[bagels]

I can't comment on the numbers, but think of how many engineers work there and how many users Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram have. Each engineer is adding new features and queries every day. You're going to get a lot of queries.

[bee_rider]

We’ve really wasted an incredible amount of talent-hours over last couple decades. Imagine if we’d worked on, like, climate change or something instead of ad platforms.

[esafak]

"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks." - Jeff Hammerbacher (2011); early Facebook employee, and Cloudera cofounder.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/quote...

[akira2501]

The waste of talent hours is directly connected to climate change. The waste of network bandwidth is as well as the waste of compute cycles to run these "social" platforms.

That all being said, as humans have free will, imagining what we "could have done" if we just _forced_ everyone to do something different is flirting with fascism.

[bee_rider]

Sure, I wouldn’t suggest forcing everyone to work on something else. We all could have been better, and the government could have tried to incentivize more productive work (they already provide incentives on way or another after all).

[spencerflem]

I think most devs also would rather work on something good too, but those jobs are rare and pay worse. That's the part that needs fixing

[theptip]

Exactly. I think it’s misguided to blame Meta or Google here. People respond to incentives, and the masses want to buy stuff using e-commerce, hence it’s profitable.

I’m oversimplifying, but that’s the root of it. If people instead of buying things from ads were looking for the best ways to purchase offsets for CO2 emissions, then the best minds would be working on that problem.

[spencerflem]

Right, that's not going to happen though for pretty obvious reasons.

Governmental incentives and carbon taxes can make more jobs in CO2, but expecting individual citizens to solve a collective action problem is doomed.

At the same time, I think it is fair to ask people to look at what they're doing for/to the world and decide if that's something that fits their values. 300k salary is nice, but almost certainly not something you need

[theptip]

By the same token, you are asking people to introspect and unilaterally sacrifice in a way that, for the same reason, is not going to happen for pretty obvious reasons.

I’m on board with solving this at the governmental level FWIW. I support stronger anti-trust enforcement for example (and not just targeting tech).

[baby]

You make it sound like everybody at Meta works in the ads department.

[bee_rider]

It is an ad company, everyone there works on ads or indirectly works on making a platform for ads.

The only exception is people who’ve managed to sneak their way into positions where they don’t contribute anything to the company. Those people are doing society a favor by wasting Facebook’s money.

[theptip]

I don’t think that’s true. Google took their ad money and placed a famous number of bets on moonshots, more than any company in a long time (back as far as Bell Labs? Did even they fund their research to the extent Google has?)

The whole Metaverse bet at Meta is also plausibly a 10s-of-$b bet that isn’t going to drive the ad flywheel, though I’m sure they hope it is. My impression is Zuck would be ok with just having a VR platform even if it’s generating revenue from not-ads.

[bagels]

Well, a lot of them do work directly on ads. Obviously not everybody, but a significant fraction. And most of the rest are just building things (products, features) to be able to show more ads.

[jojobas]

98% of Meta's revenue is from ads. Meta is an ads department.

[Scubabear68]

They all do.

[goatking]

found the meta employee