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I disagree. Among Meta's many technical contributions: React PyTorch osquery GraphQL Presto/Trino RocksDB Jest OCP Llama

Arainach 1y ago
And among their non-technical contributions, you have genocide in Myanmar, election interference worldwide, the explosive growth of hate speech, countless teenager suicides, and more. Any large company can write a web UI framework, but only a truly special one can directly contribute to genocide, know about it, have employees bring it up and suggest intervening, and decide that nah, they'd rather let people die and make more money.
- milkshakes 1y ago
  > Meta seems like one of the few large tech companies where if the whole company vanished, the world would be purely a better place. This is what I disagree with. Specifically, I don't disagree that Meta has caused serious harm. I just don't think we live in such a black and white world "where if the whole company vanished, the world would be purely a better place".
  - endemic 1y ago
    The tech contributions are fungible, to be honest. Sure, they're popular because ~Facebook~ Meta is a giant company, but if they disappeared overnight, other equally good solutions would soon take their place.
    - milkshakes 1y ago
      everything is obvious after the fact, yet still it was meta who made the contributions. and meta who made them stick. what other company has contributed more widespread, enduring, and game changing open source projects than meta? asking seriously here because the list i put up there is just off the top of my head.
dakiol 1y ago
We don’t need any of those. So many brilliant people working at facebook and wasting their talent.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- crimsoneer 1y ago
  I mean, if people working on PyTorch, GraphQL and React are "wasting their talent", then bloody hell that is a high bar.
- milkshakes 1y ago
  with the exception of maybe llama, each of these releases represented not only solid, accessible implementations, but actually also a paradigm shift and a massive investment. then they gave each away for free, and continued to invest in them for years. _you_ might not need any of these, but the internet as we know it today certainly is built on the shoulders of each of them, and in some cases, continues to use them directly.

Arainach 1y ago

And among their non-technical contributions, you have genocide in Myanmar, election interference worldwide, the explosive growth of hate speech, countless teenager suicides, and more. Any large company can write a web UI framework, but only a truly special one can directly contribute to genocide, know about it, have employees bring it up and suggest intervening, and decide that nah, they'd rather let people die and make more money.

milkshakes 1y ago
> Meta seems like one of the few large tech companies where if the whole company vanished, the world would be purely a better place. This is what I disagree with. Specifically, I don't disagree that Meta has caused serious harm. I just don't think we live in such a black and white world "where if the whole company vanished, the world would be purely a better place".
- endemic 1y ago
  The tech contributions are fungible, to be honest. Sure, they're popular because ~Facebook~ Meta is a giant company, but if they disappeared overnight, other equally good solutions would soon take their place.
  - milkshakes 1y ago
    everything is obvious after the fact, yet still it was meta who made the contributions. and meta who made them stick. what other company has contributed more widespread, enduring, and game changing open source projects than meta? asking seriously here because the list i put up there is just off the top of my head.

dakiol 1y ago

We don’t need any of those. So many brilliant people working at facebook and wasting their talent.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
crimsoneer 1y ago
I mean, if people working on PyTorch, GraphQL and React are "wasting their talent", then bloody hell that is a high bar.
milkshakes 1y ago
with the exception of maybe llama, each of these releases represented not only solid, accessible implementations, but actually also a paradigm shift and a massive investment. then they gave each away for free, and continued to invest in them for years. _you_ might not need any of these, but the internet as we know it today certainly is built on the shoulders of each of them, and in some cases, continues to use them directly.