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Ask HN: Why do I have this weird feeling that noone working at FB posts on HN?

• metanom 5y ago
  Could have something to do with HN blocking VPNs & Tor. Multiple occasions where I wanted to comment anonymously only to find out my account was shadow banned. Let's see if this comment will go through...
• delgaudm 5y ago
  I am not a Facebook / Meta employee, but does anyone think that shame factors in for some people? That overwhelmingly negative and very bad press come from the work that these folks do. For some, posting "I work at FB" is an admission that "I am part of the $PROBLEM" for any of the many, many ills people attribute to Facebook / Meta which garner that negative opinion and bad press.
  • fdeage 5y ago
    Probably. But I am afraid that losing valuable contributions from FB people leads to groupthink and ideological bubbles. I realize that I myself have a very negative opinion of FB the company, and I think this is mostly due to the stuff I read on HN. Most of my friends don't see the problem and consider Facebook as yet another big company, ruthless and profit-seeking maybe, but not more than the other ones, and that's probably true. EDIT: typo
    • MathYouF 5y ago
      As far as I can tell all social media companies (FB, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit) receive a lot of dislike in general as being a source of societal ills. I think people just don't like having a mirror held up to the very negative parts of human nature. Social media as an industry may be joining tobacco, oil, "wall street" finance, gambling, and weapons as one where if your employment is involved in it, some people in some way will feel you're profiting from exploiting society and making it worse. I personally don't think Facebook does anything wrong aside from being a normal social media company. But any social media that wants to be "successful" in terms of revenue and usage will have to exploit vulnerabilities in human nature like our increased interest in negative rhetoric about "out-groups". Any of the other companies in the stigmatised industries will either have to exploit human nature to be successful or be regulated such that their competitors can't do the same (like with tobacco advertising being heavily regulated). Regulation of social media seems to be the only real solution for society if we aren't happy with the status quo. As an aside, I think if people can be so easily misled with "fake news" and radicalised along partisan lines, the issue lies with the U.S. education system and culture rather than the site that simply hosts the content. At what point do people have to take responsibility for their own reaction to a world full of misinformation and tactics that seek to exploit them? If anyone reading this wants to post happy stories and accurate information on Facebook all day there's nothing stopping you, so why won't that fix the problem? Because of the issues with the users themselves. I've personally stopped using Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, ect. because I've seen the harmful effects it has on my psyche. If consumers aren't smart enough to recognize that and willingly give it up, the issue is with the individuals who lack the education, cultural standards, and willpower to do so, and Facebook is not responsible for how 300+ million Americans were raised and educated such that they can't consume media healthily.
    • throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      >But I am afraid that losing valuable contributions from FB people lead to groupthink and ideological bubbles Perhaps then maybe FB will understand why it's unwise to create and maintain such bubbles.
  • jxcole 5y ago
    I certainly self censor like this on a different subject: I'm one of the only people who thinks the tech interview process is actually pretty good (I'm also very good at it, so that could be why). But anyway, only an idiot wouldn't know that a positive statement about tech interviews would garner a thousand downvotes. People seem to think HN is some sort of bastion of free speech but really it's just an echo chamber of slightly different opinions than, well, other echo chambers.
    • smohare 5y ago
      I think it’s fair to distinguish an echo chamber from a place of familiar discourse. I see this for example in the skeptic circles I run in. Amongst peers we might talk more dismissively about some pseudoscience topic we’ve all seen hundreds of times, but would be more willing to engage someone in good faith at, say, a family dinner. You get downvoted because there’s actual evidence the interview process is deeply flawed and essentially a proxy measure for tolerance of anxiety (and of course raw intelligence), but does not correlate well to actual performance. You shouldn’t necessarily be downvoted, especially since there might be some merit to the overall thrust of your argument in defense of the tech interview. However at some point it’s entirely possible you sound like the person espousing homeopathy to the local skeptic club. Free exchange of ideas does not mean each is given equal weight. That’s only a lie those who spread misinformation and peddle pseudoscience propagate.
    • lostcolony 5y ago
      Yes and no - I've seen people defend stereotypical tech interviews, and not get downvoted. But only when it's sufficiently nuanced and adding to the discussion, i.e., "I think they do a good job at filtering for false positives, but as with any such measure it creates a lot of false negatives. My experience has been that the people who -do- get through tend to be pretty good, or at least, have put in a lot of work to clear the bar, which translates pretty frequently, but recognize it doesn't say anything for the people who don't." vs "Pff, the interview process is great; if you're not clearing it you're just not good enough to work there" HN, as anywhere, has an echo chamber, sure, but it also does have better dialog even around the sacred cows than others (i.e., perhaps the biggest one here, "startups are great!", is balanced with "They're lotteries. Go to a FAANG if you want to get rich, and anywhere established if you want better work/life balance")
  • asdfsd234234444 5y ago
    Or perhaps they value their job (read: fat paycheck) over arguing with random people on the internet?
• GDC7 5y ago
  They are too busy counting their money.
  • busterarm 5y ago
    Pretty much this. Every friend I have who has gone to work there admits that they've sold their soul and acknowledges that the company is doing harm. They care more about the money that they're making.
    • hunterb123 5y ago
      Yes because all other software companies are saints and FB is just killing people left and right. Personally Twitter is more of a stain of society, but for some reason HN has a stiffy for anyone who shits on FB. We have some awesome stuff because of FB open source; React, PHP, HHVM, JSX, etc. I agree they should stay out of politics, but they seem the most reserved of all services w/ the censoring. Maybe that's why they are hated? They don't censor enough and that's where the conservatives are?
      • busterarm 5y ago
        > Yes because all other software companies are saints and FB is just killing people left and right. I didn't say anything of the sort -- was just talking quoting my friends who work at Facebook. > Personally Twitter is more of a stain of society, but for some reason HN has a stiffy for anyone who shits on FB. I don't have any friends at Twitter. > We have some awesome stuff because of FB open source; React, PHP, HHVM, JSX, etc. The Church has tons of good causes but also has priests that literally fuck kids. Should they be above criticism for it? Should we give them a pass even though they actively covering up such vile villainy? Facebook's actions are a fairly good analogue...
        • hunterb123 5y ago
          > I didn't say anything of the sort Yeah, you didn't say anything of substance, just slander. > admits that they've sold their sold (soul) > and acknowledges that the company is doing harm. > They care more about the money that they're making. None of those are quotes btw, they are secondhand anecdotes mixed in with your opinion. > The Church has tons of good causes but also has priests that literally fuck kids Yeah well until you break the case that FB is fucking kids how about you find a better analogy. Or maybe come up with an actual reason you want to state about why you don't like FB and why you are singling them out over other terrible social media companies. > Should we give them a pass even though they actively covering up such vile villainy? Vile villainy. Good one. Care to expand? Nothing you said is specific, just angry feelings. What do YOU really want them to do? -- edit -- None of that was clear until your last comment, it's still not fully clear. You kept saying FB, not social media companies. It seems you have a generic issue with social media, not FB. Does that stop at forums, news aggregators, or what? Is Reddit included, is Hacker News? What's the core issue for you?
• giantg2 5y ago
  I've seen a couple posts here from people claiming to work for Facebook. It seems that most people on here don't post who they work for, Facebook or otherwise.
• gumby 5y ago
  There are plenty of Googlers, Applers (?), Amazonians or Netflixers posting on HN but not identifying themselves as such. Likewise some FBers do identify themselves as such. I only see it in technical posts (open hardware, folly, oculus etc) because I find the discussion of social networks being good/bad boring. But definitely if there were a post about why fb is evil and I worked at fb I probably wouldn’t mention that. You don’t see that many google rms defending google on HN either.
  • Ocerge 5y ago
    I'm a Googler, but I don't talk about it on HN, mostly because the Google-related articles are almost entirely negative, and I'm not about to be in the trenches on HN defending my employer. There's plenty of other good articles to read instead. I imagine some FBers probably feel similarly.
    • rob74 5y ago
      Except that the sentiment toward Facebook is considerably more negative than toward Google - at least that's my feeling, but I don't have data to back it up. Is there an opinion poll somewhere about "which one of the FAANG (or however they are called nowadays) companies do you hate the most"?
      • thrdbndndn 5y ago
        "Except"? I feel you mean "Especially".
      • fdeage 5y ago
        There is, but it's pre-pandemic data and about the general public, not the HN crowd: https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/2/21144680/verge-tech-survey-2020-trust-privacy-security-facebook-amazon-google-apple https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/2/21144680/verge-tech-survey...
        • bryanlarsen 5y ago
          Wow, that's both much more favorable towards all brands than I would have expected, and definitely in a different order than I would have expected based on the mainstream media stories I consume. Amazon on the top? Apple in the middle? Wow.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• Clubber 5y ago
  I would hesitate to post on a public forum where I work or any identifying personal information for obvious reasons.
  • yosito 5y ago
    This. I've actually had someone take their disagreement with me out by leaving negative reviews of my company online. Thankfully my company at the time agreed with my personal views and nothing came of it. But after that experience, I never mention my current employer in public forums. Especially with how easily mobs and vigilantes can be triggered by opinions they don't like these days.
• Kiro 5y ago
  Because of the employee shaming.
• PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  HN has a very clear anti-Facebook bias. It doesn’t matter what the news story is - If it has Facebook in the headline the comment section will be half low-effort comments from people bragging about quitting Facebook years ago or snide remarks about Zuckerberg. They rarely last long on the front page because they seem to trigger HN’s quality filters very quickly. So why would any Facebook employees volunteer to be part of that? If you say anything neutral or even positive about Facebook as a non-employee your comment will attract rapid downvotes here. Imagine commenting as an employee on the inside of the company. FWIW, I know several people at FB who also comment on HN. They have no interest in discussing FB on HN because we all know exactly how the discussion will go regardless of the veracity of any claims or content.
  • maxehmookau 5y ago
    > HN has a very clear anti-Facebook bias. So why would any Facebook employees volunteer to be part of that? I mean... refusing to look at things you don't like or don't fit your narrative/content bubble is pretty much the reason Facebook exists. Stands to reason it applies to HN too.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • systemvoltage 5y ago
      I view being a contrarian as a positive thing for the society. Casting it in the light of FB's toxic culture feels like an insidious, contemptful and oppressive stance to take. Facebook/Twitter/Tiktok culture has nothing to do with "not fitting in the narrative". If you want the society fit in the narrative, you'll find that well exercised in oppressive regimes such as North Korea. For the most part, HN does a great job of criticism and opposing viewpoints when it comes to technical topics. But for political viewpoints, it is a cohesive, tightly bound and impenetrable monoculture primarily echoing Silicon Valley zeitgeist.
    • dang 5y ago
      Could you please stop posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments? You've unfortunately done it a lot and we're trying for something else here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• 1cvmask 5y ago
  Almost all of us on HN are here for ourselves as individuals and I don't think they should or have to identify with any of the workings of their employer. Most of us come here for free spirited discussion and interaction of ideas, and ultimately to optionally contribute and mostly to learn. On that note I have seen many identify where they see relevant that they work at Meta/FB just as much as any of the other FAANG participants.
  • fdeage 5y ago
    I do see some FB engineers sometimes, but mostly working on open source projects there.
• ryandvm 5y ago
  I imagine that if you work at Facebook, then pretty much every Facebook story that comes up on Hacker News is going to offer you some awfully harsh cognitive dissonance if you're not absolutely Machiavellian about your employment.
• mschuster91 5y ago
  > I wonder if, because Facebook regularly gets very bad press here (stories about Facebook are overwhelmingly negative, and so are comments), FB people don't feel confident to speak. Do you share that feeling? I share that feeling, but also... Apple, Amazon and Netflix have some halfway decent customer support, whereas Google and Facebook have next to none so I think part of the cause may be people tired of being abused as unpaid customer service / "grievance counselor".
• jyap 5y ago
  Lots of companies you can get fired for saying certain things or have HR policies against social media or speaking in public about your company unless you are an authorized person. That’s what CEOs are for. You may not be allowed to even discuss your tech stack. Even when people say who they work for, they need to be cautious of the content they write. Defending a company against negative press is the role of CEOs and other personnel.
• bob1029 5y ago
  I've had a lot of "weird feelings" about the visitors on HN over the years. Enough time elapses and you realize most of it is in your head and typically leads to a dark forest of subsequent thoughts. This attempt to bind HN participation to employer is confusing to me. Is this not a (mostly) anonymous board? I usually have zero idea who anyone is working for at any given moment unless explicitly mentioned in whatever comment. A more likely middle ground conclusion is that you are partially correct - perhaps most FB employees who post on HN just don't disclose who their employer is at the same frequency as others, so the aggregate perception is that fewer FB employees frequent this board.
  • blablabla123 5y ago
    I think similarly and also see with interest when someone writes "<insert FAANG>er here". Personally I'm happy to write what I think without having to worry what employers might think. (Probably it's different when you have a lot of public exposure anyway) That said, probably most people are aware that most companies are ambivalent - in fact even some NGOs. The more you find out the worse it gets. But still most people continue using those companies products or open source creations. Speaking of React, Angular etc. etc. Although in theory it would be possible to slalom around that.
• anon_fber 5y ago
  I work there but there's no way I'm saying so on my usual HN account. I'm just in it for the interesting technical challenges and the paycheck, and I've no interest whatsoever in defending my employer in whatever PR nightmare they've become embroiled in, yet again. Even pseudonymously. Still, it's a great place to work for in many ways, and while a lot of the criticisms from outside somewhat exaggerate and misrepresent things a bit, I kind of agree with a lot of them too. A few years back I worked for Microsoft and felt quite similarly when they got bad press for whatever. To be honest, I don't get why some people go out of their way to cheerlead for their employers. Not that it happens here much, but when it does, it's quite sad to see such naïve fealty. Personally I prefer the mercenary state of mind when it comes to employment, it's good to keep a healthy work-life attitude.
  • rafiki6 5y ago
    > "To be honest, I don't get why some people go out of their way to cheerlead for their employers. It's quite sad to see such naïve fealty. I have a good life outside of work and prefer the mercenary state of mind when it comes to employment." I've thought a lot about this, and I think it has to do with the innate human desire to belong to a tribe. I also think that's why army's will tend to recruit people on the younger side of adulthood, but also why companies that require a lot of hard work and long hours will do the same. Younger adults with less life experience (the under 25s), generally speaking (obviously there are always exceptions), will tend to be the target audience for companies and armies simply because they are much more likely to develop some form of loyalty/tribalism. I also think a part of it is due to the fact that most humans are still developing their worldview at that point, and so if you get them at this stage, you're much more likely to mold them to buy into your vision.
  • givemeethekeys 5y ago
    > To be honest, I don't get why some people go out of their way to cheerlead for their employers Imagine for a second that you felt passionately about internet social networking - all the possibilities it represents and all the problems it solves. And, you then discovered that there was a company solving social networking problems and they pay really well. And, they hire you, pay you well for the kind of work that you want to do. Then, maybe you'll cheerlead for your employer. You could also choose to work for some other company that's doing amazing work and perhaps doesn't pay as well but is better aligned with your values.
• todd3834 5y ago
  You can know where I work and get the safe version for each of my comments or not know where I work and get more truth. Most people are not trying to be completely anonymous but it’s different when you call out your employer in a comment. It could be seen as you are representing the company. When I was at Apple we had regular training video sessions that made it super clear they prefer we didn’t do that. Plenty of Apple engineers on here too but you are not going to see them mention it often. It’s just not worth it. People prefer not to disclose where they work so they can be more open. Unless it’s extremely relevant to the comment. Most of the time it would be relevant to know is something that would likely be a problem for the poster as well. You also have to remember that these are public companies and engineers often work on stuff the public hasn’t learned about yet. There are too many land mines to be super open.
  • todd3834 5y ago
    If you really want to see more anonymous posts from employees at these companies teamblind.com is a better place.
• mFixman 5y ago
  I used to work for Facebook until a couple of months ago, and I know for a fact that a lot of FB employees still post here. The problem is that presenting yourself as a Facebook employee gives you a deluge of angry HN responses that are normally unrelated to your current post. It's not the bad press alone, but the design of HN and other comment ranking systems make it harder for "unpopular" commenters to get a good signal to noise ratio. Also, there's the media. Everyone has seen too many clickbait stories based on a single anonymous comment by an FB employee to risk writing anything.
• thrower123 5y ago
  Anything about FB becomes so toxic and pointless and ultimately very boring, that I more or less flag/hide anything touching on the subject
• tehlike 5y ago
  I work for Facebook and try to disclose it when it's relavant. I see people do this, but I also found people that i know to be facebooker not disclose it probably due to unrelated comments made on fb more so than topic on hand.
• kodah 5y ago
  Facebook and social media get a lot of shade here. It's not just HN though, the shame is fairly universal, even to prospective employees. I had a junior ask me if it was wise to go work there and I had to tell him this: "In this day and age there are no clean companies. All the places you think are heroes will become villains and the villains advertise themselves as heroes. The best you can do as a talented person is to earn your money and one day try to work on problems you're passionate about for companies that couldn't afford the price tag you deserve." All in all, I don't like what most of these companies do, but I also don't like moralizing employees directly for it. Rarely if ever do they work on the things that make those companies a problem. That requires coordination that engineers are not typically involved in.
  • istjohn 5y ago
    There is nothing wise about cynical amorality. The best you can do as a talented person is look to where you can apply your talents to make the world a better place.
    • kodah 5y ago
      Morality is not a requirement in my world. Ethics in a given paradigm do matter to me though, and discriminating based on my morals about someone's employment history would be a clear violation of ethical hiring practices. The phrase "making the world a better place" is also lost on me. How many startups have said this, only to make it better for some people but worse for others? It's an illusion we tell ourselves.
• InfiniteRand 5y ago
  I generally never mention my employer because I feel like if I say I work for X, my opinion will be considered representative of X, while I do not work for Facebook I would not be surprised if many Facebookers feel the same, especially since theirs is a very public company, unlike mine
• mgraczyk 5y ago
  I worked there until earlier this year, and often posted on HN while I was there. The biggest reason you don't see comments from Facebook employees is exactly what others here have pointed out: HN is overwhelmingly negative in its attitude toward Facebook. This leads to a super pragmatic reason not to post. If you post anything neutral or positive, you typically get downvoted a lot. If your comment somehow avoids going negative, then you get a ton of replies accusing you of being a paid shill, and people stalking you on other social media trying to "out" you as a shill. That's not fun and I assume it's enough to discourage most people from posting. That being said, I used to post a lot about FB and still do, even when it gets me downvoted. I worked on recommendation ML and contributed to a bunch of different surfaces, so I think I have an unusually well informed perspective on how things actually work at FB and what sorts of processes/motivations lead to the negative outcomes that cause bad PR. I think FB has a lot of problems, but as an insider with no extreme political views, it was very difficult for me to convince myself that anything FB has done is morally wrong. HN has some decent flamewar prevention automation to prevent me from spending too much time arguing here, so at the end of the day its a decent way to vent and represent an alternative point of view besides "FB bad Zuck evil".
  • toast0 5y ago
    I left FB (well WhatsApp) in 2019. I didn't necessarily care about downvotes, but commenting on work related matters is generally a no go, I wasn't authorized to speak about work stuff, and I didn't want to say anything that's going to get me in trouble at work. Also, while I might sometimes have wanted to mention something, I certainly didn't want to answer follow up questions, and that provides unsatisfying dialog.
  • Dracophoenix 5y ago
    >so I think I have an unusually well informed perspective on how things actually work at FB and what sorts of processes/motivations lead to the negative outcomes that cause bad PR. Could you enlighten as to what those are? >I think FB has a lot of problems, but as an insider with no extreme political views, it was very difficult for me to convince myself that anything FB has done is morally wrong. My personal complaints would be: - Mass censorship over certain topics (e.g. Kyle Rittenhouse) - Forcing previously purchased goods (e.g. Oculus headsets) to be tied to a Facebook Account - Paying for zero-day exploits of the Tails operating system - the Real name policy - Shadow profiles created by inserting hidden pixels into unaffiliated webpages
• fingerlocks 5y ago
  One of my all-time favorite rebuttals is from an FB employee. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21772401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21772401 It’s a fresh perspective on targeted advertising in what is normally a boring discussion with the same predictable comments. Whether you agree with the post or not doesn’t matter. It’s a candid insider’s view that drives curiosity and precisely the kind of content that keeps me returning to HN.
  • mgraczyk 5y ago
    Yeah that's a good comment, and you can see from the replies why somebody would want to post that anonymously (the replies are basically "you are lying"). I'm happy to endorse that comment using my real-world identity. Facebook does not do "hypertargeting". The marginal cost of running text processing on messages or image processing on photos for specific users exceeds the value of that information for targeting by many orders of magnitude. Facebook literally cannot afford to "listen to your conversations". The way I typically explain targeted advertising is something like this. You go to a website, you put something in your cart, but you don't buy. Facebook shows you an ad for that website the next day, you go back and buy the thing in your cart. That basic pattern probably accounts for 20-30% of ad revenue for Facebook, and the only "personal information" required is that you recently visited a particular website. The next 70-80% is similarly banal stuff, like "you're the sort of person who buys outdoor gear and you're likely to buy this quarter".
• justin_oaks 5y ago
  Life is complicated. Not everything is wholly good or wholly evil, Facebook included. Who here is upset with some of the decisions of their employers? Who else is upset that the management they work under are scumbags? I would dare say most of us fit that category. I used to work for a company whose product is pretty good, but the CEO and CTO behave unethically. They are fine with lying and cheating if they can get away with it. For example, it was discovered that in some cases the company was double-charging customers. When it was fixed, the CEO and CTO noticed a drop in revenue and told the employee to "unfix" it. That employee has ethics and thus refused revert the change. All my previous coworkers are good people trying to make a living. I was happy that my efforts were providing the users a good product and that the company was financially supporting my coworkers. I was unhappy that my efforts were enriching scumbags.
• lhorie 5y ago
  I'll add my two cents as someone who works at Uber (another company that people here like to take potshots at). For the vast majority of employees, it's just tiresome to keep hearing negative hot takes being parroted over and over by people who don't have any insider insight, and often times not even the decency of verifying their sources before jumping on a bandwagon to bash some strawman for some internet points. A lot of times, these hot takes are clearly victims of egregious cognitive biases, like suggesting that working for X employer must necessarily mean that you share the company ideology, or that getting paid more money is somehow directly associated with being morally corrupt. There's also armchair "hiring managers" who boldly claim they would never hire FB people (an actual hiring manager knows how hard it is to find talent and knows they don't really have the luxury of flaunting arrogance, and they certainly know that discrimination - even of non-protected classes - is a no-no). These threads often devolve into what-about-isms galore and I-dont-use-X-because-reason anedoctes that frankly are not very snowflakey or insightful at all. These employees get it, they've heard them all. It's like asking which twin is older: people think they're so clever for having the "insight" that one must necessarily have come out first, but that's literally the first thing everyone and their brothers asks. So, put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself what you would do if literally everyone that met you made a remark about a facial feature of yours or something like that. Chances are, you'd grin awkwardly, roll your eyes and find some way to change the subject to something less tiresome. On the internet, you'd just find another less bothersome thread to spend your precious attention span in, and that's exactly what people do.