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A little OT, but I think public perception really muddies this a lot. To expand on the siblings' example of Uber, the public seems to mostly think Uber=unethical & Lyft=ethical, but really, they engage in many of the same business practices. Uber has a worse reputation because of their sexual harassment scandals and outspoken douchebag former CEO. Lyft tries to brand themselves as the hippie-dippy summer-of-love sharing company, and has done pretty well at maintaining that image. I don't doubt that Lyft is a much better place to work (for employees, not drivers), and I just had to look up their CEO's name because he isn't the raging asshole that Kalanick seems to be and isn't in the news all the time... but that doesn't maybe Lyft the innocent darling many people think they are, especially when it's so easy to compare them favorably against Uber. So it's easy to demonize Facebook for being "the most unethical", because they're often front-and-center not just in the news, but also in people's daily lives. But consider other companies, like Uber (and Lyft!), Palantir (fuels the surveillance state), Theranos (fraudulent claims about the efficacy of "new" medical lab test procedures), Hampton Creek (had its employees buy their product from stores to pump up sales numbers), and Zenefits (built software that allowed employees to dodge state licensing requirements). As much as I love Silicon Valley and couldn't imagine working anywhere else, there's also a lot of corruption and unethical behavior here. |