HackiNews

basilgohar

A lot of people are implying that people that object should leave the company. The question is, if the people that actually care and push back leave:

1. Will this increase or decrease the incidents? 2. Will we know more or less about these incidents in the future? 3. Will anyone else inside work for or against this happening?

Which way do we want things to go?

I don't mean to say it's clearly this or that. I think it's a genuinely interesting and challenging dilemma. Do I continue working someplace that is involved in something evil but try and provide a voice, push, influence, or, if nothing else, a voice to the outside of the goings on inside, or do I separate myself and work only from the outside?

We can imagine the same for law enforcement, military, defence contractors, government, and any number of other vectors and industries.

Snowden was working from the inside before he leaked what he did. Every single whistleblower was involved first.

cherryteastain
Trying to change things materially from the inside against the wishes of the higher ups probably means your career stalls or you'll be fired anyway. From the perspective of your career, you may as well find a new job while you have the leverage from the current one and then make your statement as you leave. There is almost nothing a non C-suite person can do to change things in this context.
- elicash
  I'm not pretending there isn't very real risk of retribution, but I do think this can be done under the protections under the NLRA so long as it's done right (as in, seek legal guidance first).
  This also isn't to fault anyone who instead chooses to leave, instead.
  I also think your comments diminishes the actual impact lots of folks have had, such as stopping donation to certain PACs. Relative to many other groups of workers, tech workers actually have more leverage.
  - paimapi
    
    Not to mention the long history of whistleblowers.
    Lots of lists of people who, in a just society, would be valorized and treated as national heroes:
    https://www.whistleblowers.org/how-whistleblowers-changed-th...
    https://stfrancislaw.com/blog/10-most-famous-whistleblowers/
- jackb4040
  
  From the perspective of your career, the best thing to do is not have objections, or really any principles at all, in the first place.
- epgui
  Sometimes people have to choose between doing the right thing and doing the easy thing.
  - blooalien
    
    > ... and doing the easy thing.
    Or for that matter, doing the possible/doable thing vs trying (and failing) the impossible. Sometimes "the right thing" is just not possible because the obstacles in place are literally insurmountable. At that point your only real options left are a) pick a thing that can be done and do that instead (not always "easy"), or b) give up and accept "that's just the way things are".
lukan
"Which way do we want things to go?"
Well ideally we want companies and governments to be trustworthy and that only works with trustworthy individuals, but here in this case I can only see Meta dissolving as a solution.
Remember how it started? Zuckerberg literally said about his users: ‘They “trust me.” Dumb f--ks’.
This is the base the company has been operating since the beginning, just got better at hiding it, but now some masks are slipping again.
- exe34
  > I can only see Meta dissolving as a solution
  I wonder if an alternative could be found - for example the state funds an independent news organisation that gets access to everything they are doing by law, and turns up at offices, and asks questions, joins meetings, etc. Refusing to share information counts as criminal and a director gets shipped to prison every week until the situation resolves itself.
  - ethbr1
    
    Or just make it criminal for any accredited (because sensitive information) news organization to be blocked from these things?
    I'm not convinced the world wouldn't be a better place if we advantaged the free press over corporations, the least transparent component of our modern world.
    
    exe34
    
    The only issue right now is that the "free press" begins l belongs to the few. Their purpose is mostly to entertain and drive up antagonism towards the enemies du jour.
    
    ethbr1
    
    That's almost always been true though. See: newspaper era, radio era, tv era...
    The closest most democratic societies have gotten for most of the time is a diversity of large press entities that counterbalance each other. Possibly with the addition of a publicly-funded alternative.
    You're typically only going to have a few wide-distribution press entities, but what seems more important is that they're (a) independent (of each other and the government), (b) financially solvent, and (c) represent a diversity of opinion / constituents.
    Though I'd say the US fails those three tests because of conglomerate ownership without true independence (e.g. Washington Post being beholden to Bezos' business interests), the cannibalization of ad revenue by Google / Meta (without either funding a replacement for news), and increasing corporate consolidation (e.g. Nexstar getting preferential treatment by the current FCC to further breach TV station ownership caps).
orwin

Also, if you think you're company is enabling musk&co, stay and document. In my city, the antifa group has one member who used to be a bar pillar at a place that after an ownership change became the new place for the néo-nazi and royalists to meet up. Last Saturday they planned on disturbing the protests. We all got the information about that the day before. The day of the protests, we had two watchdogs ready outside the bar who took pictures of the nazillons who got out and dispatched them to various signal groups, allowing engaged people to organise and prevent any disturbance, provocations or fights. My more casual friends didn't notice anything and were very happy about how the day went.
Inside information is critical, and you can always try to do your part.
icantevenhold

I hope I will never be in that situation to make that decision; but seeing the fate of the different whistleblowers (in the USA) it seems you need to be almost suicidal to blow the whistle.
Like your life will basically be ruined for a long time, maybe forever.
WhyNotHugo

People who work at Facebook and complain about this strike me as incredible naive. They work for the devil in exchange for huge sums of money, but are then shocked that the devil partakes in devious acts.
Neither leaving in protest nor staying would really change much. As long as someone is willing to do the dirty work, it'll continue to get done.
watwut

It will be more expensive for Meta to hire people. Why do you think gambling companies pay better then other? And why gaming companies pay badly? Because too many people refuse to work for gambling companies, so price goes up. And conversely, too many people want to work on games, so price goes down.
People who stay will not meaningfully push back. They can grumble. They can ask to be reassign to slightly different position. But, they will never have any option to actually do something meaningful from inside.
sleight42

What percentage of whistleblowers are punished, directly or indirectly, for their ethical behavior? What percentage come out of the experience worse? Worse finances? Worse health?
The incentives aren't there to behave as an ethical human being in business beyond getting caught breaking the law (for a narrow definition of ethics).
I say this as someone who fought for the smaller fry multiple times (one sexual harassment victim, one employee at risk of losing their visa, and multiple teams getting done to) in the workplace and came out of it with autistic burnout (I didn't know then about my autism) from the emotional labor leading to unemployment.
The incentives aren't there. I wish they were.
locknitpicker
> A lot of people are implying that people that object should leave the company.
Yes, that sounds awfully suspicious and counterproductive. It sounds like they actually want to silence any reference to wrongdoing, as if potential whistleblowers and offenders must be held accountable to deeply contrasting morality bars.
To me, asking people who object to their employer's moral, ethical, and/or criminal violations to resign and go away has the same vibes as calling for people who criticism the government to exile: their goal is not to fix things, is to silence dissent.
- mcmcmc
  Your argument would carry more weight if the employees weren’t getting paid absurd sums of money. It’s very easy to stick around and keep getting rich while signing petitions and virtue signaling on social media.
  - locknitpicker
    
    > Your argument would carry more weight if the employees weren’t getting paid absurd sums of money.
    What a stupid appeal to morality. This is not the middle ages where you can only aspire to do the right thing if you abdicate any worldly possession. I am paid well because I stood up for myself in contract negotiations, and no keyboard hero is going to put my sense of right and wrong into question because I earn more than you.
    
    mcmcmc
    
    “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
    — Upton Sinclair
    
    keybored
    
    I have heard about a few things that the 300K a year SC proletariat have done. I can’t remember offhand right now, but they did apparently force management to go back on some unethical stuff.
    But on the whole we see the world that we live in. I guess it would be ten times worse without their quiet protests?
    What I do know is that SC is the capital of Effective Altruism, which contains the idea that the best way to do good in the world is to earn a lot of money and then give it to “effective causes”. And I expect no holistic or systemic action from those of such convenient, myopic beliefs.
    
    keybored
    
    > capital
    * capitol
Aurornis

> 2. Will we know more or less about these incidents in the future?
The letter was from a UK communication worker's union and no article I can find includes the number of employees who signed the letter or their roles a Meta.
With how much is being obscured about the signers of the letter and their location, I think it's unlikely they were involved with the incident at all.
They're just signing a letter protesting it.
egeozcan

This made me remember the DHH and the 37signals drama, showing how hard it is to go against the management: https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/3/22418208/basecamp-all-hand...
keybored

Big Tech can offer a high salary for non-managers, for people who cannot impact the organization other than through extra-hierarchical means (organizing). Wy would they leave?
They have options. People here spend enough time glazing each others’ 200,000 lumen minds and abilities. And judging by extra-curricular activities, no lies are told as far as I can see. That means that they can just find other employment.[1] There is enough IT that the rest of us work on, IT that doesn’t want to become a global Panopticon. None of it is perfect. You might have to work on software that just makes some previously flexible and okay procedure into a rigid, somewhat buggy, but streamlined and legible to management kind of procedure. You might earn more than the cleaning personell who have unalloyed-good jobs, just removing dirt.[2] But it’s better for the soul.
And you can earn a normal wage. Not a bad wage.
But the horde of luminous minds in Silicon Valley and I guess the Seattle Area (and maybe urban Texas and I dunno) have showed us what they can do with all the demand for their labor, their high salaries, and the pliable management who know that they have to put up with the nerds.
[1] Yes. Some workers have many options. Many have some options, many have few. Most people can’t make principled employment choices.
[2] Now someone with 30 years of experience managing cleaning personell will tell me all the dirt on what cleaning personell get up to.
knorker
Okay. So the idea is to keep helping to overthrow democracy hoping that you'll get a chance to leak something?
And yes, working for META means doing your part to overthrow democracy. It's company strategy to do so, and like it or not, working for META means you are "just following orders" in this enterprise.
I couldn't live like that for long.
- jacquesm
  
  That's because you have some idea of morals and ethics. If people were ethical to begin with they wouldn't have to denounce anything: they wouldn't be working there in the first place.
ryandvm
Yeah, I always wonder about this when I hear about people that resign from an organization in protest. Sure, they get to sleep at night now, but now they've just opened up a job for an unscrupulous person.
I mean, if you really think your organization is a net negative, perhaps your best civic effort is to just sort of linger as organizational dead weight or, better yet, as some sort of bureaucratic tar baby.
- weaksauce
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Sabotage_Field_Manual
  they could take a page out of the CIA manual for it.
- jdicdofkdicj
  
  > I mean, if you really think your organization is a net negative, perhaps your best civic effort is to just sort of linger as organizational dead weight or, better yet, as some sort of bureaucratic tar baby.
  Everything you contribute to the organisation helps it achieve its goal, no matter how small or insignificant. By staying you agree to continue to sell your skills and time to this organisation in favour of its objectives. You are as much part of the problem as the organisation itself.
mohamedkoubaa
Imo the highest leverage thing they could do is unionize
- pseudalopex
  
  It said The statement was signed by members of the tech sector branch of the United Kingdom’s Communication Workers Union, CWU.
odshoifsdhfs

I really don't like to gas those jews, but know what, I'll keep gassing them and think on how I can topple the nazi regime, that is the best option. Ohhh also, my paycheck just cleared, >Order New Tesla<, done, now back to thinking on how I can kill Hitler or something (while ordering Uber Eats for an expresso machiatto for 30 dollars and pressing that 'Burn Them' button)
andrewstuart2
Yeah this is one of my biggest questions from a lot of the high profile departures during the Trump admin early days (both times probably). Sure, you save face a little maybe, and you register your protest, but then you are replaced with a yes man almost certainly, which is significantly worse.
But also, then, I know exactly how I would feel about continuing to work if my purpose is now to just be a roadblock. It must be pretty demoralizing and can you really ask that of someone else or be upset if they aren't up for that? I would certainly be tempted to jump ship for a chance to get paid better doing something I enjoy.
- icantevenhold
  I get the sentiment but basically you say that people need to join corrupt fucked up organisations to make them better. Like if you don’t join and improve things, some kind of psychopath will join in your stead and make things worse.
  I don’t think that’s a helpful way to think about it.
  You’re not required to improve things anywhere and you can leave a toxic (work)relationship if that’s what you need.
  The problem is not that power corrupts; it’s more that power attracts corruptible people
  - pseudalopex
    
    > I get the sentiment but basically you say that people need to join corrupt fucked up organisations to make them better.
    > It must be pretty demoralizing and can you really ask that of someone else or be upset if they aren't up for that?
    Did they add this after your comment?
    
    andrewstuart2
    
    I added it pretty shortly after I commented via edit but I think they'd probably already started their response and didn't see the edit first.
gdilla

i hope there's someone at Meta who still thinks Nazis and wannabe nazis are bad and advocates for down weighting their stupid rants in the algo. but the evidence seems to be the opposite.
worik

> A lot of people are implying that people that object should leave the company
Another obvious point is: those computer programmers, and related professions, are now precarious employees.
Times have changed, there are redundant computists all over the place. Telling people they should leave the job that feeds their family because of short sighted management is cruel

selectodude

Meta employees still cash checks from evil company not realizing all the interference is possible due to them showing up to work every day.

Frieren
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...
- icantevenhold
  Yea Meta is the only possible company you can work at…
  - locknitpicker
    
    > Yea Meta is the only possible company you can work at…
    If you care about preventing Meta from doing evil things, you have far more influence and power over that if you work for Meta.
    
    TheOtherHobbes
    
    How are lower-level workers supposed to influence a crank like Zuckerberg?
    He owns the company and all of its decisions. He is literally accountable to no one, from the board down.
    The only viable action here is to do what the Brazilian government are going to do - document the abuses, and fine the company into oblivion and/or ban it if it doesn't behave itself.
    If the US ever recovers democracy itself, pass the documentation on to the new US government.
    
    locknitpicker
    
    > How are lower-level workers supposed to influence a crank like Zuckerberg?
    By witnessing first-hand the abuse and blowing the whistle on Zuckerberg for trying to manipulate elections.
    The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal broke because an employee leaked proof, and now Facebook has to cough up 25 billion in fines. Do you think Zuckerberg didn't felt this?
    
    mcmcmc
    
    How? If you don’t follow orders you get fired eventually. No one has any real power at Meta other than Zuck.
  - carabiner
    
    I'd sell out and work for them if it means I can retire at 40.
    
    gradascent
    
    At least you're being honest about the fact that you're selling out. Many people working there believe that they're making the world a better place, or think that Meta is just another amoral company like the many others, or that they as an individual aren't contributing to the negative impacts. Money will do strange things to good people.
- hlynurd
  
  Believe it or not if you can work at meta you can easily choose to not do that
- doctorpangloss
  
  there's a reason this is a meme and not one of the Ten Commandments haha
  people are not questioning whether or not the goal is good or bad. they're showing that the Concern is really a Concern Troll. that is, their concerns aren't really sincere.
  that said i think the appropriate meme for this is the Big Chin guy
- keybored
  
  There is a spectrum. On the far left or right is the claim that someone who criticizes society somewhat can go live in a cabin somewhere. That is very convenient, since that would remove everyone who is critical from society itself, meaning that nothing could be ever done to improve it.
  Far to the other side are are FU Money/assets CEOs and what have you that could quit what they are doing. Not terribly far from them are well-paid software engineers who could just demote themselves to a regular-paid job and be fine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50255234
  Notably with a regular, not-terribly-evil job they wouldn’t disappear from society at all. They would still be a part of society.
fg137
Even if 500 employees refuse to show up to work because of this, Meta will easily replace them within a month if not a week.
If Meta keeps those positions at all.
- cute_boi
  Yea, but they don't have to act like they are doing society a big favor. People are angry because they said "We Meta employees want to build technologies and platforms that millions of people use and enjoy". When we all know what they are creating....
  - hsuduebc2
    
    I believe that in the future, companies that deliberately rot people's brains will be viewed in the same light as tobacco companies and other despicable businesses. It's good to see that more and more people are recognizing Meta for the moral cesspool it is.
    
    kskdksjckdkd
    
    Yet more and more people are choosing to (even dreaming of) work there regardless.
    It’s one thing to recognise it as evil, it’s entirely another to keep selling your times and skills to the evil you recognise.
    
    hsuduebc2
    
    I would say it lost the ethos It had few years ago. But you are sadly right. Needles to say, many people are working for tobacco companies too but it lost it's glamor. Same as ordinary tech companies.
- selectodude
  The fewer people that are willing to work there, the dumber and less effective metas bullshit continues to be. Look at the Trump Admin - anybody who is still there sucks at their job. The damage they’ve done is immeasurable but it seems to be backfiring pretty significantly. Meta is successful because of the smart motivated people who continue to work there. Turn it into a confederacy of dunces. Quit your job.
  - fg137
    
    Maybe check how twitter/X is doing these days.
    
    undersuit
    
    Can't, I'm unable to reach twitter support until I've scanned my finger prints on the app.

ForHackernews

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/26184/pg26184-images.ht...

    (10) To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work.

    (11) Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.

    (12) Multiply paper work in plausible ways. Start duplicate files.

undersuit

You don't know how many people have already quit. You don't know how many will quit. But you do know that someone that quits also loses any influence they have on the decisions.
bestouff

That's true, but I think it's much more effective for them to protest than just leave. And personally I prefer there's more decent employees at Meta.
swiftcoder

Turns out when your main recruitment strategy is dangling multiple-6-figures in front of debt-laden college graduates (during an employment slowdown), there's always going to be another person willing to take the place of whoever leaves, and the work still gets done
A lot of folks left over Cambridge Analytica, another bunch left over Myanmar, more left over Trump, and yet the hits keep on coming...
foobar_______

Honestly, I dream of the day a meta employee isn't seen as a position of prestige or intelligence, but one of shame and disgust. I hope recruiters and companies actively avoid, not seek, meta employees.
kokanee

TBH I question the ethics of most big tech employees, but Meta is definitely the grossest money-grubbing hog pit of them all. I instantly lose respect for people who sell themselves to carry out the wishes of the billionaire elites like that. They'd be powerless without their legions of storm troopers.
sjdh76
Palpatine is quite mesmerizing. He will invite to his yatch, island, show you toys etc. "You want to be like me do what I say". Works on most of the chimp troupe since the dawn of time. #TheoryoftheLeisureClass
- motoboi
  Nah, not like this. It's mostly brainwashing into thinking you are doing good things.
  Banality of the evil. Hannah Arendt.
  - antonvs
    
    That's not completely realistic. A lot of people are attracted to companies like Meta because of unusually large paychecks. The whole "making the world a better place" schtick is just the whitewashing to help make them feel good about it.
    
    motoboi
    
    This is what Banality of the Evil was all about. The idea that people who do evil things is different from people who do not is what allows those awful things to happen. Because that idea stops us from examining our own cognition for signs of conformity and groupthinking.
    If we start recognizing that we too are capable of awful things all while believing we are doing good, we can start self examining our ideas, motivations and behavior, to catch ourselves before we embark on such grouptrips.
    
    antonvs
    
    There are certainly some people at Meta who would qualify in Arendt's sense as an example of the banality of evil.
    But Arendt focused on the idea that exceptional evil can be perpetrated by people who aren't exceptionally malevolent.
    Certainly at the C-suite level, the evidence is that people at Meta are exceptionally malevolent. There are direct quotes from Zuckerberg that illustrate this, like the one about people being suckers for giving him their information. As such, those aren't the people that Arendt was focusing on.
    I'm arguing that there are many more people at Meta to whom that applies than you might imagine. They're aware that Meta has a bad reputation, but they choose to work there anyway because of a large paycheck. That's knowing participation. Slapping a facade of "making the world a better place" or "helping people connect" to hide that is not what Arendt was talking about.
  - shrubby
    
    Banality of evil hits the spot on so many things these days.

p2detar

The situation everywhere looks dire. These aren‘t social media platforms anymore but tools for propaganda and repression against opposition groups across different countries.

> 25.10.2026: Meta removed three prominent satire pages from Facebook the day before presidential elections in Bulgaria.

> Shortly after the deletion they were recreated and gathered tens of thousands of followers within hours. Less than 24h later Meta removed them again. Due to past incidents involvement of security forces is suspected. No meaningful response from Meta as usual.

Source: https://bsky.app/profile/yurukov.yurukov.net/post/3myozobbcy...

lopsotronic
I've mentioned this before, but . . . these systems were ALL originally conceived by the security state as tools for surveillance and propaganda, and for control. With a hitherto-unknown-and-probably-unknowable amount of Cold War Leftover/GWoT black money poured into them before their (sometimes extremely hinky) IPOs.
Some of the old security state nomenklatura even stayed on into the Hi Tech Grandee era. In-Q-Tel. LifeLog. Regina Dugan. Douglas Gage, Jim Breyer, Howard Cox. Thiel and Palantir. And many more besides. Und so weiter, und so weiter.
They're not deviating from their mission or their "morals"; today, now -- with the chips finally down, i.e. global hegemony switching for the first time in the nuclear age -- these "companies" are returning to their roots.
- AnimalMuppet
  
  Meta? That is, Facebook? Originally conceived by the security state? Zuckerberg, when he had the idea in college, didn't actually have the idea, but was given it by the security state?
  I don't believe you.
  Some of the others, I will give you.
syrrim

>involvement of security forces
does this mean they were ordered to take them down by the government? what can they do in that case?
dastardly45
The American propaganda platforms have for a long time been helping the US regime to undermine democracies around the world. More and more Europeans are realising that the Nerd Reich are supporting the far right movements in Europe, helping Trump and his friend Putin in destabilising European democracies. Hoping that Brazil and Lula will issue an international arrest warrant for Zuckerberg for being a foreign agent interfering in a sovereign state's election. Germany should do the same with Musk.
- andreygrehov
  
  Lula is a friend of Putin. The other candidate is a friend of Trump.
empyrrhicist

Meanwhile, a couple of oligarchs are positioning convenient AI summaries in between us and all of the world's information. Talk about a useful tool to control people...

cheriot

Is there a description of what Meta to help Flavio? The article just makes vague assertions.

drdexebtjl

Aside from what other users described, some interesting “technical glitches” revealed training biases:
- Meta AI refused to generate campaign images depicting Lula, but not Bolsonaro.
- If you asked for Meta AI to generate fictitious campaign images for fake candidates, they would have Bolsonaro’s party number. It would refuse to generate images with Lula’s party number claiming it can’t use real party numbers (Brazilians vote by typing the candidate’s number in an electronic voting machine)
- AI-powered translation was refusing to translate “presidiário” correctly when referring to Jair.
idle_zealot
If I recall, they banned Lula's account and promoted Flavio super hard in the recommendations feeds.
- Aurornis
  I don't think you recall correctly
  I found that Lula's team was unable to pay to boost posts for about 24 hours, which was a bug that affected other accounts too.
  Meta also changed the search algorithm to trigger account matching after 5 characters, which would make "@lulaofficial" not the top recommendation for everyone who only typed "lula".
  The rumors about what happened are crazy. These things would be so easy to report in any of the news articles, but instead everyone is just guessing and sharing rumors.
  - mangodrunk
    
    It is incredible how little critical thinking is being applied on the Brazilian election. Too many are taking at face value that somehow META is responsible for something nefarious without any direct evidence and accusations.
    
    CyberMacGyver
    
    There is enough precedence to believe that it was intentional. The book Careless People goes into details specifically describing this tactic being used a decade ago.
dastardly45

Meta itself has been describing the favouritism as caused by technical glitches - which for some reason always benefitted Bolsonaro. Searches for Lula on Instagram didn't show any results while searches for Bolsonaro worked. Restrictions on Lula's ad account was apparently also a technical glitch. Strangely enough, there was also some technical glitches that caused whatsapp searches for Lula's 7 million members whatsapp channel to bring up Bolsonaro's whatsapp channel instead. Did I mention that Meta was fined $25 billion dollars last week for lying and misleading the public?

brandonagr2

For those not in the loop, what are the actions that "have been programmatically made user-facing to such an obvious and biased extent"?

vrganj
Here's another example, where Meta's AI was asked to make a voting poster for the election, made it about voting for Bolsonaro unprompted, then when asked to make one for Lula said it couldn't make one for political candidates: https://www.reddit.com/r/brasil/comments/1x965on/eu_n%C3%A3o...
- crummy
  
  It’s easy to hand wave that stuff as mysteries of the LLMs. Much stronger case now that these employees have spoken out about it. I hope they can point to specific cases.
Aurornis

I couldn't figure it out from this link or any other English news articles. After some searching and translating Brazilian language articles I found some complaints that they were unable to pay Instagram to boost their posts for a day, but that outage applied to many accounts. There was another problem where Instagram changed the search algorithm to only trigger account matching after 5 characters were typed, making "Lula" harder to find, but that's a global change. There are scattered additional complaints about IG stories losing a few seconds and political restrictions on AI tools not triggering equally for both candidates.
ceejayoz

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50227639

loeg

No actual details or evidence of favoritism backing the claims.

dastardly45

"International election observers have raised concerns about Meta’s platforms. Incidents include temporary interruptions of one candidate’s campaign account; differences in audience engagement, user feeds, view counts and reach; restrictions on that campaign’s Instagram posts; and differences between the main political parties in AI image generation, WhatsApp channel search results, candidates’ Stories and the distribution of political content potentially benefiting the opposing candidate’s campaign."
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/10/meta-must-pr...
cosmicgadget

Sounds like they spoke to their lawyers first.

matt3210

Company influences politics for shareholder value, not a surprise at all. This was just the time they got caught and I bet the other MAG7 are doing it in some form too even if its just massive donations

Aurornis

There are so many English articles about this topic that never explain what happened. I clicked on everything from Reuters to Al Jazeera and they're all reciting the same line about "accounts restricted".

The best I could find was from some translations of paywalled Brazilian articles like this one https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2026/10/em-mensagens-int...

The "account restriction" was a period of about 24 hours where Instagram's "Boost Post" feature wasn't working for some accounts, including Lula's. The ads were still shown, but the part to add more money for the boosts wasn't working that day.

There's another complaint about not being able to search for "Lula" and get the exact account after they changed the global search to require 5 characters to identify accounts.

There are additional accusations of things like some stories posts getting cut short and the AI tool not applying political restrictions equally.

A lot of the articles imply the "internal communications" caught them red-handed doing these things intentionally, but as far as I can tell those internal communications are just them responding to the issues? If there was a leaked internal communication about them disrupting elections, the news stories would probably lead with that instead of dancing around the subject.

That's the context I could find after not getting much useful information from this link. I know this comment is going to make some people angry but to clear I'm only trying to figure out what these articles are talking about.

loeg
> If there was a leaked internal communication about them disrupting elections, the news stories would probably lead with that instead of dancing around the subject.
And it works! Nearly every comment here is just riffing on how this was definitely intentional and further evidence of the commenter's preconceived notions of Meta, etc, etc.
- LeBit
  
  Far from every comments.
  There’s a lot of yous…
dastardly45
International UN election observers are also reporting about the American platforms suppressing free speech.
But please, just go ahead and trust the company that was fined $25 billion dollars last week for lying and misleading the public about its involvement in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/10/meta-must-pr...
- Aurornis
  Isn't that link basically saying what I said above, but in the same obscured way to hide the details of what happened?
  > Incidents include temporary interruptions of one candidate’s campaign account; differences in audience engagement, user feeds, view counts and reach; restrictions on that campaign’s Instagram posts; and differences between the main political parties in AI image generation, WhatsApp channel search results, candidates’ Stories and the distribution of political content potentially benefiting the opposing candidate’s campaign.
  > But please, just go ahead and trust the company
  There are more options than "Completely trust the company" and "Completely trust any allegations against the company". Take some time and learn the details. Don't just pick sides and bury your head in the sand when someone wants to discuss facts.
  - dastardly45
    
    Here's a thousand (and a bit more) facts and reasons why you shouldn't trust Meta. https://paydayreport.com/meta-censors-over-1-080-pro-lula-ac...
    
    Aurornis
    
    Are you just going to keep throwing random links at me and ignoring the facts?
    I'm not going to take "paydayreport.com" slop reporting over the actual Brazilian news sources I linked above. You're fully drinking the kool-aid and unquestioningly consuming any anti-Meta news as ground truth, but I'm trying to figure out what actually happened

none_to_remain

Feels to me it was established in 2021 that the major platforms had the power to place potentates and pretenders under Interdict.

ChrisArchitect

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50227639

Lula wins election after final votes tallied

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50237485

[deleted]
Comment removed.
- ceejayoz
  
  "Four out of five Supreme Court justices tasked with trying the former president", not Lula, and for a coup attempt.

ludsan

Sorry all. I'm very slow here. The linked story only talks about a group within Meta showing concern with concernable events. What was the event?

I'm slow because this article doesn't describe it: and believe it or not, I use this website as a source of "breaking" news, so I sincerely would like to know.

EDIT: ahh p2detar has something real: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50248577

dastardly45
Here's another AP and Reuters story not behind a pay wall https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/10/16/meta-employees-...
- ludsan
  
  oof... i clicked on that.
  I feel like I'm taking Crazy Pills. That was the most bizarre AJ (AP?) article I've read.

lenerdenator

Any calls for Meta to change are useless until Mark Zuckerberg no longer holds a majority of voting shares. You have to have reforms around that first. Cambridge Analytica, the Metaverse, the New Mexico judgment... all examples of things that would have gotten any other CEO canned due to their damage to the bottom line, but Mark doesn't have to worry, because he's not going to vote himself out.

loeg
> Any calls for Meta to change are useless until Mark Zuckerberg no longer holds a majority of voting shares.
That's not true. Zuckerberg blinked when the share price hit the 90s in 2022. Despite holding the vote, he started listening to external investors more.
- lenerdenator
  Know what would have been even better? Them being in a position to prevent him from doing the things he did to drive down the share price to begin with.
  - loeg
    
    He gets credit when the share price goes from 300 to 95, but not when it goes from 38 to 700?
    
    lenerdenator
    
    Yes. The point of the company is to make money, not lose it. There are plenty of CEOs who have made line go up, lost a bit of that line, and lost their jobs as a result. I guess they have to wipe the tears away with the money they get from the severance package. So it goes.
    Considering that Zuckerberg has lost the company a lot of money on fairly obvious things, I don't see why he's special, especially when he's attracting legal attention.

ivell

These behaviors are only short term beneficial for the company. Eventually they will just get banned in other nations as a threat to sovereignty.

idle_zealot

Really depends on the political climate. Such a ban is very difficult for two main reasons:
1. It's going to be very unpopular, enabling the domestic opposition to take advantage rhetorically. Without a local mandate it's political suicide, so you'd need to build up to it for a while and turn the public against Facebook/Instagram. Tricky if that's their primary mode of engagement with community/news/entertainment.
2. An attack on a powerful private company tends to scare other capital owners. If you depend on donors and local (or international) businesses to maintain your lifestyle or electoral viability then it can be tricky to convince them that your ban is limited in scope and won't prompt additional regulatory action or contribute to a social shift of people expecting more from their leaders. If you fail to provide adequate assurances then capital is likely to side with Meta and sink you for trying to cut them off.
Frieren

Short-term is the only thing that matters for billionaires. If they cared for the future they will not do the things that they do.
Also, if you help a dictator-wanna-be to take power you may get a election short-term but a country long-term. Billionaires are not very friendly towards democracy or the working class.

xlayn

I'm going to make a very bold claim here... block those 2 big ones and you will fix a lot of what's going on the planet right now.

jacquesm

That shouldn't be downvoted but keep in mind how many people cash a paycheck every two weeks from those places.

rl3

>252 points by guitcastro 1 hour ago | 100 comments

This was trending #1, and now it's not even main page at #37.

cute_boi

"We Meta employees want to build technologies and platforms that millions of people use and enjoy."

We Palantir employees want to build software tools for clients to combine, clean, and make sense of their own scattered datasets

seydor

"I'm fine with this"

Probably Zuckerberg's gravestone

benoau

He probably made hundreds of millions off it.
And the fact that he did this years after Cambridge Analytica, just wow.
I wonder if it can even be stopped at this stage - Brazil can only arrest him or execs if they are in Brazil, even international warrants are tricky to enforce against people who can travel by private jet and mega-yacht.

worik

This will damage Meta's business. As the meme that they cannot be trusted spreads alternative methods of communication will revive, and start to flourish

Trust does matter. Hard to win, easier to loose, and no matter how big you are, how mean you seem, you can still sicken and die

kskdksjckdkd
> This will damage Meta's business.
It won’t.
- roscas
  
  Right, I think this will have zero mention on their meetings. The value of this block is zero.
  On the other hand, this false protection, brings fake sense of security in people.
  I do think it was Facebook paying for this.

henriquenunez

And nonetheless our democracy won

xyst

To me this is just virtue signaling while cashing a $200K+ salary from evil corp. plus probably puts a target on your back.

If you truly despise their actions, start leaking documents to the press. Climb the ladder as high as possible and infiltrate top leadership.

swiftcoder

> If you truly despise their actions, start leaking documents to the press
I don't think meta has had an all hands meeting that wasn't live-tweeted by journalists since... 2019? The leaks are pretty ubiquitous, but notably not from high-ups or the folks with access to a lot of the public policy stuff.

shrubby

Tech fascism is panicking universally as the algorithmic manipulation doesn't seem to work anymore as people are getting more and more aware of the tactics.

join

meddling in elections and enabling genocide, the company

johen8

Honestly, in 2018 Meta *allegedly* interfered in the other direction. It basically goes along with who the US President is. This discourse is just to stoke division and promote censorship and bigger government control.

vkou

Would it be appropriate now for Lula to sanction the crap out of Meta and its operations in Brazil?

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes..?

drgo

Is there a competition among the tech pros for who becomes the most hated tech bro in the world?

drjasonharrison

yes, it's measured roughly with "financial wealth". Finer details like "number of baby momma's" and "number of dollars donated to political groups" can be used to break ties.

[deleted]

Comment removed.

drdexebtjl
- Both sides asked for the extensions.
- Less than 40.000 votes were cast during the extension. Lula won by more than 4 million votes.
- The Supreme Court Justice assigned to rule on the extension was selected by random chance, as protocol dictates.
- The Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) and its president, Nunes Marques, recognized the results of the election. He was appointed by Jair Bolsonaro.
This rhetoric is a sore loser’s.
- guywithahat
  https://x.com/leadingreport/status/2114738539204100415?s=46
  Sore winner too I suppose
  - bigyabai
    
    https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/26/world/americas/flavio-bol... ( https://archive.ph/0AfBQ )
    Brazil's Supreme Court ordered his passport to be revoked. The President doesn't have the authority to overrule their demand.

jacquesm

So, they all resigned?

sheepscreek
Yes we can say that and mock them. But you know what, if they did resign, Meta would replace them with a worse lot. With lower morals.
So we should rather want these people to stay on for as long as possible, and make it hard for Meta to pull off such shit.
- jacquesm
  Well, no. If you stick to a job at an employer that does this kind of crap then indirectly you are an enabler, even if you protest. Meta would replace them but that's on Meta, not on those that walked out.
  Meta will not stop short of government action and I wouldn't be surprised at all if this is happening at the request of that government in the first place. Zuckerberg may have some excuse (say, they showed him a documentary about Jack Ma) but he definitely either folded or just straight up decided to comply in advance.
  - sheepscreek
    
    Fair enough, but wouldn’t you rather have someone accept complicity - but try what they can, instead of someone who follows blindly?
    The world exists in shades of grey my friend..
    
    jacquesm
    
    The point is that this is performative. They don't try what they can, they just make some noise. Facebook couldn't possibly pay me to work for them.
  - swiftcoder
    
    > If you stick to a job at an employer that does this kind of crap then indirectly you are an enabler, even if you protest. Meta would replace them but that's on Meta, not on those that walked out
    So walking away would allow the former-employees to have a clear conscience, in full knowledge that the evil will continue exactly the same without them?
    This is a somewhat exotic philosophical position you are staking out here
    
    kskdksjckdkd
    
    > So walking away would allow the former-employees to have a clear conscience, in full knowledge that the evil will continue exactly the same without them?
    So they know nothing will change regardless of what they do and yet they willingly continue to sell their time and skills to said evil organisation?
    Interesting.
  - HelloMcFly
    
    > I wouldn't be surprised at all if this is happening at the request of that government in the first place
    You wouldn't be surprised if the incumbent candidate requested that Meta platform and systematically encourage voting for their rightwing opponent? What do you think happened here?
    And as for me, I want people with morals to stick around and try to influence things in a positive direction. It's so easy to get on one's high horse and say "then go elsewhere", but everyone acting like that is a short path to a worse world. Tend the gardens you are in while you can, but I don't blame anyone who just can't carry that torch day-in, day-out.
mercanlIl
That’s a rather binary and extreme way to see things. It doesn’t scale well if everyone acted like that.
It's better that people in these organizations feel they can speak up. If they have to choose between saying nothing or resigning, many would simply say nothing. And how is that situation any better?
- jacquesm
  On the contrary, it would scale very well if everyone acted like that.
  - loeg
    
    If we're just wishing for everyone to behave exactly how we want, you might as well just wish for the company operators and executives to behave exactly how you want as well. And then you don't need to coordinate the much larger employees group.
    
    jacquesm
    
    That's the point. You can denounce something easily enough. But there is no pricetag attached to that so it means absolutely nothing if you continue to enable the company that does these things. Like the 100's of times before that 'Meta' (Facebook) did stuff that was despicable. They continued to work there.
    
    loeg
    
    Eh. My point was that your wishful thinking isn’t even internally consistent. And certainly has no basis in the real world, where not everyone shares your exact ideology.
liendolucas

Perhaps some fired, others promoted.

SideburnsOfDoom

Armaments factory employees denounce bombs.

_doctor_love

I think it's more they object to where the bombs got dropped.
buellerbueller
Would you prefer the armament factory be staffed by warmongers? That seems objectively worse.
- SideburnsOfDoom
  The odds of you, the non-warmonger, influencing your employer's business direction are close to nil. You becoming complicit is a certainly.
  The change is not "objectively worse" - it is the same for them and is definitely better for you. This is a pointless take.
  Many other comments here expand on these themes - you're not going to influence the company direction by staying. You should not be surprised when the armaments factory makes bombs, or the influence factory makes political influence.
  - buellerbueller
    
    So many poor arguments and analogies in you master sage comment.
    1. No one is surprised when the armaments factory makes bombs; they claim to. Does Meta claim to be an influence factory? Ha! They argue tooth and nail against this fact in every court they've been sued or charged in. Thus, it is certainly surprising when a space for connecting to others makes specific connections, particularly political ones impossible or difficult in the midst of the election. I don't think most people saw that coming; perhaps you did because you are obviously more clever than the rest of us.
    2. A zero percent chance versus a close to nil chance are objectively different. Which one is better or worse is of course context dependent.
    3. If you work at a company that does bad things and you are trying to steer it away from those bad things, it is not clear that you are becoming complicit. Some could argue that you are the opposite of complicit.
    4. Perhaps the point is not merely influencing your employer's business direction, but also that of your colleagues.
    Sorry, bud, you didn't clinch it.
    
    SideburnsOfDoom
    
    1. Meta are an obvious influence factory. Of course they say otherwise in court, but it's well known and not subtle.
    2. I was being generous.
    3. "Some could argue that you are the opposite of complicit", and they'd be wrong. "If you work at a company that does bad things and" let me stop you there at the "and". Your real job (the stuff before the "and") isn't negated by your hobby, and if they're severely at odds then your work effectiveness will suffer.
    4. How did that work out for you?
    
    buellerbueller
    
    1. weak.
    2. weaker still.
    3. you don't own morality, buddy.
    4. complete miss; i don' work for a company whose motives i question.
    
    SideburnsOfDoom
    
    1-2 I urge you to read the other comments in this thread that make the same points in other terms.
    3 Still not clear if you possess it either.
    4 So you're already solved this, and not at all in the way that you're advocating for? That's revealing.
    Your responses are myopic, juvenile and add no understanding, so I am at this point going to say: good bye and have a nice day.
    
    buellerbueller
    
    The hilarious thing is that you believe yours have added understanding.
    Narrator: They didn't.
- kskdksjckdkd
  
  Since warmongers are rarely qualified for voluntary jobs, maybe.

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Meta Employees Denounce Interference in Brazilian Elections (www.panamericandispatch.org)

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