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And this is where it gets fun - Joe/Jill tech-worker wants to live in Menlo Park. So she works at Facebook. To pay his/her mortgage (or mortgage market-correlat

And this is where it gets fun - Joe/Jill tech-worker wants to live in Menlo Park. So she works at Facebook. To pay his/her mortgage (or mortgage market-correlated rent), (s)he has to build selective sharing algorithms that emphasize anger but maximize 'engagement' and make lots of revenue for the company. Even though friends & family tell him/her (s)he's being detrimental to the world - it's paying his/her salary, and so the mortgage/rent. In-group vs. out-group baiting, mayhem, & loss-of-life ensue. (h/t Frances Haugen)

realce 5y ago
THEN this person has to hide/digest the guilt of their actions, knowing that they are immoral but still required by society. By hiding that guilt, this person becomes disgusted by people who don't commit immoral acts to pay their mortgages, since every good action reminds them of what they're doing wrong.
- VRay 5y ago
  Haha, dude. I hate Facebook too, but you’re kidding yourself if anyone there thinks they’re evil. The employees just focus on how easy it is for non tech savvy people to share vacation and kid photos across the globe with each other through their service, and go to bed in their $1.2M condos with a smile every night
  - baremetal 5y ago
    yeah thats why there isn't a string of leaks and whistleblowers, and even former upper management decrying what is going on at fb. oh wait..
  - eevilspock 5y ago
    It's not about being "evil". People are very adept at making convenient self-serving justifications on-the-fly. For example the very same liberal parents who chastise conservatives for promoting racial inequality will cry murder when there are attempts to racially desegregate the school their child attends by changing admissions, and they'll come up with the perfect rational for this contradiction after the fact. They will put their child first, regardless of the fact that their child is already far ahead because of socio-economic advantages, and that the disadvantaged kid even with the better education is still going to be disadvantaged compared to their kid. It's even worse in a culture and economic system where selfishness is deemed a virtue. Here on HN, you can see such heavily self-serving bias in discussions like this, where the emphasis is entirely on the positive aspects and negative concerns are shot down: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28924751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28924751.
    - VRay 5y ago
      Amen I'd say it's fair to call the process by which people justify doing bad things as "evil". I just wanted to correct the notion that Facebook employees think of themselves as villains. Facebook is connecting people with each other. Amazon/Microsoft/Google are collecting usage data to improve their products. Amazon and Microsoft think it's such a benign thing to do that there's no need at all to allow people to see or opt out of this collection. Google thinks that providing visibility into what they're doing is more than enough to make up for it. Apple thinks that making it explicitly opt-in is enough to justify it. Defense contractors are keeping Americans safe and making the world a safer place. High-frequency trading firms are providing liquidity. Landlords are "housing providers" Etc etc
      - eevilspock 5y ago
        But whether or not you call it "evil", it is a moral failure, and deep down most people, including Facebook employees, know what they're doing is wrong. They look the other way, or shrug and say Everyone else is doing it, why should I lose out?, etc. Likewise most Google employees aren't proud that their high salaries are paid by advertising and the personal data collection for it -- deep down they know its a deal with the devil.
        VRay 5y ago
        Where do you draw the line? You could probably feed a bunch of people in Africa if you worked at a nonprofit, lived a spartan lifestyle, and donated most of your salary to charity. Is it evil that you aren't doing that?
        eevilspock 5y ago
        Where you draw the line defines what kind of person you are, your values and your commitment to them. The reason shows like Squid Games is popular is that it's all about where people draw lines. Morality is all about choices, and your true morality isn't what you say, but what you do. The interesting things is that the people who are most committed, who are unwilling to compromise their values even if it means sacrifice*, are often invisible. They don't make waves. They just do the right thing quietly. There are very smart people who don't make a lot of money, who choose to become teachers, or find some other uncompromised occupation. Other people see them as crazy, or naive idealists. Our culture really tends to look down on those people, since material wealth is how everyone is measured. btw, I left my career in the tech industry and my high salary nine years ago, to work on social justice, to write, and to work with children. There are costs that don't bother me at all, like my ultra simple life living in a run-down rental. There are costs that hurt, but those have to do with living in a society where eschewing the benefits of capitalism isn't popular. Some analogies I've used: Imagine being a white person having 2021 views of race and racism, but you suddenly wake up in 1850, where even Abraham Lincoln is a white supremacist (he was!). People will shun you for voicing your 2021 views. You will be an outcast in the dominant white world. You might be able to find a home among black people, except they are slaves and will be afraid to associate with you. Or here's perhaps an easier analogy: Imagine that you one day wake up and feel deeply you can't eat meat anymore. It's your conscience. You deeply feel it is wrong. So you become vegan. Now imagine this was 50 years ago before veganism started to gain any traction. Again you would be isolated. People will look at you weird.
kcatskcolbdi 5y ago
It is not Facebook's fault human nature engages with outrage. Facebook didn't change anyone. Facebook doesn't make a good person into a bad person. "In-group vs. out-group baiting, mayhem, & loss-of-life " existed throughout all of human history (and in much larger quantities!) before the age of Facebook. They will continue to exist long after Facebook displays its last newsfeed item. The longer we try to blame a technology for humanities issues, the longer it will take to address the issues.
- dahart 5y ago
  > The longer we try to blame a technology for humanity’s issues, the longer it will take to address the issues. I think it is the people at Facebook are being blamed in the comment above, and not the technology, no? > Facebook didn’t change anyone. You’re right that human nature is not Facebook’s fault, however, you cannot logically use that to conclude that Facebook bears no responsibility. Facebook is changing people, and there’s evidence of it. You don’t get to claim human nature when feeding drugs or alcohol to an addict, or when being a bookie for illegal fights, or when pimping. Advertisers don’t get to claim human nature when advertising cigarettes to teenagers. There are plenty of laws on the books to prevent companies from trying to leverage the negative sides of human nature, and there are plenty of companies that are currently using our worst impulses to goad us into spending our time and money with them. Facebook intends to normalize incredulity at all times, in order to maximize their own profit, and because of the scale of Facebook, it’s causing a net negative in human behavior. Fewer people would be choosing outrage, and less often, if Facebook wasn’t pimping it. Allowing people to form companies with this intention should be illegal, no? Or if you see this as purely human nature and think Facebook is not complicit, how are you suggesting we address the issues?
  - ricksunny 5y ago
    I should have genericized the company name - I wanted to highlight the housing motivation for tech-workers to do ill. the company-formerly-known-as-fb just provides one very familiar example of this. We're all constantly tempted to engage in sociopathic but well-remunerating work. (No doubt there is plenty of pro-social well-remunerating work - i.e. I'm not painting that as a zero-sum choice) The question becomes, 1 - what choice does each of us individually make when faced with such a role, and 2 - more importantly, how easily can a company identify & recruit a sufficiently-qualified-yet-sufficiently-desperate individual for the same role who will go ahead and make such a moral compromise.
DrJones1098 5y ago
Think about inflation increasing at 3% annually on average, with no accompanying deflation, and with no accompanying increases in wages for most of the population. A dollar is presently worth half as much as in 1990. A 100,000 a year job in 1990 is equivalent to a 50,000 a year nowdays. Every year the noose gets slightly tighter, the slack is slightly reduced, the competition is slightly increased, society become slightly more cutthroat, people are forced to do slightly crazier and crazier things to make ends meet and sacrifice their morals just a little bit more, work just a few more hours to make the same money. Then new generations are born into a world that's much more competitive than their parents world 20 years previous, and start out thinking this level of competitiveness and craziness is normal. And the water in the frog pot inter-generationally continues to get hotter. We're literally on a slow unstoppable pathway to a third world country and no one even realizes it. Or possibly creating the conditions for war.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  I came to the same conclusion after going back to a middle class country with my parents in early high school. On the salary of two public school teachers which is middle class though above average, life was not so different from in Canada on the salary from the same profession. Better in some ways, worse in others, overall only slightly worse. That would have been insane a few decades earlier, and it's not just because of improving third world countries, but also because as you said the noose tightened - everything became more expensive, especially rent, working hours increased, two salaries became necessary, etc..
- lottin 5y ago
  > with no accompanying increases in wages for most of the population Take a look at the median US household income over the last 40 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Median_US_household_income_through_2018.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    Median wage and median household income are two separate things. Median household income can mean two parents are working... Take a look at inflation adjusted wage growth for a singular person over time. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/%3famp=1 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2...

realce 5y ago

THEN this person has to hide/digest the guilt of their actions, knowing that they are immoral but still required by society. By hiding that guilt, this person becomes disgusted by people who don't commit immoral acts to pay their mortgages, since every good action reminds them of what they're doing wrong.

VRay 5y ago
Haha, dude. I hate Facebook too, but you’re kidding yourself if anyone there thinks they’re evil. The employees just focus on how easy it is for non tech savvy people to share vacation and kid photos across the globe with each other through their service, and go to bed in their $1.2M condos with a smile every night
- baremetal 5y ago
  yeah thats why there isn't a string of leaks and whistleblowers, and even former upper management decrying what is going on at fb. oh wait..
- eevilspock 5y ago
  It's not about being "evil". People are very adept at making convenient self-serving justifications on-the-fly. For example the very same liberal parents who chastise conservatives for promoting racial inequality will cry murder when there are attempts to racially desegregate the school their child attends by changing admissions, and they'll come up with the perfect rational for this contradiction after the fact. They will put their child first, regardless of the fact that their child is already far ahead because of socio-economic advantages, and that the disadvantaged kid even with the better education is still going to be disadvantaged compared to their kid. It's even worse in a culture and economic system where selfishness is deemed a virtue. Here on HN, you can see such heavily self-serving bias in discussions like this, where the emphasis is entirely on the positive aspects and negative concerns are shot down: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28924751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28924751.
  - VRay 5y ago
    Amen I'd say it's fair to call the process by which people justify doing bad things as "evil". I just wanted to correct the notion that Facebook employees think of themselves as villains. Facebook is connecting people with each other. Amazon/Microsoft/Google are collecting usage data to improve their products. Amazon and Microsoft think it's such a benign thing to do that there's no need at all to allow people to see or opt out of this collection. Google thinks that providing visibility into what they're doing is more than enough to make up for it. Apple thinks that making it explicitly opt-in is enough to justify it. Defense contractors are keeping Americans safe and making the world a safer place. High-frequency trading firms are providing liquidity. Landlords are "housing providers" Etc etc
    - eevilspock 5y ago
      But whether or not you call it "evil", it is a moral failure, and deep down most people, including Facebook employees, know what they're doing is wrong. They look the other way, or shrug and say Everyone else is doing it, why should I lose out?, etc. Likewise most Google employees aren't proud that their high salaries are paid by advertising and the personal data collection for it -- deep down they know its a deal with the devil.
      - VRay 5y ago
        Where do you draw the line? You could probably feed a bunch of people in Africa if you worked at a nonprofit, lived a spartan lifestyle, and donated most of your salary to charity. Is it evil that you aren't doing that?
        eevilspock 5y ago
        Where you draw the line defines what kind of person you are, your values and your commitment to them. The reason shows like Squid Games is popular is that it's all about where people draw lines. Morality is all about choices, and your true morality isn't what you say, but what you do. The interesting things is that the people who are most committed, who are unwilling to compromise their values even if it means sacrifice*, are often invisible. They don't make waves. They just do the right thing quietly. There are very smart people who don't make a lot of money, who choose to become teachers, or find some other uncompromised occupation. Other people see them as crazy, or naive idealists. Our culture really tends to look down on those people, since material wealth is how everyone is measured. btw, I left my career in the tech industry and my high salary nine years ago, to work on social justice, to write, and to work with children. There are costs that don't bother me at all, like my ultra simple life living in a run-down rental. There are costs that hurt, but those have to do with living in a society where eschewing the benefits of capitalism isn't popular. Some analogies I've used: Imagine being a white person having 2021 views of race and racism, but you suddenly wake up in 1850, where even Abraham Lincoln is a white supremacist (he was!). People will shun you for voicing your 2021 views. You will be an outcast in the dominant white world. You might be able to find a home among black people, except they are slaves and will be afraid to associate with you. Or here's perhaps an easier analogy: Imagine that you one day wake up and feel deeply you can't eat meat anymore. It's your conscience. You deeply feel it is wrong. So you become vegan. Now imagine this was 50 years ago before veganism started to gain any traction. Again you would be isolated. People will look at you weird.

kcatskcolbdi 5y ago

It is not Facebook's fault human nature engages with outrage. Facebook didn't change anyone. Facebook doesn't make a good person into a bad person. "In-group vs. out-group baiting, mayhem, & loss-of-life " existed throughout all of human history (and in much larger quantities!) before the age of Facebook. They will continue to exist long after Facebook displays its last newsfeed item. The longer we try to blame a technology for humanities issues, the longer it will take to address the issues.

dahart 5y ago
> The longer we try to blame a technology for humanity’s issues, the longer it will take to address the issues. I think it is the people at Facebook are being blamed in the comment above, and not the technology, no? > Facebook didn’t change anyone. You’re right that human nature is not Facebook’s fault, however, you cannot logically use that to conclude that Facebook bears no responsibility. Facebook is changing people, and there’s evidence of it. You don’t get to claim human nature when feeding drugs or alcohol to an addict, or when being a bookie for illegal fights, or when pimping. Advertisers don’t get to claim human nature when advertising cigarettes to teenagers. There are plenty of laws on the books to prevent companies from trying to leverage the negative sides of human nature, and there are plenty of companies that are currently using our worst impulses to goad us into spending our time and money with them. Facebook intends to normalize incredulity at all times, in order to maximize their own profit, and because of the scale of Facebook, it’s causing a net negative in human behavior. Fewer people would be choosing outrage, and less often, if Facebook wasn’t pimping it. Allowing people to form companies with this intention should be illegal, no? Or if you see this as purely human nature and think Facebook is not complicit, how are you suggesting we address the issues?
- ricksunny 5y ago
  I should have genericized the company name - I wanted to highlight the housing motivation for tech-workers to do ill. the company-formerly-known-as-fb just provides one very familiar example of this. We're all constantly tempted to engage in sociopathic but well-remunerating work. (No doubt there is plenty of pro-social well-remunerating work - i.e. I'm not painting that as a zero-sum choice) The question becomes, 1 - what choice does each of us individually make when faced with such a role, and 2 - more importantly, how easily can a company identify & recruit a sufficiently-qualified-yet-sufficiently-desperate individual for the same role who will go ahead and make such a moral compromise.

DrJones1098 5y ago

Think about inflation increasing at 3% annually on average, with no accompanying deflation, and with no accompanying increases in wages for most of the population. A dollar is presently worth half as much as in 1990. A 100,000 a year job in 1990 is equivalent to a 50,000 a year nowdays. Every year the noose gets slightly tighter, the slack is slightly reduced, the competition is slightly increased, society become slightly more cutthroat, people are forced to do slightly crazier and crazier things to make ends meet and sacrifice their morals just a little bit more, work just a few more hours to make the same money. Then new generations are born into a world that's much more competitive than their parents world 20 years previous, and start out thinking this level of competitiveness and craziness is normal. And the water in the frog pot inter-generationally continues to get hotter. We're literally on a slow unstoppable pathway to a third world country and no one even realizes it. Or possibly creating the conditions for war.

sudosysgen 5y ago
I came to the same conclusion after going back to a middle class country with my parents in early high school. On the salary of two public school teachers which is middle class though above average, life was not so different from in Canada on the salary from the same profession. Better in some ways, worse in others, overall only slightly worse. That would have been insane a few decades earlier, and it's not just because of improving third world countries, but also because as you said the noose tightened - everything became more expensive, especially rent, working hours increased, two salaries became necessary, etc..
lottin 5y ago
> with no accompanying increases in wages for most of the population Take a look at the median US household income over the last 40 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Median_US_household_income_through_2018.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  Median wage and median household income are two separate things. Median household income can mean two parents are working... Take a look at inflation adjusted wage growth for a singular person over time. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/%3famp=1 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2...