The problem with this argument - I care about issue X, company C is known to disregard/exploit users with X and so I assume all employees of company C are complicit while I give a free pass to the users who remain ignorant and simply don't care no matter how many times these issues surface.
And where do you stop? Are all doctors working for big pharma related to opioid crisis complicit? what about people working for firms related to the financial crisis? engineers working for any company that suffered data breaches due to lax data security? what about engineers working for companies that haven't suffered data breaches yet but might have lax security? scientists working to certain biotech firms related to GM? engineers working for car manufacturers that cheated emission norms? engineers working for telecom/internet service providers that cheat users by throttling/net neutrality etc. etc. etc.
Yes, they’re all complicit, to different degrees. Even the janitors and cooks are complicit when they support unethical enterprises.
If any Facebook engineer suddenly acquired some moral sense, he should spend his time working to sabotage the company from within. Some have walked away; others have walked away and publicly spoken about facebook’s dubious culture.
Whistleblowing would be a good middle-ground here. Also, I don't think sabotage would be as efficient since FB would just restore everything in an instant.
The problem with whistleblowing is that the consequences need to be more direct and actually leave a dent. As it is right now, FB can absorb pretty much any fines they're hit with.
I was offering creative suggestions. What I said wasn’t anything I’d avoid saying in person, nor did I have any ill will toward the commenter I replied to.
No need for “aggression”. The CIA wrote a sabotage manual, which involved things like “forgetting” to lubricate wheels, spending lots of time in meetings which go nowhere, slowing down and getting distracted while working, etc.
I consider all of the energy being spent in the maintenance of facebook to be malicious. If a datacenter caved in because of a structural flaw in the building, then that’s a lot less energy going into supporting facebook. How many datacenters would have to cave in before they wouldn’t be able to recover?
And where do you stop? Are all doctors working for big pharma related to opioid crisis complicit? what about people working for firms related to the financial crisis? engineers working for any company that suffered data breaches due to lax data security? what about engineers working for companies that haven't suffered data breaches yet but might have lax security? scientists working to certain biotech firms related to GM? engineers working for car manufacturers that cheated emission norms? engineers working for telecom/internet service providers that cheat users by throttling/net neutrality etc. etc. etc.