[HN Gopher] Facebook's attempt to smear the whistleblower
___________________________________________________________________
Facebook's attempt to smear the whistleblower
Author : fireball_blaze
Score : 195 points
Date : 2021-10-05 19:24 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| jaywalk wrote:
| It's tough to call Facebook's response a "smear" or "disgusting
| attempt at character assassination" since it didn't address her
| character at all. It certainly does attempt to discredit her, and
| it is cowardly and ultimately doesn't address the issues she
| brought up. But the author of this article is a _bit_ hyperbolic.
| [deleted]
| shill_cunt wrote:
| screw Facebook. i hope they are regulated out of existence.
| stop shilling for them.
| koboll wrote:
| Okay, so Facebook has said she
|
| - worked there for less than two years and had no direct reports
|
| - never attended some sort of key meeting
|
| - did not work on the subject matter in question
|
| ...and therefore, she lacks context which undermines some of her
| claims.
|
| Which of those is a matter of character, or a "disgusting"
| attack? They might be wrong, or they might be right but bringing
| up irrelevancies, but the writer is acting like stating these is
| some sort of reprehensible smear.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| because they're not even attempting to refute anything she
| says, which the Verge article points out. If you're going to
| try to smear someone by attacking their lack of experience it
| would probably make sense to point out how that lack of
| experience manifests itself in errors in her judgement.
|
| Of course they cannot do that because she is literally citing
| their own words. Which is why this is just a thinly veiled,
| pathetic attack on a worker.
| caminante wrote:
| _> If you're going to try to smear someone by attacking their
| lack of experience_
|
| Re-read the parent comment. How is the whistleblower getting
| smeared based on the assertions above? Are they not factual
| AND relevant?
|
| edit:
|
| I see comments below talking past this sub-thread. Let's get
| down to definitions.
|
| > Smear: damage the reputation of (someone) by false
| accusations; slander.
|
| At best, the article's premise that FB's claims "smear" the
| whistleblower is flawed and non-constructive even if you're
| seeking to slit FB's throat.
| cirgue wrote:
| How are they relevant?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| they're not relevant at all because you don't even need to
| work at facebook to disseminate facebook's research. It's a
| smear because it's a completely irrelevant ad hominem. The
| research is straight forward enough, and now public, so
| that everyone can actually come to the exact same
| conclusion she did simply by reading it. What she has done
| is made it public. And Facebook does not refute is because
| they cannot, so they go after the person's CV.
|
| Can you explain to me using basic logic what the connection
| is between your career status at facebook and reading
| research of the effects of facebook products on its users?
| what's next, do I need to work at Exxon to understand
| climate science?
| glitchc wrote:
| No, they are all ad hominem attacks. She shared ~18000
| documents. Doesn't matter who the messenger is at this
| point, it's all about the veracity of the documents
| themselves.
|
| Did Facebook deny creating those documents? No. Did they
| refute statements from those documents? No. Hence
| statements about the whistleblower are not relevant.
| _3u10 wrote:
| She hasn't shared these documents with the public. All we
| have to go on is her summary of them, and the documents
| NBC News has selectively deemed relevant. NBC news has
| only shared 7000 pages, I'd assume this is probably 10%
| of the documents. We're essentially being asked to judge
| facebook when the prosecution is withholding 90% of the
| evidence.
| adolph wrote:
| > NBC news has only shared 7000 pages
|
| Where are they shared?
| bleachedsleet wrote:
| If I tell you the sky is green the best way to refute that
| to your audience is to ignore me entirely as a person and
| instead tell people to go outside and look up: Show them
| some evidence and factually refute my claim. You don't say
| "this man isn't a sky expert, has never spoken to sky
| experts, and should therefore be dismissed!"
|
| The parent comment's point would seem to be that this
| person is making a claim that should be refutable with
| evidence. But the evidence is Facebook's own data
| supporting her claim so they can't do that. Instead, they
| diminish her credibility. It's not "smearing" in the sense
| of calling her a baby eater, but it is a credentials
| fallacy meant to make people dismiss her claims regardless
| of validity.
| caminante wrote:
| I get an argument that it's not pure, ad hominem
| character attacks as a "smear".
|
| This is really more a flaw of the article, but can you
| add data that directly refutes the claims raised by this
| article?
|
| e.g. in her leaked emails, does any of that refute the
| wording/claims raised in this article?
|
| I'm asking in good faith.
| cratermoon wrote:
| The goal is to divert discussion from the issue and make the
| discussion about her personality. The "disgusting" part is not
| what Facebook says about her (their folks clearly don't have
| much to smear Haugen with if this is the worst), it's that they
| don't want to address the allegations directly. The "smear"
| such as it is, falls flat, but it's reprehensible for
| Facebook's people to want to make the discussion about her
| rather than about the practices of the company that employed
| her.
| fireball_blaze wrote:
| Some of those could also be said of Snowden, but he found some
| impactful, explosive material.
| iammisc wrote:
| Snowden advocated in favor of the government following their
| own law (not spying on people without judicially issued
| warrants). This 'whistleblower' is asking the government to
| violate their own law (the first amendment) by banning
| individual speech on these platforms.
|
| EDIT: Honestly, I could care less about facebook. Although I
| think Mark Zuckerberg should be in jail (look at the
| allegations that his company knowingly experimented on people
| without their consent), individuals should have the ability
| to publish on the platform. If bakers must bake cakes, this
| is only fair.
| mbesto wrote:
| > This 'whistleblower' is asking the government to violate
| their own law (the first amendment) by banning individual
| speech on these platforms.
|
| I could be mistaken, but I don't think she is specifically
| advocating for that? I believe she is saying specific
| things should be regulated...mainly the ability to
| configure timelines, greater control on use by teens, etc.
| [deleted]
| kurikuri wrote:
| >asking the government to violate their own law (the first
| amendment)
|
| I don't believe this is the case, isn't the whistleblower
| accusing Facebook of lying to its investors and has filed
| SEC complaints for the matter?
| [deleted]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > If bakers must bake cakes, this is only fair.
|
| SCOTUS decided in favor of the bakers in that case, even if
| SCOTUS left the underlying question undecided (in either
| direction).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Color
| a...
| iammisc wrote:
| SCOTUS didn't comment on the question, remanded the case
| back. When another person brought a similar case to the
| CO board, they found against the baker:
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/18/us/jack-phillips-colorado-
| bak...
|
| You should pay attention to what's going on before
| commenting on out of date news.
|
| Also, a similar case in washington of an old lady florist
| forced to provide flowers for an event she doesn't
| believe in. This is like asking a jewish deli to cater
| the nazis.
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/gay-couple-wins-case-
| florist...
|
| In that case, the SC explicitly denied the request, thus
| de facto legalizing forcing _individual people_ with
| consciensce disagreements working in their own business
| to do business with those they disagree with. This is an
| obvious violation of the _individual_ right to freedom of
| conscience.
|
| Meanwhile, facebook, a multi-billion dollar powerful
| corporation, which does not enjoy constitutional rights
| neither by nature nor law, is given a free pass to
| exercise its conscience. Sorry... I'll speak for the
| little guy.
| dnissley wrote:
| It's typical for Vox reporting (parent company of the Verge) --
| but also typical for pretty much any vaguely left leaning
| publication (see also nytimes). They seek out the most populist
| angle on every story, regardless of how eyerollingly absurd it
| is. See: https://www.city-journal.org/journalism-advocacy-over-
| report...
| klelatti wrote:
| They are trying to undermine her credibility - to say she
| wasn't important, that she doesn't really understand - whether
| it's a smear is borderline but it seems a pretty poor response
| to me.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| Reading hacker news comments today, I found out that:
|
| 1. this is fishy
|
| 2. she is a political operative for the dems
|
| 3. she has a liberal bias therefore this is all fishy and she
| cannot be trusted
|
| 4. she is rich and has some backing so she is definitely a
| political operative. This one is especially true because if she
| was poor Facebook would have been SLAPPed her already into
| shutting up. So there's no winning here.
|
| 5. (US) adults are responsible enough for the government to not
| have to regulate social media. Let's conveniently temporarily
| forget about the Rohingya minority.
|
| 6. Facebook is a net positive for civilization
|
| 7. nothing is actually whistleblown, we already knew all that.
| Therefore, we're ok with it and we should ignore this. Also see
| 1.
|
| 8. We're dealing with Schrodinger's censorship. Conservative
| voices are being censored on Facebook which is ran by 'libs' and
| at the same time they're not censored as the government (also
| libs) prepares to censor them. Or censor them more? Who knows
| anymore. TLDR they're going to be censored.
|
| 9. the staple of 'tech companies' is discussed all over the place
| as someone is talking to congress about its internal workings so
| the news is all over HN. Super fishy (see 1) so definitely a hit
| piece. If there was only one or two links it would probably be
| fine. But so many links may definitely be the hand of some lib
| political operative. Or not? Who knows? We're just saying that to
| muddy the waters.
|
| I think I'm going to be taking a break from forums in general.
| Either some Facebook friendly PR machine got activated or the
| collective mind has been poisoned by years and years of
| misinformation and generally sowing mistrust to the point of
| 'everything is a conspiracy and nothing is real'.
| [deleted]
| andyxor wrote:
| Let us all honor the bravery of the Facebook Whistleblower, who
| is working with a Democratic PR firm and an adoring media to
| expose the dark and dirty fact that Facebook has so far failed to
| totally suppress all right wing content on its platform. She is a
| hero.
| cpr wrote:
| I'm sure what she's saying is only part of the evil that Facebook
| represents, but there's something fishy about the whole setup.
|
| Why is she getting full media coverage and support, when previous
| whistleblowers were roundly ignored?
|
| She's a very wealthy person (1B estimated), so perhaps she's
| fairly well insulated from any blowback?
|
| But again, why is now the time to pile on Facebook, and why this
| person?
|
| [edit] Hint: She's in fact calling for more censorship of the
| views she doesn't like.
|
| [edit] Greenwald nails it (just published):
| https://greenwald.substack.com/p/democrats-and-media-do-not-...
| buitreVirtual wrote:
| It's called a tipping point. Previous critics made similar
| denunciations, but most people and even the media just shrugged
| and pretended nothing bad was happening. It takes time for
| society to acknowledge inconvenient truths. Plus, here, Haugen
| provided a wealth of documentation.
| leahbarton wrote:
| What's your source on her wealth? I'm only finding second hand
| sources stating up to 5 million...
| shill_cunt wrote:
| there is no source. you are seeing firsthand Facebook shills
| trying to discredit her. fuck Facebook and zuck the cuck
| burkaman wrote:
| I believe they searched "frances haugen net worth" and then
| copied from this extremely reputable source:
| https://primalinformation.com/frances-haugen-wiki-net-worth/
| saulpw wrote:
| It's based on her co-founding Hinge, which apparently is now
| worth $2b. Hinge had sold 100% of shares by 2019, so she
| might have done well for herself, but definitely not 50% of
| current valuation.
| dntrkv wrote:
| There is no source because nobody under the C-level is worth
| anywhere close to that much.
| busterarm wrote:
| She's one of the cofounders of Hinge, which was acquired by
| Match Group.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| What are the chances Hinge made it to acquisition without
| giving shares to employees and investors?
|
| Wiki says they nearly went bankrupt just before a funding
| round. Even Zuckerberg only owned 28% of Facebook at IPO.
| busterarm wrote:
| Oh I'm not saying she has a billion. Odds are she is
| quite wealthy though.
| gruez wrote:
| maybe 1B is family wealth rather than personal wealth?
| keewee7 wrote:
| She founded Hinge that was bought by Match Group for $2
| billion.
|
| Update: There is no verifiable information about her stake in
| the company.
| [deleted]
| DeRock wrote:
| There is no reality in which she had a 50% stake in hinge
| at the time of sale. I would be shocked if she had >1%. She
| was involved only in the very early stages.
| gnicholas wrote:
| True, though the stock market has gone up a ton since
| 2018. If she put $50M into a mix of tech stocks, crypto,
| and Bay Area real estate in 2018, she could have hundreds
| of millions by now. I agree she likely doesn't have a
| billion if the Hinge sale is the primary source of her
| wealth.
| burkaman wrote:
| Hinge is worth $2 billion today (according to some random
| site, would love a good source) and was fully acquired
| nearly 3 years ago. And there's no chance she had 50%
| equity. It's not even clear if she had any.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Here are some points I notice about this whole thing:
|
| - Facebook has stated (in the press release the article is
| reporting on) that they support regulation. This is typical for
| large market incumbents, who have been said to always support
| fixed-overhead regulation, because it hurts smaller competitors
| more than it hurts them.
|
| - Washington loves regulating things and can be safely assumed
| to be pro-policy in most cases. More to the point, incumbents
| today are far more concerned about the possibility of being
| blindsided in their campaigns by maneuvers on a platform their
| own team doesn't know how to work with, than they are about the
| difficult to quantify pros and cons of balancing antitrust and
| libertarian policy. You'd expect them to be pro-regulation on
| average, if it reduces the importance of the internet in
| running campaigns.
|
| - The public is not presently pro-regulation and nobody really
| knows what form the regulations should take.
|
| So in a nutshell, everyone who's powerful in this situation
| wants the same outcome, and all that is left is to convince the
| public to support a bill which will probably be titled
| something like "Cyberspeech Freedom Act of 2022." Lobbyists may
| have already drafted it, and we can expect that well-meaning
| activists will be swept along by the push and end up supporting
| something they wouldn't like if they fully understood what it
| was.
| SquishyPanda23 wrote:
| > The public is not presently pro-regulation and nobody
| really knows what form the regulations should take.
|
| A majority of Americans support regulation of big tech
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/07/20/56-of-
| ameri...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Sure, but within that majority, they support _vastly_
| different _concepts_ of regulation.
|
| It's like asking "do you think the government should do
| something about abortion?" Banning it and enshrining it as
| a right are both "doing something", but the two groups are
| unlikely to see themselves as agreeing with each other.
| smoldesu wrote:
| The Hacker News crowd doesn't like to hear this, but it's
| definitely looking like the case as each day passes. If
| everything we know about domestic surveillance and PRISM is
| true, the path of least resistance would be to ratify their
| control. I can hear a lot of "so whats" in the audience, but
| this would be unprecedented. The United States would now be
| able to advance their control over the global internet with
| total impunity, and the results... are harrowing to imagine.
| FFRefresh wrote:
| Nice analysis. I'm certainly not suggesting that this is a
| coordinated campaign by FB without evidence to suggest it,
| but the net result of these viral news events could be FB
| getting the regulation that they want.
|
| If one did want to coordinate such a campaign, there's a
| certain society-wide informational/narrative vulnerability
| that makes such a campaign potentially attractive:
|
| -You have a public who loves latching onto 'good vs evil',
| 'david vs goliath' stories, and in this meta-narrative, we
| the public shall vanquish the evil goliath by any means
| necessary!
|
| -We also have a public who at large isn't terribly interested
| in questioning their own biases, thinking through the higher
| abstract principles at play, thinking through externalities
| from vanquishing said evil, and in general going against the
| grain in these 'good vs evil' battles
|
| -You have a news media environment who profits off such
| engaging meta-narratives and stories, and is more than
| willing to push these stories out into the public
|
| -The companies and their employees in the news media
| environment also have their own in-house biases against
| certain 'villians' such as FB, which further incentives the
| spread of such stories and meta-narratives. FB has been a
| competitive threat to media companies. FB has also done or
| been accused of things which have frustrated media employees
| of all political persuasions.
|
| FB is a perfect villian in this meta-narrative, regardless of
| any of the facts at play. They know it too.
| xqcgrek2 wrote:
| It is certainly coordinated. Several of the parties
| involved are influential and have a PR record in Democratic
| politics.
|
| https://www.dailywire.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-
| leftis...
| whatshisface wrote:
| There's no need for coordination when every participant
| independently desires a similar outcome.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > because it hurts smaller competitors more than it hurts
| them
|
| Is this always true? I always thought that these companies do
| want to fix themselves but fixing yourself when your
| competition won't means that you lose. Regulation helps force
| everyone to fix themselves.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Regulatory capture and barriers to market entry. See, for
| comparison, Intuit.
| https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-
| turbotax-20-year-f...
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I'm aware. I'm asking if this is always the case.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| It's laughable for Facebook to point at Congress now and say
| it's their fault for not acting, when they know darn well
| that if there's one thing Congress is incapable of doing,
| it's "acting."
| Hokusai wrote:
| > The public is not presently pro-regulation
|
| I guess that this is true for the USA. But Facebook is a
| global company and other countries may be more regulation
| friendly.
| [deleted]
| shadilay wrote:
| This seems to be a case of tech monopolies usurping power
| from the traditional power brokers who are now pushing back
| demanding to be put in charge again.
| busterarm wrote:
| 100% share your take on the subject.
|
| Additionally, reading the whistleblower's account and her
| opinions/goals struck me as an incredibly naive way of
| thinking...although I think she may be genuine (she's my age
| and I have many peers like her).
|
| What kind of organization respects the value of complete top-
| down organizational change initiated by rank and file members
| of the company? Who would think an organization would give
| them that kind of power? The role that she was hired for
| seems destined to give her no resources to accomplish the
| stated goals; we saw something similar but on a much smaller
| scale with Basecamp.
|
| I know a lot of my peers believe in the power to make
| sweeping organizational changes like that, but it's "fucking
| with other peoples' money". To me the whole situation seems
| like the setup to a bad joke.
|
| Facebook doesn't have to do much to smear her in my eyes
| because she already strikes me as a ridiculous person. That
| said, Facebook is similarly ridiculous for hiring people with
| causes in direct opposition to how they do business and
| giving everyone in the company unfettered access to damaging
| internal information.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Focusing too much on the personality of the whistleblower
| is in a sense getting sucked into the celebrity drama hole
| that will always take us away from consideration of the
| real issue.
|
| In fact, I think being taken away from consideration of the
| real issue is a major consequence of the way this is being
| approached: nobody can debate with the obvious truth that
| teenagers are getting a little too sucked in to the fake
| world of influencers, and right now we're not discussing
| it, ironically.
| busterarm wrote:
| Again, I agree with you on this point as well and it's
| got my spidey-senses tingling like crazy that the whole
| thing is a work.
|
| I've long been in the ban social media completely camp.
| It's a tool too dangerous for use by regular people.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Well, let's not fall prey to thinking that we, in doing
| what we are doing right now (talking on the internet),
| are too much smarter or less corruptible than most of our
| fellow man, including those of our fellows who spend too
| much time doom scrolling.
| orzig wrote:
| Citation majorly needed on "1B estimated"
| jcomis wrote:
| They are a cofounder of the dating app "Hinge". No idea where
| the "1B estimated" comes from at all however.
| [deleted]
| AlbertCory wrote:
| There are very few billionaires. Who "estimated" this? Based on
| what?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I'm paraphrasing a similar comment I made on a different
| thread, but this whole situation seems fishy to me...
|
| Out of the blue some larger-than-life person (with impeccable
| credentials, no less) comes out of the woodwork and is lauded
| with attention while the big news outlets make this massive
| push against Facebook, all while congress is holding hearings
| about regulating social media. Then a massive outage happens at
| Facebook right after the New York Times published an article
| titled "Facebook Is Weaker Than We Knew." (This could honestly
| just be atrocious luck and an incredible coincidence.)
|
| This woman is also _remarkably_ calm, well-spoken,
| knowledgeable, and articulate for someone testifying before the
| Senate for the _very first time_ - all while being broadcast
| around the globe, live on television. Perhaps she 's simply a
| natural, but I sense she received some coaching and preparation
| beforehand. Combine that with how well she is being received by
| senators from both parties and you start to wonder just how
| much of this was orchestrated in advance.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| You said it yourself; her credentials are impeccable... she's
| intelligent, wealthy, and experienced. She has been working
| in SV for over a decade, and has been working on presenting
| this information with a non-profit law firm that supports
| whistleblowers since this spring.
|
| Is it so hard to believe that a capable person is trying to
| do the right thing? I've seen plenty of well composed
| intelligent people testify to congress.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Perhaps she's simply a natural, but I sense she received
| some coaching and preparation beforehand.
|
| So?
|
| Do you think Zuckerberg doesn't get coaching and preparation
| before his hearing appearances?
| initplus wrote:
| I understand why Zuckerberg had coaching and preparation
| before his appearance - because he has the backing of a
| megacorporation.
|
| It's interesting to speculate on who is supporting the FB
| whistleblower's campaign.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Any high-profile whistleblower is going to have a legal
| team supporting them with hearing prep, especially if
| they're fairly well off financially.
| keewee7 wrote:
| I mean it's pretty obvious why they're targeting Facebook and
| not the other big Internet companies.
|
| Facebook is the only one still allowing far-right speech on
| their platform. That is why the Democrats are going after
| them.
| ihasdofijqwer wrote:
| > This woman is also remarkably calm, well-spoken,
| knowledgeable, and articulate for someone testifying before
| the Senate for the very first time - all while being
| broadcast around the globe, live on television.
|
| But what if the reason she is being heared is _because_ she
| is remarkably calm, well-spoken, knowledgeable and
| articulate? Should that theory not be tested first accoring
| to Occams razor? [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I did indeed include the possibility that she's just
| perfectly suited for this:
|
| >"Perhaps she's simply a natural"
|
| That is certainly within the realm of possibility. That
| being said, _to me_ , it seems _incredibly unlikely_ that
| someone in her situation would be so articulate, collected,
| and unflappable after being suddenly thrust onto the
| national stage in just a few short days. Even if she knew
| she was going to attract a ton of attention when she came
| forward, she just doesn 't seem to be showing the kind of
| body language that reflects someone in her situation who
| doesn't know what is about to happen next.
|
| Again, to me, the most simple explanation is that she was
| coached or prepared beforehand and knew what to expect. I
| wouldn't put it past some political operatives to slip her
| some questions from a few senators before the hearings
| began.
|
| This next part is going to sound the most conspiratorial,
| so take it with a grain of salt. Despite all of what I
| wrote, she really could be the real deal and there was no
| conspiracy behind the scenes to make the perfect storm for
| Facebook. But to me, that begs the question of, "how lucky
| were we that such a person with impeccable credentials just
| so happened to be the perfect whistleblower to take down
| Facebook?"
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Again, to me, the most simple explanation is that she
| was coached or prepared beforehand and knew what to
| expect. I wouldn't put it past some political operatives
| to slip her some questions from a few senators before the
| hearings began.
|
| This is entirely standard practice in Congressional
| hearings.
|
| Concrete example: the Kavanaugh hearings.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/kavanaugh-
| preps-se...
|
| > According to Grassley spokesman George Hartmann, the
| committee has also reached out to Cristina Miranda who
| posted on Facebook that she had heard about the incident
| while in school with Ford, but has has since said she
| actually has no knowledge of the incident. Miranda
| declined to talk to the committee, according to the aide.
|
| > The panel has also interacted with an attorney for an
| unnamed person that's included in Ford's original letter,
| but whose name was redacted, but the committee hasn't
| received a formal response yet.
|
| > Kavanaugh, meanwhile, was back at the White House
| complex on Thursday, amid a week of visits that have
| included preparation for the possibility of additional
| Senate testimony, according to a person involved in the
| confirmation process.
|
| > Separately, a Republican Senate aide who has been
| briefed on Kavanaugh's preparations said the practice
| sessions "have been going well," adding that he's been
| spending his days as if a hearing will go forward on
| Monday.
|
| > Mike Davis, chief counsel for nominations on the Senate
| Judiciary Committee, drew scrutiny Wednesday for posting
| and then deleting tweets saying he had personally
| questioned Kavanaugh and referring derisively to Ford's
| legal team -- and indicating that, despite his current
| role in the investigation, he backed the nominee's
| confirmation.
|
| Some of them even have forms for whistleblowers to reach
| out.
|
| https://crenshaw.house.gov/whistleblower
|
| "Please describe your goals in working with Rep. Crenshaw
| (e.g. oversight, legislative action)?"
| ihasdofijqwer wrote:
| So my suggested points of investigation would be:
|
| How many whilst blowers have tried to take down facebook?
|
| How many of those have been articulate etc i.e. have the
| skills this woman has?
|
| What are the examples of inarticulate, poorly spoken
| whilstblowers who have taken down organisations in the
| information age?
|
| Not sure who the burden of proof is on here tbh. Proof
| takes work.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I've been trying to couch my comments around the fact
| that I am only talking about my gut-feelings. I don't
| have the means to deliver on the burden of proof because
| I completely lack the resources to investigate. Heck,
| even if my suspicions are actually correct, how in the
| world would _I_ be able to uncover that? When something
| feels fishy, what else can you do?
|
| I just have suspicions because everything just seems too
| perfect. I would expect a whistleblower to be some
| Average Joe/Jane, not some wunderkind with an amazing
| background and unflappable presentation. I would expect a
| lot more stuttering and sweating - Edward Snowden was
| jittery during his first several interviews and his body
| language just screamed uncertainty about the future.
|
| But I digress. Just because something feels wrong doesn't
| mean it _really_ is. Could just be a false-positive.
| hedgehog wrote:
| Career big tech product manager, Harvard MBA, knowing she was
| going to be testifying to congress, the press, and maybe a
| jury? Of course she's prepared, it would be really surprising
| if she wasn't.
| etchalon wrote:
| This is nonsense.
|
| She's receiving a large press and Congressional focus because
| she's testifying about harm to children.
|
| Not political censorship, perceived bias, or internal politics.
|
| It's a cleaner story.
|
| Greenwald, like all politicians, is twisting the story to meet
| his narrative. He doesn't "nail it". He's just regurgitating
| his preferred talking point, and ignoring her actual testimony.
| thrill wrote:
| How dare Facebook try to defend itself against public
| accusations.
| fireball_blaze wrote:
| The point the author is making is that the rebuttal has very
| little substance. The signal to noise ratio is low.
| falcolas wrote:
| As the article pointed out, they didn't defend themselves. They
| simply attempted to discredit the whistleblower, and change the
| subject.
|
| Let them defend themselves without character assassination,
| please.
| rPlayer6554 wrote:
| > Facebook PR: "Today a Senate Commerce subcommittee held a
| hearing with a former product manager at Facebook who worked
| for the company for less than two years, had no direct
| reports, never attended a decision-point meeting with C-level
| executives -- and testified more than six times to not
| working on the subject matter in question."
|
| Where does it mention her character??
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Where does it address "the subject matter in question"?
|
| She leaked 18k documents. How does the number of direct
| reports she supervised affect their veracity?
| _3u10 wrote:
| They are addressing the testimony provided, not the
| documents which have not been provided.
|
| Generally after hacking a company, the documents are
| provided in a ZIP for everyone to download. Information
| wants to be free, but we are only being provided with her
| summary of the documents rather than the evidence itself.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > They are addressing the testimony provided...
|
| How? Where?
| bovermyer wrote:
| Facebook's "defense" is not a defense at all, but a
| misdirection.
|
| While this article uses some pretty sensational language, it
| does accurately describe Facebook's response to Haugen's
| revelations.
| xmprt wrote:
| Facebook's defense is like if someone accuses me of stealing
| something from a store and then I say the accuser has no
| security experience and was only in the store for 10 minutes.
| fedsglow wrote:
| Anyone else thinking this lady glows?
| zozin wrote:
| This is what passes for journalism these days? This reads like a
| snarky blog or Reddit post than an article. I'm surprised a few
| Zuckerberg memes weren't included. I say this as someone who
| wants Facebook broken up or highly regulated.
| xqcgrek2 wrote:
| The smear here is actually against Facebook. The whistleblower is
| clearly being boosted by Democratic operatives [1] and appeared
| in front of Congress the day after 60 minutes.
|
| [1] Jen Psaki's former employer
| https://www.dailywire.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-leftis...
| etchalon wrote:
| Yes, the smear is against Facebook, and not the person
| releasing internal research from Facebook itself, that was not
| written by the whistleblower.
|
| And obviously, discounting someone presenting factual evidence
| that at the moment is unchallenged based on perceived personal
| politics is fair game, reasonable, and the measure of good
| faith discussion.
| fireball_blaze wrote:
| "If the best Facebook can come up with is this disgusting attempt
| at character assassination, Haugen is telling God's own truth. We
| should listen to her."
|
| A pretty powerful closing statement IMHO.
| adolph wrote:
| "telling God's own truth"
|
| Tremendously convincing.
| amelius wrote:
| As opposed to alternative truths.
| adolph wrote:
| Just as long as a stack of bibles is involved.
| _3u10 wrote:
| If God is for us, who could be against us?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| What a heavily editorialized statement for something that isn't
| marked as opinion. The whole article reeks of being written by
| someone who literally hates Facebook.
|
| And the use of the term "God's own truth" feels like a really
| underhanded and unjustified rhetorical trick. To use a analogy,
| It feels like they are declaring a winner during the opening
| argument of the prosecution, before the defense has even had a
| chance to fully respond: "If Facebook had evidence, it would
| show it." Doesn't the author realize that kind of counter
| evidence will come later?
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > someone who literally hates Facebook
|
| No, the author doesn't hate Facebook, nor does the
| "whistleblower". This isn't being drive by hate, it's being
| driven by love: love of government-mandated censorship.
| They're not alone, either, Zuckerberg himself is a huge fan;
| that's why his pushback here was so weak. Facebook was
| running TV commercials last summer calling for tighter legal
| restriction on social media.
| amelius wrote:
| Sounds more like a logical fallacy.
| spfzero wrote:
| What she's telling, or not telling, is irrelevant, and indeed,
| partly because she has little experience at FB and not in a
| position that would make her privy to nefarious plots.
|
| What is relevant, is the documents, which are not being
| released in full. Only after they are will we see the full
| picture, so anything happening before that is just manufactured
| narrative to serve someone's purpose.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _Facebook PR: "Today a Senate Commerce subcommittee held a
| hearing with a former product manager at Facebook who worked
| for the company for less than two years, had no direct reports,
| never attended a decision-point meeting with C-level executives
| -- and testified more than six times to not working on the
| subject matter in question."_
|
| This doesn't sound like character assassination, it's Facebook
| claiming that she wasn't informed enough. It would be like the
| NSA telling us not to listen to Snowden because he didn't
| actually work on the programs that he obtained documents about.
| chalst wrote:
| Character assassination is not done in one press release.
| It's done in a campaign of PRs and cossetting friendly
| journalists and newspapers.
|
| Perhaps it's premature to call it character assassination,
| but we've seen this play out quite a few times.
| [deleted]
| compscistd wrote:
| It's a rather unconvincing but mean way to discount someone.
| If anything, FB saying how unrelated she is to these problems
| absolves her of being a part of it. Focus on the documents.
|
| Despite that, not everyone has the will to connect these
| dots.
| melvinmt wrote:
| Sounds to me this type of language can also backfire; next
| step of Congress could be to then subpoena someone who did
| work on the subject matter and did have C-level exec
| access...
| rustymonday wrote:
| You're not wrong. But Facebook's attempt to discredit Frances
| Haugen is poor.
|
| From the congressional hearing today, she did not answer
| questions beyond her expertise [1], and she had over a decade
| of relevant experience in Engagement Based Ranking algorithms
| [2], which was largely the focus of the hearing.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/GoSPmqqKams?t=4160
|
| [2] https://youtu.be/GoSPmqqKams?t=3482
| 0235005 wrote:
| Facebook is staring to show some really bad cracks. I think they
| should start checking their PR a bit more because if they follow
| this path, they could have congress in their neck for some time.
| klelatti wrote:
| Top comment from the FT (paraphrased somewhat)
|
| > If this is all that your comms department can get through
| legal, you know what's being said is almost 100% true.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Has anyone got the documents themselves, or only reporter's
| descriptions of the documents?
| lukasb wrote:
| My guess is they're using the same strategy as the Snowden
| leaks - drop a new bombshell at regular intervals through the
| media, then eventually open source the whole thing. The idea is
| the maximize the impact of the leaks, not to hide anything (of
| course, you can disagree about whether it actually does
| maximize the impact.)
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| This may be part of their plan, but Snowden used that method
| for the purpose of hiding things too. He wanted reports about
| the various software projects being used to be public, he
| didn't want the software itself to be public.
|
| Vetting data over dumping everything often has benefits.
| travoc wrote:
| Snippets of the source documents are presented in the WSJ
| Facebook stories that preceded the naming of the whistleblower.
| They are paywalled here, but you might be able to find the
| stories on certain archive sites.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039
| adolph wrote:
| Yes. At this point in the world we need not take anyone's word
| for what a corpus says or does not say. Either the data, query,
| and processing exist and are documented or they may as well be
| making things up.
|
| Public forkable repo or gtfo.
| josephg wrote:
| Facebook would fight tooth and nail to get those documents
| removed if they show up on GitHub. They'd win, too - since
| they own copyright.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107
|
| > Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A,
| the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by
| reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other
| means specified by that section, for purposes such as
| _criticism, comment, news reporting_ , teaching (including
| multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or
| research, is not an infringement of copyright.
|
| (Emphasis mine.)
| falcolas wrote:
| Fair use is a positive defense though, so you'd have to
| go through a trial (assumption being Facebook throws
| enough lawyers at it to make it impossible for a "it's
| obviously fair use" argument work) to assert it.
| adolph wrote:
| A repo need not be in a US or any jurisdiction. If it is
| important enough to have legislative talking time, it is
| important enough to be made public for people to make their
| own decisions about it. By keeping it private this is all
| hat and no cattle.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I always liked Edward R. Murrow's response to Senator McCarthy's
| attempt to smear him: "Since he made no reference to any
| statements of fact that we made, we must conclude that he found
| no errors of fact."
|
| 1:
| https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/edwardrmurrowtomcc...
| cratermoon wrote:
| Murrow really was a treasure.
| prox wrote:
| Brilliant. Ever since watching "good night, and good luck"
| Edward R Murrow has been a favorite.
| fleddr wrote:
| Not seeing any "character assassination" in any of the quotes.
| None of Facebook's defense lines, low quality as they may be,
| seem overly personal.
|
| For the record, I fully side with the whistleblower's claims.
| It's just that this article is very emotional, and could have
| been so much more. This is a fascinating quote the author failed
| to address fully:
|
| "Facebook PR: "Despite all this, we agree on one thing; it's time
| to begin to create standard rules for the internet. It's been 25
| years since the rules for the internet have been updated, and
| instead of expecting the industry to make societal decisions that
| belong to legislators, it is time for Congress to act."
|
| Facebook has a point here. We don't even know what Facebook is. A
| media company? A news organization? A shop? A dating site? And if
| it does all of these things, and does so at planetary scale, is
| has the potential to do harm to big parts of the world, in
| countless ways. Yet there's pretty much zero rules.
|
| I think we vastly underestimate how complicated the balancing act
| is. If Instagram does mental harm to teenage girls, whilst this
| very likely was not the original intent, what exactly is the
| "correct" course of action, in a way codified in law? Should it
| be forbidden for other girls (influencers) to broadcast their
| beauty lifestyle? Should there be a maximum time cap for
| consumers to browse the feed? The China way? Should influencers
| just be deplatformed if we don't like them, taking away their
| income?
|
| None of these rules or laws seem very plausible or sane to me,
| and this is just one example of how Facebook can do harm.
|
| Anyway, to end constructively, I'd say a first step is to force
| Facebook to give full access to its underlying (anonymized) data.
| If we've created a planetary-scale monster, we should treat it as
| a special case.
| fleddr wrote:
| I forgot to add one important part: guess which company will be
| uniquely capable to comply with whatever regulation comes up
| with?
|
| You guessed correctly.
|
| Guess whom can't comply? Indeed, everybody else. That's why
| they welcome regulation.
| cherrycherry98 wrote:
| Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing for regulation for years. He
| wants this for two reasons:
|
| 1. Abdicating responsibility so that when the public or
| politicians complain about Facebook hosting or not hosting some
| content he can say it's not his problem, he follows the law.
|
| 2. The second is for regulatory capture. Once a social network
| gets a stigma of being uncool, people move on to the next
| thing. His status and net worth are tied up in an entity he
| must aggressively defend against becoming the next MySpace. If
| he can't buy out upstarts anymore because of antitrust then the
| next best protection is to make it so difficult to build a new
| network without a team of lawyers and moderators that no one
| would even think about doing it.
| adolph wrote:
| > Abdicating responsibility
|
| Is it avoidance or asking for a democratic process to provide
| guidance? For example, yes automakers did push for a lot of
| rulemaking that cemented the car's position in transportation
| and yes a rule about driving on the left or right side is
| better decided by the community of drivers represented by
| their government, not GM alone.
| fleddr wrote:
| Good points. I violently agree that regulation favors Big
| Tech, instead of harm them.
|
| But I still believe there's a category of societal issues
| that are extremely hard to codify into rules, even if
| Facebook would be morally sound. It would still be hard or
| impossible.
| hellohntoday wrote:
| Zuck is having to up his being a dick game...
|
| Bezos is really bringing the fight to him as world's biggest
| douche.
|
| What a fascinating battle. It's hard to pick a winner, right now
| they are neck and neck.
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