| ▲ | jazzpush2 5 hours ago |
| Meta continuing to be the most shameless (and shameful to work for) company around. I can't think of a single product of theirs that hasn't made the world a markedly worse place. Even their recent hardware foray is managing to find a way to ruin trust in everyday interactions (guys filming drunk girls with Ray Bans, surveillance, etc.). Have several friends at the more 'thoughtful' frontier labs that bin meta applicants straight to the trash for this very reason. |
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| ▲ | haunter an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| > I can't think of a single product of theirs that hasn't made the world a markedly worse place zstd I’m torn about React and PyTorch :) |
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| ▲ | jazzpush2 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | They author thousands of open-source. Nobody would consider those 'products' (though feel free to play pedantic). And many would argue React did far more harm than good. | |
| ▲ | digitaltrees an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | React made front end suck. Sorry. | |
| ▲ | usefulcat an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > zstd Yes, but also “damning with faint praise” immediately comes to mind | |
| ▲ | formerly_proven an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | zstd was created outside FB, it's an acquihire. | |
| ▲ | colordrops an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | I've avoided react as much as I could. Maintained a high paying frontend career without react until a year or so ago, when I was forced by management to start using it. Thankfully AI was able to touch it for me while I pinched my nose. | | |
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| ▲ | inigyou 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Facebook, for instance, made a lot of money for shareholders, which we know is the same thing as making the world a better place. |
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| ▲ | zx8080 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Meta is a golden jail for one teenager who cannot grow up no matter what he does. Shame. |
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| ▲ | usefulcat an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Not to defend him, but there are actually quite a lot of people who can’t or won’t grow up. | | |
| ▲ | jakeydus an hour ago | parent [-] | | What’s your point? There’s a lot of people who can’t or won’t do a lot of things. |
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| ▲ | zombot 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Seeing how much damage he does as it is, I don't want to know the grown-up version. |
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| ▲ | test6554 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Back in the day... 2004-2005 facebook was amazing. Spread like wildfire, and lots of fun to use. Just you and your college friends, and their friends. |
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| ▲ | lend000 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Even the original idea (if The Social Network is a trustworthy source) was copied -- Zuckerberg just has a complete lack of vision, but is clearly an intelligent operator with good business sense. Jagged intelligence, like an LLM. | | |
| ▲ | digitaltrees an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Or he’s backed by the CIA? | |
| ▲ | thin_carapace 32 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | has zuckerberg done anything productive of his own accord? facebook was ripped off. most meta companies were acquired. it could be argued that propagandizing the entire world was productive relative to vested interests but that was done on the behest of those interests, not zuck himself. the only thing im aware of zuck actually spearheading was the metaverse, a conclusively unproductive pursuit costing tens of billions to achieve literally nothing. it isnt objective to unilaterally behave with vitriol ... still this person seems more comparable to cancer itself than any actual human. i guess you could collapse productivity to 'making money' in which case clearly he is productive, im more referring to accomplishing anything useful for humanity. i also dont consider mass surveillance to be useful for humanity as bad actors will always get away with it whether they are on or off camera. | | |
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| ▲ | zer0zzz 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What are these "thoughtful" frontier labs you speak of? I see Meta folks going to the big ones all the time. Ton of former PyTorch/Inductor folks now are at Ant/TM etc. Everyone I know in the GPU compiler/GPGPU space seems to be either going to meta or leaving meta for NV or some AI lab. My anecdotal observations don't align with "bin meta applicants straight to the trash." |
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| ▲ | millerfiller 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I hope there’s a day where collectively the money is no longer enough and reason and good will prevails so that Meta can crumble to dust while I am alive; but doubtful that day will ever come. |
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| ▲ | magixx 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Portal was pretty good and an originalish product |
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| ▲ | digitaltrees an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Spy on your grand parents from the convenience of your kitchen counter top! now in arctic white! | |
| ▲ | sbrother 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Why did they discontinue that? It was a very good product; we got them for all the grandparents and they worked really well at bringing the family together across distance. Could have fit in so well with WhatsApp too. But then they just killed it. | | |
| ▲ | measurablefunc an hour ago | parent [-] | | Shareholders didn't like it. At the end of the day Meta is an advertising company so everything they do must be in service of increasing revenue from advertising. |
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| ▲ | pwdisswordfishq 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Valve is a different company. | | |
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| ▲ | TZubiri 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| WhatsApp |
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| ▲ | sillywalk 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Nitpick: Facebook bought WhatsApp, it didn't make it. | | |
| ▲ | Marsymars 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | They've also largely made WhatsApp worse. | | |
| ▲ | zer0zzz 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | How so? Most of the hardcore encryption stuff was built at Facebook under the founder's supervision afaik for the purposes of making it harder for Zuck to inevitably ruin the privacy aspects. I personally don't use it, because it _is_ loaded with engagement bait but its not all worse and is better in some ways. | | |
| ▲ | myng111 19 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | From an infrastructure PoV, I seem to recall that WhatsApp was one of the few major companies that used Erlang, and were famous for being able to run the entirety of WhatsApp on only a few servers, each of which was serving millions of concurrent connections, mostly thanks to Erlang/BEAM (at least, from what I read). When it got acquired by Facebook, they then proceeded to rewrite the entirety of the backend in C++. Seems kind of baffling to me. | |
| ▲ | inigyou 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | They added ads, an "AI companion", and backdoor logging of all chat messages | | |
| ▲ | otterley 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | That last one’s going to need some substantiation. “In the ordinary course of providing our service, WhatsApp does not store messages once they are delivered or transaction logs of such delivered messages. Undelivered messages are deleted from our servers after 30 days. As stated in the WhatsApp Privacy Policy, we may collect, use, preserve, and share user information if we have a good-faith belief that it is reasonably necessary to (a) keep our users safe, (b) detect, investigate, and prevent illegal activity, (c) respond to legal process, or to government requests, (d) enforce our Terms and policies. This may include information about how some users interact with others on our service. We also offer end-to-end encryption for our services, which is always activated. End-to-end encryption means that messages are encrypted to protect against WhatsApp and third parties from reading them.” (https://faq.whatsapp.com/444002211197967) | | |
| ▲ | inigyou an hour ago | parent [-] | | I believe it was the automatic unencrypted weekly data upload to Google Drive | | |
| ▲ | otterley an hour ago | parent [-] | | Can you post a link? | | |
| ▲ | inigyou 42 minutes ago | parent [-] | | No. It's a special arrangement between Google and WhatsApp which makes a file only visible to WhatsApp, and not appear in your regular drive so you can't do normal cloud file operations like generating public links. |
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| ▲ | gmerc an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Reconning. We made it so Zuck had plausible deniability for all the bad shit happening on WA as a direct result of anticipated regulatory pressure. There is no “make things harder for the dictator” at Meta/Fb and never has been. |
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| ▲ | asp_hornet 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think OP’s point is that it was bought not made similar to Instagram. | |
| ▲ | 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | brcmthrowaway 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| They dont need frontier labs. Meta's dashboard jockeys get paid the same |
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| ▲ | asdaqopqkq 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| [flagged] |
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| ▲ | jopolous 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Where should we work instead? I’d really like to leave, but I’m kind of stuck, and I don’t have enough to retire. I have to work remote from a non-coast state for family care reasons, and the places I’ve interviewed at the last few months have balked at hiring a remote employee. |
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| ▲ | dozerly 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Your options are: 1. Find another job
2. Don’t find another job You can’t say “where else can I work” like you have no agency over your life. Everyone chooses every day to do what they do that day. You don’t get to be morally absolved because you’re choosing the easy path and you’re “stuck”. I’m sure there are plenty of places that pay less that would love to have talented remote employees. | | |
| ▲ | tempay 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The key point here is the “pay less” part. I know people that have turned down offers from meta that would 5x their salary and their personal situation would notably improve from at least some of that extra cash. The OP is a bit preachy and maybe some employees really don’t have any other options even with accepting lower salaries, but the majority should at least realise the golden handcuffs their bound by even if they choose not to act on them. | |
| ▲ | test6554 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I don't blame someone for working at facebook, but I don't think most of you realize how cash money a FANG company looks on your resume to IT managers at the lowly normal companies. Go work in financial services, insurance, retail, go be a contractor and work/travel until you find what you like. | |
| ▲ | ra0x3 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not sure why you're being downvoted. Maybe a little preachy, but the gist of the point isn't incorrect | | |
| ▲ | dozerly 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | In a large portion of tech people like to pretend that they are absolved of responsibility for their societal contributions. “Get that bag” and all that. Work at Anduril as long as it makes that bread, etc. It makes sense that someone promoting them to re-evaluate the harm they’re causing by participating would elicit negative response | |
| ▲ | least 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | People don’t particularly care for platitudes from anonymous people on the internet. Even less so when they reduce a complex dilemma in your life to a binary choice between an “easy and amoral” option and a “difficult but righteous” one. Most people make compromises inside imperfect systems. The person casting judgment almost certainly has their own moral compromises too, except those they understand, contextualize, rationalize, and forgive themselves for. It’s just tiresome. There may not be a ton of context, but even knowing that someone is bound to a particular place because of caregiving responsibilities should be enough to invite a little more empathy and grace, and a lot less judgment. | | |
| ▲ | jazzpush2 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | I agree. That said, a cursory glance at their post history shows they donate 6-figures to charity, which while very commendable, flies in the face of the idea of being 'stuck'. In any case, it's quite simple. If you work at Meta, you certainly have other options. Similar-tier companies pay just as well, and lower-tier companies will interview you readily. We're not talking about someone scraping by here - working at Meta is a choice, and takes hard work to get into. That does not absolve you from the damage the company has done to the world. If you work there, you contribute to it (no matter how small the capacity) and you benefit from it literally through wages and share ownership. Your vested interest is in the company growing. Historically, that has meant via very dark patterns. | |
| ▲ | ryandrake 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think there would be more empathy if Meta were the only company in the world where it was possible to work. That's "stuck." This is not. I've quit jobs over ethical boundaries. It's not an easy decision, and "integrity" doesn't quite pay rent, but helped me to sleep better at night and let me live with myself. | |
| ▲ | pishpash 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | They are not understanding that it's not one person's moral failing at the root of it, it's the system that forces everyone into participating in amoral things, including for example the investors of Meta who are getting a bigger bag. That includes every one of you S&P500 index fund hodlers. |
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| ▲ | whateveracct 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | i have like 5 companies in my rolodex who would hire me to be fully remote tomorrow get with the times | | |
| ▲ | otterley an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Knock it off. Nobody wants to read your braggadocio, and it’s insulting to people who are having real challenges finding work. | |
| ▲ | bluefirebrand an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | There's some kind of irony using outdated terminology like "rolodex" and telling someone else to get with the times. :) |
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| ▲ | dxxmxnd 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Binning applications for working at Meta seems hilarious and over the top. The ‘thoughtful’ labs are vacuuming up everyone’s chat logs and prompts to train the next model as well. |
