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I worked at Facebook for 5 years on Workplace and Internal Tools. I am typically very critical of the company nowadays, but even so find the discussion here di

I worked at Facebook for 5 years on Workplace and Internal Tools. I am typically very critical of the company nowadays, but even so find the discussion here difficult to digest. People are complex. They are more complex than an action, or even a group of actions. To take a person and alias them into being "good" or "bad" based on an action or a series of actions is to explicitly dehumanize them for the sake of making the world simpler. It is a poor model, and in a Dale-Carnegie-way it leads to poor outcomes, as you close the dialog with that person that allows you to change opinions and outcomes. It is the same with groups or companies: some parts of groups do good from some vantage point, some do bad. I found myself inspired by a lot of what Facebook did. I loved working inside Infrastructure there, I was amazed by what people were innovating on every day. Projects like charitable causes have raised a lot for charity. I've seen the Are you Safe feature reduce so much stress during disasters. I keep meaningful dialogs going with friends I don't get to see often on FB and Instagram. It makes me really happy to see my friends thriving. One of Napoleon's great gifts was in compartmentalizing pieces of his life. His tumultuous and frankly soul-crushing personal life (which affected him deeply) with Josephine never got in the way of his military victories. I wonder if that's a good model, up-to-a-point for people and groups. With people, by compartmentalizing some unsavory perspective someone has, you have the ability to change it later on through discussion. ... in groups: if everyone good leaves organizations because they're "bad," well, those organizations will just be filled with the worst of us soon enough.

decebalus1 8y ago
> People are complex. They are more complex than an action, or even a group of actions. To take a person and alias them into being "good" or "bad" based on an action or a series of actions is to explicitly dehumanize them for the sake of making the world simpler. Correct. But we're not talking about people here, we're talking about a corporate entity as a whole. It's a bit more complex than a person. It has an incentive model and a set of norms (culture) which enables people to do good/bad based on the situation to maximize their personal gains (whichever those are - personal, material, spiritual, you name it). If this consistently enables people to do what is perceived externally as unethical, we have a problem. Nice spin on it, but Facebook is still a bad actor (despite what you say). I held this opinion since the beginning, before all the leaks and all the scandals but nobody believed me. Very smart people were incentivized to join using the entourage (come work with other smart people) and money, then slightly brain-washed in a cult-like manner (us vs them, wartimes, etc..). This enabled them to ignore blatant unethical behavior. I've seen all of these first-hand and it's bad. Bad bad bad.
- drewblaisdell 8y ago
  > Nice spin on it, but Facebook is still a bad actor (despite what you say). This needs to be a conclusion, not a premise. I do not have a firm belief about whether or not this is true, but I keep seeing people list bad things about FB and draw a straight line to “thus it is evil”. Ideally, we would list the good/bad it does and assign weights to these points to determine if it is net harmful. I want to be convinced, HN, but when I read comments like the ones in this thread (FB has no positive value whatsoever for its users, FB sells users’ data), it makes it hard for me to appraise.
  - Karunamon 8y ago
    There are certain forums in which the groupthink makes discussion of certain topics in good faith impossible.. sadly, HN is one of those when it comes to Facebook being anything other than cartoonishly evil.
  - PavlovsCat 8y ago
    > This needs to be a conclusion, not a premise. What makes you think it's a premise and not a conclusion? > Ideally, we would list the good/bad it does and assign weights to these points to determine if it is net harmful. I have 11 years of data points and experiences about FB, I'm not going to enumerate all of them whenever there is another. I'll just say "typically fucking Facebook". At this point, I don't even feel obligated to remember it all -- I can trust myself enough. We do that with "evil" people in our lives, too. We don't remember every dirty detail. We remember that there were a bunch of things, and that overall, we had it at some point. I save the conclusion and the checksums and that's enough. If you think I'm operating on a premise, instead of having come to a conclusion, how is that not you operating on a premise? > I want to be convinced Maybe, maybe not. What you are doing is delegitimizing even the conclusions others arrived at, by simply calling all of that mere premises. You saw a bunch of posts that struck you as knee-jerk, so all of it is knee-jerk. You have to form your own opinion either way, that burden is not on others. Do you also expect anyone who says anything positive to give some kind of thorough, 1000-page assessment of all the benefits and cons? No, of course not. Same goes for criticism. I for one don't care about the "evilness" of people I never met. For me the harm done through ignorance or fear or "evil" (which is just another form of weakness really) or not caring enough is the same harm.
good_intentions 8y ago
While I agree that humans are complex and should not be generalized by one or a few actions, Facebook as a whole has repeatedly demonstrated they are not good stewards of the data entrusted to them by users. The actions of their leaders is in complete conflict with the messaging they portray. From the ad campaign run by Facebook in 2018: "...From now on, Facebook will do more to keep you safe and protect your privacy, so we can all get back to what made Facebook good in the first place: friends. Because when this place does what it was built for, then we all get a little closer." To anyone looking closely at the actions of executives and living outside the SV echo chamber, this statement is laughable. While the actions of the many inside the company have been noble, they too have been taken advantage of just as those who used the platform for so many years.
matt4077 8y ago
So... we should be nice to Facebook, so as not to distract them during their advance on Prussia? ...and because treating them differently based on their actions may cause good people to apply their skills to endeavors other than growing Facebook’s wealth of private data?
mistursinistur 8y ago
Like notacoward's post below, this one misses the point. The shaming is not about how good or bad or complex you are. Some people have determined that Facebook is an organization that's producing some bad results. Socially shaming employees, removing the status they might have hoped to acquire and spiking attrition are tools being deployed to change Facebook's behavior and the behavior of Facebook's competitors. You might claim that this pressure will never work, or that it will cause Facebook to shut down the "Are You Safe" feature, or gut the charity tools, or avoid developing these kinds of projects in the future. But we should avoid hand-wavy claims that Facebook and the people who work there are just too complicated to influence.
deogeo 8y ago
> you close the dialog with that person that allows you to change opinions and outcomes. So if we're nicer to facebook, maybe it'll decide to not spy on people quite so much, undo the engineered-for-addiction notifications and feed, and curb it's anti-competitive practices (but not give back any market advantage it has already gained through them, of course)? The executives will voluntarily decide to make the company earn less money, so they can be more ethical? Is there any precedent for a large corporation acting in this way?
CobrastanJorji 8y ago
It's not that you're wrong. You're not. People are complicated, and everyone's the hero of their own story. There are plenty of people out there who give millions to charity but steal from the poor. As a general rule, though, when someone accuses you of being bad and your best argument against it comes down to "what is bad anyway?," you're probably on the wrong side. Is Facebook universally bad? No. It's done lots of good things. And lots of good people work there. But Facebook is also doing lots of bad things. Your policy chief hired a PR firm to push antisemitic conspiracy theories about George Soros. "People are complicated" isn't an excuse.
Inu 8y ago
> One of Napoleon's great gifts was in compartmentalizing pieces of his life. His tumultuous and frankly soul-crushing personal life (which affected him deeply) with Josephine never got in the way of his military victories. I wonder if that's a good model, up-to-a-point for people and groups. With people, by compartmentalizing some unsavory perspective someone has, you have the ability to change it later on through discussion. Also, the Napoleonic Wars killed 3 to 6 million people.
zjaffee 8y ago
Over humanizing people is also a bad way to look at these things as it diminishes their contribution towards a more problematic group and class structure. While yes, most billionares are probably fine people by many individual metrics, the billionaire class can only exist by extracting value off the backs of others. Facebook as an entity might be run by great people who love their families and support their communities, but the entity has done tons of very sketchy things and anyone who willingly or knowingly takes a part within that, especially for personal benefit is responsible for the actions of the group as a whole. Humanity might transcend class and social status, but it doesn't excuse anything.
- profalseidol 8y ago
  > and anyone who willingly or knowingly takes a part within that, especially for personal benefit is responsible for the actions of the group as a whole. And that is on top of "The Responsibility of Intellectuals"
cbkeller 8y ago
> if everyone good leaves organizations because they're "bad," well, those organizations will just be filled with the worst of us soon enough. Is this not potentially an optimal outcome? If companies who have a track record of doing unethical things suffer for it by being depleted of all employees who are not either unethical, incompetent, or both, this should dramatically compromise the effectiveness of the company. If this happens repeatably, it provides a disincentive for unethical corporate behavior.
craigsmansion 8y ago
> critical of the company nowadays As opposed to when? When you worked there? When was this period that Facebook was a beacon of ethical behaviour? > to explicitly dehumanize them for the sake of making the world simpler. Like aliasing people into a point on a social graph and a wallet? Dehumanising behaviour and monetising that is the main ethical problem with Facebook. It's a bit rich to accuse opponents of over simplification. >It is a poor model FB market cap seems to disagree. Pidgeon-holing people for profit is an exceptionally lucrative model. > Projects like charitable causes have raised a lot for charity And the trains in Italy ran on time! You worked there for five years and never had a clue. Maybe you're not the right person to provide a judgement on judgement.
PavlovsCat 8y ago
The 76 year old woman I know who seems to be addicted to facebook and gets harrased by people reporting her posts and whatnot just wants to talk to people and share photos. The people and the photos and the emotions and the words people bring themselves -- Facebook just adds grief to that. At best it's invisible, at worst it just kicks people out with no recourse, because some troll reported them, and because they're not a FB employee or a celebrity. These people are people, too. You barge into the public and drag it onto your platform, and then you don't just dehumanize people on it, you completely remove them. The rest either is friend or not friend, blocked or not blocked, posts are liked or not liked. Yes, it's a very poor model -- don't assume everybody else is using it, too. > It makes me really happy to see my friends thriving. That's the equivalent of "it's fun with friends" for game reviews. Every multiplayer game has that. Every site that allows sharing of photos and text has that. Because people have that. > With people, by compartmentalizing some unsavory perspective someone has, you have the ability to change it later on through discussion. When later? When was Facebook ever up for candid discussion? How come you blame it on those who, in absence of any say, ever, now think badly of Facebook?
rhizome 8y ago
If what people are taking away from their time working for FB is, "you know what? Napoleon was pretty cool!" then that really buttons things up tidily, though probably not in the way you intend. Too bad he had the sads about his partner though, I guess. To take a person and alias them into being "good" or "bad" based on an action or a series of actions is to explicitly dehumanize them for the sake of making the world simpler Baruch Spinoza more or less invented the concept of ethics in the 17th century, which (partially, and simplifying) is premised on the effect of "an action"[1] being good or bad. If this doesn't reach, let's go back 2,000 more years to Jainism, in which karma is comprised of particles in the universe that stick to a person through their actions (good/bad/undefined). tl;dr: If your argument is that a person's actions should have no bearing on a sense of "good" or "bad," know that significant parts of the entirety of recorded history contradict you. [insert your own Godwin reference here] Point being, calling someone "bad" or "good" only speaks to the preponderance of evidence one way or another, and it's absolutely within all of our rights to have an opinion on what FB/Zuck/SS have done with the aspects of our lives to which they have had access, down to discrete decisions. I mean, I don't think anybody would say that FB has obviated the concept of reputation, and having an effect on society doesn't only refer to the good. And really, I don't see anybody saying "Zuck = bad" nearly as much as I see "Zuck = good" and "Zuck has done bad things and made bad decisions." He's the face of the company, this is how society works when you're not moving fast and breaking things. It's not about people being complex, it's about people shitting in the world's PII sink at the party. Specific people, with witnesses. These were actual choices made under consultation with many people, all of whom are extremely highly-compensated, to reduce the control you have over information about your actual life (what focus groups pay big money for). It's not outlandish to say that the ability to trade pictures with and keep up with people has not been a fair trade. Forgive me if I discount the hosting of online charity facilities (and really: [3]), and the supplanting of phone calls and neighborly phone trees in times of disaster or crisis, but in the words of Nelson Muntz, "If you hadn't done it, some other loser would have. So quit milkin' it,"[4] and maybe that other loser would have protected their users more. (and please don't insult us with anything along the lines of "personal information doesn't have value until someone sells it") To conclude with an even larger shadow, FB has made a shitton of money from these policies, money they use to hire people and pay them enough not to work at other companies that also pay a lot, and this money has been used to drive up housing prices and rent for their employees' convenience (nobody overbids for fun). Thus this infrastructure of data scams affects the ability of teachers to live near the schools in which they teach, police to live among those they patrol, and low wage workers to not have to commute 2+ hours each way.[5] I don't know if working at FB inures you to these examples, but it seems clear that FB leadership does not display the maturity that I personally would like to see in those who have the ability to make these decisions. Zuck didn't personally raise rents, but he built machinery that did so. But hey, it aiin't his fault his exploding knife-gun hurt someone, he painted it pink! 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conatus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conatus 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma_in_Jainism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma_in_Jainism 3. https://www.wired.com/story/nonprofits-facebook-get-hacked-need-help/ https://www.wired.com/story/nonprofits-facebook-get-hacked-n... 4. https://www.simpsonsarchive.com/episodes/3F22.html https://www.simpsonsarchive.com/episodes/3F22.html 5. https://www.curbed.com/2018/3/6/17082570/affordable-housing-commute-rent-apartment https://www.curbed.com/2018/3/6/17082570/affordable-housing-...
droopybuns 8y ago
I disagree with something you said: >>To take a person and alias them into being "good" or "bad" based on an action or a series of actions is to explicitly dehumanize them The only reliable method for evaluating someone’s values is to assess the choices they make. What values do their actions suggest? Do these choices affect your ability to trust these people? I fundamentally disagree that it dehumanizes to do this, and I also fundamentally disagree that anyone intends to dehumanize them with this approach. I find it troubling that anyone expresses such a black and white assessment of people trying to determine where others should fit in the herd. Put another way: the only way to judge someone’s ethics is by evaluating their action and comparing it against their words.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
> I wonder if that's a good model, up-to-a-point for people and groups. With people, by compartmentalizing some unsavory perspective someone has, you have the ability to change it later on through discussion. Compartmentalization is part of the problem, not the solution. It's why some people can exploit and hurt a hundred thousand other human beings in the morning, enjoy their lunch break, fuck up the environment a bit more in the afternoon, and come home to a happy evening with their spouse. We shouldn't be encouraging more people to separate their private happiness from their interactions with society. > ... in groups: if everyone good leaves organizations because they're "bad," well, those organizations will just be filled with the worst of us soon enough. The hope is that if enough people leave, the organization won't be able to keep functioning. Or, if it survives and becomes an evil-people-filled cesspool, it'll be easier to direct regulatory actions against it and just shut it down. Also, Napoleon was famous, but not exactly a paragon of morality.
- Stryder 8y ago
  "Compartmentalization is part of the problem, not the solution." This, this and this again. We as people are absolutely allowed to be complex, contradicting beings, but it is because of this richness of breadth and depth in our characteristics and beliefs that we ought to consider deeply the consequences of our actions. Compartmentalization acts effectively in the opposite direction of that.
dgzl 8y ago
> if everyone good leaves organizations because they're "bad," well, those organizations will just be filled with the worst of us soon enough. An interesting analogy... The 10th amendment to the Bill of Rights was intended on allowing each state to be diverse in its laws. If people in state x want the laws in state y to change, a constitutionalist would say that you should move to that state and work in changing the laws from the inside, via the 10th Amendment and the state's own Constitution. If you don't want to put in the work of changing the state from the inside, and would rather change the laws from the outside (i.e. via federal authority) then you're probably an authoritarian. I guess the only point I'm trying to make, is yeah, it's hard. Thanks for your contribution.
flohofwoe 8y ago
Not sure what point you're trying to make about Napoleon, he wasn't exactly someone to look up to. He was directly responsible for millions of deaths, basically a 19th century version of Stalin (and the other "great leaders" of the 20th century).
- SirensOfTitan 8y ago
  I would recommend educating yourself on a contemporary Napoleon biography (I really loved Napoleon: A Life) before making such a strong claim. Napoleon is a very complex figure and your kind of blanket statement here is the kind I was rebelling against in my original comment. The issue here is that writing a good account on Napoleon is very difficult. His enemies disseminated nonsense about him, and he was very careful about his public image even as a very young man. I could get into the history: but Napoleon was fighting feudal leaders who aimed to restore the monarchy in France. They declared war on him many more times than he on them. The Napoleonic Code is one of the most influential documents in history and through it and Napoleon's influence helped spread the ideals of the French Revolution throughout Europe. Of course there are many negative things to say about Napoleon, but he is a very interesting person who deserves a look. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/we-better-off-napoleon-never-lost-waterloo-180955298/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/we-better-off-napoleo...
ColanR 8y ago
> if everyone good leaves organizations because they're "bad," well, those organizations will just be filled with the worst of us soon enough. And then the organization becomes bad enough that it crumbles and dies.
onetimemanytime 8y ago
>>Projects like charitable causes have raised a lot for charity. Probably would have been raised by a company FB bought or crushed. Or a company in another field. >>I've seen the Are you Safe feature reduce so much stress during disasters. Not exactly charity, it gets people to use FB more. FB's problem (for the world) is that it is big and as such it can be used to manipulate opinions or mess with people's psychology. Either by others or by FB for $$$. Same would happen if Fox News or CNN were watched by a billion plus people. They would have the power to move certain people to a different direction. Google is another one, a little bias on search /news results and maybe millions of votes would move one way or another.
oska 8y ago
> if everyone good leaves organizations because they're "bad," well, those organizations will just be filled with the worst of us soon enough. This is just complete rubbish and it appears you are still rationalising the time you spent working for the company. If you are trying to achieve 'good' inside a company like Facebook then you are a complete sucker or, as Zuckerberg would say, just a 'dumb fuck'. You're being played. Facebook is not interested in doing good; that has been abundantly clear since almost day 1.
travbrack 8y ago
Do you own Facebook stock?

decebalus1 8y ago

> People are complex. They are more complex than an action, or even a group of actions. To take a person and alias them into being "good" or "bad" based on an action or a series of actions is to explicitly dehumanize them for the sake of making the world simpler. Correct. But we're not talking about people here, we're talking about a corporate entity as a whole. It's a bit more complex than a person. It has an incentive model and a set of norms (culture) which enables people to do good/bad based on the situation to maximize their personal gains (whichever those are - personal, material, spiritual, you name it). If this consistently enables people to do what is perceived externally as unethical, we have a problem. Nice spin on it, but Facebook is still a bad actor (despite what you say). I held this opinion since the beginning, before all the leaks and all the scandals but nobody believed me. Very smart people were incentivized to join using the entourage (come work with other smart people) and money, then slightly brain-washed in a cult-like manner (us vs them, wartimes, etc..). This enabled them to ignore blatant unethical behavior. I've seen all of these first-hand and it's bad. Bad bad bad.

drewblaisdell 8y ago
> Nice spin on it, but Facebook is still a bad actor (despite what you say). This needs to be a conclusion, not a premise. I do not have a firm belief about whether or not this is true, but I keep seeing people list bad things about FB and draw a straight line to “thus it is evil”. Ideally, we would list the good/bad it does and assign weights to these points to determine if it is net harmful. I want to be convinced, HN, but when I read comments like the ones in this thread (FB has no positive value whatsoever for its users, FB sells users’ data), it makes it hard for me to appraise.
- Karunamon 8y ago
  There are certain forums in which the groupthink makes discussion of certain topics in good faith impossible.. sadly, HN is one of those when it comes to Facebook being anything other than cartoonishly evil.
- PavlovsCat 8y ago
  > This needs to be a conclusion, not a premise. What makes you think it's a premise and not a conclusion? > Ideally, we would list the good/bad it does and assign weights to these points to determine if it is net harmful. I have 11 years of data points and experiences about FB, I'm not going to enumerate all of them whenever there is another. I'll just say "typically fucking Facebook". At this point, I don't even feel obligated to remember it all -- I can trust myself enough. We do that with "evil" people in our lives, too. We don't remember every dirty detail. We remember that there were a bunch of things, and that overall, we had it at some point. I save the conclusion and the checksums and that's enough. If you think I'm operating on a premise, instead of having come to a conclusion, how is that not you operating on a premise? > I want to be convinced Maybe, maybe not. What you are doing is delegitimizing even the conclusions others arrived at, by simply calling all of that mere premises. You saw a bunch of posts that struck you as knee-jerk, so all of it is knee-jerk. You have to form your own opinion either way, that burden is not on others. Do you also expect anyone who says anything positive to give some kind of thorough, 1000-page assessment of all the benefits and cons? No, of course not. Same goes for criticism. I for one don't care about the "evilness" of people I never met. For me the harm done through ignorance or fear or "evil" (which is just another form of weakness really) or not caring enough is the same harm.

good_intentions 8y ago

While I agree that humans are complex and should not be generalized by one or a few actions, Facebook as a whole has repeatedly demonstrated they are not good stewards of the data entrusted to them by users. The actions of their leaders is in complete conflict with the messaging they portray. From the ad campaign run by Facebook in 2018: "...From now on, Facebook will do more to keep you safe and protect your privacy, so we can all get back to what made Facebook good in the first place: friends. Because when this place does what it was built for, then we all get a little closer." To anyone looking closely at the actions of executives and living outside the SV echo chamber, this statement is laughable. While the actions of the many inside the company have been noble, they too have been taken advantage of just as those who used the platform for so many years.

matt4077 8y ago

So... we should be nice to Facebook, so as not to distract them during their advance on Prussia? ...and because treating them differently based on their actions may cause good people to apply their skills to endeavors other than growing Facebook’s wealth of private data?

mistursinistur 8y ago

Like notacoward's post below, this one misses the point. The shaming is not about how good or bad or complex you are. Some people have determined that Facebook is an organization that's producing some bad results. Socially shaming employees, removing the status they might have hoped to acquire and spiking attrition are tools being deployed to change Facebook's behavior and the behavior of Facebook's competitors. You might claim that this pressure will never work, or that it will cause Facebook to shut down the "Are You Safe" feature, or gut the charity tools, or avoid developing these kinds of projects in the future. But we should avoid hand-wavy claims that Facebook and the people who work there are just too complicated to influence.

deogeo 8y ago

> you close the dialog with that person that allows you to change opinions and outcomes. So if we're nicer to facebook, maybe it'll decide to not spy on people quite so much, undo the engineered-for-addiction notifications and feed, and curb it's anti-competitive practices (but not give back any market advantage it has already gained through them, of course)? The executives will voluntarily decide to make the company earn less money, so they can be more ethical? Is there any precedent for a large corporation acting in this way?

CobrastanJorji 8y ago

It's not that you're wrong. You're not. People are complicated, and everyone's the hero of their own story. There are plenty of people out there who give millions to charity but steal from the poor. As a general rule, though, when someone accuses you of being bad and your best argument against it comes down to "what is bad anyway?," you're probably on the wrong side. Is Facebook universally bad? No. It's done lots of good things. And lots of good people work there. But Facebook is also doing lots of bad things. Your policy chief hired a PR firm to push antisemitic conspiracy theories about George Soros. "People are complicated" isn't an excuse.

Inu 8y ago

> One of Napoleon's great gifts was in compartmentalizing pieces of his life. His tumultuous and frankly soul-crushing personal life (which affected him deeply) with Josephine never got in the way of his military victories. I wonder if that's a good model, up-to-a-point for people and groups. With people, by compartmentalizing some unsavory perspective someone has, you have the ability to change it later on through discussion. Also, the Napoleonic Wars killed 3 to 6 million people.

zjaffee 8y ago

Over humanizing people is also a bad way to look at these things as it diminishes their contribution towards a more problematic group and class structure. While yes, most billionares are probably fine people by many individual metrics, the billionaire class can only exist by extracting value off the backs of others. Facebook as an entity might be run by great people who love their families and support their communities, but the entity has done tons of very sketchy things and anyone who willingly or knowingly takes a part within that, especially for personal benefit is responsible for the actions of the group as a whole. Humanity might transcend class and social status, but it doesn't excuse anything.

profalseidol 8y ago
> and anyone who willingly or knowingly takes a part within that, especially for personal benefit is responsible for the actions of the group as a whole. And that is on top of "The Responsibility of Intellectuals"

cbkeller 8y ago

> if everyone good leaves organizations because they're "bad," well, those organizations will just be filled with the worst of us soon enough. Is this not potentially an optimal outcome? If companies who have a track record of doing unethical things suffer for it by being depleted of all employees who are not either unethical, incompetent, or both, this should dramatically compromise the effectiveness of the company. If this happens repeatably, it provides a disincentive for unethical corporate behavior.

craigsmansion 8y ago

> critical of the company nowadays As opposed to when? When you worked there? When was this period that Facebook was a beacon of ethical behaviour? > to explicitly dehumanize them for the sake of making the world simpler. Like aliasing people into a point on a social graph and a wallet? Dehumanising behaviour and monetising that is the main ethical problem with Facebook. It's a bit rich to accuse opponents of over simplification. >It is a poor model FB market cap seems to disagree. Pidgeon-holing people for profit is an exceptionally lucrative model. > Projects like charitable causes have raised a lot for charity And the trains in Italy ran on time! You worked there for five years and never had a clue. Maybe you're not the right person to provide a judgement on judgement.

PavlovsCat 8y ago

The 76 year old woman I know who seems to be addicted to facebook and gets harrased by people reporting her posts and whatnot just wants to talk to people and share photos. The people and the photos and the emotions and the words people bring themselves -- Facebook just adds grief to that. At best it's invisible, at worst it just kicks people out with no recourse, because some troll reported them, and because they're not a FB employee or a celebrity. These people are people, too. You barge into the public and drag it onto your platform, and then you don't just dehumanize people on it, you completely remove them. The rest either is friend or not friend, blocked or not blocked, posts are liked or not liked. Yes, it's a very poor model -- don't assume everybody else is using it, too. > It makes me really happy to see my friends thriving. That's the equivalent of "it's fun with friends" for game reviews. Every multiplayer game has that. Every site that allows sharing of photos and text has that. Because people have that. > With people, by compartmentalizing some unsavory perspective someone has, you have the ability to change it later on through discussion. When later? When was Facebook ever up for candid discussion? How come you blame it on those who, in absence of any say, ever, now think badly of Facebook?

rhizome 8y ago

If what people are taking away from their time working for FB is, "you know what? Napoleon was pretty cool!" then that really buttons things up tidily, though probably not in the way you intend. Too bad he had the sads about his partner though, I guess. To take a person and alias them into being "good" or "bad" based on an action or a series of actions is to explicitly dehumanize them for the sake of making the world simpler Baruch Spinoza more or less invented the concept of ethics in the 17th century, which (partially, and simplifying) is premised on the effect of "an action"[1] being good or bad. If this doesn't reach, let's go back 2,000 more years to Jainism, in which karma is comprised of particles in the universe that stick to a person through their actions (good/bad/undefined). tl;dr: If your argument is that a person's actions should have no bearing on a sense of "good" or "bad," know that significant parts of the entirety of recorded history contradict you. [insert your own Godwin reference here] Point being, calling someone "bad" or "good" only speaks to the preponderance of evidence one way or another, and it's absolutely within all of our rights to have an opinion on what FB/Zuck/SS have done with the aspects of our lives to which they have had access, down to discrete decisions. I mean, I don't think anybody would say that FB has obviated the concept of reputation, and having an effect on society doesn't only refer to the good. And really, I don't see anybody saying "Zuck = bad" nearly as much as I see "Zuck = good" and "Zuck has done bad things and made bad decisions." He's the face of the company, this is how society works when you're not moving fast and breaking things. It's not about people being complex, it's about people shitting in the world's PII sink at the party. Specific people, with witnesses. These were actual choices made under consultation with many people, all of whom are extremely highly-compensated, to reduce the control you have over information about your actual life (what focus groups pay big money for). It's not outlandish to say that the ability to trade pictures with and keep up with people has not been a fair trade. Forgive me if I discount the hosting of online charity facilities (and really: [3]), and the supplanting of phone calls and neighborly phone trees in times of disaster or crisis, but in the words of Nelson Muntz, "If you hadn't done it, some other loser would have. So quit milkin' it,"[4] and maybe that other loser would have protected their users more. (and please don't insult us with anything along the lines of "personal information doesn't have value until someone sells it") To conclude with an even larger shadow, FB has made a shitton of money from these policies, money they use to hire people and pay them enough not to work at other companies that also pay a lot, and this money has been used to drive up housing prices and rent for their employees' convenience (nobody overbids for fun). Thus this infrastructure of data scams affects the ability of teachers to live near the schools in which they teach, police to live among those they patrol, and low wage workers to not have to commute 2+ hours each way.[5] I don't know if working at FB inures you to these examples, but it seems clear that FB leadership does not display the maturity that I personally would like to see in those who have the ability to make these decisions. Zuck didn't personally raise rents, but he built machinery that did so. But hey, it aiin't his fault his exploding knife-gun hurt someone, he painted it pink! 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conatus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conatus 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma_in_Jainism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma_in_Jainism 3. https://www.wired.com/story/nonprofits-facebook-get-hacked-need-help/ https://www.wired.com/story/nonprofits-facebook-get-hacked-n... 4. https://www.simpsonsarchive.com/episodes/3F22.html https://www.simpsonsarchive.com/episodes/3F22.html 5. https://www.curbed.com/2018/3/6/17082570/affordable-housing-commute-rent-apartment https://www.curbed.com/2018/3/6/17082570/affordable-housing-...

droopybuns 8y ago

I disagree with something you said: >>To take a person and alias them into being "good" or "bad" based on an action or a series of actions is to explicitly dehumanize them The only reliable method for evaluating someone’s values is to assess the choices they make. What values do their actions suggest? Do these choices affect your ability to trust these people? I fundamentally disagree that it dehumanizes to do this, and I also fundamentally disagree that anyone intends to dehumanize them with this approach. I find it troubling that anyone expresses such a black and white assessment of people trying to determine where others should fit in the herd. Put another way: the only way to judge someone’s ethics is by evaluating their action and comparing it against their words.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

> I wonder if that's a good model, up-to-a-point for people and groups. With people, by compartmentalizing some unsavory perspective someone has, you have the ability to change it later on through discussion. Compartmentalization is part of the problem, not the solution. It's why some people can exploit and hurt a hundred thousand other human beings in the morning, enjoy their lunch break, fuck up the environment a bit more in the afternoon, and come home to a happy evening with their spouse. We shouldn't be encouraging more people to separate their private happiness from their interactions with society. > ... in groups: if everyone good leaves organizations because they're "bad," well, those organizations will just be filled with the worst of us soon enough. The hope is that if enough people leave, the organization won't be able to keep functioning. Or, if it survives and becomes an evil-people-filled cesspool, it'll be easier to direct regulatory actions against it and just shut it down. Also, Napoleon was famous, but not exactly a paragon of morality.

Stryder 8y ago
"Compartmentalization is part of the problem, not the solution." This, this and this again. We as people are absolutely allowed to be complex, contradicting beings, but it is because of this richness of breadth and depth in our characteristics and beliefs that we ought to consider deeply the consequences of our actions. Compartmentalization acts effectively in the opposite direction of that.

dgzl 8y ago

> if everyone good leaves organizations because they're "bad," well, those organizations will just be filled with the worst of us soon enough. An interesting analogy... The 10th amendment to the Bill of Rights was intended on allowing each state to be diverse in its laws. If people in state x want the laws in state y to change, a constitutionalist would say that you should move to that state and work in changing the laws from the inside, via the 10th Amendment and the state's own Constitution. If you don't want to put in the work of changing the state from the inside, and would rather change the laws from the outside (i.e. via federal authority) then you're probably an authoritarian. I guess the only point I'm trying to make, is yeah, it's hard. Thanks for your contribution.

flohofwoe 8y ago

Not sure what point you're trying to make about Napoleon, he wasn't exactly someone to look up to. He was directly responsible for millions of deaths, basically a 19th century version of Stalin (and the other "great leaders" of the 20th century).

SirensOfTitan 8y ago
I would recommend educating yourself on a contemporary Napoleon biography (I really loved Napoleon: A Life) before making such a strong claim. Napoleon is a very complex figure and your kind of blanket statement here is the kind I was rebelling against in my original comment. The issue here is that writing a good account on Napoleon is very difficult. His enemies disseminated nonsense about him, and he was very careful about his public image even as a very young man. I could get into the history: but Napoleon was fighting feudal leaders who aimed to restore the monarchy in France. They declared war on him many more times than he on them. The Napoleonic Code is one of the most influential documents in history and through it and Napoleon's influence helped spread the ideals of the French Revolution throughout Europe. Of course there are many negative things to say about Napoleon, but he is a very interesting person who deserves a look. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/we-better-off-napoleon-never-lost-waterloo-180955298/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/we-better-off-napoleo...

ColanR 8y ago

> if everyone good leaves organizations because they're "bad," well, those organizations will just be filled with the worst of us soon enough. And then the organization becomes bad enough that it crumbles and dies.

onetimemanytime 8y ago

>>Projects like charitable causes have raised a lot for charity. Probably would have been raised by a company FB bought or crushed. Or a company in another field. >>I've seen the Are you Safe feature reduce so much stress during disasters. Not exactly charity, it gets people to use FB more. FB's problem (for the world) is that it is big and as such it can be used to manipulate opinions or mess with people's psychology. Either by others or by FB for $$$. Same would happen if Fox News or CNN were watched by a billion plus people. They would have the power to move certain people to a different direction. Google is another one, a little bias on search /news results and maybe millions of votes would move one way or another.

oska 8y ago

> if everyone good leaves organizations because they're "bad," well, those organizations will just be filled with the worst of us soon enough. This is just complete rubbish and it appears you are still rationalising the time you spent working for the company. If you are trying to achieve 'good' inside a company like Facebook then you are a complete sucker or, as Zuckerberg would say, just a 'dumb fuck'. You're being played. Facebook is not interested in doing good; that has been abundantly clear since almost day 1.

travbrack 8y ago

Do you own Facebook stock?