[jen729w]

> a desperate red herring.

Or you can recognise that ‘Meta’ isn’t a conscious entity, and that it’s perfectly likely that there are some people over there doing amazing open-source work, and different people over there making ethically dubious decisions when building their LLMs.

[account42]

The people doing amazing open-source work are also making the ethically dubious decision of supporting the other group by working for FB.

[jen729w]

Ah I think this is bullshit to be honest.

I’ve worked for dozens of organisations in my career. Large and small, competent and not. Usually not.

In that time did I make some ‘ethically correct’ choice to leave an enormous organisation because some other part of that organisation did something that wasn’t ethically perfect?

Never. Not one time.

And I’m an ethical person. I consider this stuff deeply. Here I am bothering to have this conversation with you.

But, what, every person who has an interesting job doing good things — remember, we’re talking about engineers developing a new audio codec — so those people who have interesting jobs doing good things with a great team are expected to look over there to some distant part of the org, to teams they’re barely aware of, let alone have spoken to, and they’re expected to quit their jobs because of the ‘ethically dubious’ stuff going on over there?

Sorry. Unrealistic, idealistic bullshit. I’ve never done it and neither have you.

[bishbosh]

Not the person you're responding to, but I guess I would just have to flip that back around and say really this is bullshit to be honest.

I guess I don't really feel that you can just say you're an ethical person and have it absolve yourself of impact of your work.

It doesn't seem a stretch to say that the goals of meta are propagated by the things meta focuses work on, and even if one isn't on the forefront of stealing data, intruding on privacy, or maximizing engagement at all costs, doesn't mean nothing they do will play a part in those teams.

At the end of the day, even accounting at the orphan crushing factory plays a part in the orphan crushing machine.