14 ms·

Facebook Recruiter Correspondence

156 points by georgemandis 5y ago

danjac 5y ago
Lol the phrase "we're fighting to change it from the inside" sounds like every student socialist who gets a job in the bank after graduation. You have the moral backbone of a jellyfish and you're doing it for the sweet smell of green. Just own it, like the arms dealers and hedge fund managers.
joshuamcginnis 5y ago
I've considered responding with a link to the "Criticism of Facebook"[1] wiki. Even if only half of it is true, it's still pretty horrendous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook
draw_down 5y ago
gfodor 5y ago
It’s depressing that criticisms of Facebook now seem to entirely be focused on them not shutting down speech. At some point, the root issue with Facebook (as identified best by Jaron Lanier) has been lost in the political noise: their business model is one that incentivizes and enables the creation of a global scale surveillance and behavior modification empire. Getting angry that they are not removing content you feel is “dangerous” is the opposite of fixing this: it’s smuggling in the idea they ought to be presumed an arbiter of speech - that arbitration being the key lever of their toxic business model. If we agree Facebook should be in a position to decide who gets to talk to whom in the modern public square, we are forced to agree they get to monetize that capability, which is their current business model.
- koboll 5y ago
  The arguments that Facebook is evil are really dumb and I'm kind of tired of them. The core mechanism of political polarization is that the internet inexorably pulled society out of its temporary state of mass media consolidation. For a couple decades, we had an unusual situation where a few companies ran mass media, and those companies all sort of agreed to toe the centrist consensus line politically. Now, we've reverted to something like what we had before radio, which was that socialists read the socialist newspaper, right-wing folks read the right-wing newspaper, etc., if not even worse -- some folks just got their news from the loudest partisans at the bar. We've gone from an era where news distribution was fragmented because it was very difficult, to an era where it was consolidated because it was easy for large corporations only, to an era where it's so dead simple that anyone can do it, so it's fragmented again. Legacy media folks hate this. They blame the biggest players helping people share fragmented media sources with one another, rather than recognizing the inevitability of this fragmentation, no matter what products people use to share news over the internet. They demand a return to elite consensus blocking extreme viewpoints. It is simply not gonna happen. That barn was always temporary, and it has collapsed around the horse.
  - cowpig 5y ago
    Your reply, like the other below it, both completely ignored the article and the comment they are replying to. Sure, media is more fragmented now. But that doesn't address any of the criticisms in question.
  - gfodor 5y ago
    The argument isn’t about Facebook per se, and especially not the people at Facebook. It’s that providing Internet services for “free” on the back of advertising was an obviously great idea when such “ads” were cute product pitches and led to positive cash flow. But when it became obvious that “ads” was the wrong mental model, and that the products being created were ultimately about the general problem of persuading people by using data collected by spying on them, it should have been realized this was an incentive structure that any sane code of engineering ethics should abandon. Facebook ended up being the best and most successful example of an organization taking this system to its most logical endpoint, but someone always would have unless a code of ethics managed to materialize upon seeing the damage it was causing before it got too far. I don’t judge people who work at Facebook generally, but do think every one of them at this point should resign on ethical grounds. The situation could be fixed if the company (even just internally) owned up to the malincentives they have fallen into and committed to exiting it and leading on forming a code of ethics on when these kinds of system ought not be built.
    - lugged 5y ago
      I stopped using Facebook when they stopped showing you everything in chronological order and started implementing boosted posts and advertising in your feed. I really don't understand why it's taken almost a decade for you idiots to figure out what that would result in. "At this point" What point? The point they started hiding your friends "boring" posts in order to serve up the most clickbait shit possible? Or the point they allowed political parties to ram Obama and then trump down your throat. Or the point they decided to become arbitors of truth? Or the point they decided to censor you over your beliefs?
      - gfodor 5y ago
- jboy55 5y ago
  I think one of the key things is what happened in 2016, isn't the same thing that's happening now. Then, actors were able to pay and market content directly to audiences they felt were exploitable. The current deluge of misinformation, especially regarding vaccine, is shared directly with friends or within groups that people explicitly join. If you browse the 'Herman Cain Awards' on reddit, you'll see things like, - "I'll probably get put in facebook jail for this..." - A misinformation label attached to the bottom of the post. - The post completely blanked out, with a statement that this is misinformation. This seems to indicate some moderation being done. What I don't see from the "facebook should stop' this group, is any attempt to get cable companies to do the same with "news" stations that broadcast misinformation. An attempt to have the FCC take AM radio station's licenses for broadcasting propaganda. The underlying fact is, what we label misinformation is just what a large group of people wrongly believe, and they really like sharing it with each other.
  - soylentnewsorg 5y ago
    [flagged]
    - jboy55 5y ago
      "Soft right wing" propaganda? I can't understand from your response what side you think I'm taking. In one point its "right wing" propaganda, in the other, I'm criticizing right wing media. I also completely understand how you posted a screed, without making a point at all or taking a side at all. That Facebook has found a way to have a service that provides content, and not have to pay for it, is one of the reasons they are so immensely profitable. I kind of laugh at your comparison to a warning in front of a show that its 'fictional' as some sort of equal warning and how that relates to what right wing cable tv news and radio have been putting on the air nearly 24/7 for the past 3 decades. My point, is that the seeds of the misinformation and right wing propaganda isn't the leaf node that is facebook, but comes from the right wing media outlets, that are carried on cable or over the air. Its also a concern that no one on the 'left' seems entirely concerned about this, when you can dump on social media.
      - 5y ago
- blondin 5y ago
  > their business model is one that incentivizes and enables the creation of a global scale surveillance and behavior modification empire. huh, that's the first time i have read this one. the one i read about recently has to do with connecting the world. now this is making me realize that maybe, just maybe, nobody knows what their true business model is?
  - dcow 5y ago
    No their business model is very clear: leverage their user attention machine to sell advertising opportunities to buyers.
  - gfodor 5y ago
    It’s not hard to ascertain someone’s business model when they are a public company, nevermind one that you literally can start spending money with in about 5 minutes.
- sieabahlpark 5y ago
  They're a damn American company, free speech should be a major component. The surveilance is going to happen no matter what country. Thinking any other country would actually respect privacy is truly delusional.
  - kcartlidge 5y ago
    > They're a damn American company, free speech should be a major component. Given the constitutional safeguards you may be right on this one. > Thinking any other country would actually respect privacy is truly delusional. This, however, I had to read several times to be sure you were saying what I thought you were saying. At which point I just shook my head in amazement.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    I think it’s important to remember the issue with Facebook isn’t speech it’s amplification. Algorithmic amplification of content that drives engagement. This is what folks have an issue with. Further bear in mind that “free speech” refers to the government not precluding your speech and Facebook ain’t government. Unless you’re proposing nationalizing it.
    - worrycue 5y ago
      It’s a positive feedback loop. Introduce people to outrage. Spur them into “action” where they create more “outrage content” (comments, posts, … etc.) for you in return for attention and praise (Likes, upvotes, … etc.). Outrage content grows exponentially like the spread of an infectious disease or a nuclear chain reaction … as does the “engagement” of the site. The job of the site is just to get the outrage content in front of the viewers and keep the chain reaction going. Basically the modern version of riling up a lynch mob … for profit. To some extend, all social media use this feedback loop, even this site. P.S. Yes, I realize the irony of this comment.
      - fstrthnscnd 5y ago
        In essence, it works like a catalyst?
- jwalton 5y ago
  Everyone wants to break up Facebook back into Facebook and Instagram and Whatsapp. I don't think that would really solve any of these issues. I think we're thinking about this the wrong way - we should break up Facebook the same way we broke up Bell into baby Bells. Make "Facebook" a utility. Split Facebook into five different companies, maybe some not even in the US. Each "Facebook" company would have to provide Facebook service to a subset of current users. Allow new people to run Facebook providers. Unhappy with the customer service from your current Facebook provider, or with the quantity of ads? Don't like the algorithm that's running your timeline? Switch to one of the other providers who may do things differently. Create competition in this market where there simply isn't any. Some people will point out this forces all these providers to interoperate somehow, so users on one Facebook provider can talk to users on another. This is a really great part of this plan! Our social networks become based on open standards and interoperability instead of being walled gardens.
  - bcherny 5y ago
    In what ways is this different than today’s world, where depending on what you want to do (connect with people with similar interests, talk to friends, look at cat videos) there’s a bunch of options for what service to use?
    - bmarquez 5y ago
      Currently, I'd have to recreate my social graph if I move to a different service. With the proposed interoperability, I wouldn't have to.
      - jboy55 5y ago
        If you maintained the same social graph on each service, you'd still have all the misinformation being shared amongst the same graph members. Its one thing if the content being served is what some nefarious actor wants a group to consume, for influence sake. Its another when its the content produces and consumes themselves. The current misinformation discourse on FB is the current culture, especially the culture of a large group of people. It originates both on and off FB. 'Q' didn't originate on FB, it originated on 8chan, let that sink in.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  Facebook is not the public square. It’s not even a public square. It’s not a bulletin board or a newspaper or a telephone. There’s no analog analogy. It’s a site run by a private company that you send content to, they analyze it, then they decide what to publish and in what order. The closest analog thing I can think of is Letters To The Editor in a newspaper. They aren't “deciding who gets to talk” or “shutting down speech.” There are plenty of non-Facebook ways to talk that don’t involve sending your message to them and hoping they decide to post it.
  - chana_masala 5y ago
    There doesn't need to be an analog analogy. There was nothing analogous about the telephone either but Bell Labs was still broken up
  - FormerBandmate 5y ago
    They’re the modern public square, as are all social media platforms. You could have made the same argument about the telephone or ISPs, both of those are neutral for a reason
  - iammisc 5y ago
    This is technically true but de facto not. It's like arguing that Ukraine controls Crimea because legally (according to themselves and others) they do. In my experience when this argument is made, I typically follow it up by "well if it's so unimportant, why don't you delete your account?". 99/100 times I've asked this in real life the person responds by saying, "well I don't have anywhere else to say things" (this is during covid). For the past two years, social media is the only public square allowed by government fiat. Thus it must be regulated as such.
    - lelandfe 5y ago
      …so by the same logic, as COVID wanes and actual real-life public squares exist again, Facebook won’t need to be regulated?
      - 5y ago
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
  If we choose to go with a real world analogy, the "public square", then why are people sharing messages and photos with friends and family via a "public square". That is not what we do in the real world.
- sofixa 5y ago
  Maybe you missed the genocide that happened thanks to a rampant disinformation campaign on Facebook? Or the other more benign cases, like antivaxers (the classical ones, not vaccinating their kids against polio and measles) and co. Can anyone seriously argue that disinformation on Facebook isn't dangerous? The only possible question should be what can we do about it to preserve debate, free speech, etc. while stoping the literally deadly parts.
  - gfodor 5y ago
    We already have done this over the last several centuries by defining the line between legal and non-legal speech. The point is the line is chosen to trade off these risks. There is no silver bullet but acting like there is, and that this debate is just beginning now, is fallacious.
- nerdponx 5y ago
  > criticisms of Facebook now seem to entirely be focused on them not shutting down speech. Note to readers: the author of the blog post is not espousing this, at least not overtly.
  - smsm42 5y ago
    Mentioning hate speech is a pretty good marker though, I'd give 80% probability the author thinks FB should censor more whoever the author considers haters.
- gorgoiler 5y ago
  Many alternatives to the Facebook Public Square exist: Discord, Diaspora, Mastodon, er... Ello, erm, Voat. I’m joking of course. None of those make as much money as Facebook, and I think we can all agree it’s the fact that they are so rich that bothers us most. Far more than any public square argument. Where’s my yacht?!
  - alexandre_m 5y ago
    I don't care that they're rich. I care that they have a monopoly and consolidate so much power that they can shift the balance for the interest of their stakeholders or lobbyists.
- epinephrinios 5y ago
  What's going with the "western" world? Look at Australia, UK and now USA. Citizens are voluntarily giving up on hard-won rights like free speech in favor of what? A false sense of security? Saddens me deeply.
  - deleted 5y ago
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- bashinator 5y ago
  IMO, Facebook (or YT, or any big media company) even being in a position to “shut down free speech” is a predictable outcome of the total failure of net neutrality in the U.S. If everyone had sufficient bandwidth to host their own content from their home Internet, and ISPs were prohibited from also being media companies, free speech would be much stronger.
- smsm42 5y ago
  Well, there's another option - they are allowed to arbiter, but aren't allowed to control the rules on the arbitration, at least not directly - instead, an overriding entity would do that. The entity would be, most likely, the government, but as a window dressing, an "independent body" whose members are selected by the politicians can be established to give it a veneer of being removed from everyday politics (protip: it never is). While not a lot of people would admit to preferring this model now, I suspect, a lot of them are pushing in the direction that can't lead anywhere but there. Of course, once such body is established, its natural evolution would be first to control all large public speech platforms, and then to attempt to control all speech in general.
H8crilA 5y ago
All this negativity around the company and no good way to make a profit on it. Shares are still reasonably to fully priced, markets don't seem to care a lot. (Shorting is not for me).
- kspacewalk2 5y ago
  This negativity is mostly a moral panic confined to the elites who feel threatened by Facebook's power to disrupt their world (which they misinterpret as the end of the world). Facebook's actual users don't seem to care much.
  - marticode 5y ago
    If the disruption is the mass distribution of antivax and antiscience propaganda that kills 1000s of people, the manipulation of opinions by hostile foreign state actors, the flaming of genocide and the utter division of nations into completely antagonistic sides, then I'm sorry but maybe the elites have a point.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - gfodor 5y ago
    If you work for Facebook, you are contributing to a system which will grow into being the most effective mechanism, by far, for a bad actor to deploy capital to successfully alter the beliefs, behavior, and choices of your children. One day, through VR/AR/AI agents, they will even be able to turn your children against you for someone paying the right price, if the development of Facebook, the system, continues on its present trajectory and no ethical framework is put in place to restrain their actions. (Regulation won’t work, it is the wrong solution to this problem imo.) You should resign if you do.
    - drstewart 5y ago
      >you are contributing to a system which will grow into being the most effective mechanism, by far, for a bad actor to deploy capital to successfully alter the beliefs, behavior, and choices of your children. I believe you are actually describing government employees.
sorry_outta_gas 5y ago
As an recent employee, Facebook is the future of the internet and probably all society. you can either join with the winning team or sit around with the losers. The ad business may have it's issues but it's only temporary until the next phase beings the leadership team cares about what's best for everyone, it's not evil.
shaggyfrog 5y ago
Facebook is a massively evil company, a true net-negative to life on earth, a destroyer of personal privacy, responsible for facilitating genocides, constantly lying to its users, the most egregious example of how corruptive a monopolistic corporation can be on a society at a global level. If this recruiter is to believed -- and I wouldn't believe a goddamn word of any of it -- there are all these poor, principled people who really truly want to "make Facebook better" but dangnabit they just don't have critical mass yet. Bullshit. All of it. This is a carefully calculated response, like all of Facebook's responses (PR or otherwise), to make you drop your guard and stop using your critical thinking faculties. It's a siren song, with promises of six figures and early retirement. Listen... if you're at Facebook, you've personally made a decision that you'd rather collect your paycheque than stop contributing to the beast that surrounds you. You're fine with the pervasive corruption and rampant disinformation and hypocrisy because you're making bank. Don't be shy. Own it. Say it with a full chest. At least it would be genuine. But don't lie to yourself, or your coworkers, or anyone outside the company, and say you're trying to "make Facebook better". It can't be made "better" in its current form. It will never be better. It needs to be dismantled. It needs to be put on trial. It needs to be bled dry.
- acwan93 5y ago
  >Listen... if you're at Facebook, you've personally made a decision that you'd rather collect your paycheque than stop contributing to the beast that surrounds you. You're fine with the pervasive corruption and rampant disinformation and hypocrisy because you're making bank. Don't be shy. Own it. Say it with a full chest. At least it would be genuine. So true. I would never want to work for Facebook, but I’ve always wanted to reply back to their persistent recruiters with an obscene salary expectation just to see if they’ll consider it.
- drstewart 5y ago
  I'd say the same goes for scum that work(ed) for other evil companies like EA, too. Don't you agree?
  - aaomidi 5y ago
    EA hasn't really been tearing the fabric of our society apart, the comparison isn't really there. They're just a run-of-the-mill psychopathic company.
gigatexal 5y ago
Bravo. Bravo! I made a similar response to a FB recruiter. They followed up offering to open a dialogue. I declined. Now to follow your blog.
ferdowsi 5y ago
> Seriously, I think one of the biggest misconceptions people with opinions like yours might have is that we are somehow unified in these decisions or occurrences – we are not – and the healthy dissent is what, over time, hopefully bends us in the right direction. I laughed a bit at this. I guess a recruiting tactic is to now advertise the exciting possibilities of burnout? "Come join Facebook because you can totally change the ethical direction of this billion dollar surveillance behemoth from the inside, one commit at a time. ;)"
- gigatexal 5y ago
  My favorite line of reasoning from the article was that folks hold no civic duty to work on the inside for the megalomaniac that is the Zuck. I do find out very empathetic that the author understands why folks would stay employed there: it pays super well and people have obligations.
- gordon_freeman 5y ago
  Trillion*
pjbk 5y ago
Seriously, I think one of the biggest misconceptions people with opinions like yours might have is that we are somehow unified in these decisions or occurrences – we are not – and the healthy dissent is what, over time, hopefully bends us in the right direction. Oh, the irony. Well it looks like the "healthy dissent" gets you out the door. Perhaps that is the right direction the recruiter was referring to?
cmckn 5y ago
Listen, even if you disregard all of the privacy concerns and support of cancerous communities, Facebook is a shitty social network. The platform has decayed into a junk drawer that is legitimately terrible at the things it was originally designed for. It's bad at connecting you with people you know or might want to know. It's bad at showing you updates from your existing friends, and vice-versa. The site at one time felt cool and fun; it feels like AOL now.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  Agreed, Twitter also brings out the worst of people in short schizophrenic vile without much thought. Reddit’s front page is full of outrage videos. Tiktok sucks people into tiniest echo chambers possible. YouTube comments section is completely insane. Social media is great if it is limited to say 100 people. When you broadcast to millions, it is toxic.
paxys 5y ago
This post has the energy of someone shouting at a minimum wage customer service rep because they disagree with the company's policies and feeling smug about themselves afterwards.
- aflkunusu 5y ago
  Most effort I have seen anyone put into telling a recruiter they are not interested in a job. Well, got a blog out of it. Wonder if they have similar conversations with recruiters from all other companies, would be great to see those published.
- cee_el123 5y ago
  initially it is that yes. but it's the recruiter who decided to play along despite that. At that point OP has no choice but to elaborate and counter the 'criticizing from outside' thing
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - bink 5y ago
    And who could blame them? I'm sure recruiters at most companies have a litany of responses they use based on the tone of the candidate. They get paid on how many people they can get into the interviews, accept an offer, and stay X months past their start date. Why wouldn't they use form responses on the off chance it works?
  - polyomino 5y ago
    No choice but to create content for hacker news
- thwd 5y ago
  That's only if you equate the recruiter to a minimum wage worker and yourself to their customer. There's a superiority bias in that rhetoric. The recruiter is a well-employed tech worker. And you're not their client or superior.
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names_are_hard 5y ago
Some meta feedback to the OP: please test your site on mobile. I wanted to read what you wrote but got tired of scrolling endlessly to the right in the block quotes so I gave up.
- deleted 5y ago
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abrahamk1 5y ago
In my mind, and I acknowledge YMMV: Without doubt, FB and websites similar to FB are responsible for all the evil in this world. I know they are making money - and while they continue to make money, they will continue to be in the business of facilitating evil in the world. Of course there are good things that comes out of it, but nowhere close enough to offset the problems it creates. Now if FB stops doing what it is doing, another company will take the lead, so I guess ultimately it's a problem that we can never get away from. Having said that, FB is the current leader in facilitating evil, so I hate them for that and will never work for them. Ever. Thanks for reading.
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
"While Zuckerberg promised that thefacebook.com would boast new features by the end of the week, he said that he did not create the website with the intention of generating revenue. " http://web.archive.org/web/20050403215543/www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=357292 http://web.archive.org/web/20050403215543/www.thecrimson.com... This is very much like the promise that Page and Brin made in their early 1990's paper announcing Google. How easily the idealism gave way to greed. These kids were never suited for management, let alone leading a large organisation. There was no "business plan". Even today, they still fall back on advertising. Competition is far too challenging. There is likely no person on the Facebook dole who wants to "fix" the problem of Facebook if it means losing their paycheck, bonus and stock options. On the contrary, it stands to reason these people will be compelled to act in the interests of self-preservation, which means the preservation of "the business" (high surveillance advertising). The reply from the recruiter is perhaps an example of such desperation. Bill Gates was recently interviewed on PBS News Hour about his relationship with Jeffery Epstein. His answer seemed reminiscient of the younger Gates. Getsuring with his hands, we can see his wedding ring is gone. Perhaps he has come full circle, he is who he always was. He refused to disclose what he knew. He was apparently told to say he regretted having the meetings, which he repeats several times. Eventually after evading more questions, he is asked if he learned from the mistakes of the past, and his reply is "Well, he's dead..." and then he tries to play up his role in philanthropy. His kids are likely afraid to speak out. https://archive.org/download/youtube-LNAwUxZ5nfw/LNAwUxZ5nfw.mp4 https://archive.org/download/youtube-LNAwUxZ5nfw/LNAwUxZ5nfw... https://www.thedailybeast.com/bill-gates-asked-what-he-knew-about-jeffrey-epstein-nervously-says-hes-dead https://www.thedailybeast.com/bill-gates-asked-what-he-knew-... IIRC, back when he was active on HN, PG was a staid Zuckerberg fan. I also recall HN commenters claiming that Zuckerberg's "dumb fucks" comment referring to Facebook's early users, his fellow classmates, was no longer representative of the person who made it. I wonder if he can do better than Bill Gates in interviews.
- rowanG077 5y ago
  I felt the opposite about Gates. He had a few dinners with a guy that turned out to be a sexual predator. I don't see at all how that is "bad". It was simply a media fuelled witch hunt as far as I can see it.
narcraft 5y ago
I like to think of Facebook as a niche horse girl forum and analyze all criticisms of it through that lens. Why should we care about how this strange site is run?
- wyldfire 5y ago
  I've never used Facebook but I would never think of naively dismissing their impact on the world.
  - narcraft 5y ago
    Well I just did
- saulpw 5y ago
  Scale matters. Each power of 10 is a whole other level. A niche horse girl forum might have thousands, maybe 10s of thousands of users? FB has billions. That's 6 orders of magnitude more relevance and impact, which is planet-wide. That's why we should care.
  - narcraft 5y ago
    I think scale is a reasonable distinction to focus on. It could be argued that due to network effects that Facebook enjoys a sort of natural monopoly of being "the" social network. Nonetheless, it still has big competition in the ad space with Google and traditional media, and though much smaller and with different emphasis, Linkedin is a viable large social network that can survive alongside Facebook. I think it's hard to define at what scale a company should be subject to public scrutiny/control in part because it's hard to clearly define the market in which it competes. I think the negative impact that Facebook has on society is largely overstated and would like to see more testimony from users who believe that they have been personally harmed by Facebook's practices.
    - saulpw 5y ago
      > it's hard to define at what scale a company should be subject to public scrutiny/control FB is one of the largest companies on the planet with worldwide effects. There isn't another 10x for it to grow. If it's not subject to scrutiny/control at this scale, then it will never be subject to it. > would like to see more testimony from users who believe that they have been personally harmed Victims of genocide are notoriously unable to testify.
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aaomidi 5y ago
Has anyone else kinda decided they're done doing technical interviews? If you *really* want me, then just give me an offer and let's negotiate. I'm getting to the point where I'm just going to say if my work experience doesn't provide you with enough information about my technical ability then you can go hire someone fresh out of school who's done l33tcode 24/7 for the last few months.
- jareklupinski 5y ago
  same, but be prepared to no longer be offered those kinds of positions as long as your resume/linkedin shows that you have clearly passed once and have exceeded "leetcode level" for a number of years, you should already be getting emails for "Staff/Lead" positions that end with "got 15 minutes for a chat to see if we're right for you?" helps to have a site/project/blog/portfolio along with a github to breeze past the phone/culture screens :)
- ownagefool 5y ago
  The thing about tech interviews, is they're not just testing you, but also ensure your colleagues are at a minimal viable level. The alternatives are: - You only hire folks with prestige; pulling the ladder up for everyone else. - You fire fast; potentially screwing up peoples lives. - You carry dead weight that slows everyone else down. Of course, some of the interviews go a bit far. I had one with at ~15 calls, at least 7 of them "interviews". Most of them went well enough, but the architectual was somewhat egregious where I was asked a bit of a trick question, asked some clarifiying questions and got conflicting statements. I asked for a redo, and got a nope, then ended up in the weirdest offer stage I've experienced. I try to keep that in mind when people propose we add more hurdles to our process. :)
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andygrd 5y ago
An interaction and dialog between equally repugnant parties.
INTPenis 5y ago
All valid points but there is another perspective to this whole mess. I see it through my family members who all have Facebook, how they connect with relatives across the globe and routinely stay in touch during birthdays and other events. I also see it at most social functions around me that organize over Facebook, because I am left out of those since I don't have an account. My best connection to social gatherings is a friend who also hates Facebook but is a lot more social than me, moves around a lot more, so he hears from all the people with Facebook what is going on through word of mouth. So that's a pretty neat service they're offering to a substantial part of the population. But of course they're suffering from moderation issues, something we can see on all large platforms like Youtube and Twitter.
- rvense 5y ago
  > So that's a pretty neat service they're offering to a substantial part of the population. For sure, Facebook is great. It just provides services that shouldn't come from one single company in America. They should be forced to interoperate. Provide a way to subscribe to Facebook content (pages, events) from outside of Facebook, and a way to pull outside content (RSS, ActivityPub, hell, throw in Twitter while we're at it) into your Facebook stream. A sort of standardized stream for updates and comments. This would clear up all my criticisms of Facebook. At that point I would only wish them well. I'm sure they would provide the best interface to it, and most people would stay with them, and that would be fine.
  - INTPenis 5y ago
    Of course I agree because I'm from a traditionally socialist country. But you reap what you sow in a free market economy. I just don't see the US implementing such measures. But I do hope for a municipal social media platform in Europe some day.
  - annadane 5y ago
    The thing that's insane to me is you can't even access any profiles without being logged in. This is public information; they've locked things down to an incredible degree and I bet every last dollar I have it's for cynical reasons and not "user privacy"
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streamofdigits 5y ago
A "public good" approach to digital social graphs is the broadest and most urgent social imperative since, I don't know, nuclear non-proliferation treaty? It will decidedly not solve all problems associated with online digital platforms. We know for a fact that even the earliest and most innocent online forums would degenerate into flame wars. We know that filtering and struggle for the political control of news dissemination is "tech-independent": print, radio, TV etc all "solve" this in their own arbitrary and varying ways. What facebook managed to achieve is to combine all those, together with many others (personal data collection, algorithmic profiling of people, leaking of such profiles to third parties etc) and deploy it at an unthinkable scale.
MAGZine 5y ago
I sent a similar reply to a Facebook recruiter. Something song the lines of, "I disagree with the philosophical direction of the company and cannot in good conscience find myself working there." This, apparently, was a way to get myself permanently and unceremoniously removed from all Facebook recruiter outbound. Not only did I not get a reply, but where I used to get multiple emails a month from different teams, I haven't heard anything from a Facebook recruiter in more than two years. So everything worked out in the end.
xyzzy21 5y ago
I would have been far harsher! If you work for an immoral organization and are OK with that by virtue of continuing to draw a wage there, YOU ARE AS IMMORAL as the company because you aid and abet it. I won't have anything to do with you based on that. I'll be polite and arm's length interacting with you but NOTHING beyond that will ever be possible; not personal, not business, not social!
- gopiandcode 5y ago
  This. I've lost my respect for so many developers who have decided to go to work for these net-social-negative surveillance companies for a fat paycheck and justify their decision by the argument that if they didn't accept the offer, then someone worse would accept. What annoys me is not that they took the job for the paycheck (we all have to eat at the end of the say), but rather the fact that all it takes to appease their moral conscience is such a weak and flimsy bit of moral acrobatics. Have a spine and accept the real consequences of your actions at least.
sys_64738 5y ago
Facebook: We sell ads for eyeballs. Nothing else matters. That's it in a nutshell.
up2isomorphism 5y ago
The moral standard is very very high, yet he works for google. The amount irony almost makes me sick.
- deleted 5y ago
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zephrx1111 5y ago
I think the topic here is not what FB did wrong, but what's the difference b/w FB and, say twitter or medium. They are all platforms, but why only FB got grilled on fire.

156 points by georgemandis 5y ago

Lol the phrase "we're fighting to change it from the inside" sounds like every student socialist who gets a job in the bank after graduation. You have the moral backbone of a jellyfish and you're doing it for the sweet smell of green. Just own it, like the arms dealers and hedge fund managers.

joshuamcginnis 5y ago

I've considered responding with a link to the "Criticism of Facebook"[1] wiki. Even if only half of it is true, it's still pretty horrendous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook

draw_down 5y ago

gfodor 5y ago

It’s depressing that criticisms of Facebook now seem to entirely be focused on them not shutting down speech. At some point, the root issue with Facebook (as identified best by Jaron Lanier) has been lost in the political noise: their business model is one that incentivizes and enables the creation of a global scale surveillance and behavior modification empire. Getting angry that they are not removing content you feel is “dangerous” is the opposite of fixing this: it’s smuggling in the idea they ought to be presumed an arbiter of speech - that arbitration being the key lever of their toxic business model. If we agree Facebook should be in a position to decide who gets to talk to whom in the modern public square, we are forced to agree they get to monetize that capability, which is their current business model.

koboll 5y ago
The arguments that Facebook is evil are really dumb and I'm kind of tired of them. The core mechanism of political polarization is that the internet inexorably pulled society out of its temporary state of mass media consolidation. For a couple decades, we had an unusual situation where a few companies ran mass media, and those companies all sort of agreed to toe the centrist consensus line politically. Now, we've reverted to something like what we had before radio, which was that socialists read the socialist newspaper, right-wing folks read the right-wing newspaper, etc., if not even worse -- some folks just got their news from the loudest partisans at the bar. We've gone from an era where news distribution was fragmented because it was very difficult, to an era where it was consolidated because it was easy for large corporations only, to an era where it's so dead simple that anyone can do it, so it's fragmented again. Legacy media folks hate this. They blame the biggest players helping people share fragmented media sources with one another, rather than recognizing the inevitability of this fragmentation, no matter what products people use to share news over the internet. They demand a return to elite consensus blocking extreme viewpoints. It is simply not gonna happen. That barn was always temporary, and it has collapsed around the horse.
- cowpig 5y ago
  Your reply, like the other below it, both completely ignored the article and the comment they are replying to. Sure, media is more fragmented now. But that doesn't address any of the criticisms in question.
- gfodor 5y ago
  The argument isn’t about Facebook per se, and especially not the people at Facebook. It’s that providing Internet services for “free” on the back of advertising was an obviously great idea when such “ads” were cute product pitches and led to positive cash flow. But when it became obvious that “ads” was the wrong mental model, and that the products being created were ultimately about the general problem of persuading people by using data collected by spying on them, it should have been realized this was an incentive structure that any sane code of engineering ethics should abandon. Facebook ended up being the best and most successful example of an organization taking this system to its most logical endpoint, but someone always would have unless a code of ethics managed to materialize upon seeing the damage it was causing before it got too far. I don’t judge people who work at Facebook generally, but do think every one of them at this point should resign on ethical grounds. The situation could be fixed if the company (even just internally) owned up to the malincentives they have fallen into and committed to exiting it and leading on forming a code of ethics on when these kinds of system ought not be built.
  - lugged 5y ago
    I stopped using Facebook when they stopped showing you everything in chronological order and started implementing boosted posts and advertising in your feed. I really don't understand why it's taken almost a decade for you idiots to figure out what that would result in. "At this point" What point? The point they started hiding your friends "boring" posts in order to serve up the most clickbait shit possible? Or the point they allowed political parties to ram Obama and then trump down your throat. Or the point they decided to become arbitors of truth? Or the point they decided to censor you over your beliefs?
    - gfodor 5y ago
jboy55 5y ago
I think one of the key things is what happened in 2016, isn't the same thing that's happening now. Then, actors were able to pay and market content directly to audiences they felt were exploitable. The current deluge of misinformation, especially regarding vaccine, is shared directly with friends or within groups that people explicitly join. If you browse the 'Herman Cain Awards' on reddit, you'll see things like, - "I'll probably get put in facebook jail for this..." - A misinformation label attached to the bottom of the post. - The post completely blanked out, with a statement that this is misinformation. This seems to indicate some moderation being done. What I don't see from the "facebook should stop' this group, is any attempt to get cable companies to do the same with "news" stations that broadcast misinformation. An attempt to have the FCC take AM radio station's licenses for broadcasting propaganda. The underlying fact is, what we label misinformation is just what a large group of people wrongly believe, and they really like sharing it with each other.
- soylentnewsorg 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - jboy55 5y ago
    "Soft right wing" propaganda? I can't understand from your response what side you think I'm taking. In one point its "right wing" propaganda, in the other, I'm criticizing right wing media. I also completely understand how you posted a screed, without making a point at all or taking a side at all. That Facebook has found a way to have a service that provides content, and not have to pay for it, is one of the reasons they are so immensely profitable. I kind of laugh at your comparison to a warning in front of a show that its 'fictional' as some sort of equal warning and how that relates to what right wing cable tv news and radio have been putting on the air nearly 24/7 for the past 3 decades. My point, is that the seeds of the misinformation and right wing propaganda isn't the leaf node that is facebook, but comes from the right wing media outlets, that are carried on cable or over the air. Its also a concern that no one on the 'left' seems entirely concerned about this, when you can dump on social media.
    - 5y ago
blondin 5y ago
> their business model is one that incentivizes and enables the creation of a global scale surveillance and behavior modification empire. huh, that's the first time i have read this one. the one i read about recently has to do with connecting the world. now this is making me realize that maybe, just maybe, nobody knows what their true business model is?
- dcow 5y ago
  No their business model is very clear: leverage their user attention machine to sell advertising opportunities to buyers.
- gfodor 5y ago
  It’s not hard to ascertain someone’s business model when they are a public company, nevermind one that you literally can start spending money with in about 5 minutes.
sieabahlpark 5y ago
They're a damn American company, free speech should be a major component. The surveilance is going to happen no matter what country. Thinking any other country would actually respect privacy is truly delusional.
- kcartlidge 5y ago
  > They're a damn American company, free speech should be a major component. Given the constitutional safeguards you may be right on this one. > Thinking any other country would actually respect privacy is truly delusional. This, however, I had to read several times to be sure you were saying what I thought you were saying. At which point I just shook my head in amazement.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  I think it’s important to remember the issue with Facebook isn’t speech it’s amplification. Algorithmic amplification of content that drives engagement. This is what folks have an issue with. Further bear in mind that “free speech” refers to the government not precluding your speech and Facebook ain’t government. Unless you’re proposing nationalizing it.
  - worrycue 5y ago
    It’s a positive feedback loop. Introduce people to outrage. Spur them into “action” where they create more “outrage content” (comments, posts, … etc.) for you in return for attention and praise (Likes, upvotes, … etc.). Outrage content grows exponentially like the spread of an infectious disease or a nuclear chain reaction … as does the “engagement” of the site. The job of the site is just to get the outrage content in front of the viewers and keep the chain reaction going. Basically the modern version of riling up a lynch mob … for profit. To some extend, all social media use this feedback loop, even this site. P.S. Yes, I realize the irony of this comment.
    - fstrthnscnd 5y ago
      In essence, it works like a catalyst?
jwalton 5y ago
Everyone wants to break up Facebook back into Facebook and Instagram and Whatsapp. I don't think that would really solve any of these issues. I think we're thinking about this the wrong way - we should break up Facebook the same way we broke up Bell into baby Bells. Make "Facebook" a utility. Split Facebook into five different companies, maybe some not even in the US. Each "Facebook" company would have to provide Facebook service to a subset of current users. Allow new people to run Facebook providers. Unhappy with the customer service from your current Facebook provider, or with the quantity of ads? Don't like the algorithm that's running your timeline? Switch to one of the other providers who may do things differently. Create competition in this market where there simply isn't any. Some people will point out this forces all these providers to interoperate somehow, so users on one Facebook provider can talk to users on another. This is a really great part of this plan! Our social networks become based on open standards and interoperability instead of being walled gardens.
- bcherny 5y ago
  In what ways is this different than today’s world, where depending on what you want to do (connect with people with similar interests, talk to friends, look at cat videos) there’s a bunch of options for what service to use?
  - bmarquez 5y ago
    Currently, I'd have to recreate my social graph if I move to a different service. With the proposed interoperability, I wouldn't have to.
    - jboy55 5y ago
      If you maintained the same social graph on each service, you'd still have all the misinformation being shared amongst the same graph members. Its one thing if the content being served is what some nefarious actor wants a group to consume, for influence sake. Its another when its the content produces and consumes themselves. The current misinformation discourse on FB is the current culture, especially the culture of a large group of people. It originates both on and off FB. 'Q' didn't originate on FB, it originated on 8chan, let that sink in.
ryandrake 5y ago
Facebook is not the public square. It’s not even a public square. It’s not a bulletin board or a newspaper or a telephone. There’s no analog analogy. It’s a site run by a private company that you send content to, they analyze it, then they decide what to publish and in what order. The closest analog thing I can think of is Letters To The Editor in a newspaper. They aren't “deciding who gets to talk” or “shutting down speech.” There are plenty of non-Facebook ways to talk that don’t involve sending your message to them and hoping they decide to post it.
- chana_masala 5y ago
  There doesn't need to be an analog analogy. There was nothing analogous about the telephone either but Bell Labs was still broken up
- FormerBandmate 5y ago
  They’re the modern public square, as are all social media platforms. You could have made the same argument about the telephone or ISPs, both of those are neutral for a reason
- iammisc 5y ago
  This is technically true but de facto not. It's like arguing that Ukraine controls Crimea because legally (according to themselves and others) they do. In my experience when this argument is made, I typically follow it up by "well if it's so unimportant, why don't you delete your account?". 99/100 times I've asked this in real life the person responds by saying, "well I don't have anywhere else to say things" (this is during covid). For the past two years, social media is the only public square allowed by government fiat. Thus it must be regulated as such.
  - lelandfe 5y ago
    …so by the same logic, as COVID wanes and actual real-life public squares exist again, Facebook won’t need to be regulated?
    - 5y ago
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
If we choose to go with a real world analogy, the "public square", then why are people sharing messages and photos with friends and family via a "public square". That is not what we do in the real world.
sofixa 5y ago
Maybe you missed the genocide that happened thanks to a rampant disinformation campaign on Facebook? Or the other more benign cases, like antivaxers (the classical ones, not vaccinating their kids against polio and measles) and co. Can anyone seriously argue that disinformation on Facebook isn't dangerous? The only possible question should be what can we do about it to preserve debate, free speech, etc. while stoping the literally deadly parts.
- gfodor 5y ago
  We already have done this over the last several centuries by defining the line between legal and non-legal speech. The point is the line is chosen to trade off these risks. There is no silver bullet but acting like there is, and that this debate is just beginning now, is fallacious.
nerdponx 5y ago
> criticisms of Facebook now seem to entirely be focused on them not shutting down speech. Note to readers: the author of the blog post is not espousing this, at least not overtly.
- smsm42 5y ago
  Mentioning hate speech is a pretty good marker though, I'd give 80% probability the author thinks FB should censor more whoever the author considers haters.
gorgoiler 5y ago
Many alternatives to the Facebook Public Square exist: Discord, Diaspora, Mastodon, er... Ello, erm, Voat. I’m joking of course. None of those make as much money as Facebook, and I think we can all agree it’s the fact that they are so rich that bothers us most. Far more than any public square argument. Where’s my yacht?!
- alexandre_m 5y ago
  I don't care that they're rich. I care that they have a monopoly and consolidate so much power that they can shift the balance for the interest of their stakeholders or lobbyists.
epinephrinios 5y ago
What's going with the "western" world? Look at Australia, UK and now USA. Citizens are voluntarily giving up on hard-won rights like free speech in favor of what? A false sense of security? Saddens me deeply.
- deleted 5y ago
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bashinator 5y ago
IMO, Facebook (or YT, or any big media company) even being in a position to “shut down free speech” is a predictable outcome of the total failure of net neutrality in the U.S. If everyone had sufficient bandwidth to host their own content from their home Internet, and ISPs were prohibited from also being media companies, free speech would be much stronger.
smsm42 5y ago
Well, there's another option - they are allowed to arbiter, but aren't allowed to control the rules on the arbitration, at least not directly - instead, an overriding entity would do that. The entity would be, most likely, the government, but as a window dressing, an "independent body" whose members are selected by the politicians can be established to give it a veneer of being removed from everyday politics (protip: it never is). While not a lot of people would admit to preferring this model now, I suspect, a lot of them are pushing in the direction that can't lead anywhere but there. Of course, once such body is established, its natural evolution would be first to control all large public speech platforms, and then to attempt to control all speech in general.

H8crilA 5y ago

All this negativity around the company and no good way to make a profit on it. Shares are still reasonably to fully priced, markets don't seem to care a lot. (Shorting is not for me).

kspacewalk2 5y ago
This negativity is mostly a moral panic confined to the elites who feel threatened by Facebook's power to disrupt their world (which they misinterpret as the end of the world). Facebook's actual users don't seem to care much.
- marticode 5y ago
  If the disruption is the mass distribution of antivax and antiscience propaganda that kills 1000s of people, the manipulation of opinions by hostile foreign state actors, the flaming of genocide and the utter division of nations into completely antagonistic sides, then I'm sorry but maybe the elites have a point.
- deleted 5y ago
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- gfodor 5y ago
  If you work for Facebook, you are contributing to a system which will grow into being the most effective mechanism, by far, for a bad actor to deploy capital to successfully alter the beliefs, behavior, and choices of your children. One day, through VR/AR/AI agents, they will even be able to turn your children against you for someone paying the right price, if the development of Facebook, the system, continues on its present trajectory and no ethical framework is put in place to restrain their actions. (Regulation won’t work, it is the wrong solution to this problem imo.) You should resign if you do.
  - drstewart 5y ago
    >you are contributing to a system which will grow into being the most effective mechanism, by far, for a bad actor to deploy capital to successfully alter the beliefs, behavior, and choices of your children. I believe you are actually describing government employees.

sorry_outta_gas 5y ago

As an recent employee, Facebook is the future of the internet and probably all society. you can either join with the winning team or sit around with the losers. The ad business may have it's issues but it's only temporary until the next phase beings the leadership team cares about what's best for everyone, it's not evil.

shaggyfrog 5y ago

Facebook is a massively evil company, a true net-negative to life on earth, a destroyer of personal privacy, responsible for facilitating genocides, constantly lying to its users, the most egregious example of how corruptive a monopolistic corporation can be on a society at a global level. If this recruiter is to believed -- and I wouldn't believe a goddamn word of any of it -- there are all these poor, principled people who really truly want to "make Facebook better" but dangnabit they just don't have critical mass yet. Bullshit. All of it. This is a carefully calculated response, like all of Facebook's responses (PR or otherwise), to make you drop your guard and stop using your critical thinking faculties. It's a siren song, with promises of six figures and early retirement. Listen... if you're at Facebook, you've personally made a decision that you'd rather collect your paycheque than stop contributing to the beast that surrounds you. You're fine with the pervasive corruption and rampant disinformation and hypocrisy because you're making bank. Don't be shy. Own it. Say it with a full chest. At least it would be genuine. But don't lie to yourself, or your coworkers, or anyone outside the company, and say you're trying to "make Facebook better". It can't be made "better" in its current form. It will never be better. It needs to be dismantled. It needs to be put on trial. It needs to be bled dry.

acwan93 5y ago
>Listen... if you're at Facebook, you've personally made a decision that you'd rather collect your paycheque than stop contributing to the beast that surrounds you. You're fine with the pervasive corruption and rampant disinformation and hypocrisy because you're making bank. Don't be shy. Own it. Say it with a full chest. At least it would be genuine. So true. I would never want to work for Facebook, but I’ve always wanted to reply back to their persistent recruiters with an obscene salary expectation just to see if they’ll consider it.
drstewart 5y ago
I'd say the same goes for scum that work(ed) for other evil companies like EA, too. Don't you agree?
- aaomidi 5y ago
  EA hasn't really been tearing the fabric of our society apart, the comparison isn't really there. They're just a run-of-the-mill psychopathic company.

gigatexal 5y ago

Bravo. Bravo! I made a similar response to a FB recruiter. They followed up offering to open a dialogue. I declined. Now to follow your blog.

ferdowsi 5y ago

> Seriously, I think one of the biggest misconceptions people with opinions like yours might have is that we are somehow unified in these decisions or occurrences – we are not – and the healthy dissent is what, over time, hopefully bends us in the right direction. I laughed a bit at this. I guess a recruiting tactic is to now advertise the exciting possibilities of burnout? "Come join Facebook because you can totally change the ethical direction of this billion dollar surveillance behemoth from the inside, one commit at a time. ;)"

gigatexal 5y ago
My favorite line of reasoning from the article was that folks hold no civic duty to work on the inside for the megalomaniac that is the Zuck. I do find out very empathetic that the author understands why folks would stay employed there: it pays super well and people have obligations.
gordon_freeman 5y ago
Trillion*

pjbk 5y ago

Seriously, I think one of the biggest misconceptions people with opinions like yours might have is that we are somehow unified in these decisions or occurrences – we are not – and the healthy dissent is what, over time, hopefully bends us in the right direction. Oh, the irony. Well it looks like the "healthy dissent" gets you out the door. Perhaps that is the right direction the recruiter was referring to?

cmckn 5y ago

Listen, even if you disregard all of the privacy concerns and support of cancerous communities, Facebook is a shitty social network. The platform has decayed into a junk drawer that is legitimately terrible at the things it was originally designed for. It's bad at connecting you with people you know or might want to know. It's bad at showing you updates from your existing friends, and vice-versa. The site at one time felt cool and fun; it feels like AOL now.

systemvoltage 5y ago
Agreed, Twitter also brings out the worst of people in short schizophrenic vile without much thought. Reddit’s front page is full of outrage videos. Tiktok sucks people into tiniest echo chambers possible. YouTube comments section is completely insane. Social media is great if it is limited to say 100 people. When you broadcast to millions, it is toxic.

paxys 5y ago

This post has the energy of someone shouting at a minimum wage customer service rep because they disagree with the company's policies and feeling smug about themselves afterwards.

aflkunusu 5y ago
Most effort I have seen anyone put into telling a recruiter they are not interested in a job. Well, got a blog out of it. Wonder if they have similar conversations with recruiters from all other companies, would be great to see those published.
cee_el123 5y ago
initially it is that yes. but it's the recruiter who decided to play along despite that. At that point OP has no choice but to elaborate and counter the 'criticizing from outside' thing
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bink 5y ago
  And who could blame them? I'm sure recruiters at most companies have a litany of responses they use based on the tone of the candidate. They get paid on how many people they can get into the interviews, accept an offer, and stay X months past their start date. Why wouldn't they use form responses on the off chance it works?
- polyomino 5y ago
  No choice but to create content for hacker news
thwd 5y ago
That's only if you equate the recruiter to a minimum wage worker and yourself to their customer. There's a superiority bias in that rhetoric. The recruiter is a well-employed tech worker. And you're not their client or superior.

deleted 5y ago

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names_are_hard 5y ago

Some meta feedback to the OP: please test your site on mobile. I wanted to read what you wrote but got tired of scrolling endlessly to the right in the block quotes so I gave up.

deleted 5y ago
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abrahamk1 5y ago

In my mind, and I acknowledge YMMV: Without doubt, FB and websites similar to FB are responsible for all the evil in this world. I know they are making money - and while they continue to make money, they will continue to be in the business of facilitating evil in the world. Of course there are good things that comes out of it, but nowhere close enough to offset the problems it creates. Now if FB stops doing what it is doing, another company will take the lead, so I guess ultimately it's a problem that we can never get away from. Having said that, FB is the current leader in facilitating evil, so I hate them for that and will never work for them. Ever. Thanks for reading.

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

"While Zuckerberg promised that thefacebook.com would boast new features by the end of the week, he said that he did not create the website with the intention of generating revenue. " http://web.archive.org/web/20050403215543/www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=357292 http://web.archive.org/web/20050403215543/www.thecrimson.com... This is very much like the promise that Page and Brin made in their early 1990's paper announcing Google. How easily the idealism gave way to greed. These kids were never suited for management, let alone leading a large organisation. There was no "business plan". Even today, they still fall back on advertising. Competition is far too challenging. There is likely no person on the Facebook dole who wants to "fix" the problem of Facebook if it means losing their paycheck, bonus and stock options. On the contrary, it stands to reason these people will be compelled to act in the interests of self-preservation, which means the preservation of "the business" (high surveillance advertising). The reply from the recruiter is perhaps an example of such desperation. Bill Gates was recently interviewed on PBS News Hour about his relationship with Jeffery Epstein. His answer seemed reminiscient of the younger Gates. Getsuring with his hands, we can see his wedding ring is gone. Perhaps he has come full circle, he is who he always was. He refused to disclose what he knew. He was apparently told to say he regretted having the meetings, which he repeats several times. Eventually after evading more questions, he is asked if he learned from the mistakes of the past, and his reply is "Well, he's dead..." and then he tries to play up his role in philanthropy. His kids are likely afraid to speak out. https://archive.org/download/youtube-LNAwUxZ5nfw/LNAwUxZ5nfw.mp4 https://archive.org/download/youtube-LNAwUxZ5nfw/LNAwUxZ5nfw... https://www.thedailybeast.com/bill-gates-asked-what-he-knew-about-jeffrey-epstein-nervously-says-hes-dead https://www.thedailybeast.com/bill-gates-asked-what-he-knew-... IIRC, back when he was active on HN, PG was a staid Zuckerberg fan. I also recall HN commenters claiming that Zuckerberg's "dumb fucks" comment referring to Facebook's early users, his fellow classmates, was no longer representative of the person who made it. I wonder if he can do better than Bill Gates in interviews.

rowanG077 5y ago
I felt the opposite about Gates. He had a few dinners with a guy that turned out to be a sexual predator. I don't see at all how that is "bad". It was simply a media fuelled witch hunt as far as I can see it.

narcraft 5y ago

I like to think of Facebook as a niche horse girl forum and analyze all criticisms of it through that lens. Why should we care about how this strange site is run?

wyldfire 5y ago
I've never used Facebook but I would never think of naively dismissing their impact on the world.
- narcraft 5y ago
  Well I just did
saulpw 5y ago
Scale matters. Each power of 10 is a whole other level. A niche horse girl forum might have thousands, maybe 10s of thousands of users? FB has billions. That's 6 orders of magnitude more relevance and impact, which is planet-wide. That's why we should care.
- narcraft 5y ago
  I think scale is a reasonable distinction to focus on. It could be argued that due to network effects that Facebook enjoys a sort of natural monopoly of being "the" social network. Nonetheless, it still has big competition in the ad space with Google and traditional media, and though much smaller and with different emphasis, Linkedin is a viable large social network that can survive alongside Facebook. I think it's hard to define at what scale a company should be subject to public scrutiny/control in part because it's hard to clearly define the market in which it competes. I think the negative impact that Facebook has on society is largely overstated and would like to see more testimony from users who believe that they have been personally harmed by Facebook's practices.
  - saulpw 5y ago
    > it's hard to define at what scale a company should be subject to public scrutiny/control FB is one of the largest companies on the planet with worldwide effects. There isn't another 10x for it to grow. If it's not subject to scrutiny/control at this scale, then it will never be subject to it. > would like to see more testimony from users who believe that they have been personally harmed Victims of genocide are notoriously unable to testify.

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aaomidi 5y ago

Has anyone else kinda decided they're done doing technical interviews? If you *really* want me, then just give me an offer and let's negotiate. I'm getting to the point where I'm just going to say if my work experience doesn't provide you with enough information about my technical ability then you can go hire someone fresh out of school who's done l33tcode 24/7 for the last few months.

jareklupinski 5y ago
same, but be prepared to no longer be offered those kinds of positions as long as your resume/linkedin shows that you have clearly passed once and have exceeded "leetcode level" for a number of years, you should already be getting emails for "Staff/Lead" positions that end with "got 15 minutes for a chat to see if we're right for you?" helps to have a site/project/blog/portfolio along with a github to breeze past the phone/culture screens :)
ownagefool 5y ago
The thing about tech interviews, is they're not just testing you, but also ensure your colleagues are at a minimal viable level. The alternatives are: - You only hire folks with prestige; pulling the ladder up for everyone else. - You fire fast; potentially screwing up peoples lives. - You carry dead weight that slows everyone else down. Of course, some of the interviews go a bit far. I had one with at ~15 calls, at least 7 of them "interviews". Most of them went well enough, but the architectual was somewhat egregious where I was asked a bit of a trick question, asked some clarifiying questions and got conflicting statements. I asked for a redo, and got a nope, then ended up in the weirdest offer stage I've experienced. I try to keep that in mind when people propose we add more hurdles to our process. :)

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andygrd 5y ago

An interaction and dialog between equally repugnant parties.

INTPenis 5y ago

All valid points but there is another perspective to this whole mess. I see it through my family members who all have Facebook, how they connect with relatives across the globe and routinely stay in touch during birthdays and other events. I also see it at most social functions around me that organize over Facebook, because I am left out of those since I don't have an account. My best connection to social gatherings is a friend who also hates Facebook but is a lot more social than me, moves around a lot more, so he hears from all the people with Facebook what is going on through word of mouth. So that's a pretty neat service they're offering to a substantial part of the population. But of course they're suffering from moderation issues, something we can see on all large platforms like Youtube and Twitter.

rvense 5y ago
> So that's a pretty neat service they're offering to a substantial part of the population. For sure, Facebook is great. It just provides services that shouldn't come from one single company in America. They should be forced to interoperate. Provide a way to subscribe to Facebook content (pages, events) from outside of Facebook, and a way to pull outside content (RSS, ActivityPub, hell, throw in Twitter while we're at it) into your Facebook stream. A sort of standardized stream for updates and comments. This would clear up all my criticisms of Facebook. At that point I would only wish them well. I'm sure they would provide the best interface to it, and most people would stay with them, and that would be fine.
- INTPenis 5y ago
  Of course I agree because I'm from a traditionally socialist country. But you reap what you sow in a free market economy. I just don't see the US implementing such measures. But I do hope for a municipal social media platform in Europe some day.
- annadane 5y ago
  The thing that's insane to me is you can't even access any profiles without being logged in. This is public information; they've locked things down to an incredible degree and I bet every last dollar I have it's for cynical reasons and not "user privacy"

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streamofdigits 5y ago

A "public good" approach to digital social graphs is the broadest and most urgent social imperative since, I don't know, nuclear non-proliferation treaty? It will decidedly not solve all problems associated with online digital platforms. We know for a fact that even the earliest and most innocent online forums would degenerate into flame wars. We know that filtering and struggle for the political control of news dissemination is "tech-independent": print, radio, TV etc all "solve" this in their own arbitrary and varying ways. What facebook managed to achieve is to combine all those, together with many others (personal data collection, algorithmic profiling of people, leaking of such profiles to third parties etc) and deploy it at an unthinkable scale.

MAGZine 5y ago

I sent a similar reply to a Facebook recruiter. Something song the lines of, "I disagree with the philosophical direction of the company and cannot in good conscience find myself working there." This, apparently, was a way to get myself permanently and unceremoniously removed from all Facebook recruiter outbound. Not only did I not get a reply, but where I used to get multiple emails a month from different teams, I haven't heard anything from a Facebook recruiter in more than two years. So everything worked out in the end.

xyzzy21 5y ago

I would have been far harsher! If you work for an immoral organization and are OK with that by virtue of continuing to draw a wage there, YOU ARE AS IMMORAL as the company because you aid and abet it. I won't have anything to do with you based on that. I'll be polite and arm's length interacting with you but NOTHING beyond that will ever be possible; not personal, not business, not social!

gopiandcode 5y ago
This. I've lost my respect for so many developers who have decided to go to work for these net-social-negative surveillance companies for a fat paycheck and justify their decision by the argument that if they didn't accept the offer, then someone worse would accept. What annoys me is not that they took the job for the paycheck (we all have to eat at the end of the say), but rather the fact that all it takes to appease their moral conscience is such a weak and flimsy bit of moral acrobatics. Have a spine and accept the real consequences of your actions at least.

sys_64738 5y ago

Facebook: We sell ads for eyeballs. Nothing else matters. That's it in a nutshell.

up2isomorphism 5y ago

The moral standard is very very high, yet he works for google. The amount irony almost makes me sick.

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zephrx1111 5y ago

I think the topic here is not what FB did wrong, but what's the difference b/w FB and, say twitter or medium. They are all platforms, but why only FB got grilled on fire.