| ▲ | RugnirViking 3 hours ago |
| yes? this isn't a "just following orders isnt a defence" case. Almost everyone at meta did nothing of the sort of bad stuff. There are nearly a hundred thousand people working at meta. This is a "being a part of an extremely large group of people, some entirely separate members of the group are doing bad stuff" Are there no groups you are a part of where members have done bad things? are you sure? Do you seriously blame the death star technicians? The cooks at the death star canteen? I find that extremely hard to understand. Do you dislike people from entire countries because of things their governments did too? |
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| ▲ | iamacyborg 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > Do you dislike people from entire countries because of things their governments did too? You can’t choose where you’re born, you can choose who you work for. |
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| ▲ | tacker2000 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You are equating countries with corporations now? How does that even remotely make sense? |
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| ▲ | ohyoutravel 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I’m open to the concept of there being some scale of culpability where the janitors at Meta contracted from some third party company are less culpable than the c suite. But as a software engineer who has chosen to work there, you’re the one building the planet destroying death laser, so not only are you in a very privileged, specialized position, you’re directly contributing to the effects. Also Meta isn’t a nation state. |
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| ▲ | RugnirViking 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I do not work at meta. I have never even been to America. Chill on the personal assumptions... | | |
| ▲ | ohyoutravel 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Respond to the substance, don’t give a cop out response. | | |
| ▲ | RugnirViking 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | my arguments above already respond to the substance of what you have written, you haven't adressed them, merely restated the position I objected to at the start. I'm no debate lord, merely expressed my dislike of the baying for blood people clearly have here, pointed at everyone seemingly except the actual people responsible | | |
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| ▲ | 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| [deleted] |
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| ▲ | troupo 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| "I chose to work as a developer for this supranational corporation, but nothing bad this corporation does is any reflection on me personally, I only work there, making sure this supranational corporation keeps existing through my work. It's also the same thing as being born in a country." |
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| ▲ | SecretDreams 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > Do you dislike people from entire countries because of things their governments did too? When their governments are democratically elected, sometimes, ya. I don't want to give you any spoilers, but there's maybe a reason the average American is looked at least favourably as of late. There are also cultural beefs that have existed for longer than I've been alive that are not even all that rational, but continue to persist. Whole cultures hating each other. > Do you seriously blame the death star technicians? The cooks at the death star canteen? I think someone from Aldereen might have a hard time grabbing a beer with a death star technician. Most people probably understand that blame is not equally shared, but that those technicians were on the wrong side of history. Exceptions might include people forcefully enslaved to work on the death star - and, from a distance, an external observer still would not know the difference at first glance between forceful participation, passive participation, and active participation. It often takes time/generations to heal from the pain of their parents choices - whether those choices were active or passive. Sins of the father and all that (though I think it's unfair to put parental misdeeds onto their kids, it also historically happens a lot). |
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| ▲ | RugnirViking 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > there's maybe a reason the average American is looked at least favourably as of late I understand THAT its happening, but do you think that's right? moral? would you be happy about it if you were a random american? one who had voted against whatever is happening there? What about one who couldn't vote at all? | | |
| ▲ | hgoel 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Were Meta employees forced to work for Meta? Not that I agree with the idea of blaming all Meta employees (e.g. janitors, drivers etc don't deserve the blame), but I do think the ones doing the computer work deserve some blame. | | |
| ▲ | RugnirViking 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Do all of the hundred thousand meta employees have a say in what happens?
Do they even have as much say as citizens in a democracy? I can agree that the teams working on the specific features have quite a lot of blame. Those asked to implement immoral ads/algorithm stuff. But how many are those people as a proportion of the entire staff? | | |
| ▲ | troupo 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Do all of the hundred thousand meta employees have a say in what happens? They all chose to work at Meta. And for the vast majority of them (especially programmers) there were other choices. | | |
| ▲ | RugnirViking 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | How many companies on the SNP 500 are moral, do you think? are you sure? | | |
| ▲ | troupo 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Ah yes. Only companies that are in SNP 500 matter. Also, the existence of those other companies fully absolves any people working at Facebook. | | |
| ▲ | RugnirViking 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | im using those as a proxy for the largest employers. If we think the people working in those companies are all bad people, that means most people full stop are bad people. If people are supposed to stop working at meta if they want to keep being a "good person" then they go work somewhere else. Can they work at any of the largest employers? can they be sure? | | |
| ▲ | troupo 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | You keep diluting the arguments with sweeping generalizing statements and non-working analogies like "but think of people in other countries". When it's actually pretty easy: The people worked and kept working at Facebook after these huge and small issues - after Myanmar genocide - after paying teenagers to spy on them through VPN - after falsifying its ad metrics that ended up negatively affecting and outright destroying multiple publishers and creators - after billions in dollars of fines paid over multiple breaches of user privacy, and misleading users about their privacy And that's just off the top of my head. - and (irony is dead) after Facebook unconditionally opted every single user, and their data, and their content on their platform into AI training So don't give me the righteous indignant spiel about innocent workers who are just doing their jobs and are really really good at heart. Most of them chose to work for Meta despite all these things (and despite significantly more NDA things discussed inside the company that we don't know about). Many of those also chose to work on and contribute to ads, tracking, AI, surveillance etc. and all the infrastructure for it and have no moral qualms doing so. Spare me the sanctimoniousness. Yes, many companies are morally gray. But, again, especially developers have their pick of companies they can go to. Including companies that are less morally gray. They chose Facebook. | | |
| ▲ | RugnirViking an hour ago | parent [-] | | Im aware of all of those things. I assume many more terrible things besides those happen internally. I think people directly involved with such decisions, or implementing such decisions, are responsible, and I condemn them. Obviously. I would even suggest that those with internal knowledge of such things before they happened are morally obligated to whistleblow them. I think expecting everyone else (which is, I believe, almost everyone working at facebook) not involved with any of these things to take a large personal sacrifice or be condemned is unlikely to result in many resignations. You're asking people to be hurt for the actions of others. The best argument you have here is the moment someone starts working at facebook, after these things happen. I don't know that they should be condemned, but I can understand looking at them with some suspicion. Still, its hard to say its the worst thing in the world to do, accept employment under a shitty person. Who hasn't complained about their boss? When you lump in people who have done nothing wrong (and in fact you have no information about what they are or are not doing to stop things like this) for failing to stop the actions of others together with those committing acts of evil, you are making a totalizing statement. There is nothing they can do to redeem themselves. They are morally equivalent to the people doing the terrible things. Which is absurd. To claim that my analogies to countries are "non-working" is ridiculous. This is the exact same argument as "are citizens of israel complicit in the actions of their government" or "are citizens of the usa" or "are citizens of palestine" or "are citizens of iran". If anything, I feel citizens of a country have far more potential to change the course of what those countries do than an employee at a company like facebook. (they still have almost no power at all, so the point is essentially moot. But at least democracies are outwardly meant to follow the will of their citizens, and coordination is encouraged) What power workers may have, only works when they coordinate action (which I think should be encouraged. These people are your friend). We need more rational, sober judgement in the world, not mob justice. | | |
| ▲ | troupo an hour ago | parent [-] | | > I think expecting everyone else (which is, I believe, almost everyone working at facebook) not involved with any of these things to take a large personal sacrifice or be condemned is unlikely to result in many resignations. Ah yes. All those horrible things happened overnight, right? So that's why we don't expect people to take a large personal sacrifice of ... knowing about this shit for years, and still working for the company. Or knowing about all this shit, and still choosing to work for this company. > When you lump in people who have done nothing wrong (and in fact you have no information about what they are or are not doing to stop things like this) for failing to stop the actions Never once did I ask them to stop the actions of others. However, they chose to work for a company which is complicit in all of this. > This is the exact same argument as "are citizens of israel complicit in the actions of their government" You keep pretending that being born in a country is exactly the same as actively choosing to work, and keep working for a company especially when there are plenty of other options. "But where else will I find a 300k salary" is not a moral choice. | | |
| ▲ | RugnirViking 6 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I think your position may feel good, but it will achieve nothing. It will probably not even convince anyone to resign, let alone actually stop bad things happening. So why be angry at people who did nothing wrong? Save it for those who actually did the stuff. Save it for lawsuits against the company. Save it for regulation. Save it for efforts to organize workers to push back against these things. A single person leaving for moral reasons at this point will be replaced by the next guy. They will not run out of guys. Going by current trajectories, they're actually TRYING to reduce headcount |
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| ▲ | SecretDreams 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | 1) As others have said, there's a big difference between a country you're born in without choice and a company you've actively chosen to have a career at, so I don't want to get too off topic. 1a) Life's not fair sometimes and talking about the morality of life not being fair isn't going to change how people perceive you when you vote a certain way or happen to live in a country where the majority of the country voted a certain way. Once your country is shitting on other countries, y'all end up being painted by the same broad strokes. Reputational damage does not discriminate and the long term consequences of such damage won't, either. Not all that different than how when bombs are launched during war, the bombs are not checking the voting records of the civilians in their paths. If people don't like this reality and they did not vote for it, they should actively try harder to fix that reality - even if this is a hard thing to ask. 2) I'll repeat - once you're working on the death star, no matter why, people and history are not going to look at you favourably. At some later point in time, this might even become a shame you try to hide from the world. |
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