> "Move our trust and safety and content moderation teams out of California, and our US content review to Texas. This will help remove the concern that biased employees are overly censoring content." - like people being in Texas makes them more objective?!
The FB office in Austin, Texas is a moderately left-leaning area. Their office in Silicon Valley is about the most extreme left-wing place in the country. At the very least, teams at their Texas offices will have more overlap with the median voter than the ones in California. If their Texas offices were in rural rancher country, then I'd agree with your concern that it would just be swapping one bias for another.
It's not about actual employees, it's about signalling "Texas - yay!" and "California - booooo!" in order to make good with the incoming administration.
Says more about fb being penny pinching than anything. The kid working the panda express in california can afford a 1br apartment, why not a fb moderator?
Have you seen panda express job postings lately? It's like north of $20 an hour with full medical, dental, vacation, sick days, 401k. Higher than that for shift lead and managers I'm sure. Sure beats when I worked fast food for minimum wage and had to find my own sub when I got sick.
Actually the cost of rent and housing has dropped there the last few years, because they are doing a good job building. Not so great for my SFH's value, but its definitely dropping from "WTF" to "Seems more normal" pricing.
Grew up in Ohio. Always wanted to live in Silicon Valley. Been here 14 years now. Not leaving. But this is happening because of how terrible the California brand has become. Pretending our prestige and brand is the same as it was 20 (or even 10) years ago is not the answer.
Yeah I was recently given the choice to move for RTO to the bay area versus pacific northwest, and everyone I asked about this expressed their dissatisfaction with California.
That's a complicated topic, but part of that is because California has become a target for a number of people with money, influence and media outlets.
Not to say it doesn't have problems - like housing - that are self-inflicted. Just that a big part of the 'brand' problem is people targeting the state.
Yes there is a lot of “unfair competition” but ultimately you build a brand by demonstrating your positive qualities and making it clear what you stand for.
People care less about ideology than they do about their own lives and prosperity.
It used to be clear: you can make a better life in California. It was a land of growth, prosperity, and wealth. Growing families moving into golden cul-de-sacs.
We should actually make those things true again. Houses don’t need to be affordable in Palo Alto but not being affordable anywhere is a problem. We don’t need to develop Big Sur but not being able to develop any costal property is a problem. We don’t need to deport law abiding citizens because they fail an ICE sweep but not being able to deport career criminals is a problem.
The problem is that we have lost any ability to make a positive case for California outside of niche political interests and very specific career paths.
By the same - entirely unevidenced - reasoning, your posts ITT are about signalling the reverse in order to make good with sympathetic readers on HN.
See how that works?
The specific places in California where Facebook had "trust and safety and content moderation teams" were places that very much don't reflect the average politics of the US. That is naturally going to reflect itself in the ideological composition of employees, and therefore in political bias in the fact-checking process.
* there is no good reason a priori, outside of political bias, to suspect the New York Post (founded 1801 by Alexander Hamilton) of spreading such disinformation.
Thinking Menlo Park (or any of Silicon Valley, really) is in any way "extreme left-wing" is a sure indication you haven't spent any time there and are basing your viewpoints off of what others have said on social media. Billion dollar corporations by definition do not support anything remotely "extreme left-wing".
I’ve lived in SF, Mountain View and also the east bay and I’ve worked at a billion dollar company that did indeed support some very left-wing causes.
Despite having grown up in a light blue state, the difference in politics was very noticeable when I got to SF/SV. This isn’t a value judgement, just my observation.
That's why I was talking about Silicon Valley, not SF or east bay. They're much different places. Besides that, a corporation giving lip service to diversity =/= "extreme left-wing" views. These billion dollar corporations are still capitalist, through and through. Actual extreme left-wing views are staunchly opposed to capitalism.
Talking about "actual extreme left-wing views" is something that only really works in internet arguments where everything eventually trends into Communism vs Capitalism (TM).
In reality, every country has their own set of issues. Every democracy has their set of parties that exist somewhere in the policy space of issues relevant to them. In the US, we generally think of socially progressive policies as "left" along with non-market views of the economy. As such, the SFBA is generally much closer to the American "left" edge than the right.
I agree that South Bay and the Peninsula are less "left" than SF or Oakland, but I think this sort of argument is sophistry. That said, I don't really think moving hiring to Texas will change anything ideologically among employees and instead is just a way to signal to the new administration that they're Friends (TM) and on the backside a way to cost cut so they can pay less in Austin.
That's a funny way to say "I'm sorry, I should not have assumed you were unfamiliar with the region, when it has instead become clear that you live out there".
I aim to discuss this topic factually while noting that views vary significantly among San Francisco residents. Some common political positions that would generally be considered far-left in the U.S. context include support for:
- Housing as a human right and strict rent control policies
- Universal basic income and significantly higher taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations
- Complete defunding or abolition of police departments
- Immediate and dramatic action on climate change, including bans on private vehicles
Very few, if any, billion-dollar corporations are in any way “extreme left wing”.
But that is not “by definition”. The definition of a “billion-dollar company” is that it is valued by investors at a billion dollars. That definition has absolutely nothing to do with its political leanings.
“Vanishingly unlikely” sure. But not by definition.
What I mean is an extreme left-wing views would advocate for the nationalization or abolition of all private companies, so a corporation couldn't fit into that.
The FB office in Austin, Texas is a moderately left-leaning area. Their office in Silicon Valley is about the most extreme left-wing place in the country. At the very least, teams at their Texas offices will have more overlap with the median voter than the ones in California. If their Texas offices were in rural rancher country, then I'd agree with your concern that it would just be swapping one bias for another.