Stephen, why are you so critical of Facebook and not the other big tech companies?

A 🧵 for well-intentioned engineers about how to navigate the complexities of big tech.

There's a simple inescapable truth about the distinction in kind between Facebook and the others.

Google could fix its content moderation and stop its military contracts and its business model would still be Google. (1/)
Apple could fix up its supply chain, raises the unit prices on its products for more sustainable and environmentally sound sourcing, and its business model would still be Apple. (2/)
Amazon could treat its workers better and stop self-dealing in adjacent markets with its own products, and its business model would still be Amazon. (3/)
Netflix could ... actually don't really have here to complain about here really. Maybe less Tiger King. (4/)
That leads us to the key point, the subtle point that makes all the difference. All companies have psychopath executives, all companies cut contracts with unsavoury third parties, all companies have employee issues, all companies have ethical problems in their supply chain. (5/)
These things are not immutable facts about a company, they can and regularly do change. What *cannot* change is its core business model. The raison d'etre for its existence and the mechanism by which it continues its own existence, pays its shareholders and issues bonuses. (6/)
And that leads to Facebook, the singularly worst company in the tech sector ever. Its business model is to strip mine data from your relationships to your friends and family. It does this by showing you addictive, misleading and divisive content to optimise your screen time. (7/)
Their ambition is to create an ML-driven driven system designed to optimize your addiction to its apps to extract even more time and data from you. There are no limits or bounds on what it will show you to maximize your addiction to its platform. So long as it makes money. (8/)
Facebook is destroying the very fabric of human relationships, the democratic functioning of our state, and behaves like a dealer peddling in an addictive drug called anger. (9/)
Hell, Facebook even wants to issue their own sovereign currency so that they can track every cent of every purchase you make globally. To become a shadow bank that integrates purchasing data with behavioural data, to finally complete their user manipulation loop. (10/)
As the Wall Street Journal reported, any effort to reform moderation is second to one thing: user engagement. A public corporation must show quarterly growth, and Facebook's growth is built on ever-increasing user engagement to toxic content. (11/)
https://t.co/92EKe7UxJD
If you work at Facebook, you dump poison into the body politic of society every day you log into Workplace. Every Phabricator task is a step forward in Facebook's executives unbounded psychopathic ambition for nightmare surveillance capitalism based on digital addiction. (12/)
So, no Facebook is not "just another company" like the other tech giants. The ethical distinction is one in kind, not degree. Its business model is corrupt to the core. It is the Big Tobacco of the information age. (13/)
There can be no redemption or internal reform for companies whose business model is based on human suffering. And the only answer is burn it to the ground, salt the earth and ensure our children's generations never builds the same horrors. (14/)

/end rant

More from Tech

The entire discussion around Facebook’s disclosures of what happened in 2016 is very frustrating. No exec stopped any investigations, but there were a lot of heated discussions about what to publish and when.


In the spring and summer of 2016, as reported by the Times, activity we traced to GRU was reported to the FBI. This was the standard model of interaction companies used for nation-state attacks against likely US targeted.

In the Spring of 2017, after a deep dive into the Fake News phenomena, the security team wanted to publish an update that covered what we had learned. At this point, we didn’t have any advertising content or the big IRA cluster, but we did know about the GRU model.

This report when through dozens of edits as different equities were represented. I did not have any meetings with Sheryl on the paper, but I can’t speak to whether she was in the loop with my higher-ups.

In the end, the difficult question of attribution was settled by us pointing to the DNI report instead of saying Russia or GRU directly. In my pre-briefs with members of Congress, I made it clear that we believed this action was GRU.
🙂 Hey - have you heard of @RevolutApp Business before?

🌐 Great international transfer and 🏦 foreign #exchange rates, and various tools to manage your #business.

👉 https://t.co/dkuBrYrfMq

#banking #fintech #revolut #growth #startups
1/10


One place to manage all things business
Get more from your business account with powerful tools that give you total control over your finances.

👉
https://t.co/dkuBrYrfMq
2/10


Accept payments
online at great rates
Receive card payments from around the world with low fees and next-day settlement.

👉 https://t.co/dkuBrYrfMq
3/10


Send and receive international payments, with no hidden fees
Multi-currency accounts allow you to hold, exchange, send and receive funds in 28+ currencies - always at the real (interbank) exchange rate...

👉 https://t.co/dkuBrYrfMq
4/10


Optimise spend with smart company cards
Spend in over 150 currencies at the real (interbank) exchange rate
Stay in control – issue physical and virtual cards, track spending in real-time for your entire team...

👉 https://t.co/dkuBrYrfMq
5/10

You May Also Like

12 TRADING SETUPS which experts are using.

These setups I found from the following 4 accounts:

1. @Pathik_Trader
2. @sourabhsiso19
3. @ITRADE191
4. @DillikiBiili

Share for the benefit of everyone.

Here are the setups from @Pathik_Trader Sir first.

1. Open Drive (Intraday Setup explained)


Bactesting results of Open Drive


2. Two Price Action setups to get good long side trade for intraday.

1. PDC Acts as Support
2. PDH Acts as


Example of PDC/PDH Setup given
“We don’t negotiate salaries” is a negotiation tactic.

Always. No, your company is not an exception.

A tactic I don’t appreciate at all because of how unfairly it penalizes low-leverage, junior employees, and those loyal enough not to question it, but that’s negotiation for you after all. Weaponized information asymmetry.

Listen to Aditya


And by the way, you should never be worried that an offer would be withdrawn if you politely negotiate.

I have seen this happen *extremely* rarely, mostly to women, and anyway is a giant red flag. It suggests you probably didn’t want to work there.

You wish there was no negotiating so it would all be more fair? I feel you, but it’s not happening.

Instead, negotiate hard, use your privilege, and then go and share numbers with your underrepresented and underpaid colleagues. […]