There's no story. You need to remember - big corporations are not your friend. They're your enemy. They don't care about you. They don't care about doing good. They care about money. They care about control. They care about their stock price. That's it.
You might ask - but what about the people who work at those corporations? And that's also pretty simply explained by this classic quote: it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
They are not your enemy either. They are… businesses. Whose purpose is to survive and thrive. Just because you don’t like them or what they do doesn’t make them your enemy. And, lots of very talented and smart people work there every day for their own personal reasons. No need to bash or show hatred to them.
Less of the "not liking" and more of an "are an existential threat to."
This isn't high school. This is about real people having real experiences of fear, stress, violence, and horror facilitated by deliberate cultural engineering.
If the very talented and smart people don't get that, that's a them problem.
What a sad, sad take. Do you even know what the word “enemy” means? Just because I don’t like my neighbor doesn’t make them my enemy. We are not going to war with each other, we just don’t like each other’s company. Just because I don’t like your comments on HN doesn’t mean I hate you. Good grief.
You've entered into a logical fallacy there - the parent was saying that not liking someone or what they do is a prerequisite for them becoming an enemy. They did NOT say that everyone you don't like is your enemy, which is the straw man you chose to respond to.
I disagree. If you take statement X to be "you don't like them" and Y to be "they're your enemy". Then OP said "Just because X is true, it doesn't mean Y is true". In other words, "X does not imply Y". Meneth said "yes it does". In other words, "X implies Y".
All enemies are people you dislike and / or people who do things you don't like. This does not make the opposite true, not all people you dislike or who do things you don't like are your enemy. The statement "all cats are black" does not also mean "all black things are cats".
I roughly agree with you on that (with the caveat that e.g. opposing army generals can be enemies but admire and respect each other). I disagree that Meneth was saying what you said.
But if your neighbour actively and deliberately makes your life worse then they certainly could be your enemy.
If I’m queer and Facebook is actively censoring queer content then that’s more significant to me than just being a difference of opinion. The company is actively suppressing my way of life.
Maybe the word “enemy” is too much but if so I think describing the idea as “sad” is equally as so. Giving a corporation a pass on behaviour you consider abhorrent simply because it’s a company and not a person seems pretty sad to me.
>If I’m queer and Facebook is actively censoring queer content then that’s more significant to me than just being a difference of opinion. The company is actively suppressing my way of life.
Why queer community will not find an alternative app?
This is the incredibly profitable contradiction Facebook lives in.
They do everything they can to become the central place for online communication and profit enormously from that. But they reject any of the responsibility that ought to come along with that, the refrain being what you're saying here: "well, you can always just go somewhere else"
Except that when online communication is as deeply siloed as it is it's extremely difficult to set up an alternative. How will people even find out about it when their entire online lives are lived on Facebook? This capture is exactly what Meta wants. Remember internet.org?
No, because then what happens when the place they move to starts censoring them as well? Then all the places start censoring them? You're basically arguing for "separate but equal", and we know how that works out. The correct move is to fight for your rights, not to assuage bigotry.
And you are arguing every business must support your agenda, and if not, they are your "enemy"? What an odd take. Again, you are free to use other means of social media to spread your message but no one is obligated to read or support it. And, that does not make them the enemy.
And by your own logic, how does censoring content actively suppress your way of life? Did someone from Meta go to your place of residence and actively threaten to harm you? Sure, maybe you don’t like the censorship, but how does that make them your enemy? Have you openly declared war on them? If you don’t like their content, simply move along.
> And by your own logic, how does censoring content actively suppress your way of life?
Because it erases our existence, which is what a substantial slice of straight society wants. Queer content and spaces are important for queer adults, because it gives us places to comfortably be ourselves without feeling subject to leering or judgement from bigots, and safety in numbers in case someone starts something. It gives us people to be among who we can talk to, form community with, and support one another. And for people just coming up, it's literally lifesaving. Numerous studies have shown that queer-leaning teens and kids are MUCH safer when they have access to safe places to explore who they are, even if they don't "turn out" that way, prevents awful, irreversible things. [1,2,3] Not to mention it can be lifesaving also when their parents are bigots themselves and they need a way out.
> Sure, maybe you don’t like the censorship, but how does that make them your enemy?
The bridge between "they suppress expressions of who I am" and "they participate in my extermination" has been proven to be quite short and easily traversed for queers many times, and for racial groups, and for religious groups too. [4]
By your definition they may not be my enemy today, but they may be in a short period of time.
> If you don’t like their content, simply move along.
This is actually great advice for people who keep trying to take down queer content.
Edit: And this is exactly what figures like Breitbart have been openly trying to do for over a decade. And it isn't just him either, you have the Family Research Council, Fox News hosts, Daily Wire personalities like Matt Walsh, and Libs of TikTok have all made careers out of normalizing queer erasure. For them, "winning the culture war" is not only their stated, in-text goal, it's a means of pushing us out of public life: sometimes just running us out of town, other times things too ugly to say aloud.
Erases your existence? Would your existence be threatened if Meta was not a company? What about the countless number of other companies who are not pushing your content? Do you feel threatened by them? Now I see why you chose the word "hate"...
No, my existence isn’t contingent on Meta existing. But when a platform with billions of users decides queer content is unwelcome, it erases us from one of the largest public squares in the world, at a time when public squares are at a premium. That’s not the same as "some random company doesn’t carry my stuff."
There's also a difference between not amplifying something and actively suppressing it. Neutral omission is one thing; deliberate censorship is another. When queer content is singled out for removal, it sends a message: you don’t belong here. That's erasure.
History shows us that erasure is rarely neutral. It's part of a continuum: silence leads to exclusion leads to violence. Pretending censorship is harmless ignores the fact that queer people have lived through this cycle many times before, and we're far from alone.
> And, lots of very talented and smart people work there every day for their own personal reasons. No need to bash or show hatred to them.
Lots of very talented and smart people work for big tobacco, Aramco, Stake (crypto gambling), Kick (streaming of crypto gambling), Purdue (made billions on manufacturing an opioid epidemic), DuPont, Shein, Nestlé, NSO group, the GEO group (private prison industry), Clearview (facial recognition at scale including for ICE) and indeed Meta.
What would be a resaonable cause to bash them, in your view, if not disliking what they do?
I don't think we should hate them or show them hatred. I don't think that if you're working at a company that's suppressing someone's way of life you're somehow above criticism or contempt.
The question is, why do you feel the need to bash them? Do you feel the need to bash the coders of YouTube because they have ads or censor content? Do you feel the need to say ugly things to your grocery store because they don’t actively have the goods you want? Are they your enemy because they hire a certain type of person?
I don't mean to be a dick, but no, the question was what is a reasonable cause to bash someone if it's not disliking what they do. I don't know if these weird Socratic replies are meant to be thoughtful but they read as dismissive and condescending.
But hey, I can also play stupid games!
> The question is, why do you feel the need to bash them?
Why do you feel the need to defend them? (I answer this question less flippantly below.)
> Do you feel the need to say ugly things to your grocery store because they don’t actively have the goods you want?
Is not stocking garbanzo beans censorship? Why do you think this is equivalent?
> Do you feel the need to bash the coders of YouTube because they have ads or censor content?
Depends what Youtube is advertising. Depends what they're censoring.
> Are they your enemy because they hire a certain type of person?
Who'd they hire?
...
There is a difference between my grocery store stocking or not stocking something and having problems with a multi-national trillion dollar company that has wedged itself itself into most people's daily lives and has a history of censoring content to curry favour with authoritarians.
I sympathize with the folks who are working there trying to change things for the better, and I sympathize with the people who are legitimately stuck for whatever reason (don't know a lot about visas to the US, but those are probably a good reason). I also think they're tough enough to take it when they dunked on, and have the reading comprehension to realize that when people are critical of Facebook employees, there's context where it absolutely makes sense. Being a Facebook employee is not an identity, it's just a job. Facebook has pivoted to censoring queer content at a time when queer people are being marginalized after years of gains. Most of my ire is directed at the executives and management, but yeah, if you work at Facebook knowing what they do, you're not getting a pass.
My replies are not meant to be dismissive and condescending - they are just frank/honest questions. No need to try to decipher a hidden message.
BTW - Meta wedged itself into most people's lives because the people let it happen. It started off well enough, but just like many companies, they adjusted their content based on the people consuming the platform. Its (Meta's) survival is based on getting views and posting ads. That's the business model. If they started showing content that appealed to a small percentage of their viewership, they would probably go out of business.
While privately owned business can put ethics before outright profit, large public companies are always bound to become assholes so yes they become de facto our enemies while also being our best friends because our pension depends on them.
Some businesses go out of their way to be awful and they deserve every ounce of scorn. Some even know they are causing harm, bury the evidence and continue.
Also, simping for these companies is such a bad look.
I dunno. I used Market Place yesterday to get a new dry erase board (new to me). And, many people use FB to communicate with friends and family. How is that working to make the world a worse place?
No idea. There was once this German guy who planted flowers in front of factories. His name was Adolf Hitler and I'm not sure why everyone hates him so much. (This is sarcastic and do you see the problem with your comment now?)
> And that's also pretty simply explained by this classic quote: it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
I've come to strongly dislike this quote, because it's so often used on HN to decide that whoever's disagreeing with you is doing it for simple, stupid and greedy reasons, thus absolving you of the duty to think a bit about whether there might be nuance you're missing.
We all have limited cognitive budget. Keep nuance investment were there is relevancy for it makes more sense than spending it on things where it’s not going to bring any value to anyone.
You might ask - but what about the people who work at those corporations? And that's also pretty simply explained by this classic quote: it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.