Its amazing how quickly these assholes have dropped any sort of facade they were keeping up towards their public image. At best they are doing whatever they think will get them the most money, more realistically they actually support this regressive bullshit. As a non-American I am so pissed at what a good portion of that country has voted for and those that stayed home instead of preventing this.
LOL welcome to corporate America. The only reason they paid lip service to causes like you mention is because it was temporarily a pathway to more profit. Now that Trump is in office (or nearly so, anyway) they have read the room and realized these beliefs are actually a liability now. So, surprise! They dropped em like a rock in the pursuit of more profits. Never never never trust a corporation to do the right thing. They sometimes accidentally do it in the pursuit of profits, but tying your hopes and dreams to a large corporation is a foolish plan. THEY DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU THEY CARE ABOUT THE MONEY IN YOUR WALLET.
That’s not at all amazing. What’s amazing is that a large number of people thought it was a great idea to hand over the power to decide what’s true or not to private companies. When they rolled out this “content moderation” used mostly against Trump the political left was beside itself with joy. I remember the taunts of “haha it’s a private company, they can publish whatever they want.” So incredibly stupid and short sighted.
The “it’s a private company lolz” thing was itself a reaction to when Republicans were refusing to make gay wedding cakes, and the loss of the Fairness Doctrine long before that.
I mean, I feel thats still true. And because it’s true, we need to get the f off of it, as a society.
Yeah, it is absolutely crazy how much the tide has shifted with trump’s reelection. These so-called “woke” companies (it was always performative, but they performed for the more just side) have all turned 180 and dropped to their knees to kiss the ring.
And this is because of the very real feeling that trump will abuse his power and unconstitutionally stay in office. The guardrails seem to have come down, and these fuckers are rushing to get on the fascist’s good side.
That should alarm everyone, so I’ll say it again: these companies are positioning themselves on the side of fascism because they don’t think we can stop them anymore. They are making business decisions that bolster fascists because there’s a fuckin dollar in it.
With the power of these fucking megacorps behind the fascist movement, it’s like sticking a rocket engine on its ass.
Something something 1930’s Germany.
Supposing your team had won, these people would go back to only paying lip service. Better, no doubt, but not a solution. How long did fascists and racists and misogynists lay dormant in US culture before seizing control now?
You need cleansing and systemic change. People need to internalize “no one is free until everyone is free.” Fascists and ethno-nationalists need to be afraid and culturally eliminated over generations.
Fascism is enabled by liberalism, and its capitalist ideology, and it’s promoted by capitalists when capital is threatened. Capitalism is the underlying force here, and capitalists are behaving in exactly the same way they’ve done at similar points in history and as described and predicted by leftists.
Yes Democrats losing the vote sucks and we’re all paying for it, globally, but their win would have been a delay at best. That doesn’t mean winning votes isn’t important, but it means that it can’t be your one and only political action once every 4 years. It’s time to get serious.
“Total Chaos” feels a bit overblown…
He knows which way the wind is blowing…
Not just social issues.
It’s easier if people quit than you firing them.
So do shit like this so people “protest resign” and fill their positions with H1B’s who can’t resign because they’d be deported and take a fraction of the pay.
Resigning in protest is never a good idea.
Stay, obstruct, make them fire you.
Fuck the wind. Stand tall against the gale of hate
Ok there i go for the downvotes… Where are woke people there is always confusion about everything, if you dont think or do things like they do they start scream and protest all the time. Thats why they are getting behind, the majority of people (the silent ones) are tired of the constant whining
Why do I hear so much bitching about wokeness from the silent ones? If they want to call themselves the silent ones they should shut the fuck up. I might be interested if they had anything to say beyond the vague ‘we’re getting behind’ and ‘everything is confusing’ which gives old-man-yells-at-cloud energy.
The word woke has been misused for so many years now its effectively meaningless other than meaning “dumb leftist”
Fuck we are a stupid species…
You fuckers are anything but silent.
Pretty sure it’s the zios and other fash crying about having their lies revealed.
Ok there i go for the downvotes… Where there are people with which I disagree there is always confusion about everything, if you dont think or do things like they do they start scream and protest all the time. Thats why they are getting behind, the majority of people (the silent ones; like us) are tired of the constant whining
… We are above the fray. It is the they’s and them’s causing all the problem and doing all the complaining. This post isn’t the exact whining I’m talking about I promise. We us’s are just doing the lord’s work and never complaining.
What does “woke” mean, when you say it? It used to refer to awareness of the existence of institutional racism. Does “anti-woke” refer to a lack of awareness, or a lack of concern? Would you argue that that would be a good thing?
What is “woke” to you? Not using racist slurs?
“Do things the way they do” like accept people’s right to exist and be themselves. You’re the ones enforcing things on people, your revulsion at seeing a black person isn’t equal to that person’s suffering under a racist system.
You entitled piece of shit.
We certainly wish you were silent
Question, and this may not be the perfect place for this, but is it the phrasing that LGBTQ is a mental “illness” that’s the problem here, or that it’s a mental attribute at all?
I’m an LGBT supporter, so I’m not coming at this from a place of malice, I suppose it’s curiosity and ignorance. Don’t we basically understand that the way we function as humans is all a part of our brain chemistry, and that certain deviations from the norm cause things like ADD, homosexuality, musical creativity, etc etc?
The word illness seems way too strong, as we as a society have decided we don’t have anything against that personal trait/lifestyle/whatever, but as far as natural occurrences goes homosexuality must be considered a mental abnormality, no?
Again I don’t want to get caught up in feelings here, because I think people will hear that and take offence to it since no one wants to be “abnormal” but that is the concensus is it not?
Other animals exhibit homosexuality, we’re the only species to exhibit homophobia. That should tell you all you need to know about which behavior is abnormal.
Variant is probably a better choice than abnormality, if you’re asking genuinely, that is.
Your argument has been used countless times in history for a number of “abnormalities” that turn out to just be differences without distinction.
“Listen, I’m a supporter of red-heads, but don’t we basically understand that it’s a genetic abnormality? Maybe ‘illness’ is a bit harsh, but they’re just not common enough in society to be considered normal.”
I’m not going to downvote you and assume this is a genuine question. You appear to be aware that calling someone “abnormal” would be considered insulting. If you support the idea that someone having different sexual preferences is their own business, why would you want to use these labels? If one person likes math and the other likes literature, would you call one or the other abnormal? We all deviate from the norm because there is no norm.
Question, and this may not be the perfect place for this, but is it the phrasing that LGBTQ is a mental “illness” that’s the problem here, or that it’s a mental attribute at all?
There are many possible reasons why people might be upset at this change.
For example, loosening the moderation and restrictions like this it empowers people who are coming at this specifically with malice in mind to act with impunity.
I’m an LGBT supporter, so I’m not coming at this from a place of malice, I suppose it’s curiosity and ignorance. Don’t we basically understand that the way we function as humans is all a part of our brain chemistry, and that certain deviations from the norm cause things like ADD, homosexuality, musical creativity, etc etc?
That’s a complicated question, with a lot of what i would consider reductive phrasing.
“Deviations from the norm” would imply that there is a specific baseline “norm” to point at, when it’s much more of a vague idea of what is average, which changes over time and with increased understanding/study.
Grouping ADD, homosexuality and musical creativity together is also a bit of a stretch IMO.
ADD can be classified as a divergence from the very rough average baseline of brain function, but even then it encompasses a wide range of differences and these differences vary from person to person.
This is evidenced by how they diagnose these conditions ( ADD, ASD, Anxiety disorder etc), which is through questionnaires and assessments by professionals.
It’s not a
“You tick the 10 ADD boxes so you get the label” kind of thing,
it’s more
“You exhibit enough of these wide range symptoms with a large enough difference from the vague baseline that we would put you roughly in to this category”
Opinions on homosexuality being nature vs nurture vs “some other thing” is a whole other giant kettle of fish.
And musical “talent” can have many sources, depending on your definition.
The word illness seems way too strong, as we as a society have decided we don’t have anything against that personal trait/lifestyle/whatever
It’s commonly used to establish a baseline platform for justifying and normalising bigotry and hatred towards something.
Look up what they used to call “Hysteria” and what that enabled them to justify as “medical procedures”.
I’m sure there are people who legitimately think it’s some sort of illness but i’d put my money on the majority just being arseholes using it as an excuse.
but as far as natural occurrences goes homosexuality must be considered a mental abnormality, no?
Depends on if you consider homosexual behaviour as something unnatural.
My personal opinion is that anything we do is “natural” as we are a part of nature, not outside of it.
Putting that argument aside however, there are instances of homosexual behaviour in animals other than humans.
It also heavily depends on your definition of “abnormal”, for instance, would you consider left-handedness a mental abnormality ?
Again I don’t want to get caught up in feelings here, because I think people will hear that and take offence to it since no one wants to be “abnormal”
They might take offence because words have contextual meaning associated with them.
The strict definition of the word abnormal isn’t particularly useful here , it’s only when it’s given context that it makes sense.
My view is that the word “abnormal” when used in the context of homosexuality has been continually used as a weapon, a way to normalise and justify bigotry.
If you establish up front what it is exactly you mean (for me this would need to include what you mean by “normal”), then you might get more positive responses.
but that is the concensus is it not?
As far as i understand it, no, it is not.
we can only hope fb implodes sooner rather than later. I personally know multiple people working there who are very decent human beings who need to pay bills. I just hope their current trajectory will force employee action and paralyze fb long enough to hurt. Unlike other places it’s not so simple to just hire a load of IT professionals and have any meaningful results short term, esp. if they have not been ramped up to speed by their colleagues. So it’s not impossible, bowever tolerance threshold is kind of high for any action to take place. Wads of cash, unpaid mortgages and all. Employees of big tech are truly living in gold cages…
Lots of evil is done by people who “just need to pay the bills”
With meta on your resume you can easily find employment or freelance. Tech people have widely applicable and desired skills. Hell they could even move to a non 3rd world country and be better off.
As someone in the tech industry i can say that now is a pretty terrible time to lose your job.
The market was booming during covid but is very dry right now. Many companies have had lots of layoff and the market is saturated with candidates
Yes but at Facebook they make more money, and money speaks louder than morals 🤡 I’m not sorry for the people working at Facebook. They are part of the problem. Facebook didn’t just suddenly become evil yesterday.
I recently quit facebook due to rampant russian propaganda, unmoderated communities full of far left or far right (same thing really) bots and constant, rampant scams and ai posts. It’s not that platform has it, any platform with 5 digit userbase has them. It is that FB has used it consistently across all their platforms to drive “”“”“engagement”“”".
Five people interviewed….
“It’s total chaos!!!”
I despise Facebook as much as the next person, but sensationalism hurts more than it helps.
“Internal conversations and five people interviewed.”
Let’s be honest. For current employees, it’s probably 10-100 times that. If my company did something controversial and then the press asked me for a reaction, I’d say “no comment” like it’s my catch phrase. Unless you already have a job lined up (that can’t be undone by “badmouthing your employer”), no one’s being open and truthful.
Getting five employee accounts on record is impressive.
There is not a zero-risk of retaliation.
Imagine this being your red line. Your totally prepared to work at Facebook, because there’s absolutely nothing dodgy about that, but suddenly his transphobia is a problem.
It is kind of a red line. First theyre going after trans people. Why do you think you hear about it every day now? It gets the hate machine going for people other than our rulers
He answered the Trump signal, walked in and plop down one mil on the man’s desk. Now he’s following the Russian handbook for censorship.
There is a vast chasm between not doing a good enough job reining in your sensors and publicly openly declaring hate speech acceptable
It’s not just transphobia in these changes. You are also allowed to say that women should be/are property.
Facebook has a history of facilitating genocide (Indonesia, Myanmar). It’s clear that if it starts in the US, Facebook will be happy to help.
So as long as the genocide is far away, is completely acceptable for its employees to work there?
Nah, it was fucked up then too.
It makes sense that US politics would be the straw that would break the camels back for most Facebook employments - I don’t think your average tech worker is too familiar with the violence organized on Facebook by Hindu nationalists, the crimes against the Rohingya etc… a lot of that was with foreign language content moderation, so I can see people reasonably not knowing.
It is genuinely terrifying though. I’m already living in a fascist state and have gone through hell; I don’t know if I’ll get to survive another term of Trump.
For many, I imagine it’s just the straw that broke the camel’s back
Well, Frances Haugen left a while ago. Some people did go.
And, well, the best time to leave Facebook was to never join. The second best time is now.
It’s ok to let their platform spread misinformation and hatred that affects millions, but it’s not OK when that comes back and bites them in the ass.
Nah Meta is widely regarded as one of the best employers in the world. I’d take 300k/usd year and all of the benefits too. Let’s stop pretending that traditional companies are somehow better so you either don’t work for any corporation or actually work for one that provides incredibly benefits to you so you have the luxury to give back and steer the ship towards good a little bit.
Personally, I wouldn’t but this is the reasoning most employees have when joining Meta.
No I understand that they pay very well what I’m saying is it just seemed odd that you would go to work for such a company without knowing that you were essentially walking with the devil.
If you make peace with that then absolutely fine, but it then seems a bit odd to turn around and be suddenly offended by something as if they hadn’t already been doing stuff like that all along.
Nah Meta is widely regarded as one of the best employers in the world
lolwut
They pay a lot, but everyone knows they’re overworked like hell. Meta is a shit-tier employer, but if you’re a young masochist then they’re worth a few years to pad your accounts.
Same with Apple. They pay a lot and it looks fantastic on your resume. Even though in reality the likelihood is that the job you did was basically the same as it would be in any other company, but Apple prestige is a thing.
Please note - 99% of the time on the internet, when someone says “in the wuuurld” they mean “In this one capitalist hellhole country” so in this case it may be correct
Expanding on to your comment:
99% of the time on the internet, when someone says “in the wuuurld” they mean
“In my very limited experience, in my tiny portion of the world, that I may have never left.”
Unless a person has vast experience and has had deep conversations with thousands of people, we as humans just don’t have the ability to appreciate just how radically different life experiences are for people we share the same block with.
Nice try, Zuckerberg…
OK Meta HR…
But what is your mobility as one of its workers? What other social networks can they begin working for realistically in such a small market? Maybe that’s the way to fight against Zuckerberg’s and Musk’s attempts to turn their networks into propaganda tools for the highest bidder, to encourage disgruntled workers to start their own social networks and then go support them as well. I would seriously consider paying for an adequately moderated ActivityPub alternate that truly respected its users, was truly transparent, focuses on high quality content, and prevented brigade agenda pushing.
I don’t know if they use activityPub but open source Facebook equivalence do exist.
I know because me and my friend thought we were onto a great idea with “social networks as a protocol” but it turns out that it already existed. For some reason it just doesn’t seem to have taken off in the same way that Mastodon has, not that Mastodon itself is that successful (look at its numbers compared to Blue Sky).
LMAO, employees are about to find out why a union would be a good idea. Gotta speedrun growing class consciousness.
Tech bros are too smart for that. They are true libertarians. Totally can get a better deal on their own. /S
Major props to those causing a ruckous internally there. That said, they likely fully expected a backlash and likely didn’t care. Anyone who cares can be replaced by another sycophant, at a reduced salary even.
Zuck fully expects to take advantage of the H1B push President Musk is advocating for.
You get what you pay for. They’ll be drawing from “the best of the rest” in a dwindling pool.
They pay well enough to get anyone who doesn’t care about principles. Plenty people in tech like that.
They don’t need the very best to make profit for a very long time, especially in a friendly regulatory regime. Check IBM for reference.
They own the social media market and have enough capital to acquire any plausible competitor, as have done in the past.
Losing top talent is only a significant price to pay if the firm or its competitors are still building new stuff that affects their bottom line. Meta is happy raking in the social media-ad profits. Google is happy raking in the search-ad profits. They’re all busy getting more money out of the markets they’ve monopolized, not competing.
Nah, with Trump in office, he’ll be delighted to hire in H1B slave labor …
Since when is/will be Trump in office. I only see President Musk.
Man they’re not even doing the dog-whistle thing anymore, huh? Fucking disgusting, I hope he experiences the everlasting warmth of a car fire in the near future.
Maybe we blow up another Tesla.
If they don’t blow themselves up, that is.
or CEO.
More billionaires should become amateur submariners.
Or go on a trip to Mars.
Fecesbook is crap. Crap take from a crappy data salesman with nothing but crap to sell. I can’t wait until it eats itself from all the bots.
Gee I wonder why he’s suddenly decided to start moving parts of the business to Texas… little Musk-ette over here…
All of this is very likely to kiss the ring of Herr Trump
Unfortunately it’s a very rational choice to cozy up to an incoming fascist dictator.
“Rational”!? No, that’s false. Though it might be reasonable for someone who works for a living. But the only thing they are risking is their “high score”, nothing else. Literally nothing a billionaire does is rational, and that goes for every single one of them. I feel like we all constantly forget how much $1 billion is. https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ These people have several or hundreds of times that! Don’t forget they didn’t actually earn it. Plus, it’s still not enough. They choose to spend their time “working” and influencing governments instead of spending time with family. Power and money, they can never have enough…
Can you imagine your generational line’s entire lives being paid for before they’re even born plus the ability to literally solve suffering in society. Homelessness? Malnourishment? Drought? Hunger? The amount of wealth they sit on could literally solve any problem, anywhere in the world with a signed check and it wouldn’t even affect their day-to-day life at all. They just choose not to. I can’t imagine it. That’s what’s wrong with billionaires and why they’re not rational at all…
For some reason you are conflating “rational” with “moral.”
But I’m not. To distill my rambling: it’s not rational to feel the need to “cozy up to an incoming fascist dictator.” Because billionaires simply don’t have needs. Housing, healthcare, education, food, security, it’s all paid for, for the next 100 generations. That was my point.
The parts about morality were 100% me ranting…
Who’s making the argument that cozying up with a dictator makes the difference between them being able to meet their lowest Mazlow needs?
I’m not familiar with that term. I thought we were discussing why it’s rational?
- Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp/Oculus
- Amazon
- Apple
- OpenAI
I am surprised myself, but making progress of not using their products. For example did not buy any gift via Amazon this Christmas.
All of this is very likely to kiss the ring of Herr Trump
Not likely, obviously.
That’s Führer Trump to you, worm!
i prefer to call him herr trump.
The Turd Reich is upon us.
All heil!
Better late than never.
Meta was already enabling genocide in third world countries and countless other things but this is what caused chaos. Those employees have weird priorities, huh?
[edit] reworded slightly on the account of caused controversy
Not like they’re a bunch of committed leftists working there.
Which is more likely to impact a Meta employee personally?
Not sure why you’re being down voted, it’s a fair point.
In fairness, do we know for certain what happened in Facebook back then? Maybe some employees did protest, maybe they’re the same people protesting now, even. Or they quit. Thing is, LGBT issues make engaging articles. Third world suffering? Eh, it depends.
Yet, I agree with the overall point because this is the crux of the matter: on average, one of these simply matters more—one way or another, see transphobes cheering—for people of this subgroup. This is us.
The usual notes apply: good on them for protesting, big media isn’t helping, fully ethical employment is like fully ethical consumption.
The fact ur so heighly downvoted for saying this. Perfect example of weird priorities.
id say a good 80% of those downvotes are misunderstanding. something about the wording? idk. i thought they were talking about progressive folks getting outraged at first, not meta employees specifically. almost downvoted but caught my misunderstanding in time
Ah yes, the “old news theory”…
-They’ve done it already, why call them out again? It’s old news.
While they escalate and continue to go full-on hate for profit.
i was with you at first but upon rethinking i do think it’s fair to note that there was little to no internal uproar in meta over the myanmar and othe situations. of course there was uproar outside meta. when they said “weird priorities” they meant from meta employees specifically—not progressive or leftist voices in general.
hope me describing my train of thoughts helps :)
- They haven’t done “it” because it’s a different thing
- OP did not say not to call it out again, simply ask us to consider why this thing caused more chaos than others