Between this $2B deal and the $5B Apple Park deal, I start to wonder how companies are justifying these purchases as remote and distributed work becomes more feasible.
They're probably focused on the fact that productivity is still higher in co-located settings and the best talent pools are in major metro areas. But what if, instead, they invested $500M in remote work research and $500M in building a remote work infrastructure for the company. Then they can go ahead and pocket that extra $1-4B in real estate costs, and perhaps another ~$10B long term as they avoid future real estate purchases and scale this across the company. Also, save several hundred million in hiring and retention, as they attract more talent from around the world and retain employees by offering remote work as a benefit.
Could this be a more forward-thinking approach? I'm merely posing the question.
Real estate is super expensive, and most people would consider being able to live anywhere a huge perk. In other words, the only reason talent is so concentrated in New York, is because it has to be right now. But what will happen as more companies offer distributed work? Will people choose to continue living in metro areas with astronomical costs of living (perhaps even away from family or in a climate they don't prefer)? Or will they leave and work from wherever they want? And then what will happen to the value of this real estate? And what will happen to the companies that invested in it?
I find it odd that innovative tech companies seem to not be questioning one of the more non-innovative and dogmatic practices of today - physical office space. Not only that, but they're investing billions into that idea. Why not challenge it?
Or what if you took a hybrid approach? Have a collaborative space in New York that everyone can use to come together, but everyone can also work from home. You may be able to cut down the required space by 3-4x.
Definitely. But there's also been very little investment into remote work, both from a research and infrastructure perspective.
I just wonder, if they were to take some of this cash and invest it into proving out remote work, would it turn out to be a better long term investment?
In most of the cases that I've observed, companies enter into remote work literally by just letting their employees start working remotely. Maybe they get a nice contract with Zoom and hire a specialized lawyer or two. But what if we were to really try investing in it, in the same way (or even in a fraction of the way) that we're investing in real estate?
Another point that I’m not sure gets much attention is that, as these companies build huge campuses and spread out to multiple locations across a region, how co-located are employees anyway? Sure you can move people around to be with primary teams but it’s certainly not like everyone can pop over to talk with someone or can depend on a lot of serendipitous hallway conversations.
That's a great point. Google tends to collocate teams by product, so that may be their answer to this. But it's true that you'll eventually reach a scale where you're going to have daily remote interactions, regardless of whether those people are in an office or not. Even at the Googleplex, if you're in an office across campus, it's better to connect to the meeting remotely than walk over.
Google has experimented with that idea in London: https://www.campus.co/london/en. Free space with wifi and coffee and obviously nice furniture. They use the event space to hold tech talks and the like -- I wonder if it's worked out as more than just a brand investment.
Many American liberals are just as hard-headed and difficult to debate with. The Overton Window has shifted in the past couple years and the original leftists are now centrists. America has become radically polarized and the radical liberals and just as dangerous and closed-minded as the radical conservatives.
You should also bear in mind that you're commenting on an article where liberals deliberately censored conservative news media. That doesn't do much to support your assertions.
The fact that the American leftist view would be considered centrist in most other countries (like, for example, the nordic countries) is essentially meaningless. Just because "left" takes on different meanings or extremes in different parts of the world doesn't mean that the US is behind or should become more left. To compare US politics to those of Finland, Switzerland, or even Canada is completely absurd. We are a fundamentally different people, system, land mass, you name it. Our political system must take that into account.
Point being, Facebook's audience is majority international and it most of all wants to make money. If you occam's razor this, Facebook is simply presenting people with what they want to hear (a well-proven phenomenon[1]). The report has shown nothing to prove that there is some sort of committee that decides which political stances facebook is going to shove down people's throats, but we know it has MULTIPLE groups trying to increase engagement. The international community believes that the American right is nuts, voila, Facebook selectively presents this as the dominant news. Click, click, click...PROFIT.
I totally see what you're saying, but that's not what happened here. This was deliberate and subjective curation by a group of similarly politically minded individuals, despite the fact that the feed appeared to be organic. They were pushing a political agenda in the US.
Yes, I can see how this can be interpreted as that but I don't see any evidence of this in the report. All it says is, some un-named higher up sometimes made the call of what to show and what to not? Based on what? Liberal talking points or carefully measured clickbait titles that had previously led to more user engagement. Given their recent earnings report, what is more likely?
This is a big problem that I've been seeing a lot lately: Liberals and Progressives thinking that they're absolutely right and just, and as such, they should censor those that they perceive as not being right or just. But who is the judge here? How do we really know what is absolutely right or just?
Censorship of any kind is inherently dangerous and detrimental to true progress. Aren't equality, open-mindedness, and freedom of expression paramount to liberal thought? Do you not see the hypocrisy here?
But shouldn't none of this matter? If we're right, should we really need to silence our opponents? If our ideas are fundamentally right, then they should win in a fair and open marketplace of ideas, without the unfair advantage of censorship.
The very fact that you want (or feel the need) to silence your opponent sheds a light on the quality and legitimacy of your ideas. I say this as someone who has always been classically liberal; we have abandoned our true ideals (the ideals which have usually placed us on the right side of history) for radicalism and new forms of bigotry and inequality. The Overton Window has radically shifted and those that were previously on the left are now falling closer to the center-right.
We are a polarized nation and this is reflected in the atrocious line-up of presidential candidates that we have right now.
Literally no one has suggested that we silence opponents. I am not sure how you are confusing me and facebook's curation system not giving attention to certain sources and positions based on their credibility and integrity with actively preventing people from speaking.
Whether your statement is based on disingenuous confusion or simple ignorance doesn't matter at this point because you've made your own post largely irrelevant and quite frankly it ticked me off a little bit that this string of non-sense keeps getting repeated as if it's some defense of rational, critical thought when it's the furthest thing from it at the moment.
All positions and view points cannot get equal play time in the larger conversation -- it would be noisy and a waste of time and ultimately be detrimental to progress. That is not censorship.
"Whether your statement is based on disingenuous confusion or simple ignorance doesn't matter at this point because you've made your own post largely irrelevant and quite frankly it ticked me off a little bit"
Your personal attacks on me are actually proving my point. In your original post, you said:
"In the specific case of conservative politics, why does it matter that it's so skewed? I have absolutely no issue with, in this specific case, conservative politics not receiving much attention."
That's a form of censorship and manipulation, especially because Facebook is not seen as an editorialized news source, but rather as a representation of one's community. You seem to think it isn't censorship though:
"I am not sure how you are confusing me and facebook's curation system not giving attention to certain sources and positions based on their credibility and integrity with actively preventing people from speaking."
This had nothing to do with credibility or integrity. It was a group of people with a very specific political ideology that were subjectively picking news and having it appear in an organic feed, when it was really editorialized.
I'm not confusing you with Facebook's curation system. You're entitled to your opinion. I'm telling you why your opinion shouldn't be applied at scale (in this case, to a system that appears organic) and also why you should care about this not just for this one incident, but for the implications that this has on a larger scale.
So you don't care about conservative views getting silenced here. After all, conservatives are wrong, right? But what if the major media outlet changes it's mind and starts to think liberals are wrong, and thus silences liberal content? How will you feel then? This isn't about political ideologies. It's about the implications of an unprecedentedly large and trusted media outlet taking sides and deliberately influencing it's audience. Liberal or conservative, that's dangerous.
Pointing out that you are misrepresenting what we are talking about is a personal attack? How do personal attacks even lend support for an opposing view point?
I am not sure if you actually read what happened, but this was a case of certain sources being "ignored" because they are borderline tabloids that often push stories that aren't even remotely true. Waiting for another source to pick up the story and then publish it, isn't censorship. It's reasonable.
For this to be censorship based on a specific political ideology following along one side of the spectrum, you'd have to have an example where they let through other sources that are also tabloid-esque but happen to fall along within their opinions and views.
Did the standard for their sources remain relatively constant regardless of the material being discussed? There isn't a clear answer here, but that doesn't make it defacto censorship of one set of particular political opinions. The sources that were discussed aren't credible in any meaningful form. The fact that they happen to be largely conservative seems like a problem conservatives should address instead of calling it censorship.
A good number of posters in this thread seem fine with not bothering to really think of ways that the presented scenario doesn't hold up and completely accept what was stated is what was actually happening. It's a characteristically low standard of evidence and it just so happens that some of you have made it very clear that such a scenario also happens to align with your opinions. It's fantastically hypocritical.
>So you don't care about conservative views getting silenced here.
I am only going to clarify this once more and then I am no longer going to respond to you. I am not encouraging, advocating, enabling silencing of views here. I said I am okay such view points not getting a larger platform or attention, because it's a waste of time. Note that this is not the same as silencing, preventing discussion, outlawing, etc, etc. However, pretending that discussing all view points without considering whether they hold merit or not is somehow a path to better national dialogue is simply unfounded and doesn't make any sense. But that's my opinion, and really wasn't even what happened in the case above. That specific opinion of mine was brought up in response to someone claiming that we should defacto just give everything an equal voice in the national dialogue and somehow not doing so is censorship that will derail rational discourse on a national scale.
>But what if the major media outlet changes it's mind and starts to think liberals are wrong
You seem to misunderstand why this is happening. It's not a matter of opinions swaying. The sources discussed in the article have little to no credibility. The fact that they are all conservative is a problem conservatives might want to address.
Are you suggesting with a straight face that CNN "News" is fair and balanced? Or perhaps any of the myriad of blatantly politically charged companies out of Silicon Valley?
It happens on both sides, and it wouldn't be unreasonable to argue that the left is much more guilty of this than the right. Fox News has become a meme because it is the only mainstream news source that blatantly shows conservative bias. Try pointing to mainstream news sources that blatantly show liberal bias and you'd lose count.
CNN (and many other media companies) support Hillary because they are pro-corporate and pro-status-quo.
They have de facto supported nonsensical positions because CNN pioneered the "two sides to every argument" stupidity in their effort to look "unbiased". CNN's reporting is heavily distorted, but the distortion is usually giving credibility when it isn't deserved. Fox simply pushes their agenda directly, while CNN gives cranks a stage no matter how stupid their position is, because calling out even the obviously wrong is "biased". Often this involves conservative opinions (for varying definitions of "conservative"), but almost every opinion of every topic gets the same treatment from CNN.
I think in the US newspapers are more constrained in their biases, but as you say TV stations do take editorial views. But, as an example of regulation, only US citizens can own TV station in the US. Additionally, no single US TV station has anything like the viewer share that Facebook has.
> The problem isn't that FB is slanted, but that FB has a near-monopoly on user attention, which allows its slant to be both covert and disproportionately influential.
I couldn't agree more. They also have an unprecedented level of reach (billions of users) and user trust (appearance of community opinion vs. news media filtering).
> So the problem is much wider than FB.
Absolutely. Facebook is far from being the only offender here, and in a way, this is a growing pain of new technology. Just as we learned to not trust big media, we also will have to learn to approach social media with skepticism (despite it's inherently organic appearance).
> If you read the article, its quite possible that it was also liberal news, depending on individual curators.
"we were unable to determine if left-wing news topics or sources were similarly suppressed"
I see what you're getting at, but I highly doubt liberal news was systematically suppressed. Facebook is a notoriously far-left company, located in a region of the US that is already far-left.
> located in a region of the US that is already far-left.
Silicon Valley has a fairly substantial right-libertarian and just-plain libertarian segment, which, in the usual way multidimensional politics are smushed into the US two-party, one-axis system, fall out as "conservative", (and quite a lot of really hard to classify on a liberal-conservative axis types that are extremely socially liberal, but economically center-to-right-libertarian (that is, outside of culture-war kind of issues, they tend to agree more with the center-to-right types on the function of government, as well as leaning libertarian on its preferred degree and means of involvement in fulfilling that function); these don't fit well as either "liberal" or "conservative" in the classical sense, and often aren't very "moderate" though they might get classified that way as a result of being very liberal on some salient issues and very "conservative" (as that works out in the US political spectrum) on others.
Absolutely. Users don't perceive Facebook as a news site. They perceive it as a representation of their community, and as such, it is immensely more influential. That's why this is dangerous.
On the point about the difference between "conservative news" and "liberal news", I agree that it's unfortunate the two even exist. But for the sake of the Gizmodo article, I think it was important for them to call this out, because not only was "conservative news" being censored, but "liberal news" was being introduced or boosted.
Curators would find less biased (read: not as sympathetic to the conservative viewpoint) sources for trending conservative topics, but they would not do the same for liberal topics. So I agree that it's best to find balanced journalism, but that should happen on both sides (conservative and liberal). If they only find less biased sources for conservative media, then that is in itself even more biased toward the liberal agenda. They were censoring or watering down the conservative view point from multiple angles.
Really impressive response - they took the high road here and the data was nice. The whole time I was reading the book, I just felt like something was off. Like he was sort of out of touch and hypocritical in a lot of his arguments (like accusing the company of ageism, right after complaining that his manager was 28). It seemed like Dan may have wanted to write this book before even taking a job at the company. Too many low-ball shots and unsubstantiated stories of hearsay. Glad to see the other side of this.
I'd say 28 is still pretty young - when you look at the workforce ages between 20 and 60 odds are that individual is probably not even a quarter through their working life.
And your point? Companies like this realize that promoting / rewarding on results and competency, rather than age and tenure, is much more effective. But this is honestly nothing new.
It was surprising to me that the author just couldn't wrap his mind around it, despite going to such lengths to convince the audience that he was some amazing and prestigious tech journalist. With stuff like this, I think he was intentionally ignorant ("What?? A young manager?? He would be an assistant at my beloved, ironically extinct and thus irrelevant Newsweek"), so as to appeal to an audience that just isn't familiar with the tech scene beyond what they see on TV.
Uh, he was right unless you missed the part where the 28 year old was replaced by someone even older than the author.
There's something the vast majority of millennials seem to lack and that is respect for the wisdom that comes with age. This doesn't say anything else that necessitates a defensive posture or taking a chip on one's shoulders - though another character flaw of applying and seeing everything in the light of themselves generally causes this. This is the naivete of youth and unfortunately most don't even realize as much until they are way past their youth
I didn't get a total feeling of maturity from his writing. Did you read it? Mostly low-ball shots taken at startup practices that are pretty commonplace now, primarily for their proven effectiveness. Like the fact that he was disturbed to find that Zack, being so young, wasn't an assistant but a manager. It's like the idea of promoting individuals based on results and performance, rather than age and tenure, was foreign to the author. And ironically, he displayed a lot of ageist qualities himself there. I wouldn't exactly characterize that as maturity.
They're probably focused on the fact that productivity is still higher in co-located settings and the best talent pools are in major metro areas. But what if, instead, they invested $500M in remote work research and $500M in building a remote work infrastructure for the company. Then they can go ahead and pocket that extra $1-4B in real estate costs, and perhaps another ~$10B long term as they avoid future real estate purchases and scale this across the company. Also, save several hundred million in hiring and retention, as they attract more talent from around the world and retain employees by offering remote work as a benefit.
Could this be a more forward-thinking approach? I'm merely posing the question.
Real estate is super expensive, and most people would consider being able to live anywhere a huge perk. In other words, the only reason talent is so concentrated in New York, is because it has to be right now. But what will happen as more companies offer distributed work? Will people choose to continue living in metro areas with astronomical costs of living (perhaps even away from family or in a climate they don't prefer)? Or will they leave and work from wherever they want? And then what will happen to the value of this real estate? And what will happen to the companies that invested in it?
I find it odd that innovative tech companies seem to not be questioning one of the more non-innovative and dogmatic practices of today - physical office space. Not only that, but they're investing billions into that idea. Why not challenge it?
Or what if you took a hybrid approach? Have a collaborative space in New York that everyone can use to come together, but everyone can also work from home. You may be able to cut down the required space by 3-4x.