[HN Gopher] FB seals off some internal message boards to prevent...
___________________________________________________________________
FB seals off some internal message boards to prevent leaking,
immediately leaked
Author : the-dude
Score : 257 points
Date : 2021-10-14 11:09 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.businessinsider.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.businessinsider.com)
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| these whistleblowers are going to turn every company into a
| surveillance operation
|
| every company will soon adopt mandatory spyware, bossware,
| keyboard logging etc etc just to prevent the next Haugen
|
| hope it was worth it
| scrollaway wrote:
| How is that the whistleblower's fault?
|
| "Damn these pedestrians dying to drunk drivers forcing
| governments to make drunk driving illegal" what?
| gorgoiler wrote:
| It's their fault if the alleged behaviour isn't illegal
| enough.
|
| No one's going to blame a whistleblower who uncovers someone
| harming children.
|
| It becomes much more of a gray area if the whistleblower
| uncovers someone trying to find out what effects, positive
| and negative if any kind, harmful, long-term, short-term or
| otherwise, that their product might be having.
|
| Is a leak worthy if no one is arrested or taken to court, and
| all we get to do is tut-tut a little more sanctimoniously?
| eropple wrote:
| _> No one's going to blame a whistleblower who uncovers
| someone harming children._
|
| Of course they are. The idea that "no one", even in the
| vernacular sense of the term, will blame a whistleblower
| for _literally anything_ is naive; there are too many
| people who are terminally incapable of faulting a C
| corporation for acting against the body politic.
|
| _> It becomes much more of a gray area if the
| whistleblower uncovers someone trying to find out what
| effects, positive and negative if any kind, harmful, long-
| term, short-term or otherwise, that their product might be
| having._
|
| Not when those people doing that investigation find
| something they don't like and bury it because it's
| inconvenient for their bottom line. Which Facebook did.
| It's not a gray area at all. Not in the slightest.
|
| _> Is a leak worthy if no one is arrested or taken to
| court, and all we get to do is tut-tut a little more
| sanctimoniously?_
|
| Yes, it is an unmistakable good to have the operations of
| megacorporations with more effective power than many
| governments as transparent as possible. People matter more
| than companies, and the behaviors of those companies are
| fundamentally relevant to the behavior of people in their
| polities.
|
| A company at Facebook's scale (or Apple's, etc.) should
| have _no_ secrets not directly related to user or employee
| privacy. If they don 't want to have eyes on them, don't be
| megacorporations. We've seen far too many diseconomies of
| scale with regards to fundamental and foundational morality
| to assume anything else.
| notacrapceo wrote:
| Not every company. I would never run my company with sociopath-
| ware and will proudly tell every candidate that we actually
| trust them, unlike FB, Google, Apple...
|
| This will have the effect of weakening these paranoid, power-
| tripping companies, as high end employees flee to companies
| that respect them and their time.
| wang_li wrote:
| Can you think of anything that can't be misused? E.g. if a
| kid eats enough salad they're going to get fat. Does that
| mean we should "blow the whistle" on lettuce producers and
| implement dramatic regulations? Or should we expect parents
| to be parents and monitor and regulate their child's eating
| habits? Or in this case, monitor and regulate their child's
| facebook/instagram use?
|
| (Also, we should try and recognize that not agreeing with
| someone and leaking their internal communications about
| something that is fully legal, is not whistleblowing.)
| JAlexoid wrote:
| It's in Facebook's interest to increase engagement, even if
| it destroys people's lives.
|
| A morbidly obese depressed kid is much more valuable to
| Facebook, than an active and mentally stable kid.
|
| We should realize that and stop pretending that Facebook is
| anything but a leech on our mental health.
|
| I realized that a while ago and had to literally tell
| Facebook recruiters to GF themselves.
| notacrapceo wrote:
| This seems like a non-sequitur to my comment. I'm saying
| that companies that don't spy on their employees will win
| the best employees.
|
| That being said, FB and salad have nothing to do with each
| other. One is a spyware/adware company, the other is a
| healthy meal. I applaud the whistleblower.
| tacobelllover99 wrote:
| lmao believing Haugen is a real whistleblower.
| burnished wrote:
| No, the people that design, implement, or purchase spyware are
| going to turn companies into surveillance organizations. It's
| weird to blame whistleblowers here.
| lovecg wrote:
| That's pretty common in the industry already. Don't assume you
| have any privacy when using company's devices.
| q1w2 wrote:
| If leaking internal news/information, it should seem like a
| trivial exercise to disseminate an email with subtle unique
| identifiers in it and fire leakers.
| willcipriano wrote:
| The people smart enough to build that are smart enough not to
| build that.
| macksd wrote:
| If you believe that everyone smart values the same things as
| you, sure.
| _wolfie_ wrote:
| Counter example: This was used fairly commonly to discover
| spies in EVE Online.
| JadeNB wrote:
| Surely that only works if the leaker supplies exact text, and
| the leakee publishes exact text; if either step in the chain
| summarises, then subtle unique identifiers will be lost.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The Intercept probably got Reality Winner nabbed this way;
| they sent the files to the NSA for comment. Whoops.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Winner#Role_of_The_Int.
| ..
| yuliyp wrote:
| It sounded like the set of documents was what was used in
| that case (look for all people who have accessed every
| single document in the leak, then investigate those people
| more thoroughly)
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "Both journalists and security experts have suggested
| that The Intercept's handling of the reporting, _which
| included publishing the documents unredacted and
| including the printer tracking dots_ , was used to
| identify Winner as the leaker."
| omoikane wrote:
| Sometimes this firing action causes leakers to be recognized as
| martyrs, which results in new willing leakers emerging to
| replace the ones that were fired. The chilling effect of firing
| is not sufficient to fix all leaks.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| > protecting elections
|
| Why is a private company involved in this? Shouldn't this be the
| responsibility of a government agency? If I make a company as
| large as FB can I start getting involved in controlling
| elections?
| spoonjim wrote:
| Because this private company is pumping content directly into
| the eyeballs of 2 billion people every day. There are all kinds
| of regulations on private companies about how they can and
| cannot act with regards to elections, why would Facebook be any
| different?
| Tenoke wrote:
| Because everyone blamed them for not doing it. It's been hard
| to miss all the articles about misinformation or whatever by
| users on Facebook regarding the US election and the numerous
| calls for them to do something about it.
| Jabbles wrote:
| Perhaps the argument you would like best is that it's a form of
| self-regulation designed to prevent the need for actual
| regulation via laws that would be more expensive:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry_self-regulation
| squidlogic wrote:
| But hasn't Zuckerberg asked to be regulated?
|
| I think Facebook would like to be have regulations put up on
| the social media industry to further entrench their position
| and create a regulatory moat against new entrants.
|
| Network effects are good, but even better when coupled with
| regulatory burdens.
| duncan-donuts wrote:
| I think the answer at this point is a resounding yes.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| That's an uncharitable view of "controlling". Is the guardrail
| on a highway controlling you?
|
| Any form of media past a certain size can be used by enemies of
| a country to influence elections. The internet just makes it
| easier to do so without a physical presence.
|
| I don't see why Facebook wouldn't be expected to make some
| attempt to avoid that.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> protecting elections
|
| > Why is a private company involved in this? Shouldn't this be
| the responsibility of a government agency? If I make a company
| as large as FB can I start getting involved in controlling
| elections?
|
| Yes... in an authoritarian country that doesn't have free or
| fair elections.
|
| In a democracy that kind of responsibility is distributed.
| Sure, the government has a role, but so does everyone else.
| That includes both you, me, Facebook, etc. It doesn't work to
| unload the responsibility on the government and wash your hands
| of it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Why is a private company involved in this?
|
| Because capitalism.
|
| > Shouldn't this be the responsibility of a government agency?
|
| If it was the responsibility of a government agency in the US,
| private companies would still be involved, both in executing
| the government functions and in compliance. See _literally
| every other government responsibility_ for examples.
|
| And government agencies _are_ involved in the U.S., though
| given the social harms Facebook has historically been used for,
| that it might now engage in prevention beyond what it is
| compelled to by government action is, in and of itself, not a
| _bad_ thing.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| The term is loosely defined, and others seem to be biting on
| the bait of insulting facebook here.
|
| There are different ways the election process can be
| "attacked". Voter fraud is individual voters/real people
| committing fraud by, say, voting multiple times. Voting system
| fraud would be someone hacking the machines or ballot stuffing.
| There is gerrymandering, which is its own type of attack on the
| system.
|
| What Facebook is probably referencing, and what the
| Russia/Trump investigation was largely about, was
| disinformation/misinformation campaigns intended to produce a
| particular result in an election. While government can play a
| role in protecting people from this by debunking objectively
| false data and "hitting back" at state-sponsored campaigns, it
| shouldn't be shocking that the larger social media platforms
| have the insight and capability to detect and rebut
| *isinformation on their sites.
| scohesc wrote:
| Protecting your currency against fraudulent activities was the
| responsibility of the government too, until they put the
| responsibility onto the credit card/processor companies.
|
| So many things that should be ran by a government agency are
| being ran by companies themselves now. It's only a few more
| decades until governments are supplanted by corporations.
| ovi256 wrote:
| Because if it protects elections well enough, it gains
| tremendous political power than it can later profit from.
|
| What politician will propose legislation hurting FB when FB is
| the gatekeeper to a fair election ? The FB election protection
| group can just slip for a while - they have so much to do - and
| foreign actors spread fake news that messes up the politician's
| re-election. Just letting fake news drop the politician's
| polling numbers for a few weeks will rattle them enough. What a
| shame, couldn't be helped.
|
| These may sound like a fever dream now.
| [deleted]
| pjmorris wrote:
| The Streisand effect? [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
| [deleted]
| outside1234 wrote:
| Such a bummer - was really enjoying the "Subvert Democracy" and
| "Russian Propaganda Ad Sales" message boards. :(
| the-dude wrote:
| Full title : _Facebook told staff it would seal off some internal
| message boards to prevent leaking. The change was immediately
| leaked._
| bebuzzy wrote:
| "Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement following
| Haugen's testimony that the company's work had been "taken out of
| context and used to construct a false narrative.""
|
| Funny how Zuck blames a whistleblower for doing the exact same
| thing his company does to make billions.
| Tenoke wrote:
| Do you really believe that Facebook is actively tailoring posts
| to create a false narrative rather than just people posting
| things and Facebook showing you those you might engage with
| more?
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| You don't have to manufacture individual posts if you can
| just chain existing posts together to create narratives. I'm
| not sure if Facebook tries to create a specific agenda, but
| it is no secret that they certainly try to paint a specific
| picture: The one that creates the most outrage, and they
| probably just don't care what that picture looks like.
| causi wrote:
| Sounds like a distinction without a difference to me. If I
| make a robot and instruct it to "unobtrusively retrieve bank
| notes" I'm still picking pockets.
| evgen wrote:
| Facebook's newsfeed algorithms are actively tailoring the
| content that is surfaced in your newsfeed in a manner that
| encourages 'engagement', but this quest for engagement
| creates false narratives and an inaccurate understanding of
| reality. People engage with combative and controversial
| content that supports their biases or triggers a few discrete
| emotional centers like disgust, outrage, and strong in-
| group/out-group distinctions. I also do more that just
| 'believe' this, I know it to be true for a fact.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Facebook's newsfeed algorithms are actively tailoring the
| content that is surfaced in your newsfeed in a manner that
| encourages 'engagement', but this quest for engagement
| creates false narratives and an inaccurate understanding of
| reality
|
| Except that the "algorithms" are executed by humans and not
| always concretely defined, this has been true of every ad-
| supported commercial news medium ever, for the same reason
| as it is for Facebook: the business model is securing
| attention of an audience to sell ads to them.
| fwip wrote:
| The humans running the news agencies used to at least
| pretend to exercise due diligence when selecting their
| stories. Without humans reviewing the stories that run,
| the paperclip/engagement-maximizer is happy to run
| garbage.
|
| Facebook seems happy to be the Weekly World News,
| amplifying the modern BatBoy stories.
| tyrfing wrote:
| Isn't this website, post, and comment an example as well?
| Content ranked by engagement, and a comment on
| controversial content that supports bias.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| All the content is still plainly visible with no extra
| clicks or screens. In the standard interface I often miss
| hackernews comment rankings unless they are highly
| negative (causing the comment to be grey).
|
| The comments are also broadly divided by topic (the post
| itself) whereas a facebook feed is a firehose of
| 'anything that might engage the user'.
|
| These two facts alone heavily dispute your argument in my
| opinion.
| callmeal wrote:
| >Do you really believe that Facebook is actively tailoring
| posts to create a false narrative
|
| They have done something similar before[0]. So any denials on
| their part now will necessarily be taken with a truckload of
| salt. In a study with academics from
| Cornell and the University of California, Facebook filtered
| users' news feeds - the flow of comments, videos, pictures
| and web links posted by other people in their social network.
| One test reduced users' exposure to their friends' "positive
| emotional content", resulting in fewer positive posts of
| their own. Another test reduced exposure to "negative
| emotional content" and the opposite happened.
|
| [0]https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/faceboo
| k-...
| Loughla wrote:
| How were they not sued for even attempting to cover their
| butts for human subjects research standards?
| fingerlocks wrote:
| This sounds like an academic study with willing volunteers.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| "Willing" is not enough. You need informed consent.
| bebuzzy wrote:
| I think you are right, let's just blame the users and all our
| problems are over.
|
| "Hey, I just sell guns! Guns don't kill people, people do!"
| Tenoke wrote:
| It would indeed seem odd to me to not assign at least some
| blame to the people doing the actual shooting.
| achenet wrote:
| well... There is some truth to that, honestly.
|
| If I sell guns to someone living in the middle of Alaska,
| those guns help keep them safe from bear attacks, and hunt
| to find food. If I sell guns to bank robbers in NYC, those
| guns are used to hurt people.
|
| Similarly, Facebook helps people from across the world keep
| in touch with each other. It also helps people say very
| mean things to a wide audience.
|
| Nudging your users to use the tool you created only for
| good is not easy.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Facebook doesn't "help people from across the world keep
| in touch".
|
| In it's quest to "be the internet" it has become a stream
| of trash, that actively hinders keeping in tout with
| other people.
|
| If it focused on user interaction and personal
| connections - we'd have a different conversation about
| Facebook
| filoleg wrote:
| > _Facebook doesn 't "help people from across the world
| keep in touch"._
|
| Well, that's exactly my personal use case for FB, as well
| as that of many people I personally know irl. It
| genuinely does help me and my friends to stay in touch.
| We don't browse the feed for hours or anything (I open FB
| maybe twice a week for 20-30 mins tops, and that's only
| because I am also checking up on a few hobby-related FB
| groups I am in).
|
| Could it be the case that this is NOT how most FB users
| use the service? I mean, sure. Still would be wrong to
| say that it doesn't "help people from across the world
| keep in touch," because there is a non-insignificant
| number of people who use FB for this exact stated
| purpose, me included.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| I mean... They are actively trying to make you follow the
| common practice of following news sources, favorite
| teams, groups, etc.
|
| I have less than 200 "friends", Reuters, Economist,
| DeWalt and a few local groups on my profile. And it's a
| stream of complete garbage....
|
| Because I get served the article posts, where my friends
| comment on(that's default) or interact with.
|
| That's the normal use case for Facebook, to get you
| dragged into the cesspool.
|
| My sister is paranoid and it was facebook's desire to get
| more interaction out of her that literally resulted in
| her becoming a paranoid COVID anti-vaxxer. Which is
| infinitely infuriating...
|
| At this point even Reddit is better than Facebook.
| VRay wrote:
| Facebook makes it hard for me to keep in touch with
| people, since I have to manually pick through a mountain
| of bullshit to find any posts that are actually from my
| friends and actually about their lives
|
| At first I could set up a list of "Actual Friends" and
| see all their posts, but now it'll only show a couple
| days' worth, so I have to manually click each profile and
| check them one by one
|
| If they had RSS-enabled blogs or kept up with an email
| chain or used a shared subreddit, there'd be no problem
| akudha wrote:
| It is not funny, it is just boring at this point. Every single
| response from the mega corps to anything (leaks,
| whistleblowers, fines, hacks...whatever) is predictable,
| soulless, boring, useless. Or some combination of those.
|
| Not one of the responses is constructive, useful or accepting
| responsibility. They don't even say something _might be_ wrong
| and that they will work on it, they don 't even _pretend_ to
| care, even that is too much these days
| btheshoe wrote:
| Zuckerberg is ... kind of right though, and fb's response to
| the whole scandal seems mostly reasonable. Fb internal
| research was 1) of poor quality and 2) selectively presented.
| Scientific literature on the whole is divided wrt impact of
| social media use on mental health.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| "We can't change the facts so let's focus on changing what
| words mean"
| mjburgess wrote:
| > the exact same thing his company does to make billions.
|
| Is that what his company does? Or is that what some of his
| users do?
|
| Facebook fundamentally makes money from its users liking stuff,
| thus signalling preferences, so it can then advertise to users
| with those preferences.
|
| I dont think that has anything to do with the "malignant
| social" behaviour of the human species. It is very hard to
| provide a social communication platform to a species addicted
| to sharing stories, and not to "science".
| tacobelllover99 wrote:
| Whoever is in favoring of FB or any other social media platform
| suppressing ideas?
|
| Group thing is a horrible thing.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| If you'll permit the analogy, the headline makes it sound like
| that they installed a fireproof safe and the safe immediately
| caught fire. Stupid Facebook!
|
| Except it's more like they installed a fireproof safe and hours
| later the fire alarm went off.
|
| These too things are quite different :)
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Here's a shorthand way of knowing when a bad actor got caught:
|
| They say "taken out of context, leading to our work being
| mischaracterized" or words very similar.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Salute the simple wisdom. Only that todays media indeed likes
| clickbaity missquotes taken out of context.
| squidlogic wrote:
| This statement seems overly broad.
|
| I suspect you would object if someone took your words out of
| context, for example. Would that therefore mean you are a bad
| actor?
| mjburgess wrote:
| AlbertCory said recently, regarding a piece on Zuckerberg,
|
| [He] was a "bad actor" who "got caught".
| JAlexoid wrote:
| It's funny that trying to mischaractarize you managed to
| express the exact thing that Albert said.
|
| Thus proving his point
| AlbertCory wrote:
| When someone says that a story "took that out of context",
| we should always ask "what 'context' would lead us to view
| that differently?"
|
| Or is it just that they don't like the story?
| dqpb wrote:
| But good actors can also have words/actions taken out of
| context, no?
| AlbertCory wrote:
| To everyone jumping on this: Yes, good actors can have words
| taken out of context.
|
| FFRefresh had an example of, not so much "taking out of
| context" as "selective reframing." An entire document or
| posting pretty much IS "the context." A few words out of a
| sentence, coupled with writer-provided context, is something
| entirely different.
|
| I think the giveaway is when they say something is "untrue
| and taken out of context" without providing any further
| details. It's kinda like the lawyer's boilerplate statement
| "the allegations are without merit and we look forward to
| vigorously defending ourselves in court." It means nothing.
|
| If FB had said "we have robust debate and the leaked
| documents show ONE opinion, but that doesn't represent what
| we ultimately decided." then I wouldn't be so quick to
| dismiss it.
|
| Lastly, I've had personal experience with journalists, and
| most of them really _are_ honorable people. The scum at
| BuzzFeed or Gawker or CNN who only care about advancing their
| agenda, rather than reporting the news, are the ones dragging
| down the reputation of the media.
| FFRefresh wrote:
| (this is not a personal attack on you, but merely an attempt to
| use journalistic tactics (such as taking things out of context)
| with your words to fit meta-narratives that many news consumers
| like to read.)
|
| The alleged suspect, AlbertCory, has been associated with
| internet hacking sites (hackernews.com), which feature many
| posts from Russian sources. On these hacking sites, AlbertCory
| has boasted about his knowledge of other 'bad actors', rising
| suspicions amongst the sources we talked to that he is a member
| of a Russian operative group.
|
| In a likely recent disinformation campaign, AlbertCory sought
| to discredit vaccine confidence for Americans by claiming
| "Fauci has done more damage to "science" than any 100 religious
| authorities ever did."[1]
|
| AlbertCory has not denied the allegations and declined to
| comment when we reached out to them.
|
| [1]
| https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=28856201&goto=threads%...
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I don't recall when anyone "reached out" to me for comment.
| FFRefresh wrote:
| Perhaps my hypothetical news organization sent you an email
| minutes before posting the hypothetical article, or we sent
| an email to an address you were unlikely to use, or we
| called you at a time we knew you wouldn't pick up? Or maybe
| it went to spam?
|
| All we know is that we did reach out, and you didn't
| respond, so we standby the statement in the article.
| driverdan wrote:
| Original source:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/technology/facebook-workp...
| tc313 wrote:
| The title suggests an irony that isn't present. The change in
| policy was immediately leaked, but the policy was designed to
| keep the discussions on those boards from leaking (rather than
| the policy itself).
| jwalton wrote:
| Ah yes, the time honoured tradition of improving your integrity
| department by removing transparency.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Their work is just so objectively good and correct that
| allowing insight into what they're doing can only harm the work
| they're doing.
| Mtinie wrote:
| Your statement reminded me of something I read during my
| undergraduate courses.
|
| An excerpt of Abraham Lincoln's seminal work of popular
| wisdom, "Boom! Goes the Capitalism":
|
| "Schrodinger's Policy is a seemingly paradoxical thought
| experiment devised by Erwin Schrodinger---after a late
| Wednesday night of strong ale and copious amounts of poutine
| ---that attempts to illustrate the incompleteness of an early
| interpretation of quantum mechanics when going from subatomic
| to macroscopic systems. Schrodinger proposed his "policy"
| after debates with Albert Einstein over the Copenhagen
| interpretation, which Schrodinger defended, stating in
| essence that if a scenario existed where a policy making body
| within an (ostensibly) benevolent tech company could be so
| isolated from external interference (decoherence), the state
| of the group's work can only be known as a superposition
| (combination) of possible rest states (eigenstates), because
| finding out (measuring the state) cannot be done without the
| observer interfering with the experiment -- the measurement
| system (the observer) is entangled with the experiment.
|
| Einstein reportedly suggested that tech companies could never
| be benevolent, especially when they are expected to maintain
| an objective view when their finances were concerned.
|
| After an unknown number of rounds of distilled spirits
| derived from wormwood, Schrodinger conceded this was true and
| instead recast his thought experiment to feature a cat as the
| primary actor; a creature which he felt had a vastly higher
| likability."
|
| /hat-tip to the editors of the Schrodinger Wikipedia page
| cosmojg wrote:
| For those without a sense of humor, this is sarcasm.
| whambampow wrote:
| Really? Thanks!
| rvbissell wrote:
| I think it transcends sarcasm, circling back to how they
| actually feel.
| dym_sh wrote:
| your sarcasm - our oboros
| q1w2 wrote:
| Sometimes transparency encourages bad actors.
| 0des wrote:
| Is there an example you have in mind?
| joshstrange wrote:
| Not sure if this applies but the Obama administration has
| spoken previously about how releasing/publishing their
| visitor list was something they regretted. They got mild
| accolades at the time of doing it (in a move to be more
| transparent that other administrations) and then the right
| wing (mainly) used the visitor log to make hay for 8 years.
| Then the Trump admin stopped releasing the info and no one
| made a big deal about it (relative to the number of stories
| written about who showed up on the lists the Obama admin
| released).
| aerosmile wrote:
| Yep: https://www.amazon.com/Google-Leaks-Whistleblowers-
| Expos%C3%...
|
| I'll save you the read. A Google employee downloaded 100k
| documents from the company-wide available internal wiki,
| identified all the ones that seemed anywhere from highly-
| to-mildly offensive to anyone in the world, and then
| published it all as a book on Amazon. The book has been out
| for about a year and continues to sell well (not to mention
| the hundreds of paid media appearances for the author to
| speak in front of like-minded audiences).
|
| Here's the fun part: Google considered suing, but
| recognized that this would trigger the Streisand Effect and
| let him off the hook. Obviously, this was a calculated risk
| this dude took and that paid off (at least from the legal
| perspective).
|
| Did Google act ethically 100% of the time? God no! But did
| it hurt them to have everything out in the open? You
| betcha.
|
| So clearly there's a market out there for juicy internal
| documents. I would still say the first step is not to do
| anything wrong, ever. But once you have enough people
| working for you and you can't be in every meeting at all
| times, shit is going to happen, and people are going to
| want to pay to find out about it.
|
| EDIT: replaced "filtered out" with "identified"
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > But did it hurt them to have everything out in the
| open? You betcha.
|
| Good. Google should not be able to hide anything from
| anyone, especially the public whose privacy they invade.
| The more leaks, the better off we are. Especially the
| kind of leaks that hurt them. Those are the ones we want
| most. If they didn't want us to find out, maybe they
| shouldn't have been doing it, right?
| q1w2 wrote:
| So they should make all their code open source? Have no
| intellectual property rights?
|
| You are suggesting they just go bankrupt.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > You are suggesting they just go bankrupt.
|
| I'm suggesting they stop surveilling the world's entire
| population. Until they stop violating our privacy, I
| won't feel sorry for them when others violate theirs.
| Total lack of privacy is exactly what these big tech
| companies deserve.
| refurb wrote:
| Is your argument that the world would be a better place
| if those wiki pages weren't public?
| aerosmile wrote:
| Not at all. Most companies are not in the business of
| making the world a better place, and therefore they are
| not going to be optimizing their info access policies
| against that target, but instead they will be optimizing
| for shareholder value or what have you.
|
| Don't confuse this statement with an endorsement - I wish
| it all worked differently, but this is the reality.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Most companies put a lot of money and reputation on the
| line advertising and taking stances on current events in
| such a way to imply that they are "in the business of
| making the world a better place". Either they need to
| step up and practice what they preach, or a regulatory
| agency like the FTC should step in when they make false
| claims about corporate governance.
| geofft wrote:
| I think this comment is giving an (interesting, IMO)
| example of the claim "Sometimes transparency encourages
| bad actors" and not making a value judgment on whether it
| is worth the tradeoff to limit internal transparency just
| to have stopped this one bad actor.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| Best Sellers Rank: #48,190 in Books (See Top 100 in
| Books)
|
| #2 in Tribology Mechanical Engineering
|
| #4 in Content Management
|
| #10 in Online Internet Searching
|
| what the hell
| tablespoon wrote:
| >>> Sometimes transparency encourages bad actors.
|
| > I'll save you the read. A Google employee downloaded
| 100k documents from the company-wide available internal
| wiki, identified all the ones that seemed anywhere from
| highly-to-mildly offensive to anyone in the world, and
| then published it all as a book on Amazon. The book has
| been out for about a year and continues to sell well (not
| to mention the hundreds of paid media appearances for the
| author to speak in front of like-minded audiences).
|
| You also have to keep in mind that a "company-wide
| available internal wiki" is going to be almost entirely
| full of boring crap that people literally have to be paid
| to read.
|
| I mean, the internal wiki pages for nearly every system
| I've worked on in my company don't even describe what
| that system is supposed to do in terms someone from
| outside the team would understand.
|
| > So clearly there's a market out there for juicy
| internal documents. I would still say the first step is
| not to do anything wrong, ever. But once you have enough
| people working for you and you can't be in every meeting
| at all times, shit is going to happen, and people are
| going to want to pay to find out about it.
|
| It's not a "bad actor" thing to leak things like that.
| "Shit" that happens at low levels is still shit, even if
| it's not company policy coming from the top.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Google a decade ago wasn't like that. I learned so much
| about software development from reading internal wiki
| pages for things like MapReduce, GFS, Colossus, their
| search serving system, search algorithms in general,
| their authentication/ID system, GMail storage, Google
| Reader feed ingestion, Google Moderator voting
| algorithms, etc. Not to mention snooping on code reviews
| from folks like Jeff Dean, Rob Pike, and Guido van
| Rossum.
|
| It's not like that now - things are so much more locked
| down. The first time I was there I could basically treat
| it like a Ph.D that I got paid for, in terms of learning
| new things. This time, it's a job where I do my tasks and
| receive lots of money in return. I think this is kind of
| a shame - I liked the environment much more when most
| people were there to learn and invent rather than collect
| a paycheck - but perhaps this is the inevitable result of
| a company growing past 100K employees.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| >"Shit" that happens at low levels is still shit, even if
| it's not company policy coming from the top.
|
| In some cases, it can be worse. If something happens at a
| low level that is unambiguously bad and no one at the top
| does anything about it despite knowing about it, then to
| the public, it's as if upper-management is condoning the
| behavior.
|
| Case in point: the Redskins practicing human trafficking
| with no strong public denouncement from the team's front
| office.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| "Paid media appearances" - how would you know he got
| paid?
|
| I'm not on his level, but I have a book and I've done
| "media appearances" (BBC stations in Berkshire &
| Bristol). You don't get paid for promoting your book.
|
| Maybe on a TV show, the union forces them to pay you the
| minimum, which I believe is not very much.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| > But did it hurt them to have everything out in the
| open? You betcha.
|
| I hear this often and find it a bit puzzling. Perhaps
| it's part of believing that speech is violence - thinking
| that critical speech or angry feelings are really hurting
| Google.
|
| So how do you think it hurt them? Did they lose
| customers, and if so, how many? Did they miss a quarter?
| Have to lay people off? Cancel product initiatives?
| jessaustin wrote:
| If any of these calamities eventually happen, we'll have
| to blame GP post.
| vincentmarle wrote:
| > Here's the fun part: Google considered suing, but
| recognized that this would trigger the Streisand Effect
| and let him off the hook.
|
| Well, their strategy worked because I've never heard
| about this book.
| scohesc wrote:
| Interesting! I'm going to have to get a hard-copy of this
| book.
| rhcom2 wrote:
| If it's the same stuff on his website it is incredibly
| underwhelming https://www.zachvorhies.com/google_leaks/
| [deleted]
| mh- wrote:
| This book is only ~200 pages long. What am I missing?
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| When the GP says "filtered out" the offensive ones, I
| think he means he filtered out the inoffensive ones and
| kept the offensive ones, which makes for a much shorter
| book.
| aerosmile wrote:
| Yep, sorry for the logic brain fart. Updated the parent
| comment accordingly.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Honestly this doesn't happen if you have a good corporate
| culture to begin with (which Google has not had for quite
| a while).
|
| I always go back to my experience at HP when Bill and
| Dave were still alive: the leadership decision to trust
| employees was pretty much reciprocated so openness worked
| just fine.
|
| So lack of leadership skill (especially an inability to
| "lead by example") is usually what causes this type of
| situation.
| amznthrwaway wrote:
| A good rule of thumb as a leader, is that if you have
| more than 1,000 employees, at least 1 person is actively
| working to hurt the company.
|
| Lots of possible drivers from mental illness, to being
| paid by an unethical competitor, to just twisted ethics
| in response to some random situation.... But if you've
| got 1,000 employees, somebody is secretly trying to f*
| you.
| q1w2 wrote:
| This is folly because it only takes ONE person to leak
| documents, and there are always disgruntled employees
| somewhere in a company at the scale we are talking about.
|
| You cannot assume good behavior of literally tens of
| thousands of employees because you have an overall "good"
| company culture.
|
| That's just impossible.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Google used to (c. 2005-2008) let you freely download your
| contacts & email from GMail, either as a file or an API.
| Facebook used this to seed Facebook. When you signed up
| with an @gmail.com account for Facebook, it'd prompt you to
| import all your contacts, and then send them all an e-mail
| inviting them to sign up for Facebook.
|
| Google's requests for some reciprocity from Facebook, where
| users would own their own social graph through technologies
| like OpenSocial, naturally fell on deaf ears. Google walled
| off their own platform and decided to abandon open
| standards for proprietary systems a couple years later, and
| this is a large reason why we can't have nice things.
|
| I believe GDPR enforces the ability to download all your
| data and both Google and Facebook offer it, but it's
| practically useless now. GDPR also makes the regulatory
| burden of starting a new social network impractical, so
| it's not like we could get an ecosystem of interoperable
| competitors.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| That FB whistleblower with PR and legal team
| hef19898 wrote:
| Being that Whistleblower _not_ having legal and PR teams
| would have been rather stupid.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| She is not whistleblower, she is a front
| cguess wrote:
| For who?
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Limited Hangout
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout
|
| Not necessarily saying that is the case but if you wanted
| to steer regulation in a direction....
| jessaustin wrote:
| FB saying "please oh please don't regulate social
| networks!" sure would _seem_ like Br 'er Rabbit. Most
| prospective regulations in this area would have a bigger
| impact on e.g. a completely open community-driven
| network, for example.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Interesting. I was thinking more in line of ppl simply
| siphoning money and power from fb. I don't see a grand
| scheme here, just some blood in the water.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Even if this was true, should I care? If the leaked
| documents are real then it doesn't matter.
| varelse wrote:
| Are you suggesting in a roundabout way that we should get rid
| of all the things that can encourage bad actors?
| [deleted]
| JadeNB wrote:
| Pretending that transparency _always_ has _only_ good effects
| is clearly nonsense; but I think that pretending that the
| lack of transparency _ever_ has good effects is suspect at
| best.
| 5040 wrote:
| Diplomats have long argued that certain concessions can
| only be made if the specifics of their negotiations are
| kept private.
| EricE wrote:
| Indeed. I've always been deeply influenced by the old
| saying:
|
| Your Character Is What You Do When Nobody Is Watching
|
| Your chances of having a problem from stuff being leaked is
| greatly reduced if you aren't doing shitty things to begin
| with.
|
| Not that I think that's what motivated this
| "whistleblower".
| lovecg wrote:
| When there are motivated leakers from both sides of the
| political spectrum it's impossible to "not do shitty
| things"; someone will always be disappointed:
| https://www.foxnews.com/media/facebook-whistleblower-
| reveals...
| q1w2 wrote:
| Guilt should not be inferred by a person or company
| protecting its own privacy.
|
| It is naive to think that a bad actor cannot craft a
| falsehood from a subset of truths they select that you've
| chosen to make public.
| aerosmile wrote:
| Well said.
| jstanley wrote:
| Since transparency is the opposite of lack of transparency,
| I don't understand how transparency can have bad effects
| without the opposite (lack of transparency) having the
| opposite (good) effect.
|
| It can't both be the case that transparency ever has bad
| effects and lack of transparency never has good effects:
| pick one of the bad effects of transparency and introduce
| "lack of transparency" in its place. Isn't that bad effect
| now gone? Isn't that a good effect of the lack of
| transparency?
| watwut wrote:
| The whole point of 1:1 is that some privacy allows people
| to say things they would not otherwise.
|
| So yes, lack of transparency can have good effect.
| taeric wrote:
| I want to believe this. I also believe that 1:1s is a bit
| of an aggressive tactic to force someone to talk when
| they may not want to. :(
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's a hard problem. Some people don't want to talk for
| good, well-founded reasons; others (and I'm often guilty
| of this myself) don't want to talk because they just
| instinctively flinch away from hard but necessary
| discussions.
| baq wrote:
| 1:1 is a tool that requires a certain level of skill to
| be used successfully. it can be used for many purposes
| and in many ways.
|
| if you're describing your past experiences, you should
| definitely level that skill, especially if it makes you
| uncomfortable.
| JadeNB wrote:
| I think it's a question of whether we're playing a single
| round of a game or an iterated game; or, to phrase it
| differently, whether we're discussing single acts or
| culture.
|
| Granted, any time that transparency leads to bad effects,
| lack of transparency would presumably have led to the
| lack of those bad effects, and so be good, at least
| indirectly. A one-time lack of transparency can perhaps
| be appropriate.
|
| However, a _culture_ of lack of transparency is not the
| opposite of a _culture_ of transparency, and those are
| the two poles I really see us discussing. A culture of
| transparency _can_ lead to problems, but can also lead to
| good things (or at least to the exposure of bad things so
| that they can be addressed); whereas a culture of lack of
| transparency always _will_ lead to problems, and any
| temporary good results from its imposition will be
| overwhelmed by its long-term ill effects.
| taeric wrote:
| It is also a question of whether the transparency allows
| dissenting views. Often, it doesn't.
|
| Which isn't to claim that all dissenting views are good.
| But when you are an industry that is having a hard time
| with minority views, forcing the minority to take
| center/public stage at all times is actually somewhat
| counter productive.
|
| Put differently, if you are going to encourage
| transparency for communication and decisions, you have to
| take extra care to not punish good faith mistakes.
| topspin wrote:
| No one owes Facebook the benefit of that doubt.
| q1w2 wrote:
| The point is that protecting your own privacy should never
| been used as an indication of guilt.
|
| "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide" is
| the lie of the authoritarian. It is naive to think that a
| bad actor cannot construct a falsehood with a collection of
| truths.
|
| I have worked on court cases for both individuals and
| (small) businesses that were innocent, but pissed off the
| wrong government agency, and got pushed/intimidated into
| pleading guilty.
|
| Judges are flawed human beings who rule against innocent
| people and companies ALL THE TIME because court cases are a
| flurry of biased witness accounts and
| misleading/incomplete/subjective evidence. Folks in HN
| should appreciate this most because as I work in IT
| forensics, the judges appreciation for the technology
| details of cases is usually very low and they make
| mistakes. Defense attorneys know that and so they encourage
| innocent people to strike plead (guilty) deal, even when
| they have good evidence of their innocence because
| literally anything can happen in a court room. Prosecutions
| also know this, and so they throw absolutely everything
| they can think of in front of the judge, from hearsay to
| irrelevant data points to try to influence the judge's
| overall impression of the defendant so the judge will get
| frustrated with the complex details and rule on other
| subjective evidence. It's really an eye-opening experience
| to see people getting railroaded in court.
|
| Few appreciate it until it happens to them, and they are
| presented with a subset of facts and hearsay that the
| prosecution has architected to paint a misleading picture
| in front of the court.
|
| That is just the unfortunate reality of the world.
| Protecting your own or your company's privacy is the
| prudent way to behave even when you are completely
| innocent.
| crandycodes wrote:
| No one things FB is evil because they aren't transparent.
| It is because of the observable harm on society and their
| perceived reluctance to mitigate that harm. Internally,
| they also suffer with retention because employees don't
| want to work at an evil or perceived to be evil place.
|
| Thus, FB decides to have more transparency, gets a little
| credit that they want to fix the problem. All good.
|
| Now, FB then revokes that after it leads to criticism
| (which is the point of being transparent...), so they
| revert to the previous state, only now there is even more
| evidence and the problem is worse.
|
| It's the height of irony that a company that profits from
| selling information about you would ever try to defend
| itself with a right to privacy. Not only is that not the
| issue at hand but it speaks to the lack of self-awareness
| that I can only hope will doom FB to irrelevance or legal
| destruction.
| q1w2 wrote:
| I am not arguing Facebook's goodness or evilness.
|
| > It's the height of irony that a company that profits
| from selling information about you would ever try to
| defend itself with a right to privacy.
|
| Everyone deserves a robust defense - even the guilty. It
| is not for _their_ justice - it is to protect the
| integrity of the system.
|
| Everyone also deserves the right to privacy because bad
| actors (competitors, disgruntled employees, political
| activists, etc...) are always happy to twist facts leaked
| to make a biased case. This happens all the time - there
| is no shortage of talking heads on spin alley.
|
| You're right in that FB should have probably never tried
| to be more transparent - and doing so was naive and
| destined for failure. In the court of public opinion /
| social media (and eventually probably ACTUAL court
| someday), you simply cannot successfully voice your
| innocence. Even apologizing when you're wrong makes
| things worse.
|
| My advice to clients is always...
|
| #1. Shut up. Do not make public statements. Do not engage
| anyone publicly. Anything you say can and will be used
| against you - both in and out of court.
|
| #2. See point above.
|
| In my opinion, the correct strategy for a social media
| company these days is to be as ethical as possible, and
| to say as little as possible publicly about ethics or
| internal policies.
| topspin wrote:
| Your lecture on jurisprudence and standards of evidence
| is misplaced. This isn't a courtroom. We are not judges
| presiding over a case. These are matters of politics and
| profession as much as law and here we are free to
| interpret behavior, state our views and consider our
| associations as our knowledge and experience inform us.
| Further, unlike Facebook which has long since squandered
| whatever good faith one might imagine they were owed, we
| _are_ owed the assumption of good faith while doing it.
| yuliyp wrote:
| It applies even more outside of a courtroom. Most people
| get information via very agenda-driven news articles, and
| not having "making sense of weird situations" as their
| day job, they're even more likely to be misled than
| judges.
|
| At least a court has lots of rules built in to try and
| provide some amount of fairness to both sides in a
| debate. The political and public sphere has no such
| rules, making it even more vulnerable to such
| railroading.
| topspin wrote:
| "It applies even more outside of a courtroom."
|
| Perhaps inside the heads of some. In the actual external
| world people make decisions based on incomplete
| information, first impression, secondhand observation,
| self serving bias and other imperfect influences. Neither
| you nor I will live to see this reality 'corrected.'
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Transparency and privacy aren't antonyms.
| na85 wrote:
| Facebook's existence encourages bad actors.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Ask Apple how that turned out for them by being completely
| hermatically sealed from the public. Zero transparency.
|
| This is a low quality knee-jerk emotional comment tickling the
| current FB zeitgeist and HN tends to love those.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Apple isn't even remotely in the same position as Facebook.
|
| Let alone - Apple is private, Facebook is anything but
| private
| BbzzbB wrote:
| Apple on Apple ads : "Want relevant ads?"
|
| Apple on Facebook ads : "Want spyware?"
| baq wrote:
| special circumstances. it's a democratic grey area.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| Dear Facebook, remember when you said only criminals have
| something to hide?
|
| But thanks for the argument! Now, whenever I have to explain why
| privacy matters to someone I will say that I don't want facts
| about me taken ,,out of context" because my life is ,,complex"
| and that ,,might decrease morale".
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I don't think I've ever seen executives do something to prevent
| "decreased morale" that hasn't immediately resulted in morale
| falling right off a cliff.
| novok wrote:
| I remember another meme where govt says "you don't have
| anything to hide" and then the other side saying "then you
| don't mind me publishing all of this secret government info
| then?" and then getting very angry at the other person.
| Kilenaitor wrote:
| When did Facebook say only criminals have something to hide?
| outside1234 wrote:
| Yeah, I think that was Google and Eric Schmidt.
|
| Facebook doesn't believe anyone should have anything to hide.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| Confirmed, it was Eric Schmidt (2009):
|
| _If you 're concerned about Google retaining your personal
| data, then you must be doing something you shouldn't be
| doing. At least that's the word from Google CEO Eric
| Schmidt._
|
| _" If you have something that you don't want anyone to
| know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place,"
| Schmidt tells CNBC. . ."_
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2009/12/07/schmidt_on_privacy/
| Apocryphon wrote:
| There's a difference between surveillance and sousveillance.
| Powerful entities should be subject to the latter.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance
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