[afavour]

> The rank and file engineers and designers and PMs doing the work were all morally correct people

Then why didn't they quit?

I believe I could have gotten a job at Meta (and hey, maybe I'm wrong!) but I've never been able to stomach the idea of working on their products. If I can choose to avoid working on morally compromising things, why can't they?

And look, I get it. If they didn't make it some other engineer would. There's no union or anything that would make resisting it a meaningful cause. But that doesn't mean everyone can absolve themselves of any culpability. They took the (big pile of) money, they did the work.

[palmotea]

>> The rank and file engineers and designers and PMs doing the work were all morally correct people

> Then why didn't they quit?

I can't speak for those people, but decisions like quitting your job aren't one-dimensional. Quitting a job can create severe hardships for a family, stress relationships to the breaking point, etc. The Bay Area is very expensive, so I'd imagine that's true even for workers making otherwise very good salaries at Facebook. Then consider that the harms caused by Facebook are remote, abstract, and diffuse. Also, making the pushing for the right decision to only get overruled by the people in power can feel like doing enough for many people.

Also, there's the frog in a pot effect: a lot of the problems with social media have only become well understood relatively recently. Maybe you'd chose no to join Facebook today, but would stay if you'd already worked there for 10 years.

> If I can choose to avoid working on morally compromising things, why can't they?

What other morally compromising things have you not chosen to avoid? The modern world is full of them, many of them well publicized even if they're not in-your-face. IMHO, it's impossible to avoid them all without killing yourself.

[afavour]

> I can't speak for those people, but decisions like quitting your job aren't one-dimensional. Quitting a job can create severe hardships for a family, stress relationships to the breaking point, etc.

I can't disagree with that. But my point is more... own it, then.

OP's comment said the leaders are fully responsible. I argue the engineers are responsible too. If they made the decision they made because they don't want their family to leave the Bay Area then that's the decision they made: they put their family ahead of broader societal damage they're helping create. I might do the same for my family. But I wouldn't try to claim that I'm completely blameless in the scenario.

> Also, making the pushing for the right decision to only get overruled by the people in power can feel like doing enough for many people.

I suppose I would counter with "but it isn't".

> What other morally compromising things have you not chosen to avoid?

Again, I agree with what you're saying, every day involves some level of moral compromise. But the task I choose to dedicate most of my waking hours to, day in day out, is a little different from whether I buy free range eggs or not.

[lazide]

So you’re saying hard decisions… are hard for reasons? No shit Sherlock.

They made them a specific way, and will be stained with the consequences, because they were cowards who took the easy way out.

[palmotea]

> They made them a specific way, and will be stained with the consequences, because they were cowards who took the easy way out.

One thing I've gotten tired of as I've gotten older is self-righteous judgement like that, when directed at the rank-and-file.

Your assignment: carefully inspect your life, and enumerate all the things which you are "stained with the consequences, because [you] were [a] coward who took the easy way out." There are lots because you're a human living in the modern world. Then, before you join the peanut gallery to judge smoeone, remember that guy's like you.

Sure, judge leaders like Zuckerberg like that, the buck stops with him, and his lieutenants who support his vision, and associates with "fuck you" money. But regular folks who need a job who try to do the right thing within their scope but are overridden? Come on.

[lazide]

‘Just following orders’ is derided for a reason.

What do you think that actually looks like?

The same damn thing.

What do you think the scientists working at big tobacco said to themselves?

The same damn thing.

The system won’t work without the ‘little people’ doing all the day to day.

This is, quite literally, the ‘banality of evil’.

[palmotea]

> ‘Just following orders’ is derided for a reason.

For things like murdering people and genocide. When you're talking about controversial/gray areas, where there is no crime or clear consensus on punishable immorality, then no.

Expand that concept too far, too zealously, and you might as well shoot everyone because everyone's guilty. The world ain't black and white.

[lazide]

Facebook’s algorithms have quite literally caused that. Nearly a decade ago. And haven’t much improved.

And is clearly (with many, many studies on the topic over a decade plus) behind the rise of right wing nationalism and the fraying social contract.

Zuck is very, very aware of this - as leaked emails show. He knows, but continues anyway, and anyone at Meta at this point who also doesn’t know is being willfully ignorant.

This is the ‘cigarettes don’t cause cancer’ argument.

[iterateoften]

Don’t worry, all employees were morally good people, who chose to stay and make millions from the harm to children they supposedly were resisting.

It’s not like meta was a charity. There was a lot of money being made by every one knowing the harm they were doing.

[smugma]

2017-2019… it sounds like maybe he did quit.

[AlexandrB]

“The awful thing about life is this: everyone has their reasons.”