What makes you still work for Meta, when it's clear how toxic the company is?
48 camillomiller 42 8/15/2025, 10:22:23 AM
The more I read about Zuckerberg's thoughts on the future of AI, and the more it's unveiled about the shady practices the company has been engaging in for more than a decade, the more I can't find an answer to a simple question:
how can so many brilliant, probably ethically sound people, still work for such a company?
I'm focusing on Meta, but the same goes for Palantir and such ilk of companies whose clear and only output is a net negative for society.
Is it really just money? Or do you actually believe these companies are not the societal wrecking balls they are? Would you argue that their toxicity itself is not as evident as I claim? You just don't give a damn?
I understand this is a provocative question, but bear with me and possibly change my mind. I'm genuinely curious.
Some other common reasons that I disagree with, but are quite defensible:
"Well-targeted advertising is a net positive, or at least not hugely negative, for the world. Better targeting has helped many small businesses succeed where they would otherwise not been able to get customers"
"I am working on account security/React/ML/etc which is a good thing. I don't endorse all the bad things"
"It is more complicated than it seems, and most people at Meta try to do the right thing"
"I might as well work at the company and try to make it better from the inside" (while making lots of money)
It's all a slippery slope anyway. If you were to work for yourself and publish your research, people might do bad things with it anyway. Consider YOLO [1] as an example of where things might have gone wrong. Another fine example is Fritz Haber [2], who intended some of his inventions for good, some for bad, but eventually society found a way to reverse his intentions.
Given that most computer scientists are pretty good at putting things in perspective, they might come to the conclusion that working for Meta isn't so bad in the grander scheme of things. Slaving away in academia and having your work ignored isn't a very tempting alternative.
Instead of considering how we can make smart people stop working for idiots, it might be more fruitful to spread the idea that we should stop worshipping idiots altogether. If there is one thing I miss from the days when religion was still a thing, it is this suggestion [3].
[1] https://www.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/code-no-evil/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber
[3] Exodus 20:3-5
There's a whole world of difference between someone using your work in a way that you find objectionable and volunteering to accept a paycheck doing work for a company that you know will be using the work they're paying for in a way that you find objectionable.
This is why I have to assume that anybody working for a company is fine with what that company does.
This is a terrible argument and is defeatist in the same was as 'what does anything matter at all if the sun is going to explode'.
If you choose to do work for bad leaders, you are going bad in the same way that 'just following orders' for bad things is also bad. You are responsible for the outcomes in those cases. If you are ok with the resulting bad outcomes because the science was interesting and the pay is good, that's your decision. But there is no absolution just because you can suppose that someone else would have done it so it might as well have been you.
Not try to defending them, but I do believe Meta is doing much more harm, purely based on Instagram for children.
Are they worse than Meta? I don't know, a strong argument can be made that both organizations are very harmful and there's no point in trying to rank which is worse.
What makes you buy chocolate from giant corps that have slave/child labour in their supply chain?
But there are different kinds of harm.
That's wildly false.
Prove me wrong.
- cool project that is somewhat not related to shady stuff (Oculus)
- cool people I knew there
- I got down-leveled, so money was just a small % bump to my previous salary
I ended up quitting after less than a year due to said toxic culture and a bunch of other reasons.
Meta employees had (has?) this little stat on your profile page that gives you a title based on how long you were there. Staying 4 years gave you the title of "Mercenary". I think it speaks by itself :-)
Honestly speaking, some people actually thrive in the Meta culture and end up making bank with repeated promotions, but they are also clearly able to abstract the ethical side of things to focus on maximizing impact at all cost.
I am unwilling to bear the burdens of fixing a society that doesn't give a shit and asks me to pay the price while they continue not to care.
At times and in places, many of the young and optimistic have been able to believe that. Or at least to proclaim such beliefs - without immediately being called on it.
But similar to "Santa Clause won't bring presents to naughty boys and girls" - that ain't how the real world actually works. And the usual social convention for those "in the know" to allow young optimists to figure things out for themselves. "Don't spoil their youthful joy, the world is shitty enough as it is." );
Their whole idea of the metaverse was purely toxic, so is their idea about social media.