4 ms·

It is just common sense. If I wear clothing branded with my company's logo then I could be held accountable for my actions outside of work, even if I am doing t

by chaz6 6y ago

It is just common sense. If I wear clothing branded with my company's logo then I could be held accountable for my actions outside of work, even if I am doing the right thing and it is perceived to bring the company into disrepute, I could be disciplined or potentially fired.

randomsearch 6y ago
Is it possible to do the right thing and be working at Facebook? I think we can take as a given that every engineer at Facebook could easily get a job elsewhere. To be a Facebook employee is a conscious choice. The bigger question is - should you avoid working at companies that are a net negative, or should you stay there to try to improve them? I don’t know the answer, but I don’t see Facebook improving and I wouldn’t personally work there, for ethical reasons.
- KaiserPro 6y ago
  > Is it possible to do the right thing and be working at Facebook? Yes. > I think we can take as a given that every engineer at Facebook could easily get a job elsewhere. To be a Facebook employee is a conscious choice. yes, but loosing a lot of benefits. > should you avoid working at companies that are a net negative, or should you stay there to try to improve them? Thats two questions. And it's been on my mind for about a year now. I was bought out. The tech we make could be a brilliant tool for mankind, or if deployed incorrectly, commoditised stasi/KGB/Chinese secret police as a service. I don't want it to be the latter. If I leave there will be less voices of dissent. FB is a whipping boy. There are things that it should rightly be criticised for: not adhering to its own ToS for celebrities. Not enforcing age restrictions for instagram, not having enough diversity in its India operation. Myanmar. The difference between FB and the rest of SV is that FB has an utterly utterly shit PR team, who sits apart from the company. They love sniffing their own farts. (for example I only found out how many small companies advertise on FB when I joined. yet they reference this heavily only once, and expect a single full page advert to win people over.) Let us not forget that whilst FB is a data dustpan and brush, Google, Amazon, Apple, and your ISP are data hoovers. most of FB's data is collected willingly. The stuff your phone snitches on you every minute is extra ordinary. Amazon is literally selling a live feed of your front door to the police. I don't seek to admonish Facebook of its failings. They should be fucking hauled through the shit. But, we should also start to look at other companies, especially with the rise of AR.
  - esja 6y ago
    Have you seen the recent disclosure of the data gathered by Messenger? https://9to5mac.com/2021/01/04/app-privacy-labels-messaging-apps/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/01/04/app-privacy-labels-messaging-... That's a data hoover, not a dustpan... and it's not been collected "willingly".
    - KaiserPro 6y ago
      I have seen that disclosure. Its a wonderful bit of spin there. Apple's PR is really good, it allows signal to piggy back like a champ. You can uninstall messenger/instagram/fb. you can't easily stop apple or google snooping your location, health, finance and contact information and use your phone. Facebook don't have access to my location, health, financial, search or browsing history. I know because I did a GDPR request. Depending on where you live, you can do the same.
  - cmehdy 6y ago
    Your first answer is ethically debatable in a way that entirely depends on what is perceived to be "right". I'm not sure it's as clear cut as anyone would want it to be, but your approach is consistent with a specific kind of definition from what you're saying in your third answer. Your second answer is just a question of comfort. Similar to questions around ecology, making a choice one considers "right" might mean that you value that choice enough that the loss of benefits isn't a net loss to you. Much like with climate change, doing good things is hardly valued at all in terms of ethics in the current way tech does anything though. And I agree with you that all companies should be scrutinized heavily, and it's possible that Facebook just has become the symbol of that behaviour in all of tech. However (1) other people doing worse things is not really an excuse that's valid in itself ("I murdered somebody but there are serial killers out there!"), (2) facebook does a whole lot of dirty work especially in poorer countries like in Myanmar where it became ubiquitous by being pre-installed on smartphones and has become THE central information (and misinformation) hub of its own volition, and (3) you're pointing out AR and the most significant actor of that field currently is Facebook itself.
    - 6y ago

by chaz6 6y ago

randomsearch 6y ago

Is it possible to do the right thing and be working at Facebook? I think we can take as a given that every engineer at Facebook could easily get a job elsewhere. To be a Facebook employee is a conscious choice. The bigger question is - should you avoid working at companies that are a net negative, or should you stay there to try to improve them? I don’t know the answer, but I don’t see Facebook improving and I wouldn’t personally work there, for ethical reasons.

KaiserPro 6y ago
> Is it possible to do the right thing and be working at Facebook? Yes. > I think we can take as a given that every engineer at Facebook could easily get a job elsewhere. To be a Facebook employee is a conscious choice. yes, but loosing a lot of benefits. > should you avoid working at companies that are a net negative, or should you stay there to try to improve them? Thats two questions. And it's been on my mind for about a year now. I was bought out. The tech we make could be a brilliant tool for mankind, or if deployed incorrectly, commoditised stasi/KGB/Chinese secret police as a service. I don't want it to be the latter. If I leave there will be less voices of dissent. FB is a whipping boy. There are things that it should rightly be criticised for: not adhering to its own ToS for celebrities. Not enforcing age restrictions for instagram, not having enough diversity in its India operation. Myanmar. The difference between FB and the rest of SV is that FB has an utterly utterly shit PR team, who sits apart from the company. They love sniffing their own farts. (for example I only found out how many small companies advertise on FB when I joined. yet they reference this heavily only once, and expect a single full page advert to win people over.) Let us not forget that whilst FB is a data dustpan and brush, Google, Amazon, Apple, and your ISP are data hoovers. most of FB's data is collected willingly. The stuff your phone snitches on you every minute is extra ordinary. Amazon is literally selling a live feed of your front door to the police. I don't seek to admonish Facebook of its failings. They should be fucking hauled through the shit. But, we should also start to look at other companies, especially with the rise of AR.
- esja 6y ago
  Have you seen the recent disclosure of the data gathered by Messenger? https://9to5mac.com/2021/01/04/app-privacy-labels-messaging-apps/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/01/04/app-privacy-labels-messaging-... That's a data hoover, not a dustpan... and it's not been collected "willingly".
  - KaiserPro 6y ago
    I have seen that disclosure. Its a wonderful bit of spin there. Apple's PR is really good, it allows signal to piggy back like a champ. You can uninstall messenger/instagram/fb. you can't easily stop apple or google snooping your location, health, finance and contact information and use your phone. Facebook don't have access to my location, health, financial, search or browsing history. I know because I did a GDPR request. Depending on where you live, you can do the same.
- cmehdy 6y ago
  Your first answer is ethically debatable in a way that entirely depends on what is perceived to be "right". I'm not sure it's as clear cut as anyone would want it to be, but your approach is consistent with a specific kind of definition from what you're saying in your third answer. Your second answer is just a question of comfort. Similar to questions around ecology, making a choice one considers "right" might mean that you value that choice enough that the loss of benefits isn't a net loss to you. Much like with climate change, doing good things is hardly valued at all in terms of ethics in the current way tech does anything though. And I agree with you that all companies should be scrutinized heavily, and it's possible that Facebook just has become the symbol of that behaviour in all of tech. However (1) other people doing worse things is not really an excuse that's valid in itself ("I murdered somebody but there are serial killers out there!"), (2) facebook does a whole lot of dirty work especially in poorer countries like in Myanmar where it became ubiquitous by being pre-installed on smartphones and has become THE central information (and misinformation) hub of its own volition, and (3) you're pointing out AR and the most significant actor of that field currently is Facebook itself.
  - 6y ago