "late Meta" or "post-Musk Twitter/X" on a resume it gets filed as "low morals / low trust".

I understand that but trust me plenty of jobs, especially at other larger shops, do not do that.

That argument doesn't really fly for some of the most highly paid people in the world with at least one really big name on their CVs.

Everyone working at Meta has more options than almost anyone else.

That's a good point. The crux is privacy or half your salary.

Exactly, these are highly-paid professionals with very broadly applicable skills. They have the means to uphold professional values.

Anyone working for Meta could have chosen to work elsewhere. You have other options (that might not pay $350 grand, but hey, that's the price of your soul)

Poor Meta employees. They are victims of the oppressive job market and are left no other option than to work for 100s of thousands of dollars per year in well-lit and comfortable offices with free food and premium healthcare.

Anyone who could get a job at meta has other options, I think this is why people are so confident criticizing. Outside of the obvious (and correct!) hypocrisy angle, I think this would be an altogether different issue if it were for grocery store workers, retail employees, etc. (or for a much more real example, Amazon warehouse workers) Those groups really might not have other real options.

But I was only following orders!

> you should really quit your job

Stop blaming the working class. We need jobs to pay our bills. Regulate capital, force them to follow the law, force them to be ethical, and use all the force of the state for doing so.

To blame employees for the capital behavior is absurd and solves nothing. Put the high up decision makers in prison. Punish the real criminals and we will get back our privacy and our rights.

Stop using bills as an excuse to be on the wrong side of history. Were the nazi soldiers innocent for gassing jews? Or were they also just "following the law"?

Being ethical is hard, but it's not an excuse. Yes, I judge people that work for FAANG, I judge colleagues for extensively rely on LLMs, and Big Corps for that matter.

> Regulate capital

How? Oh, right, by not using these products or working for the mentioned companies.

It's so easy to shift blame on other's and mark it as "not my problem lol"

> It's so easy to shift blame on other's and mark it as "not my problem lol"

I don't say that it is "not my problem". It is. That is why Facebook is guilty and high level decision makers should be held accountable by the law.

We need to make it happen. Until CEOs and the like are in prison we are failing society.

Several reports say even a mid-ranked engineer at Meta can earn $200k in salary and another $100k in stock and bonus, every year. And that's not some rare, mega-senior E8 architect either.

Is there any point where a person stops being working class? Can I be chauffeur-driven to the opera in my gold-plated Lamborghini and still call myself working class?

If you work to earn a living, you're working class. If you use capital to pay your bills, you're a capitalist. So I'd say someone with that kind of salary and stocks is probably halfway to not-working-class. If you already have 1MM in stocks then you're not working class anymore, you don't need to work at that point.

> So I'd say someone with that kind of salary and stocks is probably halfway to not-working-class. I

Just halfway seems low. But this is Silicon Valley News after all.

> If you work to earn a living, you're working class

They are using a divide an conquer strategy. By splitting the working class they want to weak our ability to resist capital.

There is no logic to their argument just lies to fulfill their goal.

If you keep expecting the morals should be coming (only or mainly) from the top, you get trump and all related shitshow and many other beautiful things. Thats not how healthy societies work, and same can be said about companies.

Somebody making 300-500k+ yearly is hardly working class, in same way bezos or zuckenberg are not working class yet they do spend some time working on their businesses.

We all make our choices in our lives and shape it accordingly, at least have a pair and own your decisions.

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