20 ms·
Facebook removed post by ex-manager who said site 'failed' black people
- kache_ 8y ago>ex manager >manager why would their opinion be at all relevant
- infinity0 8y agoMore relevant than your opinion.
- spork12 8y agoGood thing they shielded me from that post. I don't know if I could have taken reading that.
- spork12 8y agowell i see 4 people don't support making the internet safe for women and children, we really need to get the internet censored so folks cannot post whatver they want and disrupt social order. A social credit score would be a big step forward for the US. We can't continue to have people posting whatever they want on the internet, we need make sure people can only access and interact with information that has been approved as non-offensive. And people who refuse to get with the program in the 21st century, need to be de-platformed. This is how we got orange man in office, and from what i've read he is a very bad man. Ex Nazi, kkk member, Womanizer, Makes offensive jokes about people and steals money from social programs but not paying extra taxes. Impeach orange man and have the UN help create laws. We need completely open orders. It is the only way to help US workers move forward and to become global citizens instead of belonging to these old fashioned ideas of countries and democracy.
- sctb 8y agoWe've banned this account for trolling.
- j4kp07 8y agoThe Left is eating itself.
- aphextron 8y agoBeing black in this industry really, really sucks. I'm certain that for the vast majority of people I interact with on a daily basis, it doesn't even cross their minds. But living with an unending fear of having your entire self worth immediately judged at the color of your skin is something that no other race lives with in this industry. I have to immediately force myself to be twice as charming, friendly, witty, and intelligent sounding as the equivalent white or Asian person just to be taken seriously. I don't really know that there's any solution to this, it's just something we have to live with.
- ddorian43 8y agoAnd who's fault is it according to you ?
- brianmcc 8y agoSometimes it's good for people to have the chance to simply vent, tbh. Don't need to assign blame, or come up with "solutions". Sounds like GP has had a tough time and we should maybe simply sympathise.
- claudiawerner 8y agoNot only that, but the idea that blame can even be assigned, individually or collectively, is up for question. Nobody is really to blame for structural issues or operating within a framework which seems natural or unquestioned or even unquestionable.
- EpicBlackCrayon 8y agoI'm not sure what you're getting at here, but this just sounds incredibly accusatory.
- ddorian43 8y agoYes but not at him. Probably at the ones who hire black women to fill numbers.
- EpicBlackCrayon 8y agoThe post for anyone who hasn't read it. https://facebook.com/notes/mark-s-luckie/facebook-is-failing-its-black-employees-and-its-black-users/1931075116975013/ https://facebook.com/notes/mark-s-luckie/facebook-is-failing...
- janzij 8y ago>the [internal] Black@ group Imagine if there was a White@ or Azn@ or Jewish@ group.
- EpicBlackCrayon 8y agoThere likely are for other under represented minorities. That is not unprecedented, people not in the majority will want to share experiences and be around people with shared experiences. I think the thing you're missing here though is that the White@ group is 80-90 percent of the company already.
- janzij 8y agoWhat kind of experiences? I hope they weren't using an internal group which can be read by other employees with IT access or bosses to smear their white, Asian, Jewish, etc coworkers.
- lukebitts 8y agoI used to have lunch with an internal LGBT group at a previous job. Shared experiences are stuff like talking about discrimination, talking about niche tv shows that non-lgbt people usually don't watch, sharing gay artists, etc. There is no reason to believe the group is used to smear anyone.
- yunyu 8y agoThere is an APIS@ (Asian & Pacific Islanders) internal group
- imgabe 8y agoThis is the problem with putting the onus for regulating speech on Facebook. It sounds like it'll be all rainbows and unicorns when you think it will prevent genocide (hint: it won't), but as soon as Facebook is responsible for removing any content that anyone, anywhere might conceivably object to Facebook as a platform for speech becomes useless.
- southphillyman 8y agoThis is interesting since I know of an initiative at FB that aggressively pursued talented AA engineers. The compensation packages they were willing to offer as part of the initiative were impressive even for FAANG. Why put that effort forth if the environment at the company is not adequate to retain whatever AA talent you get?
- dasil003 8y agoBecause neither Zuck nor any other brass at Facebook can tame the beast they’ve created. Internal gender politics are just a microcosm of their larger problems.
- kwamenum86 8y agoThe first 3 comments in this thread "The Left is eating itself." "Good thing they shielded me from that post. I don't know if I could have taken reading that." ">ex manager >manager why would their opinion be at all relevant" That pretty much sums up the state of the dialog in the industry and it's pretty sad that you can't even find thoughtful comments on Hacker News. Regardless of your politics, everyone deserves a fair shake. I'm a black engineer and manager with experience at several tech companies, including Facebook. At every company I've worked for I've heard jokes about African-Americans (overheard, to my face, from managers and ICs alike) and dealt with people assuming I'm a junior engineer at the beginning of every encounter despite the gray hairs lining my chin. At the conclusion of my tech talks and even technical interviews people routinely ask me if I have an engineering background! These things may seem insignificant ("they're just jokes") but we're social creatures want to feel recognized and accepted. That hasn't stopped me from building a career I'm proud of and I don't lose sleep at night. But I'm an outlier in that regard. The larger subtext of the entire diversity conversation is learning to coexist. It's not about black people, women, the LGBTQ community, or any other single group. It's about a better working environment for everyone indefinitely. Being against that is literally pathological. Based on the quality of discourse on this site lately, I'm sure many of you will take my words out of context and make broad assumptions about my beliefs. For the sane ones, please reflect on the words I actually wrote.
- shawn 8y agoTroll comments tend to show up first, because quality comments take time to write. It's best to reserve judgement for an hour or so after a thread hits the front page.
- krn 8y agoIt's interesting, how much this problem is specific to the US. As someone from a small Eastern European state, who hadn't met a single black person during the first 18 years of his life, I had zero negative attitude towards black people when I first met them at the university in the UK. Actually, many of them were like friends.
- deleted 8y ago
- fipple 8y agoDisappointed to see the Guardian refer to Facebook as “a tech corporation that largely excludes African Americans.” “Excludes” implies a deliberate and willful act which they cite no evidence for, and the editorializing is more appropriate for the Daily Mail.
- sonnyblarney 8y agoAs a daily Graun reader myself I will say sadly that they are guilty of editorializing as much as any other rag.
- alistairSH 8y agoThe Guardian didn't make that claim; Mark S Luckie made the claim.
- fipple 8y agoNo, it wasn’t in quotes. The Guardian should just say “paucity of African Americans” or some statement that avoided ascribing intent.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago"Create internal systems for employees to anonymously report microaggressions. " This is the 'happy path' to ideological totalitarianism, and it's a scary statement. In the UC system, it is now considered a 'micro aggression' to make the statement 'America is a Meritocracy'. Why? Because it doesn't necessarily reflect the fact that for some people it's harder than others. Surely - there's a lot to be debated about the statement. But that it cannot be said, or is even considered problematic is utterly Orwellian. The author makes the case of 'undue or overly harsh' criticism of Black employees? Unfortunately, this is a difficult thing to measure, and if FB turns into a 'government office' - it simply won't be possible to give even a fair assessment without the fear or being labelled a racist. I'm actually quite sensitive to aphxtron's comment above about the insecurities of being black in tech, and there is work to do ... but I think the intersectional / authoritarian approach, especially those whereby we 'assume racism' is wrong. I don't think the Colin Kaepernick approach is going to work on this, I think it's just going to take a while.
- arethuza 8y agoThe chap who came up with the term "meritocracy" actually did it in a dystopian novel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy A recent comment by the author, Michael Dunlop Young: "It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit. It is the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class without room in it for others."
- sonnyblarney 8y agoThis is a very thoughtful comment and I don't think it should be downvoted. I particularly appreciate last quote it's utterly relevant in the Valley.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- arethuza 8y ago
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- octopod 8y agoThis company is toast and the next AOL. Anyone that ever compared this piece of sht to Google was comparing Apples to [choose your rotten fruit]. This is what you get for calling your users dumb fcks and while copying and pasting myspace text entry boxes and calling "technology". They can go the way of Iomega too while their at it.
- KasianFranks 8y agoFacebook is a roach motel, the next friendster.
- programmarchy 8y agoLooking at the facts from the article... Shaun King, a race activist for BLM, posted a screenshot of an email someone sent him calling him a racial slur on Facebook, and got suspended. He complained and shortly after Facebook apologized and lifted the suspension. The simple explanation is that Facebook censors were not paying close attention. They saw a racial slur posted and suspended the poster. They didn’t spend the time to understand the context. Pointing to this particular incident as failing black people is laughable. This is a failure of the policy of censorship. It was collateral damage. I can’t find the manager’s letter but I’d be willing to believe Facebook censored his post primarily because it was critical of Facebook, under the guise of removing “hate speech”. Again, it was collateral damage, but this time due to malice instead of incompetence. And this is precisely the argument against censorship. In the one case, it’s unrealistic to expect a censorship bureaucracy to operate with surgical precision. Accepting censorship of offensive speech means accepting the collateral damage of censoring some ordinary speech, due to incompetence. In the other worse case, the definition of “hate speech” will be abused to provide political cover to remove speech that censors simply don’t like. Perhaps everyone, including black people, would be better off if we all stood behind the spirit and law of free speech.
- 40acres 8y agoSlavery and the genocide of Native peoples is America's original sin. The legacy of racist policies permeates through every aspect of American life -- Silicon Valley is NOT an exception, liberal havens are NOT an exception. North East Portland is a traditionally black neighborhood, but now I see more "Black Lives Matter" lawn signs that Black people. It's not a surprise that being black at Facebook is a tough experience, as all of us who are black in tech know. Being 2-3% of the population would be tough for anyone to deal. Add on to that the very real notion of "micro-aggressions". My girlfriend was delivering a presentation and a manager literally admitted to day dreaming about which way she braided her hair that day, it totally threw her off base. At the end of the day a majority of us who are black in tech are dealing with death by paper cut as we try and traverse through our careers. Employee groups have been a big help to me, all I can recommend is to try to integrate yourself with other black employees at your organization -- there is strength in numbers.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- gammateam 8y agoSure I’ll add on to the black engineer diaspora. I find this industry selects for and exacerbates social anxiety issues amongst almost any demographic. “Is this one of those circumstances where a cabal of men misunderstand my ability to contribute to their company?” Most experience comments I’ve read in this thread are social anxiety related. And then people debate on the quality of that particular social anxiety issue than the similarities of there being social anxiety at all. My experience has been mostly positive and inclusive. But this isnt intended to be another anecdotal data point, this is intended to highlight widespread social anxiety.
- mbrumlow 8y agoI hear these stories of people making racial surls and other accusations of poor treatment of blacks at the work place. I am shocked. I live and work in the south and have never seen anything even remotely like this. It's almost hard to believe this occrus and HR simply does nothing. Of the few non racial issues that HR needed to intervene in it has always been swift removal of the offender and a company wide email. Maybe the south is not so racist ? Side not- bring a minority can't be a complaint. If you are a minority it is just a fact. Being a minority and expecting to walk into a conference room and find many faces like yours is just not an expectation anybody should have. Even if we had a perfect representation of blacks it still is going to feel like a sea of white in any white majority country.
- trashtester 8y agoBlacks comprise about 14% of the US population, but only 1.4% of the top 1% household income. That means that whites are about 10 times more likely to belong to this elite. Many on the intersectional left consider this evidence that blacks are (still) oppressed by whites. Jews comprise about 2.5% of the US population, but about 25% of billionaires are Jewish. That means that Jews are about 10 times more likely than non-Jewish whites to belong to this elite. Nazis consider this evidence that there is a Jewish conspiracy to oppress whites. What is the difference? (Btw, I'm not American, and in my country, there are fairly few of both blacks and Jews, so I see this from the outside.)
- manfredo 8y agoThe pragmatic reality is that if a demographic has generally left-leaning views then this absolves them of the sin of privilege. This plays out on an individual level as well. Consider how many immensely privileged and wealthy individuals don't get called privileged (or at least, don't get called privileged with any significant degree of intensity) with the rationale that their support of progressive ideals absolves them of their privilege. This is the reason why I outwardly exaggerate support for things like discriminatory hiring policies that favor women and URMs. If I fail to signal the right virtues, then I will be considered (racist | sexist | *phobic) and my professional reputation and opportunities will suffer.
- maa5444 8y agohi guys Black ... in the meanwhile focus to make Africa great and prosperous fighting the foreigners who are stealing from you every day... one day you might experience the trill of behaving racist with some Asians or caucasian dudes not sure if you agree ... because diversity will always be part of our society and related racism for who is different