Would you accept a job at Facebook?
Such a multi-faceted question. As mentioned in the reading “Working for Ethically Complicated Organizations”, it really depends on two questions. First, how seriously wrong do I believe my company’s actions are and secondly, how close is my work to the actions that I believe are wrong? For me, while I believe that especially in the beginning of your career you will often have to make choices that don’t align with your moral encompass entirely and fully in order to build up a career for yourself and your family, I think it begs the larger question of how far you are willing to go for this. We do live in a capitalist society in which many systems and structures are very interconnected. Even the most ethically just organizations such as one that organizes clean ups arounds communities might use services like Google to advertise, receive funding from more dubious sources in order to pay their staff, etc. It is quite difficult in this day and age to escape from many of the constructs that we have created ourselves.
For Facebook specifically, from the exploitation of consumers regarding user data and privacy, environmental exploitation on their electricity usage and enormous carbon footprint, and ethically dubious missions and connections, means that I do not think I would accept a job at Facebook. Facebook has been known to be a breeding ground for misinformation and hate speech, has heavy involvement with US surveillance technologies, in addition to a slew of other concerns. Even if I was holding a position that was not directly working on many of these unethical projects, it is hard in this case to separate yourself from the myriad of things that Facebook is working on. Let’s just say I was holding a marketing related role at the company, in a way I am helping to market all of these values that I strongly do not believe on, and I personally would not be able to justify this. I think there are many other companies where you are able to gain similar technical skills and experiences would prefer that route.
