SFLemonade

I just wonder, if they were to take some of this cash and invest it into proving out remote work, would it turn out to be a better long term investment?

In most of the cases that I've observed, companies enter into remote work literally by just letting their employees start working remotely. Maybe they get a nice contract with Zoom and hire a specialized lawyer or two. But what if we were to really try investing in it, in the same way (or even in a fraction of the way) that we're investing in real estate?

They're probably focused on the fact that productivity is still higher in co-located settings and the best talent pools are in major metro areas. But what if, instead, they invested $500M in remote work research and $500M in building a remote work infrastructure for the company. Then they can go ahead and pocket that extra $1-4B in real estate costs, and perhaps another ~$10B long term as they avoid future real estate purchases and scale this across the company. Also, save several hundred million in hiring and retention, as they attract more talent from around the world and retain employees by offering remote work as a benefit.

Could this be a more forward-thinking approach? I'm merely posing the question.

Real estate is super expensive, and most people would consider being able to live anywhere a huge perk. In other words, the only reason talent is so concentrated in New York, is because it has to be right now. But what will happen as more companies offer distributed work? Will people choose to continue living in metro areas with astronomical costs of living (perhaps even away from family or in a climate they don't prefer)? Or will they leave and work from wherever they want? And then what will happen to the value of this real estate? And what will happen to the companies that invested in it?

I find it odd that innovative tech companies seem to not be questioning one of the more non-innovative and dogmatic practices of today - physical office space. Not only that, but they're investing billions into that idea. Why not challenge it?

Or what if you took a hybrid approach? Have a collaborative space in New York that everyone can use to come together, but everyone can also work from home. You may be able to cut down the required space by 3-4x.

Your personal attacks on me are actually proving my point. In your original post, you said:

"In the specific case of conservative politics, why does it matter that it's so skewed? I have absolutely no issue with, in this specific case, conservative politics not receiving much attention."

That's a form of censorship and manipulation, especially because Facebook is not seen as an editorialized news source, but rather as a representation of one's community. You seem to think it isn't censorship though:

"I am not sure how you are confusing me and facebook's curation system not giving attention to certain sources and positions based on their credibility and integrity with actively preventing people from speaking."

This had nothing to do with credibility or integrity. It was a group of people with a very specific political ideology that were subjectively picking news and having it appear in an organic feed, when it was really editorialized.

I'm not confusing you with Facebook's curation system. You're entitled to your opinion. I'm telling you why your opinion shouldn't be applied at scale (in this case, to a system that appears organic) and also why you should care about this not just for this one incident, but for the implications that this has on a larger scale.

So you don't care about conservative views getting silenced here. After all, conservatives are wrong, right? But what if the major media outlet changes it's mind and starts to think liberals are wrong, and thus silences liberal content? How will you feel then? This isn't about political ideologies. It's about the implications of an unprecedentedly large and trusted media outlet taking sides and deliberately influencing it's audience. Liberal or conservative, that's dangerous.

You should also bear in mind that you're commenting on an article where liberals deliberately censored conservative news media. That doesn't do much to support your assertions.

The fact that the American leftist view would be considered centrist in most other countries (like, for example, the nordic countries) is essentially meaningless. Just because "left" takes on different meanings or extremes in different parts of the world doesn't mean that the US is behind or should become more left. To compare US politics to those of Finland, Switzerland, or even Canada is completely absurd. We are a fundamentally different people, system, land mass, you name it. Our political system must take that into account.

Censorship of any kind is inherently dangerous and detrimental to true progress. Aren't equality, open-mindedness, and freedom of expression paramount to liberal thought? Do you not see the hypocrisy here?

But shouldn't none of this matter? If we're right, should we really need to silence our opponents? If our ideas are fundamentally right, then they should win in a fair and open marketplace of ideas, without the unfair advantage of censorship.

The very fact that you want (or feel the need) to silence your opponent sheds a light on the quality and legitimacy of your ideas. I say this as someone who has always been classically liberal; we have abandoned our true ideals (the ideals which have usually placed us on the right side of history) for radicalism and new forms of bigotry and inequality. The Overton Window has radically shifted and those that were previously on the left are now falling closer to the center-right.

We are a polarized nation and this is reflected in the atrocious line-up of presidential candidates that we have right now.

It happens on both sides, and it wouldn't be unreasonable to argue that the left is much more guilty of this than the right. Fox News has become a meme because it is the only mainstream news source that blatantly shows conservative bias. Try pointing to mainstream news sources that blatantly show liberal bias and you'd lose count.

I couldn't agree more. They also have an unprecedented level of reach (billions of users) and user trust (appearance of community opinion vs. news media filtering).

> So the problem is much wider than FB.

Absolutely. Facebook is far from being the only offender here, and in a way, this is a growing pain of new technology. Just as we learned to not trust big media, we also will have to learn to approach social media with skepticism (despite it's inherently organic appearance).

"we were unable to determine if left-wing news topics or sources were similarly suppressed"

I see what you're getting at, but I highly doubt liberal news was systematically suppressed. Facebook is a notoriously far-left company, located in a region of the US that is already far-left.

Curators would find less biased (read: not as sympathetic to the conservative viewpoint) sources for trending conservative topics, but they would not do the same for liberal topics. So I agree that it's best to find balanced journalism, but that should happen on both sides (conservative and liberal). If they only find less biased sources for conservative media, then that is in itself even more biased toward the liberal agenda. They were censoring or watering down the conservative view point from multiple angles.

It was surprising to me that the author just couldn't wrap his mind around it, despite going to such lengths to convince the audience that he was some amazing and prestigious tech journalist. With stuff like this, I think he was intentionally ignorant ("What?? A young manager?? He would be an assistant at my beloved, ironically extinct and thus irrelevant Newsweek"), so as to appeal to an audience that just isn't familiar with the tech scene beyond what they see on TV.

I don't think that Twitter was originally designed for real discussion and discourse, but it's become the Social Activist Platform™, and as such, discourse and discussion are almost necessities. In it's current state, however, it's 140 character format unfortunately aids and promotes ignorant and uninformed statements rooted in mob mentality, killing the possibility of any meaningful discussion or discourse, which could benefit many of the conversations that are occurring on the platform.

Twitter wasn't meant for discussion and discourse, but it's community seems to be demanding that it be exactly that.

That's just my (admittedly biased) take.

I understand what you're getting at, but that is hilariously untrue and a perfect representation of the delusion that the social justice movement operates under.

- Lack of touch with reality (the candidate thinks that IQ is actually a measure of anything substantial in terms of competency and likelihood to experience / deliver success)

- Lack of motivation or desire to actually contribute (the candidate presumes that a high IQ is a contribution in and of itself, and therefore does not work as hard as others)

- Lack of intellectual humility (the candidate feels that their high IQ qualifies their ideas or work more than that of others. The candidate is not willing to admit when they're wrong or recognize when another individual's idea is better than theirs)

That's truly the best function that IQ has served for us: spot the people who talk about their IQ score and don't hire them.

But what happens when Zuckerberg meets with German political leaders to discuss the silencing of anti-refugee posts on Facebook? We know that the technology exists. If you've ever advertised on Facebook, you've seen how easily one piece of content can be given massive priority while others can go quietly ignored. But that's not how it seems to the user. It just seems like all of their friends are thinking one way....so they should too.

There are massive implications to this.