My greatest hope with all of the noise surrounding this, is that the engineers and employees at Facebook realize that Facebook and Zuckerberg’s vision does not line up with reality. Zuckerberg believes that Facebook will connect people and change the fabric of society and communities for good in a way that was heretofore impossible.
Between Facebook’s political issues and the happiness-depressing effects of its use, I think it is pretty easy to draw the conclusion that Facebook is a net negative for society. This is without even taking into account the amount of PII that has been concentrated into a single entity (who monetizes it), or the effects of algorithmically appealing to people’s desires.
A hundred years from now, Equifax, YouTube, and Facebook will be lumped into the same pile: companies who profit off of information about consumers. The algorithmic veneer that protects YouTube and Facebook will be gone by then.
I’m not trying to condemn anyone, and I’m not in the position of having to weigh providing for my family with making ethical choices.
But, I think it is clear that change for Facebook will not come from the top. It will only come as people leave.
I don't disagree with these sentiments, but the hope that engineers/IT staff will leave is wishful thinking. I speak from my own experience which my differ from others in other industries/regions/countries but, I find people who work in tech to be generally dispassionate with regards to the downstream effects of their contributions. I think that's because:
a) We're often small cogs ...
b) ... working on often interesting technical problems that require much detail ("think down here" I was once told by a manager, who put his hand to the ground, "not up here" he said putting his hand up and waving it[1]) ...
c) ... and we don't always get to choose. Not everyone is a superstar who can leisurely choose which exciting opportunity to pick and choose. And yes, most of us have rent/mortgages/children/ other obligations to concern ourselves with.
While it may not affect current employees, I do think vivid stories like this make the allure of joining Facebook less compelling for the next generation of programmers. It also may influence just a few people in hot fields who have many opportunities to choose from (such as the top researchers in AI).
This is, sadly, 100% true. I know because I've been there. I've been that engineer who was so interested in the technical problems of what he was doing that he didn't think about what it was being used for, which I think is the gist of (B) at the least. The banality of evil is very much real.
I think the reason is (d), that most employees believe in the company's mission and do not think they are working for an unethical company, but instead that the company is being unfairly portrayed.
Most in Facebook or most in general in tech companies? If the latter, I'd bet my life that most people couldn't care less about visions or missions, which is more the realm of Founders, very young employees and marketing materials. I'm sorry to state it that harshly...
"Zuckerberg believes that Facebook will connect people and change the fabric of society and communities for good.." is marketing speak. What does Zuckerberg believe? Nobody knows that except Zuckerberg. But I really doubt it's that.
You don't even need to look at meta-effects of Facebook. Look at how it operates, in effect. It splits people into mutually exclusive echo chambers that are falling increasingly far away from reality in terms of median ideological view. Far from connecting people social media has become, arguably, the single biggest factor in societal division in modern history. People even speak of this casually without realizing the implications of what they're saying - 'I can't believe what [non echo chamber approved views] my [friend/family member/acquintance/etc] has. Unfriending!' Of course these views and differences always existed, but in typical social interaction agreeing to disagree on issues is fine. In the social media era, people have started to condemn people over any failure to abide group ideology. It's cult like behavior without the formality.
There's no way in the world you can possibly spin this into a positive or unifying force for society. You've even had founders and executives of speak out against the social harm the company is causing. The point of this is that there's no 'algorithmic veneer' protecting YouTube and Facebook, and I strongly doubt Zuckerberg himself has any delusions about what he's doing. Even most users themselves could easily reason that Facebook is a net negative. But they enjoy and/or are addicted to the services, so they keep using it. It's slot machines on a global scale, where instead of inserting coins - you insert your personal information and get that dopamine rush when somebody likes or otherwise interacts with you.
---
As for employees - you'll never make a company change from the bottom up. Most people don't work for ideologies - they work for money. And Facebook has deep enough pockets to ensure that they'll never suffer for a lack of employees.
>James Damore, Google, and the YouTube radicalization of angry white men
https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/prager-university
>PragerU doesn’t disguise the fact that it is waging a war for young minds. Though the site’s videos are clinical, their cumulative function is to proselytize, and the language PragerU uses to describe its mission is religious.
Zuckerberg SAYS that. But I think we've all known CEOs who live in a reality distortion field. I'm not sure he believes that Facebook isn't a bad actor. But he has a ton of financial incentive to deny it's a bad actor.
Why would people leave? Facebook knows your buttons and pushes them just right. In aggregate this is terrible for society, but individually it feels good.
I'd argue that in the pursuit of upping engagement, they've shifted to pushing our buttons too much over the past year or so. Or at least that's true for MY buttons.
Over the past year my view of Facebook has shifted from "I kinda don't like the privacy implications, but it is very useful for following what my extended family (most of whom live literally across the country) and friends are up to" to "why is this fucking thing sending me all these useless notifications all the time? (rhetorical question, I know why it is...) am I getting enough benefit out of it to be worth all of this or should I delete it?"
I very much doubt that most employees at Facebook share your viewpoint that Facebook is a net negative for society. It’s almost a tautology—people who feel that way won’t seek employment there.
Between Facebook’s political issues and the happiness-depressing effects of its use, I think it is pretty easy to draw the conclusion that Facebook is a net negative for society. This is without even taking into account the amount of PII that has been concentrated into a single entity (who monetizes it), or the effects of algorithmically appealing to people’s desires.
A hundred years from now, Equifax, YouTube, and Facebook will be lumped into the same pile: companies who profit off of information about consumers. The algorithmic veneer that protects YouTube and Facebook will be gone by then.
I’m not trying to condemn anyone, and I’m not in the position of having to weigh providing for my family with making ethical choices.
But, I think it is clear that change for Facebook will not come from the top. It will only come as people leave.