alt Hacker NewsThere are many, many ways to provide for one's family, Meta is but one. And I say this as a father providing for mine.
Additionally, putting the blame for using Meta products on the users in spite of all of what we know about how the company has strived to make the productive terribly addictive is a very wild take.
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Well, this fellow is a programmer, that's his trade and at his level he would be working for one of the fangs or whatever they are called these days and they're all creepy as far I am concerned. Which one of them is 'responsible'? Google and its pervasive tracking and selling of our data to all and sundry? Microsoft and "let's make our AI addictive"? Working for Amazon and contributing to the gutting of small businesses and bookstores? ... Really, you speak as if you have slept through the past 26 years in this field.
> Additionally, putting the blame for using Meta products on the users in spite of all of what we know about how the company has strived to make the productive terribly addictive is a very wild take.
Really? It's like me complaining that my pot and smoking habits were due to evil designs of their vendors. I take full responsibility for taking those initial puffs knowing full well that they were addictive and not good for me.
p.s. my general point is this: The entire industry was pushing developers to think nothing of 'ethical concerns' and 'just move fast and break things'.
And I find it disengenous to now pick on a single solitary entity, Meta, as if the rest of these newly arrived big techs were/are clean and ethical. Possibly some want to virtue signal while earning big $ at some other VC unicorn.
(Anyone working for "AI" companies here complaining about Meta? ...)
After many years in research science I had an opportunity to work in applied sciences in the petroleum industry. This is an industry that knows that the writing is on the wall for them. Resources are finite and peak demand may well be behind us. (Almost everyone I worked with drove electric cars.) That does not stop the petroleum industry (drug dealers) from responding to economic demand (addicts). When I was younger I saw the petroleum industry as evil, but if there was no demand there would be no supply. Who is to blame? Working in this industry changed my perspective on addiction, drinking, gambling, infinite scrolling. I used to believe that the pushers were solely at fault, and some of them certainly are. But I find it hard to blame only Facebook for their practices.