[otterley]

I find it difficult to believe that the average Facebook employee is exposed to less media coverage about their own company than a member of the general public is. So the remaining possibilities are that the employee either agrees with the policy (in which case, we can question their judgment), or they're just trying to keep food on the table (in which case, we should wonder about how healthy the job market is).

[gfxgirl]

There are more options than you've presented. There is also that the employee has perfectly valid and logical reasons for believing the policy isn't evil. In other words, the issue is you see the policies as evil with no possibility to see otherwise.

I use facebook to connect with my family and friends. I've unfollowed all overly political friends. I get no real or fake news in my facebook feed. If I worked at facebook I'd be proud of helping people to stay connected.

[yomly]

To add to this, Facebook is seen as an existential threat to traditional media so most reporting on it will pass through an editorial lens.

Here on HN we are happy to call out the NYT and Bloomberg when they are wrong, but is that only when their articles don't align with our prior biases?

[otterley]

There’s no question that there are good things about Facebook, but I think a fully contemplative person would need to balance those things against the harms Facebook allows to exist on their platform. It’s not a black and white question of good vs evil, as much as it is “does what this company does (or not do), on balance, comport with my values of right or wrong?” Evidence of wrong-doing and questionable judgment by the company’s leaders is abundant. And at some point you can’t continue to work for a company without being complicit in its sins; after all, a company hires someone because they need them to help execute the company’s decisions.

[conradev]

What if you replaced “Facebook” with “the US federal government”?

Can you continue to work for the digital service without being complicit in the government’s sins? There is plenty of evidence of wrong-doing and questionable judgement by the government’s leaders, for sure.

Say everyone who did take issue with Facebook’s policies decided to leave – who would be left?

[otterley]

The Government is subject to a Constitution that has an amendment process, and laws are made by elected leadership who can be voted out by the people.

Facebook is not a democracy, and given the corporate structure and differing voting rights of shareholders, it is practically impossible to replace the current leadership even if a majority of shareholders wanted to.

Moreover, the Government is immense and highly diverse in its missions compared to Facebook. I don't think anyone reasonably believes the sins of the CIA should be borne by, say, U.S. Forest Service park rangers. If Facebook had a public service mission that, among other things, provided essential services to the public like food and housing, perhaps the discussion would be different.

> Say everyone who did take issue with Facebook’s policies decided to leave – who would be left?

Some might say that this is the desired outcome, but eventually management might see the writing on the wall and change the way they do business. Indeed, this is one of the key mechanisms of unionized labor - to bring management to the table for negotiation through the threat of work stoppage (striking).

[conradev]

I think the government is indeed massive with a diverse set of goals, but I think employees at Facebook may see their workplace the same way:

- They could work on something “good”, like trust and safety, community moderation tools, emergency response, etc.

- They could work on something user-driven or “neutral”, like Events or Groups which are used to organize anything from BLM protests to Trump rallies.

If they’re not actively designing privacy anti-patterns or trying to make the news feed more addictive, quitting would not really affect those problem areas.

I think organizing at the workplace is a great idea, and the threat of work stoppage could be a very real one if enough employees organize. But the idea of telling people to quit their jobs and distance themselves from the problem is very different from telling them to start organizing to fix the problem.

[notacoward]

As others have said, there are other possibilities. Some good, some neutral, perhaps some bad (but in ways unrelated to how Facebook itself is considered bad).

A great many are there to build their skills and/or resumes, which is a lot more than just putting food on the table. There aren't many places where one can learn so much so quickly about certain technologies (like VR/AR) or how to run things at that kind of scale, and most of those (e.g. Google, Amazon) have their own ethical issues. Many other companies, including some HN darlings, were founded by ex-FB employees. Some of them are doing good things, for practically any definition of "good" you might apply.

Others are there because they believe in the good Facebook does as well as the bad. As you said, they're likely exposed to more information about what the company does, which means a lower percentage is of the "jealous columnist at NYT" variety. Facebook helps connect people and businesses in positive ways as well as negative. You might think the ratio is not high enough, but others can quite reasonably disagree and/or think it's worth their time to work on improving that ratio.

There are many other possible reasons as well. "Evil or trapped" is not a useful simplification.

[darawk]

Which policies of Facebooks are 'evil', exactly?