Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments Over Ethical Concerns

Re:Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments ... by saagarjha on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @01:38PM (#16803284)

Please don't be flippant. You know the what we mean here: the perception that those who work at Facebook are lacking in ethics or moral fiber. This isn't about politics.

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Re:Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments ... by r00fus on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @01:51PM (#16803432)

It's not a flippant remark - it's argument to extreme [1] (ie, paining those who question FB as only Trump-haters when many people have questioned FB long before CA/Trump entered the mainstream discussion).

It doesn't help FB that Trump is associated with them and that he's in hot water already.

[1] https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFalla...

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Re:Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments ... by saagarjha on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @07:11PM (#16806493)

The reason why I called it out as flippant was because I felt that they might have had a valid point, that Facebook was being unethical with regards to influencing elections, but they did it in a really poor way which ended up having the effect you mentioned in your response.

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Re:Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments ... by tomc1985 on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @01:51PM (#16803429)

Please don't tell other people what to do. As a Californian, the reaction he is describing is very plausible.

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Re:Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments ... by saagarjha on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @07:08PM (#16806468)

You do realize that I likely responded to them because I live in California as well, right? This isn't a political issue in the traditional sense of "on no they got Trump elected"; the issue would still exist if it was Clinton that ended up winning the election due to Facebook. The problem is that Facebook just should not have control over the politics, more so because the control they have was shown to be gained without their user's trust and without regard to their privacy.

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Re:Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments ... by peoplewindow on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @02:13PM (#16803648)

Yeah, but what drives that perception? It doesn't seem to be rooted in any coherent theory of ethics. After all, users happily agreed to their data being used, they weren't forced to sign up to social networks en-masse, they weren't forced to install tons of crappy apps or agree to grant them permission to their friends data. They weren't denied any information or lied to.

So the normal rules of ethics that would lead to conclusions about immoral behaviour don't apply here. Privacy isn't something that should be forced on someone. It's their life, their decisions, their information. They can do what they want with it. In reality virtually no users care about privacy and will happily upload their lives or even broadcast it to the whole world given the slightest chance.

As such, it's hard to conclude what exactly Facebook employees are supposed to have done wrong here.

That leaves "OMG YOU GOT TRUMP ELECTED", which isn't going to convince the roughly 50% of Americans who voted for him. After all, they won't believe that Trump voters were mindlessly reprogrammed into voting for Trump against their will by social media. And a lot of Clinton voters won't believe that either.

I expect a whole lot of virtue signalling from the same Silicon Valley types who foam at the mouth if someone says there aren't many women coders because on average they choose to be teachers instead. And not much else.

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Re:Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments ... by gaius on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @05:09PM (#16805453)

After all, users happily agreed to their data being used, they weren't forced to sign up to social networks en-masse, they weren't forced to install tons of crappy apps or agree to grant them permission to their friends data.

The modern understanding of consent is that it can be withdrawn at any time. Sometimes even retrospectively

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Re:Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments ... by wu-ikkyu on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @03:43PM (#16804543)

Are you implying ethics and morals are unrelated to politics?

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Re:Facebook Employees Are Quitting or Switching Departments ... by saagarjha on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @07:10PM (#16806479)

In this case, yes. The issue here is the fact that Facebook had any effect on politics through what it was doing, not that Trump ended up getting elected.

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