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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

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).
  - darawk 6y ago
    Which policies of Facebooks are 'evil', exactly?
  - gfxgirl 6y ago
    There are more options than you've presented. There is also that the employee has perfectly valid and logical reasons for believing the policy isn't evil. In other words, the issue is you see the policies as evil with no possibility to see otherwise. I use facebook to connect with my family and friends. I've unfollowed all overly political friends. I get no real or fake news in my facebook feed. If I worked at facebook I'd be proud of helping people to stay connected.
    - yomly 6y ago
      To add to this, Facebook is seen as an existential threat to traditional media so most reporting on it will pass through an editorial lens. Here on HN we are happy to call out the NYT and Bloomberg when they are wrong, but is that only when their articles don't align with our prior biases?
    - otterley 6y ago
      There’s no question that there are good things about Facebook, but I think a fully contemplative person would need to balance those things against the harms Facebook allows to exist on their platform. It’s not a black and white question of good vs evil, as much as it is “does what this company does (or not do), on balance, comport with my values of right or wrong?” Evidence of wrong-doing and questionable judgment by the company’s leaders is abundant. And at some point you can’t continue to work for a company without being complicit in its sins; after all, a company hires someone because they need them to help execute the company’s decisions.
ll931110 6y ago
At the end of the day, you need enough people to care. But plenty are happy with finishing the work, or absolving all the messiness of real world and focus on the engineering work, which is simply more pleasant (and fits to their liking). Work is hard enough, why adding extra stress unless the company is doing something obviously illegal?
dang 6y ago
Please don't morally posture over other people on this forum, first because it's bad for conversation, and second because we're all guilty, even those who don't work for Facebook. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
notacoward 6y ago
So you think that this person was the absolutely last good person at Facebook, and that every one of the other 48,000+ are evil? Do you also believe that every single US government employee, including Dr. Fauci and the inspectors general who regularly report on wrongdoing, must be evil because they're involved with what the Trump administration does? And what on Earth makes you think the majority at Facebook is quiet about any topic least of all this one? Interesting notions, to say the least. It seems to me that there are three stories here. One is that some small group of employees were violating policy by preventing certain users from being flagged or banned when they should have been. One is that an employee caught them. The third is that the employee was fired - apparently for conduct around the disclosure rather than the disclosure itself, but that's beside the point. The point is that it's absurd to assume that the first and third stories are totally representative of how every single person remaining at Facebook is, while the one that connects them is assumed to be an anomaly that could never possibly happen again.

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).
- darawk 6y ago
  Which policies of Facebooks are 'evil', exactly?
- gfxgirl 6y ago
  There are more options than you've presented. There is also that the employee has perfectly valid and logical reasons for believing the policy isn't evil. In other words, the issue is you see the policies as evil with no possibility to see otherwise. I use facebook to connect with my family and friends. I've unfollowed all overly political friends. I get no real or fake news in my facebook feed. If I worked at facebook I'd be proud of helping people to stay connected.
  - yomly 6y ago
    To add to this, Facebook is seen as an existential threat to traditional media so most reporting on it will pass through an editorial lens. Here on HN we are happy to call out the NYT and Bloomberg when they are wrong, but is that only when their articles don't align with our prior biases?
  - otterley 6y ago
    There’s no question that there are good things about Facebook, but I think a fully contemplative person would need to balance those things against the harms Facebook allows to exist on their platform. It’s not a black and white question of good vs evil, as much as it is “does what this company does (or not do), on balance, comport with my values of right or wrong?” Evidence of wrong-doing and questionable judgment by the company’s leaders is abundant. And at some point you can’t continue to work for a company without being complicit in its sins; after all, a company hires someone because they need them to help execute the company’s decisions.

ll931110 6y ago

At the end of the day, you need enough people to care. But plenty are happy with finishing the work, or absolving all the messiness of real world and focus on the engineering work, which is simply more pleasant (and fits to their liking). Work is hard enough, why adding extra stress unless the company is doing something obviously illegal?

dang 6y ago

Please don't morally posture over other people on this forum, first because it's bad for conversation, and second because we're all guilty, even those who don't work for Facebook. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

notacoward 6y ago

So you think that this person was the absolutely last good person at Facebook, and that every one of the other 48,000+ are evil? Do you also believe that every single US government employee, including Dr. Fauci and the inspectors general who regularly report on wrongdoing, must be evil because they're involved with what the Trump administration does? And what on Earth makes you think the majority at Facebook is quiet about any topic least of all this one? Interesting notions, to say the least. It seems to me that there are three stories here. One is that some small group of employees were violating policy by preventing certain users from being flagged or banned when they should have been. One is that an employee caught them. The third is that the employee was fired - apparently for conduct around the disclosure rather than the disclosure itself, but that's beside the point. The point is that it's absurd to assume that the first and third stories are totally representative of how every single person remaining at Facebook is, while the one that connects them is assumed to be an anomaly that could never possibly happen again.