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It's not about actual employees, it's about signalling "Texas - yay!" and "California - booooo!" in order to make good with the incoming administration.



Well, that and moderators being able to afford 1-bedroom apartments.


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?


> The kid working the panda express in california can afford a 1br apartment

A lot of them can't, actually, but that's really a different problem.


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.


Have you ever been to or lived in Austin? Are you aware of how high the cost of rent is there now?



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.

This is an us problem not a them problem.


How can you build that brand if someone is determined to tear it down for ideological reasons?


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.


Oh, I'm 100% on board with the housing stuff. That's what I do in terms of local politics here in Oregon.

But by and large, the 'branding' is places like Fox News crapping on California.


No that’s just talking heads carping on cable tv.

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.


Well, that, but also the worst housing markets in the country.


Techbros are pretty toxic, and that culture was very much SV 10-20 years ago.

That said, most of them have since (loudly) decamped the state.


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.

We've already seen harm from this. For example, Facebook suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story (https://www.yahoo.com/news/zuckerberg-admits-facebook-suppre...), even though:

* there has never been any evidence provided to link the story to supposed Russian disinformation;

* The FBI (i.e., the agency supposedly telling Facebook and other social media companies to be on the lookout for such disinformation) acknowledged that they did in fact seize the laptop from the computer shop owner in 2019 (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/22/us/politics/hunter-biden-...) and verified that it was Hunter Biden's - which later came up in a criminal case against him in mid 2024 (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/live-blog/hun...

* 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.




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