> At one end of the spectrum you have very talented, smart engineers who could easily get a job anywhere

Not exactly...

> devoting their lives to targeting ads, surveillance, brain-hacking the masses with the algorithm in order to sell more ads, etc.

Nice try, but most of engineering at Meta has almost as much to do with this as the food staff...

So the question remains - if you're an engineer working on nothing related to any of that - most of Meta - why is your work reduced to "destroying girls lives" but the TVC's working in the kitchen are not?

Why are people working at GM, who have a large ad spend on Meta, not destroying girls lives? But the people working on storage compression algorithms to save on hardware costs are??

Why is the TVC not bad, but the person working on decorating the offices is?

My answer already addresses this? I didn’t say every engineer works on those things. I said it’s a spectrum, with the people working on those things at one end. I also already answered that they all contribute to the edifice, with different levels of moral culpability, which it’s up to them to hash out how they feel about.

Meta’s business is enabled by (practically) everyone who works for them, otherwise they wouldn’t pay them to work there. The storage compression algorithms are enabled by and contribute to the mission of the company.

If you’re comfortable knowing that your job is paid for by destroying society, and that your work makes that destruction a little more efficient, that’s fine. Storage algorithms are pretty low on the spectrum, and at least they may have some other uses if open sourced. For me, I wouldn’t do it, because I don’t want to contribute even in a small way to what Meta does. But others obviously can and do feel differently.