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I've always wondered how such discussions go in company meetings where some product/feature has harmful effect of something/someone but is good for the business

by yumraj 6y ago

I've always wondered how such discussions go in company meetings where some product/feature has harmful effect of something/someone but is good for the business of the company. I cannot believe that everyone is ethicality challenged, only perhaps the people in control. So what goes through that minds of people who don't agree with such decisions. Do they keep quiet, just worry about the payroll, convince themselves that what the management is selling is a good argument for such product/service.... Luckily I've never had to face such a dilemma, but can't be envious of those who have faced and come out of it by losing either their morals or jobs.

troughway 6y ago
Where do you draw the line? If the customers are willing to pay a huge markup on a product, who are you to tell them wiser? - youdontchargeenough11 (probably)
- yumraj 6y ago
  This is more than just a price markup.. This is more like a pharma company or Monsanto knowing that their product kills, but ignore or hide the data and keep selling the product.
  - troughway 6y ago
    Division on FB started out as squabbles between friends and relatives. And yet, here we are.
danharaj 6y ago
Capitalist systems sieve out people whose goals are at odds with the accumulation of capital. By the time you get to a boardroom, everyone has been tested hundreds of times for their loyalty to profit. All deviations are unstable: over a long enough period of time they will be replaced or outcompeted.
- pm90 6y ago
  Not sure why this comment is being downvoted. The people who rise through the ranks are exactly the kind unburdened by ethical or moral issues that get in the way of the business generating revenue. In fact, such folks use their short term gains from breaking such implicit expectations to jettison themselves ahead of their peers. As such, this kind of behavior is incentivized. Those with such issues either quit or work in non controversial parts of the org.
  - danharaj 6y ago
    When you describe capitalist processes, some people take it as if you are making a morally charged argument.
    - asveikau 6y ago
      I think there is a crowd that kneejerk downvotes ideas they interpret as anti-capitalist, without reading the argument. An example: I am not a Marxist. But I think the Marxist question of "surplus value" as an ethical question is relevant and interesting. I pointed it out on HN a few times. Again, without being a Marxist, just intellectually curious. Nobody ever asks me if I am really a Marxist. I get downvoted pretty severely when I point it out. I get an impression that they smell a whiff of the opposing sports team and turn negative.
      - danharaj 6y ago
        Ugh, such strong language. Please censor it as M*rx or, better yet, "literally Satan".
      - selimthegrim 6y ago
        I don’t ask people if hey are really Marxists because when I have in the past I get accused of “pigeonholing” their idea(s)
        selimthegrim 6y ago
miguelmota 6y ago
It's kind of a combination of all the above. Majority of employees are working for a paycheck and they don’t really care what goes on as long as they get paid. If the person is in an executive type role then their goal is to increase revenue so they convince themselves that it’s good for the company.
- thomasjudge 6y ago
  This seems very near the moral vacuity of the "just following orders" defense
  - StillBored 6y ago
    For the beta roles (because I can't help mapping wolf/pack behavior to most corp meetings anymore) about all a person can do is mount a weak defense. Which gets ignored by upper mgmt as they justify ASPD with a framework that says the number one priority is the corporate profit statement. What percentage of people in these meetings are so wealthy they can risk everything over morally gray area decisions like this? Further how many can get away with it repeatedly should they choose to fight a battle like this?
    - eropple 6y ago
      Few people in such a meeting are "risk[ing] everything". I've quit jobs rather than doing sketchy things. For people in these industries, there's always a next job.
      - StillBored 6y ago
        I don't think this is a question of someone doing "sketchy" things. Its a question of someone in the room questioning a morally questionable action, being implemented by a part of the organization as a whole. Quiting over it, or whatever likely doesn't even have an effect. Someone on the team required to implement it is going to follow the bosses orders. This appears to have happened a few times with members of the US president's cabinet over the past few years. So, its more a "stay and fight" or "get rolled over and threaten/quit" decision. I'm betting most people just weigh the monthly mortgage payment against that and they raise the issue, but it doesn't get pushed beyond the discussion phase. If this goes on long enough, they switch jobs, or they become that person that just keeps their head down and do what they are told.
kace91 6y ago
I've been there, obviously not to the level of a facebook board member. IMO the feeling is not really that different from making choices as a consumer ("was this shirt made by child labor?", "was the animal this meat comes from treated humanely?", etc). People tend to turn a blind eye to those questions unless something comes up that hits close to home. To be clear, I'm not saying that's justifiable or a good mindset to have, just what I think happens.
- _bxg1 6y ago
  That may apply in many cases, but I don't think an engineer or manager at Facebook can use that excuse. They'd have lots of other options.
- dfxm12 6y ago
  I disagree and think it is significantly different. Facebook decision makers have way more agency in the directions their company takes than a consumer has in their choice of clothes to buy at Target (or wherever). Shirt consumers don't have much of a choice. They can only buy what's for sale (and in their price range). And then, how can they be sure if a shirt was or wasn't made by child labor? How would an individual consumer's behavior lead to ending child labor? According to the article, Facebook execs understood what the product was doing, and, while they have the ability to stop it, don't. Maybe I understand what you're saying if we're talking engineers/middle managers, but that's a boring conversation. The buck has to stop somewhere.
  - lol636363 6y ago
    As consumer, you may not be able to stop child labor but you can vote with your wallet. Several of my friends buy clothes from a few vetted brands because of exactly this issue. Then I have another friend who was huge cruise ships fan. He encouraged me to go on my first cruise too. But then there was a report about mistreatment of cruiseship employees, and he is totally against cruiseships now. His actions probably won't change anything alone but if enough consumers start to act like him, a change may happen.
    - 6y ago
Hokusai 6y ago
Boeing 737 MAX killed 346 people. So, it seems that death is not a deterrent. The mails from the case are good to understand the internal discussions: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jan/10/737-max-scandal-the-internal-boeing-messages-and-emails https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jan/10/737-max-sca...
- nickff 6y ago
  > "Boeing 737 MAX killed 346 people. So, it seems that death is not a deterrent." I really don't understand your point, unless you're implying that there was a meeting where Boeing planned to kill those people. I am not an aviation expert, but what happened with the MAX seems to be a product of the certification process, urgent business needs, systems engineering issues, and bad internal communications at Boeing. I haven't seen any evidence that someone specifically predicted the chain of events which would unfold on those flights, and clearly communicated the issue, then had executive(s) respond that it was 'worth the money'. As an aside, I have seen quotes about the 787, which were similar to those in your linked article (mostly with respect to production quality issues), yet the 787 has not had similar accidents. One problem with working on such huge projects is that the line engineers do not understand that managers are constantly hearing alarmist 'warnings' which don't pan out. If 1% of Boeing staff give false alarms in a year, that means there are 1600 false alarms.
  - Hokusai 6y ago
    > I haven't seen any evidence that someone specifically predicted the chain of events which would unfold on those flights, and clearly communicated the issue, then had executive(s) respond that it was 'worth the money'. People understand the consequences of what they say. I doubt that most people will say that statements out loud, even when they know that are true. But, people knew and money was involved. * February 2018 “I don’t know how to refer to the very very few of us on the program who are interested only in truth…” “Would you put your family on a MAX simulator trained aircraft? I wouldn’t.” “No.” * August 2015 “I just Jedi mind tricked this fools. I should be given $1000 every time I take one of these calls. I save this company a sick amount of $$$$.”
pacala 6y ago
As actors in the World, we are machines that turns sensor data into a linear stream of actions. To the extent the decision process in not completely random, there exists a metric that ends up maximized by the decision process, sometimes referred to as 'god' or even 'God'. The vast majority of economic decision processes in the modern economy are driven by one metric: money, sometimes referred to as 'Mammon'. A corporation is an aggregation of human / computerized actors that work to maximize the corporation metric: money earned by said corporation. The discussions are very simple: Course of action A makes us X$, course of action B makes us XXX$. Therefore course of action B is taken. There is no consideration of other effects besides, perhaps, a quantization of risks. Risk of losing the 'good guys' facade, counterbalanced by PR expenses, or risk of being sued, counterbalanced by legal expenses.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
truculent 6y ago
You don't apply, don't get hired, or don't get promoted, depending on how effective their hiring processes are.
- yumraj 6y ago
  That leads me to another question: are there people/companies who will not hire someone who has been an employee of FB?
  - babesh 6y ago
    I have heard someone spouting that but it was all baloney since that person supported actions just as bad.
  - truculent 6y ago
    That seems generally unlikely to me, but it’s a big ol’ world out there so I am sure it has occurred someplace
gabaix 6y ago
Facebook internal memo by Andrew Bosworth, VP June 18, 2016 The Ugly We talk about the good and the bad of our work often. I want to talk about the ugly. We connect people. That can be good if they make it positive. Maybe someone finds love. Maybe it even saves the life of someone on the brink of suicide. So we connect more people That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people. The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is de facto good. It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned. That isn’t something we are doing for ourselves. Or for our stock price (ha!). It is literally just what we do. We connect people. Period. That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it. The natural state of the world is not connected. It is not unified. It is fragmented by borders, languages, and increasingly by different products. The best products don’t win. The ones everyone use win. I know a lot of people don’t want to hear this. Most of us have the luxury of working in the warm glow of building products consumers love. But make no mistake, growth tactics are how we got here. If you joined the company because it is doing great work, that’s why we get to do that great work. We do have great products but we still wouldn’t be half our size without pushing the envelope on growth. Nothing makes Facebook as valuable as having your friends on it, and no product decisions have gotten as many friends on as the ones made in growth. Not photo tagging. Not news feed. Not messenger. Nothing. In almost all of our work, we have to answer hard questions about what we believe. We have to justify the metrics and make sure they aren’t losing out on a bigger picture. But connecting people. That’s our imperative. Because that’s what we do. We connect people. Shortly after the leak Bosworth distanced himself from the post. https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/29/17178086/facebook-growth-memo-leak-boz-andrew-bosworth https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/29/17178086/facebook-growth-...
- nkozyra 6y ago
  Even that is very handwave-y. It talks about "connections" and events, but not that the algorithm (in the broad, commonly-used sense) encourages and incentivizes that which builds "engagement."
coliveira 6y ago
The discussions in this article are never shared with employees, it is just a matter raised in closed high level board meetings. Companies never discuss openly negative positions, and if they do it is only to dismiss them.
Spooky23 6y ago
People are capable of all sorts of mental gymnastics to keep things at arm's length. Bad practice X is because of group Y or requirement Z.
MattGaiser 6y ago
People tend to rationalize it as not that ethically challenging or by compensating through some other societal benefit. I knew someone who ran a FB group that devolved into conspiracy theories and absurd levels of anger to the point that members of the group were lashing out at local politicians. The group owner liked the power and influence so rationalized it as "increasing public engagement in politics." This person is otherwise a vegetarian who fosters animals and works in the medical field.
_bxg1 6y ago
I think it's mostly denialism (which is cultivated by management). This is a great article about it: https://newrepublic.com/article/155212/worked-capital-one-five-years-justified-piling-debt-poor-customers?__twitter_impression=true https://newrepublic.com/article/155212/worked-capital-one-fi...
toshk 6y ago
From my experience there are very strong currents in a group that are very hard to go against as an individual. Only very contrarian people will go against the grain in formal meetings with high level executives or other individuals with status in a group. This is why often big organizations are able to produce decisions that the team behind it doesn't agree with and that look silly from the outside. Many people in such a team will not feel personally responsible because they feel like they didn't have any influence on the decision making proces, even if they could have said something. There are other dynamics at play I think, but this is one of them. (The contrarians seem to not survive long in the corporate world)
- abawany 6y ago
  Also, IME, if you do say something, others jump down your throat quickly and viciously. I still remember this one former cow-orker and his words: 'they debate, they decide, we deliver': this project ended up losing the company millions and left it as a has-been in ecommerce because people chose to accept and support the utter insanity that was going on right in front of their faces.
- rewoi 6y ago
  As a programmer I am not responsible (and paid) for management decisions. It is also not my job to fix toxic culture in a company.
  - hnruss 6y ago
    As management is responsible for bad management decisions, so too is the programmer responsible for implementing bad decisions.
    - rewoi 6y ago
      Programmer can still implement bad decision very well :)
- sjg007 6y ago
  This dynamic is present in FB the website as well. You find clusters or groups of folks who re-amplify a point. It's so effective that you can find "Re-Open" rallies in your state driven by a shady "gun-rights" nonprofit. Even though polling largely supports the lock down and actions taken to curb the pandemic. You also find that outside the group people are a lot more nuanced and reasonable. It's fascinating. What is even more concerning is that a lot of bots drive this behavior. I think the issue is that in the long term it dilutes FB. I know many people who don't post on FB, preferring Instagram etc... I know these are still FB platforms but it's a big shift. So FB will eventually become Usenet and effectively non-functional. There's some type of social network that's between Instagram and FB that doesn't exist yet.
analyst74 6y ago
Not at boardroom level, but I was in a couple meetings in past jobs where this happened. In one case, people had different ideas of what's more ethical/user friendly, since we can't resolve those disagreements with more arguing, we go with metrics, and metrics have no morality. In another case, everyone agreed that it was slightly shady, but it was a highly competitive market and we have to do it to stay alive. On the bright side, if a company ventures too deep into bad practices, it will eventually lose trust of the public. Which is why the capitalistic world hasn't descended into complete madness portrayed in dystopian sci/fi films.
zarkov99 6y ago
They quit. The process selects for the most sociopathic because the fitness function is heavily weighted towards bringing profits in the short term. Ethics are only a consideration to the extent that they affect public perception (hence profits) or safeguard against litigation ( protecting profits).
zelon88 6y ago
I've typically found my employment via companies who deal with a variety of contracts, some of them for weapons or defense contractors. I could go down the rabbit hole of chasing down all those contracts and would probably find that many of the products my company makes get sold to groups and causes that I don't support. But in the end; I've gotta eat. Do I want to throw away my career which is 99% unrelated to the SJW cause I support just because 5% of our products eventually get used against that cause. What about the 95% of our products which go to worthy causes? I'll say it again... I just gotta eat, man. What's good for the gander is probably good for the goose too.
- whatshisface 6y ago
  Products that may be sold to terrorists include canned beans and Toyota trucks. Your situation might actually be less morally compromising than the Facebook stuff being discussed, because in their case they are the "questionably motivated 'freedom fighters,'" (i.e. they're directly doing the morally questionable stuff) whereas you're just selling stuff to a broad market that may include questionably motivated "freedom fighters." It's sort of the difference between selling lockpicks that may eventually be used in a burglary or might also be used to get Grandma's safe open, versus breaking in yourself.
- eropple 6y ago
  Forgive me for the bluntness, but nobody with any set of technical skills "gotta eat" by supporting those kinds of efforts. I've worked to practice what I preach, too; I've consistently worked in do-no-harm jobs. I make rowing machines today and the worst you can hang on me from the past is that I had a daily-fantasy-sports site for a client for a while (which I'm not proud of but it's a pretty venal sin)--and I have made more than enough money to do very well for myself.
- peruvian 6y ago
  If you're working for defense or weapons contracts you're supporting the industry that has kept us in the Middle East for almost two decades. I agree that it's often a moral grey zone but in this case it's pretty clear. If you're an engineer there's plenty of other companies to choose from.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bjt2n3904 6y ago
> I've always wondered how such discussions go in company meetings where some product/feature has harmful effect of something/someone but is good for the business of the company. I mean, it's one thing if we're talking about something like an airbag, where harm can result from normal usage because of a design flaw. It's another thing to talk about the Ford Pinto -- where harm could happen due to accidental misusage. Does Facebook encourage division? Do ice cream ads encourage obesity? Or alcohol ads encourage drunk driving? (I get that Facebook's "engagement algorithms" are designed to maximize profit, and has a side effect of showing you things that are upsetting and frustrating... but that isn't their design. I'm no fan of "the algorithm", and don't think they should use it, but I think they should be free to.) In this instance, I don't think it's fair to say Facebook has a "harmful effect". The abuse, misuse, and addiction to Facebook can be harmful, for sure... but that's not Facebook's fault. That's the end user's fault. Should Facebook come with a warning label, like cigarettes? I don't think so. (I also don't think cigarettes should be mandated to come with images of people dying of lung cancer when alcohol can be sold without images of people with liver disease... but I digress.) Everyone wants to "mitigate harm". But you need to be able to separate "harm due to malfunction", "harm due to accidents", and "harm due to abuse". This seems to be firmly in the third category, which is the least concrete and most "squishy" category. Especially squishy, when "harm" is considered to be people saying and/or thinking the wrong things.
- visarga 6y ago
  > In this instance, I don't think it's fair to say Facebook has a "harmful effect". The abuse, misuse, and addiction to Facebook can be harmful, for sure... but that's not Facebook's fault. That's the end user's fault. Yeah, it wasn't me who posted this reply, it was the cells in my body. It's their fault... I think complex systems create effects that go beyond the individual parts. Facebook is running and profiting from such an 'effect' on society. Their right to freely express their creativity by making the feed how they wish should be balanced with the large scale (negative) effects that appear in the system.
throwaway894345 6y ago
> I cannot believe that everyone is ethicality challenged, only perhaps the people in control. Seems likely that social media as an industry selects more strongly for unethical executives, presumably because online advertising is the only effective way to monetize social media and it is more or less fundamentally unethical. I imagine the same effect can be observed among tobacco and fossil energy executives--these are industries where there is no ethical monetization strategy, at least not one that is in the same competitive ballpark as the unethical strategy.
- ptudan 6y ago
  Online advertising as a concept is fundamentally unethical? I think you're speaking in hyperbole here. Stealing user data without consent (or with fake here read this 500 pg legalise consent) is unethical for certain. But a bike blog putting ads for bike saddles on the bottom of their page to pay for their server costs and writing staff? Hard to see how that's unethical unless you think selling anything is unethical.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    > Online advertising as a concept is fundamentally unethical? No, I meant "online advertising as an industry". It's unethical to the extent that it depends on stealing user data, which presumably is the overwhelming majority of the industry by value (i.e., I'm assuming your privacy-respecting bike saddles ads don't account for even 1% of the industry's value).
- spaced-out 6y ago
  >Seems likely that social media as an industry selects more strongly for unethical executives More so than the fossil fuel industry? Big tobacco? Or the pharmaceutical industry? Wallstreet? Clothing/apparel manufacturers?
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    > More so than the fossil fuel industry? Big tobacco? I already addressed this in my second sentence: > I imagine the same effect can be observed among tobacco and fossil energy executives No, that wasn't meant to be an exhaustive list of unethical industries.
mc32 6y ago
What kind of harm do you propose is the kind that should have pushback? Movie executives discuss (do they even?) the ramifications of their movies which glorify ills? Do they censor violence, suicide, etc?
- Hokusai 6y ago
  > What kind of harm do you propose is the kind that should have pushback? "Some 700,000 members of the Rohingya community had recently fled the country amid a military crackdown and ethnic violence. In March, a United Nations investigator said Facebook was used to incite violence and hatred against the Muslim minority group. The platform, she said, had “turned into a beast.”" https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/myanmar-facebook-hate/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/myanmar-...
  - mc32 6y ago
    So why facebook but not movies and TV over the air or streamed via other platforms? What, because it comes from studios and other sanctioned organs? Are they above propaganda and above having agendas? I’m not saying FB is not culpable, but I’m saying if they are, then so are others.
    - Hokusai 6y ago
      > above having agendas? Having an agenda is normal and is good. Everybody that plans for the future has an agenda. What is wrong is to have a "hidden agenda". A "hidden agenda" is wrong because is a form of manipulation. When an organization has a "hidden agenda" means that they are lying to achieve a goal that they are hiding. If a movie agenda is to "create awareness of human trafficking", and it shows how "human trafficking" impacts peoples lives, that is not "hidden" and it is actually an agenda that most people supports. So, to have an agenda is intelligent, needed, common, awesome behavior. Stones have no-agenda, rocks have no agenda. To have a "hidden agenda" is what should be criticized. Why will anyone think that to have an agenda is bad?
babesh 6y ago
I have an example. We built a feature that would be good for users. However we found out that it would result in lost revenue. The decision of whether to keep the feature got bounced up management. Eventually we were told to can the feature and that the decision was made at the very top. Keeping it would have affected quarterly revenues. So no go. That showed me what kind of company it was. The decision went directly against one of the company’s supposed core values. This was not a small company. Don’t work there anymore.
crazygringo 6y ago
> I cannot believe that everyone is ethicality challenged No, but it's not always clear what the ethical choice is. In philosophy, this is known as pluralism [1] -- the fact that different people have irreconcilable ethical views, with no way to find any "truth". That might seem like a lot of justificatory mumbo-jumbo, but there are genuine ethical arguments on all sides. For example, did you know that in the postwar 1950's, the lack of polarization and divisiveness in American society was seen by many as a major problem, because it didn't provide enough voter choice between the two parties? [2] There are also plenty of ethical arguments that giving people what's "good for them", rather than what they want (click on) would run counter to their personal autonomy, and therefore against their freedom. This is what critics of paternalism believe. [3] Then there's the neoliberal argument that markets always work best (absent market failure). That most of human progress over the past couple of centuries has resulted from companies doing what's most profitable, despite how non-intuitive that is. In that sense, Facebook doing what makes the most money is ethically right. I'm not saying I agree with any of these -- in fact, I don't. But I am saying that supposing there's some kind of obvious right ethical answer, and implying bad faith towards people at Facebook that they're somehow making decisions they genuinely believe to be wrong but making anyways, is not accurate. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralism_(political_philosophy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralism_(political_philosoph... [2] https://newrepublic.com/article/157599/were-not-polarized-enough-ezra-klein-book-review https://newrepublic.com/article/157599/were-not-polarized-en... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternalism
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > For example, did you know that in the postwar 1950's, the lack of polarization and divisiveness in American society was widely seen as a major problem, because it didn't provide enough voter choice between the two parties? There was not a lack of polarization and divisiveness in American society. The divides in American society and politics didn't map well to the two major political parties because there was a major political realignment in progress and the parties hadn't yet aligned with the divides in society. The problem was the divide between the major parties not being sharp on the issues where there were, in fact, sharp, polarizing divides in society, preventing members of the public from effectuating their preferences on salient issues by voting.
NoodleIncident 6y ago
> some product/feature has harmful effect of something/someone but is good for the business of the company If you start with such black-and-white assumptions, you will never be able to actually empathize with those people. Nothing is that simple when you're close enough to see the details. Things good for the company should be and frequently are good for the people using the product. The same thing can also harm the same people, or a different set of people, or the company, in a way that's impossible to disentangle from the good. There's a whole back and forth about Facebook and political divisions. It starts with someone assuming that tech companies put people in bubbles and echochambers, assuming they'll only be engaged with stuff they agree with. Then you run the numbers, and realize that people are far more isolated from opposing opinions in real life than they are on the internet, you interact with more people online, and they censor themselves less. But at the same time, you can change your mind about echochambers, and decide that this is a bad thing, being exposed to different opinions makes you more entrenched in what you actually believe. It's never as simple as "this is bad for everyone except us but at least we're getting rich". Everything has more nuance than that when you experience it up close
- DSingularity 6y ago
  People are more isolated in the real world? Please provide a source. Aside from the fact that this is hard to measure now that the underlying medium has itself been modified — I would hardly expect this to be the case. Online I am connected to those whom I socialize with or am otherwise professionally connected to. In the “real world” this constraint is largely absent.
  - creddit 6y ago
    I highly doubt you and I are socially or professionally connected and yet here we are.
    - _tulpa 6y ago
      This connection doesn't mean shit compared to someone you see face to face and share experiences with. Yet this watered down form of connection seems to have replaced the latter, which I think is the fundamental social problem of the internet.
jhowell 6y ago
I think what happened here is a little different than how you describe. For me, it seems they had a hypothesis, found support for their hypothesis, then changed its definition for speculative motivations with tangible harm.
DataWorker 6y ago
Nobody thinks they are complicit but in reality we all are. Some can accept this while others let the cognitive dissonance drive their behavior in convoluted and hard to discern ways. Redemption only comes after accepting that we’re born of original sin. Anybody who supports or uses non-free software has worked to finance the amoral tech decision making that you’re decrying. Even Stallman makes compromises. Welcome to modernity.
dahart 6y ago
> I cannot believe that everyone is ethically challenged Right, so what assumptions are leading to the conclusion that this situation can only be caused by everyone being ethically challenged? Are ethics shared and absolute enough for the answer to this question to be easy or black & white? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism > Luckily I’ve never had to face such a dilemma Are you certain about that? I realize you’re talking specifically about C-level execs debating something in a board room, but consider the ways that we all face lesser versions of the same dilemma. For example, do you ever consume and/or pay money for things that are generally harmful to society? Environmental concerns are easy to pick on since more or less everything we buy has negative environmental effects... ever bought a car? flown on an airplane? Smoked a cigarette or enjoyed a backyard fire pit? Bought anything unnecessarily wrapped in plastic? It’s really hard to make the less harmful choice, and a lot of people don’t care at all, so by and large as a society we put up with the harm in favor of convenience. As consumers, we are at least half of the equation that is leading to socially harmful products existing. If we didn’t consume it, the company meetings wouldn’t have anything to debate.
pdkl95 6y ago
> I cannot believe that everyone is ethicality challenged The difficult ethical discussion probably never happens. The decisions being made in those meetings are usually seen as small/inconsequential. The problems caused by those "small" decisions are ignored. Eventually those problems become normalized allowing another "small" decision to be made. Humans seem to be very bad at recognizing how a set of "small" decisions eventually add up to major - sometimes shocking[1] - consequences that nobody would have approved if asked directly. Most of the time, nobody realizes just how deviant their situation had become. For a good explanation of the mechanism underlying the normalization of deviance (as an abstract model), I strongly recommend this[2] short talk by Richard Cook. [1] https://blog.aopa.org/aopa/2015/12/07/the-normalization-of-deviance/ https://blog.aopa.org/aopa/2015/12/07/the-normalization-of-d... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLYEDpNu60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLYEDpNu60 ("Resilience In Complex Adaptive Systems")
dmitrygr 6y ago
I've been there at Google a few times and can imagine exactly how this went :/. The one time I can tell about is the blogger disaster [1]. The top leadership, spearheaded by chief of legal was basically ignoring everyone's logical arguments at the meetings, the town halls, etc. We kept coming to the mic and telling them that their ideas of what is and isn't sexual are arbitrary, as are anyone else's. They said "no, we have experts and we have a clear definition" (they didn't). We explained that post-facto removing content people wrote is cruel and unnecessary. They claimed "nobody would care or miss it". (of course they would). We told them that this will hurt transgender people, who used to find support in blogs of others going through the same life challenges and blogging about it. Those blogs would be banned under the policy. They said they had data that impact would be minimal. (They had no data). Normal rank-and-file people at google all knew the idea was a bad one. We fought hard. They scheduled a 8-am townhall and announced it the day before at 9pm! We showed up anyways en masse! There was a line to the microphone! They had microphones in the audience. I walked up and directly asked for the "data" they claimed to have showing no impact will be had. They claimed and I quote "we have no hardcore data" (audience was laughing at the word choice given the topic). I said that "well, then how can you claim to be making a data-driven decision?" Drummond answered that "we know this is right and we are sure." The town hall was a waste of time. Nothing we said was heard and all they did was recite lines at us from the stage that made it look like either they did not understand what we had to say, or they were trying very hard to appear to not understand. Both sides were talking, but nothing we said seemed to change their mind, They came there to deliver a policy, not to collect feedback on it, despite claiming this was a meeting to discuss it. That was clear. We did not give up. Google's TGIF was the next day. A number of people came there early and lined up and the microphones, ready to bring this up again and again. In front of the whole company and the CEO as well (Larry and Sergey were not at the town hall and claimed to have not heard of the policy until "the ruckus started"). I guess they saw the large line of people and relented. Before the scheduled TGIF began they announced they will reverse the policy. This was a rare victory, for this sort of a situation. I am willing to bet that there are lots of good people at facebook who also fought as hard or harder against this. They just probably lost. Having seen how this plays out internally, I am not surprised, just sad. To anyone at FB who fought against this, I send you my thanks! [1] https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/23/google-bans-sexually-explicit-content-from-websites-hosted-on-blogger/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/23/google-bans-sexually-expli...
threatofrain 6y ago
Almost everyone is ethically challenged, we just need the right circumstances for particular expressions to emerge. The people who do right and wrong by you might be alternative persons under alternative scenarios. The very poor and very rich are often placed in front of ethically interesting bargains, such as a trade of life for money, whereas Hacker News has trouble even daring to ballpark the dollar value to life -- a middle class aesthetic where one has neither the resources nor the desperation to trade in flesh.
jimmaswell 6y ago
I'm ethicality challenged if I think the biggest (or at least up there) forum of public discourse shouldn't be micromanaged like a day care, with "divisive" people sent to time out? Is it unthinkable to you that some people value free expression over being protected from negativity?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
xapata 6y ago
> how such discussions go In my case, I told my manager about a system design problem that would cause a daily annoyance to 100k people, forcing them to input their passwords more often than necessary. He said, "they'll accept it." I said, "I quit."
carapace 6y ago
> I cannot believe that everyone is ethicality (sic) challenged... Why not? Ockham's Razor says to accept the most parsimonious explanation, and I think that's it. I mean look at little kids: they're amoral monsters. If they weren't so cute our species would have gone extinct ages ago. Look at our methods to train ourselves to be better people: religions cause wars while "Wolf of Wallstreet" is a big hit. ($392 million worldwide.) Look at our leaders.
- AlexandrB 6y ago
  The Wolf of Wallstreet was a scathing critique of capitalist excess. To think otherwise is to consider a lifestyle where your wife hates you and you crash your car on quaaludes because you've got nothing better going on glamorous.
  - carapace 6y ago
    I didn't see it. All I know about it comes from Christina McDowell's open letter: https://www.laweekly.com/an-open-letter-to-the-makers-of-the-wolf-of-wall-street-and-the-wolf-himself/ https://www.laweekly.com/an-open-letter-to-the-makers-of-the... > Your film is a reckless attempt at continuing to pretend that these sorts of schemes are entertaining, even as the country is reeling from yet another round of Wall Street scandals. We want to get lost in what? These phony financiers' fun sexcapades and coke binges? Come on, we know the truth. This kind of behavior brought America to its knees. My point is that we did find it entertaining to the tune of $0.4B, and that doesn't bode well for our general level of moral development.
  - carapace 6y ago
    FWIW I just found this fascinating tangent: https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-perfect-irony-that-the-wolf-of-wall-street-was-also-a-real-life-scam https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-perfect-irony-that-t... > THE PERFECT IRONY THAT ‘THE WOLF OF WALL STREET’ FILM WAS ALSO A REAL-LIFE SCAM (caps in original) > How Leo got caught up in a money-laundering scheme that screwed the Malaysian people out of billions.
ummonk 6y ago
Is it clear that echo chambers and polarized discussion are good for the bottom line? I imagine they help with user growth and user retention, but would people engaged in these polarized echo chambers actually spend more on advertised products?
standardUser 6y ago
I've been in that situation. I argued as much as I felt I could get away with and made the strongest arguments I could against unethical behavior. I was eventually forced out. A couple years later, the company was investigated by law enforcement and subsequently declared bankruptcy. The people in control were the only ones pushing for the unethical actions, but most others were a lot more quiet than I was and several stuck around until the bitter end.
pwned1 6y ago
The Banality of Evil.
arkades 6y ago
So, I work in healthcare - as a doc, and at various times, as an admin in healthcare centers as well as in health insurance. I don't know how much of that experience relates to FB's behavior, but I have some idea of what it's like to work in a field and be either called a hero or a devil, depending on the day. I am neither. Deep breath. As an industry, we are often doing things that are perceived to be evil. I've noticed the following: 1. Some of that interpretation is just wrong. People from the outside tend to have a poor understanding of what we do (providers, centers, insurers) and draw conclusions based on highly imperfect information. This is compounded by the fact that journalists have a terrible comprehension of what we do and an incentive to dramatize and oversimplify it - resulting in people reading the news and walking away misinformed and wrongly feeling like they're now educated on the topic. This happens a lot. 2. We sometimes do things, or want to do things, that have potential harms and potential benefits - e.g., in health insurance, I'd love to have had the ability to twist people's arms into coming to get a flu shot. It would have been a huge net benefit to their health. It would have been a net reduction in our costs. It would have been great! If we'd had the ability to ignore patient autonomy and force it, or carrot-and-stick it, we probably would have. We would not have conceptualized it as "ignoring patient preference," we would have conceptualized it as "preventing a bunch of preventable hospitalizations and deaths and, for the elderly, permanent consequences of hospitalizations." And that would have been true! And would have allowed us to not think about the trade-off so much. It's not lying to yourself: it's looking at the grey, round-edged parts of a cost-benefit analysis and subjectively leaning it in your direction. My motivation there isn't even about the money - the money just gets it on the radar as something my employer would be willing to prioritize. 3. Resource scarcity. I only have so many resources to allocate. One may benefit a patient X; another may benefit them 10X. If X benefits my organization and the 10x choice doesn't, I'll probably choose X. By itself I'm not choosing to do harm - I'm choosing a win/win. Enough decisions like that, in enough contexts, probably do give rise to net harm. But the choice isn't to do harm. 4. Not every battle can be a "will I burn my career over this?" battle. If I'd ever been faced with a choice that I thought was harm > benefit to patients, I would have burnt the house down over it. But I haven't. I've been faced with lots of little grey questions with uncertain costs and uncertain benefits where there was, in fact, benefit, and usually not just to us but to the patients too. I imagine that's where most organizations go awry: a thousand decisions like this, shaking out under the pervasive organizational need for profit. Like a million million particles of sand moved by the tide, settling out into an overall pattern due to gravity. I think the badness is generally an emergent pattern, not a single person choosing to do evil, or choosing themselves over causing harm to many. I've never been in that position, ever, so either my career is highly anomalous, or that's just not how those choices present themselves in real life. I suspect it's the latter. (Or, I guess, my being amoral is a valid third possibility.)

by yumraj 6y ago

troughway 6y ago

Where do you draw the line? If the customers are willing to pay a huge markup on a product, who are you to tell them wiser? - youdontchargeenough11 (probably)

yumraj 6y ago
This is more than just a price markup.. This is more like a pharma company or Monsanto knowing that their product kills, but ignore or hide the data and keep selling the product.
- troughway 6y ago
  Division on FB started out as squabbles between friends and relatives. And yet, here we are.

danharaj 6y ago

Capitalist systems sieve out people whose goals are at odds with the accumulation of capital. By the time you get to a boardroom, everyone has been tested hundreds of times for their loyalty to profit. All deviations are unstable: over a long enough period of time they will be replaced or outcompeted.

pm90 6y ago
Not sure why this comment is being downvoted. The people who rise through the ranks are exactly the kind unburdened by ethical or moral issues that get in the way of the business generating revenue. In fact, such folks use their short term gains from breaking such implicit expectations to jettison themselves ahead of their peers. As such, this kind of behavior is incentivized. Those with such issues either quit or work in non controversial parts of the org.
- danharaj 6y ago
  When you describe capitalist processes, some people take it as if you are making a morally charged argument.
  - asveikau 6y ago
    I think there is a crowd that kneejerk downvotes ideas they interpret as anti-capitalist, without reading the argument. An example: I am not a Marxist. But I think the Marxist question of "surplus value" as an ethical question is relevant and interesting. I pointed it out on HN a few times. Again, without being a Marxist, just intellectually curious. Nobody ever asks me if I am really a Marxist. I get downvoted pretty severely when I point it out. I get an impression that they smell a whiff of the opposing sports team and turn negative.
    - danharaj 6y ago
      Ugh, such strong language. Please censor it as M*rx or, better yet, "literally Satan".
    - selimthegrim 6y ago
      I don’t ask people if hey are really Marxists because when I have in the past I get accused of “pigeonholing” their idea(s)
      - selimthegrim 6y ago

miguelmota 6y ago

It's kind of a combination of all the above. Majority of employees are working for a paycheck and they don’t really care what goes on as long as they get paid. If the person is in an executive type role then their goal is to increase revenue so they convince themselves that it’s good for the company.

thomasjudge 6y ago
This seems very near the moral vacuity of the "just following orders" defense
- StillBored 6y ago
  For the beta roles (because I can't help mapping wolf/pack behavior to most corp meetings anymore) about all a person can do is mount a weak defense. Which gets ignored by upper mgmt as they justify ASPD with a framework that says the number one priority is the corporate profit statement. What percentage of people in these meetings are so wealthy they can risk everything over morally gray area decisions like this? Further how many can get away with it repeatedly should they choose to fight a battle like this?
  - eropple 6y ago
    Few people in such a meeting are "risk[ing] everything". I've quit jobs rather than doing sketchy things. For people in these industries, there's always a next job.
    - StillBored 6y ago
      I don't think this is a question of someone doing "sketchy" things. Its a question of someone in the room questioning a morally questionable action, being implemented by a part of the organization as a whole. Quiting over it, or whatever likely doesn't even have an effect. Someone on the team required to implement it is going to follow the bosses orders. This appears to have happened a few times with members of the US president's cabinet over the past few years. So, its more a "stay and fight" or "get rolled over and threaten/quit" decision. I'm betting most people just weigh the monthly mortgage payment against that and they raise the issue, but it doesn't get pushed beyond the discussion phase. If this goes on long enough, they switch jobs, or they become that person that just keeps their head down and do what they are told.

kace91 6y ago

I've been there, obviously not to the level of a facebook board member. IMO the feeling is not really that different from making choices as a consumer ("was this shirt made by child labor?", "was the animal this meat comes from treated humanely?", etc). People tend to turn a blind eye to those questions unless something comes up that hits close to home. To be clear, I'm not saying that's justifiable or a good mindset to have, just what I think happens.

_bxg1 6y ago
That may apply in many cases, but I don't think an engineer or manager at Facebook can use that excuse. They'd have lots of other options.
dfxm12 6y ago
I disagree and think it is significantly different. Facebook decision makers have way more agency in the directions their company takes than a consumer has in their choice of clothes to buy at Target (or wherever). Shirt consumers don't have much of a choice. They can only buy what's for sale (and in their price range). And then, how can they be sure if a shirt was or wasn't made by child labor? How would an individual consumer's behavior lead to ending child labor? According to the article, Facebook execs understood what the product was doing, and, while they have the ability to stop it, don't. Maybe I understand what you're saying if we're talking engineers/middle managers, but that's a boring conversation. The buck has to stop somewhere.
- lol636363 6y ago
  As consumer, you may not be able to stop child labor but you can vote with your wallet. Several of my friends buy clothes from a few vetted brands because of exactly this issue. Then I have another friend who was huge cruise ships fan. He encouraged me to go on my first cruise too. But then there was a report about mistreatment of cruiseship employees, and he is totally against cruiseships now. His actions probably won't change anything alone but if enough consumers start to act like him, a change may happen.
  - 6y ago

Hokusai 6y ago

Boeing 737 MAX killed 346 people. So, it seems that death is not a deterrent. The mails from the case are good to understand the internal discussions: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jan/10/737-max-scandal-the-internal-boeing-messages-and-emails https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jan/10/737-max-sca...

nickff 6y ago
> "Boeing 737 MAX killed 346 people. So, it seems that death is not a deterrent." I really don't understand your point, unless you're implying that there was a meeting where Boeing planned to kill those people. I am not an aviation expert, but what happened with the MAX seems to be a product of the certification process, urgent business needs, systems engineering issues, and bad internal communications at Boeing. I haven't seen any evidence that someone specifically predicted the chain of events which would unfold on those flights, and clearly communicated the issue, then had executive(s) respond that it was 'worth the money'. As an aside, I have seen quotes about the 787, which were similar to those in your linked article (mostly with respect to production quality issues), yet the 787 has not had similar accidents. One problem with working on such huge projects is that the line engineers do not understand that managers are constantly hearing alarmist 'warnings' which don't pan out. If 1% of Boeing staff give false alarms in a year, that means there are 1600 false alarms.
- Hokusai 6y ago
  > I haven't seen any evidence that someone specifically predicted the chain of events which would unfold on those flights, and clearly communicated the issue, then had executive(s) respond that it was 'worth the money'. People understand the consequences of what they say. I doubt that most people will say that statements out loud, even when they know that are true. But, people knew and money was involved. * February 2018 “I don’t know how to refer to the very very few of us on the program who are interested only in truth…” “Would you put your family on a MAX simulator trained aircraft? I wouldn’t.” “No.” * August 2015 “I just Jedi mind tricked this fools. I should be given $1000 every time I take one of these calls. I save this company a sick amount of $$$$.”

pacala 6y ago

As actors in the World, we are machines that turns sensor data into a linear stream of actions. To the extent the decision process in not completely random, there exists a metric that ends up maximized by the decision process, sometimes referred to as 'god' or even 'God'. The vast majority of economic decision processes in the modern economy are driven by one metric: money, sometimes referred to as 'Mammon'. A corporation is an aggregation of human / computerized actors that work to maximize the corporation metric: money earned by said corporation. The discussions are very simple: Course of action A makes us X$, course of action B makes us XXX$. Therefore course of action B is taken. There is no consideration of other effects besides, perhaps, a quantization of risks. Risk of losing the 'good guys' facade, counterbalanced by PR expenses, or risk of being sued, counterbalanced by legal expenses.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

truculent 6y ago

You don't apply, don't get hired, or don't get promoted, depending on how effective their hiring processes are.

yumraj 6y ago
That leads me to another question: are there people/companies who will not hire someone who has been an employee of FB?
- babesh 6y ago
  I have heard someone spouting that but it was all baloney since that person supported actions just as bad.
- truculent 6y ago
  That seems generally unlikely to me, but it’s a big ol’ world out there so I am sure it has occurred someplace

gabaix 6y ago

Facebook internal memo by Andrew Bosworth, VP June 18, 2016 The Ugly We talk about the good and the bad of our work often. I want to talk about the ugly. We connect people. That can be good if they make it positive. Maybe someone finds love. Maybe it even saves the life of someone on the brink of suicide. So we connect more people That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people. The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is de facto good. It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned. That isn’t something we are doing for ourselves. Or for our stock price (ha!). It is literally just what we do. We connect people. Period. That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it. The natural state of the world is not connected. It is not unified. It is fragmented by borders, languages, and increasingly by different products. The best products don’t win. The ones everyone use win. I know a lot of people don’t want to hear this. Most of us have the luxury of working in the warm glow of building products consumers love. But make no mistake, growth tactics are how we got here. If you joined the company because it is doing great work, that’s why we get to do that great work. We do have great products but we still wouldn’t be half our size without pushing the envelope on growth. Nothing makes Facebook as valuable as having your friends on it, and no product decisions have gotten as many friends on as the ones made in growth. Not photo tagging. Not news feed. Not messenger. Nothing. In almost all of our work, we have to answer hard questions about what we believe. We have to justify the metrics and make sure they aren’t losing out on a bigger picture. But connecting people. That’s our imperative. Because that’s what we do. We connect people. Shortly after the leak Bosworth distanced himself from the post. https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/29/17178086/facebook-growth-memo-leak-boz-andrew-bosworth https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/29/17178086/facebook-growth-...

nkozyra 6y ago
Even that is very handwave-y. It talks about "connections" and events, but not that the algorithm (in the broad, commonly-used sense) encourages and incentivizes that which builds "engagement."

coliveira 6y ago

The discussions in this article are never shared with employees, it is just a matter raised in closed high level board meetings. Companies never discuss openly negative positions, and if they do it is only to dismiss them.

Spooky23 6y ago

People are capable of all sorts of mental gymnastics to keep things at arm's length. Bad practice X is because of group Y or requirement Z.

MattGaiser 6y ago

People tend to rationalize it as not that ethically challenging or by compensating through some other societal benefit. I knew someone who ran a FB group that devolved into conspiracy theories and absurd levels of anger to the point that members of the group were lashing out at local politicians. The group owner liked the power and influence so rationalized it as "increasing public engagement in politics." This person is otherwise a vegetarian who fosters animals and works in the medical field.

_bxg1 6y ago

I think it's mostly denialism (which is cultivated by management). This is a great article about it: https://newrepublic.com/article/155212/worked-capital-one-five-years-justified-piling-debt-poor-customers?__twitter_impression=true https://newrepublic.com/article/155212/worked-capital-one-fi...

toshk 6y ago

From my experience there are very strong currents in a group that are very hard to go against as an individual. Only very contrarian people will go against the grain in formal meetings with high level executives or other individuals with status in a group. This is why often big organizations are able to produce decisions that the team behind it doesn't agree with and that look silly from the outside. Many people in such a team will not feel personally responsible because they feel like they didn't have any influence on the decision making proces, even if they could have said something. There are other dynamics at play I think, but this is one of them. (The contrarians seem to not survive long in the corporate world)

abawany 6y ago
Also, IME, if you do say something, others jump down your throat quickly and viciously. I still remember this one former cow-orker and his words: 'they debate, they decide, we deliver': this project ended up losing the company millions and left it as a has-been in ecommerce because people chose to accept and support the utter insanity that was going on right in front of their faces.
rewoi 6y ago
As a programmer I am not responsible (and paid) for management decisions. It is also not my job to fix toxic culture in a company.
- hnruss 6y ago
  As management is responsible for bad management decisions, so too is the programmer responsible for implementing bad decisions.
  - rewoi 6y ago
    Programmer can still implement bad decision very well :)
sjg007 6y ago
This dynamic is present in FB the website as well. You find clusters or groups of folks who re-amplify a point. It's so effective that you can find "Re-Open" rallies in your state driven by a shady "gun-rights" nonprofit. Even though polling largely supports the lock down and actions taken to curb the pandemic. You also find that outside the group people are a lot more nuanced and reasonable. It's fascinating. What is even more concerning is that a lot of bots drive this behavior. I think the issue is that in the long term it dilutes FB. I know many people who don't post on FB, preferring Instagram etc... I know these are still FB platforms but it's a big shift. So FB will eventually become Usenet and effectively non-functional. There's some type of social network that's between Instagram and FB that doesn't exist yet.

analyst74 6y ago

Not at boardroom level, but I was in a couple meetings in past jobs where this happened. In one case, people had different ideas of what's more ethical/user friendly, since we can't resolve those disagreements with more arguing, we go with metrics, and metrics have no morality. In another case, everyone agreed that it was slightly shady, but it was a highly competitive market and we have to do it to stay alive. On the bright side, if a company ventures too deep into bad practices, it will eventually lose trust of the public. Which is why the capitalistic world hasn't descended into complete madness portrayed in dystopian sci/fi films.

zarkov99 6y ago

They quit. The process selects for the most sociopathic because the fitness function is heavily weighted towards bringing profits in the short term. Ethics are only a consideration to the extent that they affect public perception (hence profits) or safeguard against litigation ( protecting profits).

zelon88 6y ago

I've typically found my employment via companies who deal with a variety of contracts, some of them for weapons or defense contractors. I could go down the rabbit hole of chasing down all those contracts and would probably find that many of the products my company makes get sold to groups and causes that I don't support. But in the end; I've gotta eat. Do I want to throw away my career which is 99% unrelated to the SJW cause I support just because 5% of our products eventually get used against that cause. What about the 95% of our products which go to worthy causes? I'll say it again... I just gotta eat, man. What's good for the gander is probably good for the goose too.

whatshisface 6y ago
Products that may be sold to terrorists include canned beans and Toyota trucks. Your situation might actually be less morally compromising than the Facebook stuff being discussed, because in their case they are the "questionably motivated 'freedom fighters,'" (i.e. they're directly doing the morally questionable stuff) whereas you're just selling stuff to a broad market that may include questionably motivated "freedom fighters." It's sort of the difference between selling lockpicks that may eventually be used in a burglary or might also be used to get Grandma's safe open, versus breaking in yourself.
eropple 6y ago
Forgive me for the bluntness, but nobody with any set of technical skills "gotta eat" by supporting those kinds of efforts. I've worked to practice what I preach, too; I've consistently worked in do-no-harm jobs. I make rowing machines today and the worst you can hang on me from the past is that I had a daily-fantasy-sports site for a client for a while (which I'm not proud of but it's a pretty venal sin)--and I have made more than enough money to do very well for myself.
peruvian 6y ago
If you're working for defense or weapons contracts you're supporting the industry that has kept us in the Middle East for almost two decades. I agree that it's often a moral grey zone but in this case it's pretty clear. If you're an engineer there's plenty of other companies to choose from.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

bjt2n3904 6y ago

> I've always wondered how such discussions go in company meetings where some product/feature has harmful effect of something/someone but is good for the business of the company. I mean, it's one thing if we're talking about something like an airbag, where harm can result from normal usage because of a design flaw. It's another thing to talk about the Ford Pinto -- where harm could happen due to accidental misusage. Does Facebook encourage division? Do ice cream ads encourage obesity? Or alcohol ads encourage drunk driving? (I get that Facebook's "engagement algorithms" are designed to maximize profit, and has a side effect of showing you things that are upsetting and frustrating... but that isn't their design. I'm no fan of "the algorithm", and don't think they should use it, but I think they should be free to.) In this instance, I don't think it's fair to say Facebook has a "harmful effect". The abuse, misuse, and addiction to Facebook can be harmful, for sure... but that's not Facebook's fault. That's the end user's fault. Should Facebook come with a warning label, like cigarettes? I don't think so. (I also don't think cigarettes should be mandated to come with images of people dying of lung cancer when alcohol can be sold without images of people with liver disease... but I digress.) Everyone wants to "mitigate harm". But you need to be able to separate "harm due to malfunction", "harm due to accidents", and "harm due to abuse". This seems to be firmly in the third category, which is the least concrete and most "squishy" category. Especially squishy, when "harm" is considered to be people saying and/or thinking the wrong things.

visarga 6y ago
> In this instance, I don't think it's fair to say Facebook has a "harmful effect". The abuse, misuse, and addiction to Facebook can be harmful, for sure... but that's not Facebook's fault. That's the end user's fault. Yeah, it wasn't me who posted this reply, it was the cells in my body. It's their fault... I think complex systems create effects that go beyond the individual parts. Facebook is running and profiting from such an 'effect' on society. Their right to freely express their creativity by making the feed how they wish should be balanced with the large scale (negative) effects that appear in the system.

throwaway894345 6y ago

> I cannot believe that everyone is ethicality challenged, only perhaps the people in control. Seems likely that social media as an industry selects more strongly for unethical executives, presumably because online advertising is the only effective way to monetize social media and it is more or less fundamentally unethical. I imagine the same effect can be observed among tobacco and fossil energy executives--these are industries where there is no ethical monetization strategy, at least not one that is in the same competitive ballpark as the unethical strategy.

ptudan 6y ago
Online advertising as a concept is fundamentally unethical? I think you're speaking in hyperbole here. Stealing user data without consent (or with fake here read this 500 pg legalise consent) is unethical for certain. But a bike blog putting ads for bike saddles on the bottom of their page to pay for their server costs and writing staff? Hard to see how that's unethical unless you think selling anything is unethical.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  > Online advertising as a concept is fundamentally unethical? No, I meant "online advertising as an industry". It's unethical to the extent that it depends on stealing user data, which presumably is the overwhelming majority of the industry by value (i.e., I'm assuming your privacy-respecting bike saddles ads don't account for even 1% of the industry's value).
spaced-out 6y ago
>Seems likely that social media as an industry selects more strongly for unethical executives More so than the fossil fuel industry? Big tobacco? Or the pharmaceutical industry? Wallstreet? Clothing/apparel manufacturers?
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  > More so than the fossil fuel industry? Big tobacco? I already addressed this in my second sentence: > I imagine the same effect can be observed among tobacco and fossil energy executives No, that wasn't meant to be an exhaustive list of unethical industries.

mc32 6y ago

What kind of harm do you propose is the kind that should have pushback? Movie executives discuss (do they even?) the ramifications of their movies which glorify ills? Do they censor violence, suicide, etc?

Hokusai 6y ago
> What kind of harm do you propose is the kind that should have pushback? "Some 700,000 members of the Rohingya community had recently fled the country amid a military crackdown and ethnic violence. In March, a United Nations investigator said Facebook was used to incite violence and hatred against the Muslim minority group. The platform, she said, had “turned into a beast.”" https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/myanmar-facebook-hate/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/myanmar-...
- mc32 6y ago
  So why facebook but not movies and TV over the air or streamed via other platforms? What, because it comes from studios and other sanctioned organs? Are they above propaganda and above having agendas? I’m not saying FB is not culpable, but I’m saying if they are, then so are others.
  - Hokusai 6y ago
    > above having agendas? Having an agenda is normal and is good. Everybody that plans for the future has an agenda. What is wrong is to have a "hidden agenda". A "hidden agenda" is wrong because is a form of manipulation. When an organization has a "hidden agenda" means that they are lying to achieve a goal that they are hiding. If a movie agenda is to "create awareness of human trafficking", and it shows how "human trafficking" impacts peoples lives, that is not "hidden" and it is actually an agenda that most people supports. So, to have an agenda is intelligent, needed, common, awesome behavior. Stones have no-agenda, rocks have no agenda. To have a "hidden agenda" is what should be criticized. Why will anyone think that to have an agenda is bad?

babesh 6y ago

I have an example. We built a feature that would be good for users. However we found out that it would result in lost revenue. The decision of whether to keep the feature got bounced up management. Eventually we were told to can the feature and that the decision was made at the very top. Keeping it would have affected quarterly revenues. So no go. That showed me what kind of company it was. The decision went directly against one of the company’s supposed core values. This was not a small company. Don’t work there anymore.

crazygringo 6y ago

> I cannot believe that everyone is ethicality challenged No, but it's not always clear what the ethical choice is. In philosophy, this is known as pluralism [1] -- the fact that different people have irreconcilable ethical views, with no way to find any "truth". That might seem like a lot of justificatory mumbo-jumbo, but there are genuine ethical arguments on all sides. For example, did you know that in the postwar 1950's, the lack of polarization and divisiveness in American society was seen by many as a major problem, because it didn't provide enough voter choice between the two parties? [2] There are also plenty of ethical arguments that giving people what's "good for them", rather than what they want (click on) would run counter to their personal autonomy, and therefore against their freedom. This is what critics of paternalism believe. [3] Then there's the neoliberal argument that markets always work best (absent market failure). That most of human progress over the past couple of centuries has resulted from companies doing what's most profitable, despite how non-intuitive that is. In that sense, Facebook doing what makes the most money is ethically right. I'm not saying I agree with any of these -- in fact, I don't. But I am saying that supposing there's some kind of obvious right ethical answer, and implying bad faith towards people at Facebook that they're somehow making decisions they genuinely believe to be wrong but making anyways, is not accurate. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralism_(political_philosophy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralism_(political_philosoph... [2] https://newrepublic.com/article/157599/were-not-polarized-enough-ezra-klein-book-review https://newrepublic.com/article/157599/were-not-polarized-en... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternalism

dragonwriter 6y ago
> For example, did you know that in the postwar 1950's, the lack of polarization and divisiveness in American society was widely seen as a major problem, because it didn't provide enough voter choice between the two parties? There was not a lack of polarization and divisiveness in American society. The divides in American society and politics didn't map well to the two major political parties because there was a major political realignment in progress and the parties hadn't yet aligned with the divides in society. The problem was the divide between the major parties not being sharp on the issues where there were, in fact, sharp, polarizing divides in society, preventing members of the public from effectuating their preferences on salient issues by voting.

NoodleIncident 6y ago

> some product/feature has harmful effect of something/someone but is good for the business of the company If you start with such black-and-white assumptions, you will never be able to actually empathize with those people. Nothing is that simple when you're close enough to see the details. Things good for the company should be and frequently are good for the people using the product. The same thing can also harm the same people, or a different set of people, or the company, in a way that's impossible to disentangle from the good. There's a whole back and forth about Facebook and political divisions. It starts with someone assuming that tech companies put people in bubbles and echochambers, assuming they'll only be engaged with stuff they agree with. Then you run the numbers, and realize that people are far more isolated from opposing opinions in real life than they are on the internet, you interact with more people online, and they censor themselves less. But at the same time, you can change your mind about echochambers, and decide that this is a bad thing, being exposed to different opinions makes you more entrenched in what you actually believe. It's never as simple as "this is bad for everyone except us but at least we're getting rich". Everything has more nuance than that when you experience it up close

DSingularity 6y ago
People are more isolated in the real world? Please provide a source. Aside from the fact that this is hard to measure now that the underlying medium has itself been modified — I would hardly expect this to be the case. Online I am connected to those whom I socialize with or am otherwise professionally connected to. In the “real world” this constraint is largely absent.
- creddit 6y ago
  I highly doubt you and I are socially or professionally connected and yet here we are.
  - _tulpa 6y ago
    This connection doesn't mean shit compared to someone you see face to face and share experiences with. Yet this watered down form of connection seems to have replaced the latter, which I think is the fundamental social problem of the internet.

jhowell 6y ago

I think what happened here is a little different than how you describe. For me, it seems they had a hypothesis, found support for their hypothesis, then changed its definition for speculative motivations with tangible harm.

DataWorker 6y ago

Nobody thinks they are complicit but in reality we all are. Some can accept this while others let the cognitive dissonance drive their behavior in convoluted and hard to discern ways. Redemption only comes after accepting that we’re born of original sin. Anybody who supports or uses non-free software has worked to finance the amoral tech decision making that you’re decrying. Even Stallman makes compromises. Welcome to modernity.

dahart 6y ago

> I cannot believe that everyone is ethically challenged Right, so what assumptions are leading to the conclusion that this situation can only be caused by everyone being ethically challenged? Are ethics shared and absolute enough for the answer to this question to be easy or black & white? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism > Luckily I’ve never had to face such a dilemma Are you certain about that? I realize you’re talking specifically about C-level execs debating something in a board room, but consider the ways that we all face lesser versions of the same dilemma. For example, do you ever consume and/or pay money for things that are generally harmful to society? Environmental concerns are easy to pick on since more or less everything we buy has negative environmental effects... ever bought a car? flown on an airplane? Smoked a cigarette or enjoyed a backyard fire pit? Bought anything unnecessarily wrapped in plastic? It’s really hard to make the less harmful choice, and a lot of people don’t care at all, so by and large as a society we put up with the harm in favor of convenience. As consumers, we are at least half of the equation that is leading to socially harmful products existing. If we didn’t consume it, the company meetings wouldn’t have anything to debate.

pdkl95 6y ago

> I cannot believe that everyone is ethicality challenged The difficult ethical discussion probably never happens. The decisions being made in those meetings are usually seen as small/inconsequential. The problems caused by those "small" decisions are ignored. Eventually those problems become normalized allowing another "small" decision to be made. Humans seem to be very bad at recognizing how a set of "small" decisions eventually add up to major - sometimes shocking[1] - consequences that nobody would have approved if asked directly. Most of the time, nobody realizes just how deviant their situation had become. For a good explanation of the mechanism underlying the normalization of deviance (as an abstract model), I strongly recommend this[2] short talk by Richard Cook. [1] https://blog.aopa.org/aopa/2015/12/07/the-normalization-of-deviance/ https://blog.aopa.org/aopa/2015/12/07/the-normalization-of-d... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLYEDpNu60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLYEDpNu60 ("Resilience In Complex Adaptive Systems")

dmitrygr 6y ago

I've been there at Google a few times and can imagine exactly how this went :/. The one time I can tell about is the blogger disaster [1]. The top leadership, spearheaded by chief of legal was basically ignoring everyone's logical arguments at the meetings, the town halls, etc. We kept coming to the mic and telling them that their ideas of what is and isn't sexual are arbitrary, as are anyone else's. They said "no, we have experts and we have a clear definition" (they didn't). We explained that post-facto removing content people wrote is cruel and unnecessary. They claimed "nobody would care or miss it". (of course they would). We told them that this will hurt transgender people, who used to find support in blogs of others going through the same life challenges and blogging about it. Those blogs would be banned under the policy. They said they had data that impact would be minimal. (They had no data). Normal rank-and-file people at google all knew the idea was a bad one. We fought hard. They scheduled a 8-am townhall and announced it the day before at 9pm! We showed up anyways en masse! There was a line to the microphone! They had microphones in the audience. I walked up and directly asked for the "data" they claimed to have showing no impact will be had. They claimed and I quote "we have no hardcore data" (audience was laughing at the word choice given the topic). I said that "well, then how can you claim to be making a data-driven decision?" Drummond answered that "we know this is right and we are sure." The town hall was a waste of time. Nothing we said was heard and all they did was recite lines at us from the stage that made it look like either they did not understand what we had to say, or they were trying very hard to appear to not understand. Both sides were talking, but nothing we said seemed to change their mind, They came there to deliver a policy, not to collect feedback on it, despite claiming this was a meeting to discuss it. That was clear. We did not give up. Google's TGIF was the next day. A number of people came there early and lined up and the microphones, ready to bring this up again and again. In front of the whole company and the CEO as well (Larry and Sergey were not at the town hall and claimed to have not heard of the policy until "the ruckus started"). I guess they saw the large line of people and relented. Before the scheduled TGIF began they announced they will reverse the policy. This was a rare victory, for this sort of a situation. I am willing to bet that there are lots of good people at facebook who also fought as hard or harder against this. They just probably lost. Having seen how this plays out internally, I am not surprised, just sad. To anyone at FB who fought against this, I send you my thanks! [1] https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/23/google-bans-sexually-explicit-content-from-websites-hosted-on-blogger/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/23/google-bans-sexually-expli...

threatofrain 6y ago

Almost everyone is ethically challenged, we just need the right circumstances for particular expressions to emerge. The people who do right and wrong by you might be alternative persons under alternative scenarios. The very poor and very rich are often placed in front of ethically interesting bargains, such as a trade of life for money, whereas Hacker News has trouble even daring to ballpark the dollar value to life -- a middle class aesthetic where one has neither the resources nor the desperation to trade in flesh.

jimmaswell 6y ago

I'm ethicality challenged if I think the biggest (or at least up there) forum of public discourse shouldn't be micromanaged like a day care, with "divisive" people sent to time out? Is it unthinkable to you that some people value free expression over being protected from negativity?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

xapata 6y ago

> how such discussions go In my case, I told my manager about a system design problem that would cause a daily annoyance to 100k people, forcing them to input their passwords more often than necessary. He said, "they'll accept it." I said, "I quit."

carapace 6y ago

> I cannot believe that everyone is ethicality (sic) challenged... Why not? Ockham's Razor says to accept the most parsimonious explanation, and I think that's it. I mean look at little kids: they're amoral monsters. If they weren't so cute our species would have gone extinct ages ago. Look at our methods to train ourselves to be better people: religions cause wars while "Wolf of Wallstreet" is a big hit. ($392 million worldwide.) Look at our leaders.

AlexandrB 6y ago
The Wolf of Wallstreet was a scathing critique of capitalist excess. To think otherwise is to consider a lifestyle where your wife hates you and you crash your car on quaaludes because you've got nothing better going on glamorous.
- carapace 6y ago
  I didn't see it. All I know about it comes from Christina McDowell's open letter: https://www.laweekly.com/an-open-letter-to-the-makers-of-the-wolf-of-wall-street-and-the-wolf-himself/ https://www.laweekly.com/an-open-letter-to-the-makers-of-the... > Your film is a reckless attempt at continuing to pretend that these sorts of schemes are entertaining, even as the country is reeling from yet another round of Wall Street scandals. We want to get lost in what? These phony financiers' fun sexcapades and coke binges? Come on, we know the truth. This kind of behavior brought America to its knees. My point is that we did find it entertaining to the tune of $0.4B, and that doesn't bode well for our general level of moral development.
- carapace 6y ago
  FWIW I just found this fascinating tangent: https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-perfect-irony-that-the-wolf-of-wall-street-was-also-a-real-life-scam https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-perfect-irony-that-t... > THE PERFECT IRONY THAT ‘THE WOLF OF WALL STREET’ FILM WAS ALSO A REAL-LIFE SCAM (caps in original) > How Leo got caught up in a money-laundering scheme that screwed the Malaysian people out of billions.

ummonk 6y ago

Is it clear that echo chambers and polarized discussion are good for the bottom line? I imagine they help with user growth and user retention, but would people engaged in these polarized echo chambers actually spend more on advertised products?

standardUser 6y ago

I've been in that situation. I argued as much as I felt I could get away with and made the strongest arguments I could against unethical behavior. I was eventually forced out. A couple years later, the company was investigated by law enforcement and subsequently declared bankruptcy. The people in control were the only ones pushing for the unethical actions, but most others were a lot more quiet than I was and several stuck around until the bitter end.

pwned1 6y ago

The Banality of Evil.

arkades 6y ago

So, I work in healthcare - as a doc, and at various times, as an admin in healthcare centers as well as in health insurance. I don't know how much of that experience relates to FB's behavior, but I have some idea of what it's like to work in a field and be either called a hero or a devil, depending on the day. I am neither. Deep breath. As an industry, we are often doing things that are perceived to be evil. I've noticed the following: 1. Some of that interpretation is just wrong. People from the outside tend to have a poor understanding of what we do (providers, centers, insurers) and draw conclusions based on highly imperfect information. This is compounded by the fact that journalists have a terrible comprehension of what we do and an incentive to dramatize and oversimplify it - resulting in people reading the news and walking away misinformed and wrongly feeling like they're now educated on the topic. This happens a lot. 2. We sometimes do things, or want to do things, that have potential harms and potential benefits - e.g., in health insurance, I'd love to have had the ability to twist people's arms into coming to get a flu shot. It would have been a huge net benefit to their health. It would have been a net reduction in our costs. It would have been great! If we'd had the ability to ignore patient autonomy and force it, or carrot-and-stick it, we probably would have. We would not have conceptualized it as "ignoring patient preference," we would have conceptualized it as "preventing a bunch of preventable hospitalizations and deaths and, for the elderly, permanent consequences of hospitalizations." And that would have been true! And would have allowed us to not think about the trade-off so much. It's not lying to yourself: it's looking at the grey, round-edged parts of a cost-benefit analysis and subjectively leaning it in your direction. My motivation there isn't even about the money - the money just gets it on the radar as something my employer would be willing to prioritize. 3. Resource scarcity. I only have so many resources to allocate. One may benefit a patient X; another may benefit them 10X. If X benefits my organization and the 10x choice doesn't, I'll probably choose X. By itself I'm not choosing to do harm - I'm choosing a win/win. Enough decisions like that, in enough contexts, probably do give rise to net harm. But the choice isn't to do harm. 4. Not every battle can be a "will I burn my career over this?" battle. If I'd ever been faced with a choice that I thought was harm > benefit to patients, I would have burnt the house down over it. But I haven't. I've been faced with lots of little grey questions with uncertain costs and uncertain benefits where there was, in fact, benefit, and usually not just to us but to the patients too. I imagine that's where most organizations go awry: a thousand decisions like this, shaking out under the pervasive organizational need for profit. Like a million million particles of sand moved by the tide, settling out into an overall pattern due to gravity. I think the badness is generally an emergent pattern, not a single person choosing to do evil, or choosing themselves over causing harm to many. I've never been in that position, ever, so either my career is highly anomalous, or that's just not how those choices present themselves in real life. I suspect it's the latter. (Or, I guess, my being amoral is a valid third possibility.)