Can you quote anything at all from this particular thread that supports this statement?
It’s clearly the position you are trying to refute, but I think it’s a straw man.
That said, at least you are in the domain of agreeing that working for Facebook is an ethical compromise:
“We all make ethical compromises, and have worked for companies that made ethical decisions we didn't agree with.”
Once again, your position seems to be to try to erase the distinction between Facebook and any other company. The Nuremberg trials demonstrate that this position is not tenable - we don’t erase the distinction between the Nazis and any other government.
The argument here is that by now there is enough evidence that this compromise is too much, and that ethical people who work at Facebook should consider that.
Being an ethical person doesn’t imply some kind of mythical ethical purity. It implies that you care about ethics.
The original parent comment of this thread...
> 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.
As to your comment...
> The argument here is that by now there is enough evidence that this compromise is too much, and that ethical people who work at Facebook should consider that.
The argument in this thread is not that people who work at Facebook should "consider" that, but rather that anyone who continues to work at Facebook is no longer ethical.
It's not a straw man if the very first comment proposed exactly that.
Which is a sort of absolutism that I'm taking issue with. I'm sure there are parts of Facebook that are wretched hives of scum and villainy. I'm sure there are parts that would make my and your employer look terrible, ethically comparatively.
So maybe we should use a bit finer brush when tarring people. That seems like a fairly modest proposal to me.
The poster you quote believes that Facebook is clearly immoral, and to continue to work there is indefensible.
Have you considered that this might be true?
Now perhaps you don’t think it is true. That would be my guess based on your positions in this thread.
A non-absolutist position would be to say ‘Facebook as a whole isn’t that bad - here are my reasons...’
Whereas your actual position is ‘nobody can make valid ethical statements about organization above a certain unstated size’.
The first is holding a different opinion. The second is an absolutist claim.
Another counterargument could be like the Nuremberg defenses that you have already mentioned - I.e. Facebook is that bad but there are good people there who don’t realize that, or who think they can change it, or don’t understand the consequences of the orders they are following etc.
But that’s not what you are saying - you are saying that nobody should claim that Facebook is that bad.
You seem to think that Facebook is no different from any other employer, but have offered no explanation other than to suggest that not all steps taken by all employees are calculated to be evil.
It’s perfectly reasonable for others to think that Facebook is so obviously corrupt that to work there is morally bankrupt.
Perhaps it is.