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> bottom-of-the-ethical-barrel Again, this is silly sensationalist thinking -- companies aren't people capable of "good" or "evil" choices. If they were, I'd n

> bottom-of-the-ethical-barrel Again, this is silly sensationalist thinking -- companies aren't people capable of "good" or "evil" choices. If they were, I'd note that Facebook was one of the only companies NOT conspiring to deflate the wages of half of the people that visit this site. (Note: I don't work for FB -- I just rail against silly hyperbolic thinking.)

DerpDerpDerp 13y ago
Groups of people are capable of collectively "good" or "evil" choices, and we often regard collective decisions in moral terms. I'd argue that Facebook has made a lot of decisions that exploit users in pursuit of making more money and acquiring more personal data -- and that we don't have to be happy a technology platform with a lot of promise is now tied to a company with a record of making such decisions. I won't welcome a Facebook platform in to my life the same way I would a standalone piece of technology, precisely because of the kind of decisions made by Facebook.
pfraze 13y ago
I normally agree with you, but I really believe Facebook's model - hosting people's personal life in a corporate database - is wrong, flatly wrong. It'd be wrong for anybody, but they're the most active pushers. Friend lists, personal photos, relationships, messages, even though users gave them up freely, it was wrong to take them. IT ethics means that you use your expertise to actively protect sensitive information. They don't do that, and there can be / will be / are consequences. If anybody could have pushed an effective self-hosting platform, it's them, but they haven't. They are at the bottom of the ethical barrel.
- jaegerpicker 13y ago
  While I tend to agree with your ethical stand point, I think it's unfair to blame them for not pushing a self hosting platform. Without first gathering the personal info of the users they would never had the clout to push anything. They had to obtain a large level of popularity in order to push anything.
  - pfraze 13y ago
    That's a fair point - think of all the attempts to displace them (cough diaspora). But that's also why the onus falls onto them now, right?
vacri 13y ago
companies aren't people capable of "good" or "evil" choices Their directors certainly are. A friend's mother works in a high-level consultancy that is known for turning down lucrative-but-unethical projects. I've worked in a company where the CEO would always try to find a win-win, even if it cost the company financially. I've also worked in a company where the CEO/majority owner vociferously abused the directors when he wasn't allowed a vote when they were voting on his own payrise (the directors saying that it was illegal to do so). That company also played a lot of three-card monte with FDA auditors. Companies can behave ethically; just because they're not an organism doesn't mean that they're not under the control of something that can make those decisions. A car is just a lump of matter. Can't do anything by itself. But stick a human into it, and it can do all sorts of things, from the mundane (collecting groceries) to the charitable (distributing meals) to the unethical (hit-and-run). A company is the same. Add into this that Facebook has been shown to be openly selling fraudulent products, and it doesn't make it sound like Facebook is the innocent you're implying. Crack open youtube and search for 'veritasium facebook', there are a couple of videos - Facebook is essentially selling advertising with fake impressions.
na85 13y ago
It's really not sensationalist at all. Facebook is run by a man who got rich on selling private data to advertisers, and then used his billions to buy all the mansions surrounding his own mansion so that he could protect his privacy. Zuckerberg is scum and this is a sad day for any fan of the Oculus.
- philsnow 13y ago
  to be fair, put in zuckerberg's position, I would do the exact same thing. the last thing I would want is for my house to be surrounded by people who won bidding wars just to own property near me. it's not like he bought all the surrounding lots and kicked the residents out; iirc he actually went out of his way to essentially set up a pseudo reverse mortgage for one older couple.
  - na85 13y ago
    >the last thing I would want is for my house to be surrounded by people who won bidding wars just to own property near me. That's hypocrisy. He's repeatedly gone on record stating that he believes peoples' lives should be fully open and shared. But he doesn't want his own life to be open and shared?
    - philsnow 13y ago
      I don't like the guy's company, I've never met the guy; but I don't think you're even trying, or even thinking very hard about what you're saying.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
vanwesson 13y ago
>I'd note that Facebook was one of the only companies NOT conspiring to deflate the wages of half of the people that visit this site If you're referring to the fact that it was reported yesterday that Facebook refused to participate in the "no poaching" agreement between Apple, Google, and other companies, it is worth noting that Facebook's CEO is involved in a totally different, and probably much more permanent and far-reaching strategy for suppressing engineer salaries: http://gawker.com/mark-zuckerbergs-self-serving-immigration-crusade-484912430 http://gawker.com/mark-zuckerbergs-self-serving-immigration-...
- 77ko 13y ago
  Doesn't that potentially raise the salaries of all non-American engineers who might get jobs?
  - EricDeb 13y ago
    Yes, at the expense of American engineering salaries. Not a bad thing for innovation/technology as a whole but does lower American salaries.
    - scient 13y ago
      As a H1B holder - I was hired because there was no-one competent enough to hire in the US and my salary seems to be significantly higher than the average engineers salary in the same area I work at. So its kind of a silly point imho. You would not have this immigration issue (issue as in companies trying to get larger quotas and less restrictive conditions) if you would have enough competent engineers in the US. The problem is that companies HAVE to look outside of the country to find capable work-force. It's also worth nothing that one of the prerequisites of getting an approval of a H1B visa is the fact that you can prove that the position you are trying to fill cannot be (at least easily) be filled with finding someone locally. You also need to show (and guarantee) that the person whom you are hiring on the visa, will get paid higher than average salary for the same position in that field. So essentially there are mechanisms in place to avoid companies bringing in pointless cheap labor - how those rules are enforced is up to the government tbh. It is also worth nothing that the "crusade" against current H1B laws also include some other, very important points, like getting rid of the silly H4 visa that H1B holders spouses are forced on. All in all I suggest digging a little more into the issue instead of commenting from a very shallow point of view.
arg01 13y ago
Companies may be formally structured in such a way that they effectively act in an amoral fashion and merely seek to fulfill the wishes of their shareholders. But they are also made of some less formal structures. Groups of people that believe privacy is important will be predisposed to assume that disrespecting that tenet will affect profit and the companies operating environment later. Even if this is not the case perhaps a company gains additional political capital in some area for it's behaviour and no single product is likely to be worth the loss of that clout. If you take factors like these into account you can judge whether a company is predisposed to create outcomes you'd say are good or bad based on it's previous actions. As to FB and the wages I do not give them the benefit of the doubt and assumed that it wasn't them acting on some outpouring of principal but purely needing the engineers as they grow more than they needed depressed wages. This may be unfair to them but their past actions do not align well with a more generous interpretation, though give it a few years with similar incidents and I'd reevaluate in their favour(I'd love to see it but I wouldn't hold my breath).

DerpDerpDerp 13y ago

Groups of people are capable of collectively "good" or "evil" choices, and we often regard collective decisions in moral terms. I'd argue that Facebook has made a lot of decisions that exploit users in pursuit of making more money and acquiring more personal data -- and that we don't have to be happy a technology platform with a lot of promise is now tied to a company with a record of making such decisions. I won't welcome a Facebook platform in to my life the same way I would a standalone piece of technology, precisely because of the kind of decisions made by Facebook.

pfraze 13y ago

I normally agree with you, but I really believe Facebook's model - hosting people's personal life in a corporate database - is wrong, flatly wrong. It'd be wrong for anybody, but they're the most active pushers. Friend lists, personal photos, relationships, messages, even though users gave them up freely, it was wrong to take them. IT ethics means that you use your expertise to actively protect sensitive information. They don't do that, and there can be / will be / are consequences. If anybody could have pushed an effective self-hosting platform, it's them, but they haven't. They are at the bottom of the ethical barrel.

jaegerpicker 13y ago
While I tend to agree with your ethical stand point, I think it's unfair to blame them for not pushing a self hosting platform. Without first gathering the personal info of the users they would never had the clout to push anything. They had to obtain a large level of popularity in order to push anything.
- pfraze 13y ago
  That's a fair point - think of all the attempts to displace them (cough diaspora). But that's also why the onus falls onto them now, right?

vacri 13y ago

companies aren't people capable of "good" or "evil" choices Their directors certainly are. A friend's mother works in a high-level consultancy that is known for turning down lucrative-but-unethical projects. I've worked in a company where the CEO would always try to find a win-win, even if it cost the company financially. I've also worked in a company where the CEO/majority owner vociferously abused the directors when he wasn't allowed a vote when they were voting on his own payrise (the directors saying that it was illegal to do so). That company also played a lot of three-card monte with FDA auditors. Companies can behave ethically; just because they're not an organism doesn't mean that they're not under the control of something that can make those decisions. A car is just a lump of matter. Can't do anything by itself. But stick a human into it, and it can do all sorts of things, from the mundane (collecting groceries) to the charitable (distributing meals) to the unethical (hit-and-run). A company is the same. Add into this that Facebook has been shown to be openly selling fraudulent products, and it doesn't make it sound like Facebook is the innocent you're implying. Crack open youtube and search for 'veritasium facebook', there are a couple of videos - Facebook is essentially selling advertising with fake impressions.

na85 13y ago

It's really not sensationalist at all. Facebook is run by a man who got rich on selling private data to advertisers, and then used his billions to buy all the mansions surrounding his own mansion so that he could protect his privacy. Zuckerberg is scum and this is a sad day for any fan of the Oculus.

philsnow 13y ago
to be fair, put in zuckerberg's position, I would do the exact same thing. the last thing I would want is for my house to be surrounded by people who won bidding wars just to own property near me. it's not like he bought all the surrounding lots and kicked the residents out; iirc he actually went out of his way to essentially set up a pseudo reverse mortgage for one older couple.
- na85 13y ago
  >the last thing I would want is for my house to be surrounded by people who won bidding wars just to own property near me. That's hypocrisy. He's repeatedly gone on record stating that he believes peoples' lives should be fully open and shared. But he doesn't want his own life to be open and shared?
  - philsnow 13y ago
    I don't like the guy's company, I've never met the guy; but I don't think you're even trying, or even thinking very hard about what you're saying.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

vanwesson 13y ago

>I'd note that Facebook was one of the only companies NOT conspiring to deflate the wages of half of the people that visit this site If you're referring to the fact that it was reported yesterday that Facebook refused to participate in the "no poaching" agreement between Apple, Google, and other companies, it is worth noting that Facebook's CEO is involved in a totally different, and probably much more permanent and far-reaching strategy for suppressing engineer salaries: http://gawker.com/mark-zuckerbergs-self-serving-immigration-crusade-484912430 http://gawker.com/mark-zuckerbergs-self-serving-immigration-...

77ko 13y ago
Doesn't that potentially raise the salaries of all non-American engineers who might get jobs?
- EricDeb 13y ago
  Yes, at the expense of American engineering salaries. Not a bad thing for innovation/technology as a whole but does lower American salaries.
  - scient 13y ago
    As a H1B holder - I was hired because there was no-one competent enough to hire in the US and my salary seems to be significantly higher than the average engineers salary in the same area I work at. So its kind of a silly point imho. You would not have this immigration issue (issue as in companies trying to get larger quotas and less restrictive conditions) if you would have enough competent engineers in the US. The problem is that companies HAVE to look outside of the country to find capable work-force. It's also worth nothing that one of the prerequisites of getting an approval of a H1B visa is the fact that you can prove that the position you are trying to fill cannot be (at least easily) be filled with finding someone locally. You also need to show (and guarantee) that the person whom you are hiring on the visa, will get paid higher than average salary for the same position in that field. So essentially there are mechanisms in place to avoid companies bringing in pointless cheap labor - how those rules are enforced is up to the government tbh. It is also worth nothing that the "crusade" against current H1B laws also include some other, very important points, like getting rid of the silly H4 visa that H1B holders spouses are forced on. All in all I suggest digging a little more into the issue instead of commenting from a very shallow point of view.

arg01 13y ago

Companies may be formally structured in such a way that they effectively act in an amoral fashion and merely seek to fulfill the wishes of their shareholders. But they are also made of some less formal structures. Groups of people that believe privacy is important will be predisposed to assume that disrespecting that tenet will affect profit and the companies operating environment later. Even if this is not the case perhaps a company gains additional political capital in some area for it's behaviour and no single product is likely to be worth the loss of that clout. If you take factors like these into account you can judge whether a company is predisposed to create outcomes you'd say are good or bad based on it's previous actions. As to FB and the wages I do not give them the benefit of the doubt and assumed that it wasn't them acting on some outpouring of principal but purely needing the engineers as they grow more than they needed depressed wages. This may be unfair to them but their past actions do not align well with a more generous interpretation, though give it a few years with similar incidents and I'd reevaluate in their favour(I'd love to see it but I wouldn't hold my breath).