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.
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.
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/
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".
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.
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.
Inside information is critical, and you can always try to do your part.
Like your life will basically be ruined for a long time, maybe forever.
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.
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.
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.
they could take a page out of the CIA manual for it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
— Upton Sinclair
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.
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.
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
> 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?
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
If you care about preventing Meta from doing evil things, you have far more influence and power over that if you work for Meta.
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.
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?
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
If Meta keeps those positions at all.
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.
(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.A lot of folks left over Cambridge Analytica, another bunch left over Myanmar, more left over Trump, and yet the hits keep on coming...
Banality of the evil. Hannah Arendt.
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.
> 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...
does this mean they were ordered to take them down by the government? what can they do in that case?
- 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.
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.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/10/meta-must-pr...
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.
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.
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...
> 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.
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
I feel like I'm taking Crazy Pills. That was the most bizarre AJ (AP?) article I've read.
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.
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.
This was trending #1, and now it's not even main page at #37.
Probably Zuckerberg's gravestone
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.
Meta employees say Lula’s accounts restricted in Brazil election
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50227639
Lula wins election after final votes tallied
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.
We Palantir employees want to build software tools for clients to combine, clean, and make sense of their own scattered datasets
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
It won’t.
On the other hand, this false protection, brings fake sense of security in people.
I do think it was Facebook paying for this.
Incredible, and here I was thinking the letter was going to be in regards to the last minute extension of the election by Lula's former attorney, or the irregularities in the second round. Facebook is a culturally left-wing company and their argument seems to lack substance
- 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.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes..?
If you truly despise their actions, start leaking documents to the press. Climb the ladder as high as possible and infiltrate top leadership.
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.
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.
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.
The world exists in shades of grey my friend..
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
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.
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.
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?