
FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord - mful
https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-to-curb-internal-debate-over-sensitive-issues-amid-employee-discord-11600368481
======
hirundo
If we were to discuss politics at work at any length we would be at immediate
risk of losing valuable people. We all pretty much know where we stand on
politics, and it is not together. And many of us feel very strongly about our
irreconcilable positions. But by carefully not talking about them (or engaging
when someone less in tune starts) we get along just fine. That's not official
policy but it is a good one.

~~~
benjohnson
Our small company has a "No drama" policy. We have an astounding diverse team
and we've learned to appreciate each other.

~~~
tolbish
Does your company do anything remotely controversial such as moderating how
people are informed, or providing tech for military organizations?

~~~
ry_co
It is a political opinion itself to think those actions are controversial. At
scale, anything is political. The only solution is to keep politics out of
business, and manifest our political opinions through government. Business,
like economics or biology, is dismal. The most efficient and productive
continue on.

Government's role is to make the ideologically agnostic machine of business
align with our values. In the kind of competitive economy we have, it can only
be this way. If we try to apply politics from within a business, we risk
introducing instabilities and ineffeciencies, making the business less
competitive–an existential threat to the values we incorporated into the
business.

~~~
dragonwriter
> It is a political opinion itself to think those actions are controversial.

No, the existence of controversy over an issue is a question of empirical
fact, not political opinion.

The ascription of significance to the existence of controversy may be a
political opinion (and is certainly a value-based opinion), but not the
question of whether controversy exists.

~~~
ballenf
If it's an empirical fact, how much objection from how many (and which) people
is enough to cross the line into controversial? You can always find at least
one upset person about any significant decision of any company, thus it's
inherently political when you decide which group of people or how big a group
you have to have to merit the "controversial" badge.

Those complaining of being deplatformed would probably agree strongly with
your definition, however, so I will admit the definition of this word is
itself controversial. Or maybe I shouldn't, because the prior sentence feels
very political to me.

~~~
dragonwriter
> If it's an empirical fact, how much objection from how many (and which)
> people is enough to cross the line into controversial?

Any. Controversial is a continuous-valued, not binary, attribute.

How controversial is enough to justify a particular reaction? That's a
political judgement, and in practice has as much to do with where you stand on
the controversy as how much controversy there is.

------
patorjk
At 3 paragraphs (131 words), that was a really short article. However, I agree
with the subheading: "Mark Zuckerberg says employees shouldn’t have to
confront social issues in their day-to-day work unless they want to"

That sounds good to me. I've never had to talk about these kind of things at
work. Are there work places where this is unavoidable?

~~~
jseliger
It's interesting to watch companies rediscover the old rule about leaving
politics and religion at the door.

~~~
munificent
If a business wants its employees to leave politics at the door, _the business
should too._ If Facebook is going to have departments for government affairs,
public policy, and lobbying, then it is _entirely_ reasonable for employees to
be politically active too.

Otherwise, you're basically saying corporations should participate in the
political process but individuals should not. And that's exactly how we got
the Earth into the increasingly shitty state it is currently in.

~~~
reader_mode
That's a straw man argument, just because an employee isn't allowed to bring
politics to work doesn't mean they can't be politically active on their own
time.

~~~
munificent
So individuals can do recreational politics but corporations are free to sink
as much of their resources into it as they want?

Is your claim that we really need _more_ corporate control over politics in
the US and less citizen participation?

~~~
newcomputer
Individuals are also free to sink as much of their resources into it as they
want.

The fact of the matter is political conversations have high risk of
annoying/frustrating/alienating their participants. To have these
conversations at work is just making employees less productive and asking for
a controversy.

~~~
namuol
> To have these conversations at work is just making employees less productive
> and asking for a controversy.

I dare say it might be time for some employees at Facebook to pause and think
about how their work may have an impact on the world.

~~~
fxtentacle
That would be frustrating. And it might lower their productivity.

As Facebook, I'd rather pay for some yoga classes so that people don't have
time to think about their actions.

------
itg
Looks like tech companies are finding out there's a good reason so many older
companies discouraged talk of politics, religion, etc.

------
wmf
Google's similar policy change leaked yesterday:
[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/16/google-content-moderation-
in...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/16/google-content-moderation-internal-
message-boards-memegen.html)

~~~
teddyh
From a cursory reading it does not really sound similar; it sounds like Google
is picking a side and doubling down on it. The description of the Facebook
policy, on the other hand, _suggests_ that Facebook are trying to suppress the
drama, not picking a side in it.

------
throwitawayfb
I've just been given an offer from Facebook and I have a few days to decide to
take the job or not. The ethical implications of what I'm doing are intense.
On one hand, a near 400k total comp package is very nice, but on the other
hand I don't want to make the world worse off. I think if I could make that
kind of money working from home for another company it'd be an easier
decision. Unfortunately, I have to play the hand I'm dealt.

~~~
baby
I’m obviously biased since I work there, but I had the exact same concerns
before starting two years ago. In reality things are much more different that
what HN makes it sound like. There’s all sorts of people, and not everyone
agree, and much like the current climate in the US people are getting more and
more polarized. I think it’s pretty awesome that everyone in the company is
free to express themselves and debate and openly challenge management during
Q&As and other events, but I also recognize that at some point the debates can
turn toxic and I can see why we would want to avoid that. Once you realize how
things work from the inside, you realize that the majority of people do want
to make the world a better place, and that it’s easy to pick on things that
didn’t work quite well and forget all of the positive sides that social
networks have brought to the world. You can tell me that I’m drinking the kool
aid but IMO internally things are really not at all like HN likes to portray
it everyday.

~~~
Reedx
> Once you realize how things work from the inside, you realize that the
> majority of people do want to make the world a better place

It's hard to square that with the algorithmic feed, likes, etc, which are
making the world worse every single day in favor of engagement metrics. We've
known for many years how destructive these are.

Facebook and Twitter could literally make the world a better place simply by
disabling those kind of features. Just remove them. It doesn't get easier than
that to substantially improve the world, yet it's not being done.

~~~
luckylion
> Facebook and Twitter could literally make the world a better place simply by
> disabling those kind of features. Just remove them.

I'm not sure about that. I agree that the world might be better, but I'm not
sure they could just disable them. The next smaller competitor who won't will
have more user engagement and grow. If something is a very effective
advantage, I believe you can only remove it by coordinated action and enforce
it on a global scale.

Modern weapons are terribly efficient at killing people. But if you're the
only country that's removing them from your arsenal, you depend on the mercy
of your neighbors.

~~~
jakear
This doesn’t need to be a secret flipped switch. It could be a very public
announcement, which lots of supporting data and arguments. Nobody is going to
build a successful competitor to FB based off of “we’re doing the same thing
that Facebook just very publicly stopped doing because they took a stand
against its society-destroying implications”.

~~~
luckylion
Maybe, but I have doubts. Nobody likes predatory lending, but it's still a
blossoming industry. I believe that works for small things, but if the
advantage is large enough, somebody will step up and do it.

And it's not like people don't like it. They "want" to be engaged, to feel
anger and surprise etc, those systems work because they're catering to
peoples' instincts and desires.

------
mensetmanusman
Interesting to see young companies fall into line. There is a reason it is
against norms to talk about these things in most companies, because it causes
undo conflict usually far outside of the context of what is being worked on.

------
m0zg
Good for them. I haven't worked at FB, but I can only assume they're similar
to Google in this regard, maybe worse, since their workforce tends to be
younger on average. Things were already getting pretty unbearable when I left
Google years ago, and (according to people I know who still work there) have
taken a turn for _much_ worse in 2016. When recruiters email, I politely
decline, without specifying why, but this is largely why. I actually liked
working there when it came to _work_, but the environment was extremely
politicized and oppressive. No differences of opinion were tolerated at all.
You'd immediately be ratted out to HR for a mere suggestion that someone is
too aggressive/uncivil in enforcing the dogma on internal Google+.

------
fareesh
If the climate is such that the employees are so passionate about politics, is
it at all possible that zero employees have their thumb on the scale in terms
of using their position to nudge towards their desired election result?

That seems like a bigger issue. If I am an activist and I poison the enormous
dataset that's being fed to a ML model, is anyone even going to notice?

~~~
disgruntledphd2
They would notice the size of the ETL job necessary to do this (and tbh, I
don't think anyone understands the individual level outputs of any large ML
model well enough to accomplish this).

~~~
thu2111
Evidence suggests the opposite: they would write a self-congratulatory blog
post about it.

For example the work Google does on "de-biasing AI" is all about taking ML
models and warping its understanding of the world to reflect ideological
priorities.

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.06520](https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.06520)

~~~
disgruntledphd2
That paper (and all other works in this space) are about population level
inferences from the model.

My point is that the individual level outputs (which you'd need to accomplish
what the OP was talking about) are essentially impossible to tune so
precisely, given our current understandings of the models.

------
fivre
I've made attempts to reach out to some of my old friends there on the T&S
team in light of some evidence really blatant Russian agitprop thriving and
finding an audience there. Between this and the Zhang memo, however, it looks
quite doubtful that I'd be able to do much more than reconnect and share a
rather depressing lunch as they explain that their hands are tied because of
executive will.

The IRA and/or its successors or friends appear to have taken the same
approach as Russian security services have with the rash of targeted murders
in Europe, with a "this totally isn't our doing, but anyone slightly educated
on the subject will recognize our hand, because we want them to be aware that
it's us and we don't actually mind people knowing" wink wink nudge nudge
threadbare veneer of disclaiming responsibility.

Normally, I wouldn't really care: the 2016 stuff everyone made a fuss about on
social media was largely ineffective and at best served as a smokescreen to
distract from their very successful actions outside social media--Buff Bernie
is a lasting meme treasure and nothing more. This go 'round, however, they've
apparently learned from their mistakes, and I'm seeing.evidence that personal
friends _are_ receiving and and are influenced by their messaging.

I thankfully haven't really had to watch any family or friends succumb to the
Fox News media poison, and thought my social circles largely insulated from
that sort of problem, but I was apparently quite wrong--right about _what_
wouldn't influence people, but blind to the idea that other actors would
follow the same model and create content that _would_ suck in their target
audience.

[https://twitter.com/evelyndouek](https://twitter.com/evelyndouek) is a good
source of reporting about Facebook and other social media cos' continued
lackluster attempts to stand up potemkin independent review bodies, if you
want more info on the space and can stomach more disheartening news.

~~~
jessaustin
_...they 've apparently learned from their mistakes..._

So the dastardly Russkies _didn 't_ intend that Trump be elected? Someone tell
Rachel Maddow! This changes everything!

~~~
fivre
They didn't, oddly enough! They were as surprised at the outcome as most
everyone else was, and had more intended to put the expected Clinton
presidency off on a bad foot.
[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/putin-a...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/putin-
american-democracy/610570/) is fairly on the mark about their goals then and
now.

American coverage on their efforts was by and large terrible, at least from
major outlets. Focused analyst coverage in the space has been a lot more
nuanced, but nobody's reading that without an existing personal or
professional interest.

The other half of that analyst coverage is that they rapidly became quite
tired of Maddow and friends hammering on a very simple narrative that missed
the point, but was very effective at achieving its actual goal, keeping
consumers of major media on the left-of-center end of the American political
spectrum engaged in their content and bringing in continued advertiser money.
That tiredness is relegated to water cooler discussion on Twitter, however, so
it's not going to shape major outlet coverage much.

~~~
jessaustin
Thanks for the link; that seems like a nice summary. I appreciated the
warnings about "loose talk" "despite a lack of evidence to justify such", but
this lampshade is the size of a tent and swallows the whole article. Jack
Cable described real things that could be verified and don't contradict facts
we already know. That was good stuff, but everything else seems exactly like
loose talk without justifying evidence. Basing the argument for "Russians
hacked Hillary's campaign" on the Podesta emails, for one thing, is
problematic. Although we're warned " _the Russians have grown adept at
tailoring bespoke messages that could ensnare even the most vigilant target.
Emails arrive from a phony address that looks as if it belongs to a friend or
colleague, but has one letter omitted._ ", in reality the phish that got
Podesta was totally generic. [0] There are probably a million people around
the world who could have executed this phish. I think _I_ could have done it,
if I'd had the inclination.

That's about the extent of the claims that can actually be checked by the
reader. Of the rest, I certainly agree with the warnings about poor security
for voting machines and other election infrastructure, but that's been a
commonplace on HN for a decade, and the most salient if by no means the most
egregious example this cycle, the Iowa Primary, is totally dismissed. Also in
other parts of the article we're assured without any sort of proof that no one
hacked a voting machine in 2016. Can we be so sure? The narrative walks a
narrow path. The Russians did bad things but not catastrophically terrible
things (i.e. they prepared to discredit the election on social media but
didn't change the results). Voting machines should be more secure but let's
not even mention requirements for open code and hardware audits (about which
I've been writing my legislators for many years). Federal efforts on election
security since Trump took office have been paltry but everything before that
was great. Did Goldilocks write this? Was she the confidential source who
provided most of the information without attribution?

I'm glad that normal neoliberal Democrats will finally distance themselves
from the Maddow noise, but I would have preferred actual progress by this date
rather than just "yeah sorry we went loopy for 3.5 years". I'd also like some
indication that the next president, whether he takes office in January or four
years later, will do anything at all to make voting more secure and more
accessible to citizens. As it is, I just expect more attacks on the First
Amendment. News media firms won't complain; as you observe they're banking fat
stacks with Trump to kick around. The concern that keeps me up at night is
that they're cooking up a new Russia effigy with which to torment the public
now that Covid-19 seems likely to remove Trump himself from public office.

[0] [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-phishing-email-that-
hacked-...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-phishing-email-that-hacked-the-
account-of-john-podesta/)

------
kerng
This seems like a wrong move. The idea seems to disassociate employees from
the problems of Facebook, and the problem the platform creates...

When you work at Facebook you should know what's going on and what the company
is doing and causing and trying to help fix it.

It sounds like leadership is asking employees to put the head in the sand -
shouldn't a leader propose the opposite? What happened to move fast and break
things?

------
btbuildem
The cognitive dissonance is nauseating -- on one side, a flaming sphincter of
discord, pandering to the lowest common denominator. But they want the other
side, the side that picks the diet and tunes the dilation to be disengaged,
apolitical and obedient? I really am not sure you can have both, Zucky.

------
ponker
Very glad to work somewhere where people just don’t talk politics or anything
serious at work. I have kids and I don’t want to risk my job over saying the
wrong thing. I don’t need you to be my partner in discovering myself, let’s
just discuss our work, the weather, and the local sportsball results.

------
pjc50
If Facebook doesn't want to talk politics, it should stop making political
donations to PACs.

~~~
dejavuagain
That's right. There is a goal to separate the employer and employee to absolve
the proletariat of the moral connection between their actions day-to-day and
the bourgeois who all share in the protections of the corporate veil.

But this cannot be done, despite all attempts to quiet the cognitive
dissonance. Every employee of an evil company is evil.

Every political message lobbied for by the employer is the employee's
political statement. Any claims to the contrary reek of hypocrisy.

------
neonate
[https://archive.is/PdluY](https://archive.is/PdluY)

------
fgrtr3terwy
Facebook wants their employees to stop talking about politics, even though
Facebook by its nature takes stances on deeply political topics. How exactly
do you avoid political discussion when you're asking what constitutes hate
speech, whether a US president should be allowed to violate Facebook's content
guidelines, or to what extent governments can spread misinformation in other
countries?

If you work at Facebook, your work directly or indirectly supports Facebook's
political decisions. Facebook just doesn't want you to talk about it. Because
Mark and the executives make the decisions, and you're just supposed to follow
orders. This is how it works at many other companies. But for a long time,
Facebook was able to recruit people to work their by promising that they could
'change the world' and 'make a difference.'

Side note: One of Facebook's board members apparently enjoys the company of
white supremacists.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24444704](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24444704)
Will Facebook employees be allowed to talk about that? If you work at
Facebook, how do you feel about that?

~~~
xamuel
>Facebook by its nature takes stances on deeply political topics.

Why is that "by its nature"? I don't think that's "by its nature" at all.
Phone companies and ISPs facilitate communication between people, but that
doesn't necessitate they take political stances on what communication to
allow. Why should Facebook? If certain language should be restricted, then
laws should be written restricting said language and Facebook should comply
with those laws. Nothing about Facebook's nature forces them to go beyond that
and act as de facto language legislators.

~~~
t-writescode
> Phone companies and ISPs facilitate communication between people, but that
> doesn't necessitate they take political stances on what communication to
> allow

Taking a stance to _not_ control what communication is allowed is a very
political stance. It just so happens that, I believe in those cases, it's also
a legally mandated stance; but, if it weren't a legally mandated stance, it
would absolutely be a political stance, whatever they ended up saying.

Where a _private company_ decides to limit free speech (or not limit free
speech) is, 100%, a political stance when the laws have not been written that
make that decision for them.

Even if we maintain a law around protecting companies that just host other
people's content vs curating and publishing content, it could be seen as a
political decision whether a given website and company choose to be on the
publisher vs public content stance.

I'm forgetting the word for publisher vs ... whatever it is where they take no
responsibility for what people post on the site; but I hope my point is clear.

~~~
mehrdadn
> Taking a stance to _not_ control what communication is allowed is a very
> political stance.

Then in your model of the world, how would one _not_ take a political stance?

If _everyone_ takes a political stance in your model by definition no matter
what their intents or actions are then it's a rather useless definition.

~~~
shard
It's like Rush says in Free Will, "If you choose not to decide, You still have
made a choice".

~~~
mehrdadn
Taking that logic at face value, it would mean "if you choose not to take a
political stance, then you still have made a choice". Okay, so you've chosen
not to make a decision. Yet I don't see how having made the choice implies
you've still made a decision ("you have still taken a political stance"). If
anything it seems like you just argued against the point?

~~~
shard
If you choose not to decide on a political stance, you have chosen to accept
the current political climate as it is.

~~~
luckylion
What is the current political climate? And is it static, will it not change?

Is providing food in supermarkets without political background checks "a
political choice"? If so, then everything, including picking your nose with
your left or right hand, is a political choice and the term "political choice"
becomes utterly meaningless.

~~~
shard
The current political climate is the policies enacted by politicians and the
populace's reactions to it. It is not static, and it changes with the
politicans in power, the laws in effect, and the political mood of the
populace.

------
satya71
How about bringing the same rules to the wider FB? I just want to look at baby
pictures and connect with friends. I don't want to be part of a machinery that
spreads misinformation and conspiracy theories.

~~~
rsynnott
I'd give that about 10 minutes before someone started claiming that their baby
was immune to covid, and then you're right back where you started.

~~~
paganel
> claiming that their baby was immune to covid

Some people are indeed immune to covid, babies too, most probably. I've
personally heard of numerous cases of persons not getting the virus at all
while their spouse was in intensive therapy or worse.

~~~
seattle_spring
My wife had the cold once and I didn't get it. Must mean I'm immune to the
common cold.

~~~
paganel
Yes, you were probably immune to that particular cold strain. Or you weren't
in close contact with your wife during that timeframe, but that wasn't the
case for the persons I've written about.

------
PunchTornado
People shouldn't be forced to join in political debates in the workplace. If
you're not interested, you should be able to avoid climate change, racism,
hate speech debates.

~~~
pklausler
I completely agree with your first sentence, but would not characterize any of
your examples in your second as being inherently political as opposed to
having been needlessly politicized.

------
ganoushoreilly
Good. More companies should move this way rather than the other.

------
eli
I wonder what the people who justify working for Facebook because they’re
“changing it from the inside” think about this.

~~~
forgotmysn
are there really people that naive at fb?

~~~
x3n0ph3n3
_Absolutely_ there are.

------
AlexandrB
Weird that an outspoken free speech advocate like Mark Zuckerberg would want
to limit the speech of his employees.

~~~
kurthr
Especially since they presumably use FB for internal discussions... Why not
use the same (weak) moderation mechanisms everyone else has? Not like you can
avoid politics on your regular feed.

I guess he realizes they don't work.

~~~
bhupy
> Why not use the same (weak) moderation mechanisms everyone else has? Not
> like you can avoid politics on your regular feed.

Because people don't typically use Facebook at work? It's a recreational tool.
The issue is that for Facebook employees, they are working on building that
recreational tool, and that hampers productivity and professionalism.

> I guess he realizes they don't work.

Or he realizes that they work for a service that's typically consumed during
one's free time, and not as a direct component of one's employment.

------
gorgoiler
Yesterday, I introduced some of my pupils — in this case, a group of ten rowdy
pre-teens — to the idea of decorum and vulgarity. There’s could well be a
whiff of truth to a comparison between my class of children and this story
about FB employees.

It feels very old fashioned, but are we not getting a little burned out by a
world where people openly nail gun their identity politics to the mast?

When I were a lad (way back in the nineties) I was taught it was rude to talk
about politics, religion, or money. This applied to anywhere one was in polite
company, not just at home, and definitely not at work.

------
jondubois
I think they should be allowed to talk about politics. Verbal conflict is
always good. The reason why political conflicts are not resolvable these days
is because there is a strong element of financial self-interest which is
preventing honest and rational discourse.

On one side, some people have an interest in not accepting that their
financial success is arbitrary and illegitimate. On the opposite side, some
people feel that they have been locked out of an arbitrary wealth transfer and
so they have a strong interest in not accepting that they're incompetent
losers and that they deserve to be at the bottom of the food chain because
they didn't time the market right (a highly speculative and irrational market
too!). Or maybe they didn't pass the Facebook whiteboard test job interview
questions several years back (which is also an arbitrary hiring process by
many accounts)... So basically they missed out on a huge opportunity because
of some fickle arbitrary reason.

I don't think blocking discourse is going to improve things. History has shown
time and time again that preventing free speech will stop people from finding
compromises. The only solution to the worsening problems will be violence.

If the elites keep suppressing speech, the result will be worse than WW2 and
the elites will not stand a chance because it will be fought on their own
turf... The elites won't even know who their enemy is. Their own friends and
family members could be against them. They won't even realize it until it's
too late.

The right thing to do is to find political solutions. I personally think that
UBI (Universal Basic Income) would solve most problems. It wouldn't fix the
wealth gap immediately, but it would fix the mechanism which is suspected of
causing arbitrary (centralizing) wealth transfer and that would at least level
the playing field.

UBI is a really good compromise. If the elites are so confident in their
superior abilities, surely they have nothing to lose by leveling the playing
field right?

BTW, I currently earn 100% passive income so I'm actually saying this as
someone who is on the winning side... I've come so close to complete failure -
I leaped over the crevasse in the nick of time; the system's fickleness and
arbitrariness are crystal clear to me. I'm currently standing on the winning
side of a very deep precipice and I can see legions of talented people running
straight into it.

------
unabst
Zuckerburg touts free speech over Russia interfering with our elections or
correcting the president or controlling the viral spread of disinformation,
yet moves to control speech within the company due to inconveniences.

“If you don't stick to your values when they're being tested, they're not
values: they're hobbies.”

― Jon Stewart

(Many said something similar, but I just love Jon Stewart)

------
jyrkesh
> Ctrl+F -> "quit.", "quit "

I see so much debate about what's right to do within FB, "how will people
change the structure from the inside with this rule?", etc.

QUIT. Just quit. Seriously. Make it public why you quit. Quit en masse. FB is
not a good company. Your talents are useful in many other places.

Yes, I'm privileged in saying this. No, I wouldn't feel comfortable quitting
my job right now.

But if you believe enough that FB is an evil company--as many of us have known
for 10+ years now--you should not work there.

If they are doing bad things, and they are not open to people fixing said bad
things, stop helping them do bad things.

~~~
greencabs
They will, in fact, just hire somebody else. American companies have access to
an unlimited supply of labor. Better to stick around and try to unionize. It
may not happen in your lifetime, but the other fact is the United States is a
corporate hellworld. Workers have no say in anything. Until that changes, the
corporations won’t.

~~~
daveFNbuck
If they have an unlimited supply of labor and we're living in a corporate
hellworld, why do they pay so well and include so many perks? They sure seem
to be acting like a company that's competing for a limited talent pool.

~~~
vl
Because it makes business sense to hire best of the best. Football clubs have
unlimited supply of players, yet they pay ridiculous amounts of money to their
players.

~~~
dejavuagain
You're assuming the best of the best decide where to work based on
compensation. Also consider the number of pro players is miniscule compared to
the number of engineers at fb. It's a false analogy because of the law of
diminishing returns and population dynamics.

------
Apofis
They drive their own content moderators insane. This is just corporate
protectionism.

------
gabereiser
FB by its nature is political, as it supports its ad network. To say to
employees you can’t be is really them admitting they aren’t equipped to deal
with this crisis they themselves created.

------
29athrowaway
There will be always people that do not care and just want to get paid. FB
won't have many problems finding people to do the job without moral
objections.

------
drewcoo
How has it worked at tabloid newspapers for longer than I care to remember?
Same problem. This is not about tech.

------
htnsao
Probably better to #deleteFacebook and give everyone access to their own
Mastodon instance for ~$5/yr.

~~~
robjan
It costs a lot more than that to host a Mastodon instance. The system
requirements for all of the dependencies are pretty heavy

~~~
htnsao
Of course, currently. $5/yr could just be the targeted subsidized price.

#deleteFacebook

------
secondcoming
I'm not surprised. US political 'discussions' are ruining the internet as it
is, having to endure it in the workplace must be unbearable. Reddit is fucked
from it, Twitter should be avoided by everyone and it's here on HN too. It's
also on Slashdot even though it's dead, the San Fran office of The Register
seems intent on pulling that site down too.

The sooner this fucking election is over, the better. No more having to read
about Marxism, Trump, Racists, Snowflakes and Trannies.

I downloaded nVidia Broadcast a while ago, it's really quite good.

~~~
themacguffinman
I'd be surprised if it stopped after this election. It's shaping up to be one
of the most divisive elections ever. Whichever the outcome, at least one of
the two large factions will have a lot to say, which leads to the other
faction saying a lot about what they have to say.

------
jgacook
Generally I try and shy away from being too alarmist, but I am so
disillusioned with the kind of tech worker HN's userbase seems to represent. I
think it's a feckless attitude to think that working in one of the best-paid,
global, most influential professions in the world right now means that your
only obligation is to clock in on time, code whatever you're told to code,
take no ownership of the effect your work may have on the general public and
collect your fat paycheck at the end of the month.

Why does it sound good to anyone that Facebook employees should be prevented
from discussing the ethical implications of the product they sell their labor
to create? Facebook complete lack of accountability - internal or governmental
- has to date:

\- incited a genocide [[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-
facebo...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-
genocide.html)]

\- provided a bias for right wing content in a American election year (and
fired the employee who blew the whistle on it)
[[https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-
tech/ne...](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-
tech/news/facebook-fire-employee-conservative-right-wing-breitbart-charlie-
kirk-dimaond-and-silk-a9659301.html)]

\- exacerbated a global pandemic, indirectly causing 1000s of deaths, by not
policing Covid misinformation
[[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/aug/19/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/aug/19/facebook-
funnelling-readers-towards-covid-misinformation-study)]

\- is arguably a contributor to the global rise in authoritarianism
[[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/24/facebo...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/24/facebook-
authoritarian-platform-mark-zuckerberg-michael-bennet)]

and that's really just the tip of the iceberg. If you buy into the notion that
Mark Zuckerberg is a nice man in a hoodie trying to run a business that his
employees are tearing down with some radical agenda then I'm sorry, but how
naive are you? Facebook has a track record of ignoring the consequences of
what happens on their platform in order to continue profiting. It's not a
mistake, it's the point.

We should be cheering on tech workers challenging the ethics of the work they
produce, not talking about how inconvenient it is for Facebook workers to
start realizing how questionable the product they're building really is.

~~~
wmf
I'm convinced that discussing ethics or politics inside Facebook or Twitter
will have literally zero effect. Employees should either quit or get back to
work.

~~~
jgacook
Why are you convinced of that? Unionized protests frequently accomplish
institutional change - why do you think Facebook or Twitter would be exempt?
If anything a unionized tech force striking would have more bargaining power
than other groups since they are educated, specialized, and
difficult/expensive for either company to replace en masse.

~~~
wmf
I agree that unions could be effective, but I also doubt that Facebook/Twitter
employees could ever unionize. And for anything less than a full strike,
leadership will just ride it out.

------
BTCOG
All this rioting and yet nobody burned down the Facebook offices. A shame,
could have brought about the radical change they expected.

~~~
jballer
By “they” do you mean Facebook? Or the rioters?

…or were you intentionally toeing the line between sarcasm and anarchy?

~~~
BTCOG
I specifically meant the ones burning buildings hoping it would bring about
change. Burned the wrong buildings.

------
iron0013
How is this different from silencing employee objections to unethical
corporate practices? It’s not merely “talking politics at work” to point out
that, for example, your company’s practices are helping a political party
steal an election. That’s an ethical concern, not a political one.

~~~
paganel
> your company’s practices are helping a political party steal an election

Nobody is stealing anything, as the rules are set right now influencing public
opinion through media channels is not seen as "stealing". If the powers that
be were to physically alter the votes and the voting process that would be
another discussion, but almost everything presented in the media is fair game.

