[Oarch]

A few years ago I had a date with a backend engineer at Meta.

I asked if they'd ever considered the societal implications of the work they did. They said "Oh wow I've never even thought about it". Probably a solid hire from Meta's perspective.

[nostrademons]

I know an ex-Facebook employee who told me that "Nobody at Facebook ever makes a conscious decision about whether something is good or bad. You are given a metric, and your job is to make that metric go up. If it turns out that making the metric go up has negative consequences [for the business, I don't think it's anyone's job to worry about the rest of society], then somebody else is given another metric to ameliorate the negative consequences of you making your metric go up."

He didn't last all that long, he had a conscience. I've heard similar things, but not quite in such clear words, from several other people I know who have worked at Facebook/Meta.

[motbus3]

I know couple of people who said exactly same thing. One of them is quite smart and I asked what was his/her personal opinion and I've heard: "I'd rather not talk about it ever again"

[jonah]

That's a really effective way to get a group of people to do horrible things. Break it up into small pieces where each one isn't that bad in and of itself.

[nostrademons]

Basically how a corporation is structured. The whole point is limited legal liability, so that the corporation as a whole can do things that would be blatantly illegal if any one person did them.

Governments too. The defining characteristic of a state is the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Some more recent theories on state formation come down to the state being the biggest bandit of them all, the one that subsumes and threatens to kill all other organized sources of violence, and hence becomes the "legitimate" one simply because it has eliminated all other contenders. One of the most popular courses at my college was entitled "Murder", and the syllabus was largely devoted to this tension between how the worst crime of all, when talking about individuals, is simply how states do business.

[knollimar]

That sounds mysterious and important

[kingofmen]

Or you missed the eye-rolling sarcasm in the answer they have to give on every goddam first date.

[ryandrake]

Maybe I'm just a wacky Bleeding-Heart, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect someone who worked on a product that amplified hate, leading up to a massacre in Myanmar, to at least address that without sarcasm while getting to know them.

[sunnybeetroot]

Maybe it’s a question for the third date?

[Dumbledumb]

Getting to know the views and values of your date is not a weird thing to do on the first date. If it’s a question that annoys them, they should consider why.

[throwanem]

Imagine dating someone who works at Facebook, though. I can't imagine who would be so utterly dense as to offer so presumptuous a complaint, but he'd better be at least a 13 out of 10 or I'm not even bothering to pretend to go to the bathroom and then sneak out the back.

[zeroonetwothree]

You sound fun to date

[brabel]

That can only be a sarcastic answer, don’t you think?? You really believe people would get a job at former Facebook, after lots of scandals have been exposed, and not even think about that?? Sorry no way.

[SpaceNoodled]

You seriously underestimate how myopic people can be. Not everyone is a sophisticated and socially aware HN commenter like you and I.