[yodsanklai]

There are tons of good reasons to work for Meta. You can work on interesting projects, build your resume and network, work on interesting engineering problems, learn from other people, and of course, they pay very well. People do need to support their family, secure their retirement and so on...

Is it perfect? certainly not. Is the company toxic? where do you draw the line? how much are you willing to compromise given the other advantages you get? Everybody has a different answer to these questions. Some people would tell you that even working in tech is wrong due to environmental concerns.

Personally, I would happily work for Meta. Many people use their services and like them. Is it the greatest thing for society? probably not, but neither is Netflix or Amazon or Apple...

[yojo]

Meta is straight evil. It undermines the institutions of democracy and it negatively impacts its users mental health, all in service of selling your data to advertisers so they can better goad unnecessary consumption.

If I learn you work at Meta, I will judge you as at best lacking a moral compass and treat you appropriately.

Apple has problems, but is a lot closer to morally neutral. Ditto for Netflix.

Amazon has hollowed out local retail/is also bad for society, though not on Meta’s scale. But you sell your soul more cheaply there.

[vanuatu]

not to defend zuck but its a common misconception that meta sells data

advertisers dont see the personal data they buy for ad placement

[jbuhbjlnjbn]

There is no misconception. Meta also sells data, next to selling advertising space.

[seattle_spring]

They literally don't. Data is their moat; selling it would be counter to their financial success.

[jbuhbjlnjbn]

Well not in bulk to its advertisement competitors as you seem to suggest. But as a different revenue stream, data collectors sell the collected information. Don't be naive, of course they do, first customer are governments.

[spongebobstoes]

no, it doesn't sell user data. or, where can I buy some?

[doublerabbit]

Brokers. Acxiom and Experian for starters.

Heck, you can buy facebook datasets right now from brightdata.

https://brightdata.com/products/datasets/facebook

Don't you recall the Cambridge Analytica scandal?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica

All corporates sell your data. You're a fool to think otherwise, data makes dosh, and you can sell any data for a price.

Data is a commodity.

There are current ten plus folk in the subway carriage I am sitting in right now. Toss me £10 and I'll give you a dataset of ten people of what colour tops they're wearing and what brand of shoe and colour.

And yes you can sell your internet data too.

https://www.moneymagpie.com/make-money/make-money-selling-yo...

[spongebobstoes]

this is just not correct.

the brightdata link is a data set scraped from Facebook, not sold by Facebook

Cambridge Analytica was the same thing, scraped from Facebook by people who voluntarily (perhaps ignorantly) gave their data to quiz apps like "what kind of horse are you?"

Facebook does not sell user data, and it never has

[dbgrman]

its not a misconception. As an advertiser, I can go use meta's tools, target people specifically, and show them ads on meta's platform. While i don't get the CSV dump, but if i can target people with my message, its the same thing. Meta keeps the data AND the distribution. Data brokers have the data but no distribution of attention for that data. Newspapers have distribution but don't have the granualar data for direct targeting.

There are many, many use cases of having a CSV dump of the data, but in reality, all of it boils down to either reselling the data, or marketing a product to the demographic in the data.

The 3rd use case is that of palantir but let's not get distracted.

So, meta is not selling data is like saying netflix is not selling movies (its actually buying them). Technically true, but a shallow understanding.

[vanuatu]

i dont think targeted ads are necessarily bad, and definitely not has bad as the data freely shared vs. behind meta's walls

and what is this 3rd use case?

[mrguyorama]

Why should anyone at all care about this distinction?

[vanuatu]

i care that my data isnt being sold

i dont really care that i get targeted ads, in fact i prefer targeted ads vs. ones that are of no use to me

[adammarples]

Really do you care that your daughters are being advertised beauty products at the exact moment that they delete a photo because it's likely that they're feeling low self esteem at that moment? Because that's a service that you used to be able to buy from Meta.

[vanuatu]

i think some targeted ads are bad

and social media is probably bad

[gobdovan]

Why wouldn't Meta also directly sell data if nobody cared about this distinction?

[mcdeltat]

I have learnt that very few in tech hold themselves to a complex moral standard. Most seem to have an attitude like "well company X is offering money, why not take it?" Some seem to genuinely believe large money = large societal value no matter what the job is. Quite blasé and pretty sad.

[jkl5xx]

This is a pretty uncharitable perspective. Most folks I know working at Meta or Amazon aren’t morally bankrupt. They just have kids, debt, poor parents with health problems, etc. They work at Meta to support their loved ones. And it’s not like you can walk onto the street and just wave down a morally superior job with similar pay and benefits. Blame the tech oligarchs, not the workers.

[gaiagraphia]

"Supporting their loved ones" is doing a lot of moral heavy lifting here, though.

History's littered with people trotting out this line when they've valued luxury and status over morals.

The more you interact with something, the more you are part of it and help it prosper. "Blame the kings!" is a little bit too simple, imo.

[jkl5xx]

Thanks for the level-headed response. Agreed, "blame the kings" is also an overly simplistic take. There's rarely a single entity to blame. Just wanted to bring some nuance to the hate getting thrown around here.

Redirecting frustration towards the systemic issues that drive perfectly normal people to work for a terrible company like Meta seems more productive to me.

I hate what Meta does just as much as the next guy, but shaming friends who feel like they have no better employment option doesn't seem like the best way to make a difference here.

[Jtarii]

When you are paid $500,000+ a year you lose the right to use the "I'm just supporting my family" excuse.

You sold your morals for a wheelbarrow of money, that is the end of the story.

[gaiagraphia]

People struggle with claiming responsibility for their actions.

They think a 6 digit salary is a god-given right, and that everybody else is to blame if their work results in negative externalities for the rest of society/the world.

It's quite ok to say "I chose the money and don't value x". I'd prefer the honesty, rather than people larping as moral crusaders and throwing blame around.

[adammarples]

If morality is only a consideration after similar pay and benefits are secured, then it's not really a high enough consideration to call the person moral

[p-e-w]

There are many, many tech jobs at many companies (at least there used to be, until very recently).

“I work for one of the most evil institutions on the planet today because it is the only way I can support my sick parents” is an absurd excuse.

[Trasmatta]

It's not actually that hard, most companies are morally superior to Meta. Even the other evil ones.

[yoyohello13]

Lol, it's always. Oh, think of these poor software engineers making $400,000 a year. Just scraping by to support their family. Give me a break.

When you're pulling that kind of money, there is a choice.

[jmye]

Reads like "The poor kapos had kids! They weren't evil, they were just upstanding people supporting their families!"

Absolute bullshit.

> And it’s not like you can walk onto the street and just wave down a morally superior job with similar pay

Oh no! They might only have to make mid-six figures! Welp, better give some teenage girls depression. They really don't have a choice, do they?

Zero good people work at Meta.

[jjulius]

Hey, at least you're open and honest about being okay with contributing to such a global net negative as long as you get something out of it.

[poisonborz]

This an ad company that proveably, willingly targeted insecure children. You could write the same things about Northrop Grumman or Palantir. I mean corporations were never angels, but how software engineers can work anywhere else with similar features... just why.

[fourside]

Growing up, I’d wonder how people could work for companies like cigarette manufacturers even after it became well known that their products wreck havoc on your health.

This comment is a masterclass in the type of mental gymnastics people do to justify working for these kind of companies.

> Is the company toxic? where do you draw the line?

You couldn’t even answer the question you yourself posed.

[yodsanklai]

Meta isn't nowhere near cigarettes manufacturers in terms of damage. Tobacco kills millions every year. Meta may need even more regulation, and you can argue that social medias aren't the greatest invention, but I don't think they are that bad.

There's no mental gymnastics here. I draw the line differently than you, that's all. I'm not a big fan of Meta and their products, I would be happy to work there anyway for the reasons I mentioned. But I wouldn't work for let say Marlboro.

[psvv]

I think one could make a hypothetical case that working at a cigarette company in 2026 is a more morally justifiable position than working at meta in 2026, because cigarettes as they're regulated today generally only affect adults, only affects those who opt in, and kills people on average near the end of their lives.

Meta's decisions affect everyone, even non-users, because of their outsized impact on society. But they also have way more users than cigarettes, and deliberately prey on children and teens in ways that could affect them their whole lives (see recent lawsuit).

I would struggle to judge anyone working for either of these companies. I think the blame lies at the top, or is shared by all of us for failing to build a better society which prevents such exploitation.

Measuring damage to society, or the degree of moral bankruptcy in a company's leadership, is a very difficult thing to quantify.

So, I agree with you that these are personal choices, and everyone will draw the line differently based on who they're comfortable working for and what they're comfortable contributing to.

[jscd]

Maybe not in the millions, but Meta is certainly not free from bloodshed. For example, in efforts to promote "engagement," they left the rollout of Facebook in Myanmar dangerously unmoderated, and (at least according to claims by Amnesty International[1]) are at least partially responsible for the genocide of the Rohingya there, which saw the tens of thousands of deaths.

[1]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa16/5933/2022/en/

[rafterydj]

Putting Meta next to Netflix in terms of moral culpability is in my opinion laughable.

I don't disagree that there are reasons people compromise on things like the morality of their employer - tale as old as society itself. I do disagree that many people like Meta's services - the only things I have seen people like about Meta is Facebook Marketplace (which is really just Craig's List or eBay if you are looking at technical problems) or the Meta Quest VR (which they've since gutted employment wise since the metaverse debacle).

Not only is it a morally bad employer, but it's also not a very good employer overall. They've just got institutional inertia keeping them entrenched, and are trying to buy their way into AI dominance to boot.

It's hard to imagine a tech company with more clear disdain for their employees than Meta. To me, that seems like a recipe for a dead company, but by all means, build your resume and network.

*Edit: people also use Instagram, but the engineering problems with that are also found in newer social networks like Bluesky, with a little less engagement addiction focus.

[rightbyte]

Yeah like, what evil does Netflix do other than autoplaying the next episode? Like ... it is not just not the same league but different fields.

[Nasrudith]

They commit the most egregious of sins, competing with established media industries so the knives come out in their portrayal.