Moral Responsibility of Meta Engineers - Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

Heated debate over whether Meta engineers bear moral culpability for the company's harms including genocide facilitation, teenage depression, and surveillance. Arguments range from 'they had other options' to 'everyone needs a job,' with philosophical concepts like causal impotence and the Principle of Double Effect invoked.

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I would decouple "build things people want" from "business function". I would put in the former bucket things like: making the computer work smoothly and run apps. I would put in the latter bucket things like: show advertising to the user when the log in. Engineering should always be about the first, or it's bad engineering. The second is far more controversial - business leaders would like you to consider it good engineering to do that, but you get to interpose your own ethics.

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I would decouple "build things people want" from "business function". I would put in the former bucket things like: making the computer work smoothly and run apps. I would put in the latter bucket things like: show advertising to the user when the log in. Engineering should always be about the first, or it's bad engineering. The second is far more controversial - business leaders would like you to consider it good engineering to do that, but you get to interpose your own ethics.