I sat in on an early planning session (in about '04 or so in the bay area) and was asked if it mattered to me if Mr. –––––––– was an early investor. I'd never heard the name before so I said, it wouldn't matter to me.

A few years later I heard of Mr. –––––––––––. He's one of the legendary bad guys.

Whatever evil FB is involved in was baked in from the start.

I agree with your position: working for Meta means selling out your moral values.

The argument I see for doing so is usually, "If I don't, someone else will, so I might as well be the one making money off it." I think people tell themselves that as a way to avoid thinking about the ethics of what they're doing. What they're actually saying is, "I value money more than upholding these moral principles"

But I disagree that everyone working there wants to operate ethically and I strongly disagree with the sentiment that the company's moral failings are "due to no fault of their own" because it enables people to be silently complicit. Operating ethically requires individuals to take action to uphold their values.

Many companies in big tech make insane profits from the surveillance-advertising complex. Is Meta especially bad in this regard? Google, Apple, etc. all do their own tracking and advertising, not to mention TikTok, Reddit, etc.

Everyone has their price, I guess. History won't remember any individual FAANG peon anyway, but for that peon, that salary could mean early retirement, a good life for their kids and grandkids, and maybe even generational wealth. I wouldn't do it personally, but it's a tradeoff many would accept.

Seems like the "wrong side" of history is winning anyway, and likely the big US antitrust efforts will all be shut down soon, so today's ethics will probably just seem like a fringe has-been in a decade or so. For any individual developer, they can choose to be a Stallman-like figure and crusade against all the woes of commercialization... and probably get nowhere... or they and their family and their kids can all be rich and live comfortably, regardless of where history goes. It's the old "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" mentality, I guess. Not a hard choice for many.

Most of the world doesn't really care about this stuff. They struggle just to put food on the table. For immigrants coming from worse regimes or weaker economies, especially, FAANG money can be transformative. For every upstanding, ethical developer who refuses a job, there will be 10,000 waiting in line after them.

I too consider working for Meta to be an ethical issue. In fact, I never considered any of their career opportunities. I wonder what the general sentiment is, not only toward Meta but also similar companies (Bytedance/TikTok?).

As we have seen 2 days ago with the election, its really not about misinformation with socila media, its about apathy and lack of strong morals. 200 or so million people stayed at home, being implicitly ok with any of the shit that Trump has pulled in public versus Kamala who has an exceptionally clean record.

So in totality, with all the Trump voters, 8/10 people around you are going to be responsible for any shit that comes as result of this, whether its climate change, or economic downturn, or worse.

So the question is, why the fuck shoud I or you care about what happens to those people, if they dont care about themselves?

The right thing to do is to maximize your own net worth through high salary, build up a network of trustworthy people, so if shit hits the fan, you are better off.