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“Potential” Political bias. Can we just acknowledge for a moment what it’d be like to have a colleague who’s desperately trying to prove that your work is a “b

“Potential” Political bias. Can we just acknowledge for a moment what it’d be like to have a colleague who’s desperately trying to prove that your work is a “big conspiracy” when you’re honestly all just trying to do your best. I see so many of these stories of weirdly rogue political activist type employees recently surprised when they their employer doesn’t like that they’re purposely trying to undermine them and their employees work. I’m sure Facebook isn’t perfect, but I know enough good people who work there to know they’re not all out to “get” us. This smells like sour grapes* from an employee who focused more on their plans to take down their employer than their actual job. *ed: previously written as “sour apples”...it’s been a long day.

sapienwastey 6y ago
Amen.
- iron0013 6y ago
  ^ it’s neat to see a sleeper account being brought out of dormancy. Be interesting to see what you have to say between now and November 3.
  - sapienwastey 6y ago
    Simply agreeing with the parent motivated you to examine my post history and draw some conclusion about my political alignment?
    - iron0013 6y ago
      Inauspicious first couple of comments. Might want to burn this one and move on to the next account on the list. Try starting more subtly next time; ease in with a few banal comments on a Rust thread or something
      - dang 6y ago
        I just replied to your comment upthread saying that this is not ok, but I need to add more. You've been using HN primarily for ideological warfare for a long time now. Your recent comments in particular have been breaking the site guidelines egregiously and repeatedly. You've pulled this "sleeper account" attack before as well (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23859828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23859828). If you keep breaking the site guidelines, we are going to ban you. Actually, you're well into bannable territory as it is. I'm shocked at how much and you badly you've crossed the line. We've cut you way more slack than most people get here. If you don't want to be banned on HN, please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on. For all its many flaws, this is a community, and to participate in a community while constantly destroying the commons is incongruent. People who use this place need to take care of it, not burn it. That goes for everyone, regardless of what their political views are or how intensely they feel them, and that includes you.
        robk 6y ago
        Please just ban these people Dan. You are banging your head against the wall arguing w idealogues who don't want to participate just throw stones...
        CathedralBorrow 6y ago
        Just genuine curiosity because I like this site and like how active you are in constructively moderating it: Why not simply ban people who have crossed the line this badly for this long? It certainly doesn't seem heavy handed or unfair.
        SturgeonsLaw 6y ago
        Comments like the one you're replying to serve an additional purpose of indicating acceptable posting standards to readers. Dang may happen to err on the side of forgiving, and imho that helps form some of the character of HN. The idea that commenters should "make HN good because we all want it to be good" is quite positive, and that sentiment seems to be reflected here far more than banhappy reddit.
  - dang 6y ago
    You can't attack other users like that, regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are. No more of this, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
fach 6y ago
> This smells like sour apples from an employee who focused more on their plans to take down their employer than their actual job. The story didn't read as "sour apples" to me but rather an employee pointing out evidence that contradicts the "two strikes" policy Zuckerberg explained at the company Q&A. It's tough to write that off as "Facebook isn't perfect".
- smart_jackal 6y ago
  A google employee had also similarly pointed out evidence in an internal company memo few years ago. That employee was promptly fired and last I heard, he is struggling to make a living and ends meet in the US.
  - sjwright 6y ago
    It is startling and frankly concerning to me that the parent post is being voted down. Clearly there are some people who don’t want to confront difficult questions, or acknowledge that this might be more pervasive than we feel comfortable admitting.
    - LeoNatan25 6y ago
      Virtue signaling is strong here, even with the downvoting.
    - gwbas1c 6y ago
      Honestly, as bigoted and creepy as the diversity memo is; I found Google's response just as creepy. It would be one thing if they called the diversity memo out as disruptive and bigoted, but they said it had "wrong opinions." That just reeks of authoritarianism. I'm more afraid of authoritarianism from a major company than a bigot.
      - sjwright 6y ago
        The memo wasn't bigoted or creepy, it didn't even say anything particularly remarkable, though I do agree it failed to pay sufficient deference to the cultural moment. But the assertion that it was hateful or bigoted went unchallenged in all of the reporting around it. If you haven't read it yourself, I encourage you to challenge yourself with an open mind and give it a read.
Mekantis 6y ago
Sorry, but "good people" who are involved with all the evil things Facebook does by working for them aren't good people. I know it's hip to absolve yourself of responsibility by saying "I just work here" or "I didn't work on that", but all these rationalizations don't fly as long as you're one of the quiet majority that does nothing to fight what Facebook does. Seriously, techies seem to act on the same amoral plane as business executives and I wonder how you people manage to sleep at night.
- irq 6y ago
  AFAB
  - catalogia 6y ago
    All Features are Biased?
    - gorgoiler 6y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.C.A.B https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.C.A.B. All Cops Are Bastards: the idea that it isn’t possible, by definition, for there to be such a thing as a good cop. Presumably F for Facebookers.
- eclipxe 6y ago
  What evil things?
- wuunderbar 6y ago
  There's 2 things here to keep in mind to go down your train of logic: 1) The company is actually doing evil things 2) The employee is aware of the purported evil things the company is doing, and agrees with that claim Now we can debate all we want how evil Facebook is or not, but how many employees do you think check off box 2?
  - otterley 6y ago
    I find it difficult to believe that the average Facebook employee is exposed to less media coverage about their own company than a member of the general public is. So the remaining possibilities are that the employee either agrees with the policy (in which case, we can question their judgment), or they're just trying to keep food on the table (in which case, we should wonder about how healthy the job market is).
ehsankia 6y ago
Yep, listening to one employee out of thousands who claims something outrageous is just like listening to that one "scientist" who claims climate change is a hoax or the one "doctor" who claims vaccines are dangerous. If there was truly a hoax, I'd expect a good proportion of the workers there to be outraged about it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
duxup 6y ago
I worked with one. He and his buddies had and endless list of grievances involving political this and that. Nothing seemed to happen that wasn't somehow 'political.' They surrounded themselves in this thicket of 'logic' where the simplest explanation was impossible and conspiracies were the most obvious answer to them. Thankfully it was long before social media as we know it. He was fired for leaving some nasty bigoted comments in code. But for the record I have no idea who these folks at Facebook are or their motivations. If the guy I'm thinking of made the news, you wouldn't know either.
- gumby 6y ago
  I have some relatives like that: the government is preventing us from XXX. Yet I can happily do xxx if I wish... Eventually I just stopped talking with them as that’s all they could talk about.
ffggvv 6y ago
yeah except liberal employees are constantly walking out or protesting or screaming/whining instead of working and never reprimanded at google or fb.
newacct583 6y ago
Did you read the story? The details seem pretty damning to me. > I’m sure Facebook isn’t perfect, but I know enough good people who work there to know they’re not all out to “get” us. Yeah, I don't think you read the article. That's what's happening: a bunch of employees are blowing the whistle on what seems to be executive abuse of the fact check program.
- wiredone 6y ago
  As the FB employee in this thread commented - this person vilified others and was fired for that, not his attempts to "bring down the man". Large scale platforms like this are hard to manage. I can see many cases where people doing their best can be misconstrued as an evil conspiracy. Eg. - Users and companies with large fan bases are open to brigading. Previously companies have been taken off the platform suddenly because of militant FB groups. - A new rule is instituted "anyone with more than X followers get Tier-1 support in reviewing and reinstating their account following a take down." - Engineer on some team mildly close to the team who runs the takedown/reinstatement systems sees that a Right Wing commentator is getting Tier-1 support and fast turn around reinstatement. - Said engineer tries to vilify the people who wrote the policy and those who are carrying it out, tries to go public with a conspiracy that "FB is prioritizing reinstating Right Wing users". Instead they've really just lost the trust of their peers, failed to understand the space properly, and now brought their employer into disrepute - they should be fired. This stuff happens all the time, and is usually just chalked up to "its a hard problem to get right, and we're trying to get better every day". When people over react and make out like Zuck is pulling strings to rule the universe i have a hard time understanding when he sleeps.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- thu2111 6y ago
  The fact check program is itself executive abuse and should be ended. Given how many "fact checkers" are simply leftist pro-establishment types, and how many "fact checks" they produce are simple re-statements of whatever someone was claiming without bothering to address any raised criticisms, it doesn't surprise me at all that it's a flashpoint internally. These sort of people simply define anything that's not left wing as "misinformation", so the claim by the FB employee is on its surface meaningless. Zuckerberg should never have given way on fact checking. I wonder if he understands it was a mistake. Facebook is meant to be a social network, it's inherently a graph oriented organisation in which graph nodes are all roughly equal. Fact checking is the exact opposite: a hierarchy with Facebook at the top and delegated "truth arbiters" a layer lower, that try to dominate the social graph. The cited example of the Breitbart video is a good example. The video is a video of doctors. There are tons of scientists, government advisors and indeed whole governments saying they don't see any need for masks, children can go back to school or never even left (as in Sweden), etc. You don't need to go far to find them. That children aren't infectious is by now widely accepted in the scientific community. For Facebook to censor the President for making such a statement makes them look absurd, and totalitarian. Given the long term accusations of fraud surrounding mail voting that were never addressed, it's not a big surprise Trump is worrying about the integrity of the election process.
throwgeorge 6y ago
>This smells like sour apples from an employee who focused more on their plans to take down their employer than their actual job. do you work at FB? how can you smell anything? are you sure you're not projecting?
op03 6y ago
> Can we just acknowledge for a moment... They are not "weirdly rogue political activist type employees". They are normal people reacting to the abnormality that is Facebook. I mean which tech company has ever produced the kind of polarization, fake news, Brexit and Trump type events all over the globe? If Intel or IBM or AT&T had produced these type of outcomes you can bet your ass "weirdly rogue political activist type employees" wld suddenly start popping up all over the place. Facebook will continue to be a highly abnormal place to work for anyone who isn't mildly conformist.
- dependenttypes 6y ago
  Intel and AT&T might not have provided a platform which some people used for political propaganda but they have done other much worse things (ME, proprietary software/firmware/etc, anti-net-neutrality, anti-competition, etc).
erentz 6y ago
Do note that “potential” was added by me when I edited title because the original didn’t fit. I tried to come up with something appropriate but you shouldn’t comment off my title.
throwaway1801 6y ago
Is this satire? You’re describing literally every left wing activist that accuses their employer of systemic bias, racism, pay disparity, interference in elections, etc. Transparently it seems the right type of activists are celebrated and the wrong vilified. That’s fine, but let’s not act like this is principled.
- wiredone 6y ago
  There have been plenty of toxic people i've worked with who seem to think their job is to "point out all the unfairness in the world", when really they're just hired to pull stories off a backlog and write code. I get that there are good whistle blowers. I also have first hand experience (a growing list recently) of people who decide to vilify their coworkers under the guise of "justice" and "taking down the man" when really most people ("evil VPs" included) are just trying to do their best and get through the day. They on the other hand are horrible to work with, and usually very unproductive. When threatened with performance management for their lack of delivery, they then tend to become hostile and see the whole charade as a conspiracy against them, when really no one trusts them or wants to work with them as they are assholes.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - onion2k 6y ago
    There have been plenty of toxic people i've worked with who seem to think their job is to "point out all the unfairness in the world", when really they're just hired to pull stories off a backlog and write code. If you believe your employer is doing something wrong, potentially illegal, and bad for society as a whole then ignoring it because that's not in your job description means you're a huge failure as a human being.
    - hanselot 6y ago
      If any/everything is potentially offensive, don't be surprised if we are going towards a future market where the easily offended are MUCH less employable.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bjowen 6y ago
None of that is necessarily inconsistent with there being political bias though - which could exist despite everyone’s best intentions. Disagreeable people are sometimes right, as much as it might be hard to see it or admit it. [edit - tone]
LifeLiverTransp 6y ago
Honestly, to a cooperation, any feudal or totalitarian system is much closer in nature then a democracy, with libertarian or even anarchistic organizational forms. Thats just how it is. I would be suprised if there was any cooperation whos ruling class is not secretly rooting for the dictators of this earth.

sapienwastey 6y ago

Amen.

iron0013 6y ago
^ it’s neat to see a sleeper account being brought out of dormancy. Be interesting to see what you have to say between now and November 3.
- sapienwastey 6y ago
  Simply agreeing with the parent motivated you to examine my post history and draw some conclusion about my political alignment?
  - iron0013 6y ago
    Inauspicious first couple of comments. Might want to burn this one and move on to the next account on the list. Try starting more subtly next time; ease in with a few banal comments on a Rust thread or something
    - dang 6y ago
      I just replied to your comment upthread saying that this is not ok, but I need to add more. You've been using HN primarily for ideological warfare for a long time now. Your recent comments in particular have been breaking the site guidelines egregiously and repeatedly. You've pulled this "sleeper account" attack before as well (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23859828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23859828). If you keep breaking the site guidelines, we are going to ban you. Actually, you're well into bannable territory as it is. I'm shocked at how much and you badly you've crossed the line. We've cut you way more slack than most people get here. If you don't want to be banned on HN, please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on. For all its many flaws, this is a community, and to participate in a community while constantly destroying the commons is incongruent. People who use this place need to take care of it, not burn it. That goes for everyone, regardless of what their political views are or how intensely they feel them, and that includes you.
      - robk 6y ago
        Please just ban these people Dan. You are banging your head against the wall arguing w idealogues who don't want to participate just throw stones...
      - CathedralBorrow 6y ago
        Just genuine curiosity because I like this site and like how active you are in constructively moderating it: Why not simply ban people who have crossed the line this badly for this long? It certainly doesn't seem heavy handed or unfair.
        SturgeonsLaw 6y ago
        Comments like the one you're replying to serve an additional purpose of indicating acceptable posting standards to readers. Dang may happen to err on the side of forgiving, and imho that helps form some of the character of HN. The idea that commenters should "make HN good because we all want it to be good" is quite positive, and that sentiment seems to be reflected here far more than banhappy reddit.
- dang 6y ago
  You can't attack other users like that, regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are. No more of this, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

fach 6y ago

> This smells like sour apples from an employee who focused more on their plans to take down their employer than their actual job. The story didn't read as "sour apples" to me but rather an employee pointing out evidence that contradicts the "two strikes" policy Zuckerberg explained at the company Q&A. It's tough to write that off as "Facebook isn't perfect".

smart_jackal 6y ago
A google employee had also similarly pointed out evidence in an internal company memo few years ago. That employee was promptly fired and last I heard, he is struggling to make a living and ends meet in the US.
- sjwright 6y ago
  It is startling and frankly concerning to me that the parent post is being voted down. Clearly there are some people who don’t want to confront difficult questions, or acknowledge that this might be more pervasive than we feel comfortable admitting.
  - LeoNatan25 6y ago
    Virtue signaling is strong here, even with the downvoting.
  - gwbas1c 6y ago
    Honestly, as bigoted and creepy as the diversity memo is; I found Google's response just as creepy. It would be one thing if they called the diversity memo out as disruptive and bigoted, but they said it had "wrong opinions." That just reeks of authoritarianism. I'm more afraid of authoritarianism from a major company than a bigot.
    - sjwright 6y ago
      The memo wasn't bigoted or creepy, it didn't even say anything particularly remarkable, though I do agree it failed to pay sufficient deference to the cultural moment. But the assertion that it was hateful or bigoted went unchallenged in all of the reporting around it. If you haven't read it yourself, I encourage you to challenge yourself with an open mind and give it a read.

Mekantis 6y ago

Sorry, but "good people" who are involved with all the evil things Facebook does by working for them aren't good people. I know it's hip to absolve yourself of responsibility by saying "I just work here" or "I didn't work on that", but all these rationalizations don't fly as long as you're one of the quiet majority that does nothing to fight what Facebook does. Seriously, techies seem to act on the same amoral plane as business executives and I wonder how you people manage to sleep at night.

irq 6y ago
AFAB
- catalogia 6y ago
  All Features are Biased?
  - gorgoiler 6y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.C.A.B https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.C.A.B. All Cops Are Bastards: the idea that it isn’t possible, by definition, for there to be such a thing as a good cop. Presumably F for Facebookers.
eclipxe 6y ago
What evil things?
wuunderbar 6y ago
There's 2 things here to keep in mind to go down your train of logic: 1) The company is actually doing evil things 2) The employee is aware of the purported evil things the company is doing, and agrees with that claim Now we can debate all we want how evil Facebook is or not, but how many employees do you think check off box 2?
- otterley 6y ago
  I find it difficult to believe that the average Facebook employee is exposed to less media coverage about their own company than a member of the general public is. So the remaining possibilities are that the employee either agrees with the policy (in which case, we can question their judgment), or they're just trying to keep food on the table (in which case, we should wonder about how healthy the job market is).

ehsankia 6y ago

Yep, listening to one employee out of thousands who claims something outrageous is just like listening to that one "scientist" who claims climate change is a hoax or the one "doctor" who claims vaccines are dangerous. If there was truly a hoax, I'd expect a good proportion of the workers there to be outraged about it.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

duxup 6y ago

I worked with one. He and his buddies had and endless list of grievances involving political this and that. Nothing seemed to happen that wasn't somehow 'political.' They surrounded themselves in this thicket of 'logic' where the simplest explanation was impossible and conspiracies were the most obvious answer to them. Thankfully it was long before social media as we know it. He was fired for leaving some nasty bigoted comments in code. But for the record I have no idea who these folks at Facebook are or their motivations. If the guy I'm thinking of made the news, you wouldn't know either.

gumby 6y ago
I have some relatives like that: the government is preventing us from XXX. Yet I can happily do xxx if I wish... Eventually I just stopped talking with them as that’s all they could talk about.

ffggvv 6y ago

yeah except liberal employees are constantly walking out or protesting or screaming/whining instead of working and never reprimanded at google or fb.

newacct583 6y ago

Did you read the story? The details seem pretty damning to me. > I’m sure Facebook isn’t perfect, but I know enough good people who work there to know they’re not all out to “get” us. Yeah, I don't think you read the article. That's what's happening: a bunch of employees are blowing the whistle on what seems to be executive abuse of the fact check program.

wiredone 6y ago
As the FB employee in this thread commented - this person vilified others and was fired for that, not his attempts to "bring down the man". Large scale platforms like this are hard to manage. I can see many cases where people doing their best can be misconstrued as an evil conspiracy. Eg. - Users and companies with large fan bases are open to brigading. Previously companies have been taken off the platform suddenly because of militant FB groups. - A new rule is instituted "anyone with more than X followers get Tier-1 support in reviewing and reinstating their account following a take down." - Engineer on some team mildly close to the team who runs the takedown/reinstatement systems sees that a Right Wing commentator is getting Tier-1 support and fast turn around reinstatement. - Said engineer tries to vilify the people who wrote the policy and those who are carrying it out, tries to go public with a conspiracy that "FB is prioritizing reinstating Right Wing users". Instead they've really just lost the trust of their peers, failed to understand the space properly, and now brought their employer into disrepute - they should be fired. This stuff happens all the time, and is usually just chalked up to "its a hard problem to get right, and we're trying to get better every day". When people over react and make out like Zuck is pulling strings to rule the universe i have a hard time understanding when he sleeps.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
thu2111 6y ago
The fact check program is itself executive abuse and should be ended. Given how many "fact checkers" are simply leftist pro-establishment types, and how many "fact checks" they produce are simple re-statements of whatever someone was claiming without bothering to address any raised criticisms, it doesn't surprise me at all that it's a flashpoint internally. These sort of people simply define anything that's not left wing as "misinformation", so the claim by the FB employee is on its surface meaningless. Zuckerberg should never have given way on fact checking. I wonder if he understands it was a mistake. Facebook is meant to be a social network, it's inherently a graph oriented organisation in which graph nodes are all roughly equal. Fact checking is the exact opposite: a hierarchy with Facebook at the top and delegated "truth arbiters" a layer lower, that try to dominate the social graph. The cited example of the Breitbart video is a good example. The video is a video of doctors. There are tons of scientists, government advisors and indeed whole governments saying they don't see any need for masks, children can go back to school or never even left (as in Sweden), etc. You don't need to go far to find them. That children aren't infectious is by now widely accepted in the scientific community. For Facebook to censor the President for making such a statement makes them look absurd, and totalitarian. Given the long term accusations of fraud surrounding mail voting that were never addressed, it's not a big surprise Trump is worrying about the integrity of the election process.

throwgeorge 6y ago

>This smells like sour apples from an employee who focused more on their plans to take down their employer than their actual job. do you work at FB? how can you smell anything? are you sure you're not projecting?

op03 6y ago

> Can we just acknowledge for a moment... They are not "weirdly rogue political activist type employees". They are normal people reacting to the abnormality that is Facebook. I mean which tech company has ever produced the kind of polarization, fake news, Brexit and Trump type events all over the globe? If Intel or IBM or AT&T had produced these type of outcomes you can bet your ass "weirdly rogue political activist type employees" wld suddenly start popping up all over the place. Facebook will continue to be a highly abnormal place to work for anyone who isn't mildly conformist.

dependenttypes 6y ago
Intel and AT&T might not have provided a platform which some people used for political propaganda but they have done other much worse things (ME, proprietary software/firmware/etc, anti-net-neutrality, anti-competition, etc).

erentz 6y ago

Do note that “potential” was added by me when I edited title because the original didn’t fit. I tried to come up with something appropriate but you shouldn’t comment off my title.

throwaway1801 6y ago

Is this satire? You’re describing literally every left wing activist that accuses their employer of systemic bias, racism, pay disparity, interference in elections, etc. Transparently it seems the right type of activists are celebrated and the wrong vilified. That’s fine, but let’s not act like this is principled.

wiredone 6y ago
There have been plenty of toxic people i've worked with who seem to think their job is to "point out all the unfairness in the world", when really they're just hired to pull stories off a backlog and write code. I get that there are good whistle blowers. I also have first hand experience (a growing list recently) of people who decide to vilify their coworkers under the guise of "justice" and "taking down the man" when really most people ("evil VPs" included) are just trying to do their best and get through the day. They on the other hand are horrible to work with, and usually very unproductive. When threatened with performance management for their lack of delivery, they then tend to become hostile and see the whole charade as a conspiracy against them, when really no one trusts them or wants to work with them as they are assholes.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- onion2k 6y ago
  There have been plenty of toxic people i've worked with who seem to think their job is to "point out all the unfairness in the world", when really they're just hired to pull stories off a backlog and write code. If you believe your employer is doing something wrong, potentially illegal, and bad for society as a whole then ignoring it because that's not in your job description means you're a huge failure as a human being.
  - hanselot 6y ago
    If any/everything is potentially offensive, don't be surprised if we are going towards a future market where the easily offended are MUCH less employable.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

bjowen 6y ago

None of that is necessarily inconsistent with there being political bias though - which could exist despite everyone’s best intentions. Disagreeable people are sometimes right, as much as it might be hard to see it or admit it. [edit - tone]

LifeLiverTransp 6y ago

Honestly, to a cooperation, any feudal or totalitarian system is much closer in nature then a democracy, with libertarian or even anarchistic organizational forms. Thats just how it is. I would be suprised if there was any cooperation whos ruling class is not secretly rooting for the dictators of this earth.