some people work for charities, some people work for facebook. the employees make the company, and are complicit if they don’t react harshly to decisions made by their board like google employees did... if nobody wants to support the scummy tactics that “the company” is pushing, it won’t get done. sometimes you need to have a spine to get anything changed otherwise we are just heading for a blade runner distopia, and we in the tech industry are pushing us there as fast as our pay cheques can.

people quit google over the military project because they didn’t agree with it. i don’t think it’s crazy to do the same over facebooks disgusting manipulation of their user base.

I don't think it's crazy either, I just think it's totally inappropriate to tell people to think less of their friends when they don't have the full context.

There's a lot of FB employees on HN and I wager a lot of them know how scummy their employer is. Yes, many are staying for the paycheck (and because leaving a job isn't an easy thing for everyone), but I know several who are staying because they feel that their position is where they can produce the most good for the world.

Similarly, I know many people in politics who despise who/what they work for, but keep at it because that is where they can make a difference.

It doesn't always work. But it also doesn't make me think less of them. At least of the ones who aren't staying because of the $.

No, they are not producing any kind of good for the world, never mind "the most".

For the users, Facebook is just a means of communication, among many others. If it disappeared tomorrow 10 different platforms would replace it and the level of goodness in the world might even increase.

Doing good is probably the lamest, least truthful excuse for working at Facebook, goes to show how self-deluded people can be.

What if you are working at Facebook on improving Linux's network stack for example? Sure, if you have the skills to do that, you will find work very easily. But is it easy to find a job that would allow you to make these kind of contributions?

> but I know several who are staying because they feel that their position is where they can produce the most good for the world

Do you think Facebook is a net positive for the world? Borderline, or overwhelmingly?

To be clear, I'm not asking whether some people get net benefit out of it, I'm talking about the net overall effect on society and the individuals within it.

Personally, I believe it is causing tremendous psychological damage, and that anyone that works there is a contributor to that end.

I believe Facebook, overall, is a net negative. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have its own positives.

Sticking to the "net positive / net negative" terms, imagine Facebook contributes a number of positive / negative points to the world. Now the sum can be a net negative, but that doesn't mean some line items aren't positives.

Where do you work? Is your company flawless? Are you a contributor to every single one of its misdeeds merely because you work there? This isn't an easy thing to answer for everyone. I think it's certainly a question more Facebook employees should ask themselves though.

That is what net means, there will be positives and negatives which contribute to the net. For the record I agree with you, I think Facebook is overall negative but not by much, there are very strong positives.

I never thought I'd see the day that someone explained the meaning of the word net to me on HN.

I agree, you can't say that to someone to just drop their friends because the company they work for is evil. Hell, I'd actually like to see where all the people calling for this work — them lets see if we can hold their companies to the same light, and if they would actually be willing to quit. I'm saying this a non-facebook user for a number of years, this sounds pretty ridiculous to expect.

I feel that I agree with you @rickycook

Except for the "think less of them," part, I don't think it's inappropriate -- we all get to vote every second of the day for the companies that rule our world. We vote with our wallet every time we buy even the smallest thing, and we vote with our clicks when we choose to use web services.

It is far from the most extreme of social changes that have occurred in history to suggest people stop using a particular company's tools.

I think people at Facebook do have some moral frustration and consider leaving from time to time. It's simply impossible, especially in these times, to avoid asking oneself the moral question of the consequences of my own actions when they affect billions, even if the aim is as innocuous as to hook up the user for some time longer. Nevertheless, I agree that judging them from the outside is quite difficult as we don't know the full context.

Superior orders, often known as the Nuremberg defense, lawful orders or by the German phrase Befehl ist Befehl ("an order is an order"), is a plea in a court of law that a person—whether a member of the military, law enforcement, a firefighting force, or the civilian population—not be held guilty for actions ordered by a superior officer or an official.[1]

The Nuremberg defence is widely regarded as invalid.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders

> This is a totally inappropriate thing to ask of anyone. Please rethink your view on life.

No, working at Facebook is the modern day corporate equivalent of the banality of evil.

Unless you genuinely think Facebook is doing good, take some fucking responsibility and rethink _your_ view on life.

There's a difference between working at Facebook actively being involved in the creation of such scummy designs, dark patterns, etc; and merely working on one of its open source libraries. Facebook does do some good and comparing what they're doing to war crimes ... does that really help?

I think that's a distinction without a difference. Facebook doesn't have engineers working on open source libraries because they want to do good in the world, and those other people working on scummy designs and dark patterns just didn't get the memo. They do open source work because:

* The projects directly help their business operations; those engineers might be doing the same work, anyway, even if Facebook were zealously closed source.

* Open source work gives the company image a boost in the minds of potential employees. This expands the labor pool, reducing the wages FB needs to pay, and helps give FB access to talent it otherwise simply could not have. In this case, hiring engineers to work on open source projects is little more than a PR campaign targeted at people like you and me--and it's clearly working on you.

The "good deeds" of their open source work are entirely accidental; the whole point of employing engineers to work on open source libraries is to help their business, which is inherently exploitative.

I agree with lancewiggs: by working at Facebook, your friends are aiding and abetting one of the most unethical and socially-dangerous companies in modern times. Think less of them.