Would I Accept a Job at Facebook?
The Ethical Jobs reading raises important questions about working for organizations with troubling practices. It draws on examples like the Harvard Psilocybin Project, where psychedelic drugs were tested on inmates and theology students. It asks: who is responsible—the professors leading the research, the grad students following orders, or even the chemists who made the drugs? This idea of degrees of responsibility is useful when thinking about companies like Facebook. How close am I, in my work, to the unethical outcomes? And how wrong do I think those outcomes are?
The Vox article on Facebook highlighted how its dominance has reshaped media. Facebook and Instagram have pulled audiences into new platforms where shorter, more addictive content thrives, while traditional media outlets have been forced to focus more on brand marketing than journalism. This is a huge economic and cultural shift. On one hand, I find it fascinating as a technologist and optimist—it’s clear that people are drawn to these platforms because they are more engaging than older media. But the question is whether popularity equals value. A product that people use more might simply be addictive, which complicates how we judge it as “better.”
I also found it thought-provoking to see how emergent behaviors from platforms, like echo chambers and attention battles, arise without direct intention from individual employees. This ties back to the Ethical Jobs article. I don’t think every engineer at Facebook is morally responsible for the addictive algorithms, in the same way that a lab tech wasn’t solely responsible for psilocybin abuse. But I do think leadership holds a greater burden for prioritizing ethics and safety, and this is something Facebook has not been known for. Companies like Anthropic, at least, claim to focus on ethics in AI, which sets a contrast.
For me, the ethical boundary feels clearer in areas like defense technology—missiles, drones—where harm is direct and violent. Consumer technology, like social media, is trickier. The harms are less obvious but still powerful. I draw the line closer when it comes to working on features that deliberately push addiction or undermine user well-being.
Overall, though, I would accept a job at Facebook. My main interest is in AR, spatial computing, and AI, and Meta is doing some of the most exciting work in this area—like their new Ray-Bans with wrist detection. I think the best I could do is engage critically, help build innovative technology, and work to mitigate harmful effects. As the article suggested, it’s not necessarily immoral to work in such a company, but it is important to stay mindful of where the ethical lines are and to take responsibility when you are close to them.
