zlacker

>>giulio+(OP)
I wonder how people continue to work at Facebook. I know they tend to have the highest salaries from the FAANG groups, but still. We, as engineers and builders, have the responsibility to think critically about how the things we are working on will be used.

>>inambe+Lv
Earlier this year, I had a recruiter invite me to interview there, and I made an attempt at convincing myself with reasoning like:

- they're going to do their evil thing anyway, may as well show up and intentionally do it marginally worse

- they're going to pay someone large sums of money, may as well be me

- I increasingly believe this whole industry is net evil overall, and large sums of money mean I can leave it sooner

- also, it was their VR thing, and if it was a VR thing at literally any other company I would be excited about that because VR is at least conceptually cool

These are not particularly good arguments, and that's why I don't work there now. But statistically, I can imagine a few people who we would otherwise categorize as non-evil actually convince themselves with arguments like these, and when you're casting as wide a net as Facebook does, a few is all you need.

>>blep_+qH
Thank you for a realistic, grounded, evidence-based discussion of this. I've seen quite a few comments in this thread that have made me shake my head pretty hard.

Here's the thing: anyone who is in IT, especially programming; is going to be well-aware of the...I don't want to say 'evil', but I will at least say questionably ethical nature of Facebook's workings.

Anyone working there had to compromise some level of ethics for the profit they acquire from it.

>>lostga+vN1
My guess is that the personal code of ethics that people run with who work there or work for other companies that produce goods that are bad for people (e.g., tobacco) is that their belief in individual choice is the primary factor.

In this way, the poor choices people make is not the responsibility of the person offering the choice, it's the responsibility of the chooser. You can sell heroine this way and sleep like a baby.

It's not totally crazy if you think what you're offering is not coercive and that people can and should look out for their best interests. This doesn't work for my ethics because I think, basically, that some people aren't so great at looking out for their own best interests and can be tricked or seduced into hurting themselves. If someone is weak in whatever way that they can be tricked into hurting themselves, this is a soft form of coercion.

Ethically though it's not totally cut and dried. Pretty much everyone engaged in behavior where they might come out ahead relative to another (e.g., buying/selling a car, aiming for a promotion or raise, etc). I work for a company that sells shiny baubles and people buy stuff they can't really afford partly because of our slick marketing. I feel this is better than working for Meta, but is it? I don't know. Being ethical while living under an unethical system is almost impossible and requires significant sacrifice. If I'm being honest, I'm not willing to make that sacrifice, so I'm already compromising my ethics to _some_ level too. I guess we all just pick our levels.