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?

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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.

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RugnirViking 3 hours ago | parent [-]

How many companies on the SNP 500 are moral, do you think? are you sure?

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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 7 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