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I think the blame is misplaced. People work at Facebook because they offer among the highest salaries, and are insulated enough from the bad PR to not feel bad

I think the blame is misplaced. People work at Facebook because they offer among the highest salaries, and are insulated enough from the bad PR to not feel bad about it. It is hard to understand the breadth of scope of the FAANGs. You read in the newspaper that Google exists to turn over dissidents to the Chinese government, but there are plenty of engineers working on making the Linux kernel more secure, or providing gigabit internet for $79/month. Should those engineers quit and go work on CRUD apps for some startup at half their salary? It doesn't make much sense, and that's why people don't do it. (I don't know if the scope of Facebook is similar to that of Google, but I imagine it is. I submitted a patch to some open source project of theirs that collects diagnostic information from NTP servers. Are those people really to blame for targeting their product at 6 year olds? No. They just want to work on interesting projects for a great salary, and hope that whatever bigger system they're part of works out.) Basically, it won't be effective to be an Internet Tough Guy and tell all Facebook employees to quit. They won't do it. Make their work illegal (regulate), or make their work unprofitable (stop buying their ads), and the problem solves itself.

8note 5y ago
I've never bought an ad on Facebook, and yet it continues to run, and Facebook won't comply to non-US laws, and will almost certainly have a large influence on whatever regulations are put in. Your suggestions are even more toothless than banning Facebook engineers from the local bars and breweries
- threatofrain 5y ago
  Facebook won't comply with non-US laws? Are we talking about the EU or China?
egypturnash 5y ago
Well, we know how much your morals cost, then.
- archontes 5y ago
  You're missing the point... completely. Until unethical behavior doesn't pay dividends, people will engage in that unethical behavior. Ostracizing them to any degree less than the sex offender list offers fails at 'making it not pay dividends'. Snide comments are useless, and posting a snide comment in response to a post literally saying that snide comments are useless is hilarious and ironic.
- tombert 5y ago
  Give me a break. Most of us aren't dropping everything to go join the Peace Corps, we want to live a comfortable life, and by no coincidence, most of us work for assholes. Nearly any sufficiently old company has its share of controversies (this includes startups, they're just smaller so they're not as publicized). I will agree that Facebook's controversies are a bit more egregious than most, but at the end of the day I don't really see how a random Facebook engineer is substantially worse than an engineer who works for Microsoft, or Apple, or Google, or Lockheed Martin, or <insert large corporation here>. People just want to make a decent living, not change the world. However, I think there's plenty of blame you can place on the decision-makers at Facebook (most of the executive level team).
  - throwaway2331 5y ago
    Have you read Solzhenitsyn's "From Under the Rubble?" It has a section called "The Smatters" where he derides Soviet Russia's intelligentsia for being cowards that would trade physical comfort in return for sacrificing their soul and morality. This is in contrast to "Old Russia's" intelligentsia, that would canktankerously fight and even sacrifice themselves and their personal needs, just to uphold their own (many times removed-from-reality) ideals. The former's "pragmatic nihilism" of only taking cares of one's self and one's interests is mirrored today among our society. That's not to say I'm any better. I, too, am a coward.
    - tombert 5y ago
      I mean, I said in a sister thread that I do think there could be an argument that me working for an awful corporation does enable them and I am at some level responsible for their actions, but I don't know that it's realistic to expect someone in the corporate world right now to drop everything and only work for ethical people right now...our entire society is somewhat based around us working for evil corporations.
jacquesm 5y ago
> are insulated enough from the bad PR to not feel bad about it You'd have to be living under a rock to be able to make that excuse.
- treesknees 5y ago
  My old roommate works there on a database/storage team. They are pretty insulated. He doesn't directly interface with the product-side. Sure perhaps on some level he could look at his role and say he's enabling mass collection of user data. But at the end of the day he has no interaction with the actual filesystem contents or what they mean. They're just bits flying around. So, should the graphic designers of the emoji buttons feel responsible for misinformation? The CDN/network folks keeping the websites available? The janitorial and cafeteria staff for cleaning up and feeding the "monsters of humanity" ?
  - Benjammer 5y ago
    >at the end of the day he has no interaction with the actual filesystem contents or what they mean. They're just bits flying around Whatever helps him sleep at night I guess. I doubt history will make this distinction when talking about "legacy," as this sub-thread is. >"monsters of humanity" You have to realize that this exaggeration contributes poorly to the discussion, right? Are you seriously trying to satirically hyperbolize the characterization of Facebook's effects on society in order to make it seem like people are overreacting to the whole thing? This is a wild take on the matter, to me, in 2021.
    - jonp888 5y ago
      Only a few posts below this is one where someone unironically equates Facebook engineers defending their choice of employer with SS officers defending their part in the Final Solution. Welcome to HackerNews.
      - goatlover 5y ago
        More like r/news at this point.
Benjammer 5y ago
>People work at Facebook because they offer among the highest salaries, and are insulated enough from the bad PR to not feel bad about it I'm curious how you draw a line between "the bad PR" and everything else at Facebook? Are you distinguishing the media coverage of the company as a separate thing that employees have to deal with other than the actual actions the company takes, and the ramifications of its real effects on society? If someone is "insulated from the bad PR," does that mean they are insulated from anything working with or enabling the bad actions/effects? Or just insulated from the "PR"? If the former, how could we possibly make that distinction with an organization as large and complex as Facebook? How can you be so sure that anything any given employee touches does or does not connect to the bad effects on society? If you just mean insulated from the "bad PR," then can you see why history might look unfavorably on someone who hides the greater negative effects of their actions from themselves?
default-kramer 5y ago
I don't understand your point. Are you saying that things like Linux and NTP servers can be used by an evil organization, therefore people who work on them are partly to blame for the resulting evil? If so, I disagree. There is a pretty clear line between working to improve the Linux kernel and working to get more children and teens to use Facebook.
- jonp888 5y ago
  No, the opposite, that many of the people working for evil organisations are not doing evil stuff, but instead maintaining kernel drivers or whatever, and they don't concern themselves with how exactly the money that pays their salary was generated.
- yreg 5y ago
  He is talking about engineers employed by Facebook who are working on linux kernel.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
eurasiantiger 5y ago
> open source project of theirs that collects diagnostic information from NTP servers What’s this project and what data does it collect? Pretty much every device connects to an NTP server, so this is intriguing.
eigengrau5150 5y ago
> People work at Facebook because they offer among the highest salaries, and are insulated enough from the bad PR to not feel bad about it. Good job defending the little Eichmanns. Or are you perhaps defending yourself? “For when I speak of the banality of evil, I do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to a phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial. Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III 'to prove a villain.' Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all… He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing… It was sheer thoughtlessness—something by no means identical with stupidity—that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period. And if this is 'banal' and even funny, if with the best will in the world one cannot extract any diabolical or demonic profundity from Eichmann, this is still far from calling it commonplace… That such remoteness from reality and such thoughtlessness can wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together which, perhaps, are inherent in man—that was, in fact, the lesson one could learn in Jerusalem.” ― Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
yumraj 5y ago
> I think the blame is misplaced. People work at Facebook because they offer among the highest salaries, and are insulated enough from the bad PR to not feel bad about it. Would you say the same if they were say peddling crack to kids, that hey it pays better.... If all one cares about is money, then yes, it is one's fault and the blame is correctly placed.

8note 5y ago

I've never bought an ad on Facebook, and yet it continues to run, and Facebook won't comply to non-US laws, and will almost certainly have a large influence on whatever regulations are put in. Your suggestions are even more toothless than banning Facebook engineers from the local bars and breweries

threatofrain 5y ago
Facebook won't comply with non-US laws? Are we talking about the EU or China?

egypturnash 5y ago

Well, we know how much your morals cost, then.

archontes 5y ago
You're missing the point... completely. Until unethical behavior doesn't pay dividends, people will engage in that unethical behavior. Ostracizing them to any degree less than the sex offender list offers fails at 'making it not pay dividends'. Snide comments are useless, and posting a snide comment in response to a post literally saying that snide comments are useless is hilarious and ironic.
tombert 5y ago
Give me a break. Most of us aren't dropping everything to go join the Peace Corps, we want to live a comfortable life, and by no coincidence, most of us work for assholes. Nearly any sufficiently old company has its share of controversies (this includes startups, they're just smaller so they're not as publicized). I will agree that Facebook's controversies are a bit more egregious than most, but at the end of the day I don't really see how a random Facebook engineer is substantially worse than an engineer who works for Microsoft, or Apple, or Google, or Lockheed Martin, or <insert large corporation here>. People just want to make a decent living, not change the world. However, I think there's plenty of blame you can place on the decision-makers at Facebook (most of the executive level team).
- throwaway2331 5y ago
  Have you read Solzhenitsyn's "From Under the Rubble?" It has a section called "The Smatters" where he derides Soviet Russia's intelligentsia for being cowards that would trade physical comfort in return for sacrificing their soul and morality. This is in contrast to "Old Russia's" intelligentsia, that would canktankerously fight and even sacrifice themselves and their personal needs, just to uphold their own (many times removed-from-reality) ideals. The former's "pragmatic nihilism" of only taking cares of one's self and one's interests is mirrored today among our society. That's not to say I'm any better. I, too, am a coward.
  - tombert 5y ago
    I mean, I said in a sister thread that I do think there could be an argument that me working for an awful corporation does enable them and I am at some level responsible for their actions, but I don't know that it's realistic to expect someone in the corporate world right now to drop everything and only work for ethical people right now...our entire society is somewhat based around us working for evil corporations.

jacquesm 5y ago

> are insulated enough from the bad PR to not feel bad about it You'd have to be living under a rock to be able to make that excuse.

treesknees 5y ago
My old roommate works there on a database/storage team. They are pretty insulated. He doesn't directly interface with the product-side. Sure perhaps on some level he could look at his role and say he's enabling mass collection of user data. But at the end of the day he has no interaction with the actual filesystem contents or what they mean. They're just bits flying around. So, should the graphic designers of the emoji buttons feel responsible for misinformation? The CDN/network folks keeping the websites available? The janitorial and cafeteria staff for cleaning up and feeding the "monsters of humanity" ?
- Benjammer 5y ago
  >at the end of the day he has no interaction with the actual filesystem contents or what they mean. They're just bits flying around Whatever helps him sleep at night I guess. I doubt history will make this distinction when talking about "legacy," as this sub-thread is. >"monsters of humanity" You have to realize that this exaggeration contributes poorly to the discussion, right? Are you seriously trying to satirically hyperbolize the characterization of Facebook's effects on society in order to make it seem like people are overreacting to the whole thing? This is a wild take on the matter, to me, in 2021.
  - jonp888 5y ago
    Only a few posts below this is one where someone unironically equates Facebook engineers defending their choice of employer with SS officers defending their part in the Final Solution. Welcome to HackerNews.
    - goatlover 5y ago
      More like r/news at this point.

Benjammer 5y ago

>People work at Facebook because they offer among the highest salaries, and are insulated enough from the bad PR to not feel bad about it I'm curious how you draw a line between "the bad PR" and everything else at Facebook? Are you distinguishing the media coverage of the company as a separate thing that employees have to deal with other than the actual actions the company takes, and the ramifications of its real effects on society? If someone is "insulated from the bad PR," does that mean they are insulated from anything working with or enabling the bad actions/effects? Or just insulated from the "PR"? If the former, how could we possibly make that distinction with an organization as large and complex as Facebook? How can you be so sure that anything any given employee touches does or does not connect to the bad effects on society? If you just mean insulated from the "bad PR," then can you see why history might look unfavorably on someone who hides the greater negative effects of their actions from themselves?

default-kramer 5y ago

I don't understand your point. Are you saying that things like Linux and NTP servers can be used by an evil organization, therefore people who work on them are partly to blame for the resulting evil? If so, I disagree. There is a pretty clear line between working to improve the Linux kernel and working to get more children and teens to use Facebook.

jonp888 5y ago
No, the opposite, that many of the people working for evil organisations are not doing evil stuff, but instead maintaining kernel drivers or whatever, and they don't concern themselves with how exactly the money that pays their salary was generated.
yreg 5y ago
He is talking about engineers employed by Facebook who are working on linux kernel.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

eurasiantiger 5y ago

> open source project of theirs that collects diagnostic information from NTP servers What’s this project and what data does it collect? Pretty much every device connects to an NTP server, so this is intriguing.

eigengrau5150 5y ago

> People work at Facebook because they offer among the highest salaries, and are insulated enough from the bad PR to not feel bad about it. Good job defending the little Eichmanns. Or are you perhaps defending yourself? “For when I speak of the banality of evil, I do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to a phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial. Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III 'to prove a villain.' Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all… He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing… It was sheer thoughtlessness—something by no means identical with stupidity—that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period. And if this is 'banal' and even funny, if with the best will in the world one cannot extract any diabolical or demonic profundity from Eichmann, this is still far from calling it commonplace… That such remoteness from reality and such thoughtlessness can wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together which, perhaps, are inherent in man—that was, in fact, the lesson one could learn in Jerusalem.” ― Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

yumraj 5y ago

> I think the blame is misplaced. People work at Facebook because they offer among the highest salaries, and are insulated enough from the bad PR to not feel bad about it. Would you say the same if they were say peddling crack to kids, that hey it pays better.... If all one cares about is money, then yes, it is one's fault and the blame is correctly placed.