zlacker

>>colone+(OP)
Said this yesterday in the other Facebook thread, and I'll say it again.

Working for Facebook is a morally bankrupt position. If you are an engineer you have plenty of job opportunities available to you and there is no excuse for you to continue contributing your labor and time to a wholly malignant organization. At a certain point one has to ask how we as an industry will start dealing with those who continue to take a paycheck from Facebook even in the face of constant and horrific evidence of wholesale ethical violations and negligence.

>>pdeuch+zb
So is working at Google, Amazon and probably 90% of the big corps of the world in many sectors - from oil to finance to pharmaceutical to telecommunications and so on. And we can include the government. If you're a subcontrator or sold in body rental (modern IT slavery) you're also in the same position as an employee, so you're enabling their evils. Also, if one of those companies is a client of your company you're also enabling them (or a client of a client of your company? How many layers of separation should exist between you and Walmart before you stop being an accomplice in enabling their abuse of workers?).

Your point? Should we stop working in IT and go back to the fields?

Also, I fear that HN somewhat forgets the world is not SF, in Europe going to work for Facebook/Google/Amazon is a enormous bump (we're speaking 2-4x) of salary for many people, which in some cases means you can buy an house after 3-4 years even with the crazy rents back in your home country - and that's HUGE. Why should those people spend their time slaving as a subcontractor for yet another TLC/bank trying to squeeze their customers dry at the first occasion while getting 25% the salary and zero benefits? Are those less evil?

What needs to happen is that people keep applying pressure so facebook is forced to adapt its business model even if it hits their bottom line - which is already happening apparently.

>>chroni+mq
> So is working at Google, Amazon and probably 90% of the big corps of the world in many sectors

While Google and Amazon both have their ethical problems and serious anti-trust issues, Facebook is in a league of its own. The complete, cavalier disregard for the consequences of its own actions as long as they get theirs is utterly unconscionable.

Unlike Google or Amazon, they add nothing of real value to society to balance the abuses they bring with them. All their labors are geared towards extracting the utility of other creators (their acquisitions like Instagram or WhatsApp) or to suck the time and attention out of people through addictive mechanisms. If Facebook disappeared tomorrow a hundred federated online platforms to function as generic address books and life-updaters would crop up over night, and just about every one of them would be better.

You would have to look at lines of business like Big Tobacco to find another field of similar moral perfidy.

>>narava+gz
Facebook is just the first that stumbles over all the sh*t that they doing. Amazon with their slavery workforce isn't better and Google was pretty good as keeping everyone happy and creating services but they're as bad as everyone else. I think we will see Google running into similar problems soon. They have also the problem of not having enough guidance anymore, sergey and larry don't care at all and never really wanted to build such a big evil corp. the only one left at the top is sundar but I don't think he can manage to steer such a beast of corporation into shallower water.

but I'm also hoping that it breaks apart and we find a better way then invading peoples privacy to monetize platforms

>>arez+jI
I'd class Google and Amazon as being analogous to an industry like coal, oil, or railroads back in the robber baron days. They bring horrible externalities and dodgy/corrupt influences on our politics, but we also need them to keep the modern world running and build the future. The problems with them are larger problems with how we manage our economy and our industrial and labor policies.

Facebook is more like Big Tobacco. They're purely malignant, continuing solely through adversarial relationships with their users meant to foster addiction or control the revenue streams of key industries like media and news. They're pirates. What benefits they provide, they have only ever made worse than other services and tools that predated them.

>but I'm also hoping that it breaks apart and we find a better way then invading peoples privacy to monetize platforms

Amen to that. Treating attention as a form of currency has been utterly corrosive to society.