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> This disregard for ethics has allowed Facebook to “grow at all costs." There's a great phrase for this: "move fast and break things". When you believe it is

> This disregard for ethics has allowed Facebook to “grow at all costs." There's a great phrase for this: "move fast and break things". When you believe it is ok to break small rules and norms, it becomes easier to break larger norms and ethics and rules. This philosophy took SV by storm, but at its core it's always been about disregarding things like laws and ethics, and now we are seeing the world that created.

greglindahl 8y ago
You might think that that's a great phrase for it, but many other people don't interpret "move fast and break things" to mean what you think it means. I'm all for criticizing things that have gone wrong, but you're using an overly-broad brush.
- tmalsburg2 8y ago
  I wish I could agree with you're more nuanced viewpoint, but seeing a whole industry making insane amounts of money based on abusive and deceptive business models suggests that there truely is a broader issue. Whether the underlying attitude is best describe by "move fast, break things" is debatable but we can't easily dismiss the idea.
  - Vinnl 8y ago
    I think the point is that that quip usually refers to technical breakage, i.e. "it's better to ship more often and potentially break something that you then fix equally quickly, than spending thrice as much time analysing the problem to ensure there's no breakage in the first place". In other words, an entirely different meaning that what the grandparent meant when they said it was a great phrase for it.
    - Angostura 8y ago
      The point that the poster was making was that while the phrase normally refers to its technical development philosophy, it seems that it also seems to reflect Facebook's attitude to other issues, such as regulation and privacy.
      - sharemywin 8y ago
        and uber and theranos. and probably others. airbnb had a lot of people that broke their leases and deed restrictions and local zoning laws.
    - kibibu 8y ago
      The point is that, while it applies to technical issues, it equally applies to ethical ones. - "Should we share this data?" - "I don't know, we'll figure that out in version 2"
  - greglindahl 8y ago
    That's an excellent reason to attack abusive and deceptive business models. Have at it.
- TAForObvReasons 8y ago
  The original quote is: > Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough. In the technical space, things may be legacy code or APIs. In the business space, things may be ethics and laws, and this incidentally is exactly the model we see in companies like Facebook and Uber and AirBnB.
- _jal 8y ago
  > but you're using an overly-broad brush No, not really. If you notice people working - say, construction - in a particular way, and they're trading safety for speed, and if you weren't concerned with worker-safety, you might consider that tradeoff their business. If you also found that it led them to build buildings that overlapped other people's properties, you might note that the tradeoffs they choose might also lead to that problem. Especially if you notice that other construction firms are making the same sorts of tradeoffs and also having the same problems. I'm not saying that firms who "move fast and break things" are inevitably also unethical, shitty companies. Everyone sacrifices QA depth for release at some point. But there's nothing wrong with pointing out many high-profile companies who trumpet their pride of it are, in fact, unethical, shitty companies.
  - greglindahl 8y ago
    The wrong thing about combining not-very-related things is that you're wasting your ire and offending ethical people at the same time. Great for starting an argument, not so great for convincing people. BTW, your construction example is terrible. Unsafe construction worksites are illegal, and continuous integration and deployment of software is not.
    - _jal 8y ago
      But they do appear to be related. You see the same things in the same companies, and the commonalities are consistent with treating consequences of the quest for growth at all costs as acceptable. When you have people racing a (real or perceived) time window, they don't stop pushing when humans are involved rather than software. > your construction example is terrible Takes all kinds. Including people who intentionally read things obtusely.
- IggleSniggle 8y ago
  I thought it was insightful. Fundamentally, “move fast and break things” means you’re not going to be afraid to do something just because you haven’t thought through all the repercussions yet. Personally I find it easy to see how to, as an engineer...ignore hunches that there might be a security hole or a privacy hole in the interest of pushing things forward. “Move fast and break things” implies that you’ll get something working out the door and you’ll come back and fix it later. When you always move to the next thing, you never really come back and fix all the things you broke.
- jonhendry18 8y ago
  I think at first people thought it meant something less toxic, like "things" meaning "software" or "industry norms". But then the likes of Uber came along and showed that it meant "laws".
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  The phase fundamentally captures an essense of what Umberto Eco and Rober Paxton observed of early 20th century political movements emerging in Italy and Germany. I'd recognised this similarity some time back. http://w3.salemstate.edu/~cmauriello/pdfEuropean/Paxton_Five%20Stages%20of%20Fascism.pdf http://w3.salemstate.edu/~cmauriello/pdfEuropean/Paxton_Five... Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes.... No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. ...disagreement is treason. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/
Latteland 8y ago
Move fast and break things means don't be afraid to try things that might fail, but it doesn't mean ethics don't matter. There has long been a concern about what facebook does with people's privacy, now there's no doubt they went way too far.
- TAForObvReasons 8y ago
  > Move fast and break things means don't be afraid to try things that might fail, but it doesn't mean ethics don't matter. Sure it does. Move fast and break things means don't be afraid to try new things, but the line isn't "ethical concerns" but rather "legality". There's a whole gray area between what is ethically acceptable and what is legally acceptable, and FB profits in that gray area that other companies are afraid to try because of their corporate values or personal misgivings.
  - jonhendry18 8y ago
    I think Uber's strategy was to go illegal in a big way, presenting a city with a fait accompli of a large number of unlicensed Uber cabs on the street. And then Uber would resist any regulatory efforts through lobbying and in court.
philipodonnell 8y ago
Huh. I always interpreted "move fast and break things" to be referring to the speed of development cycle, as in, SV startups prefer to we deploy new code without really testing everything as thoroughly as an enterprise company might, because time to market is most important and people are forgiving if we break their experience for a short time. I don't think anyone would really fault anyone for that interpretation. However, if that becomes "do whatever we want to anyone without regards for laws or ethics or customs including directly lying to regulators" as it appears Facebook did then I agree it becomes a problem.
- quadrangle 8y ago
  The break-things part is related to the startup meme of disruption too. And as some critic I read once said, many startups disrupt business status quo in the same way that I disrupt the idea of pet-ownership if I steal your dog.

greglindahl 8y ago

You might think that that's a great phrase for it, but many other people don't interpret "move fast and break things" to mean what you think it means. I'm all for criticizing things that have gone wrong, but you're using an overly-broad brush.

tmalsburg2 8y ago
I wish I could agree with you're more nuanced viewpoint, but seeing a whole industry making insane amounts of money based on abusive and deceptive business models suggests that there truely is a broader issue. Whether the underlying attitude is best describe by "move fast, break things" is debatable but we can't easily dismiss the idea.
- Vinnl 8y ago
  I think the point is that that quip usually refers to technical breakage, i.e. "it's better to ship more often and potentially break something that you then fix equally quickly, than spending thrice as much time analysing the problem to ensure there's no breakage in the first place". In other words, an entirely different meaning that what the grandparent meant when they said it was a great phrase for it.
  - Angostura 8y ago
    The point that the poster was making was that while the phrase normally refers to its technical development philosophy, it seems that it also seems to reflect Facebook's attitude to other issues, such as regulation and privacy.
    - sharemywin 8y ago
      and uber and theranos. and probably others. airbnb had a lot of people that broke their leases and deed restrictions and local zoning laws.
  - kibibu 8y ago
    The point is that, while it applies to technical issues, it equally applies to ethical ones. - "Should we share this data?" - "I don't know, we'll figure that out in version 2"
- greglindahl 8y ago
  That's an excellent reason to attack abusive and deceptive business models. Have at it.
TAForObvReasons 8y ago
The original quote is: > Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough. In the technical space, things may be legacy code or APIs. In the business space, things may be ethics and laws, and this incidentally is exactly the model we see in companies like Facebook and Uber and AirBnB.
_jal 8y ago
> but you're using an overly-broad brush No, not really. If you notice people working - say, construction - in a particular way, and they're trading safety for speed, and if you weren't concerned with worker-safety, you might consider that tradeoff their business. If you also found that it led them to build buildings that overlapped other people's properties, you might note that the tradeoffs they choose might also lead to that problem. Especially if you notice that other construction firms are making the same sorts of tradeoffs and also having the same problems. I'm not saying that firms who "move fast and break things" are inevitably also unethical, shitty companies. Everyone sacrifices QA depth for release at some point. But there's nothing wrong with pointing out many high-profile companies who trumpet their pride of it are, in fact, unethical, shitty companies.
- greglindahl 8y ago
  The wrong thing about combining not-very-related things is that you're wasting your ire and offending ethical people at the same time. Great for starting an argument, not so great for convincing people. BTW, your construction example is terrible. Unsafe construction worksites are illegal, and continuous integration and deployment of software is not.
  - _jal 8y ago
    But they do appear to be related. You see the same things in the same companies, and the commonalities are consistent with treating consequences of the quest for growth at all costs as acceptable. When you have people racing a (real or perceived) time window, they don't stop pushing when humans are involved rather than software. > your construction example is terrible Takes all kinds. Including people who intentionally read things obtusely.
IggleSniggle 8y ago
I thought it was insightful. Fundamentally, “move fast and break things” means you’re not going to be afraid to do something just because you haven’t thought through all the repercussions yet. Personally I find it easy to see how to, as an engineer...ignore hunches that there might be a security hole or a privacy hole in the interest of pushing things forward. “Move fast and break things” implies that you’ll get something working out the door and you’ll come back and fix it later. When you always move to the next thing, you never really come back and fix all the things you broke.
jonhendry18 8y ago
I think at first people thought it meant something less toxic, like "things" meaning "software" or "industry norms". But then the likes of Uber came along and showed that it meant "laws".
dredmorbius 8y ago
The phase fundamentally captures an essense of what Umberto Eco and Rober Paxton observed of early 20th century political movements emerging in Italy and Germany. I'd recognised this similarity some time back. http://w3.salemstate.edu/~cmauriello/pdfEuropean/Paxton_Five%20Stages%20of%20Fascism.pdf http://w3.salemstate.edu/~cmauriello/pdfEuropean/Paxton_Five... Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes.... No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. ...disagreement is treason. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/

Latteland 8y ago

Move fast and break things means don't be afraid to try things that might fail, but it doesn't mean ethics don't matter. There has long been a concern about what facebook does with people's privacy, now there's no doubt they went way too far.

TAForObvReasons 8y ago
> Move fast and break things means don't be afraid to try things that might fail, but it doesn't mean ethics don't matter. Sure it does. Move fast and break things means don't be afraid to try new things, but the line isn't "ethical concerns" but rather "legality". There's a whole gray area between what is ethically acceptable and what is legally acceptable, and FB profits in that gray area that other companies are afraid to try because of their corporate values or personal misgivings.
- jonhendry18 8y ago
  I think Uber's strategy was to go illegal in a big way, presenting a city with a fait accompli of a large number of unlicensed Uber cabs on the street. And then Uber would resist any regulatory efforts through lobbying and in court.

philipodonnell 8y ago

Huh. I always interpreted "move fast and break things" to be referring to the speed of development cycle, as in, SV startups prefer to we deploy new code without really testing everything as thoroughly as an enterprise company might, because time to market is most important and people are forgiving if we break their experience for a short time. I don't think anyone would really fault anyone for that interpretation. However, if that becomes "do whatever we want to anyone without regards for laws or ethics or customs including directly lying to regulators" as it appears Facebook did then I agree it becomes a problem.

quadrangle 8y ago
The break-things part is related to the startup meme of disruption too. And as some critic I read once said, many startups disrupt business status quo in the same way that I disrupt the idea of pet-ownership if I steal your dog.