Flags are generally from user votes- so probably too inflammatory/political to some here.
Per the guidelines: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
I don't understand why doesn't Facebook just:
-Allow all posts
-Allow users to customize what they want to see (e.g. "dont show me posts that glorify violence" or "only allow covid posts that match WHO guidelines" or "allow exceptions from political figures or of historical significance") and allow users to ban hide posts that are found untruthful by third parties (snopes, etc).
To me effectively everyone wins. Facebook users who want to curate their experience can do so. Facebook gets out of the censorship business so governments can lay off. Governments will have a hard time objecting because it is the users controlling their information, not the company. "Sources of truth" have to compete to get the customer's business.
Its hard but not that hard, and its Facebook's core business.
Defaults are important because, fundamentally, misinformation and superstition spread faster, farther and stronger than the truth, with much more staying power.
There's also the practical problem with social networks - within a degree or two of connections, you'll at least have some people who are part of communities covered by your own blocks. But it is in Facebook's interests to show you those communities and extend those linkages; likewise, people would simultaneously object to 1) Facebook not showing them content from friends even if it violates their own content settings 2) Facebook violations their content settings.
It would be a lose/lose situation. It is now, too.
They could then no more wash their hands of it than they can now: if people are using your platform to do bad things, or things society rejects, then you'll take the blame nomatter what level (or lack thereof) of interference you take.
> Defaults are important because, fundamentally, misinformation and superstition spread faster, farther and stronger than the truth, with much more staying power.
The amount of effort involved in telling a lie is pretty low. Going out to do good research to tell the truth is often much more expensive in terms of effort.
Or, said another way:
"The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it."
Yes defaults matter, and people will campaign heavily for the default settings, but perfect can't be the enemy of good and I can't see how this is worse.
I think its not only possible but relatively easy to have user settings that allow people to toggle on/off "1) Facebook not showing them content from friends even if it violates their own content settings".
Ah, that word "just." Whenever I see "just" in some kind of kind of technical demand in the first line, I immediately know that there's a lot of stuff to unpack.
Here, you have requested something fairly close to a general AI which understands both written language, images, and even more fun, images of language. Cartoon violence right on down to "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" And will quoting Henry II of England set off your detector?
Let's unpack your COVID post thing -- note that WHO guidelines have changed a few times. Recall that era wherein they said that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission. Also, don't buy masks. So you'd have to factor in a time domain as the guidelines change, in addition to your generalized AI as above.
In IT, I have frequently heard requests for "why can't we just get the things we know we will like?" and such. It all boils down to that mind-reading, future-predicting generalized AI.
Okay, but companies like Google, FB, and Twitter are already putting great efforts towards implementing that type of thing in production.
Whats so difficult about letting a user toggle those existing filters on and off? Or allowing users more control over their news feed, such as allowing it to be chronological? Or hiding items based on keywords?
Its our job as technologists to not only tell people if/when their request is technologically impractical/impossible, but more importantly, to make informed recommendations of what is technically feasible and most closely matches their intended goals (which they might not yet even fully understand themselves).
I hate seeing politics of any stripe in my news feed, for example. I get enough of it elsewhere. But how can Facebook take an image, recognize that it is a cartoon, and that the cartoon is based on something political? We're not there yet. We're not anywhere near there yet.
You and I, as humans in this time period, will likely recognize a drawing of a man with kind of mocha-y skin, ears that stick straight out, large-ish front teeth, and kind of a squint as a standard issue caricature of a particular former President of the USA. We can immediately go "aha, politics!"
So I suppose we could try to train some AIs on a historical set of caricatures of politically-relevant figures. Of course, caricaturists and cartoonists of all stripes are called upon to produce new stylized exaggerations of people as they step into the limelight (or are dragged into it), so our training set must be updated on a daily basis. Hrm, some more work there ...
But then it gets into "politics you would like to hear" versus "politics you would NOT like to hear," and that is just going to be something that will require a mental model of what you do and do not like.
Right now, Amazon and Netflix cannot get my recommendations even CLOSE and their data is much better curated than what someone might type into a Facebook text box.
Chronological? Reasonable! Probably doable. Keywords? Who is putting those in? Who is curating that set of keywords?
banads says>"Whats so difficult about letting a user toggle those existing filters on and off? Or allowing users more control over their news feed, such as allowing it to be chronological? Or hiding items based on keywords?"<
This! And...
allow 3rd-party individuals/companies to create user-filters that users could load up at their preference. Allow a proliferation of filters to compete.
So, say, if you don't want profanity you could view FaceBook with the, say, "FaceBook-no-profanity" filter active. Or if you don't want antisemitic remarks you can load up FaceBook with, say, the no-antisemitic filter. Filters could be loaded, unloaded, switched on and off at the users desire.
So everyone could see the Internet they want or, at any time, view everything or part of it. And if you want to see what a friend is talking about, you could load the filter(s) (s)he is using. Sets of filters could be grouped, e.g., TomT's filters, Mary's filters, Mom's filters, etc., so you can, so to speak, "see the (Internet) world through their eyes".
I see where this is going...in the long run the Internet will turn into a vast wasteland with gardens of little consequence and minimal membership. It will become defunct and all else will be simple P2P over TCP/IP.
Facebook doesn't have anything more that the dream of a promise that some day they'll have AI smart enough to curate content as well as humans can. They don't even have a hope of doing so in a way that all humans can agree is fair.
They are criminally negligent in allowing themselves to be what they are: a publishing platform designed to divide humanity into smaller and smaller subgroups in order to ease marketing, without regard to public safety or any conception of common good. Social media does not care about the blood it spills.
Want the good old web back? Enforce responsibility for content published on the publisher. Let's see facebook moderate every post. Let hateful shitheads find a place to host them, and let them start their own blogs, with their identifiable information publicly available. Failing that, maybe we can do something like this idea I posted this morning. (https://www.reddit.com/r/socialmedia/comments/gwhiie/trust_a...)
My bet is most people would not realize this was available and would continue to see whatever the default options were. And so you get back to square one, what should the defaults be?
Of course. That is exactly what FB should be doing and its likely where Twitter is going as well. Nothing else is sustainable. What exactly gives a bunch of 20 to 30 year old privileged nerds the moral authority or wisdom to decide what information the country gets access to? Pardon my French, but fuck that.
Silicon Valley people live in a bubble where everyone they know is smart and liberal. After a while they forget that there exist smart people who are not liberal and implicitly think that if someone disagrees with them, they are uneducated and just wrong. Consequently they take it upon themselves to demand that people not be allowed to say incorrect and uneducated opinions (really just anything the Silicon Valley hivemind disagrees with).
When nearly everyone in your bubble has the same beliefs on politics and culture you will react violently towards threatening ideas.
It's not about users being outraged about what they can read.
"Those other people are idiots and will kill us all without some rules" is a basic human conceit. These people calling for censorship on Facebook don't want to see that stuff, sure, but way more importantly they want FB to censor so that other people CAN'T read that stuff.
They think that if they shout loud enough, they will get to decide what other, more gullible/radicalized/violent/whatever people are allowed to read.
It's really condescending nonsense to claim that you know better than another adult what they should be allowed to read.
Lots of really famous/successful people are thinking along these lines lately. It's quite popular amongst the "thought leadership" set to think that Facebook has some moral obligation to play publishing cop and shut down private groups where people say things they don't like, because people other than the ones calling for censorship are so gullible and malleable and childlike that they'll turn into a terrorist if they read enough about 5G or vaccines or antifa or whatever in private FB groups or something.
A handy example is John Gruber's recent post on the matter:
The correct answer to people being wrong is education, never censorship.
I defer, as always, to Heinlein:
> “Thing that got me was not her list of things she hated, since she was obviously crazy as a Cyborg, but fact that always somebody agreed with her prohibitions. Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws — always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: "Please pass this so that I won't be able to do something I know I should stop." Nyet, tovarishchee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them "for their own good" — not because speaker claimed to be harmed by it.”
There was an effort by Anonymous people to negatively affect Cloudflare in some capacity called #OpISIS due to the fact that Cloudflare generally tries to be a content-neutral pipe, and was continuing to host websites used by the Islamic State.
>The correct answer to people being wrong is education, never censorship.
What do you do when people reject education itself as a matter of course or principle?
Or can only view such attempts defensively, see them as patronizing at best, and so radicalize further as a result?
Heck, even "this post is misleading" approaches, which leave the original content intact, are seen by some as a form of censorship (and definitely as propaganda to be discarded) and I don't think that's an unreasonable response based on their existing point of view.
Fundamentally, if misinformation is more appealing and attractive than truths, how far can educational approaches go? If it's information junk food, then I see education helping no more than it helps for the obesity crisis - perhaps less so because that unhealthiness actually feels bad and prompts action. There's no equivalent with disinfo.
> What do you do when people reject education itself as a matter of course or principle?
Shrug. Sometimes the wrong choices of others can't be helped.
> Fundamentally, if misinformation is more appealing and attractive than truths, how far can educational approaches go?
Well, based on approximately the last 1000 years of history, considering that we have an orbiting science lab 400km above the Earth and outdated superstitions seem to be waning worldwide, I would venture a preliminary guess that in the long run, truth will win out.
All of the other times we tried mass censorship, it ended very poorly, with millions upon millions of deaths.
Trust in your fellow human beings. You can't have a society without trust. Most people are not malicious, nor are they exceedingly dumb. Let people read.
If you're worried about people not knowing the things they need to know, or being mislead by wrong or bad information, I encourage you to write a book, or make a website. Hell, I'll even help you set it up, for free, if you need assistance doing so.
I agree that people want to adjust what other people can read, but this is where Facebook can really sidestep this by making things user preferences. Because it sounds strange to campaign to force Facebook to "override a person's explicit preferences about what to show/hide".
One thing I have to hand it to Twitter for is that they wrote an explicit carve out for their "no glorifying violence" rules to militaries and governments.
This seems to be somewhat implicit in our society ("violence is bad, unless it's our heroes doing it to people another color far away, then woohoo bombs away!") but usually unsaid and unexamined. It's a good moral move by Twitter to point out the contradiction.
A better move would have been for them to simply ban everyone calling for violence, militaries included (if and only if they are going to be banning people selectively based on content, which they are, which I think is bad).
That depends on how you define "it." Media is not neutral. At least, we haven't yet had a neutral mass media. In 2020 that means defaults, recomendation engines & such. These are core to FB's product, business model. They're not neutral.
You need to take the scale FB's influence into account. Elections, revolutions, mass protests, primary political narratives... all determined on FB. What happens on Facebook can determine presidencies and prime ministerships. The have more power than Rupert Murdoch. At this scale you can't just "get out of the censorship business."
Youtube, for comparison, appears to be trying to get out of the harder problems by exiting the space entirely. On hard news issues, they're defaulting to (more than defaulting to) television news sources. I don't think they want politics on their platform anymore. It's too dangerous.
FB can't do that as easily, but I expect they'll try something similar.
Basically... social media will try to hand the problem back to traditional media somehow.
I'm not so convinced it would reduce engagement. I would think that me giving Facebook feedback on what I want would potentially increase engagement. But it feels more sustainable to me, and less prone to unwanted regulation.
In fact, if I were Facebook and wanting to reduce competition, I would try to pass legislation that requires these kinds of controls, making it harder for upstarts.
> I don't understand why doesn't Facebook just: -Allow all posts [...] To me effectively everyone wins.
"Everyone", including racists, terrorists, drug cartels, human smugglers, child pornographers, scammers, phishers, hackers, gun nuts, anarchists...
I know you say you'd be fine with all that stuff, but if I write long enough I'll find something you're not OK with. And everyone else has a different something. Finding common ground on which we can all agree isn't a mistaken goal or an unnatural side effect of having a public forum. It is the purpose of having a public forum.
This is just another variant of the "forums should be unmoderated" argument. No one wants that. And the proof? You're making the point on a heavily moderated forum.
People in the "everyone" categories you mention can be heard if they want to, the world and Internet are big enough for everyone. And I have the impression that you think you are the owner of the truth by putting categories that should NOT have free speech because you KNOW they are bad. You are wrong multiple times, first because your categories are extremely subjective (I know gun nuts that are very nice people with a passion for the Olympic sport called precision shooting), second because in a country where SCOTUS said something like "there is no exception for hate speech in the 1st A, so hate speech is protected speech" you want private organizations to be restrict what the government is not allowed to. For you free speech is a bad idea, but you think you can post on forums about that and benefit from the fact that the forums do not restrict your posts like you want to restrict others. Maybe your posts are more nocive than child porn, some food for thought.
> People in the "everyone" categories you mention can be heard if they want to, the world and Internet are big enough for everyone.
Which was exactly my point. "Facebook" is not "the world and Internet", is it? The question is about whether moderated forums have value to people (they do, you're reading one right now). Demanding that your moderated forum not be moderated affects whether or not people see it as valuable. Facebook wouldn't be Facebook without moderation to make it so. HN wouldn't be HN, Reddit wouldn't be Reddit, etc...
> you think you are the owner of the truth [...] For you free speech is a bad idea
Go. Away. This junk doesn't belong on HN. And I'm gonna bet you get flagged for that by the very moderation we're discussing.
Very simply, the biggest threat to Facebook and other tech companies is the legacy media they're replacing. Censorship is a complex issue. So any solution will get them eaten alive for not suiting literally everyone. Then you'll be pilloried for failing to appease the one nano-segment of society that thinks you went too far or not far enough.
For your solution, the NY Times will run stories about Facebook censoring us on Monday then stories about Facebook letting Nazis eat babies on Tuesday.
That's the issue Facebook faces here: not minimising social damage or maximising freedom, it's protecting share price and avoiding legislation due to economically motivated attacks.
No it doesn't. The customization could be done based on the source (Always/never show government officials posts, for example) or the votes of a trusted entity (the WHO, The White House, CNN, your cool friend who knows what is going on, etc). Plenty of empty gas bags have been identified by their reaction to Pandemic but also plenty of people who were right, early (and widely mocked at the time). There is signal there that users should be able to leverage.
I shortened my quote, for context the GP post had these examples:
> e.g. "dont show me posts that glorify violence" or "only allow covid posts that match WHO guidelines" or "allow exceptions from political figures or of historical significance")
Glorifying violence isn't objective measurable.
How do you identify matches to WHO guidance (incl. satire, valuable critique, ...)
How exactly do you identify "political figures or of historical significance" sure, you can identify elected officials, but what about opposition leaders which often are not formally designated or cases where elections are disputed?
And to be clear: I think the stance of "we are neutral" is wrong. And I don't think this can be offloaded to the user, while Facebook stays "neutral".
Hi, thanks for following up. So you say all these things are hard and not objectively measurable, and I agree. But Facebook is already making these decisions, so in some ways it can be described as lettings users opt out of Facebook's curation in different ways.
I think perfect is the enemy of good in this case. Giving users more control is good.
I guess to be clear on my stance, I think Facebook should be trying to be as neutral as possible, and keep making progress on that front, knowing it is impossible to be perfectly neutral in every way.
I agree that "hide things I won't like" isn't going to work but I think that for people in good faith the proxies I mentioned would be good enough. That however would not afford FB or anyone else control over other's speech, which I guess is what you think should be possible? Can you elaborate as to why you think that would be a net good?
Hmm. I think you may be onto something. Tagging may not be that hard ( though false positives may be an issue ) and only showing stated preferences. But do we want to move into slippery slope of 'show me car accidents with at least one fatality'.
That is where it gets hard, but I think its doable. And just to play with the thought experiment you would probably weigh things. Like would you want to see any car accidents on your street within 50 feet of your house? Maybe yes. 2 miles away? Probably not, but may be if they have a fatality sure. Car accident of a friend in another country? Maybe. A train wreck with 100 deaths in your state?
Basically you can adjust the likelihood of something showing on your feed by severity weighted by location and friend graph (showing less severe things closer to you and more severe things further away). This matches how I think humans actually process information.
What you're essentially advocating for is Facebook, exactly as it is today. Unless you default to censoring information, which is incredibly unlikely, you default to amplifying all hateful information.
Doesn't Facebook work like this already? I imagine most of the people really angry about things Trump is posting don't follow him anyways. I'll occasionally unfollow (not unfriend) people who post nonsense repeatedly and my feed is remarkably clean.
Because when you operate at a scale measured in billions of souls, impacts and consequences are neither inconsequential nor personal. Neither are remediations and mitigations.
You find lone actors committing mass killings:
"New Zealand mosque shooter broadcast slaughter on Facebook"
Or, as some may better recognise the notion, "with great power comes great responsibility". Facebook and Zuckerberg consistently shirk theirs, and externalise the concommitant costs.
Anticipating the usual rebuttal that Facebook could not operate if it were required to act responsibly: if an organisation cannot exist or operate at scale without actively harming society, then it shouldn't exist.
The "individual responsibility" argument, going back to 1970s anti-littering campaigns and the crying (fake) Indian (fake) TV advert (and before), are corporate gambits to shirk their own obligations:
Annie Leonard, "Moving from Individual Change to Societal Change" (2013) [pdf]
When you turn on the WHO guidelines filter are you just filtering or are you curating? Ultimately you have to form an opinion about whether the piece fits into that classification. With that particular class it may be clear, but with others it may be more grey. Right or wrong, thats what facebook is trying to avoid, attaching an opinion to the content, because then they subject to the same scrutiny twitter is facing with 230.
See you have a healthy respect for the idea of free expression, as do I
Unfortunately we are in the minority, the majority wants SOMEONE ELSE to choose what they can see, what is the "good speech" and what is the "bad speech"
They want someone else to tell them what the "good things" are they should be supporting, and what the "bad things" are that they need to oppose
In short, people no longer want to think critically for themselves, they want the magic box to do that for them
We simultaneously hate and fear Mark Zuckerberg and we want him to be the ultimate censor on everything we see and read. Somehow, we've decided that we want to demand that he take even more power.
I honestly don’t understand how this ignorant of a comment still gets on HN. What y’all are talking about is “The Internet” where all the trash and racist are free to make whatever content they want. What everyone else is talking about is private companies that publish trash based on recommendation engines, timeline visibility algorithms, sharing functions, and whole other bunch of programmed ways to “increase engagement.” If Facebook just wants to be the internet where you publish trash then I have to go find it on my own accord then manually share it to a list of other people, or where I can make a page with no special boosting to parrot that trash, then go right ahead. But that’s not what FB is doing, so don’t pretend that is.
I am well aware, see you are upset that facebook is not filtering "the correct way", and facebook is promoting "the bad things" from your POV, and not promoting the "good things" from your POV.
My statement is Facebook should not be doing any promotation at all, and people aurging over the level and type of filtering / promotion is the problem
Facebook painted themselves into this corner by choosing what people will see and not see instead of letting user choose this for themselves. That is what the GrandParent was saying.
See you desire them to censor and filter, you want that you just disagree with their choices
I do not want them picking anything at all for anyone.
not sure how that makes me "ignorant" on this topic, or how my comment is some how wrong or misunderstanding what it happening. It seems more likely you are misunderstanding my comment
Of source this is all really pointless because I have never, and will never have either a Facebook or Twitter account so...
You’re sidestepping the discussion though. It is “when you avail yourself to FB, do we want FB to use its algorithms to push certain content.” I see two options: stop any ranking/recommendations and make FB a dumb pipe with no restrictions, or put guard rails on the ranking/recommendations so we don’t end up with extremists.
>> I honestly don’t understand how this ignorant of a comment still gets on HN. What y’all are talking about is “The Internet” where all the trash and racist are free to make whatever content they want.
Oh, the irony.
Racism is protected speech. Hate is protected speech. You seem not to understand free speech so you want it suppressed - it sounds a lot like the Inquisition in good ol' times.
Where am I calling for suppression? I’m saying I don’t want it promoted via FB’s algorithms. The internet is open, just like the ol’ public square. As much as I hate 4chan, those idiots can still post. But FB is not the internet and never has been. It has been letting hate run amok and then promoting it. Imagine if every time I went online Comcast kept track of all the sites I went to then would recommend sites it thinks I would like. You get how that Comcast is different than the Comcast today? (Ignoring the fact that Comcast does keep track of what I visit).
That’s not true at all. The content is filtered out according to their algorithms. They ditched the “see everything your friends are doing” feed a long time ago. Even the group and friend suggestions are tailored.
Which is based on FB’s weighing of those factors...so either stop doing any ranking/recommendations and make FB a dumb pipe with no restrictions, or put guard rails on the ranking/recommendations so we don’t end up with extremists.
He’s standing up for what he believes. You can disagree with his convictions, but you should admire anyone who risks personal and financial consequences for sticking to their guns. That’s what actual morality is—not just a “belief” that is talked about but acted upon even when the results will be costly.
I find the complaints overblown myself. It seems like just a site people can see posts from other people on, which relies on standard adtech for funding, which I also don't consider evil. The big thing was CA which can't even be proven FB was complicit in.
While it's always a good time to take the action, I'd expect anyone motivated primarily by morals and not compensation to quit long time ago already, or not join Facebook in the first place.
anyone who risks personal and financial consequences for sticking to their guns.
The financial consequences seem to be overblown. At the end of the day, people in Timothy's situation will certainly be able to make ends meet. At the end of the day, I'm sure he'll still be better off than well over half the country. This should be clear to most people reading this.
I'm not saying this to downplay Timothy's actions; I'm saying this to remind others that are on the fence - if you think you can't afford, morally, to keep working at Facebook, you can afford, financially, to quit.
I mean, it's even simpler than all this. Talking about the money is what complicates it. "I don't like what this company does, so I don't want to be part of it." Pretty simple.
Either "...I don't want to be part of it, despite how much they pay me" or "...I don't want to be part of it, but I know I'll be okay" are both complicating the issue.
Be a Zen master. Strive for directness, simplicity. Don't fight yourself.
It's not that simple or easy. Many of these guys are giving up tends of thousands of dollars in benefits (stock options/ bonuses). Also, the assumption that everyone with a good paying job at Facebook is going to be able to quickly pick up a comparable job in a short amount of time is a huge stretch.
Ultimately developers leaving and people refusing to work for Facebook, drive up Facebook's costs and speaks to their management in the only language Facebook management seems to understand: Profitability.
It's not really a huge stretch, his post on LinkedIn [0] has 200K+ reactions, and it's an understatement to say he'll have no trouble _at all_ getting a job within a few weeks.
Google and Amazon won't touch him with a barge pole, considering how many problems they already have with internal dissent. I'm sure he'll find something, but it might well be less cushy than the big-co job. It is a sacrifice. Not everyone can be like St. Francis, but a sacrifice is a sacrifice.
I think he's doing the right thing and I wish more people could feel like they are in a position of walking the walk, every day.
Not really, given the left bias of technology companies there is zero chance that his act will be ignored by companies. If anything, standing behind free speech is brave nowadays
If nothing works he can probably open a gofundme campaign.
This might be overly cynical, but it might be possible that he was already thinking about leaving his job, and now found an excuse to do it in a way that potentially gets him more LinkedIn profile views and thus a better next job (he does end his message with advertising himself)
Number of Facebook employees: about 45k. Let's say half of them work in the US (20k). Let's assume people tand to stay at a job for 5 years on average and think about leaving for 6 months before they leave. That means there are 2000 Facebook employees thinking about leaving right now.
Now, what is the probablity that if someone is already thinking about leaving they would take advantage of this situation? Let's give Facebook employees the benefit of the doubt and say that only 1% of them would do such a thing. That means we should expect to hear from about 20 Facebook emloyees making socal media and LinkedIn posts about them leaving Facebook citing policy as a reason while just taking advantage of the situation. Is it really far fetched to say that this guy could be one of them? If anything I would expect 19 more posts like this!
This is obviously too complex for a quick calculation of that sort. This is not really something that math can enlighten. You’re conjecturing out of a bias towards the negative. We simply have no access to his mind, and the information that we have barely justify exploring the possibility of bad faith. In other words: you’re being cynical.
> Also, the assumption that everyone with a good paying job at Facebook is going to be able to quickly pick up a comparable job in a short amount of time is a huge stretch.
Especially since at some companies such a public statement can put you on a no-hire list. Some companies avoid potential "trouble makers" or avoid hiring, which might be interpreted as making a point.
Still risk of high total loss is quite low for individuals from FAANG companies.
Listening to that argument is a clear “catch 22”. If he quits his job, it’s not much of a stance but obviously staying is not a stance either. What was he supposed to do? I think that in a capitalist country we choose who we buy from and who we work for. These are two powerful choices that can shape society. He’s doing the right thing.
He worked at Facebook, let's not get carried away.
Working at Facebook and then leaving because of the non-intervention wrt to the President is a bit like manufacturing landmines quite happily, but having a change of heart because you saw a dog stepping on one. You've still been manufacturing landmines all that time, making money and not giving a damn.
Beating people up for not having your morals is not a great way to get them on your side.
Facebook has been on my list of companies not to work at for a long time, but I have friends who work there. Accepting that other people value different things and being willing to interact with them on a basic, human level is a lot more likely to build bridges and lead to constructive conversation about important matters down the road than casting people aside because they don't conform to your worldview today.
I'll grant you that Facebook, among others, enables exactly the sort of thing I'm advocating against. I'll grant you that it seems to promote people yelling at each other over the internet instead of building the relationships that enable difficult conversations in time. And I'll grant you that they do it to sell ads for shit we mostly don't need.
But that doesn't make everybody who works there bad, and it doesn't mean that people who decide that continuing to work there is no longer consistent with their values should be equated with merchants of death when they publicly leave.
You're castigating somebody for voting with their feet, but presumably mostly because they didn't do it as soon as you did.
> You're castigating somebody for voting with their feet, but presumably mostly because they didn't do it as soon as you did.
No. I'm saying they did always vote with their feet. And "get money, fuck society" was the vote they cast.
Facebook isn't the army, there is no draft, they had and have plenty of other options. It's greed and a general feeling of superiority that sees the general population the same way the owners of factory farms see pigs.
That analogy does not work though. Landmine's sole purpose is to kill/injure whoever steps on it. I don't use Facebook much, but plenty of people have benefited from it.
Instead of personal cost to him, I'd rather view it through the lenses of the impact of his action. It's inviting a lot of constructive conversation and making people re-evaluate Mark's decisions, which I think overall is a net positive.
> I don't use Facebook much, but plenty of people have benefited from it.
Namely those who hold stock options or who used it to hyper target unsuspecting fools and scam them.
> Instead of personal cost to him, I'd rather view it through the lenses of the impact of his action.
Let's. The "constructive conversation" has been going on already. This doesn't move the needle on that conversation, it's not one with a lot of grey area where the world is on the fence. This is great - for him. But not much else.
Oh sure those too. But small businesses benefit from it immensely, e.g using fb live and fb groups to connect with their customers for example.
> Let's. The "constructive conversation" has been going on already. This doesn't move the needle on that conversation, it's not one with a lot of grey area where the world is on the fence. This is great - for him. But not much else.
If that's the case, what do you think he should have done, or we should have done?
I might even say explicit support. After all, how better to support a company than directly working for them? In some business models you're probably generating more value for the company working for them than you would as a customer.
Whilst his stance is to be applauded, it lessens the value of the stance given that he’s not sacrificing much and won’t suffer for his cause.
Doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do, just that it would carry more weight if he was leaving to go work at Burger King. Then you’d say “man that guy stands tall”.
He would stand even taller if while he was quitting Facebook, he was running in to a burning building to save a child. Of course, while saving a child is to be applauded, it lessens the value of his stance that he's not also saving 10,000 from starvation. Of course, that would be nothing next to achieving world peace while eliminating corruption in every government in the world. I'm not saying he shouldn't quit Facebook over his convictions, it's just that it would be awfully nice if he solved every global problem and then was crucified on an actual cross for doing it on the way out.
While there's no proof of life on other planets, there's equally no proof there's not, and it might be suffering terribly and frankly I don't see this guy doing anything about that either.
Wouldn't you say that a society that only places high value on taking a stance if that comes at great personal cost will probably not find too many people willing to take a stance?
I think you have to measure these things (if at all) by the person's own context, not by external comparisons.
It reminds me of the old joke about the skinflint who accidentally put a pound in the collection plate instead of a shilling. "Oh well", he says, "I'll get credit for the pound." The priest hears him and replies, "No, you'll get credit for the shilling."
I think that the idea that one must suffer to be valid is a way to ensure that no radical transformations of society take place, because in such a culture the most radical people can only be validated by dying.
Facebook loses much more money with this employee's departure (if their salary is indeed 250k like you're claiming) -- the cost of recruiting, training, and keeping employees is incredibly high, especially in tech.
Now imagine that OP inspires 100 employees quit -- now Facebook has a problem that it must address, because it's threatening their bottom line.
I respect the privileged for speaking out. They are the ones that often can affect change and have their voices heard. A packaging employee at an Amazon warehouse quitting over principles isn't a blip on the radar. When the VP does it and explicitly makes the argument on why he's leaving, Bezos hears and takes notice. He might not change anything, but he hears.
I look at it a little differently. The point is not to make some noble sacrifice, but to actually try and create actual substantive change. I would imagine that Facebook, like all tech companies, cares A LOT about their ability to recruit and retain talent. So if their employees start resigning and talented engineers are averse to work at Facebook then that will absolutely be something that FB tries to solve.
Reading this most charitably, the implication seems to be that his action _isn't enough_.
That he should also devote his efforts full time to combating the problems he speaks about for less compensation, or donate the excess compensation to related causes, otherwise the action is unworthy.
These are restatements of classic utilitarian dilemmas, as stated by, among many others, Peter Singer[0].
"In a society in which the narrow pursuit of material self-interest is the norm, the shift to an ethical stance is more radical than many people realize."
he's a "Software Engineer" at facebook. He's not even a "Senior Software Engineer" He is NOT making 250k and he likely lives _near_ facebook which means _most_ of his money is going directly into housing. There are a LOT of people working what is normally considered a high income job in the bay area and living out of their vans because that's the only way they can actually have any money left over at the end of the month.
Yes, he's a privileged white male and will likely get a job offer soon, but that doesn't mean he's rolling in cash. Also, take a look at average salaries. Devs don't make $250,000 in the US unless they've got some really high profile public backstory.
You are extremely out of touch with actual bay area compensation for big companies. I made more than 250K total comp as a senior eng at Google in 2015.
The average facebook dev in the Bay area with 0 years of experience starts over 180. The average FAANG dev hits 250K around 3-4 years of total industry experience.
Imagine the damage to the business for not having someone creating more than $250k of value annually.
Of course at Facebook's scale it's a small number, but given the damage to their reputation, they will have to take note once this crosses critical mass.
Unless he was in a very unusual position of leading some kind of research project related to Facebook's core business, there will be close to no damage. It's a huge corporation, not a bootstrapped startup, everyone is highly replaceable.
Luckily, he made a very public post about it which is currently being discussed in one of the most influential tech news aggregators on the internet. If others are inspired and also leave the company, it will make an impact.
Unless you know some specifics that is not public, he would be leaving significant money on the table. That is, financially sacrificing. If a portion of salary is paid as RSU, that portion would have unvested portions carried over from prior years. My best guess would be that he is losing at least $50k until he closes the gap in about 2 to 3 years at the new job. of course the new job could pay him lot more, I am not ruling that out.
Give him credit for what he did. He is losing a lot more than us armchair pundits.
Don't forget we are in the middle of a pandemic, it's not the easiest time to find a job.
Also I don't think it ads much to the conversation to try to minimize someones sacrifice, you don't know their personal situation, and even if its not that hard on them personally who cares, it's still a principled stand of where to invest ones time and energy.
I don’t think that’s their fault, I’m happy they=’re leaving, but the people commenting and upvoting these threads should question how much attention this one person deserves. There are people working jobs in far worse conditions with far worse bosses we never hear about.
Not sure I agree with the premise that this has to be only or primarily about how much this guy deserves the attention.
Maybe the goal of praising him isn't to make his life better but is instead to encourage other people to also stand up for what they believe in.
Or maybe it's to contrast him with other people who are in a similar position of privilege (and feel the same about Zuckerberg's lack of action) but chose not to sacrifice anything at all for their principles.
I think it's still a respectable sacrifice. a) There's often an emotional toll to looking for a new position, b) even if the job search only takes a month, that's 250/12 = $20k of a financial hit, which is not a trivial loss.
“Just saying” is judging. The anxiety created by his move is real. At the same time we can accept that other people are in a worse financial situation.
People with this level of income could also manage to support 3 or 4 others with UBI. Not saying one person making a moral stand is bad, but economically hundreds of thousands of FAANGers could make a humongous impact.
it's much more than most people have done and having the skills to be payed $250,000 is not a privilege. you don't wake up one day knowing how to code it'a a lot of work.
>having the skills to be payed $250,000 is not a privilege
It is privilege having a stable life to get there, but we're calling out this dude's privilege like he's Jeff Bezos throwing a million dollar coin to a witcher.
It's definitely a sacrifice to quit a nice job during a pandemic and nationwide riots.
It's a privilege when it is relatively accessible to some and not to others. Given that it's much easier for a kid in the Western hemisphere to learn coding than for a poor kid in a remote village in Bangladesh, it is a privilege for the former that the latter doesn't have.
I come from a poor country, I was selling shoes since the age of 13 to be able to pay for my school books, now I have a 100k job ... I didn't get here because I was privileged, I worked my ass off. was I lucky? yes but not privileged.
The other people back in your country of origin who didn’t make it because of physical or mental illness, lack of opportunities you may have had, bad turns of fate, etc —- would you not think of them as even less privileged than yourself?
- Have two eyes? what about the blind
- Can you speak english? What about those that never had the opportunity to learn
- Are you alive ? What about those that passed away
There are a lot of things that are even more work but don't pay nearly as much. It's a privilege. I consider myself lucky to be born in a time where what I like to do (programming) aligns with what pays well. This will not last forever.
"“If you keep in mind that he is what I refer to as a corrupt idealist, then you can be assured that he will move mountains for you.”
The green-eyed man laughed. “Okay, that’s a new Americanism on me. What the hell do you mean by a corrupt idealist?”
Claude folded his hands. “That’s a person who will do everything he can to make something happen when he is convinced that he is working for the good of the many, while managing to ignore the fact that he is being paid handsomely for his work while his countrymen suffer in poverty.”
“In other words, your typical non-governmental organization type,” Park Dong Woo said.
Claude winced. “I suppose so. I expect that Ritesh would fit right in working for one of those NGOs, except they don’t pay enough.”
“Fortunately, we can, if he is up to the task.”"
I'm calling total BS. He should stay to change the system from within. Total waste of hard work to give up now. This is a knee jerk reaction and the poor lamb is going to live to regret it.
I'm surprised they didn't have him out on his ass the same day and gave him a whole extra week to potentially sabotage the systems.
Edit:
OK fine. I agree it's totally an uphill struggle and in all fairness it's one we're all fighting.
It's one man versus a sea of apathy where all the incentives are geared towards productivity at all costs and bitter disempowerment and ostracism for anyone that steps out of line.
I were him I'd go hardcore until they actually fired me i.e. make it hard for them rather than take a gallant bow -- how's that for starters?
Whatever happened to fighting for what you believe in? How can you leave all your hard work in the hands of people you no longer trust?
I've actually gone all the way up and been fired by a roomful of directors and a vice president for calling out bullshit agile theatre.
Part of it rests on everyone's shoulders because I know for sure a lot of people reading this thread right now would jump at the chance to take his place, struggle be damned.
Look at what happens to anyone that expresses a dissenting opinion I'd like to see more downvotes just to make sure I'm on the right side of this issue.
How many times have people at these companies tried to "manage up" from within and it didn't work? I honestly lost count by now. This will continue as long as there are enablers on the other side who keep offering to foot the bill in exchange for the lion's share of management's attention. I see this quite often. As a rank-and-file employee, there comes a point where a lot of people have to cut their losses and realize that, within whatever their current trajectory is, the chances of becoming a VP or C-level and making a real difference within a reasonable timeframe are slim. I wish it wasn't so, because as you can see, the only option in that situation is to quit.
Totally agree but there are many people there now who could use his help to fight for what they believe in. He's not just one guy trying to get some hair brained initiative passed.
Our problem is we seek acceptance and agreement too much and don't fight for what others believe in on principle.
We're all to blame but now we have one less person who can do anything about it. Look at the world from the outside in for once and quit suffering your blasted anecdoche.
How many times have they tried to manage up only to be hamstringed by their own peers?
The peers are all jockeying for the same limited number of promotions. I don't know what the solution is, but protesting won't resolve what is fundamentally a conflict of interest.
Actually agile is supposed to be a disruptive process that enables upward change but we keep doing it all wrong squeezing features out our asses when we should be making organizational changes.
We should all know we're trying to change them and help each other, how else?
Tell me you've never tried and failed due to "politics" but have you ever stuck your neck out even a little?
Oh c'mon when someone rage quits in protest these corporations have safeguards in place to prevent rogue actions. I'm surprised they didn't trigger a visit from the thought police given the high profile and instead let a potential bad actor remain on the premises a whole extra week?
And yes all our energies should be towards changing the organizations, as systems professionals, rather than competing on "look what I can do" while the world outside our gated communities crumbles.
I admire Zuck more in this situation. This kid is voicing a very popular “unpopular opinion” in the Bay Area and will have a new job within the week, if he doesn’t already.
Zuck, on the other hand, faces an open mutiny and a damaging of the Facebook brand. Perhaps he’s just stuck between a rock and a hard place, though, because Facebook censoring POTUS can only invite more government scrutiny.
I don't think we know whether the threat of government regulation is worse for business than the threat of his employees quitting en masse combined with a mass exodus from his company's platforms
He's trading practically 0 money (actually might be paid more in his next job if he selects one with a bit less growth potential) for a lot of virtue signaling value. I mean nothing evil, but not that admirable and altruistic.
I strongly disagree. Quitting your job is just about the most disruptive thing you can do in terms of the effect it has on your own life. Some folks might have an easier time finding another job than others, but that doesn't change the fact that he's actively choosing to stop creating value for an organization that his morals don't align with.
And additionally, quitting your job on moral grounds is _absolutely_ something you should post about. He made a personal post on Facebook, as a current Facebook employee, noting that he's leaving. This will be seen by his coworkers, and as the very presence on HN demonstrates, the public at large. Virtue signaling is Old Navy changing their profile picture to a rainbow flag during Pride month, or an NFL team posting a black rectangle on Instagram to support BLM. Virtue signaling is _not_ quitting your job to protest your employer's ethical failings, or writing content that would violate a non-disparagement agreement.
That seems precisely wrong to me. It's not about the individual scoring some sort of "virtue points", it's about spurring change. He could certainly just quit and not tell anyone but that would sort of defeat the purpose. It's not like Facebook is really going to miss any one engineer. But if their employees start to leave en masse then they will absolutely notice and try to deal with it.
Literally every single thing anyone does publicly is "virtue signalling". The hope is that by publishing this he may inspire other employees to do the same.
Public announcements of resignation have two impacts: on fellow employees, and on the employer. Fellow employees may be waiting for validation of a sinking feeling that they're in the wrong place, before they quit themselves. When the employer sees numerous conscience quits in response to a bad action, they have an opportunity to reflect and change.
He's taking on job uncertainty during a pandemic where SWEs are getting laid off left and right. In the long run will he get paid the same or more? Possibly. But I'd guess he's not the only person who thinks this way within FB and a lot of employees aren't going to do this. There is a legit cost here.
Didn't his white privilege land him the job/education/connections in the first place. How is him finding another job using his privilege make any sense.
I just don't agree that severing professional ties over political disputes is admirable. For society to function, people need to be willing to work with others whose politics they find distasteful.
There are things like mortgage rates and spending priorities that are healthy political democratic differences that should have no impact on your professional life.
There are also things that are not political. They are war. They are 'over my or your dead body' type of things like slavery, holocasts and treason. We don't vote on those and accept whatever the outcome is. We go to war. That's why that sort of stuff is in a constitution. Because it's not negotiable. Not up for popular vote.
Now. I do admit that I don't think that applies to Facebook. I don't think they are intentionally trying to end the US democracy and break the US society.
But never say never. There is definitely a point. One does not sell hamburgers to the KKK for example. Or help build their website.
That's also why you see so many apolitical brands speaking out and picking a side here. They do understand this is different. This is a war for human rights. Nobody deserves the privilege to stay neutral on this.
>For society to function, people need to be willing to work with others whose politics they find distasteful.
Why?
I am not on some high horse here, I am not sure what I would be willing to put up with if I had no other options but I certainly prefer working with companies that have values that are aligned with my own.
Because otherwise it becomes impossible to truly engage in politics. If everyone sorts themselves into liberal companies that only allow liberal values and conservative companies that only allow conservative values, how are we supposed to have an honest debate on anything?
I don't need to engage in politics in my workplace. I can work with people with differing political opinions in terms of activism and advocacy, though.
"Liberal" and "conservative" aren't the only political flavors, either. Lots of leftist activists don't work with liberals and lots of right-wing activists don't work with conservatives, for example. It's also difficult to work with someone whose beliefs conflict too much with your own or whose views are dehumanizing (like, I wouldn't want to work with someone who regards themselves as superior because of their race).
Because unless you are a bootlicker (or the company is yours), the company cannot possibly have all of the same values as you.
There are too many actions that are political when they come down to it (pricing products, marketing products, choosing partners, choosing tools, choosing customers, choosing features, choosing charities, etc). There is no possible way that all of them are going to align with your views.
The reason that works is that you’re just able to not care that they don’t.
It wasn't over a political dispute though. It was over the CEO effectively lying with regard to a red line that was crossed.
The straw that broke the camels back.
> For society to function, people need to be willing to work with others whose politics they find distasteful.
And how are we supposed to work with people that outright lie? Who are dishonest. Who crosses a red line with that lie? Are we supposed to shrug and accept it? Would you accept people lying in a professional environment?
I respect his decision. But I for one do not want our president, no matter who she or he is to be censored. I want to know exactly what they are saying and when. That includes any government official for that matter because it directly affects my voting decisions and actions.
This is why I liked Twitter's action (weird to say). They didn't hide the tweets, they just added context to say "hey, this is wrong according to actual studies" and to warn users of violent rhetoric. I know some will make the slippery slope argument, but I'm glad Twitter did something to take a stand against one of the most high-profile members of our society spreading misinformation, hate, and vitriol.
You're robbing the situation of all of its nuance. You could say corporations helping spread a proto-fascist leader’s call to violence against protesters who are exercising their right to free speech and assembly after a government agent murdered a citizen in the middle of street is a dystopia we should all be against. But that wouldn’t capture the whole issue either.
it's a tough problem to solve or reason about. i personally don't have any answers around this, but do you allow hate to spread and then be reactive about it and deal with the consequences? or do you nip it at the bud proactively allowing for potentially something that you wrote? some sort of censorship. how do you deal with it?
sure, but realistically this is exactly what has been happening if you just look at the last few years. many people are extremely misinformed and there are tons of propaganda campaigns. finding the real truth is borderline impossible. what is the solution? continue as is until someone more and more radical comes along bending truth to their will? there's gotta be some middle ground between a ministry of truth and just completely lawlessness.
No, you've been told that because people aren't happy with the current status quo.
There has always been propaganda and the truth is always possible to find.
Unless you have something specific I feel like you're using hyperboles (think of the children!!!) to win your way.
It's not lawlessness, people aren't extremely misinformed (if they are that's on them), the truth isn't borderline impossible.
This truth hunt will die out when the people seeking it are back in charge.
Yes remove threats, but don't remove lies. Having lies on your platform is not lawlessness, it's the internet.
If you don't want lies then take 230 away from them and make them take down libel/slander/lies that EVERYONE says, not just the people they choose to target.
Is it wrong to think that people elected to lead should be treated differently during their tenure in office? Regardless of better/worse, harder/softer, etc, I don't necessarily think that's immediately an indictment of Twitter to have POTUS say something outlandish and have nothing done, and have a bot account say the same thing and get banned. For all we know at noon on Jan. 20th Twitter will ban Trump's entire family.
You’re right to want to be able to look into what elected officials have said, but social media additionally allows posts to be shared, commented on, and spread widely.
There are thousands of elected officials, so it’s not simply a theoretical question to ask what should be done when one of them posts dangerous misinformation. Shouldn’t Facebook prevent it from spreading widely?
How is this any different from a President giving a speech that people don't agree with on TV? Or making statements that are covered in newspapers?
Spreading widely is the only reason we should censor speech? If what a person says is absolutely ridiculous, it should be seen and exposed by sunlight and more discussion.
I don't know if it qualifies as censorship. Facebook or other social media platforms aren't public spaces, they are private.
You can remove whatever you want from your own private platform. If president trump want to say something that is removed from these platform I'm sure he can host his own blog.
If you're going to use a social media platform, you have to obey by the rules of that platform. It's not censorship. He's still free to say whatever he wants, just not on that platform.
Ordinarily I'd agree, but Trump is perhaps a special case here. Almost every single thing he says on social media is designed to cause division and sow the seeds of racism, xenophobia, or indeed anything that panders to would-be voters. Pretty much everything else is verifiably false, or completely ludicrous to the point where you really have to question his intelligence, let alone his capability to lead a country.
I genuinely wonder if we should be giving this vile person a platform through which he can so effectively reach so many people so frequently.
I disagree. I keep trying to figure out ways in which I can show people why I disagree.
What would have happened if Facebook had been around in the 1920s and Hitler had said, I want to round up all of the people of Jewish decent and murder them... in a really bad way?
Now what would have happened if that message was only shared locally not globally. Or it was determined by the majority what message could be shared. Many people love comparing Trump to Hitler, but what they forget is Hitler was LOVED. He was eloquent. He was a great at harnessing everyone's rage and controlling it. He was an EVIL controlling dictator, but he understood how to control the majority well. Trump does not. If he wins again it will not be majority votes it will be electoral college.
Now Obama, in his first election knew how to influence people. Shit, sorry I miss that guy, I digress.
The problem is when a politician says something that can be backed up by force it's a fact, not an opinion. If I Said, Trump should, "do XYZ". It's an opinion and if it's egregious enough it should be discarded. If I say, "I want to do XYZ to This person." It needs to be kept if only as proof of intent (even if it's no longer shared via algorithm). Now if I were to say, I want to start a war, and I had the legal right, power, and capability to do so. It should be kept, spread AND commented on. Because one thing that comments do well is breed divisiveness and I don't want unity on posts which are hateful.
The thoughts of a leader need to be spread. Even if you abhor Trump, I don't want to stop his message unless he loses power over me. Because no matter what you want he has POWER over all of us. We have power too as has been seen recently. But information is power, to remove information is to dis-empower the people. He's not a redneck with a gun. He's a redneck with nukes.
It is overwhelming to see folks in the tech community come forward to support a cause like this. Protesting and speaking up is one thing, leaving a job is another. Kudos.
Kudos to them; this is great. I think both the resignation but also announcing so directly are brave (they have career ops and compensation to think about). Announcing publicly helps build a groundswell among tech workers not only at Facebook but other tech companies.
Plenty of companies hiring, I know my company is specifically looking for good people that are leaving because of layoffs and principled reasons.
Zuckerberg has always made it clear to investors and employees that Facebook is not a democracy. Mark is in charge and has full control of the company to do as he pleases when he pleases. When they IPOed he made it clear that’s how the company works. IPO materials made it clear that if you don’t like that don’t invest in it.
Not saying I agree with his actions (or inactions) and decisions but he’s been very clear about how Facebook works as a company and who’s in charge. Part of the big issue I see here with these “employee protests” at Facebook is that it seems employees didn’t pay attention to what they were signing up for when they joined. Mark is doing exactly what he said he would do in running the company. It’s not a democracy.
That's somsething of a sideways argument though. I mean, it's speciously true of any organization that isn't actually a democracy. Google isn't a democracy. Apple isn't a democracy.
But most corporate environments act at least a little like democracies anyway. And that's not by choice, it's a darwinian thing. Companies that can't motivate their employees to work towards shared goals don't tend to succeed. And so on some level you absolutely do have to do what your employees want to do.
And if you don't, they quit and work somewhere else. Which is literally what the linked article is about. That thing up there in the headline? That's democracy in action. At Facebook.
Most large corporate environments don’t have the CEO as the sole controlling shareholder in the company.
While CEOs are powerful and have a lot of autonomy on day-to-day decision making they too are generally employees employed at the discretion of the board. The board itself exists and is populated by individuals at the pleasure of a diverse set of shareholders. There’s real accountability. That’s not the case at Facebook. Again not saying that’s good or bad but the model was no secret when people signed on.
If anything that makes the actions of employees even more powerful. As CEO he doesn't need to keep investors happy as he has full control. But he still needs (and always will need) employees to run the company. Employee protests are one of the few things that can directly impact Zuckerberg.
Employment is a two way street. They signed up knowing Zuck was in charge but expecting certain behaviour from him. Now that he's breaking that behaviour employees are protesting.
Even a dictatorship can be put under pressure if enough of its subjects take a stand. The relationship between employer and employee is a continuous negotiation. Facebook has put something new on the table: we expect you to look the other way when Trump calls for violence.
If enough employees push back it's very likely that Facebook will change its stance, regardless of whatever power Mark thinks he has.
I am not a fan of Zuckerberg, but a dictatorship is necessarily illegitimate. A legitimate non-democratic rule may be unfair and perverse, but it’s not the same as a dictatorship.
First of all, I'm glad this person has seen the light and hopefully others that work at Facebook will see the light and stop working for this evil company.
With that out of the way though, I'm obligated to say that there have been many stages in the lifecycle of Facebook where one could have said "how could they do something this despicable" and leave for another "high impact" job, and it saddens me that things have to reach such a high boiling point (what with all the protests, riots, and so on going on in the US) in order for people to actually realize that they've been propping up an extremely disingenuous and immoral organization.
There have been many opportunities in Facebook's history to say, you know what, what they're doing is really messed up, and it's really immoral, and I can't put up with it anymore.
The cynic in me is saying that this person is piggybacking off of this incredibly tense situation to go viral basically everywhere. His LinkedIn post has north of 200K likes [0] and he'll have absolutely _no_ problem finding work. I truly wish him the best of luck in doing so. But I'm honestly disappointed that it's taken people this long to realize that Facebook is not the bastion of good that they thought it was.
> But I'm honestly disappointed that it's taken people this long to realize that Facebook is not the bastion of good that they thought it was.
The cynic in me says that they haven't realized that at all. They've just made a value judgement that making a loud public statement and switching to another adtech surveillance capitalism corporation is a career move that will make them more money than working at Facebook.
It’s strange to me how the two things Facebook gets the most shit for, this and the Cambridge Analytica scandal, are far down the list of reasons that I see as reasons to abhor Facebook. In both cases there are sane arguments to be made in Facebook’s defense, unlike other aspects like their decision on their business model. However, if politics is what it takes for the exodus to begin, so be it.
The creation of a nearly impossible to control machine that profits off of manipulating human behavior. A product with such toxic social systems it brings out our worse selves and divides us from one another, feeding into our base desires to read only opinions we agree with and see anyone else as “others”, free to hate. I could go on :)
Fair enough I suppose. He would like to work in a place that is willing to suppress the speech of the POTUS so as to avoid exciting the violent ignoramus. I am glad that isn't Facebook and I hope he finds a nice job as long as he is never, ever, put in a position where he gets to decide what information others have access to.
The engineer describes Facebook as being on the "wrong side of History." I take this opportunity to remind my fellow readers that History is not an infallible goddess to be worshipped. The moral arc of the past several hundred years has bent towards liberty and tolerance, but this has not been consistent and was not inevitable. It is precisely when your values are on the "wrong side of History" that you should be defending them the most strongly.
Justify your actions because they are right, not because they will be popular.
Optimists believe that the future will be better, that people will be wiser.
They believe that those future enlightened people will look back at some people and actions, and believe that they were on the wrong side of history.
It's not a popularity contest. It's a belief that we get better over time by making moral actions.
"It is precisely when your values are on the 'wrong side of History' that you should be defending them the most strongly."
No one believes their own values are on the wrong side of History.
"Justify your actions because they are right, not because they will be popular."
Everyone thinks their own values are right.
And if you are an optimist, you believe the future will be better. And so therefore, you are advocating doing things that would make the future worse. It's a very odd way to think.
Unless, you're a pessimist? And you think the future will be worse, and so you're trying to prevent the backslide? And you're saying "screw you" to those idiots in the future?
We have gathered here, by and large, to discuss and cheerlead a campaign which calls for political censorship of a major political figure, one who earned the vote of just under half of the USA. We assembled beg for a world in which a megacorporation will enact content restrictions, deciding what types of view are acceptable to express.
The politician in question, far from offering a meaningful alternative that advances freedom, attempts to use his office to restrict opposing speech as well. He may well win re-election and further implement policies which advance the ideas the Facebook employee objects to.
Elsewhere in the world, the Chinese Communist Party builds its surveillance state, installing their secret police in Hong Kong to crush protests.
Free speech may die within my lifetime, and the Chinese Communist Party in particular is fairly well positioned to make a claim that history will be on their side. Of course I'm a god damn pessimist.
Hi, you're bending the words "right side of history" beyond how anyone else uses them. So, don't be surprised if people have a hard time understanding you.
You have legitimate concerns, but your phrasing of them is not easy for anyone else to follow.
If I am bending words, it is specifically to demonstrate how hollow they are, how readily the cause of History can be co-opted by the utopian rhetoric of strongmen and oppressors.
> It is precisely when your values are on the "wrong side of History" that you should be defending them the most strongly.
Not sure what you mean, people who supported slavery were on the wrong side of history, are you saying they should have defended it strongly because they were "right" according to them?
People who supported slavery were wrong because slavery is wrong. If the South had won the Civil War and conquered the North, they'd still be just as wrong, but opposition to slavery would be more important than ever. History itself justifies precisely nothing.
We're not saying it does. We're saying that when you can tell right from wrong, but you make a selfish / pragmatic choice, that you will be on the wrong side of history. Because we're optimists. We think in the future, people will be better able to tell right from wrong.
This is what solidarity should look like, It takes courage to walk away from a company such as Facebook but it's a great move nonetheless. We should not become complicit
Figure of speech.I think most would feel scared by leaving a company as big as Facebook and the backlash or job possibilities being clouded if they'd leave a company on bad terms
It seems to me that Facebook (or at least Mark Zuckerberg) actually agrees with you and wants FB to be an open platform, but are being pressured by activists to censor against their wishes. This kind of goes beyond "they're a private company, they can do what they want": it would appear that they can't do what they want.
I am just amazed that people are for private companies censoring politicians. You really don't want to see everything politicians want to tell you? Even if it's a complete lie? You want Mark and Jack and others to hide that info from you?
What is going on? I feel I am completely losing touch. It's scary.
People keep jumping between the extremes of “show or don’t show the post”
There are options in between like decrying the post for violence. Twitter did a good job here IMHO by having the post visible, but restricted behind a click through. They also didn’t cast aspersions on it, and sent you to more links to learn more.
We need a better framework for discussing speech issues in general. Even here arguments devolve into semantics over what the first amendment applies to when we should really be discussing how we actually expect/want society to function. Maybe we can adopt RFC language. Example:
must: A law should/does enforce this
must-not: A law should/does forbid this
should: You have the right to NOT do this, but I believe this is what should be done
should-not: Although you have the right to do this, I believe you shouldn't do this
social media platforms (must|must-not) have the right to police speech
social media platforms (should|should-not|must|must-not) police speech
This Trump stuff is a red herring. I'd be more curious what people think about Facebook letting the anti-vax movement run wild and helping violence in Myanmar.
Interesting that someone would give a public resignation like this but still give two weeks notice (presuming he gave notice on Monday). I'd imagine it likely that the company would just let him go immediately after making a public statement.
He had to do it because of contractual obligations, obviously. He's probably on garden-leave now. Standard procedure for resignations in a big security-aware company (which I hope FB is) is to immediately suspend all access and escort out of the building. You can always ask him to come back to help with stuff later, as a visitor.
So in the end, firing him after he resigned like this would be counterproductive: you don't gain any organizational advantage and you're actually inviting trouble from the media.
As a former FB employee, I can almost assure you that he will get to stay until June 12. The PR trainwreck that would be firing him not is not worth 7 days of his salary.
You can do both. A local private-sector employer has a category of employee that is walked out generally within the hour of tending notice of their resignation. It's a standard protocol, everyone is aware, there are parameters but they are paid for the time they are out and most folks will start doing some basic KT ahead of time to avoid the void.
It's obviously a bit silly but this is where lessons from the past have landed the company.
I get a sense that he would be equally upset at Facebook if they had followed their content policy and censored the George Floyd video. The reality is that Facebook doesn't want to censor anything that is "newsworthy." The President's stance on the riots is certainly something that many people would be interested to know.
I appreciate anyone who has the courage to do this. I've done it before, and it's definitely hard. Congrats and I wish more people would stand up for themselves and others.
It's always better to receive downvotes and do the right thing, than merely sit by and go along with the hive. Especially when you know in your gut the hive is wrong.
Well, we live in a time where information spreads faster than the news. We see history developing in front of our eyes on sites like twitter, reddit or facebook before they move through the newspaper filter. It's a wonderful thing to behold.
On the other hand, we also get in touch with radical posts or "fake news" or news which try to influence readers in various forms from all different kinds of sources.
So on one hand, our tech enabled information to move more freely. On the other hand, extreme, biased or untrue information can be dangerous.
But we don't have the means to filter or flag this content objectively in an automated fashion. That's why we have a problem. And as long as humans are involved in this filtering process, we have other problems.
It's very similar to self-driving: As long as we cannot find a way to make this 100% automated and safe according to rules we all adhere to, we won't find a solution.
Or they'll just ask him to leave. If you quit on bad terms they likely won't want you anywhere near the building- you aren't fired you just aren't allowed in the office anymore.
A solution to this would be to use congress instead of expecting companies to comply.
Create a law that prevents elected or people who have declared themselves a candidate for office from using social media platforms. Extend it to their offices/teams/associates etc.
Politics shouldn’t be reduced to 160 characters in my opinion. I don’t want to live in a society where this is the primary way this kind of important information is conveyed.
Keep social networks for the chattering class, not the political class.
I read this word " privilege" more in the comments. I just want to say to all used it , leaving a job with a public stunt from a high paying job is never an easy decision for anyone. We all love money. But when someone chose to stand up for what they thought is right, is a big thing. I believe we should honor and respect that. Being dismissive or saying he/she is privileged to make a decision is nothing but dishonor.
I am wondering though, how much eye closing exactly is needed, to work for FB for any stretch of time.
I guess for some people the glass can still overspill and they can only take that much. At some point some reason comes along, that makes it easier to just leave and give the exterior a good explanation for leaving. That's actually a good thing. Shows, that some conscience is still there.
People that speak out in favour of virtue and signalling thereof get praise and admiration, other people that speak their opinion, which may be unconventional, get fired from their jobs or lose scholarships to universities. How did it come to this? Seems like this situation is a grotesque twisting of freedom of expression, something that the internet was supposed to endorse, not condemn.
To be fair, quitting a high-paying job for moral reasons in the midst of a pandemic and a major recession takes courage. I don't agree with his view, but I'll give him that much at least.
Is pretty much the consensus within my friend groups who joined Facebook left than a year ago is
"yeah but cmon you know what you're at Facebook for, it isn't for a moral debate" cue laughter
I would be more impressed to see people quitting that just got their $100K signing bonus and were within their first year of vesting, feeling kind of probationary.
For years, President Trump has enjoyed an exception to Facebook’s Community Standards; over and over he posts abhorrent, targeted messages that would get any other Facebook user suspended from the platform. He’s permitted to break the rules, since his political speech is “newsworthy.”
“when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
Mark always told us that he would draw the line at speech that calls for violence. He showed us on Friday that this was a lie. Facebook will keep moving the goalposts every time Trump escalates, finding excuse after excuse not to act on increasingly dangerous rhetoric. Since Friday, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand and process the decision not to remove the racist, violent post Trump made Thursday night, but Facebook, complicit in the propagation of weaponized hatred, is on the wrong side of history.
I cannot keep excusing Facebook’s behavior. Facebook is providing a platform that enables politicians to radicalize individuals and glorify violence, and we are watching the United States succumb to the same kind of social media-fueled division that has gotten people killed in the Philippines, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka. I’m scared for my country and I’m done trying to justify this.
My last day will be June 12th. If you have contacts in the San Francisco Bay Area looking to recruit a software engineer, please DM me.
Zuckerberg has been very principled on free speech and Facebook and society as a whole is better for it. I hope this FB employee is replaced with someone more grounded on liberal ideals of free speech, tolerance and openness.
I respect the moral stance he took, though that this is a public open letter is a little self-serving (but even with that quitting a well-paying job in the midst of a pandemic and a huge recession is not easy).
I disagree wholeheartedly with his position that Facebook should be wading into politics and interpreting Trump's tweets and posts because with Trump (and even politics in general) everything is in the eye of the beholder. It's one of the most frustrating things with the Trump presidency where the same statement will be interpreted in WILDLY different ways by those that hate Trump and those that love Trump. The most surreal example of this was when Trump called MS-13 members 'Animals' and it was interpreted by many people and the media as a dog-whistle that all immigrants are 'animals'. Trump for sure brings this bad faith on himself with his temperment, but that just reinforces the view that a platform like Facebook should wade into this quagmire with trepidation because once you get in, you open a pandora's box of unintended consequences.
It may be self-serving but it may also be targeted to other Facebook employees and recruits or to the general FB-using public to let folks know how dire and complete their complicity with things is.
As someone who is repeatedly contacted by FAANG recruiters, I can tell you there are two of them I keep asking hard questions about company culture and role in society. They stop responding, then a different recruiter reaches out a few months later. I imagine you can guess which two.
>It may be self-serving but it may also be targeted to other Facebook employees and recruits or to the general FB-using public to let folks know how dire and complete their complicity with things is.
Fair enough and I do consider his action to be a moral stance that took courage to make. And I certainly respect your decision to not work for these companies.
Having said that, I think you are way overstating how bad FB or Twitter or Google is (I wasn't sure which two companies you were talking about). And I say that because I look at the full picture of the economy that has, for example, timeshare companies, payday lenders, banks and credit card companies, casinos, alcohol and beer companies, pharmaceuticals (especially with opiates). Products from those companies can have terrible real-world consequences on people that may take decades to rectify, and then when I look at Facebook and the negative things they bring .. Facebook doesn't even rank. I'm sure FB has problems that they need to work on fixing but the hyperbole around them is so outrageously disproportionate, it feels like gaslighting.
If you think abiding fascism can't have real-world, long term consequences please review your history. The same if you think abuse of having everyone's private data is no big deal.
The two companies, by the way, are Facebook and Amazon. Unfortunately I'm in a position that I use both, but I don't intend to work for either as things currently stand. I'd probably go to Amazon before Facebook, but I have concerns about their treatment of warehouse staff and entering markets they've built around other sellers and undercutting them.
He took a direct shot at Facebook's culture and it's highly effective PR, hopefully many others open their eyes on what they are supporting when they choose to execute orders from the top down and stay.
It amazes me that people haven't caught onto the shtick yet. Trump keeps doing this to them over and over again. Trump takes some popular position and exaggerates it or maybe just plainly takes the position a little too far. And then his opposition, who reflexively just put a negative sign in front of everything he says, come out strongly against the popular opinion. "Propagation of weaponized hatred" is lunacy. At worst it's an exaggeration or slight overstep of the popular mainstream opinion.
People want the police to come in and stop the looting and burning of small businesses. Seeing people calling these peaceful protests while there's literal burning cars in the background is the most Orwellian thing I've ever seen. And when you point that out you get the "just a few bad apples" argument, which makes it even more hilarious.
I was supposed to interview at Facebook this week. My company is struggling and I expect I’ll be laid off before the year is over, so I figured that maybe I could push my ethical frustrations with the company aside and just go make some good money and ignore the fact that this company is undermining democracy and many of the things I value.
Seeing resignations from existing Facebook employees really woke me up and made me realize that I can’t sacrifice my values for a paycheck and stable employment.
I contacted the recruiter at the beginning of the week and told them I was going to stop the process and my reasons.
I hope that engineers taking a stand like the OP know that it is having an impact.
It’s tempting to be cynical, no job in tech right now is without faults, so why not just play the capitalist game? Everyone makes their own choices, but struggling to make the right choice for you is better than refusing to struggle.
In a similar boat here. I am not in danger of losing my job but I kinda thought I spend some time at Facebook see what "state of the art" looks like for a big tech company and then do something else a few years down the line. I passed their coding screen and I am waiting to schedule a full day interview but as far as the big tech companies go Facebook does get a bad rap. Although I think its unavoidable. I used work in NYC making not as much as a FANG worker but enough money to know, it's impossible to make that kind of cash without moral compromises. It's simply a feature of the capitalist system, companies like FB are just taking it to its logical extremes, the commodification of your society down to the individual level.
Anybody working for Facebook is knowingly and willingly helping promote fascism. These people have some of the best job options out there, and they're actively choosing to work for a company that's actively harmful to society.
Uhh. I dislike FB as much as next poster here, but I cannot explicitly state that FB does not benefit society. In a sense, it might be closer to alchohol. It might be ok in small doses, but too much of it will mess you up.
Also, I would hesitate using term 'fascism' on US oriented forum. As arguments go, the label has become largely meaningless.
Facebook also has a long history of meddling in elections and actively promoting far right groups. Meanwhile, fascism is absolutely not a meaningless label, and it's literally what's happening in US right now. Trump’s own former defense secretary just compared him to the nazis https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7wn7m/welp-trumps-own-fo...
When a company builds its whole business model on promoting extremist ideology and mass surveillance, then it's a pretty strong indication that it does not in fact benefit society.
My comparison holds. Alcohol is bad for you too with extensive research confirming that.
As for fascism, you may be right in principle, but in practice the word has become associated with 'things I do not like'. Not completely unlike, say, anti-semitism ( though that one is holding up a lot better in comparison ).
Your comparison is the definition of a false equivalence fallacy. And words have meaning, and the fact that many people in US don't understand what the fascism means is not a reason to stop using the term. This simply shows the need for education.
Umm. Language is not an immutable construct. It evolves. I can agree that words have meaning that has certain amount of life in it. For more recent example, think of how word gay changed.
We use words to communicate. If you use words that are misunderstood by your potential audience, is it their fault for having different internal definition of a word or yours. You are trying to traslate your world into theirs.
Language is not a immutable, however the problem in US is precisely that people don't understand what fascism is. You have literal fascist organizations, you have white supremacy, you have tight coupling between the government and the military industrial complex, and so on. Everybody else in the world understands this, and it's time for people in US to start understanding what's happening in their country.
Having gone through versions of this conversation before, I can say that it is a lot easier to attempt to relate to something audience already understands instead of trying to spend valuable time fighting over the definition of fascism and whether it is left wing or right wing ideology ( never fails ).
I am not really disagreeing with you, but you are trying to fight against decades of fascist label being used as a catch all phrase. I believe in dealing with things as they are.
Might want to read up on some of Facebook history in promoting extremist ideology because it's good business. Here are a couple of links to get you started
Holy shit. I was wondering why so many old hn accounts were linking to an insulting meme and this was upvoted in few other threads so I wonder what those people saw.
My solution has always been to not bother with Facebook. A few employees quitting was already on Mark's radar, he expected that and is willing to accept that. Honestly seems like Mark fears actions by Trump against social media - Mark cares about the existential threat, he can hire more people. A very large boycott of Facebook by its users might actually get Mark's attention. We seem to have forgotten how to effectively boycott for change.
I feel like your question is snark designed to criticise the vocal/dramatic way the FB employee has resigned. I hope I'm wrong. Personally, I'm grateful for their post. I think it is designed to bring awareness to the problem and to pressure FB to do the right thing.
I've seen this one person's resignation on nearly every site I follow this past week. My hope is that this is the start of a substantial shift in the company with more employees walking out (I don't believe senior management there will do anything on their own), otherwise it's just what the parent commenter's implying: a lot of noise.
Sure it is. If you boycott a company for doing something bad, you damage that company regardless of whether you are shouting from the rooftops or whispering it in a basement.
When outsiders see a given Facebook resignation, it does send a message, but even if they quit silently, Facebook's management sees employees leaving. While Facebook's exec team clearly doesn't give a damn about doing what's right, they absolutely care about keeping costs down and employee retention is a big cost for these companies.
Technically, no, and then they would probably terminate the employee.
Maybe this is better stated as "If you resign from a hugely visible platform, because it's bad, but you don't tell anyone, have you really maximized the impact of your resignation for good?"
For background: I am a married white male, in 50s, with one teenage child, and I've made a comfortable 6 figure income for a number of years now. And I had three honorary godfathers that were my father's best friends and good friends of the family (Haitian, an ex-Black Panther, and an Asian-American real-estate broker). But I wasn't always comfortable - I have worked in metal finishing plants, leather-working plants, and for ARC when I was much younger and struggling. This whole thread speaks to privilege to me.
There are people who do not vote because they cannot afford the couple hours or so away from their job without fear of getting fired. And we think someone should quit, before even getting another job, if they disagree with a company's stance on a social media issue?
If you were a cop, then yes..I could see quitting, though the braver thing would be to stay, rise, and change from the inside (just watch your back).
You want to help, and your organization is not one of the ones actually killing Americans? Don't quit your job. Unless you are truly essential personnel you leaving will be a hit, but one the company can likely recover from pretty quickly with not too much pain. Instead: Speak out; take a stance; help protesters and civil rights leaders locally with your donated skills. Better yet, also work to convince your company to take a stand.
I applaud anyone's desire to protest, in any way they feel comfortable with. I also applaud anyone's desire to be an ally without protesting, in however you can, if you feel you have to protect your life and those around you and protesting scares you too much that you won't be able to do that. I do not applaud anyone who protests as a way of getting likes, or protests as a way to act out, or protests as a way to say 'look at me'.
Also, if you protest..act out, but abhor violence. As Presiden Obama said..civil disobedience and the political process are not mutually exclusive and must be used hand in hand together until you are heard.
Actions speak louder that words. I abhor violence now, and do not advocate it, but I remember an incident when I was 10 in W.Va. A senior in high school, a white kid, was picking on three of us, myself and and white boy (B) in my class and an African-American (C) in our class. He was picking on the African-American boy the most, with racial epithets and physical shoving and occasional punch as he would walk by. This happened over a span of time.
C was upset but didn't want to tell his parents. He told me was ashamed that he was being singled out. Let that sink in a moment. The victim felt ashamed for being victimized. The other boy B said we should avoid him as best we could, changing where we played and missing out on playing on the river. It happened again and again until I got fed up, picked a broom up by the handle, swung it over my head and whacked the senior in the head with the other end, making him need 5 stitches. I should have tried non-violent actions, but I did something, whereas B did not. I got a lot of trouble for that, but he never picked on any of us again.
The point of the story is that action that has impact is needed. Action without action is action for the sake of saying you did something. And yes, I abhor violence now, but I cannot blame people for violence during protests when they can go buy baby formula in the middle of the night and wonder if they'll be killed by those who are supposed to protect us, for the crime of DWB.
Social media is fast food. If you eat it all the time it makes you feel awful and will destroy your mental and physical health. But its cheap, easy to get and tastes really good...
When I slip down the rabbit hole every now and then and end up deep in a multi hour social media/internet binge when I could be doing something else entertaining as well as constructive, I am definitely being a stupid person.
So true. I realized recently that social media makes me think that I hate people that I actually like! You get a quick hit of superiority, but it's the problem the most effective tool I've ever seen to divide us.
This comment chain is mildly toxic and (ironically) proves that HN is similar to social media. Any political post seems to have the same divisiveness that traditional social media has.
That being said, HN does have logical and helpful technical discussion that does not resemble the kind of social media that people are talking about when they say "social media". The incidence of toxicity is much lower. That is why I believe HN is social media yet much healthier than, for example, facebook.
From this thread it would appear that one is either a hypocrite for complaining about something they participate in or arrogant for complaining about something they don't. Here, both.
It seems like a needless exercise to classify which type each person is. We can just take both cases with a grain of salt, address their points skeptically, and move on from doing psych evals on a couple sentences about something else.
That's a good point, and I agree. But I do think it would be more pragmatic to justify why the outgroup isn't stupid than it is to go after the people who are saying so. The anger response you'll get for saying someone is arrogant probably won't get the open-mindedness you'll need to persuade someone to act differently.
Even just pointing out that the word being said is 'stupid', but the actual in-group/out-group divide is technical literacy or systems-awareness. And really just in the frame of social media. Perhaps there should be a word to describe the local ignorance that everyone engages in when they are turned off and relaxing.
While true, I feel like HN is a different variety of Social Media than Facebook. You're not going to see vacation photos, screenshots of tweets, and memes everywhere. It's a forum yes, but it's very different from places like Facebook and Reddit.
You can eat fast food once in a while and still be very healthy. They're not necessarily advocating for (metaphorically) shutting down all fast food restaurants, just making a point about over-consumption side effects.
That's how you read it because that's what they said. Not sure why the original reply felt the need to add "stupid" as "So people love it" makes the same point. Mister Gotcha is probably replying implicitly to the addition of 'stupid' to make a point. Except now that they've stuck their stakes in the ground and are getting defensive, let the pedantic internet slap-fight commence
A forum isnt social media unless you define social media as any medium that allows people.... But to play along, I dont eat fast food often, maybe once a year. But I still eat it and afterwards I always say to myself, "how and why do people eat this all the time"....
Then it seems the poster does find some value in social media. I'm saying that HN is social media - descended from Reddit, in fact - to point out that the popular stance of Facebook being inherently evil seems to forgive this website for doing the same thing.
This kind of scare has happened with all media: games, TV, film, fiction books. If there's a difference between the fast-food social media and this website, I'd like to hear what it is.
You're implying the commenter is hypocritical for being on a social media site while criticizing social media. I don't think that's necessarily true, since all they said was that _too much_ social media was bad for your health, not that any amount was.
Even if they spent all their time on social media, their warning against it wouldn't necessarily be hypocritical. If an alcoholic tells you that alcohol is addictive, you should believe them.
I don't think what you have said here is wrong. I do think that judgements about social media are made from the point of view of people who hear about the evils of big (fast food) websites mostly second-hand while wrongly believing they don't participate in it.
My understanding is that this website was created was to make YC more famous among the kind of people who would post here. Posts are indexed by search engines and, after some period, undeletable. Like all social media - including all the way back to usenet, before the phrase existed - flaming, high-tensions, and consequences are non-negligible. I've seen someone write a post as an insider that got a reply from their CEO asking them not to do it. The sum of this is that YC's advertising is creating a platform for people to harm their careers.
Yet, despite knowing this, I continue to browse because I find value in the content that exceeds the dangers. I imagine others feel the same and hope that, by viewing HN under the same umbrella as Facebook etc., they might not view the negatives as fatal. At least not to the point of demanding other people leave their jobs.
Well to start forums are a self selecting group of like minded individuals. To be an active member usually requires thought and care, intelligence and skills such as reading comprehension and critical thinking... Oh, and the whole system isnt built to game your senses in order to mine minute data points about you that is then sold to companies who then masquerade their content as ads all while pretending that they're doing good work for the world...
But honestly, if you cant tell the difference between Social Media and a forum, maybe you should step away from the net all together. Read some books, learn a hobby. Go outside. Make some real life friends... For it seems as if you too close to the forest to know that its made up of trees.
Its just like fast food. If its all you eat, you have no idea what real food tastes and feels like...
Oh, sorry. I didnt realize you are super-duper smart. Maybe because your posts are anything but... Or maybe you're just being sarcastic and just not a very good writer... Either way, thanks for contributing. It really makes a difference.
I feel the trigger of social media is getting dopamine-like reward signal when people like/share your posts. Its underlying acceptance of "you" aspect of it, rather than the idea itself that you share. In a forum, being an anonymous user, it doesn't affect you as much on a personal level which allows for a more rational discussion by detaching the "personal" side of you from it. Of course, that is only true in theory as we are all prone to taking everything personally (myself included) but I try consciously to change that.
This website has rapid interaction from other users and visible upvotes that add up over time to create a personal score that nets you extra benefits. If I worked for Facebook, I'd like stronger evidence than amateur psychology for me to feel morally compelled to give up my livelihood.
Edit: furthermore many users post with real or pseudo-real names that reward them with real life social clout.
For example, is there any revenue generated from people visiting users' profiles on HN? But there is revenue from ads on Facebook and Instagram profiles that millions subscribe to. There is no "subscription" like cult on this forum (afaik). I do not see content based on whether user has high points or not. Unlike social media, where people with more followers get more visibility. So I think the scoring vs followers is not really comparable.
I use adblocker so I do not see ads on HN. Correct me if this is different from your experience.
I can imagine, as you point out, the impact on "social life" for users with real/pseudo real names. Back in the day forums were used for anonymous discussions when you would not trust strangers on the internet. I guess now the opposite is trending.
So Social Media is any digital tool that allows people to interact? I really dont understand your definition as every human interaction across all mediums could be defined as social media. And yet the term and the tools did not exist prior to 2003ish... So was Usenet social media? Was Aol and Prodigy?
Didn't Facebook have over a billion users then? There's about 8 billion people on this planet, a good 7th or so are blocked from Facebook entirely. Even then, orders of magnitude would be 100, 1000 billion and upwards.
I've never seen so many people try to censor a political rival as recently with President Trump.
If you can make a compelling argument in the marketplace of free ideas, you don't need to censor.
If they are going to censor Trump for calling the looters 'thugs', they need to censor the people calling for violence against cops (which is way worse)
Today I opened facebook to reply to a message from my mum, I got autoplaying videos of Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro "destroying" liberals and trying to discredit George Floyd. I hope we come out of this period with a better understanding of the responsibility we have of the effect of the technology we build, pretending the things we build are neutral and hiding behind "free speech" is not working
I don't follow Candace Owens so I can't speak to that, but Ben Shapiro has been very sympathetic towards justice for the murder of George Floyd and calling on the cop to be punished - pretty much daily since the video came out.
Why would you say he's trying to discredit George Floyd?
The Ben Shapiro video was the one title "destroying liberals" arguing against women being able to access healthcare / have abortions, the Candace Owens one was talking about how George Floyd wasnt a martyr.
Ben Shapiro's twitter is predictably a constant stream of ridiculing the protests, that isnt being sympathetic towards justice for the murder, thats just saying something obvious that people have to agree with you before you announce your contrarian view.
>Ben Shapiro's twitter is predictably a constant stream of ridiculing the protests
I don't follow his twitter, but, at least on his radio show, he criticizes rioters and looters and takes care to differentiate them from protestors. I think that's fair. Rioting and looting is not the same as protesting.
Except that "looting -> shooting" doesn't necessarily involve the police at all, because the American population is armed and, in many jurisdictions, empowered to use lethal force in certain circumstances.
At any rate, the President's tweet of "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" is an accurate statement, irrespective of the employment of the police, martial law, fascism, etc...
In general, the death penalty does not apply to property crimes as such. In practice, the system executes convicted criminals almost exclusively for murder. And our Supreme Court has prohibited capital punishment even for appalling violent crimes, like adult rape.
Police use-of-force policies---however otherwise flawed---limit deadly force. State laws vary as to when and how private citizens may defend themselves with deadly force. Property crime outside the home without immediate risk to life or safety is not a license to kill.
Oh he's so brave demanding censorship for the masses. President Trump speaks for those that have lost their voice in the chicomm and leftist controlled media and big tech. As he says himself, big tech censors those that dare speak the truth.
I don't care, let the downvoting and misguided leftist justice ensue on my hacker news account. After all, you must censor my speech any way you can.
All these "good" people pushing for censorship of a democratically elected president and social networks. Don't you see this is precisely what tyranny looks like?
this dude is just being an attention grabber now. yesterday he posted to linkedin and now today facebook. what's next? a frontpage ad in the nyt or a billboard in times square? great... you quit your job on your beliefs, who really gives a sh*t.
This is a culturally important moment in which people in all 50 states are holding valid, peaceful protests in response to centuries of injustice.
And we have a president who is not only unwilling to listen, but encourages division and hate on a daily basis.
When he says "when the looting starts, then the shooting starts" he's encouraging a general atmosphere of unrest, fear, and vigilante justice against all protestors, not just violent ones.
You'll notice he didn't say, "looters and violent individuals only will be subject to violence in return." He's saying once the protests even have a small group in them that disregards the law, then the entire protest is invalid. and he's okay with people participating getting killed even if they're not the ones looting.
I think, in order to understand just how much hatred and division he's sewing on a daily basis, you have to understand how many of his supporters have guns, are open to conspiracy theories and violence against fellow citizens, and are intolerant of people of different races.
There is a mature and masterful way of handling civil unrest on a national scale. This isn't it.
It is possible that there are groups that just mix with protesters to loot stuff, but it doesn't look good for the peaceful stuff.
As for centuries of injustice, is it still happening? And why are e.g. Asians not protesting?
> When he says "when the looting starts, then the shooting starts" he's encouraging a general atmosphere of unrest, fear, and vigilante justice against all protestors, not just violent ones.
For me it is just a warning, either you protest peacefully or something bad will happen.
Your right to protest is limited by right of other people to go on with their life peacefully - that is democracy 101 - your liberty is limited by other peoples liberty. You can protest, but you can't break windows.
It doesn't matter if you agree or disagree with the quote, the concern OP had was that Facebook was refusing to apply its policies against glorifying violence (and the quote absolutely is) to specific individuals.
(Certainly the POTUS is not the average person, but Twitter's solution of marking that his comment was against terms of use is an extremely easy compromise.)
Property can be replaced. People cannot. In my state it is illegal to protect property with deadly force. They have to threaten your life before you can shoot.
Germany requires proportionality, e.g. you obviously can't shoot people because they try to steal candy, but you can very much protect your car.
I have zero objections to that. You will not get money from an insurance company if somebody robs you or breaks into your house to clean the place out. It's really not "what do you care, it's only money, a human life cannot be replaced". The money will also not be replaced.
It's the USA. Some states you can shoot trespassers. Others, like mine generally require a life threatening situation before deadly force is authorized.
That's quite the range though. If somebody breaks into your house and you have the ability to leave through the back door, would you be required to do so and would be charged if you didn't, a fight ensues and you kill the person? What if they walk out with your computer, can you try to stop them, knowing that it will escalate the situation to what is likely life-threatening?
If it's not life threatening, you are not allowed to physically hold someone. They'll be guilty of theft and you'll be guilty of assault. It has to be self-defense, then you can only response with equal force. Other than self-defense, only the police are authorized to use force.
When you don't prevent looting the looters will be confronted by cops and they will then choose to take the cops life or go to jail. This is what happened to David Dorn.
Luckily most of us have the ability to focus on as many as two things simultaneously. You can be in favor of protesting in general, these protests specifically, and still have a problem with seemingly random destruction of innocent people's property. I hate whataboutism as much as anyone, but just as insidious is the same mental failing on the other side of the spectrum where you're "not allowed" to look at anything other than whatever "the focus" is.
Many of us are choosing to separate the looters from the protesters, primarily because there is accuracy in that, and there is no need to dilute the message.
We are choosing to reframe the "its bad he died, whats up with the property damage" to "the property damage is bad, lets fix why he died", to make the message and focus less diluted.
And for people that aren't in that particular filter bubble and gravitate to focusing on ways of discrediting the civil unrest, I will help reiterate the message of how to realign that focus.
Presidents have all kinds of privileges that others don’t. Why should their privilege on social-media be diminished? To me the problem is not the platform but the fact that they have such exceptional privilege to begin with.
What I don't understand is how you can be Facebook employee and also think the platform is the problem - lots of these especially in the React community [1].
If you believe Facebook is the problem, and you're quite vocal about it, and you continue working for Facebook, then that seems as close to paradoxical as you can possibly get.
If that's the case you are by definition working for a company which values you disagree with. That's similar to working for an oil company while being a climate change activist on social media.
Personally I find it great that Facebook allows this kind of open speech and open approach from their employees (both in the OP post but also in Abramov stance).
I hope one day this work openness will surface to be seen on their products as well.
>Why should their privilege on social-media be diminished?
Why should a president, prime minister or government/parliament member should have "privilege" ? should they be allowed to swear or show their naked ass on public TV because they are special? The rules should apply equal to all citizens no exceptions for the ones in power.
IMO the algorithm that decides if a post should be banned or not should not have as input who is the author.
Equal protection is one of the founding principles of the US. So is freedom of speech.
Facebook is not the government, but they are the de facto public square. They shouldn’t have one set of rules for leaders and another, stricter, set for their critics.
Having previously been involved in organizations with racist/sexist leadership, I've found it generally to be the case that the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. I have observed that leaving those organizations and then drawing public attention to their problems tends to be a significantly more effective tactic.
Yes, my experience is unfortunately the same. But I certainly won't fault someone for thinking they could make a difference. I don't have any nice things to say about Facebook but I'm certain that I could find plenty of nice things to say about the people who work there.
I mean, obviously Cambridge analytica, election manipulation, ad creep, privacy issues, psychological experiment on masses, and so many dark things just happened without anyone working on them and of course people changed it from inside.
Can Facebook fuck off with closing the current tab I am in whenever I click one of their links? Sometimes undoing the closed tab doesn't work and there is no way to recover my previous tabs history.
This has gotten so annoying and used to be things we only expected from spam sites
That's most likely Firefox's Facebook container. Once you click on a link that leads outside Facebook, the container closes and you can't go back anymore.
Why would you hire this guy? What tech companies wants employees that are just going to walk off whenever some crisis of the year erupts? Why not take a stand and continue to work to make Facebook better from within?
I know, because he doesn't actually give a shit about Facebook and this is a convenient way for him to gain some social exposure while also quitting a job he wanted to quit for a while anyway. He happily took home the $250k loot for years. Is he donating a good portion of that excess cash to relevant organizations? Probably not.
There is nothing praise-worthy about taking a stand now, you should have been out of there ten years ago or never started to begin with. Zuckerberg has been consistently out of control and unaccountable since the Beacon fiasco, which was in like 2008.
This is slightly more annoying than all the government officials who only dare criticize the executive branch after they retire. We have way more data over a longer period of time about how horrible this company is, you should have figured it out a long time ago.
The last thing I want to read in 2020 is essays from wealthy tech workers who already cashed out talking about "taking a stand". You're not brave, you're a coward.
> There is nothing praise-worthy about taking a stand now, you should have been out of there ten years ago or never started to begin with.
That is a ridiculous position. perhaps it would have been wise to do this 10 years ago, or perhaps not it doesn't matter. NOW, it is either the moral thing to do, or it is not. Clearly Mr. Aveni thinks it IS moral, and I applaud him for taking this step (at some significant personal cost) in accordance with his ethics.
