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We have no such moral obligation. Facebook is no better and no worse than a multitude of other companies that trade in attention and data. They've suffered an o
by kspacewalk2 5y ago
We have no such moral obligation. Facebook is no better and no worse than a multitude of other companies that trade in attention and data. They've suffered an onslaught of bad PR lately, largely due to their singular success rather then being singularly evil or (on balance) harmful to the world.
A lot of this moral panic about Facebook's effect on society is just a projection of our general angst the democratization of media. A lot of our type of people, squishy liberal nerd types, cheered it on when it was starting, supposing that it will be an improvement over the status quo of pre-2010. Information flow will finally be free, and Evil Gatekeepers won't control it, that sort of stuff. Now that we've been disabused of the notion that this is a good development, we get all uppity.
Turns out your friends and neighbours always liked fake news, and always will. And so do you. Oops.
- DitheringIdiot 5y agoFacebook’s success and ubiquity is what makes it worse than other companies that trade in attention and data. It’s not a moral panic, the people who run facebook have provably done terrible things. Would other people in their position do those things? Some would, some wouldn’t. There are people who do the right thing, even when it means their company losing a few bucks. It is our responsibility to speak out against terrible companies like facebook. And if you, like me, work in tech, it is your job to not do terrible things. If it’s not our responsibility, then it’s no one’s — and if you believe that, you believe in nothing.
- pacomerh 5y agoThen pick one and do something about it. Just because there's more than one company doing bad things doesn't mean you get to do nothing about it.