> I would be okay with working for a US defense contractor, ie a company which makes machines that literally kill people
The thought of working for a company like this makes me feel physically ill. Soldiers can at least feel like they are working to defend a country they believe in. Weapons companies will sell killing machines to anyone with money. Few things in the world make me feel the visceral disgust that these companies engender.
By contrast Facebook is icky
... In the sense that there's one naive greedy idiot pulling the strings and he refuses to accept the damage he's causing. Weapons companies and the people who work for them know that their killing tools are sold indiscriminately and will end up in the hands of tyrants and terrorists across the world.
> The thought of working for a company like this makes me feel physically ill. Soldiers can at least feel like they are working to defend a country they believe in. Weapons companies will sell killing machines to anyone with money. Few things in the world make me feel the visceral disgust that these companies engender.
Not really. Even if I had the money, I don't think I would be allowed to buy a fully-armed F-16.
IMHO, there can be little moral distinction between being a soldier and a weapons maker. If it's OK to be a soldier to defend a country you believe in, then it's OK to make weapons to allow those soldiers to destroy enemy forces as effectively as possible. If the former is OK, but the latter is somehow not, then you're basically condemning your soldiers to defeat and possibly unnecessary death.
Damage to society by denying the role - via inaction, if nothing else - the company he leads plays in coordinated campaigns of deceit and disinformation aimed not just to undermine public discourse but also the functioning of democractic government itself (via targeted political advertising and misinformation).
Which isn't to say that moderation at Facebook's scale is an easy problem - it's not. And balancing freedom of speech with some degree of accountability and acknowledging empirically verifiable truths is difficult.
But, buy the ticket, take the ride. He's a billionaire. FB makes oodles and oodles of money. They just don't want to do it because it would cost them money.
Eventually laws will catch up, in one way or another, and the same way other media outlets are (imperfectly) regulated, new-media outlets such as FB, Google, etc, will be as well, IMHO.
The thought of working for a company like this makes me feel physically ill. Soldiers can at least feel like they are working to defend a country they believe in. Weapons companies will sell killing machines to anyone with money. Few things in the world make me feel the visceral disgust that these companies engender.
By contrast Facebook is icky ... In the sense that there's one naive greedy idiot pulling the strings and he refuses to accept the damage he's causing. Weapons companies and the people who work for them know that their killing tools are sold indiscriminately and will end up in the hands of tyrants and terrorists across the world.