Okay I'll feed the troll. There are only a few places where if you implemented, for example, an effort to reduce "body dysmorphic disorder", it could instantly improve the lives of 3 billion users worldwide. Meta is one of those places.
I just genuinely don't understand why someone would consider working there as a positive thing.
So I would like to know!
But I have no way to figure it out as I know zero people who work there, and talking to a human who works at these companies is impossible because their websites are geared towards not allowing you to talk to them.
So now that I just saw someone in the wild to ask, I figured I should use the opportunity to figure something out which I absolutely do not understand.
> There are only a few places where if you implemented, for example, an effort to reduce "body dysmorphic disorder", it could instantly improve the lives of 3 billion users worldwide. Meta is one of those places.
It surely is a zero-sum to fix the problem which your company has created in the first place???
It's hard to believe you're not trolling when you present "millions of teenagers with body dysmorphic disorder thanks to Instagram" as the only kind of 'impactful' work.
What about people working on WhatsApp, or infra, or people working at FAIR or people building React, etc? The list goes on.
Meta creates a shit ton of positive impact which is not at all related to "millions of teenagers with body dysmorphic disorder thanks to Instagram".
They said that was the first thing that came to mind. The first thing that comes to my mind is fueling a genocide in Myanmar[1], but as a parent of a girl, I couldn't care less about Meta's development of React when their own research showed that they "make body-image issues worse for one in three teenage girls." Then there was the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. It's been clear for years that to work for Zuckerberg is to do anything that he thinks will make him rich, the consequences for our children, our democracy, and the rest of the world be damned.
If you look at the actual leaked documents from FB (via the WSJ), then you can see that over 1/3rd of girls had their body dysmorphic issues improved by IG.
Oddly enough, this didn't get reported on very much by the media.
I don't see their comment as trolling. Reducing the negative impact Meta already has is a more accurate description. Given their track record so far, you'd be a tiny minority to even get to work on that instead of ad/user engagement optimization for example.
For every teen with poor body image issues there are likely 5 people served by Facebook in some way that they deeply appreciate. I talk to family members in Algeria who I'd never be able to reliably keep in touch with otherwise, and friends in Europe love FB marketplace. Yes, a service for 2-3 billion people has drawbacks. It's disingenuous to say that it doesn't improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people, though.
Facebook's algorithms fueled the genocide in Myanmar. How many muslim lives is FB marketplace worth?
Do you talk to family members in Algeria through FB or WhatsApp? WhatsApp would have been just fine if Zuckerberg didn't buy it before US regulators rolled out of bed.
I think it's hard to argue that anyone's life is improved by a company that shows such a lack of respect for its users. We could have social networks that respect us, but Zuckerberg systematically purchased them or squashed them in the cradle.
>Facebook's algorithms fueled the genocide in Myanmar. How many muslim lives is FB marketplace worth?
FB marketplace didn't cause those bad things.
FB has done bad things due to perverse incentives, but for individuals working at the company you can't deny that at least some people can have a positive experience making positive impact to the world.
The lungs plead their innocence, “We give life!" But the blood they oxygenate feeds the mitochondria that fuel the muscles that power the claws that tear into the lamb's soft belly.
