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The fact that she did end up setting herself apart is what's remarkable. For every one of her who was able to self-reflect, become horrified of the ethics of wh
by ryandrake 7mo ago
The fact that she did end up setting herself apart is what's remarkable. For every one of her who was able to self-reflect, become horrified of the ethics of what she was doing, and took the hard steps of stopping and breaking away, how many current and former Meta employees don't do this reflection and remain contributors to the problem? 1:100? 1:1,000? 1:10,000?
- Oarch 7mo agoA few years ago I had a date with a backend engineer at Meta. I asked if they'd ever considered the societal implications of the work they did. They said "Oh wow I've never even thought about it". Probably a solid hire from Meta's perspective.
- kingofmen 7mo agoOr you missed the eye-rolling sarcasm in the answer they have to give on every goddam first date.
- smohare 7mo ago[dead]
- Dumbledumb 7mo agoGetting to know the views and values of your date is not a weird thing to do on the first date. If it’s a question that annoys them, they should consider why.
- ryandrake 7mo agoMaybe I'm just a wacky Bleeding-Heart, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect someone who worked on a product that amplified hate, leading up to a massacre in Myanmar, to at least address that without sarcasm while getting to know them.
- sunnybeetroot 7mo agoMaybe it’s a question for the third date?
- throwanem 7mo agoImagine dating someone who works at Facebook, though. I can't imagine who would be so utterly dense as to offer so presumptuous a complaint, but he'd better be at least a 13 out of 10 or I'm not even bothering to pretend to go to the bathroom and then sneak out the back.
- brabel 7mo agoThat can only be a sarcastic answer, don’t you think?? You really believe people would get a job at former Facebook, after lots of scandals have been exposed, and not even think about that?? Sorry no way.
- SpaceNoodled 7mo agoYou seriously underestimate how myopic people can be. Not everyone is a sophisticated and socially aware HN commenter like you and I.
- zeroonetwothree 7mo agoYou sound fun to date
- nostrademons 7mo agoI know an ex-Facebook employee who told me that "Nobody at Facebook ever makes a conscious decision about whether something is good or bad. You are given a metric, and your job is to make that metric go up. If it turns out that making the metric go up has negative consequences [for the business, I don't think it's anyone's job to worry about the rest of society], then somebody else is given another metric to ameliorate the negative consequences of you making your metric go up." He didn't last all that long, he had a conscience. I've heard similar things, but not quite in such clear words, from several other people I know who have worked at Facebook/Meta.
- motbus3 7mo agoI know couple of people who said exactly same thing. One of them is quite smart and I asked what was his/her personal opinion and I've heard: "I'd rather not talk about it ever again"
- knollimar 7mo agoThat sounds mysterious and important
- jonah 7mo agoThat's a really effective way to get a group of people to do horrible things. Break it up into small pieces where each one isn't that bad in and of itself.
- nostrademons 7mo agoBasically how a corporation is structured. The whole point is limited legal liability, so that the corporation as a whole can do things that would be blatantly illegal if any one person did them. Governments too. The defining characteristic of a state is the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Some more recent theories on state formation come down to the state being the biggest bandit of them all, the one that subsumes and threatens to kill all other organized sources of violence, and hence becomes the "legitimate" one simply because it has eliminated all other contenders. One of the most popular courses at my college was entitled "Murder", and the syllabus was largely devoted to this tension between how the worst crime of all, when talking about individuals, is simply how states do business.
- bena 7mo agoShe didn’t set herself apart. She was fired. She was forced apart. That’s the issue here. Is this someone who found their morals or someone who found a stick with which to strike back at those who hurt her? One of those doesn’t require her to change at all.
- petre 7mo agoEven if she was fired it was an act of courage and a step in the right direction to write a book about it. The company is cancer, no wonder they named it Meta.
- brabel 7mo agoCourage guided by righteousness or vengeance? I feel like the motivation is very important here.
- advael 7mo agoI don't particularly think so. What matters is whether the stuff in the book was true, not whether the author is of unassailable character
- dylan604 7mo agoCould be courage guided by a paycheck. Would not be surprised if the publisher did not reach out directly to suggest writing a book.
- BloondAndDoom 7mo agoDid you read the book? Because that's not the story, she way too many opportunities to do that, yet didn't. Only after she stopped getting paid, she did an "expose". I hate facebook more than the next guy but this person just helped Facebook to accomplish usual evil things, and only stopped once she cannot profit. I'm pretty sure she didn't start that way or maybe even saw it that way, but objectively (in her own narrative, if you only take actions and ignore her own emotional justifications) that's what happened.