[OpieCunningham]

Nice.

> I don't think it's an emergent property, I think it's a by-product of the constraints. > Imagine if you were trying to fix climate change, but under the condition that you weren't allowed to burn fewer fossil fuels.

There is one person who controls all the constraints: Zuckerberg. He even went so far as to enforce that through his stock classifications. It’s entirely understandable and acceptable to have empathy for those working at FB who are attempting to solve the problems. But Zuckerberg made the decision to be the single source of the constraints that bind everyone below. And his constraints are: profit over all else. He should face consequences for setting those constraints, just as anyone should who set a constraint of “address climate change without adversely effecting GDP”.

Separately, and as the “revelations” of Zuckerberg’s immoral behavior continues year after year, those who work for him but are attempting to solve the problems, should recognize at some point in the future, now, or in the past that the problems are insurmountable within the confines of the constraints. As that knowledge spreads, then the question becomes whether those idealistically earnest individuals are justifiably ignorant of the reality: that all their best intentions are moot in the face of the constraints as were determined by Zuckerberg. And when or if they are no longer justifiably ignorant, they become culpable.

[pmp11pmp]

Zuckerberg is simply over his head and I think he knows it(I certainly wouldn't want to be in his shoes). I don't think he's evil I think he was enamored of this toy he built, he pushed it in very logical "business" directions, and now it's been adopted by so many people and its so big, its business model is having real world impact where I'm sure he'd prefer, from an intellectual perspective, that it acted totally passively. He's right, no business should have to determine the morals of a society, which is essentially what we are asking of facebook. The bigger picture is more complex than most people realize.

[saiya-jin]

I think you are overly generous to him. He has extremely powerful tools at his hand, and he properly owns them and has absolute power over them.

But due to whatever reasons (ego, greed of seeing his net worth rising and fear of losing some of it etc.) he won't take morally right step that would harm FB's financials in any way.

On top of that, let's be clear - the mission of FB never was some altruistic connecting the world, in contrary - it was all that juicy private data on each of us while we are connecting and interacting, quietly building a shadow profile for every single human being. There is no moral high ground there no matter how much mental gymnastics you try. If FB would somehow leak those data publicly, the company would go bust very quickly.

In more than 1 way, I struggle to understand these whistleblowers - they get hired for tons of money into company with clearly amoral (or at very best dubious) mission and then they are surprised when it actually is... Similar case would be going to investment or private banking and then being surprised how business is set up and how decision makers in it behave

[ashtonkem]

Nobody is forcing him to keep doing this. He’s waking up every day and making the choice to keep running FB today the same way he ran it yesterday. He could just quit

[Yoric]

Sure, but... what would that change?

[ashtonkem]

This is a rebuttal to the “he’s in over his head” argument. If he personally is in over his head, the obvious solution is to quit and let someone more capable run the company.

I personally do not buy the “in over his head” argument, fwiw.

[Yoric]

Fair enough.