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That would mean that Facebook basically unfixable unless you fire/replace everyone. That doesn't bode well.

badfrog 8y ago
The generous interpretation would be that the people who are there "because of what's in the press" want to fix the problems.
- hopler 8y ago
  You can't fix things when all the politically important decisions are made in the C suite. Even the Chief Security Officer quit and said Facebook is hopeless.
  - throwawaymath 8y ago
    Alex Stamos has never said "Facebook is hopeless." He has also never said anything to that effect in not so few words. His take on Facebook was, and continues to be, nuanced - he has said that Facebook has deep seated challenges, but never intimated that he believes they're insurmountable. In fact, now I'm challenging you to cite this. Why say things like this if they're not true? Any broader point about Facebook doesn't even hinge on the veracity of this claim, I don't get it.
ed312 8y ago
A lot of devs just want to work on cool stuff, which FB has plenty of, and ignore "politics".
- HillRat 8y ago
  That’s the issue, innit? All the extremely cool tech is the prerequisite for the privacy-invading, democracy-busting, user-hostile, ethics-dismissing business model of the company. You can’t disentangle the “cool stuff” from the “bad stuff,” any more than a dev for the NSA plausibly can, and we as technologists have to grapple with the moral consequences of doing cool stuff for bad people. Or, to quote Tom Lehrer, "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? / “That's not my department" says Wernher von Braun
- paulcole 8y ago
  Why is it that rich white guys are always the ones who want to ignore “politics”? Edit: Why downvote this?
  - deogeo 8y ago
    If your logic is that people at facebook want to ignore politics, perhaps you'd be better off directing your question at asians? Whites are 46% of facebook employees (underrepresented to the point of being a minority there), while asians are 41% (over-represented by a factor of ~4 vs. the general population): https://www.facebook.com/careers/diversity-report https://www.facebook.com/careers/diversity-report
    - paulcole 8y ago
      Anecdotally, every time I've heard the phrase "I want to keep politics out of this," it's been uttered by some rich white dude. I don't see why Facebook would be any different.
coldtea 8y ago
Facebook isn't a problem because of its people's personalities, it is a problem because of its business model.
saiya-jin 8y ago
Not everybody, just upper management all the way to Zuckenberg including. They set the moral bars in projects they focus on, and most people just follow. Since name above is quite far from moral person from most news I was able to see related to him/FB, what you state is most probably correct.
dspillett 8y ago
> everyone No, just the actively bad ones. The ones who bobble along regardless because their individual tasks are not evil would bobble along just the same in a regime that does care more about doing the right thing (or, at least, doing the wrong thing less). Unfortunately the actively bad ones are probably good at hiding behind the more apathetic, throwing a few of them under the proverbial bus every now and then.
CamTin 8y ago
(almost) nobody would dream of working for Facebook if the salaries weren't there. The "problem" with the games industry, and other industries with prestige jobs like publishing, film, etc., is that their toxicity derives from the drive of jobseekers to desire these jobs all out of proportion with their benefits and compensation. There's nothing inherent with the production of computer games that requires this attitude other than employees' and jobseekers' irrational (and very human) love of games. There are exploitative games that are bad, but there's no reason that all games have to be this way. Facebook is toxic because it fundamentally makes money in an exploitative way that is bad. There is no way for Facebook to both be a business and not be sleezy. I think it's potentially possible we could build something Facebook-like as a non-business, but if we expect it to make a return for investors, it absolutely has to do fundamentally objectionable things to its users and society.

The generous interpretation would be that the people who are there "because of what's in the press" want to fix the problems.

hopler 8y ago
You can't fix things when all the politically important decisions are made in the C suite. Even the Chief Security Officer quit and said Facebook is hopeless.
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  Alex Stamos has never said "Facebook is hopeless." He has also never said anything to that effect in not so few words. His take on Facebook was, and continues to be, nuanced - he has said that Facebook has deep seated challenges, but never intimated that he believes they're insurmountable. In fact, now I'm challenging you to cite this. Why say things like this if they're not true? Any broader point about Facebook doesn't even hinge on the veracity of this claim, I don't get it.

ed312 8y ago

A lot of devs just want to work on cool stuff, which FB has plenty of, and ignore "politics".

HillRat 8y ago
That’s the issue, innit? All the extremely cool tech is the prerequisite for the privacy-invading, democracy-busting, user-hostile, ethics-dismissing business model of the company. You can’t disentangle the “cool stuff” from the “bad stuff,” any more than a dev for the NSA plausibly can, and we as technologists have to grapple with the moral consequences of doing cool stuff for bad people. Or, to quote Tom Lehrer, "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? / “That's not my department" says Wernher von Braun
paulcole 8y ago
Why is it that rich white guys are always the ones who want to ignore “politics”? Edit: Why downvote this?
- deogeo 8y ago
  If your logic is that people at facebook want to ignore politics, perhaps you'd be better off directing your question at asians? Whites are 46% of facebook employees (underrepresented to the point of being a minority there), while asians are 41% (over-represented by a factor of ~4 vs. the general population): https://www.facebook.com/careers/diversity-report https://www.facebook.com/careers/diversity-report
  - paulcole 8y ago
    Anecdotally, every time I've heard the phrase "I want to keep politics out of this," it's been uttered by some rich white dude. I don't see why Facebook would be any different.

coldtea 8y ago

Facebook isn't a problem because of its people's personalities, it is a problem because of its business model.

saiya-jin 8y ago

Not everybody, just upper management all the way to Zuckenberg including. They set the moral bars in projects they focus on, and most people just follow. Since name above is quite far from moral person from most news I was able to see related to him/FB, what you state is most probably correct.

dspillett 8y ago

> everyone No, just the actively bad ones. The ones who bobble along regardless because their individual tasks are not evil would bobble along just the same in a regime that does care more about doing the right thing (or, at least, doing the wrong thing less). Unfortunately the actively bad ones are probably good at hiding behind the more apathetic, throwing a few of them under the proverbial bus every now and then.

CamTin 8y ago

(almost) nobody would dream of working for Facebook if the salaries weren't there. The "problem" with the games industry, and other industries with prestige jobs like publishing, film, etc., is that their toxicity derives from the drive of jobseekers to desire these jobs all out of proportion with their benefits and compensation. There's nothing inherent with the production of computer games that requires this attitude other than employees' and jobseekers' irrational (and very human) love of games. There are exploitative games that are bad, but there's no reason that all games have to be this way. Facebook is toxic because it fundamentally makes money in an exploitative way that is bad. There is no way for Facebook to both be a business and not be sleezy. I think it's potentially possible we could build something Facebook-like as a non-business, but if we expect it to make a return for investors, it absolutely has to do fundamentally objectionable things to its users and society.