
Facebook employees stage virtual walkout in protest of company’s stance - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/01/technology/facebook-employee-protest-trump.html
======
mc32
Activists want to eat their cake and have it too.

On the one hand they say platforms may exercise “their” free speech by
moderating posts or banning people and that’s okay because it’s a private co.
and not obliged to be platform for everyone.

Then on the other hand a different company also exercises its free speech
(under their own argument) by not moderating posts and now that’s bad because
some speech should be moderated and they disagree with those voices.

So like basically they’re for corporate free speech when they agree with the
controls but are against it when they disagree with the results.

Just say it. We only want to allow our approved views — we don’t want free
speech.

And not only that but they protest free speech but totally don’t walk out when
they unscrupulously slurp up data on everyone.

~~~
metalgearsolid3
Do you not understand that these non-approved views, for the most part, come
from actual nazis? Like, real life nazis. People that _will kill you_ because
of your skin colour.

I've read a lot of bootlicking comments on this website lately from people who
want to talk in upper abstractions about free speech and discuss moral theory.
You are all completely missing the point. That black people are needlessly
DYING because real life white supremacists are having their voices promoted
and platformed on the internet.

When it comes to activists eating their cake and having it too, yea, those are
the privileged facebook employees taking a paid day off as a way of making a
statement. What a joke.

You know who needs their voices heard? Who needs free speech? Black people.
And our society silences them through gruesome MURDER. Murders with no
justice. God forbid someone get their tweet "fact-checked".

~~~
brigandish
It took 2000 years of anti-Jewish hatred and even then it required violence
for Nazis to "win" that argument. The anti-Jewish hatred was protected by
blasphemy laws, and the Nazis were banned in the 1920s and several of them
prosecuted under hate speech laws. And _then_ there was no freedom of speech
in Nazi Germany.

Hardly a glowing recommendation for limits on speech. It's easy to argue
against National Socialism and it's easy to argue against anti-Semitism _as
long as free speech is allowed_. Allow people to argue instead of fight
violently and the better argument will win.

If you don't think you have a better argument than a Nazi then I'm really
worried for you.

~~~
metalgearsolid3
Was I making an argument?

------
vsareto
>Silence is complicity

I'd like to point out that the argument that you must choose a side or you're
an enemy is a farce and bullying tactics (which is behind the spirit of this
statement).

Both sides can say this. Meaning, of course, they are both wrong because I
cannot be complicit in both sides of this at the same time.

Participation is optional. Non-participation implies silence. Silence is not
complicity.

~~~
MarkLowenstein
Excellent logic vsareto. It's hard to verbalize what you have done here so
well...which is why they choose this weird phraseology to begin with. Netflix
told me that I was complicit in this same way yesterday--so I canceled my
subscription. Goodbye Netflix!

------
justchilly
Dozens of employees. Put in PTO. Facebook has 44k+ Employees. There are
protests going on across the US/World. If anything the news should be how few
employees are part of this.

------
adpirz
> Employees participating in the protest requested time off and then added an
> out-of-office response to their emails notifying senders they are
> protesting, The New York Times reports. Facebook has since acknowledged the
> walkout and said it will not require employees to use their paid time off.

Is this really a protest when it amounts to a no-penalty day off from the very
employer you're protesting?

~~~
renewiltord
Well, no bastard ever successfully protested by imposing a cost on himself. He
successfully protested by imposing a cost on some other dumb bastard.

The ideal protest applies amplified damage to the other guy at low cost to
yourself.

I hope The Zuck stays strong, though. Let everyone speak.

~~~
adpirz
> by imposing a cost on himself

What would you say to people who have been arrested, beaten, or in some cases,
even lost their lives in protests like these and those before it?

~~~
geodel
That its good on them. Unlike these FB virtual protesters who will not put
virtual mask and put their virtual health in danger to show they "stand" for
something.

------
thoraway1010
So - the tesla driving facebookers get a day off from work - paid - not even
using their vacation - and this is a walkout?

Are they forfeiting their stock to protest facebooks offensive conduct?

This is the look at me style of protesting.

Quit your job and work a better company if you think facebook is a scum
company.

~~~
chickenpotpie
The whole point of a walkout is to cost the company money. If they forfeited
their stocks and used up vacation time it wouldn’t be nearly as effective.
Also why go straight to quitting when you can keep your job and change the
company?

~~~
thoraway1010
This I think illustrates nicely how privileged and out of touch Facebook
engineers are.

\---

I demand the right to protest my own employer. Facebook: Sure

I demand the right to take unplanned time off to protest even if it disrupts
operations. Facebook: Sure

I demand to post my feelings on my company email autoreply so other employees
and customers are informed of my opinion via company resources. Facebook:
Sure.

I demand to get paid for my time off. Facebook: Sure - we give you lots of
generous PTO and don't really track you that carefully in terms of hours
worked.

I demand to get paid for my unplanned time designed to disrupt operations to
protest my employers actions and post my feelings on company email including
communication with customers / partners and get paid for this WITHOUT using
PTO (but as regularly working hours). Facebook: Sure!!

\-----

Wow!!

~~~
chickenpotpie
I would say they’re very in touch if they can successfully walkout without any
repercussions. They seem to know they have the upper hand right now and have
the power to influence the company.

------
TechBro8615
It would be a more powerful statement if they were actually sacrificing
something. Instead, they're taking a day off from their cushy $200k/year jobs
that they're too scared to quit.

If they really care so much about a lack of censorship, they could show it by
quitting. But then how will they pay for their $3k/month SoHo lofts and their
twelve person birthday dinners in Williamsburg?

It's amusing to me when these overpaid employees think they're some kind of
last bastion of intellectualism, looking out for the common man, when in fact
they could not be more disconnected from reality, and comprise one of the most
gullible flocks of sheep on the planet. Their mindset makes for the perfect
employee, really.

------
shaan1
Correct, these guys want to have the cake and eat it too. If they don't like
Facebook, they should just leave. They want the money. Its too attractive to
them.

------
sixstringtheory
A thought experiment regarding the "just quit" argument:

You're placed in a room with a person who is raving about homicidal fantasies.
A gun is placed in the middle of the room. You don't think they should have
access to this gun because of their statements. Is the solution to:

1) leave the room

2) try to get control of the gun before they do

Facebook is a tool, the same as that gun.

~~~
dnissley
You can certainly make a case for facebook being a weapon, but you could just
as easily make a case that it's not. This is a terrible thought experiment
that has us assume the former without considering the latter.

~~~
sixstringtheory
I didn't mean to make the case that Facebook a weapon. I even said

> Facebook is a tool, the same as that gun.

But I chose a weapon to try to show something with high impact that is simple
to understand.

Try it with an unhappy neighbor, a tree on your property line and a set of
garden shears.

------
KaiserPro
Some background

Some head of content made a post defending not enforcing the rules on trump.
Trump made a post that incorrectly stated how registration for mail in votes
work in california

They wrote 8+ paragraphs of nonsense, starting with "we have seen some
upsetting videos, [..] we hope it spurs change" However, even though we know
this post clearly violates our community standards, we're going to allow it,
because well, he's trump.

Then the post about "looting and shooting" which also violates the community
standards as well:

> Statements advocating for high-severity violence; or > Aspirational or
> conditional statements to commit high-severity violence

The post came out, and people were already pissed off, knowing that something
they were working on was partially responsible for the ratcheting up of
violence. Twitter had given facebook cover to enforce it's own rules. but the
management "team" chose not to.

Zuckfuck then said "I'm going to spend $10mil on an indulgence" "stop hassling
me, I'm not going to give in to employee pressure." (paraphrase)

Then the head of HR made another long rambling post devoid of content along
the lines of: "zuck has spaffed $10m on un specified charity for the black
people what more do you want [..] blah blah blah freedom of expression"

The management keep on banging on about "private companies shouldn't censor"
If you have a set of community standards which are plain and well written,
enforce them equally.

Whats in them is up for debate, but we haven't got that far yet, because we
seem to be allowing any politician to say what they like (from either side of
the debate)

THey don't seem to have noticed that the media have always been deciding what
to publish, ever since thomas paine was wafting around being his annoying
autistic self.

------
sys_64738
They're virtually quitting their jobs by the sounds of it.

------
throwawaysea
Whenever the 'protesters' are counted in one of these activist employee
actions, the numbers tend to be exaggerated. They say dozens, and I will take
it to mean a couple dozen at best. Even so, this is a company with tens of
thousands of employees. Why should leadership care about their voice, and why
should outlets like NY Times amplify this message without any honest attempt
to find differing views?

These activist employees enjoy psychological safety from taking on views that
align with the political culture surrounding them - namely progressive far
left political views that are common in the Bay Area, Seattle, etc. But the
reality is, there are still many employees, both who are progressive and
otherwise, that would prefer that the company take a nuanced, preferably
neutral stance on these matters. They aren't speaking up because they are
either busy or afraid of social/professional fallout (due to the prevailing
views at these companies about Trump).

The only way to understand the true sentiment of the employee base is to take
an anonymous poll of them, so that psychological safety is not an issue.
Otherwise, what we'll see, and have been seeing at these big tech companies,
is a tyranny of the vocal minority.

------
dang
Url changed from [https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/01/facebook-employees-
stage-v...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/01/facebook-employees-stage-
virtual-walkout-in-protest-of-companys-stance-on-trump-posts/), which points
to this.

