
Ask HN: As a Facebook or Google engineer, do you consider your company evil? - fdeage
Amid the severe backlash that tech companies currently face (Google and FB amongst others), how do you consider your own company from a moral POV?
Do you think the current backlash is justified?<p>No judgement, just curious.
======
throwaway22349
Googler. Yes, I think the backlash is all deserved. I’ve been here for many
years, since back when any criticism was still very niche, and at the
beginning it was different. Obviously morally superior to working at a bank,
and more meaningful than working on Snapchat for Sourdough Starters or similar
dumb startups. Now it’s no better than the banks, and they’re even chasing
military contracts. And the work is largely pointless tedium.

I’ve thought of leaving for years. Problem is: I have a wife who doesn’t work,
two kids, piles of debt, and live in the most expensive city in the country.
We can’t just leave, our whole life is here. And moving to a bank now to make
more money (if I even would, the tenure and promotions do pile up) means
working harder and more hours. That comes out of spending time with my young
kids.

I spent a couple of years having a tough time with this. It genuinely caused a
long-term, slow burn existential crisis that only recently started to settle
into a stable state. All of life is moral compromise, I think. It sucks and
I’m sorry, but it would be too hard to stop and I’m just sort of accepting
that now.

~~~
throwaway_g_67
Another Googler here, thanks for saving me the typingm

Yes, Google does unethical things. This sucks and I feel uncomfortable
supporting it. Quitting is just too costly in terms of personal cost and would
not have much effect.

~~~
dangus
To you and your parent comment, coming from outside of Google:

Anytime you get a large enough group of people, minimum size of one, evil will
exist. That’s something we have to learn how to cope with, and sometimes we
have to accept that we aren’t in control.

There’s sort of a rebel spirit in the USA where people see themselves as
perpetuating evil if they’re not actively fighting it, boycotting this and
that, throwing the tea in the Boston harbor.

On the flip side, I’d make the argument that one’s personal self-preservation
is more important than “making a difference,” and that people have way less of
a chance to make a difference than they give themselves credit for. As you
said, quitting Google would not have much effect.

All of that said, I don’t see anything uniquely evil about Google compared to
any other Fortune 500 or even much smaller mid-sized business. I think I could
even make the argument that they are decidedly less evil than many much
smaller businesses with approximately 200 employees.

And the upside of Google is tremendous. A lot of commercial products have an
incredibly positive impact.

I just don’t think anyone has to feel bad for holding down a steady job,
especially since we shouldn’t judge people on their employment prestige in the
first place. Having the ability to choose employer based on moral compass is
itself an indicator of privilege, so I wouldn’t want to look down on a
cigarette company employee (especially individual contributors) for holding
down that job, never mind a software company that makes a bunch of stuff that
people largely like and benefit from.

~~~
kryptokommunist
I feel that when everyone would apply this world view there would be no point
in ethics at all and we would live in a more grim world than we already are. I
find it very discouraging since this assumes that we have no choice. But we
do.

I met a guy studying CS in Cuba (he grew up there) on a Congress and visited
him there. The living conditions there are not nice, wealth is something most
people there don’t have access to. But this guy was asked by FB/Google to
interview for a position and he proudly told me how he declined and wrote them
exactly why he morally thought he will never work there. Regardless of the
correctness of his view it impressed me that he held principles higher than
his potential income. If you just follow financial incentives in your
decisions plus a minimal ethical code that will keep you out of prison you are
contributing to humanities demise. Long term if too many people just follow
their incentives without reflecting on their net contribution to society as a
whole this will destroy our society.

Also it’s not like you will be out on the streets if you don’t work for
Google/FB. You’ll most likely still be considered rich with whatever you make
at other companies in this sector.

------
dareobasanjo
Using the word “evil” to describe these companies when today there are people
literally dying from COVID19 because of the policies of their employers &
governments seems like a lack of perspective to me.

The framing of your question has no good answer like the classic “are you
still beating your wife?” where either a yes or no is still a bad look.

~~~
fdeage
I hear your point, but I was interested precisely in Google/FB employees'
feelings about their own company, not in objectively defining "evil".

Not sure I see the point you want to make with COVID-19 though... You mean
there is "worse" evil going on somewhere else?

------
plantain
Ex-googler, I felt on the majority of issues, both as an entity but also as a
collection of people, the intent was to do good.

I was much warier of trusting Google with my data pre-Google to post-Google.
It's constantly drilled into you the sacred nature of user data, and the
technical protections seemed sound.

The elements I was most uncomfortable with were the profit-shifting/tax
optimization, i.e. the Double-Irish Dutch Sandwich.

~~~
sneak
Not the fact that the US military intelligence apparatus has real-time
warrantless access to the data they pretend is sacred?

~~~
mav3rick
Blame the US govt. and your senators for that. Not a law abiding corporation.

~~~
sneak
I'm not of the belief that "I was just following lawful orders" is a
legitimate defense of infringing upon someone's human rights.

Historically, it also seems a shaky defense argument.

~~~
mav3rick
You clearly don't live in the real world. Every company is to comply with
these

~~~
sneak
There are alternative options.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio)

~~~
mav3rick
Here you go -
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/05/21/googl...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/05/21/google-
epic-court-fight-with-us-government-over-gmail-privacy/)

Now find some obscure niche case and blame Google. It's fun when the anti
Google narrative here is spoilt.

------
summerlight
I'm a Googler in Ads. This is a multi-faceted issue and there are tons of
legitimate points on both its criticism and defense but IMO the backlash
itself is deserved, especially for a number of anti-competitive business
practices. But probably the exact same criticism can be applied to Apple,
Amazon and Microsoft so I consider this to be more of a general tech sector
problem where network effects tend to be amplified by its nature and perhaps
better handled by regulations.

For privacy perspective, I'm not very satisfied with the status quo, but at
least for Ads, privacy is now the top priority with a strict deadline so the
situation may get improved. But I still think collecting less (or no) user
data solves just a part of the problem; users still don't have understanding
on what the real trade-off between their privacy and benefits to
themselves/the overall web ecosystem from the ads they're watching is. Without
this information, users cannot really make informed arguments and decisions on
their privacy and ads. IMO, this is one of the fundamental reason of having
significant discrepancies on the ads' perception across many people. But as
this is not just a technical problem like 3rd party cookie but more of a
subjective issue, this might be a much harder problem to tackle though.

~~~
forsakenharmony
What's your opinion on advertising in general?

I kinda consider ads a violation of human rights, given they're literally made
to influence your decision making, therefore taking away a bit of your free
will

~~~
summerlight
Well, almost every aspects in human civilization try to affect your behavior
and I think a translation of this into a binary question of free will is very
likely over-simplification. Historical arguments on free will has been a very
complex one and prone to errors, so I wouldn't step into this landmine.

Beside of free-will arguments, I'm seeing the huge (both positive and
negative) impacts of ads on both societal and economical aspects and there's
no real practical way to make it undone, it's pretty important to guide it to
the right way. Yes, you can argue that it's better not to have it from the
first moment but it's not the reality so the only option is making it better.

------
jefftk
I work in ads at Google, and I don't consider the company evil. It does an
enormous number of things which range from very positive to very negative, but
on balance I think the company is and has been positive.

I think some of the backlash is justified and pushes the company to do better,
but there's also some amount of what feels like backlash for backlash's sake
where it just gets everyone here paying less attention to what critics think.

(speaking only for myself)

~~~
fdeage
Thanks for replying.

2 questions:

\- what's the most negative in Google's actions in your opinion? \- do you
have examples of routine critiques of Google that you feel are unjustified?

~~~
jefftk
_> what's the most negative in Google's actions in your opinion?_

One that I was pretty angry about a few months ago was soliciting the business
of ICE/CBP, and firing workers who tried to raise awareness of this
internally: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/25/technology/google-
fires-w...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/25/technology/google-fires-
workers.html)

 _> do you have examples of routine critiques of Google that you feel are
unjustified?_

One relatively recently one I remember was when Chrome announced that they
were deprecating Chrome Apps in favor of Progressive Web Apps there was a lot
of "Google is killing something again" backlash. But Chrome Apps were a
Chrome-only solution Google came up with to make Chromebooks usable, and PWAs
are the cross-browser replacement. Proprietary things that only work in Chrome
_should_ be replaced by standardized things, and this is actually a really
good change.

------
nunez
Ex-Googler. I had my gripes with the company, but their ethics was not one of
them. They constantly strived to make fair and ethical decisions, and they
treated their people extremely well.

A company that’s as large and fundamental as Google will always have
detractors. They pay too much. They pay too little. They collect too much
data. They don’t make their data open enough. There will always be something.

------
fancyfredbot
The Economist Asks - Has covid-19 killed the big tech backlash?

[https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2020/04/16/has-
covid-19-k...](https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2020/04/16/has-
covid-19-killed-the-big-tech-backlash)

~~~
amelius
Might also hold for big pharma, if they find a cure/vaccine.

------
allie1
I think a better question is: Is there a google employee that doesn’t use
Google products for personal use (search, youtube, android), and is there a fb
employee that doesn’t have a personal fb account?

~~~
anonyxyz
Pretty sure FB wont even hire you unless you are a fanboy to begin with so
it's a weak barometer.

~~~
allie1
Well wouldn’t fan boys who stop using fb after they get an inside peak be a
good barometer?

------
altgoogler
Googler here.

I don't consider the company evil. In fact, I think it's leading the way that
we talk about ethics in computing. People talk about Maven, but it was an
internal revolt--not external influence--that challenged the issues with the
project.

Secondly, there's a lot of criticism about supposed violations of "Don't Be
Evil". As a multi-national company, it's almost impossible these days to avoid
morally complex issues. Microsoft, on the other hand, has recently been seeing
in much better light due to Nadella's leadership in the post Ballmer-era. But
Microsoft never had the "Don't Be Evil" and isn't getting criticism for its,
e.g. defense contracts. I don't consider Microsoft to be an immoral company
either.

Concerns about privacy and data handling are warranted. There _should_ be
stronger consumer protections in there area, and legislation like GDPR is
good, and should be more widespread. I honestly don't think Google is the
company to worry about here (or at least the biggest threat). It's companies
who aren't as closely watched that are the highest risk to you. Google is
pushing the state-of-the-art here, with efforts like differential privacy.
From what I can see, Google respects your PII and has more advanced internal
mechanisms for handling it than any other company I know about.

IMHO, Google tried to be as transparent as possible in this area. Concerned
about data collection? Review your activity on myactivity.google.com. Want to
move all of your data out, or back it up? takeout.google.com Location data?
Google literally regularly emails you a report on your location summary so you
know what's going on.

Is it perfect? No. Is there valid criticism? Sure. Could it do a lot better in
many different areas? Absolutely.

Is it evil? I honestly just don't see it. Feel free to ask about individual
issues if you disagree.

~~~
fdeage
Thanks a lot for your reply. Do you think Google is serious about differential
privacy?

Also, I wonder whether the fact that most comments on this thread come from
Google (ex-)employees, and not FB's, is saying something...

~~~
altgoogler
> Do you think Google is serious about differential privacy?

IMHO, Yes, very much so. There are lots of other initiatives as well (can't
find a public link at the moment).

> and not FB's, is saying something...

I don't think they are an evil company either, but they were somewhat cavalier
with handling PII until recently. This is why I support stronger personal and
data privacy laws. It's very easy to mishandle info, even with the best of
intentions. Take a look at Zoom, which prioritized ease-of-use over security
and privacy. This is another example of why I think people shouldn't worry
(first) about FAANG, they should worry about the much smaller players that
don't receive nearly as much scrutiny.

~~~
summerlight
To add more flavors on differential privacy efforts inside Google; yes, when
someone tries to launch something non-trivial then privacy reviewers will very
likely ask them to apply differential privacy techniques where it's possible.
This is causing lots of frictions on engineers who's not familiar with privacy
issues, but in a good way.

------
uyuioi
As a user of Facebook. They shouldn’t be most upset about the privacy
problems. A developer at Facebook should be ashamed of helping to build the
absolute garbage that is the Facebook advertising suite. It’s a maze of bugs.

~~~
fdeage
So you would consider that a user has the same responsibility as a FB/Google
developer in using these services?

------
tantalor
You'll have to be more specific about "the current backlash"

~~~
parkaboy
I would have to assume OP is referencing the plethora of pre-COVID19 pieces
relating to the issues of enabling disinformation spread and privacy.

~~~
fdeage
Actually the funny thing is I wasn't thinking about COVID-19 at all... (maybe
I should get out of my cave sometimes)

------
throw_m239339
> No judgement, just curious.

The issue is what does qualify as "evil"?

~~~
fdeage
Maybe I should have been more precise in my post, but I was interested in
people's subjective definition here, not in providing a definition myself (not
feeling qualified for that).

------
op00to
No.

------
cameronbrown
I think backlash is important, it keeps big tech accountable.

That being said, I do think big tech has been scapegoated for years.
Everything is blamed on these companies: eroding privacy, Brexit, Trump, fake
news, social breakdown -- at some point we as a society need to take
responsibility as well because frankly these platforms are a reflection of us
as a species.

I understand the skepticism, but after seeing how things work on the inside I
trust my employer far more.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Is it really scapegoating though? Tech companies have radically restructured
how business is done globally, ensuring that first and foremost, they profit
at every step along the way. Other concerns, important concerns to society,
have taken a back seat.

I mean, these are the two companies nearly every other company _on the planet_
is in business with, and the negotiating terms are pretty one-sided.

I am not sure any other industry in human history has ever held so much power,
and it's largely wielded by incompetent kids with little understanding of how
what they do translates to the global stage.

~~~
cameronbrown
So to pick up on my specific arguments (politics, privacy)...

You could make this argument about any revolution in tech/communications: The
printing press certainly had similar concerns (politics + propaganda), same
with the telephone ("people are listening in"). Powerful shady people have
always been in charge of giant telecoms networks - I'm not saying if that's
good or bad, just how it's always been.

The biggest difference I can see is that the web (and the networks big tech
maintain) are far more open and free. That comes with downsides like even
easier spreading fake news, but I don't see this as an issue with big tech,
but with people. We've always been like this, but the internet just makes it
easier.

------
RestlessMind
A FANG employee here. I don't think my company is evil. In fact, I believe
very very few companies are truly evil. A lot of criticism seems to be coming
from competitors who are hurt and are determined to tar your reputation
(newspapers vs FB/Google), or from ideologues who simply hate your existence
(climate activists vs oil / energy companies). Sometimes, criticism is shallow
in that people will say they don't like your actions but will still buy your
products (eg. Apple profiting off slave labor in China or Amazon's treatment
of warehouse employees doesn't affect their market success), or that the
criticism of your company/product is coming from a very tiny but very loud
minority (climate activists against Air travel).

You show me any sufficiently big company and I will show you enough reasons to
call them evil.

------
xoogler_9980
I spent a decade at Google and I see it as rotten to the core. I used to think
this was all Eric Schmidt but given the things that we have learned about in
the last 2 or 3 years I am now convinced that all the founders are to blame.

There are a lot employees there that want to do the right thing, which is a
why activism has been such a big deal for so long.

The tax avoidance thing used to annoy me but that's nothing compared to
everything else that has happened. Even Vic Gundotra's incompetent management
of Google+ looks tame now.

Maven was handled really poorly by Diane Greene who seemed to live in her own
bubble during the whole thing. Urs Hölzle didn't fare much better in this
regard. Moving all of SRE under cloud was a big mistake and it has backfired
spectacularly because there's enough in SRE who are not happy with the whole
"We want to work with the military" thing.

The shift towards cloud was a huge change and a lot of us would have preferred
if Cloud had become its own company.

The high profile sexual harassment cases that we learned about did not do much
to improve trust in Google execs. And the fact that the founders of the
company just vanished into thin air speaks volumes about how bad things were.

Kent Walker in particular represents everything that is wrong with Google. He
protected David Drummond, he's been pushing for more work with the US military
and is as morally bankrupt as it gets. At one TGIF he tried to justify forced
arbitration because it was better for employees to not have to go to court and
when asked why not let them choose what they wanted to do he just walked off
the stage. That's Kent Walker for you.

Heather Adkins is not much better than Kent. We all thought she could be
trusted until two things happened: She actively sought out to destroy every
copy of the Dragonfly investigation document that delroth@ had put together
using searchable information and then claimed that the privacy review had
proceeded as usual, which we all know it's not true given that Yonatan Zunger
eventually left because of DragonFly.

Another interesting character is Laszlo Bock which many people used to look up
to. When Eric Schmidt was caught colluding with other companies all he had to
say was: "We do not believe we did anything wrong." That kind of moral
compass, or lack thereof, is what defines Google's DNA.

Rachel Whetstone used to be loved here as well, for some mysterious reasons
given her political background.

Google execs have managed to alienate many high value employees who either
left on their own accord or were retaliated against until they had no choice
but to go: Erica Joy, Liz Fong-Jones, Laura Nolan, Kelly Ellis, Claire
Stapleton, Chelsey Glasson, Meredith Whittaker, Laurence Berland, Rebecca
Rivers and so on and so forth.

This company could have been a profitable version of Xerox PARC. Instead it
became SV's version of Monsanto.

It is a great place to work _at_. You will meet lost of ridiculously smart
people and learn a lot. So put Google on your resume, learn a lot, and then
run far, run fast.

------
jkmcf
Are there any realistic attempts, fictional or otherwise, at describing a
market encouraging a more balanced society, but reasonably, but not
excessively, rewarding successful risk takers?

------
gwenzek
I switched from Google (YouTube) to Facebook in 2019 after 2.5 years at
Google.

When I joined Google I was very influenced by the 'Google is the good guy PR'.
I never liked the Ads business model, but there a few Google products I really
liked (Inbox, Maps and YT notably).

It's hard to pinpoint the wake up call, but I'd say it was project Maven (aka
let's make an AI to help US drones kill more people), and all the lying and
mislabeling there was around it (our AI don't kill people, etc…).

Wrt Cambridge Analytica, you have to go back to the mind state of 2016. At the
time FB was mostly attacked because it was a walled garden hoarding all the
precious data. So FB allowed users to share data with external apps. Then one
apps managae to get data about 100k Americans and their friends and use it for
helping Trump. And then 'data portability' was evil.

------
tyingq
Companies exist to make money. So "evil" is probably the default when you get
down to it. Anything that heads that off is temporary at best. CEOs with
strong personalities, specific niches that allow for enough money without
"evil" tactics, etc. Basically, the structure isn't geared toward anything
better. Eventually things will come down to money vs whatever.

~~~
dangus
I see a lot of pseudo-communists point this out constantly, how evil it is to
make money.

I would call them psuedo-communists because they continually engage in the
same self-centered practices that corporations do, but it’s “okay” for
individuals or hipster small businesses but not for larger companies.

Money is seen as some kind of evil but all it is is an exchange method. It’s a
way to convert one type or good or labor into another.

The evil practices tied into money are human evils. Money is impartial and
neutral, therefore trying to gain money is not inherently evil or good.

~~~
pencilcode
This is simplistic. The problem is not money per se, the problem is the
hoarding of it. Would you hoard oranges? No, because they would go bad. What
happens when you hoard toilet paper for example? Other people can’t have it.
What happens when you hoard money? Other people can’t buy oranges, apples,
etc. they have a lower quality of life. The problem is then that the current
systems puts very little control on this hoarding and 99% of humanity is worse
off.

------
mav3rick
Google is far ahead and mature in it's handling of data than FB. FB had many
years to copy Google's practices and still let Cambridge Analytica happen.
Google is a net positive in this world. Search alone is the starting point of
most great things since the 2000s. I'm proud of Google.

~~~
fdeage
Reminds me of this: "Of the 186 Facebook employees polled, only 21 percent
said they would entrust their data to the social media giant."

([https://decrypt.co/12708/most-facebook-employees-dont-
trust-...](https://decrypt.co/12708/most-facebook-employees-dont-trust-
financial-data-survey))

------
azaras
And as an Amazon/Inditex/Walmart engineer?

------
querez
Googler: Not with the company for long (~1 year), so I don't have a good
handle on the internal politics yet. From what I heard, it takes a few years
to get disillusioned/cynical here. With that said: In general, I'm fairly
impressed with how Google behaves internally and how much emphasis there still
is on being nice and good. I mean, one thing that seems obvious to me is that
the Google of 2020s will always be held to the standard of the Google of the
2000s or the 2010s, and that is a comparison that it just cannot win. It's
very different to run a company of thousands of employees vs one of 100k
people. Trying to not be evil just doesn't scale so easily: there is
definitely going to be internal politics, and you are confronted with harder
choices. You _are_ going to be hiring some bad apples, even if you try your
hardest and manage to achieve that 99,9% of your hires are nice, exceptional
people. The numbers are against you, and so is public scrutiny, so anything
bad that happens will get reported anyways. And you can't be honest to your
employees all the time if all your internal communication is going to be
published on bloomberg, and has to be written with that in mind. You have
multiple, sometimes conflicting interests that you need to handle. So in
general: I think the Google of 2020 is less Good than the company it was 10
years ago. But overall it's still a very, very good company: I am very
impressed with the general quality of people that surround me. Both on the
grunt level as well as higher up the totem pole. Obviously no-one's flawless,
and I definitely am unhappy with a lot of internal and external choices,
decisions, strategies and communications. But I still feel that people (all
the way up to leadership) are trying to do the right thing. Not to just do
right for large stakeholders or themselves, but to actually figure out what
the Right Thing is, and follow through on it. I don't see a lot of greedy
behavior in leadership, or people who don't care or are doing a bad job. They
seem to care to keep Google a "good" company, both to its users and
internally. There were enough scandals, but I still feel like leadership is
trying to sort stuff out and improving internal policies to make sure bad
incidents don't repeat themselves. I think most people in the company know
that in the long term, it's better to work with users, and put user's
interests (including privacy) first.

The general backlash against Google is the obvious one that Google collects a
ton of data about you. Google is an ad company, and it makes as much money as
it does BECAUSE it can put the ads in front of those users where it will be
most effective. It can only do that because it knows a lot about users. It's
google's core business. The trade-off makes a lot of sense to me: users get to
use a really good product for free (It is hard to impossible to compete with
google search), and in return Google gets to serve them targeted ads that it
sells to other businesses. That's a fairly obvious and IMO very good deal, and
it's easy to see how this happened historically, and it's likely not going to
change -- people are too used to getting good search for free, you simply
can't charge money for a search engine these days. I think the issue is that
users aren't always conscious of this transaction taking place (you get free
search-results and emails, and google gets to use the data it collects when
you use the services). But the good news is that as far as I can tell, Google
takes privacy concerns very, very serious. It's mind boggling (but technically
obvious) how much Google _could_ know about you, since it has your location
data, search results, and theoretically even your emails (as far as I know,
gmail data is fairly sacred and not exploited to better sell you ads). The
mean reason I think google is still a good company (and doesn't deserve the
backslash) is that, simply, Google doesn't exploit all the data it could
collect about people for nefarious purposes, AFAICT. Now granted, I'm working
in a role that is far away from those decisions, but it seems to me that a
whole, Google tries to be nice and fair, and the protocols and technical
solutions appear sensible and carefully designed to put user's privacy first.
Given the position google is in, I think it is trying very hard to do the
right thing and protect its users rights and data, and does not exploit them
in any "evil" way, as far as I can tell.

Like I said, I think this is a decision that makes economical sense: even as
it is Google faces enough scrutiny, it's in their interests to not exploit all
the data it could collect. I'm sure all the scandals that Facebook has hurt
its bottom line. At Google, I trust leadership to not fuck this up.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
"And you can't be honest to your employees all the time if all your internal
communication is going to be published on bloomberg"

Why can't a company be honest when their statements are shared with Bloomberg?
In fact, can you trust what they're saying if they're afraid of it making it
to Bloomberg?

Generally when companies keep secrets, like salaries, it's so it can get away
with treating people unfairly or lying to one group or the other.

~~~
querez
There's lots of small reasons why. You can't tell your employees about that
new phone feature you're developing if it lands on Bloomberg a year ahead of
release, because then your competitors might one-up you. You might not be able
to openly divulge ongoing security risks because external actors will
definitely exploit them once they land on Bloomberg. You might not even tell
them the intricate details of search-engine improvements or Youtube spam
detection changes, because if it lands on Bloomberg the external SEO market
goes crazy and destroy all your hard work... I could go on, but there are a
lot of things that would arguably make a lot of sense for you to divulge to
your employees, but that you just cannot if you can't rely on them sticking to
their NDAs.

------
notacoward
Facebook employee. My ethical relationship with my employer is ...
complicated.

First, I believe in our basic mission to make the world more open and
connected, and I think in many ways we do work toward that. We're especially
seeing that now. _Tons_ of people are using FB (including IG and WA) as a way
to stay connected during this crisis, and it makes me proud.

On privacy: yeah, we've made some mistakes. Were they _evil_ mistakes? Let's
put that in context. I was _around_ when "information wants to be free" was
everyone's mantra. When Facebook was being criticized for _not_ making
information they had available to third parties. I do not accept the
gaslighting about attitudes toward privacy always being like they are now.
They weren't. Should FB have put in better controls, and more strongly
enforced those controls? Almost certainly. Was the lack of such efforts
"evil"? Only if you apply today's standards of diligence to events and
decisions in a very different time. Right now, I can see some of the problems
that occur as we apply rigorous access control to user data even as it moves
between internal systems. How many of our critics have ever needed to deal
with such issues? There will always be more to do, but I'd say we're a bit
_ahead_ of the industry in that area now.

On disinformation: this is the real "damned if you do, damned if you don't"
scenario. There's no logically-consistent reason why Facebook should exercise
more control over content than Verizon does over the content of phone calls.
To do so is to invite accusations of censorship, and run the risk of being
treated as a publisher rather than a carrier. Nonetheless, we're devoting more
human and computer time to detecting disinformation than most companies have
in total. Vast data centers' worth. I'm in storage, so I see only the edge of
this, in the form of (insanely complex) analysis pipelines and models. That's
enough to get a feel for the scale of these efforts, and it boggles my mind.
People are honing these techniques all the time, and having some successes.
These successes are drastically under-reported compared to failures, for
reasons I won't get into here, but they are reported. Anybody who's _actually
paying attention_ can see thousands of accounts being banned at a time for
inauthentic content. Think for a moment about the computational complexity of
detecting a thousand-node subset within a billion-node graph. Most people who
accuse FB of taking this issue lightly just don't grasp the scale at which we
operate and the additional difficulty that entails.

Does FB still do things that make me cringe? Sure does. The disrespect for
user choice (e.g. chronological-timeline settings constantly being reset)
pisses me off to no end. The demands put on moderators of large groups, and
the dearth of tools made available to them, is inexcusable. Likewise for the
lack of decent support or appeal processes when users are adversely affected
by our own screwups. I've come to the conclusion that even though the people I
work with directly are great, there are some other people at the other end of
the company (user-facing product rather than deep infra) and at a different
level who ... well, let's just say I wouldn't get along with them so well. It
_does_ give me pause sometimes, but not enough to outweigh my belief in the
basic mission.

You want evil companies? How about those who make much of their money from
contracts with ICE/CBP/NSA? How about those that have helped hollow out the
economy with their anti-labor "gig economy" BS, leading to millions of
unemployed right now? Or the worse half of the finance or defense industries?
How about those helping to destroy our health or our planet? There are
absolutely better companies I could work for. My ideal would be to do what I
do at a company that's making vaccines or something, but they didn't seem
interested in hiring me. But there are other companies that _were_ interested
and I turned them down because I don't approve of what they do. There are a
whole lot of pots calling the kettle black.

~~~
fdeage
Thanks for this long and well-thought reply.

> First, I believe in our basic mission to make the world more open and
> connected

Real question: do you think the top management feels the same? In general, do
you see a lot of cynicism in workers around you?

> You want evil companies? How about...

Not saying GOOG/FB were worse than others, but people and the MSM began to
increasingly question their moral alignment in the past few years, which is
why I'm asking.

~~~
notacoward
> do you think the top management feels the same?

Honestly I don't know. If I had to guess I'd say they probably do agree with
the words but might have different ideas of what they mean. Should "open" mean
literally anyone can see literally anything? Clearly not. I might put limits
where they wouldn't. Maybe the converse is true sometimes.

> do you see a lot of cynicism in workers around you?

Nope. TBH that's mostly because they're heads-down solving technical problems.
Or maybe they're focused on social problems other than the ones that apply to
the company from an external perspective (e.g. diversity is a big one). To the
extent that I see these company-direction issues discussed at all, I do see
people trying sincerely to grapple with them and do the right things. Are
those people just fooling me? Are there others who take a more cynical
position? Don't know and can't know. I can just say what I see.

------
throw5399375930
I hate the double standards in our society. We have people who actually work
in the "killing people" industry. We call it "the military", and whenever one
of them says they identify as a member, we tell them _" thanks for your
service",_ not _" hey, do you think your org is evil?"._ We honor them before
sports events. We make the president the CEO of the killing people industry,
FFS. And these people are unquestionably, explicitly in the "invading
countries and killing people" industry.

So are you seriously asking people who work in tech companies that spread cat
videos and enable video chats if their companies are "evil"? With a straight
face? Come on.

This thinking betrays both that people in the industry take themselves far too
seriously, and that we're so brainwashed to accept these kind of glaring
double standards, we don't even stop for a second to question them.

~~~
fdeage
It might be because tech companies had been trying so hard to look like "the
good guys" in the past 20 years. So it might just have something to do with
that.

Also, the moral problems arising from having a military force have been
studied for centuries, so nothing new here. It doesn't mean we cannot be
critical of the military at the same time (and it's not all bad either btw).

Finally, the tech industry has a huge power on us. This power is rising every
day, and has been invisible to most until recently. So questioning its morals,
intentions and agenda today matters.

~~~
mav3rick
If you're not happy with tech, feel free to not join a tech company or not use
tech at all. The problem with people here is "FAANG" is evil "but I love their
services and want their really high comp".

------
dt3ft
Companies are not living beings and as such they can not "be" evil. The evil
or good stems from us, living human beings and our behavior.

~~~
zupa-hu
I'd disagree on that. Humans are made of cells and yet we are ready to talk
about humans not just cells. It's a higher level of abstraction with its own
decisions. Same way, companies are made of humans yet they have power
structures that make them behave in unique ways. They make decisions based on
processes that maybe no human would approve. Sure, there is often a catalyst
leader but the organization can move on without it.

~~~
ClumsyPilot
That nowhere near a reasonable analogie, humans are agents in their own right,
we have a brain.

A company has no will of it's own, anything in the interest of the firm but
not in the interest of any of the employees, it won't happen.

~~~
zupa-hu
The book called Creation by Steve Grand has great arguments in favor of the
analogie. I came across it as the favorite book of Jeff Bezos.

Sorry, I know this is a weak response to your argument but it would be too
much to cover here, I don't have the time and I'm not sure I should convince
anybody anyway. If you want to shake your beliefs on what life and
intelligence are, go read the book.

~~~
ClumsyPilot
Appreciated, I will check it out

