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There must be many HNers who work at Facebook. Anyone willing to make a throwaway account and tell us how it feels from the inside for Facebook to be one the wr

There must be many HNers who work at Facebook. Anyone willing to make a throwaway account and tell us how it feels from the inside for Facebook to be one the wrong side of so many ethical issues? It just seems like in so many dimensions they've been caught saying wrong things or appearing to outright lie, and I'm curious how developers who work for them think about aiding a company that seems to be so compromised at the moment. Now that it's fairly clear that the service doesn't serve any unique, unambiguously positive purpose, what world-changing mission can you possibly decide that Facebook is achieving these days?

ljk 10y ago
i'm guessing to work for facebook the employees probably know what they're signing up for so it might not feel like "the wrong side" for them
deepsun 10y ago
I have a friend at Facebook. Yes, they do understand that some data they collect is pretty ... private. But since it's good for Facebook -- it's good for them. In all personal discussions they defend the company to the point that I started feeling like there is some mind-washing going on. Of course it's just a feeling, but my point is -- they don't think it is bad.
- pmyjavec 10y ago
  Same, I have a friend who works there, often tells me about how good his stock prices are etc, never ever heard him talk about ethics, it's just not even on his radar. The other day I installed messenger (in the hope I never have to login to FB web again) and received a message about 15 seconds later saying, "Good boy, that's good for my stock prices" ha. I know what you mean though, it's like they're trained not to discuss topics with outsiders or something?
  - hueving 10y ago
    >I know what you mean though, it's like they're trained not to discuss topics with outsiders or something? Pretty standard amongst companies to discourage employees from talking politics about the product.
- mahyarm 10y ago
  It's hard to work for any software bigco that doesn't have an ethics violation somewhere. Same as living in a country without an ethics violation attributable to it's govt. Google is probably the scariest one out there out of all of the bigcos because of how much data they have on the world, yet they cover themselves with a cutesy image.
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  There is no personal gain or advantage to dwelling on the bad things your company could be doing. So if you work at company X and company X does some bad things but you're working on something you consider not bad, you focus on what you're working on. Sure you'd do things differently if you ran the company but you don't, so you just ignore that stuff. Mental self defense at its finest.
  - Hydraulix989 10y ago
    You also don't want to rock the boat and bite the hand that feeds you (and your wife, children, etc.).
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  Such an odd impulse. I've known guys who sold heroin and meth on the small to medium scale, they don't defend the drug or their actions except to perhaps say "I'm trying to take care of my little girl". It might be a socioeconomic thing coming from a poor background nobody is really proud of what they do to make ends meet so nobody has to pretend to be.
- kordless 10y ago
  Ideally, who speaks for your wants and desires? Realistically, who do you allow to speak for you on a regular basis? Your mom? Your boss? Perhaps an unhealthy narcissistic friend? Facebook? Speaking for others is formulating emotional responses for someone else and then constructing a dialog that elicits those feelings in that person. Today, that can be done with software as has been shown time and time again with Facebook. In the past it's been the tool of choice for those who control others. Narcissistic parents or greedy corporations, the end result is the same: loss of choice for all.
- SamBoogieNYC 10y ago
  I heard the urinals at Facebook have a sheet at eye-level where the week's "metric-to-hit" is posted. Methods like this seem to be effective, but creepy and invasive.
  - chris_7 10y ago
    I've been in the Facebook office and it's true that they have information posted above the urinals. Didn't really read it though.
  - mahyarm 10y ago
    That can become common at many larger tech cos. Usually its about some random technical fact, like how to write a better test or whatever else. It's community driven at about the sophistication level of a community newsletter.
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    The urinals at the rest stops among the highways here have sheets at eye-level telling people not to drive when they're too tired or drunk. Is that creepy and invasive?
- WalterSear 10y ago
  “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair.
pipio21 10y ago
It is not wrong when you benefit from it. This is a human trait, people do not see the wrong on the things you benefit from. For example, did you ate beef or fish lately? When was the last time you thought about the animals that were killed in order for you to eat them. Have you seen the sacrifice of an animal needed for eating it. In Mongolia or Middle East nomads will sacrifice the animal in front of you before eating so you know what you eat is the best they have. Imagine that cows were able to think like humans, and remember what you did to their veal. As a children I worked feeding cows and they are not as stupid as people believe, and they like horses have emotions and personalities like humans have. When humans personally benefit from something it is very easy to just rationalize it. Humans rationalize everything. Workers on facebook are multimillionaires that are pretty happy about their life becoming the new central intelligence of the World. They will rationalize it as a good thing focusing on this service being needed and useful for the world, as it is. The problem is that even when the best of intentions, Governments, and secret services of countries want to use this service for nefarious purposes in the same way that if you centralize money in one place, some people want to take it by force if necessary, if you place too much personal information in some place, some people will want to take it for their own use.
- ForrestN 10y ago
  Ironically I'm a vegetarian for just these reasons. I don't say that because I'm perfect (I am not yet fully vegan, for example) but because I do take ethics seriously. Maybe we do rationalize too often, but shouldn't we still try to work against that impulse? The fact that something unethical benefits me generally makes me more upset, not less upset.
  - laughingman2 10y ago
    Thats great of you, I am vegetarian by birth, became vegan by choice , Even in vegetarian people rationalise when they come to terms with messy aspects of dairy farming. The question of ethics is weighing hard on me, even normally rational people who talk about human rights etc turn off their ethical circuits when question of meat comes up .. I think this points to a deeper question of how rationalising can affect morality .. Does average human consider their wants above ethics he seems to subscribe? , why is hypocricy not making many upset? Many won't consider themselves as beings who put only themselves above others, they cry out for morality, but when question of ethical boundaries they themselves cross, it becomes question of rationalisation. One has to really ponder, did a slaver in the past (sad that its not that ancient) who cared about ethics of his fellows , rationalised away his slavery? If people really thing about this in terms of past people rationalising stuff away, if they feel upset about that, maybe it will lead to them thinking about ethical problems they too rationalise away
karllager 10y ago
An observation: I recently watched a presentation from a developer who works at a random adtech company. He was a nice, albeit naive guy. In order to explain the technical topic he gave a bit of context about the business. It was so creepy, you could feel the audience thinking - Oh-kay. He didn't even notice. Now. I watched hundreds of technical presentations from Google and Facebook engineers. Did a presenter ever got into the details on how they track the user for what metric, and so on. Not a single freaking time. Andrew Ng recently told in a presentation, that all data must be accessible in one place. Did he came across creepy? Not at all. He is such a professional person, that he can even weave in a remark about privacy just right beside the talk about the uber-data-warehouse. That is professionalism. I expect Facebook to have a silent policy about talking about things developers and admins see on the inside. Apart from this complex issue. Who inducts ethics for managers? Why do people come up with bad ideas (track all users all the time, or buying such data for that matter) in the first place? Hint: The problem is not developer ethics.
nxc18 10y ago
I don't see how this is being on the wrong side of an ethical issue. Perhaps it is (somehow, after years of this being in the news) shocking that that data is collected about your life, but Facebook isn't doing the collection. Anyone can buy that data and many organizations do. Facebook hasn't actually done anything here that is harmful, not with the non-shocking data collection from third parties and not with the data you willingly give them by using their service. Even the fake news situation, which is another supposed reason why Facebook is evil, is purely a result of the hubbub over having human editors. When the human news editors were around, the news links were interesting, of decent quality and unbiased. Facebook really hasn't been on the wrong side of any moral or ethical debate, just the wrong side of public opinion (or at least the opinions of writers who need clicks/pageviews).
- karllager 10y ago
  > not with the data you willingly give them by using their service. Imagine I am a producer of sugared water. Do I want you to delve into health issue associated with that? Not necessarily. As a owner of a site that lives from user interaction, do I want my users to go out without their phone and have fun without me? Well, do it, but only if you really must. There is a conflict of interest here, but that's too disturbing to communicate. Period. Most people don't have the time and money to check facts anyway, so let's just claim facebook is the internet (for example) - because, you know, without all this livestock, our investors get unhappy. Business as usual, I would say.
- hueving 10y ago
  >Facebook isn't doing the collection Who is it then that allows facebook like buttons and social widgets to be integrated into other sites?
  - nxc18 10y ago
    Facebook does that data collection, but not the data that the article discusses - no social widget is responsible for figuring out your income or what you do at physical retailers.
closeparen 10y ago
It's easy to forget on HN, but there is far from universal buy-in for the notion that having or collecting data on people is unethical. Some may even consider it noble to optimize and perfect the world and its institutions (including commerce, via efficient advertising) using large-scale personal data. The impulse to make something better by applying a database engine that you might feel for business processes, can just as easily be felt for customer interactions or the world at large. For an interesting (and very critical) look at this philosophy I recommend The Circle by Dave Eggers.
- api 10y ago
  Surveillance could indeed have many beneficial uses in a benevolent, voluntarist sort of society. Unfortunately we don't live there. The world is still largely run by warlords, narcissists, and sociopaths.
  - closeparen 10y ago
    The "standard" counterargument here is that warlords, narcissists, and sociopaths can only operate effectively in private, and their capabilities would be severely limited in a world where secrets are hard to keep.
    - playeren 10y ago
      I understand you don't necessarily buy into that argument, but allow me to offer a counter-counter. That argument relies on the collected data being closer to the truth, than the absence of it. I think that may be true for (statistically) normal people. But for narcissists and sociopaths, it may also be a helpful tool for someone creating a fake alter ego of benevolence and 'harmlessness'.
    - scalio 10y ago
      Why would the warlords, narcissists and sociopaths get rid of their own privacy? Zuckerberg seems very keen on preserving his...
- ForrestN 10y ago
thr0waway1239 10y ago
SoftGooFace: We can easily double your current salary. Engineer: Oh SoftGooFace: You don't have to worry about employment ever after Engineer: Oh Soft: We are so powerful, we can dump unwanted OS upgrades on people Goo: We are so powerful, people are terrified of linking to other sites Face: We are so powerful, even heads of state better watch out before criticizing us Engineer: Uh.. SoftGooFace: Every time someone makes a critical comment about your employer, you can look at your bank account and tell them to f-off Engineer: Uh.. SoftGooFace: And we open source everything Engineer: Oh, where do I sign up?
- harry8 10y ago
  And yet they underpay and also use their lobbying muscle/money to change laws to keep engineering pay down. Note the sheer desperation to keep the pay secret so it doesn't turn into an auction for scarce resources for engineering talent the way it does with lawyers, bankers, MBA's. If you're in it fore the money don't work for facebrick.
  - wheelerwj 10y ago
    payment is relative. to the rest ofnthe world, all of the SV engineers looks grossly over paid.
    - hueving 10y ago
      > to the rest ofnthe world, all of the SV engineers looks grossly over paid. Only to people who don't understand economics. I know the salaries in NYC are high as well, but I understand the cost of living that drives that.
      - wheelerwj 10y ago
        no, even to people who understand economics. the only reason the cost of living is so high in SF is because of grossly over paid employees who drive up the cost of living. its a private little island of inflation.
    - 10y ago
allemagne 10y ago
NSA recruiters came to a class I had in college. I imagine Facebook employees would have the same sort of party line drilled into them. Yes the NSA takes privacy very seriously. The NSA spies on everyone else but doesn't spy on Americans, period. Oh, well yeah of course we collect data from Americans but if we find out we are looking at an American's data we're supposed to throw it away immediately. Throw in a harmless joke about "big scary NSA" to lighten the mood. Nice salary, nice benefits. Most of the students ask for applications after class, it's a career forum for area studies majors and this is by far the most lucrative job presented in the semester. It's honestly pretty easy to make a deal with the devil, especially if you're smart enough to argue that he's not the devil.
- Razengan 10y ago
  > if we find out we are looking at an American's data we're —supposed— to throw it away. Keyword emphasized, and anyway ahat safeguards are there to ensure that they won't turn against "undesirable" Americans at any point in the future? Like how the American citizens of Japanese origin were more-or-less extra-judicially just herded into camps back around WWII, and the perceived "risk factor" of American Muslims right now.
- zippoxer 10y ago
  I never got why HN are angry at NSA since they spy on Americans. Spying on me (non-American) is okay, but spying on an American is wrong? I feel just as violated as any American by the thought of NSA spying me.
  - beefield 10y ago
    What astonishes me the most is the absolute double standards US government has on this issue. you are US government and it is perfectly fine spying and collecting data from people and organizations outside US jurisdiction. You are a person outside US jurisdiction and have an unauthorized look on US government data, and US government tries to get you extradicted to US and to face charges?!?[1] That just makes morally zero sense to me. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauri_Love https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauri_Love
MarkMc 10y ago
Not a Facebook employee, but I don't see any particular ethical problem with the company. There's nothing in the law or Facebook's terms of use that obligates the company to release data they buy from third-party sources.
- optionalparens 10y ago
  I'm not trying to agree or disagree with you here (for the record, I despise Facebook and anyone who works there), rather I want to point out that ethics often has no correlation with law. The difficulty in making ethical determinations is precisely that there is often no well-defined written criteria like a law or terms of use that dictate what are the ethical boundaries or what might be ethically or morally reprehensible.
  - Karunamon 10y ago
    And that's fine. Most of the "ethical" barbs I see being leveled about facebook are on the hypothetical/philosophical level, rather than the practical one. As a general rule, I'm a lot more bothered by actual bad actions rather than hypothetical future ones. Facebook collecting all the data they want just doesn't even register as even sorta bad to me. (And no, I don't work there.)
    - optionalparens 10y ago
      I definitely disagree with you on Facebook being bad and there not being a practical component, however I'm willing to see what you are saying. There's a lot that can go wrong, but like you imply, it's mostly perspective. Sure it's hypothetical, but even those with the best intentions see the results of their work take interesting (evil) turns for the worst. Further, there's a lot that does go on that is not hypothetical and the problem tends to be that it is hard to educate yourself about if you are an outsider, i.e. not the person doing these things. Regarding hypotheticals, if you collect data, it is always there for someone to abuse, whether they are technically "allowed" to do so or not by laws, company policy, or otherwise. It can and does happen more often than we believe as I came to find out from friends and family who work in government and legal roles. I am more of the cautious sort and would rather try to make a best effort that might not be perfect to simply mitigate and minimize the issue of the wrong thing happening. Though these cases may never happen, I am in the camp of "let's not make it easier." As an aside, a lot of feelings towards these issues can be influenced by environmental and contextual reasons. For instance, I was raised in a family that lost a lot of people due, but not limited to things like data collection, humans selling each other short, supposedly good people making bad choices, and individuals acting highly in self-interest despite their "ethics." Further, I also grew up in a country more under constant and tangible threat than the US for part of my childhood and served in its army against very real threats during wartime. I'm certainly no action hero as my job was more of the engineering and intelligence nature, though I have seen first hand what people can, will, and tend to do with data, especially if there is money or physical security involved. Especially on the other side of things (i.e. our enemies) if they are losing. As such, I am more sensitive than most when it comes to people knowing things about me. I assume "they" know everything, but as I implied, I try not to make it easier than it needs to be and I actively throw in disinformation about myself. It helps if you know a thing or two about algorithms and the best ways to confuse them :)
icantdrive55 10y ago
I have sadly found that 99.9% of people(excluding maybe the Amish, and some, very few religious groups) will do whatever their employer, industry dictates, as long as it's legal, even slightly legal. I once walked out of Chiropractic School. I lost a lot of money. I walked out because of complete disbelief in the Subluxation, and the subsequent profession. Besides my astonishment over the denial by the students, and staff; I was most bothered by, "Hay--it's legal? It might work, but the studies are underfunded?" This was my over twenty years ago. When ever I encounter sonemeone, and there profession, I wonder what this guy(usually in a tie, with a degree) would do for the organization in order to make money for himself, and spawn. 99.9% of the time they go along with the crowd. Sure, after a few beers, they become pious ethical warriors, but they are scared sheep. Psychologists have proved it over, and over again(Milgram experiment comes to mind), but everyone thinks they are different. I have never found a completely ethical person. Ethics are the one trait we seem to be loosing year after year. And sure, every new generation thinks they are different, but really aren't. My hope is ethics will be talked more about in companies, and society. (If you're from a poor, unsupportive family don't "rock the boat"--you honestly can't afford it. I learned the hard way. Plus, it's usually the rich boys who need to take the ethical stand more often.)
morgante 10y ago
Not everyone agrees with your ethics. I have no financial stake in Facebook (don't work there), but really don't see many moral problems with what it does. And I think their mission of connecting the world in a single easily discoverable network is absolutely world-changing and noteworthy. It's changed my world for sure.
- scalio 10y ago
  I think a lot of fear is rightly grounded in history: it's clear that this much power in very few hands turns to shit at some point. Facebook may well be humanity's biggest concentration of power (knowledge being power). How do you keep an advantage when the other side knows >> than you could ever know? There's also the disparity in availability of AI, since large applications need powerful and thus expensive hardware.
  - morgante 10y ago
    To be clear, I don't think Facebook is flawless. All the issues you bring up are definitely true. I just think it's unfair to assume that these issues automatically make Facebook evil and that there's no good they do.
    - scalio 10y ago
      They certainly could do good, theoretically. Problem is their business model, because manipulating people doesn't fall under "doing good". As long as they make profit by selling people, they're the opposite of good because their activity goes against peoples' interest.
woerking 10y ago
Why is it Facebook's responsibility to discuss what your credit card will happily sell to literally anyone? This story is utterly baffling.
j_s 10y ago
Uber seems to be in a similar boat; HN comments from employees 100% defended the company: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13085098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13085098
rasz_pl 10y ago
It probably feels pretty good from inside your very own Tesla.
pluma 10y ago
I've talked with some FBers about this after one of them prompted me that I should apply for a job at FB. The rationale is entirely predictable (heavily paraphrased as most conversations involved alcohol): * Zuckerberg has grown up and matured. We've all done stupid things at that age so we shouldn't measure him by his infamous line about how his early users were gullible idiots. * There's no harm in retaining that kind of data. FB is handling the data responsibly because it's their competitive advantage. The only people who could get access are the government and we don't need to worry about the US government doing anything evil with it because that could never happen in the US. * If you don't want to be on Facebook, don't use Facebook. Nevermind that Facebook will still track you with a shadow profile if any of your friends are on Facebook and staying off Facebook means you have no way to take down photos of yourself shared by others. * If you don't want something about you ending up on Facebook, don't do it. If you have nothing to hide, you don't have to worry. And you can still ask for your information to be taken down if it does end up on Facebook. * Facebook is just a company. They don't have any ulterior motive beyond creating a product users want. Market forces prevent Facebook from doing anything bad. * Civil rights organizations like the EFF may be complaining about Facebook, but they just have a different opinion. They don't understand how Facebook works anyway. * Who cares about politics? Facebook has a lot of interesting tech problems and it's a great opportunity. I can still go somewhere else if I decide I don't like it. In other words: the Banality of Evil at work. Same reasoning that allows people to work for organisations like the NSA with a clean conscience. Maybe I should add a disclaimer that all of the people I talked to were on the younger end of their 20s and most of them were likely drawn in by the opportunity to work on cool tech and the salary & benefits (like being hauled to conferences all over the world where speakers are often treated as celebrities).
Kant1984 10y ago
Same for Google and its multiple violations of privacy. Great products, but everything revolves around selling user information to the highest bidder or general establishment Democratic/liberal cronyism. Will we see a Democrat apply anti-trust laws?

ljk 10y ago

i'm guessing to work for facebook the employees probably know what they're signing up for so it might not feel like "the wrong side" for them

deepsun 10y ago

I have a friend at Facebook. Yes, they do understand that some data they collect is pretty ... private. But since it's good for Facebook -- it's good for them. In all personal discussions they defend the company to the point that I started feeling like there is some mind-washing going on. Of course it's just a feeling, but my point is -- they don't think it is bad.

pmyjavec 10y ago
Same, I have a friend who works there, often tells me about how good his stock prices are etc, never ever heard him talk about ethics, it's just not even on his radar. The other day I installed messenger (in the hope I never have to login to FB web again) and received a message about 15 seconds later saying, "Good boy, that's good for my stock prices" ha. I know what you mean though, it's like they're trained not to discuss topics with outsiders or something?
- hueving 10y ago
  >I know what you mean though, it's like they're trained not to discuss topics with outsiders or something? Pretty standard amongst companies to discourage employees from talking politics about the product.
mahyarm 10y ago
It's hard to work for any software bigco that doesn't have an ethics violation somewhere. Same as living in a country without an ethics violation attributable to it's govt. Google is probably the scariest one out there out of all of the bigcos because of how much data they have on the world, yet they cover themselves with a cutesy image.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
There is no personal gain or advantage to dwelling on the bad things your company could be doing. So if you work at company X and company X does some bad things but you're working on something you consider not bad, you focus on what you're working on. Sure you'd do things differently if you ran the company but you don't, so you just ignore that stuff. Mental self defense at its finest.
- Hydraulix989 10y ago
  You also don't want to rock the boat and bite the hand that feeds you (and your wife, children, etc.).
cmdrfred 10y ago
Such an odd impulse. I've known guys who sold heroin and meth on the small to medium scale, they don't defend the drug or their actions except to perhaps say "I'm trying to take care of my little girl". It might be a socioeconomic thing coming from a poor background nobody is really proud of what they do to make ends meet so nobody has to pretend to be.
kordless 10y ago
Ideally, who speaks for your wants and desires? Realistically, who do you allow to speak for you on a regular basis? Your mom? Your boss? Perhaps an unhealthy narcissistic friend? Facebook? Speaking for others is formulating emotional responses for someone else and then constructing a dialog that elicits those feelings in that person. Today, that can be done with software as has been shown time and time again with Facebook. In the past it's been the tool of choice for those who control others. Narcissistic parents or greedy corporations, the end result is the same: loss of choice for all.
SamBoogieNYC 10y ago
I heard the urinals at Facebook have a sheet at eye-level where the week's "metric-to-hit" is posted. Methods like this seem to be effective, but creepy and invasive.
- chris_7 10y ago
  I've been in the Facebook office and it's true that they have information posted above the urinals. Didn't really read it though.
- mahyarm 10y ago
  That can become common at many larger tech cos. Usually its about some random technical fact, like how to write a better test or whatever else. It's community driven at about the sophistication level of a community newsletter.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  The urinals at the rest stops among the highways here have sheets at eye-level telling people not to drive when they're too tired or drunk. Is that creepy and invasive?
WalterSear 10y ago
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair.

pipio21 10y ago

It is not wrong when you benefit from it. This is a human trait, people do not see the wrong on the things you benefit from. For example, did you ate beef or fish lately? When was the last time you thought about the animals that were killed in order for you to eat them. Have you seen the sacrifice of an animal needed for eating it. In Mongolia or Middle East nomads will sacrifice the animal in front of you before eating so you know what you eat is the best they have. Imagine that cows were able to think like humans, and remember what you did to their veal. As a children I worked feeding cows and they are not as stupid as people believe, and they like horses have emotions and personalities like humans have. When humans personally benefit from something it is very easy to just rationalize it. Humans rationalize everything. Workers on facebook are multimillionaires that are pretty happy about their life becoming the new central intelligence of the World. They will rationalize it as a good thing focusing on this service being needed and useful for the world, as it is. The problem is that even when the best of intentions, Governments, and secret services of countries want to use this service for nefarious purposes in the same way that if you centralize money in one place, some people want to take it by force if necessary, if you place too much personal information in some place, some people will want to take it for their own use.

ForrestN 10y ago
Ironically I'm a vegetarian for just these reasons. I don't say that because I'm perfect (I am not yet fully vegan, for example) but because I do take ethics seriously. Maybe we do rationalize too often, but shouldn't we still try to work against that impulse? The fact that something unethical benefits me generally makes me more upset, not less upset.
- laughingman2 10y ago
  Thats great of you, I am vegetarian by birth, became vegan by choice , Even in vegetarian people rationalise when they come to terms with messy aspects of dairy farming. The question of ethics is weighing hard on me, even normally rational people who talk about human rights etc turn off their ethical circuits when question of meat comes up .. I think this points to a deeper question of how rationalising can affect morality .. Does average human consider their wants above ethics he seems to subscribe? , why is hypocricy not making many upset? Many won't consider themselves as beings who put only themselves above others, they cry out for morality, but when question of ethical boundaries they themselves cross, it becomes question of rationalisation. One has to really ponder, did a slaver in the past (sad that its not that ancient) who cared about ethics of his fellows , rationalised away his slavery? If people really thing about this in terms of past people rationalising stuff away, if they feel upset about that, maybe it will lead to them thinking about ethical problems they too rationalise away

karllager 10y ago

An observation: I recently watched a presentation from a developer who works at a random adtech company. He was a nice, albeit naive guy. In order to explain the technical topic he gave a bit of context about the business. It was so creepy, you could feel the audience thinking - Oh-kay. He didn't even notice. Now. I watched hundreds of technical presentations from Google and Facebook engineers. Did a presenter ever got into the details on how they track the user for what metric, and so on. Not a single freaking time. Andrew Ng recently told in a presentation, that all data must be accessible in one place. Did he came across creepy? Not at all. He is such a professional person, that he can even weave in a remark about privacy just right beside the talk about the uber-data-warehouse. That is professionalism. I expect Facebook to have a silent policy about talking about things developers and admins see on the inside. Apart from this complex issue. Who inducts ethics for managers? Why do people come up with bad ideas (track all users all the time, or buying such data for that matter) in the first place? Hint: The problem is not developer ethics.

nxc18 10y ago

I don't see how this is being on the wrong side of an ethical issue. Perhaps it is (somehow, after years of this being in the news) shocking that that data is collected about your life, but Facebook isn't doing the collection. Anyone can buy that data and many organizations do. Facebook hasn't actually done anything here that is harmful, not with the non-shocking data collection from third parties and not with the data you willingly give them by using their service. Even the fake news situation, which is another supposed reason why Facebook is evil, is purely a result of the hubbub over having human editors. When the human news editors were around, the news links were interesting, of decent quality and unbiased. Facebook really hasn't been on the wrong side of any moral or ethical debate, just the wrong side of public opinion (or at least the opinions of writers who need clicks/pageviews).

karllager 10y ago
> not with the data you willingly give them by using their service. Imagine I am a producer of sugared water. Do I want you to delve into health issue associated with that? Not necessarily. As a owner of a site that lives from user interaction, do I want my users to go out without their phone and have fun without me? Well, do it, but only if you really must. There is a conflict of interest here, but that's too disturbing to communicate. Period. Most people don't have the time and money to check facts anyway, so let's just claim facebook is the internet (for example) - because, you know, without all this livestock, our investors get unhappy. Business as usual, I would say.
hueving 10y ago
>Facebook isn't doing the collection Who is it then that allows facebook like buttons and social widgets to be integrated into other sites?
- nxc18 10y ago
  Facebook does that data collection, but not the data that the article discusses - no social widget is responsible for figuring out your income or what you do at physical retailers.

closeparen 10y ago

It's easy to forget on HN, but there is far from universal buy-in for the notion that having or collecting data on people is unethical. Some may even consider it noble to optimize and perfect the world and its institutions (including commerce, via efficient advertising) using large-scale personal data. The impulse to make something better by applying a database engine that you might feel for business processes, can just as easily be felt for customer interactions or the world at large. For an interesting (and very critical) look at this philosophy I recommend The Circle by Dave Eggers.

api 10y ago
Surveillance could indeed have many beneficial uses in a benevolent, voluntarist sort of society. Unfortunately we don't live there. The world is still largely run by warlords, narcissists, and sociopaths.
- closeparen 10y ago
  The "standard" counterargument here is that warlords, narcissists, and sociopaths can only operate effectively in private, and their capabilities would be severely limited in a world where secrets are hard to keep.
  - playeren 10y ago
    I understand you don't necessarily buy into that argument, but allow me to offer a counter-counter. That argument relies on the collected data being closer to the truth, than the absence of it. I think that may be true for (statistically) normal people. But for narcissists and sociopaths, it may also be a helpful tool for someone creating a fake alter ego of benevolence and 'harmlessness'.
  - scalio 10y ago
    Why would the warlords, narcissists and sociopaths get rid of their own privacy? Zuckerberg seems very keen on preserving his...
ForrestN 10y ago

thr0waway1239 10y ago

SoftGooFace: We can easily double your current salary. Engineer: Oh SoftGooFace: You don't have to worry about employment ever after Engineer: Oh Soft: We are so powerful, we can dump unwanted OS upgrades on people Goo: We are so powerful, people are terrified of linking to other sites Face: We are so powerful, even heads of state better watch out before criticizing us Engineer: Uh.. SoftGooFace: Every time someone makes a critical comment about your employer, you can look at your bank account and tell them to f-off Engineer: Uh.. SoftGooFace: And we open source everything Engineer: Oh, where do I sign up?

harry8 10y ago
And yet they underpay and also use their lobbying muscle/money to change laws to keep engineering pay down. Note the sheer desperation to keep the pay secret so it doesn't turn into an auction for scarce resources for engineering talent the way it does with lawyers, bankers, MBA's. If you're in it fore the money don't work for facebrick.
- wheelerwj 10y ago
  payment is relative. to the rest ofnthe world, all of the SV engineers looks grossly over paid.
  - hueving 10y ago
    > to the rest ofnthe world, all of the SV engineers looks grossly over paid. Only to people who don't understand economics. I know the salaries in NYC are high as well, but I understand the cost of living that drives that.
    - wheelerwj 10y ago
      no, even to people who understand economics. the only reason the cost of living is so high in SF is because of grossly over paid employees who drive up the cost of living. its a private little island of inflation.
  - 10y ago

allemagne 10y ago

NSA recruiters came to a class I had in college. I imagine Facebook employees would have the same sort of party line drilled into them. Yes the NSA takes privacy very seriously. The NSA spies on everyone else but doesn't spy on Americans, period. Oh, well yeah of course we collect data from Americans but if we find out we are looking at an American's data we're supposed to throw it away immediately. Throw in a harmless joke about "big scary NSA" to lighten the mood. Nice salary, nice benefits. Most of the students ask for applications after class, it's a career forum for area studies majors and this is by far the most lucrative job presented in the semester. It's honestly pretty easy to make a deal with the devil, especially if you're smart enough to argue that he's not the devil.

Razengan 10y ago
> if we find out we are looking at an American's data we're —supposed— to throw it away. Keyword emphasized, and anyway ahat safeguards are there to ensure that they won't turn against "undesirable" Americans at any point in the future? Like how the American citizens of Japanese origin were more-or-less extra-judicially just herded into camps back around WWII, and the perceived "risk factor" of American Muslims right now.
zippoxer 10y ago
I never got why HN are angry at NSA since they spy on Americans. Spying on me (non-American) is okay, but spying on an American is wrong? I feel just as violated as any American by the thought of NSA spying me.
- beefield 10y ago
  What astonishes me the most is the absolute double standards US government has on this issue. you are US government and it is perfectly fine spying and collecting data from people and organizations outside US jurisdiction. You are a person outside US jurisdiction and have an unauthorized look on US government data, and US government tries to get you extradicted to US and to face charges?!?[1] That just makes morally zero sense to me. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauri_Love https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauri_Love

MarkMc 10y ago

Not a Facebook employee, but I don't see any particular ethical problem with the company. There's nothing in the law or Facebook's terms of use that obligates the company to release data they buy from third-party sources.

optionalparens 10y ago
I'm not trying to agree or disagree with you here (for the record, I despise Facebook and anyone who works there), rather I want to point out that ethics often has no correlation with law. The difficulty in making ethical determinations is precisely that there is often no well-defined written criteria like a law or terms of use that dictate what are the ethical boundaries or what might be ethically or morally reprehensible.
- Karunamon 10y ago
  And that's fine. Most of the "ethical" barbs I see being leveled about facebook are on the hypothetical/philosophical level, rather than the practical one. As a general rule, I'm a lot more bothered by actual bad actions rather than hypothetical future ones. Facebook collecting all the data they want just doesn't even register as even sorta bad to me. (And no, I don't work there.)
  - optionalparens 10y ago
    I definitely disagree with you on Facebook being bad and there not being a practical component, however I'm willing to see what you are saying. There's a lot that can go wrong, but like you imply, it's mostly perspective. Sure it's hypothetical, but even those with the best intentions see the results of their work take interesting (evil) turns for the worst. Further, there's a lot that does go on that is not hypothetical and the problem tends to be that it is hard to educate yourself about if you are an outsider, i.e. not the person doing these things. Regarding hypotheticals, if you collect data, it is always there for someone to abuse, whether they are technically "allowed" to do so or not by laws, company policy, or otherwise. It can and does happen more often than we believe as I came to find out from friends and family who work in government and legal roles. I am more of the cautious sort and would rather try to make a best effort that might not be perfect to simply mitigate and minimize the issue of the wrong thing happening. Though these cases may never happen, I am in the camp of "let's not make it easier." As an aside, a lot of feelings towards these issues can be influenced by environmental and contextual reasons. For instance, I was raised in a family that lost a lot of people due, but not limited to things like data collection, humans selling each other short, supposedly good people making bad choices, and individuals acting highly in self-interest despite their "ethics." Further, I also grew up in a country more under constant and tangible threat than the US for part of my childhood and served in its army against very real threats during wartime. I'm certainly no action hero as my job was more of the engineering and intelligence nature, though I have seen first hand what people can, will, and tend to do with data, especially if there is money or physical security involved. Especially on the other side of things (i.e. our enemies) if they are losing. As such, I am more sensitive than most when it comes to people knowing things about me. I assume "they" know everything, but as I implied, I try not to make it easier than it needs to be and I actively throw in disinformation about myself. It helps if you know a thing or two about algorithms and the best ways to confuse them :)

icantdrive55 10y ago

I have sadly found that 99.9% of people(excluding maybe the Amish, and some, very few religious groups) will do whatever their employer, industry dictates, as long as it's legal, even slightly legal. I once walked out of Chiropractic School. I lost a lot of money. I walked out because of complete disbelief in the Subluxation, and the subsequent profession. Besides my astonishment over the denial by the students, and staff; I was most bothered by, "Hay--it's legal? It might work, but the studies are underfunded?" This was my over twenty years ago. When ever I encounter sonemeone, and there profession, I wonder what this guy(usually in a tie, with a degree) would do for the organization in order to make money for himself, and spawn. 99.9% of the time they go along with the crowd. Sure, after a few beers, they become pious ethical warriors, but they are scared sheep. Psychologists have proved it over, and over again(Milgram experiment comes to mind), but everyone thinks they are different. I have never found a completely ethical person. Ethics are the one trait we seem to be loosing year after year. And sure, every new generation thinks they are different, but really aren't. My hope is ethics will be talked more about in companies, and society. (If you're from a poor, unsupportive family don't "rock the boat"--you honestly can't afford it. I learned the hard way. Plus, it's usually the rich boys who need to take the ethical stand more often.)

morgante 10y ago

Not everyone agrees with your ethics. I have no financial stake in Facebook (don't work there), but really don't see many moral problems with what it does. And I think their mission of connecting the world in a single easily discoverable network is absolutely world-changing and noteworthy. It's changed my world for sure.

scalio 10y ago
I think a lot of fear is rightly grounded in history: it's clear that this much power in very few hands turns to shit at some point. Facebook may well be humanity's biggest concentration of power (knowledge being power). How do you keep an advantage when the other side knows >> than you could ever know? There's also the disparity in availability of AI, since large applications need powerful and thus expensive hardware.
- morgante 10y ago
  To be clear, I don't think Facebook is flawless. All the issues you bring up are definitely true. I just think it's unfair to assume that these issues automatically make Facebook evil and that there's no good they do.
  - scalio 10y ago
    They certainly could do good, theoretically. Problem is their business model, because manipulating people doesn't fall under "doing good". As long as they make profit by selling people, they're the opposite of good because their activity goes against peoples' interest.

woerking 10y ago

Why is it Facebook's responsibility to discuss what your credit card will happily sell to literally anyone? This story is utterly baffling.

j_s 10y ago

Uber seems to be in a similar boat; HN comments from employees 100% defended the company: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13085098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13085098

rasz_pl 10y ago

It probably feels pretty good from inside your very own Tesla.

pluma 10y ago

I've talked with some FBers about this after one of them prompted me that I should apply for a job at FB. The rationale is entirely predictable (heavily paraphrased as most conversations involved alcohol): * Zuckerberg has grown up and matured. We've all done stupid things at that age so we shouldn't measure him by his infamous line about how his early users were gullible idiots. * There's no harm in retaining that kind of data. FB is handling the data responsibly because it's their competitive advantage. The only people who could get access are the government and we don't need to worry about the US government doing anything evil with it because that could never happen in the US. * If you don't want to be on Facebook, don't use Facebook. Nevermind that Facebook will still track you with a shadow profile if any of your friends are on Facebook and staying off Facebook means you have no way to take down photos of yourself shared by others. * If you don't want something about you ending up on Facebook, don't do it. If you have nothing to hide, you don't have to worry. And you can still ask for your information to be taken down if it does end up on Facebook. * Facebook is just a company. They don't have any ulterior motive beyond creating a product users want. Market forces prevent Facebook from doing anything bad. * Civil rights organizations like the EFF may be complaining about Facebook, but they just have a different opinion. They don't understand how Facebook works anyway. * Who cares about politics? Facebook has a lot of interesting tech problems and it's a great opportunity. I can still go somewhere else if I decide I don't like it. In other words: the Banality of Evil at work. Same reasoning that allows people to work for organisations like the NSA with a clean conscience. Maybe I should add a disclaimer that all of the people I talked to were on the younger end of their 20s and most of them were likely drawn in by the opportunity to work on cool tech and the salary & benefits (like being hauled to conferences all over the world where speakers are often treated as celebrities).

Kant1984 10y ago

Same for Google and its multiple violations of privacy. Great products, but everything revolves around selling user information to the highest bidder or general establishment Democratic/liberal cronyism. Will we see a Democrat apply anti-trust laws?