To first address Facebook’s ethics, we can arguably categorize the company into almost all 4 exploitative categories. There have been reports of their employee exploitation in terms of lack of diversity and toxic workplace culture. They have also been large outcries against its exploitation of consumers with harmful addictive design and data privacy violations used for advertising. Its’ environmental impact falls broadly into the category of what any other large corporate company faces in its carbon footprint and supply chain impact. Ethically dubious missions and connections has also been reported as a controversial Facebook practice in the form of spreading misinformation and facilitating violence and human rights abuses in places throughout the world in relation to their lack of censorship or promotion of certain content.
There is some substance to the point that they best way to reform is often from growing your personal status and reforming from within. Being an employee at a company like Facebook places you closer to the issues but also presents you with a larger voice and closer reach to reforming harmful world policies. The idea that the best way to combat these unethical corporations is to remove yourself as far as possible from them does not address the issues of combatting, slowing, or stopping the progress that these companies have made but is in its own form ignoring the problem. The cycle will often continue as they hire someone that can perform a similar role to you and you have just delayed the fundamental issue until their new hire is up and running. Instead, I would argue that if the unethical issue that you are attempting to address is pertinent enough to you to not accept this job, you should search for a job at an alternative competitor that is creating an ethical pathway in that same industry.
Another point made in the article is that the ethical considerations can be outweighed because the employee must provide for their families and their moral obligation to their family’s wellbeing can outweigh the corporation. In my case, this argument should be discounted, coming from a place of privilege with an exceptional educational background there are many other career paths that exist with reasonable salaries in which I could obtain a job.
This place of privilege inevitably leads me to my answer; I would not accept a job at Facebook because I have the power to make large scale impact towards a more ethical world, and if those who have the resources to make change do not use them, then the trajectory of the workplace will flow further into this unethical job paradox. In the case of Facebook, I believe reforming from within would not be a realistic goal in an entry level position and their exploitations have impacts on so many adolescent minds resulting in severe mental health impacts. A more productive way to make an impact is to join a corporation whose mission aligns with my personal goals for a better future.
