A Personal History with the Algo
Like many of the students here at Stanford, I grew up on Instagram from a young age. Not in a metaphorical “I checked it sometimes” kind of way, but I mean it definitely shaped my adolescence. From 8th grade on, my day started and ended with various usages of the app, where every scroll trained me in terms of what to look like, how to talk, what to value, etc. And I definitely wasn’t alone – millions of us (mostly young impressionable teenagers) learned to equate visibility with worth, and that was the algorithm at work.
At the time, I didn’t think much of it at all. But reading The Facebook Papers snapped this prior experience into focus. Haile mentions that Facebook’s gravitational pull “warps user behavior” and reconfigures how information reaches the public. It dictates what people see, when they see it, and how they engage with it, pulling users into this cesspool optimized for clicks and engagement.
The Ethical Ambiguity
This question—can I work for an organization whose impact I question?—is exactly what the 5.2 reading explores. The Psilocybin Project example in the reading shows how ethical gray zones don’t just trap leaders but entangle everyone from grad students to secretaries. At a company like Facebook, the fine line between the observer and participant blurs and obscures out of view —you don’t just work there, but you become part of the system driving its impact.
I asked myself two questions from the reading:
1. What makes a company’s work unethical?
2. Can I be part of that anyway, and if so, how close do I get before I’m complicit?
To me, Facebook’s issues are systemic – the company’s platform design amplifies misinformation, contributes to polarization, and erodes public trust. Even if I were on a team far removed from content moderation, I’d still be feeding into the same platform that shapes attention, relationships, and even elections. As the 5.2 reading mentions, it’s not about whether something bad is happening but it’s about “how close the stink gets to your office.” At Facebook, it gets pretty close no matter where you sit.
Could I join with the intention of making change from within? Maybe, but the sheer scale and size of the organization makes that unlikely. We sometimes justify ethical tradeoffs by pointing to long-term goals or resume building, but I don’t want to train myself to look away from discomfort (especially not this early in my career).
Why I’m Saying No—For Now
I absolutely understand the appeal—prestige, great compensation, career growth. But for me, product management isn’t just about building things people use but about being responsible for the behaviors those products shape. Right now, I can’t look at Facebook’s track record and say “this is helping people live better lives”. And until I can, I don’t feel I want to lend my time and values to it.
