[batmaniam]

This is an extremely unfair evaluation of software engineers. There's no such thing as a company doing ethical work, they all answer to shareholders and generate profit solely to benefit that class of people. Everyone else is the working class, trying to get by and without any ability to actually change the incentive structure of a company. We all work for someone who is screwing someone else, be it the consumer or your fellow coworker. It's all evil, and we are all doing the devil's work.

If you truly want fundamental ethical change, how about empowering the working class, so that we have a platform and the power to speak without reprisals? Then it goes beyond facebook, we can fight back against all types of abuses, ideological ones and the ones in the office. Can you imagine the kind of power we can have if we, in unison, shut down all our development work to fight for societal change? The government and corporations will bow.

Start a tech union, and let's see how far you get. That's a better answer than putting the onus on a single developer whose life is literally dependent on the company's continued employment.

Just don't be surprised that the company will do everything to shut you down, hard. And then you'll realize how ridiculous the evaluation you wrote above is.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

(1) There are privately held companies who are not answerable to shareholders (certainly not a large group of them), and who may not even operate with profit as their primary goal.

(2) There are more nuanced definitions of "working class" which might be useful in this context. As much as I applaud class solidarity, there are ways in which software engineers currently are not subject to the same issues as other people who sell their labor to capital in order to make a living.

(3) Empowering the working class has not been a particularly successful strategy when done at scale, from a historical perspective. It seems more effective to focus on empowering people you know, the place you live, organizations that have something to do with you. "The working class" is, at this point in US history, far too amorphous and ill-defined a group, riven by division sown by capital in its own interest, to really be the focus of much empowerment.

[acephal]

Yeah really can't behind this idea software engineers are in any way "working class". Kind of an affront in my book.

[ogre_codes]

> There's no such thing as a company doing ethical work,

A "Company" is the sum of the collective actions of its employees, board, and management. If that collective does things which are unethical—for example supporting repressive regimes—then that is unethical.

While some companies are borderline, there is zero doubt in my mind that Facebook is unethical.