It's astonishing how many people value a ton of money over doing something good. Everyone who talks about setting values aside for cash is the problem. Gross.
It is absolutely not what I think about "job" and "contributing to society": I would prefer to be paid less but work in an ethical company than the other people of this thread...
This is maybe why I am feeling so "disconnected" with Tech and devs today.
But at least they all seem to acknowledge it is a terrible company and they know they are working on something terrible (which is beyond me why you would accept to do that).
I was on a salary of $550 a day with a bank. I left because how grim banks are. I have yet to find another job that pays that much outside of a banking circuit.
If meta is paying you high-end why would you give it up for something that pays you less?
Sure, because I don't value high-end living. A modest living is enough to keep me happy. If I can provide a happy, comfortable life for my family, we're good.
It would irk me deeply to set aside my values for the sake of a boatload of cash that I don't actually need.
Everyone is addicted to unnecessary luxury. If I suggested that you take a principled stance, your lifestyle would be offended.
We don't have a tablet in the house, or the latest video game consoles. You should've seen how outdated our TV was before we upgraded a couple of years ago, but I didn't go posting about it online.
I don't subscribe to most streaming services, preferring to sail the high seas. Sure, we used them for a while, but then the experience began to become subpar. Even then, my collection is fairly small, limited largely to my favorite films and a small smattering of television shows I occasionally re-watch.
My musical hobbies all involve old gear that I've not upgraded in two decades.
I don't have social media and don't feel the need to show off to others.
My car is terribly old and has none of the modern luxuries of today's vehicles, but it still chugs along nicely.
Little Free Libraries are a delightful way for us to find new books and put books we love back into the community. Other than a few specific books related to our hobbies, that's where most of the books in our house come from. The children's books we have, most of them are hand-me-downs or gifts.
We value vacations in wilderness over hotels and fine dining - it's a lot cheaper, keeps us in touch with the natural world, and as a bonus, one doesn't have to have TSA fondle you prior to cramming yourself into a metal tube with a bunch of strangers for five to ten hours. And, no, we don't go camping with the latest-and-greatest gear.
I'm quite happy with all of that, and genuinely don't feel like I'm missing out on anything, or a connection with the people that matter in my life.
You talk about how everyone is addicted to unnecessary luxury, but that's an absolute that's simply not true. There are plenty of people out there who try to live a life as free of material attachments, luxury worship and whatnot as possible. The broader culture might be that way, but it's not everyone.
I've built my life around my core values (or "principled stances" as you put it), I wouldn't preach it if I wasn't trying my damnedest to practice it.
It is so obvious how competition dynamics naturally ends up as a fight to the bottom, and yet so many people are happy enough clocking in to this grind, then trying to forget about it the moment they clock off.
I totally understand this from a survival standpoint - but choosing to work at Meta is likely not "the only job you could get"
You should introduce your friend to Kant. He’s taken a situational excuse and turned it into a general principle: ‘If someone else would do it anyway, it’s okay for me to do it.’
It's kinda like.. Kant's whole 'thing'.
> The number of people in these comments who would be happy to be "paid well" to contribute to what's inarguably a huge net negative worldwide is exactly how the company got to this point.
Sorry, have to call bullshit on this. As to the Meta products, who is forcing anyone to use it? They could have had armies of geeks working for them but if no one ever came, would Facebook cum Meta ever be this huge? I personally, from back when most people here would downvote you to oblivion when some of us pointed out the emergence of surveillance capitalism in "Web 2.0", recognized this company for what it is and have avoided every single product offering.
Who is forcing people to use Facebook?
And what was the role of websites like Hackernews in promoting the 'permissive' (irony alert) ethics of these 'ventures'?
Additionally, putting the blame for using Meta products on the users in spite of all of what we know about how the company has strived to make the productive terribly addictive is a very wild take.
That there's demand isn't necessarily the fault of the user, in many cases it's the fault of industry. At this point, at least for petroleum, it's a feedback loop - we built infrastructure around it, people became dependent upon it because alternatives are limited, the dependence creates demand, and that demand is used to justify continued production.
The petroluem industry then just has to work hard to squash alternatives, as it very much has, thereby leaving the user with little to no choice.
So you changed your beliefs to ease some cognitive dissonance and help yourself sleep at night. Seems normal and expected to me, people do that all the time. These companies actively advertise and lobby to get their product into more peoples hands and quash alternatives.
> Additionally, putting the blame for using Meta products on the users in spite of all of what we know about how the company has strived to make the productive terribly addictive is a very wild take.
Really? It's like me complaining that my pot and smoking habits were due to evil designs of their vendors. I take full responsibility for taking those initial puffs knowing full well that they were addictive and not good for me.
p.s. my general point is this: The entire industry was pushing developers to think nothing of 'ethical concerns' and 'just move fast and break things'.
And I find it disengenous to now pick on a single solitary entity, Meta, as if the rest of these newly arrived big techs were/are clean and ethical. Possibly some want to virtue signal while earning big $ at some other VC unicorn.
(Anyone working for "AI" companies here complaining about Meta? ...)
This particular discussion is about Meta, hence the focus in these comments. My views (and I'm sure the views of many others here) do, however, apply broadly to much of what you refer to.
That comment about me sleeping through the past 26 years? I'd say the same about all of the companies you cited, they've all had their own broad negative impacts.
Edit: Further, the marijuana comparison is a bit weak (as an aside, I'm a former pothead myself, who made the choice to start and stop). The world hasn't structured itself to the point where most people are required to smoke pot to do everything they need to do. The world has structured itself to require Meta products be used in many instances, lest you lose access to information from certain sources or the ability to communicate with others. "The system" pushes people to it, and it tries it's damndest to keep you there once you arrive.
We barely know the damage social media does yet, it's not comparable to taking the first hit of drugs at all.
Agreed that tech workers need to take a look at themselves too, but also it's the execs and governments more too blame.
Children are on Facebook because adults like you used their surveillance product and made them a "must have" aspect of social life.
Facebook and Google and the rest were harming society long before '20s. This was obvious to some us and when we spoke up forums like this were used to silence informed voices.
That is the .
The kids feel the pressure from their own social circles, I can see it even with my littles and their requests for tablets and Minecraft at their young ages. And if they choose to give into that pressure in spite of their parent's best efforts, much of what they might use is designed to keep them there.
I made a comment about the petroleum industry's feedback loop making it hard for me to fully fault petroleum users for continuing to drive demand for oil in another comment in this chain. Like it or not, our society has become so structured around social media that we're already seeing something similar play out there. That feedback loop is driven by the companies at fault here.
I hear your. Regarding above however it is my understanding that VC$ determines the behavior and direction of companies in our sector. I just quickly ran a couple of queries that you can try:
"has paul graham of YC ever written about ethics that should govern startups and companies? interested in ethics in terms of social responsibility, impact of the product on the society as a whole, prioritizing social good over profits, etc"
It's just like privacy. Do you think we would not have socially responsible and optimal digital services by this point if investors and the entire propaganda system built around startups insisted on socially responsible products??
Just because the entire industry was doing bad things does not absolve the largest members of the industry from doing bad things. They were leading the charge!
No, intentionally giving kids depression and anger issues is not "something good" no matter how many bullshit platitudes someone throws out about their "family" and "excellent character".
Pixels? Everywhere? Pre-installed FB mobile apps that harvest contact info and build shadow profiles of non-FB users?
Doesn't seem like serious analysis. Raising a family is important, but so is how you fund it, right? Still ok to fund it if you're robbing banks, but it pays for college? That is your logic it seems.
You can't seriously argue that everyone can just drop a mainstream communication tool without acknowledging the lack of replacements.
There is no limit to human greed