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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 p
by 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-...
- cbkeller 8y agoI see Spinoza, I upvote :) To give the benefit of the doubt I'm not sure if OP was objecting to the first step of placing a person or company along a good-bad continuum or the second step of reducing that continuum to a binary label. In either case though, no amount of complexity makes it unreasonable to consider whether a company like Facebook is a net positive or negative force on society -- which is a binary decision that requires reduction.
- rhizome 8y agoI'd argue that reduction is required for qualitative decisionmaking and so is no barrier to legitimate opinion. First, because we can never know everything that is going on outside of investigations like this one and public statements by FB. Second, language is a lossy codec for thought, so the investigations and public statements by FB are themselves reductive. It's turtles all the way down. This applies to both examples then: thinking FB is good or bad, and being required to eliminate reduction in order to make that decision.
- cbkeller 8y agoSounds fair enough to me