And among their non-technical contributions, you have genocide in Myanmar, election interference worldwide, the explosive growth of hate speech, countless teenager suicides, and more.
Any large company can write a web UI framework, but only a truly special one can directly contribute to genocide, know about it, have employees bring it up and suggest intervening, and decide that nah, they'd rather let people die and make more money.
> Meta seems like one of the few large tech companies where if the whole company vanished, the world would be purely a better place.
This is what I disagree with. Specifically, I don't disagree that Meta has caused serious harm. I just don't think we live in such a black and white world "where if the whole company vanished, the world would be purely a better place".
The tech contributions are fungible, to be honest. Sure, they're popular because ~Facebook~ Meta is a giant company, but if they disappeared overnight, other equally good solutions would soon take their place.
everything is obvious after the fact, yet still it was meta who made the contributions. and meta who made them stick. what other company has contributed more widespread, enduring, and game changing open source projects than meta? asking seriously here because the list i put up there is just off the top of my head.
Any large company can write a web UI framework, but only a truly special one can directly contribute to genocide, know about it, have employees bring it up and suggest intervening, and decide that nah, they'd rather let people die and make more money.