7 ms·

Ask HN: What do Facebook employees think about their company?

96 points by helical 9y ago

How do they feel about Facebook's business practices etc?

nikivi 9y ago
I don’t think they can disclose that. Besides they get paid pretty well to do their work and not ask questions about the ethics of it.
onetimemanytime 9y ago
Same as Googlers...they're ramble some nonsense about caring to keep families connected while waiting for their stock options to vest.
billysielu 9y ago
I'd assume that most employees don't have anything to do with dodgy stuff. Interested in knowing if I'm right or not.
- rco8786 9y ago
  ...who is doing it then, if not employees? Truly perplexed by your comment.
  - Yoric 9y ago
    I think that the keyword in the parent post is "most".
Baeocystin 9y ago
Can they post an honest answer here, and be confident that it couldn't be traced back to them?
- mh- 9y ago
  Guess that depends if they have the app installed on their phone.
- ng-user 9y ago
  Absolutely not, it's a lose-lose situation.
dovik 9y ago
Hope they think what they want.
ex3ndr 9y ago
This was my first question at job interview to Facebook. Luckily i got an indian developer and i knew about how aggressive facebook in his home country (does everybody remembers free basics?) and i asked about what he thinks. Answer was simple - this is a form of a competition. I think "competition" can easily justify doing shady things - any of your competitors eventually will do the same and because of this there are no reason to not to implement something like phone book scraping.
- muzani 9y ago
  Ah, the dodgy salesman approach: "If they don't buy our useless thing, they will buy the same useless thing from one of our competitors anyway!"
  - pavlov 9y ago
    Maybe more like: "If we don't send someone to sneak around our customers' houses looking for clues of what they might buy, one of our competitors would do the same! Besides, it's the customer's fault if they leave the door unlocked."
    - dingo_bat 9y ago
      > Besides, it's the customer's fault if they leave the door unlocked." More like: > Besides, it's the customer's fault if invite us inside their home and willingly hand over the keys to the cupboards.
      - pavlov 9y ago
        Both Android and Facebook use a passive security model. They didn’t ask for permission, but buried it in small print and pretended that’s good enough.
    - test6554 9y ago
      More like "lets make an online environment so comfortable for users that they are mentally fooled into thinking it is like their home away from home and they will say and do whatever is on their mind, even private thoughts."
golergka 9y ago
Facebook employees and tech workers in general have a much wider spectrum of opinions that what echo chambers like HN allow. I personally know a lot of Facebook, Apple and Microsoft employees who voted Trump. Palantir employees who are very proud about their jobs and believe that they're making a positive impact on the world. Uber employees who believe that they're engaged in a good fight against regulation and bureaucracy. What's common for all of them, though, is that they generally keep these opinions to themselves and know better than venting them on HN, Techcrunch and social media.
- qwerty456127 9y ago
  There is nothing wrong in telling what do you feel about something when you are asked. And there is no problem in expressing an unpopular opinion on HN as you can sign-up anonymously at any time and just share whatever thoughts you want.
  - golergka 9y ago
    > And there is no problem in expressing an unpopular opinion on HN as you can sign-up anonymously at any time and just share whatever thoughts you want. People are social creatures, programmed to respond to approval and disapproval from others. This includes replies as well as votes. It's irrational, but that's who we are. Now, try registering an alternative account on HN and write political comments, polite, articulated, and reasonable, from a conservative point of view. What do you think the response will be like? Will you feel encouraged to proceed, or will you feel (emphasis on "feel", as these things are emotional and not rational) that you'd rather not continue with your point of view?
  - adav 9y ago
    To play devil's advocate, in an arena where all comments are ordered by votes, the unpopular opinion would simply be downvoted to oblivion and not seen anyway. Why would someone with a contentious opinion go to the bother?
    - qwerty456127 9y ago
yodsanklai 9y ago
I'm interested in the answers. I'm having upcoming interviews with Facebook, and I wonder if the recent events should be addressed in the "culture fit" interview. My personal opinion is that the problem is not so much with Facebook but with the legislation. Corporations like Facebook are there to make profit within the rules defined by society. I hope there will be stronger laws to protect our privacy and data, and generally more awareness on the issue.
- Dwolb 9y ago
  The nuance here is there's better individual data collection and targeting on a massive scale than society has ever dealt with before. Never has a business been able to properly choose the correct advertisement to show an individual at the exact moment they're looking to purchase an item to maximize likelihood of purchase. It's incredible and we've never dealt with something like this. We'll get better at understanding and education of the issues but not without major setbacks. So, yes corporations can legally make a profit within rules defined by society. However, whether or not corporations are in a sustainable position is entirely up to how they're able to manage long term viability with profits (short and long term).
- Vinnl 9y ago
  > My personal opinion is that the problem is not so much with Facebook but with the legislation. Corporations like Facebook are there to make profit within the rules defined by society. This holds true as long as those corporations do not influence what the law looks like (i.e. they are the results of a democratic process). The question is whether that is the case for Facebook.
  - test6554 9y ago
    It is also important for industry to inform the public about how certain legislation impacts them, their products and the quality/quantity of jobs.
    - Vinnl 9y ago
      Yes, that's what makes this a difficult problem. You don't want to ban companies from influencing legislation, but then you also can't say they were just playing by the rules, and that they did not influence the rules not being tougher on them.
cornholio 9y ago
I think the way this problem is framed succumbs to an outdated world view, an image of the samurai computer hackers that put themselves in the service of the corporate lords - but are ultimately responsible for their actions against society and can choose to rebel. They are rare and prized and thus their collaboration is valued by the lords. This is a romantic vision that the companies themselves like to perpetuate, but it's no longer true for a decade or more. It's irrelevant what the Facebook employees think, just like it's irrelevant what the employees of McDonalds think about the health of their customers. They are not unique, precious snowflakes of rare skill, they are replaceable cogs in a machine that exists for a single purpose, profit. Massive IT education programs now underway everywhere in the world will ensure that the corporations will have vast masses of foot soldiers so they can concentrate on what matters: creating competitive advantage and market dominance using the strong network effects technology affords. Silicon Valley has bred an ultra-aggressive type of capitalism that will crush and automate the old competitors away but will no longer redistribute the wealth to the workers, as capitalism has done for the last few hundred years, because it no longer needs them. In this economic war, developers are rich mercenaries, not noble freedom fighters. The likes of Facebook and Uber are simply the expression of that social reality, a glimpse into the world of tomorrow.
- feral 9y ago
  Nonsense, at least today. If 'massive IT education programs' had made engineers disposable, then salaries would be a lot lower. (If you need 'data' on this, Glassdoor says FB SWE salaries are >120k, total comp will be a lot higher. Compare that to a job with an actual disposable workforce.) >In this economic war, developers are rich mercenaries, not noble freedom fighters. If you said developers were poor mercenaries, that'd be one thing. But if you are rich, then you can choose to work somewhere compatible with your morals. And if you don't make that choice, its on you.
  - RestlessMind 9y ago
    Can you please share a list of companies with strong morals and are above criticism?
- 9y ago
lifeisstillgood 9y ago
Imagine that software development / engineering was a profession along the lines of law or medicine - no one could "practise software" without belonging. Now imagine we are drawing up the ethics code for that profession - is what facebook did something that could reasonably be banned? Is there direct harm involved? In my (very personal) view Facebook is just an example of an externality - this loss of control over data is a form of pollution, and the costs are rarely direct harm to individuals, even though society as a whole seems to be being harmed. So rather long windedly, i don't think this is something to beat up on individual Facebook employees - this is something for society level regulation - look to the GDPR and its successors Medical ethics jumping off point: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_ethics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_ethics
- jacques_chester 9y ago
  The IEEE Computer Society and ACM jointly adopted just such a code of ethics. https://www.computer.org/web/education/code-of-ethics https://www.computer.org/web/education/code-of-ethics None of it gives Facebook engineers any comfort. They are responsible for the fruits of their efforts. Recent revelations are of degree, not kind. The consequences of engineering work were reasonably foreseeable and the consequences were not at arm's length. Facebook's business model has been clear and well-understood for years and years now. This is not technology being misapplied by someone several steps removed from you. This is technology misapplied by Facebook and Facebook's immediate customers and Facebook engineers enabled it. Technology work has dimensions beyond "it's interesting" and "they pay me a lot". I hold us as professionals. We have duties which go beyond our own self-regard. I am unsympathetic to anyone at Facebook feeling moral disquiet. I think you know what you ought to do.
  - lifeisstillgood 9y ago
    I am dubious about the value of a "public interest" clause as the basis for everything - that tends to be "whatever we agree post-hoc". Look at medical ethics ideas of "do no harm" - or the more modern interpretation "do more good than harm" It is perfectly arguable that Facebook has been doing more good than harm. And that is not something one should ban under a code of ethics. NB I personally do not think that Facebook's actions have been correct, or worthy or defensible. They have hoovered up everything and left it lying around for anyone to collect - it breaks every Data protection rule set since the 1980s (due care etc). They can and will pay at some point down the line. But data is like ... oil. It has massive externality costs, but wow has society benefited. From the data footprints we leave we can (if it is well managed(!)) expect improved medical research, improved mental well being, reduction in crime, improved trade, greater econmic equality. Yes there will be costs. And we need to manage those as only externalities can be managed. But the mass collection and processing of our PII data is not just negative cost. Edit just to be clear this is not an attempt to justify ends with means, or defend facebooks actions - but to note that just because JP Getty was unethical it did not stop ambulances getting petrol engines, generators lighting hospitals and plastics encasing artificial hips. It's complicated.
Dowwie 9y ago
The groupthink against Facebook needs to stop
orbifold 9y ago
Facebook, along with the military industrial complex is among the places I wouldn't work for any amount of money. Privacy is a human right and Facebook is by far the worst human rights violator and enabler in this respect. Their behaviour is clearly evil, exploitative of human nature and at least for some people using facebook decreases their overall well-being and mental health. People like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94s0yYECeR8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94s0yYECeR8 are clearly intelligent, articulate and competent, yet they are working on a product that is explicitly designed to be addictive and create an echo chamber, as he nicely explains in the talk (if you are curious how click-bait is formalised go to ~34min).
staltz 9y ago
So far no Facebook employee has answered this thread (unless they did so between the lines). Considering that Facebook has 25k employees, this must mean they have some very harsh policy on keeping quiet. Either that, or a strong culture that brainwashes them to actually believe they are working towards the naive mission of connecting the world. Or all of the above.
- Flenser 9y ago
  It's a losing proposition whatever they say. It's unsurprising there are no comments.
- kridsdale1 9y ago
  I am a FB employee. And I ain’t sayin shit. It is as simple as weighing losing my job and being deported from the USA on one hand, and being a participant on HN on the other.
shabirgilkar 9y ago
I fail to get an answer about, "How a founder of a company would fail to think that what would happen to this humongous data which his company is collecting if landed in wrong hands?" Maybe he is noble soul leading his company now and tomorrow he would be shown door and someone creepy comes to lead. I think Fb would be known in history as a major data provider to AI bullshit acts.
cies 9y ago
> What do Facebook employees think about their company? You mean "their employer"? Or maybe most have some small % of stock, but to me my tiny-% stock holdings do not make those companies "my companies".
SFjulie1 9y ago
Pretty sure they have a NDA on the back with an abrupt termination of contract and a potential civil action if ever "the revelations harm the company". Plus they probably have the HR doing meetings on the topic and news from time to time of such cases happening. It is totally illegal, but a coder hardly is ready to fight for his/her constitutional rights when violating others. PS economical revolution and disruption (like raildroads and mechanization) are just synonyms of finding a clever way to circumvent the laws.
matte_black 9y ago
I went out with a girl who works at Facebook (she does software development) and asked her this very question. Basically her response was that the whole incident really isn’t even Facebook’s fault but rather the third party developers. Even though Facebook could have done a better job of protecting data, it’s a waste of time to do so as these companies will always find a way to violate the TOS. It’s a bit like fighting software piracy or ad-blocking, hackers are always getting a step ahead. No company is perfect, despite everything Facebook still does a lot of good in the world, and as a company it’s going to keep doing more of it. There’s a lot of people who hate Facebook for personal or business reasons, but in the end there’s no fundamental reason why Facebook is a bad company that shouldn’t exist, it’s only going to get better anyway.
- lordfoom 9y ago
  Sounds like a lot of ego protection going on. "We're the real victims!"
  - matte_black 9y ago
    And the critics all sound like short sellers.
- colinb 9y ago
  to paraphrase the immortal words [1] of Mandy Rice-Davies, well she would say that wouldn't she. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandy_Rice-Davies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandy_Rice-Davies
- danpalmer 9y ago
  I roughly agree with this in terms of the recent events, but Facebook has been doing creepy stuff that I think many people disagree with for a long time, and that seems to be getting worse. Advertisers being able to target so effectively, by salary, by socio-economic status, and by hundreds or even thousands of metrics. I think that's still bad, and I don't think I could work on a product like that.
  - 9y ago
danpalmer 9y ago
Facebook used to have a little book that they gave out to employees that was almost like a manifesto for what Facebook was, and should strive to be. The book claims strongly that Facebook is a communications company, who want to help (not force) people be more social, and that advertising is purely a side effect intended to enable them to achieve that mission. It was quite cliche, but overall I got the impression that it was honest, I really do think that Facebook the company, and by extension, many of their employees do see themselves like that. I personally find that to be a little naive, but then I am more sensitive to privacy issues than the average person.
PunchTornado 9y ago
As an ex-fb employee I don't think fb did anything wrong and fb is just a scapegoat now. Media tries to blame brexit and trump on fb instead of realising that a large portion of the population actually want trump, brexit, no immigration, muslim bans etc. Hey, but it is easier to think that the people were tricked into voting like that.
- phaus 9y ago
  I live in the rural South and although it may sound ridiculous to you, I've met more people here that believe all of the inflammatory, fake nonsense they read on FB than I have that don't. They use it as a primary source of news and they allow it to shape their view of the world and therefore their beliefs on certain political policies. While it's difficult to quantify with a specific percentage, there were absolutely a large number of people tricked, in the literal sense, into voting for Trump. These are the people that are Ill informed enough to think that women are certain to get raped by a pack of muslims if they ever try walking down a street anywhere in Europe. Note: Surely this doesn't account for everyone that voted for Trump, but it is possible that it made enough of an impact to change the outcome.
  - PunchTornado 9y ago
    Fake news is one thing. Targeted ads are another thing. I don't think that targeted ads can change that much. Fake news I agree, can be brainwashing, but fb does all it can to combat fake news.
    - thisacctforreal 9y ago
      It's all based on emotional manipulation. Have you seen Nix's presentation at the 2016 Concordia Summit? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Dd5aVXLCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Dd5aVXLCc For what targeted ads lose to fake news with having to stay clean, they regain with psychological accuracy.
- teaneedz 9y ago
  And this is what's wrong with today's dev—not able to see what's plainly wrong, putting the blame on others.
kisstheblade 9y ago
I think the more salient question is "why do people post everything on facebook (and other services)". No sane person can be surprised that this is what happens with your data that you freely give away. And what I have been hearing nobody actually is surprised. Nor do they care in the end. Selling adverts is just an extremely lucrative business, get over it. It is what pays for your entertainment (sports etc), information (magazines, internet sites etc) and just about everything.
candybar 9y ago
I don't work at Facebook but I don't know if there are any major companies (tech or non-tech) that are significantly better about this? Nearly all Fortune 500 with any significant digital operations are tracking everything they can, especially all media companies. Marketers want all the data they can get to better target people and better measure ROI - so either you're using the data you gather to better sell stuff or you're gathering data to sell it to people who can use it to better sell stuff. Big technology companies seem way better about this (from the perspective of the user) - non-tech companies have much worse practices when it comes to safe-guarding data, are generally not as conscientious about privacy implications and are much more prone to using shady third-party vendors who are not accountable to users and more likely to abuse data. This, of course, includes nearly all ad-funded publishers, where all this criticism of Facebook (and Google and Amazon and so on) abounds. The journalists that are writing about this and tsk-tsk'ing at tech are literally paid by their employers maximizing yield by selling user data. This whole big data thing along with all these related jobs (big data engineer, machine learning engineer, data scientist, etc) - what do people this was all about? Why do we have all this data now that we didn't before - it's because everyone is tracking stuff. So where should we all work if we don't want to be part of this? If you're not doing this directly, you're probably paid by someone who is.
vernon99 9y ago
I left Facebook a few months back so I don’t have anything holding me from sharing my honest take. Also I was involved in platform development a lot. Don’t envy the folks who stayed btw - now it’s gonna be much harder. In short: Facebook does care about user privacy a lot. Some of the worst pains we had in platform development at Messenger were related to convincing privacy team to let us open more info to developer. And we usually fail. There was and is a strong sense of internal paranoia around leaking any user data, even if anonimized. Whenever there’s a chance of a data leakage of any sort, everything halts and the whole team is in on it. I personally spent weeks of my life in such meetings, redesigning whole parts of the product to avoid even simplier things like anon user tracking by developers with no explicit consent etc. So when I hear people saying that Fb intentionally does something bad or doesn’t care - those people really don’t have clue. Current situation is a byproduct of two things: 1) legacy decisions (that were reverted in 2015) from when the company was younger and more open and didn’t have those protocols and 2) just the very sensitive nature of this data. This is a social network. What would you expect it to give developers from it’s API? If not your info and parts of your graph. Even those days are over now due to (imo) unjustified paranoia. Ads targeting is another example of that. The fact that you see targeted ads _does_not_ mean advertiser knows _anything_ about you individually. It’s fully anonimized for them! And no, there’s no evil intent to make the UI more confusing to get more of your data. It’s the opposite at that point, Jeez, folks, take off your tin hats. Many things to question Fb about (most notably product innovation) but here they are doing their best.
- teaneedz 9y ago
  Average users see years of Facebook not caring enough about privacy, with a CEO and COO making anti-privacy statements. Things have changed? What about that Real Name Policy? Anonymized data? The world of data brokers might disagree. The shady world of farmers and affiliate marketers rely on the ease of Facebook data mining. Tin hats? Facebook has relied too long on users not understanding what happens with their data behind the scenes. Personally identifiable or not (trivial matters) the fact that Facebook and its devs fail to see the harm that this platform is causing from its gluttony of user data is mind boggling.

96 points by helical 9y ago

How do they feel about Facebook's business practices etc?

I don’t think they can disclose that. Besides they get paid pretty well to do their work and not ask questions about the ethics of it.

onetimemanytime 9y ago

Same as Googlers...they're ramble some nonsense about caring to keep families connected while waiting for their stock options to vest.

billysielu 9y ago

I'd assume that most employees don't have anything to do with dodgy stuff. Interested in knowing if I'm right or not.

rco8786 9y ago
...who is doing it then, if not employees? Truly perplexed by your comment.
- Yoric 9y ago
  I think that the keyword in the parent post is "most".

Baeocystin 9y ago

Can they post an honest answer here, and be confident that it couldn't be traced back to them?

mh- 9y ago
Guess that depends if they have the app installed on their phone.
ng-user 9y ago
Absolutely not, it's a lose-lose situation.

dovik 9y ago

Hope they think what they want.

ex3ndr 9y ago

This was my first question at job interview to Facebook. Luckily i got an indian developer and i knew about how aggressive facebook in his home country (does everybody remembers free basics?) and i asked about what he thinks. Answer was simple - this is a form of a competition. I think "competition" can easily justify doing shady things - any of your competitors eventually will do the same and because of this there are no reason to not to implement something like phone book scraping.

muzani 9y ago
Ah, the dodgy salesman approach: "If they don't buy our useless thing, they will buy the same useless thing from one of our competitors anyway!"
- pavlov 9y ago
  Maybe more like: "If we don't send someone to sneak around our customers' houses looking for clues of what they might buy, one of our competitors would do the same! Besides, it's the customer's fault if they leave the door unlocked."
  - dingo_bat 9y ago
    > Besides, it's the customer's fault if they leave the door unlocked." More like: > Besides, it's the customer's fault if invite us inside their home and willingly hand over the keys to the cupboards.
    - pavlov 9y ago
      Both Android and Facebook use a passive security model. They didn’t ask for permission, but buried it in small print and pretended that’s good enough.
  - test6554 9y ago
    More like "lets make an online environment so comfortable for users that they are mentally fooled into thinking it is like their home away from home and they will say and do whatever is on their mind, even private thoughts."

golergka 9y ago

Facebook employees and tech workers in general have a much wider spectrum of opinions that what echo chambers like HN allow. I personally know a lot of Facebook, Apple and Microsoft employees who voted Trump. Palantir employees who are very proud about their jobs and believe that they're making a positive impact on the world. Uber employees who believe that they're engaged in a good fight against regulation and bureaucracy. What's common for all of them, though, is that they generally keep these opinions to themselves and know better than venting them on HN, Techcrunch and social media.

qwerty456127 9y ago
There is nothing wrong in telling what do you feel about something when you are asked. And there is no problem in expressing an unpopular opinion on HN as you can sign-up anonymously at any time and just share whatever thoughts you want.
- golergka 9y ago
  > And there is no problem in expressing an unpopular opinion on HN as you can sign-up anonymously at any time and just share whatever thoughts you want. People are social creatures, programmed to respond to approval and disapproval from others. This includes replies as well as votes. It's irrational, but that's who we are. Now, try registering an alternative account on HN and write political comments, polite, articulated, and reasonable, from a conservative point of view. What do you think the response will be like? Will you feel encouraged to proceed, or will you feel (emphasis on "feel", as these things are emotional and not rational) that you'd rather not continue with your point of view?
- adav 9y ago
  To play devil's advocate, in an arena where all comments are ordered by votes, the unpopular opinion would simply be downvoted to oblivion and not seen anyway. Why would someone with a contentious opinion go to the bother?
  - qwerty456127 9y ago

yodsanklai 9y ago

I'm interested in the answers. I'm having upcoming interviews with Facebook, and I wonder if the recent events should be addressed in the "culture fit" interview. My personal opinion is that the problem is not so much with Facebook but with the legislation. Corporations like Facebook are there to make profit within the rules defined by society. I hope there will be stronger laws to protect our privacy and data, and generally more awareness on the issue.

Dwolb 9y ago
The nuance here is there's better individual data collection and targeting on a massive scale than society has ever dealt with before. Never has a business been able to properly choose the correct advertisement to show an individual at the exact moment they're looking to purchase an item to maximize likelihood of purchase. It's incredible and we've never dealt with something like this. We'll get better at understanding and education of the issues but not without major setbacks. So, yes corporations can legally make a profit within rules defined by society. However, whether or not corporations are in a sustainable position is entirely up to how they're able to manage long term viability with profits (short and long term).
Vinnl 9y ago
> My personal opinion is that the problem is not so much with Facebook but with the legislation. Corporations like Facebook are there to make profit within the rules defined by society. This holds true as long as those corporations do not influence what the law looks like (i.e. they are the results of a democratic process). The question is whether that is the case for Facebook.
- test6554 9y ago
  It is also important for industry to inform the public about how certain legislation impacts them, their products and the quality/quantity of jobs.
  - Vinnl 9y ago
    Yes, that's what makes this a difficult problem. You don't want to ban companies from influencing legislation, but then you also can't say they were just playing by the rules, and that they did not influence the rules not being tougher on them.

cornholio 9y ago

I think the way this problem is framed succumbs to an outdated world view, an image of the samurai computer hackers that put themselves in the service of the corporate lords - but are ultimately responsible for their actions against society and can choose to rebel. They are rare and prized and thus their collaboration is valued by the lords. This is a romantic vision that the companies themselves like to perpetuate, but it's no longer true for a decade or more. It's irrelevant what the Facebook employees think, just like it's irrelevant what the employees of McDonalds think about the health of their customers. They are not unique, precious snowflakes of rare skill, they are replaceable cogs in a machine that exists for a single purpose, profit. Massive IT education programs now underway everywhere in the world will ensure that the corporations will have vast masses of foot soldiers so they can concentrate on what matters: creating competitive advantage and market dominance using the strong network effects technology affords. Silicon Valley has bred an ultra-aggressive type of capitalism that will crush and automate the old competitors away but will no longer redistribute the wealth to the workers, as capitalism has done for the last few hundred years, because it no longer needs them. In this economic war, developers are rich mercenaries, not noble freedom fighters. The likes of Facebook and Uber are simply the expression of that social reality, a glimpse into the world of tomorrow.

feral 9y ago
Nonsense, at least today. If 'massive IT education programs' had made engineers disposable, then salaries would be a lot lower. (If you need 'data' on this, Glassdoor says FB SWE salaries are >120k, total comp will be a lot higher. Compare that to a job with an actual disposable workforce.) >In this economic war, developers are rich mercenaries, not noble freedom fighters. If you said developers were poor mercenaries, that'd be one thing. But if you are rich, then you can choose to work somewhere compatible with your morals. And if you don't make that choice, its on you.
- RestlessMind 9y ago
  Can you please share a list of companies with strong morals and are above criticism?
9y ago

lifeisstillgood 9y ago

Imagine that software development / engineering was a profession along the lines of law or medicine - no one could "practise software" without belonging. Now imagine we are drawing up the ethics code for that profession - is what facebook did something that could reasonably be banned? Is there direct harm involved? In my (very personal) view Facebook is just an example of an externality - this loss of control over data is a form of pollution, and the costs are rarely direct harm to individuals, even though society as a whole seems to be being harmed. So rather long windedly, i don't think this is something to beat up on individual Facebook employees - this is something for society level regulation - look to the GDPR and its successors Medical ethics jumping off point: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_ethics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_ethics

jacques_chester 9y ago
The IEEE Computer Society and ACM jointly adopted just such a code of ethics. https://www.computer.org/web/education/code-of-ethics https://www.computer.org/web/education/code-of-ethics None of it gives Facebook engineers any comfort. They are responsible for the fruits of their efforts. Recent revelations are of degree, not kind. The consequences of engineering work were reasonably foreseeable and the consequences were not at arm's length. Facebook's business model has been clear and well-understood for years and years now. This is not technology being misapplied by someone several steps removed from you. This is technology misapplied by Facebook and Facebook's immediate customers and Facebook engineers enabled it. Technology work has dimensions beyond "it's interesting" and "they pay me a lot". I hold us as professionals. We have duties which go beyond our own self-regard. I am unsympathetic to anyone at Facebook feeling moral disquiet. I think you know what you ought to do.
- lifeisstillgood 9y ago
  I am dubious about the value of a "public interest" clause as the basis for everything - that tends to be "whatever we agree post-hoc". Look at medical ethics ideas of "do no harm" - or the more modern interpretation "do more good than harm" It is perfectly arguable that Facebook has been doing more good than harm. And that is not something one should ban under a code of ethics. NB I personally do not think that Facebook's actions have been correct, or worthy or defensible. They have hoovered up everything and left it lying around for anyone to collect - it breaks every Data protection rule set since the 1980s (due care etc). They can and will pay at some point down the line. But data is like ... oil. It has massive externality costs, but wow has society benefited. From the data footprints we leave we can (if it is well managed(!)) expect improved medical research, improved mental well being, reduction in crime, improved trade, greater econmic equality. Yes there will be costs. And we need to manage those as only externalities can be managed. But the mass collection and processing of our PII data is not just negative cost. Edit just to be clear this is not an attempt to justify ends with means, or defend facebooks actions - but to note that just because JP Getty was unethical it did not stop ambulances getting petrol engines, generators lighting hospitals and plastics encasing artificial hips. It's complicated.

Dowwie 9y ago

The groupthink against Facebook needs to stop

orbifold 9y ago

Facebook, along with the military industrial complex is among the places I wouldn't work for any amount of money. Privacy is a human right and Facebook is by far the worst human rights violator and enabler in this respect. Their behaviour is clearly evil, exploitative of human nature and at least for some people using facebook decreases their overall well-being and mental health. People like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94s0yYECeR8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94s0yYECeR8 are clearly intelligent, articulate and competent, yet they are working on a product that is explicitly designed to be addictive and create an echo chamber, as he nicely explains in the talk (if you are curious how click-bait is formalised go to ~34min).

staltz 9y ago

So far no Facebook employee has answered this thread (unless they did so between the lines). Considering that Facebook has 25k employees, this must mean they have some very harsh policy on keeping quiet. Either that, or a strong culture that brainwashes them to actually believe they are working towards the naive mission of connecting the world. Or all of the above.

Flenser 9y ago
It's a losing proposition whatever they say. It's unsurprising there are no comments.
kridsdale1 9y ago
I am a FB employee. And I ain’t sayin shit. It is as simple as weighing losing my job and being deported from the USA on one hand, and being a participant on HN on the other.

shabirgilkar 9y ago

I fail to get an answer about, "How a founder of a company would fail to think that what would happen to this humongous data which his company is collecting if landed in wrong hands?" Maybe he is noble soul leading his company now and tomorrow he would be shown door and someone creepy comes to lead. I think Fb would be known in history as a major data provider to AI bullshit acts.

cies 9y ago

> What do Facebook employees think about their company? You mean "their employer"? Or maybe most have some small % of stock, but to me my tiny-% stock holdings do not make those companies "my companies".

SFjulie1 9y ago

Pretty sure they have a NDA on the back with an abrupt termination of contract and a potential civil action if ever "the revelations harm the company". Plus they probably have the HR doing meetings on the topic and news from time to time of such cases happening. It is totally illegal, but a coder hardly is ready to fight for his/her constitutional rights when violating others. PS economical revolution and disruption (like raildroads and mechanization) are just synonyms of finding a clever way to circumvent the laws.

matte_black 9y ago

I went out with a girl who works at Facebook (she does software development) and asked her this very question. Basically her response was that the whole incident really isn’t even Facebook’s fault but rather the third party developers. Even though Facebook could have done a better job of protecting data, it’s a waste of time to do so as these companies will always find a way to violate the TOS. It’s a bit like fighting software piracy or ad-blocking, hackers are always getting a step ahead. No company is perfect, despite everything Facebook still does a lot of good in the world, and as a company it’s going to keep doing more of it. There’s a lot of people who hate Facebook for personal or business reasons, but in the end there’s no fundamental reason why Facebook is a bad company that shouldn’t exist, it’s only going to get better anyway.

lordfoom 9y ago
Sounds like a lot of ego protection going on. "We're the real victims!"
- matte_black 9y ago
  And the critics all sound like short sellers.
colinb 9y ago
to paraphrase the immortal words [1] of Mandy Rice-Davies, well she would say that wouldn't she. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandy_Rice-Davies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandy_Rice-Davies
danpalmer 9y ago
I roughly agree with this in terms of the recent events, but Facebook has been doing creepy stuff that I think many people disagree with for a long time, and that seems to be getting worse. Advertisers being able to target so effectively, by salary, by socio-economic status, and by hundreds or even thousands of metrics. I think that's still bad, and I don't think I could work on a product like that.
- 9y ago

danpalmer 9y ago

Facebook used to have a little book that they gave out to employees that was almost like a manifesto for what Facebook was, and should strive to be. The book claims strongly that Facebook is a communications company, who want to help (not force) people be more social, and that advertising is purely a side effect intended to enable them to achieve that mission. It was quite cliche, but overall I got the impression that it was honest, I really do think that Facebook the company, and by extension, many of their employees do see themselves like that. I personally find that to be a little naive, but then I am more sensitive to privacy issues than the average person.

PunchTornado 9y ago

As an ex-fb employee I don't think fb did anything wrong and fb is just a scapegoat now. Media tries to blame brexit and trump on fb instead of realising that a large portion of the population actually want trump, brexit, no immigration, muslim bans etc. Hey, but it is easier to think that the people were tricked into voting like that.

phaus 9y ago
I live in the rural South and although it may sound ridiculous to you, I've met more people here that believe all of the inflammatory, fake nonsense they read on FB than I have that don't. They use it as a primary source of news and they allow it to shape their view of the world and therefore their beliefs on certain political policies. While it's difficult to quantify with a specific percentage, there were absolutely a large number of people tricked, in the literal sense, into voting for Trump. These are the people that are Ill informed enough to think that women are certain to get raped by a pack of muslims if they ever try walking down a street anywhere in Europe. Note: Surely this doesn't account for everyone that voted for Trump, but it is possible that it made enough of an impact to change the outcome.
- PunchTornado 9y ago
  Fake news is one thing. Targeted ads are another thing. I don't think that targeted ads can change that much. Fake news I agree, can be brainwashing, but fb does all it can to combat fake news.
  - thisacctforreal 9y ago
    It's all based on emotional manipulation. Have you seen Nix's presentation at the 2016 Concordia Summit? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Dd5aVXLCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Dd5aVXLCc For what targeted ads lose to fake news with having to stay clean, they regain with psychological accuracy.
teaneedz 9y ago
And this is what's wrong with today's dev—not able to see what's plainly wrong, putting the blame on others.

kisstheblade 9y ago

I think the more salient question is "why do people post everything on facebook (and other services)". No sane person can be surprised that this is what happens with your data that you freely give away. And what I have been hearing nobody actually is surprised. Nor do they care in the end. Selling adverts is just an extremely lucrative business, get over it. It is what pays for your entertainment (sports etc), information (magazines, internet sites etc) and just about everything.

candybar 9y ago

I don't work at Facebook but I don't know if there are any major companies (tech or non-tech) that are significantly better about this? Nearly all Fortune 500 with any significant digital operations are tracking everything they can, especially all media companies. Marketers want all the data they can get to better target people and better measure ROI - so either you're using the data you gather to better sell stuff or you're gathering data to sell it to people who can use it to better sell stuff. Big technology companies seem way better about this (from the perspective of the user) - non-tech companies have much worse practices when it comes to safe-guarding data, are generally not as conscientious about privacy implications and are much more prone to using shady third-party vendors who are not accountable to users and more likely to abuse data. This, of course, includes nearly all ad-funded publishers, where all this criticism of Facebook (and Google and Amazon and so on) abounds. The journalists that are writing about this and tsk-tsk'ing at tech are literally paid by their employers maximizing yield by selling user data. This whole big data thing along with all these related jobs (big data engineer, machine learning engineer, data scientist, etc) - what do people this was all about? Why do we have all this data now that we didn't before - it's because everyone is tracking stuff. So where should we all work if we don't want to be part of this? If you're not doing this directly, you're probably paid by someone who is.

vernon99 9y ago

I left Facebook a few months back so I don’t have anything holding me from sharing my honest take. Also I was involved in platform development a lot. Don’t envy the folks who stayed btw - now it’s gonna be much harder. In short: Facebook does care about user privacy a lot. Some of the worst pains we had in platform development at Messenger were related to convincing privacy team to let us open more info to developer. And we usually fail. There was and is a strong sense of internal paranoia around leaking any user data, even if anonimized. Whenever there’s a chance of a data leakage of any sort, everything halts and the whole team is in on it. I personally spent weeks of my life in such meetings, redesigning whole parts of the product to avoid even simplier things like anon user tracking by developers with no explicit consent etc. So when I hear people saying that Fb intentionally does something bad or doesn’t care - those people really don’t have clue. Current situation is a byproduct of two things: 1) legacy decisions (that were reverted in 2015) from when the company was younger and more open and didn’t have those protocols and 2) just the very sensitive nature of this data. This is a social network. What would you expect it to give developers from it’s API? If not your info and parts of your graph. Even those days are over now due to (imo) unjustified paranoia. Ads targeting is another example of that. The fact that you see targeted ads _does_not_ mean advertiser knows _anything_ about you individually. It’s fully anonimized for them! And no, there’s no evil intent to make the UI more confusing to get more of your data. It’s the opposite at that point, Jeez, folks, take off your tin hats. Many things to question Fb about (most notably product innovation) but here they are doing their best.

teaneedz 9y ago
Average users see years of Facebook not caring enough about privacy, with a CEO and COO making anti-privacy statements. Things have changed? What about that Real Name Policy? Anonymized data? The world of data brokers might disagree. The shady world of farmers and affiliate marketers rely on the ease of Facebook data mining. Tin hats? Facebook has relied too long on users not understanding what happens with their data behind the scenes. Personally identifiable or not (trivial matters) the fact that Facebook and its devs fail to see the harm that this platform is causing from its gluttony of user data is mind boggling.