[jazzpush2]

Meta continuing to be the most shameless (and shameful to work for) company around.

I can't think of a single product of theirs that hasn't made the world a markedly worse place. Even their recent hardware foray is managing to find a way to ruin trust in everyday interactions (guys filming drunk girls with Ray Bans, surveillance, etc.).

Have several friends at the more 'thoughtful' frontier labs that bin meta applicants straight to the trash for this very reason.

[haunter]

> I can't think of a single product of theirs that hasn't made the world a markedly worse place

zstd

I’m torn about React and PyTorch :)

[zx8080]

Meta is a golden jail for one teenager who cannot grow up no matter what he does. Shame.

[zombot]

Seeing how much damage he does as it is, I don't want to know the grown-up version.

[inigyou]

Facebook, for instance, made a lot of money for shareholders, which we know is the same thing as making the world a better place.

[test6554]

Back in the day... 2004-2005 facebook was amazing. Spread like wildfire, and lots of fun to use. Just you and your college friends, and their friends.

[lend000]

Even the original idea (if The Social Network is a trustworthy source) was copied -- Zuckerberg just has a complete lack of vision, but is clearly an intelligent operator with good business sense. Jagged intelligence, like an LLM.

[digitaltrees]

Or he’s backed by the CIA?

[zer0zzz]

What are these "thoughtful" frontier labs you speak of? I see Meta folks going to the big ones all the time. Ton of former PyTorch/Inductor folks now are at Ant/TM etc.

Everyone I know in the GPU compiler/GPGPU space seems to be either going to meta or leaving meta for NV or some AI lab. My anecdotal observations don't align with "bin meta applicants straight to the trash."

[magixx]

Portal was pretty good and an originalish product

[digitaltrees]

Spy on your grand parents from the convenience of your kitchen counter top!

now in arctic white!

[sbrother]

Why did they discontinue that? It was a very good product; we got them for all the grandparents and they worked really well at bringing the family together across distance. Could have fit in so well with WhatsApp too. But then they just killed it.

[measurablefunc]

Shareholders didn't like it. At the end of the day Meta is an advertising company so everything they do must be in service of increasing revenue from advertising.

[pwdisswordfishq]

Valve is a different company.

[steve_adams_86]

Meta's Portal is different from Valve's Portal.

https://www.meta.com/ca/portal/

[whateveracct]

> Meta Portal devices and accessories are no longer available

lol

[millerfiller]

I hope there’s a day where collectively the money is no longer enough and reason and good will prevails so that Meta can crumble to dust while I am alive; but doubtful that day will ever come.

[jopolous]

Where should we work instead?

I’d really like to leave, but I’m kind of stuck, and I don’t have enough to retire.

I have to work remote from a non-coast state for family care reasons, and the places I’ve interviewed at the last few months have balked at hiring a remote employee.

[dozerly]

Your options are:

1. Find another job 2. Don’t find another job

You can’t say “where else can I work” like you have no agency over your life. Everyone chooses every day to do what they do that day.

You don’t get to be morally absolved because you’re choosing the easy path and you’re “stuck”. I’m sure there are plenty of places that pay less that would love to have talented remote employees.

[tempay]

The key point here is the “pay less” part. I know people that have turned down offers from meta that would 5x their salary and their personal situation would notably improve from at least some of that extra cash.

The OP is a bit preachy and maybe some employees really don’t have any other options even with accepting lower salaries, but the majority should at least realise the golden handcuffs their bound by even if they choose not to act on them.

[test6554]

I don't blame someone for working at facebook, but I don't think most of you realize how cash money a FANG company looks on your resume to IT managers at the lowly normal companies. Go work in financial services, insurance, retail, go be a contractor and work/travel until you find what you like.

[ra0x3]

Not sure why you're being downvoted. Maybe a little preachy, but the gist of the point isn't incorrect

[dozerly]

In a large portion of tech people like to pretend that they are absolved of responsibility for their societal contributions. “Get that bag” and all that. Work at Anduril as long as it makes that bread, etc.

It makes sense that someone promoting them to re-evaluate the harm they’re causing by participating would elicit negative response

[least]

People don’t particularly care for platitudes from anonymous people on the internet. Even less so when they reduce a complex dilemma in your life to a binary choice between an “easy and amoral” option and a “difficult but righteous” one.

Most people make compromises inside imperfect systems. The person casting judgment almost certainly has their own moral compromises too, except those they understand, contextualize, rationalize, and forgive themselves for.

It’s just tiresome. There may not be a ton of context, but even knowing that someone is bound to a particular place because of caregiving responsibilities should be enough to invite a little more empathy and grace, and a lot less judgment.

[ryandrake]

I think there would be more empathy if Meta were the only company in the world where it was possible to work. That's "stuck." This is not.

I've quit jobs over ethical boundaries. It's not an easy decision, and "integrity" doesn't quite pay rent, but helped me to sleep better at night and let me live with myself.

[pishpash]

They are not understanding that it's not one person's moral failing at the root of it, it's the system that forces everyone into participating in amoral things, including for example the investors of Meta who are getting a bigger bag. That includes every one of you S&P500 index fund hodlers.

[whateveracct]

i have like 5 companies in my rolodex who would hire me to be fully remote tomorrow

get with the times

[otterley]

Knock it off. Nobody wants to read your braggadocio, and it’s insulting to people who are having real challenges finding work.

[brcmthrowaway]

They dont need frontier labs. Meta's dashboard jockeys get paid the same

[TZubiri]

WhatsApp

[sillywalk]

Nitpick: Facebook bought WhatsApp, it didn't make it.

[Marsymars]

They've also largely made WhatsApp worse.

[zer0zzz]

How so? Most of the hardcore encryption stuff was built at Facebook under the founder's supervision afaik for the purposes of making it harder for Zuck to inevitably ruin the privacy aspects.

I personally don't use it, because it _is_ loaded with engagement bait but its not all worse and is better in some ways.

[gmerc]

Reconning. We made it so Zuck had plausible deniability for all the bad shit happening on WA as a direct result of anticipated regulatory pressure.

There is no “make things harder for the dictator” at Meta/Fb and never has been.

[inigyou]

They added ads, an "AI companion", and backdoor logging of all chat messages

[otterley]

That last one’s going to need some substantiation.

“In the ordinary course of providing our service, WhatsApp does not store messages once they are delivered or transaction logs of such delivered messages. Undelivered messages are deleted from our servers after 30 days. As stated in the WhatsApp Privacy Policy, we may collect, use, preserve, and share user information if we have a good-faith belief that it is reasonably necessary to (a) keep our users safe, (b) detect, investigate, and prevent illegal activity, (c) respond to legal process, or to government requests, (d) enforce our Terms and policies. This may include information about how some users interact with others on our service. We also offer end-to-end encryption for our services, which is always activated. End-to-end encryption means that messages are encrypted to protect against WhatsApp and third parties from reading them.” (https://faq.whatsapp.com/444002211197967)

[asp_hornet]

I think OP’s point is that it was bought not made similar to Instagram.

[dxxmxnd]

Binning applications for working at Meta seems hilarious and over the top. The ‘thoughtful’ labs are vacuuming up everyone’s chat logs and prompts to train the next model as well.