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Comment by sktrdie | Hacker News Reader

Presidents have all kinds of privileges that others don’t. Why should their privilege on social-media be diminished? To me the problem is not the platform but the fact that they have such exceptional privilege to begin with.

What I don't understand is how you can be Facebook employee and also think the platform is the problem - lots of these especially in the React community [1].

If you believe Facebook is the problem, and you're quite vocal about it, and you continue working for Facebook, then that seems as close to paradoxical as you can possibly get.

If that's the case you are by definition working for a company which values you disagree with. That's similar to working for an oil company while being a climate change activist on social media.

1. https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/1267544361929256966

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Personally I find it great that Facebook allows this kind of open speech and open approach from their employees (both in the OP post but also in Abramov stance).

I hope one day this work openness will surface to be seen on their products as well.

>Why should their privilege on social-media be diminished?

Why should a president, prime minister or government/parliament member should have "privilege" ? should they be allowed to swear or show their naked ass on public TV because they are special? The rules should apply equal to all citizens no exceptions for the ones in power.

IMO the algorithm that decides if a post should be banned or not should not have as input who is the author.

The next sentence of GP is

> To me the problem is not the platform but the fact that they have such exceptional privilege to begin with.

When all citizens have the button to nuke the whole world, we can make arguments about equality.

Equal protection is one of the founding principles of the US. So is freedom of speech.

Facebook is not the government, but they are the de facto public square. They shouldn’t have one set of rules for leaders and another, stricter, set for their critics.

Not just “working for”, but being a very public face of the company for people they are trying to recruit. It rings hollow.

Sometimes you can effect change from within.

Having previously been involved in organizations with racist/sexist leadership, I've found it generally to be the case that the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. I have observed that leaving those organizations and then drawing public attention to their problems tends to be a significantly more effective tactic.

Yes, my experience is unfortunately the same. But I certainly won't fault someone for thinking they could make a difference. I don't have any nice things to say about Facebook but I'm certain that I could find plenty of nice things to say about the people who work there.

I mean, obviously Cambridge analytica, election manipulation, ad creep, privacy issues, psychological experiment on masses, and so many dark things just happened without anyone working on them and of course people changed it from inside.

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