I don't think this idea matches what parent poster is saying.
Banality of evil is about how ordinary people can work on evil things while not being sociopaths and still being considered ordinary people. But it also presumes that there is some truly evil / sociopathic force driving this through authority, such as Hitler himself in case of Eichmann.
On the other hand the parent poster is saying that Facebook is simply too big to not end up evil, that evil is an emergent property of the million different processes that is Facebook. That view absolves not only regular workers of Facebook who are helping the company achieve evil things, but also the people who are actually in control of the company – Mark Zuckerberg and his senior executive team.
Personally I'm not buying either of these absolutions, but especially not the grand universal absolution that the parent poster affords to the whole company.
Ultimately it is someone's decision to put profits above everything else. Engagement doesn't excessively optimize itself. Users' contact books aren't getting stolen by themselves. Shadow profiles don't fill up themselves. "Just doing my job" is a choice, not an excuse. Many people are complicit in making and implementing these decisions for their own benefit, and they are all responsible for the outcome.
Banality of evil is about how ordinary people can work on evil things while not being sociopaths and still being considered ordinary people. But it also presumes that there is some truly evil / sociopathic force driving this through authority, such as Hitler himself in case of Eichmann.
On the other hand the parent poster is saying that Facebook is simply too big to not end up evil, that evil is an emergent property of the million different processes that is Facebook. That view absolves not only regular workers of Facebook who are helping the company achieve evil things, but also the people who are actually in control of the company – Mark Zuckerberg and his senior executive team.
Personally I'm not buying either of these absolutions, but especially not the grand universal absolution that the parent poster affords to the whole company.
Ultimately it is someone's decision to put profits above everything else. Engagement doesn't excessively optimize itself. Users' contact books aren't getting stolen by themselves. Shadow profiles don't fill up themselves. "Just doing my job" is a choice, not an excuse. Many people are complicit in making and implementing these decisions for their own benefit, and they are all responsible for the outcome.