Well, in an ideal, completely efficient market for remote workers, of course the "fair" thing to do is to pay for enough salary to hire the best people in Prague or Bangalore. People can decide whether they want to live in San Francisco with that salary. Most people can't, so naturally there will be a diaspora spreading out to low-cost areas, and rent in SF will drop until the area can be "competitive" again.
But this dry description involves a ton of economic/social upheaval, which we (the society) really wouldn't like to deal with, especially right now. (Not to mention a "completely fair market" is an illusion: you can't just fire your entire team on the bay area and hire replacements from Bangalore.) So a compromise is reached, where companies try to keep people they have now at roughly the same price they're paying now, with ugly, stop-gap measures to dissuade people from getting ahead of the equation.
I'm not saying we should thank Facebook - it's behaving completely in its own interest - but people who complain that this isn't "fair" might want to answer what's their position on the logical conclusion of a "fair market" for remote workers.
But this dry description involves a ton of economic/social upheaval, which we (the society) really wouldn't like to deal with, especially right now. (Not to mention a "completely fair market" is an illusion: you can't just fire your entire team on the bay area and hire replacements from Bangalore.) So a compromise is reached, where companies try to keep people they have now at roughly the same price they're paying now, with ugly, stop-gap measures to dissuade people from getting ahead of the equation.
I'm not saying we should thank Facebook - it's behaving completely in its own interest - but people who complain that this isn't "fair" might want to answer what's their position on the logical conclusion of a "fair market" for remote workers.