Sorry for the late post! I didn’t get permission to post on the blog until after the assignment was due so I directly submitted my answer, but thought I should put it here too now that I have access.
I think I would take a job at Meta (formerly Facebook). Although I’d love to say that this decision is grounded in some moral justification, I simply don’t think that’s the case. I’d take a job at Meta because it would pay well, would look good on a resume, and would end my hunt for a job. I understand that, as the reading says, I could use the fact that I’d be making money to fulfill a duty to myself or my family. And I probably would tell myself that–but I think it would just be a story, after the fact, to alleviate my cognitive dissonance. There are many other stories I’d tell myself–perhaps that I’d take the company down from the inside when an opportunity arose to expose something really horrific. Or that I’d be the one man in twelve angry men that convinces everyone else to stop exploiting children’s neurochemistry to create more ad revenue. Or I’d say that someone is going to take the job anyway, so it might as well be a fantastic upstanding citizen like myself, who actually cares about ethics and morals, unlike the other scum that might take the job otherwise.
The truth is, I don’t think these stories are true. I doubt I’d have influence to actually make anything better, and I’d probably be too intimidated and timid to reach for the power to get that influence. I would leak a story if there was something absolutely egregious that I was aware of that no one else knew about, but I have a hard time believing that would actually come about. It seems much more likely that working at a place like Meta would be akin to a frog boiling in a pot of water, not really noticing the slipping morals as they’re happening.
I think I’d take the job not because I’m moral but because I’m selfish, and any justification would come later.
