As the person with sole absolute authority over Facebook, he is 100% responsible for everything that happens, in addition to whatever responsibility the people under him bear
The development process at a company the size of FB is so fragmented that the number of people who actually have a full view of the sum ethics of the platform generally reside at the Director level or higher.
Does the engineer who maintains the code for tagging photos with facial recognition know anything about what happens to that data after? Does the person who works on content filtering algorithms know what language rules another person is going to put into them? Does the person working on optimizing databases know who's been given carte blanche access to that data via APIs?
To use an extreme comparison, there's a reason the entire German army wasn't hung at Nuremberg.
So there you have it in a nutshell straight from the horse's mouth, as it were.
EDIT: or even how many pay attention to tech news in the mainstream media, for that matter.
I've seen some internal memos with zuck reassuring the employees how much he cares, those memos aren't written in a vacuum, they are responses to things going on. Are you suggesting that Facebook employees don't read the internal memos sent to them or lack any critical thinking on why they are sent?
And in the case of working at facebook, will most definitely be used.
Facebook employees have vastly more options to leave a company that they reasonably know or should know is morally questionable, and quite likely to be able to find other employment.
That changes the measures of culpability (or at least compliance) significantly.
There are schools and jobs waiting in Georgia and Texas and Wyoming. They aren't Valley jobs. But they offer comfortable lives.
I appreciate the honesty of the parent post. It's all about the money and lifestyle. The part that makes me blink is that they think this somehow alters the ethics in a positive way.
If I had a job, for example, maintaining photo storage at FB, should I be so ethically outraged that I should upend my whole life, and my family's life, to run away as quickly as possible?
If you want to argue that it is hard to quit FB because of money and schools, and that that changes the ethics, see my comment above.
1. I'm not arguing that every job at FB is ethical, I'm arguing that most aren't so unethical that one would permanently taint one's soul by staying there. This is especially so if you consider that FB has a chance to change, no matter how slim that chance is. Perhaps these people believe in the stated mission of FB and think they can help.
2. It's not at all easy to leave a job - not every engineer is a 20-something nomad with no kids. Finding a gig that matches a AAA, SV company in sum benefits is a hard task on its own, even if you're not geographically limited due to familial sentiment or obligations.
That only changes the costs of the options, not the fact that you are either complicit or choose to leave.
Specific to your specifics, if changing circumstances _in_ the Valley is so hard, leave the Valley as well. I live in the Midwest, so my perspective has it's own skew, but SV sounds more and more like a crazy place to even try to live.
thats the actual reason why soldiers were spared in Nürnberg: because a lot of the army didn't actually have a choice. It was death or collaboration for them.
My historical knowledge of this isn't as detailed as I would hope to have; do you have some suggestions - links, books, etc in regards to the details on the sentencing?
I can certainly understand that the higher up the chain you went, the more knowledge of the atrocities you would (or should reasonably) have, but was there a particular "breaking point" where "below this point nobody is charged or even censored"?
If so - how was that point decided? What if you were just an everyday Joe-in-the-trenches soldier who was on the front lines, but knew you had neighbors and friends that just "disappeared" and you had doubts or other misgivings?
Or what if you were a younger person, and had "snuck around" and seen something strange with the "hidden camps" in the countryside - but then became a soldier a few years on, and those sights as a kid haunted you?
Where's the ethical line?
If you had a very good and reasonable suspicion that what you were participating in, had actually much more grave consequences for neighbors and fellow citizens - even if you didn't agree with their views politically or morally (let's suppose) - would it be better to avoid being a conscripted soldier and dying, than to participate in what may turn out to be a brutal atrocity on the world stage?
I can see the conundrum - that you wouldn't know for sure what the truth was, and since you don't really know for certain, then "fighting for your country" - even if forced - was better than your country killing you (in some manner) because you didn't.
But I bet there were more than a few who did say "no" - and I wonder how many of them made it through the camps or other "work detail" where they quickly learned either some horrifying details from other prisoners, overheard conversations of guards, or just what they considered very frightening rumor (that ultimately turned out true)?
Those that survived - if any - I wonder if there have been discussions between them and those who joined though they may have had misgivings or doubts?
When you start to question and think about this - you begin to see why things are the way they are in Germany today; at the same time, you also wonder how is it that there is still - kinda in the shadows, kinda not - a level of "nationalism" and (possibly?) "German purity" movement in both Germany, and Europe (and the larger world stage).
A certain amount of it has to do with propaganda, conspiracy, and the like of course - but what else is driving all of this? Are we (humanity) doomed to repeat this kind of atrocity again and again (that is - genocide and such on a mass scale; while what happened during WW2 was perhaps (?) one of the largest examples in history, it is also - unfortunately - not a unique thing in humanity's history)?
I'm also aware of other history that can help explain some of this (that is, the targeting of the Jews - among other groups) - and it potentially goes back millenia, which is both sobering and depressing to realize that we're barely budging the status quo over the years...
There are reasonable arguments for hanging the whole German Army after the war starting with dissuading monstrous wars of aggression with the idea that if we lose we'll all die.
An interesting alt-history fiction could be written where that was the case, I bet...
that's quite an extreme view. Have you ever considered you might be mistaken?
It's been years since I've even seen a pro-facebook take on HN, let alone anywhere else.
Most people echo something similar to "I don't like it, but everyone else is there, and I don't want to feel left out."
FB employees: pretty close to Purdue pharma and the tobacco companies. At least tobacco prevents Parkinsons. I know, people got kids to feed and ex-wives to pay off, but FB is complete and utter garbage, and anyone who ever worked there carries a badge of shame forever.
Either way in support of what you’re saying and in reference to the words — what evidence or rational is there that most people psychologically addicted to FB think it is evil? Replace FB overall with IG. IG is hugely popular. Some are prob addicted. IG doesn’t have the same negativity assigned to it so saying most addicted users think it’s evil would seem like a very silly statement.
Edit: this is not to argue that FB is an addiction or that FB is evil or that FB is equivalent to cocaine. It is just to point out the weakness of the parent comment.
I highly doubt most addicted users think FB is evil. That’s a strong word.
Regardless, people being pro some company is not a good way at all to see if a company is “evil” or not. Many times people being pro something can be a negatives indicator.
We have seen various tech companies do bad things. Like the anti-poaching collusion so many participated in. But at that time Google was given near unanimous praise and pro-comments.
'let alone' anywhere else? HN is surely skewed toward privacy-conscious types that are inherently not 'pro-Facebook.'
It's pretty bad when even a significant portion of your user base only uses your product begrudgingly and with resentment.
That describes a _lot_ of companies and organizations (probably the majority of all organizations, I would guess?) most of which I would not consider evil. The DMV, for example. I would agree with calling them 'pretty bad', but pretty bad isn't the same as evil.
Do you want to try to make a case for Facebook being good or even benign, or did you just want to check in if we're conducting regular introspection?
(And, off the top of my head, the things Facebook does that nudge it into "evil": persuading media to move to video by lying about viewership statistics, gaming the algorithms to maximize engagement in the style of a Skinner box, in at least one case intentionally trying to depress people through feed manipulation, turning a blind eye to electoral interference, all the dark patterns surrounding getting people's personal information, the shady ways they share that information, and if I sat here and literally thought about it instead of producing a list as I typed it out, I'd come up with more. This is not what a good or benign corporation does. Doing these things is not compatible with being good or benign.)
I wrote my original post off the cuff. I might edit it to say that Zuckerberg, as the CEO, sets the tone, and hires the people who build the system and set the culture that either incentivizes/allows/demands these practices (dark patterns, etc.).
Individual engineers can take a stand, but without their managers, and those managers' managers backing them, it's a Sissyphean task.
The point being, Zuckerberg is ultimately responsible.
Yes, the responsibility is ULTIMATELY on zuck, but for it to reach him, every single person in line has to shrug their shoulders and do the wrong thing because it's more profitable to do so.
In that sense, I agree with your push back. However, I lament that we've given tech employees this kind of morality and ethics-free environment to play in.
I'm a big fan of systems thinking. My friends get on me for it, but I wholly believe "if you aren't thinking about the system, you aren't thinking" or some aphorism to that effect. Donella Meadows, Russell Ackoff, W. Edwards Deming all inform my thoughts on this.
When an individual contributor like you are mentioning above is in a system there are four options they can take when they see something off. 1) Do nothing 2) Distort the system (often seen as a band-aid fix) 3) Distort the data (when Alan Mulally took over Ford all of their dashboards were "green" which meant good while the company was slated to lose billions of dollars that quarter) 4) Change the system
From Deming I learned this: who is responsible for the system? Management. Who is the top manager at FB? Mark Zuckerberg. So that's my perspective on using the word "ultimately." I also noticed that with your wording "...but for it to reach him" gives the sense that these behaviors are percolating from the bottom up. My sense, is looking at it from the other perspective--Zuckerberg down. He has set the tone, built the system, and the culture that allows (demands?) this behavior.
Another Deming quote that I have seen all too viscerally in my 17 years in the professional world is this "A bad system beats a good person every time."
I don't excuse unethical or illegal behavior of ICs or managers, but I can look at the system they are a part of and understand it.
I don't disagree with anything you've said, except that I add one more option to the IC's list: 5) Leave the system: quit and work somewhere else.
"A loss of X dollars is always the responsibility of an executive whose financial responsibility exceeds X dollars." - Gerald Weinberg's 'First Principle of Financial Management' and 'Second Rule of Failure Prevention' [1]
By this model, I'd say engineers have some responsibility, but managers and, especially, executives shoulder the primary responsibility. By the same model, engineer's choices also have to be mediated by their own responsibilities to pay the bills, take care of their families, and so on.
[0] An Introduction to General Systems Thinking, Weinberg
[1] 'First-Order Measurement', Quality Software Management, Volume 2, Gerald Weinberg, Dorset House Publishing, 1993
Thanks for bringing him to light. I was completely ignorant of him before your comment and look forward to looking into the sources you graciously added to the discussion.
Edit: Went to add the books you cited to my Goodreads list and lo and behold, the first one was already there. I am not going to live long enough to read all of the books I want to!
The day that thought first came to me was a dark day! Another of Weinberg's heuristics [0]: Read books only after three people have recommended them. It's a quality filter, tuned to the kind of people you associate with, and to reducing the number of pages you'll have to digest.
[0] From a message on the SHAPE (Software as a Human Activity Practiced Effectively) online forum, which may be long gone.
IMO quitting in a huff over issues like this causes damage to one's career that one really ought to avoid. I left my previous gig over cultural issues and I nearly got labeled a job hopper for doing so. I'd suggest taking the long view and let's see what happens with all the tech companies that are now doing morally questionable things.
It feels like there's been a phase transition in mood in the valley in the past 2 years.
The shareholder system of control foists massive negative externalities on the public while concentrating profits in the hands of a few.
It's like advertising toxic waste disposal for $100 a tonne, then dumping the carcinogenic sludge in the town square while keeping the cash for yourself.
If you're a real capitalist, you peel off 1% of your windfall to support politicians who sabotage any attempt at regulating toxic waste disposal.
Is it possible that this "every FB engineer is a moral criminal" stance is actually a fringe view espoused by a radical minority and not a principle we should consider seriously? I think so. I reject the OP's claim to moral authority.
A thing isn't bad just because some random commentator on HN says it's bad. The law is how we encode legitimate and society-wide consensus on what's bad. I am under an obligation to follow the law. I am under no obligation to behave according to what some random HN commentator wants to ban this week.
Governments are trying to control it. Sri Lanka recently disabled all Facebook properties at the ISP level after Facebook promised to clean up incitements to violence but then either wouldn't or couldn't.
Just because a thing is legal doesn't make it moral or ethical. And a big reason why bad things remain legal is because bad things tend to shit cash.
I suppose you're free to do anything that doesn't get you arrested. The rest of us try to live to a somewhat higher standard.
So making guns is okay, supplying them randomly is illegal at most places because they just do harm.
Similarly there at these companies the engineers working to maintain the infra making it all possible.
Engineers need to understand where their work is getting put at.
Such a position is a longstanding feature of law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_liability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity
I get that some people don't want these principles to exist and would prefer personal liability in everything, but I would suggest that these people be very careful what they wish for.
I'm thinking in terms of a RACI matrix.
BTW, I had to look up RACI matrix as I've only ever heard of it. Is this a popular project tool at the moment? Do you use it?
This is absolutely 100% FALSE. Every single person who works on those dark and shady patterns are responsible for their actions. They choose to work for evil every single day because the money is more important to them.
Why do we give tech employees a moral and ethical pass for the terrible things they do just because they work for a company?
These engineers don't work with blinders on, they know that every line they commit is ultimately in service of getting more people addicted, and more clicks on facebook ads.
Someone above them may tell them to write that code, but they choose to write each line when they could be working somewhere else. Last I heard, facebook hires supposedly intelligent people, I daresay they'd be able to to get a job elsewhere.
They choose not to.