When you talk to these guys (they're almost all guys), you realize they're fully aware of what they're doing, and in the back of their minds they know FB is evil. They just like the money too much.
This is 100% about money trumping conscience. FAIR researchers may be millionaires, but they're ethically challenged. I wouldn't trade place with them. These people disgust me.
I highly doubt most of them believe that FB and the work they’re doing is evil. They would have no incentive to work there if they did.
Interestingly the head of the Pittsburgh lab here isn't even an ML researcher -- she is primarily known for her motion capture work and for running Disney Research.
That's historically true of lots of research innovation though.
War (generally accepted as bad thing!) has advanced technology and civilization repeatedly.
At least the scientists aiding war (on average) had some awareness that killing people is clearly not a good thing, and at absolute best a necessary evil. Can the same be said of the people at Facebook?
The culture of their management is to be in denial about how damaging their service is to the mental health of individuals and society.
On a parallel line of thought, I prefer FB's React to Google's Angular. In both React and Pytorch I see the same elegant design. TensorFlow and Angular on the other part are unnecessarily complicated.