[HN Gopher] Facebook paid Republican strategy firm to malign TikTok
___________________________________________________________________
Facebook paid Republican strategy firm to malign TikTok
Author : elsewhen
Score : 445 points
Date : 2022-03-30 11:44 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| numair wrote:
| In case you think this is some esoteric issue involving kids'
| stuff -- keep in mind that the founder of TikTok was one of the
| most balanced voices within China, who argued that the country
| needed to engage with the West in a healthier manner. Zuckerberg
| et al and their incessant lobbying for that TikTok ban basically
| vaporized that guy's pull within China, which eliminated a super-
| valuable asset for the West.
|
| So, yeah, Facebook continues to be the single greatest threat to
| Western society outside of Russia. These are serious issues with
| serious consequences.
| spoonjim wrote:
| LOL. The single greatest threat to Western society is Western
| society itself. Declining fertility, mass immigration at the
| border but brutally hard immigration for high skill workers,
| civil wars over pointless culture war issues, and the
| destruction of the social norms that once held us together. But
| go blame Facebook if you want.
| naravara wrote:
| Facebook is a major contributor to the pointless cultural war
| obsession and the erosion of pro-social norms though.
| pessimizer wrote:
| So are the telephone and families getting together for the
| holidays.
| naravara wrote:
| Surely you realize how much of a stretch that is. If you
| wanted to say broadcast television or radio you might
| have a point but analogizing an algorithmic feed tuned to
| stoke outrage to families spending time together is just
| a farcically bad faith approach.
| dqpb wrote:
| > Facebook continues to be the single greatest threat to
| Western society outside of Russia.
|
| No it's not. The greatest threat to any society is its own
| ineptitude.
| bostonsre wrote:
| Doesn't facebook make it a lot easier for inept viewpoints
| and thoughts to gain traction and impact society more easily?
| Facebook is the gun, not the trigger man.
| dqpb wrote:
| Facebook is just a public square
| jollybean wrote:
| "Facebook continues to be the single greatest threat to Western
| society outside of Russia"
|
| This is ridiculous hyperbole.
|
| And TikTok, as a Chinese company whereupon they can be
| compelled to do the bidding of the CCP at any time, in whatever
| terms, remains problematic.
|
| It doesn't matter what the 'founder' thinks.
| Spivak wrote:
| Do you apply this logic to all companies not in the US? Do
| you worry that the American Honda Motor Company is a sleeper
| cell for Japanese state interests?
| kmlx wrote:
| oh my. are we equating Japan with China?
| pessimizer wrote:
| Is it bizarre to compare countries with other countries
| generally, or only when one is on the official enemies
| list?
| jollybean wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with comparing countries, but it's
| ridiculous to compare countries which have systems of de
| facto central control, vs systems that do not.
|
| Xi (and the CCP) don't interfere directly very often, but
| he can and will do so as he chooses. He's an Emperor.
| Nobody has that kind of power in Japan.
| des1nderlase wrote:
| Any government can and will control any present company
| if "national" interests are in question.
| jollybean wrote:
| Again this is unhelpful rhetorical relativism, because
| the circumstances of 'national interest' are defined
| completely differently.
|
| Yes, if someone is pointing Nuclear Weapons at Japan,
| they will force Yahoo.jp to fork over data on the spot,
| but otherwise, no.
|
| In China, a random person making a comment about someone
| in government could be suppressed as a matter of
| 'national interest'.
|
| It's pointless to make rhetorical analogies. Even if one
| could argue they are 'different in extent and not in
| character' (though I would disagree), the 'extent of
| difference' is sufficient to make them different in
| character.
|
| A random person walking down the street has little to
| fear in either country, but that line can be crossed
| quickly and arbitrarily in authoritarian regimes.
| jollybean wrote:
| The CCP has very specific influence on companies in China,
| that has no parrallel elsewhere. Specifically they require
| companies to hire CCP members that have internal positions
| with oversight, the CCP will remove leaders as they see
| fit, require arbitrary censoring as they see fit.
|
| This is obviously much more of a concern for companies in
| the information domain such as social media or finance,
| than others such as manufacturing.
|
| Donald Trump for example, could not remove the Google
| founders by any means.
| Leary wrote:
| Regardless of what people think about Facebook or Tiktok, this
| kind of behaviour is anti competitive.
|
| If Facebook did this to Tiktok, you can bet it tried similar
| tactics against Snapchat.
| kmlx wrote:
| > Facebook continues to be the single greatest threat to
| Western society outside of Russia.
|
| this statement is both hyperbolic and naive at the same time.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Hyperbolic for sure but I do not think it is naive at all.
| Facebook has proven many times over they are basically the
| Mafia of Silicon Valley and nothing they say should be
| trusted or taken at face value.
|
| That being said there are many other threats to western
| society and while many or most of those will exploit Facebook
| as much as they can for influence they will continue to exist
| should Facebook fall.
| ardit33 wrote:
| The Engineering wage raises during 2010-2014 are a huge
| part due to Facebook back then entering a biding war for
| talent, which google had to counter which raised comps for
| everyone. Also, after 2015 you had more companies hitting
| the fray (Uber, Airbnb, etc). If it wasn't for Facebook,
| the compensation industry wise would look something like
| MSFT's comp (pretty low in general).
|
| So, for one thing, Meta / Facebook has been great at
| raising the comps for engineering in SV.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Uh society is more important than SV engineering wages,
| full stop. You're looking at a single tree and ignoring
| the forest of manipulation FB has done to society.
| amarant wrote:
| You seem to be conflating Western society with
| engineering wages in SV. They are not the same, and
| what's good for one can very much be bad for the other!
|
| I guess you were getting at the Mafia analogue in GP.
| Perhaps that was an unfortunate analogue, but GP's points
| were valid, not native.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think the reason people hate on Facebook here is that
| they do things like spread misinformation and lies about
| elected officials and current events, damaging democracy.
| It is annoying that Apple and Google underpaid already-
| well-paid people, but not a huge issue for society in
| general.
| Melatonic wrote:
| I was not commenting on that - more on Facebook's
| business practices in general.
|
| As for Silicon Valley collusion re: wages in my opinion
| the agreement that George Lucas / Steve Jobs / Ed Catmull
| / Others made in the late 90s / early 2000s to screw over
| tech workers and specifically VFX workers (they were
| afraid of a VFX union) was worse and flys under the radar
| way more than it should. VFX workers to this day continue
| to get screwed by this totally illegal collusion (and
| there was a large settlement of "unknown amount" at one
| point).
|
| edit: After looking into the above lawsuit we may
| actually be talking about the same thing - although it
| did dramatically screw the VFX industry more than tech.
| And I refuse to credit Facebook with helping with that -
| it was the exposure of that collusion that ended it.
|
| That does not mean Google gets a pass and I don't think
| my original comment implies that at all
| bostonsre wrote:
| Why is it hyperbolic and why is it naive?
|
| It was a tool used to influence elections in the United
| States, I can't think of any other entity that has had a
| larger negative impact on our society recently (maybe
| coronavirus?).
| jessaustin wrote:
| Nothing in Russia is in any sense a "great threat to
| Western society".
| Jackpillar wrote:
| bko wrote:
| > It was a tool used to influence elections in the United
| States
|
| Are you talking about fake Russian accounts buying $100k
| worth of facebook ads in 2016? That constitutes 0.00625% of
| total spending (1.6 bn) on the 2016 election. Or are you
| talking about something else?
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/facebook-sold-100000-ads-
| fak...
| martingoodson wrote:
| The IRA Russian troll farm had 1000 employees in 2015.
| They used Facebook as a tool to influence elections in
| the United States.
|
| This is very well documented
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency
|
| And I don't know why the sister comment about Facebook
| being used to commit genocide in Myanmar was flagged and
| killed. This is also well documented by eg the NYT and
| the UN. It was also admitted by Facebook itself.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-
| facebo...
| tracker1 wrote:
| It swings in every direction. Not just what they allow in
| terms of ads but what gets suppressed, promoted,
| shown/reshown. Visibility and not.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| > one of the most balanced voices within China
|
| Except TikTok, like Facebook, is not available in China. The
| Dou Yin platform cannot see posts from tiktok.
| TSiege wrote:
| I don't disagree with what you're saying, but I think it's
| probably overstating the impact. We've seen China exert a huge
| amount of influence in Chinese tech space and really clamp down
| loosened controls. Maybe this was the excuse Chinese press
| gave, but I think this would have likely happened anyways given
| the power and direction Xi is moving China in. See their moves
| in the tutoring, construction, crypto, and e-commerce spaces
| too
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| I won't pretend to know all of the details but this comes off
| as kind of conspiracy-theory.
|
| Why is Zuckerberg the boogieman? He just wants to run his
| company well and get as many eyeballs on paid advertisements as
| possible... right? Why is there some notion that he wants to
| push either a liberal or conservative agenda internationally?
|
| It's near impossible to moderate a billion people posting crap
| on a social media platform well enough to the point where you
| keep everybody happy. How does this make him "the single
| greatest threat to Western society outside of Russia"?
| KarlKemp wrote:
| Facebook has consistently disappointed anyone working on any
| of these issues, from Islamic State recruitment to Myanmar's
| ethnic violence. Because young people in tech are generally
| thought to be smart and happy, i. e. Democrats, these failing
| have been interpreted as growing pains and various lapses in
| skill or judgement.
|
| The idea has, however, been catching on that Zuckerberg may
| just be a Greenwald-Democrat, i. e. someone going through a
| process of alienation in increasingly schizophrenic episodes.
|
| Combine bad faith with the power of Facebook and it's
| possible to consider that dangerous. The superlative feels
| strange indeed, but can you think of any other credible
| alternative, especially outside of (party) politics?
| pessimizer wrote:
| > smart and happy, i. e. Democrats
|
| > these failing have been interpreted as growing pains and
| various lapses in skill or judgement.
|
| "[...]have been interpreted[...]" are wikipedia "weasel
| words" here; this is really what centrist party Democrats
| feel. They interpret the acts of "smart and happy" middle-
| class people through the lens of "people trying to do good
| badly" rather than "people doing what they want to do,
| consistently with what they've always done."
|
| These are the only people that need to rationalize their
| associations with Facebook, and this is how they do it.
| Republicans and libertarian-types don't actually think
| these are issues that Facebook should be concerned about,
| and lefties don't need to to rehabilitate Facebook.
| ModernMech wrote:
| I believe Zuckerberg never made it past the "I don't know
| why these dumb fucks trust me" phase of his psychological
| development. He's never fully grasped that the fact that
| people did in fact trust him means he has a responsibility
| rather than a mandate. Unfortunately every time Zuckerberg
| has abused his power, he never faces a single consequence,
| so he just keeps learning the wrong lesson again and again.
| roamerz wrote:
| Conspiracy theory? He did everything in his power to get
| liberals into political power.
|
| Yes he is a very large threat to Western society, the United
| States of America and world peace. The current state of
| affairs should be the proof anyone needs.
| zenmaster10665 wrote:
| Well there we go... Last one turn out the lights, this guy
| has solved it.
| bostonsre wrote:
| > He just wants to run his company well and get as many
| eyeballs on paid advertisements as possible... right?
|
| Yes, I would definitely agree that this is the case and I
| think that is a large part of the problem. The Machiavellian
| ends justifying the means equates to him not caring about the
| negative impacts that he has on society while trying to
| attract the most eyeballs possible.
| vixen99 wrote:
| Aren't those negative impacts on society a matter for
| government? Basically any company will 'try it on' until
| it's stopped. And 'stopping' is what governments are about,
| I used to think. It doesn't seem to happen and it's not
| surprising that some have written darkly about the marriage
| of huge corporations with government and its dire
| consequences.
| bostonsre wrote:
| Yes, I think the government should be responsible for
| preventing bad actors, but I also don't think Facebook
| operating without morality is good or acceptable.
| Government is slow, facebook is using this to their
| advantage and moving fast and breaking things (society)
| and I don't think they should be let off the hook because
| our government hasn't caught up with the blatantly bad
| stuff that they are up to. If outrage and bad PR can curb
| some of their negative tendencies, I am all for exposing
| their actions.
| curiousgal wrote:
| > _the single greatest threat to Western society outside of
| Russia_
|
| I can't help but roll my eyes whenever I come across such
| statements. Which one is it now guys? Russia or China or Iran
| or Muslims or Liberals or etc.?
|
| The single greatest threat to Western society is itself.
| user3939382 wrote:
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| >I'd say the single greatest threat at the moment is hyper-
| aggressive, unnecessary NATO expansion at the behest of the
| "defense" industry provoking other nuclear powers into armed
| conflicts.
|
| Nobody was proposing to expand NATO until Russia invaded a
| country that had no other defense umbrella.
| user3939382 wrote:
| > Nobody was proposing to expand NATO
|
| "We reiterate the decision made at the 2008 Bucharest
| Summit that Ukraine will become a member of the Alliance"
| June 2021
|
| https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_185000.htm
|
| Also for those "flagging" my verifiable facts: https://en.m
| .wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in...
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/04/politics/igor-danchenko-
| arres...
| eunos wrote:
| Trump (and Pompeo) destroys the liberal oriented ideology in
| China much more effectively than whatever Xi did.
| vixen99 wrote:
| Please explain?
| Jackpillar wrote:
| steve76 wrote:
| throwaway4good wrote:
| For many Chinese, the US has showed its true face in the past
| couple of years. Unfortunately this digs a lot deeper than
| Facebook.
|
| Facebook is guilty of poor management; involving themselves in
| partisan politics in order to get a competitor banned is an
| incredible stupid risk to take.
| boc wrote:
| The US hasn't changed - it's always been a country of crazy
| people and smart people and zealots and honest, hard working
| folks. There's no such thing as our "true face" - American
| was populated by the radicals and risk-takers from other,
| older societies. We've always been a nation of slightly
| insane people.
| bllguo wrote:
| Absurd, of course there is a "true face." Whether the
| country has stayed the same or not has nothing to do with
| it, this is a discussion about how the US is perceived
| internationally. We have been flooding the rest of the
| world with its messaging and cultural exports for decades.
| In many places, China included, people genuinely looked up
| to the US. That has changed meaningfully across the globe.
| hardware2win wrote:
| They cannot compete with the product so here we go
|
| Facebooks main site is less responsive than visual studio on my
| school lap and i cannot use messenger on my phone from web
| browser cuz they want me to install spyware
|
| Once i graduate i dont think ill use this mess more than once a
| month for 5mins
| h2odragon wrote:
| I would still like to see someone brag about the "Facebook
| whistle blower" campaign. That was the most remarkable media
| ballet in years, someone paid a _lot_ for that.
|
| I can't help but wonder if it was FB behind it, "all publicity is
| good publicity." And despite the amazing success of the campaign
| at raising "awareness" of the campaign, it didn't have any
| apparent aim or effect beyond that. We've seen that before from
| FB, vast resource deployed with intricate execution towards
| trivial goals.
| klabb3 wrote:
| Iirc the govt instituted bounties on corporate malfeasance
| fines to whistleblowers (in % - so can be huge), so there are
| lawfirms that target and finance whistleblowers. There are even
| spooks-for-hire who work the targets. It's fascinating.
|
| So no, doesn't seem like a hit job at all, just a good mix of
| first-order incentives. The media balleting is part of the
| defense, but also it was really informative for many.
|
| EDIT: forgot the media _reaction_ that indeed seemed
| coordinated and bold. Part of that is just media hating
| Facebook. They take any chance they get.
| specialist wrote:
| Kara Swisher, for one, has stated the character assassination
| of whistleblowers is just part of Facebook's playbook. Make
| of that what you will. She's far too cozy to tech founders
| and leaders for my tastes, with no apparent axe to grind, so
| I lean towards she's just relating an open secret.
|
| For reference, Ronan Farrow names names and relates his own
| lived experience. Among a zillion other similar accounts.
| (Sibel Edwards, Snowden, the TV journalist couple that tried
| to report on illegal doping of dairy cows, ad nauseum.) So I
| assume paid harrassment is standard practice.
|
| Could be worse. At least killing whistleblowers is rare in
| the USA.
| wanda wrote:
| Isn't this what all firms do to each other, all the time?
|
| Like, isn't this just normal business these days? Isn't this sort
| of thing a natural eventuality in a capitalist world?
|
| Capitalism crowns the person who wins, regardless of how they
| won.
|
| And besides, all press is good press because it's all exposure.
| Why wouldn't you do this sort of thing?
|
| It's only wrong to get caught.
|
| And even then, you can pay for a lawyer to prove that you were
| either:
|
| - not doing anything wrong,
|
| - not legitimately caught,
|
| - or simply giving your opinion.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| _Positive_ PR, where you pay someone to go around convincing
| reporters how great you are, is normal business and I 'm not
| sure it could ever be otherwise. Negative campaigns that
| function solely to tear down your opponents, as the article
| says (and my experience matches), are relatively uncommon
| outside of politics.
| Jcowell wrote:
| I disagree, the PC vs Mac is arguably not positive PR towards
| the PC industry but was very popular back when it aired. Even
| now Samsung sometimes poke fun at Apple mistakes. I would
| argue micro aggressive advertising is negative PR just with
| lipstick on it.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I mean, to some extent, those ads were popular/notorious
| precisely _because_ they were such an unusual tactic.
|
| Also, that was open advertising, not a covert
| disinformation campaign; it's a bit different.
| afavour wrote:
| There's a pretty large difference though. PC vs Mac were
| explicitly adverts, you knew Apple made them. This article
| describes the firm placing op-eds from "concerned parents"
| that they drafted themselves with no indication of their or
| Meta's involvement. Whole different level.
| Loughla wrote:
| There's a pretty big difference between comparing the cool
| Justin Long and nerdy John Hodgman (I would argue those
| character roles are backwards from what they should be) and
| a massively cynical scare theater campaign about how a
| Chinese company is stealing your children's data,
| negatively impacting their mental health, and causing
| destruction of property from a company that makes money
| using your children's data and negatively impacting
| everyone's mental health.
| _jal wrote:
| Tell me you've never run a business without telling me you've
| never run a business.
|
| > Negative campaigns that function solely to tear down your
| opponents, as the article says (and my experience matches),
| are relatively uncommon outside of politics.
|
| If you have competitors, they will try to trash your name, I
| promise you. It doesn't matter what scale you're operating
| at.
|
| Trash talk is universal.
| ok123456 wrote:
| The 'yellow peril' aspect of it was certainly disgusting.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| All of Chinese economic activity is subservient to the state,
| including companies like ByteDance. The information they
| gather goes back to the state. This is not "yellow peril",
| this is "Sino peril" if you must call it something scary
| sounding. It has nothing to do with race, and everything to
| do with national security and ideology.
| ok123456 wrote:
| If we can put aside our own ideology and national bias, the
| business model and tactics of ByteDance, Facebook or any
| other company in the ad-tech supported social media realm
| operates more-or-less with the same objectives and does the
| same things.
|
| Ideology is just the trash can we are all eating from.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| It's not necessarily wise to put aside national bias.
| There are well informed, intelligent, honorable people
| who believe that Chinese hegemony would be a bad thing.
| In that lens, it would be perfectly consistent to want to
| prevent Western citizens from being influenced by the
| Chinese company/govt, while being OK with the same power
| in the hands of Western governments.
|
| IE, you would need to also assert that Western companies
| having these data is no better than Chinese companies, an
| opinion which is hotly debated and not at all settled.
| ok123456 wrote:
| There are well informed, intelligent, honorable people
| who believe that American hegemony has been bad thing.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Yep, totally agree! They usually aren't the ones making
| the case that for Us citizens, it's better to have data
| in the Us companies hands rather than Chinese.
|
| I may have missed your overall point though - would you
| mind being explicit about it?
| ciupicri wrote:
| What "yellow peril"?
| JadeNB wrote:
| The focus on Asia, specifically China, as a uniquely
| threatening force:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Peril .
| Stupulous wrote:
| Is China not a uniquely threatening force? They have the
| second largest GDP, the second-most expensive military
| with the most personnel, considerable influence over
| other important Asian countries, and a major role in
| manufacturing the world's products, and they continue to
| rapidly expand across all of those facets. They are very
| much in opposition to Liberal values (free speech,
| democracy, privacy), and they are somewhat aligned with
| other US adversaries (Russia, North Korea).
|
| In 1910, I'd absolutely attribute focus on China to
| racism. Today, if I were to rank the biggest threats to
| US for the coming decades, I would put China in distant
| first place. But I'm no geopolitics expert, am I missing
| something?
| Loughla wrote:
| Sure, but what are the repercussions?
|
| If you know how to ride a media wave, you literally can't
| lose in today's media landscape (mixed metaphor, I know).
| boredumb wrote:
| Capitalism has nothing to do with power disseminating
| information in an attempt to retain power. You are actually
| lucky for capitalism as it's two companies offering social
| media services playing PR games and not a totalitarian
| government operating under the guise of
| fascism/socialism/marxism pushing domestic propaganda
| demonizing people who think like you.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Dont' all massive corps do this against their competition?
| datalopers wrote:
| Facebook is using the same firm to malign Roblox with the same
| strategy.
| farco12 wrote:
| Would you mind speaking more to this or providing a link?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Like most adults, most of what I know about Roblox comes
| secondhand from the media. Recently I saw[1] a pretty damning
| video about Roblox's lack of moderation and exploitation of its
| users.
|
| My basic perception at this point is that TikTok, Facebook, and
| Roblox all deserve each other. Hopefully they waste their money
| attacking each other until they mutually self-destruct.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTMF6xEiAaY
| pessimizer wrote:
| That damning video could have been indirectly paid for by
| Facebook. I'm a fan of the Shut Up Sit Down guys, but they
| are pros.
| rvz wrote:
| Digital pharmaceutical drugs company spreading conspiracies and
| tales about another addictive digital pharmaceutical drugs
| company.
|
| News at 10.
| HNresetPass wrote:
| That's not true, Facebook did not spread misinformation because
| Facebook decides what misinformation is
| api wrote:
| I agree with both sides. Facebook is right that TikTok is Chinese
| government spyware. TikTok is right that Facebook is human-
| farming advertising spyware.
| rayiner wrote:
| My 9 year old watches TikTok, and I've got mixed feelings. My kid
| is really into videos of other kids telling jokes, making slime,
| doing puzzles, etc. Frankly I think that's better than the vapid
| dreck on Disney--and infinitely better than social media, which
| would just stoke the tweener social drama. (We allow TikTok but
| not any form of social media.) Obviously there is less age-
| appropriate content on there too. But the algorithm is pretty
| good about not surfacing that material unless you're looking for
| it.
| [deleted]
| advisedwang wrote:
| I'm interested to see that you don't count TikTok as social
| media.
|
| Does your 9yo have friends on TikTok? I sometimes see the
| younger crowd often follow each other on TikTok and make posts
| primarily intended for their friends. This seems a very
| different usage pattern from mostly watching strangers on the
| for you page. Maybe 9 is too young for that mode though.
| rayiner wrote:
| She uses it more like YouTube. The algorithm does a good job
| of feeding her videos related to her interests: puzzles,
| slime, Pyramids, etc.
| rchaud wrote:
| Kids seem to be far more vulnerable to become addicted to
| video-based social media than text-based. I say this as a
| mid-30s person who saw how obssessed teens and 20-somethings
| were with Youtubers. For them, all they knew about video was
| from Youtube, so they accepted the lack of polish that an older
| person like could not.
|
| I have distraction issues with doomscrolling text feeds, but
| none whatsoever w/ TT because I dont' find super short videos
| entertaining. But it's probably very different for those who're
| exposed to it from a young age.
| kevwil wrote:
| LOL - WaPo and Facebook slinging political mud, what a surprise!
| The real surprise is that anyone still trusts what social media
| and ancient media oligarchs say.
| greenyoda wrote:
| While this story of Facebook smearing TikTok is getting all of
| HN's attention today, a perhaps more important story about
| Facebook is being ignored:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30855113
|
| Summary: "A lawsuit accusing Meta Platforms Inc.'s Facebook of
| overstating its advertising audience got a lot bigger Tuesday
| when a court expanded the pool of plaintiffs to include more than
| 2 million small ad buyers.
|
| Dismissing what he called a "blunderbuss of objections" by the
| company, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that the case can
| proceed as a class action on behalf of small business owners and
| individuals who bought ads on Facebook or Instagram since Aug.
| 15, 2014.
|
| The decision is another setback for the social networking giant
| after court filings in 2021 revealed that its audience-measuring
| tool was known by high-ranking Facebook executives to be
| unreliable because it was skewed by fake and duplicate accounts."
| elsewhen wrote:
| https://archive.ph/qcoo9
| btbuildem wrote:
| Thank you
| naoqj wrote:
| >The White House is briefing TikTok stars about the war in
| Ukraine
|
| >"We recognize this is a critically important avenue in the way
| the American public is finding out about the latest," said the
| White House director of digital strategy, Rob Flaherty, "so we
| wanted to make sure you had the latest information from an
| authoritative source."
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/11/tik-tok...
| throwaway2474 wrote:
| Serious question, for those with more experience than me "in the
| game" running big successful companies: are dirty tactics like
| this (and worse) par for the course and generally expected, and
| it's sort of understood that the outsiders/general public are
| shielded from it? Or is it actually shocking?
|
| It often seems like there's two "worlds" operating at the same
| time. In one, there's outrage and indignation at this sort of
| thing. In the other, that public outrage is just another item in
| the chess game, to be weaponised against your competitors as
| appropriate. But maybe that's too pessimistic of a view, and not
| all industries are like this? I'm genuinely curious.
| fairity wrote:
| On average, these sorts of undermining tactics are uncommon
| because most companies have limited resources that are better
| spent on improving their own product or service.
|
| That said, for the subset of companies that operate in fiercely
| competitive markets with well-funded players, this sort of
| activity is common.
|
| In my prior company, where 2 competitors & us had raised 9
| figures in venture capital, we found multiple instances of such
| undermining attacks going on from 1 of the competitors.
| Although we never engaged in such activities, it was clear to
| me that we were at a slight disadvantage due to our lack of
| willingness. Imo, such activities require sociopathic
| leadership, and unfortunately, that sort of personality is
| overrepresented in the c-suite.
| akyu wrote:
| This kind of thing is entirely normal.
| kache_ wrote:
| I prefer the moral clarity of playing "dirty" (but legally)
| compared to pretending to be nice but doing shady shit like
| conspiring to depress SWE salaries in emails with strict
| retention policies
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| Ya the startup I work at did some crazy shit in the founder
| days or so I've heard from the seniors. Competitive
| intelligence they called it.
|
| We have had malicious litigation too and now I'm ramping up on
| security (cybersecurity or corposec as I call it, not network)
| because knowing our competitors I think it's not a case of if
| there is a hostile op against us, but when.
| _3u10 wrote:
| Given that the paper in question is owned by Bezos...
| lupire wrote:
| Yes. In a competitive environment with no law/enforcement,
| anyone who doesn't cheat loses to someone who does. This is the
| state of nature, law of the jungle.
| specialist wrote:
| The game is broken when honest players have to cheat to be
| competitive.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > are dirty tactics like this (and worse) par for the course
|
| The details make all the difference.
|
| Apple goes on stage and posts misleading graphs about their
| competition multiple times per year. The latest event showed
| the M1 Ultra matching an RTX 3090 in performance, yet that's
| nowhere close to true in anyone's testing and the graph was
| deliberately misleading in dishonest ways (3090 curve was
| truncated before it reached peak performance).
|
| The difference is that most people here really like Apple
| hardware, so they get a free pass. Most people here really
| dislike Facebook, so this seems like a mortal sin for a company
| to promote negative misleading ideas about their competitor.
|
| Everyone markets against their competitors to some degree, even
| if it's just a comparison chart on a marketing page somewhere.
| I'd need to see more evidence that Facebook was deliberately
| lying to really be concerned about this. It seems the authors
| are relying heavily on anti-Facebook anger to fuel this story.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Apple lies themselves. They don't pay the news to lie for
| them, though they do sanction reporters who report
| inconvenient truths. Facebook has a history of paying for
| smear campaigns.
|
| https://www.business-
| standard.com/article/companies/facebook...
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-13374048
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/update-facebooks-
| smear...
| uncomputation wrote:
| > The difference is that most people here really like Apple
| hardware, so they get a free pass
|
| I think it's pretty clear the difference isn't Apple vs
| Facebook (e.g. CSAM blowback) but boasting about yourself
| versus hiring someone to attack a competitor.
|
| An analogous comparison would be if Facebook said their
| algorithms benefited mental health more than competitors, or
| if Apple paid to have an op-ed in a newspaper talking about
| how Intel's GPU's might explode or something. The difference
| is that Apple's slide was _Apple's_ slide and any bias was
| clear. Facebook went through backdoors and PR firms to sway
| local journalists and congressmen in an actually dark game of
| chess.
|
| > I'd need to see more evidence that Facebook was
| deliberately lying to really be concerned about this
|
| That's the whole point. _Facebook_ wasn't lying, Targeted
| Victory was. Take your pick of the evidence:
|
| Firm director's email:
|
| > get the message out that while Meta is the current punching
| bag, TikTok is the real threat especially as a foreign owned
| app
|
| > Campaign operatives were also encouraged to use TikTok's
| prominence as a way to deflect from Meta's own privacy and
| antitrust concerns.
|
| > rumors of the "devious licks" challenge initially spread on
| Facebook, not TikTok.
|
| > Targeted Victory worked to spread rumors of the "Slap a
| Teacher TikTok challenge" in local news... In reality, no
| such challenge existed on TikTok. Again, the rumor started on
| Facebook
|
| > In addition to planting local news stories, the firm has
| helped place op-eds targeting TikTok around the country,
| especially in key congressional districts.
|
| If that feels like a wall of text, it's because it is, chock
| full of specific evidence Targeted Victory was manipulating
| congressmen and newspapers to report in a way benefitting
| them, all because they know that the TikTok algorithm is
| leagues superior and more user curated than their own
| outrage-bate dumpster fire.
|
| The authors aren't relying on "anti-Facebook anger" anymore
| than it's Facebook's bed and now they need to lie in it after
| years of turning the web into a partisan surveillance state.
| This was a targeted campaign of disinformation ranging far
| further than one slide on a keynote.
| tyrfing wrote:
| The one difference is that most of big tech these days
| doesn't actually have any competition, and will collude in
| ways like wage fixing in any areas they do. As such, it's not
| too surprising to see they don't care about competitors -
| they don't have any.
| lozenge wrote:
| When Apple lies about performance on a stage... It's clearly
| from Apple and people treat it accordingly. Nobody relied on
| that information or even believed it.
|
| When Facebook pays a marketing agency to get anti tiktok
| headlines into local news, the reader has no idea who was
| involved and is left with negative impressions of tiktok that
| stay with them long after they forgot the details of the
| story (if they even read that far).
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Does this make Putin an ideal politician, since we know
| that anything that comes out of his mouth is likely a
| falsehood? That someone or something compulsively lies
| doesn't feel like a redeeming value.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| Putin doesn't care what the foreign audience thinks,
| whatever he says is almost certainly intended for his
| domestic audience.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| There are some optimists here.
|
| - Pharmaceutical companies trash generics and lobby both
| directly to doctors and governments
|
| - The sugar and food industry has had a significant role in
| informing consumers that their obesity was their fault and not
| the fault of their products
|
| - The oil industry has had a significant role in informing
| consumers that climate change was their fault and not the fault
| of their products
|
| - Fruit/vegetable companies I don't even want to get into (look
| up Chiquita/United Fruit Company)
|
| - Anything to do with any major retailer/distributor and unions
|
| They aren't "dirty" tactics so much as "profit maximizing
| tactics" and they are inherent to capitalist mega-corps.
| taylodl wrote:
| Many commenters here have pointed out this is the norm. I'll
| also point out that most companies fail, and many of the ones
| that don't fail are despised by their customers/users. What can
| we say of the companies that succeed and aren't despised? They
| typically don't do shit like this.
|
| The other problem with thinking "this is what everybody does"
| is there's the unstated "so keep your mouth shut and just go
| along with it" that's really unhealthy for us all. If you work
| for Facebook and you think this is the norm then you're not
| going to be inclined to question this behavior and if you
| really think it's universal then you may not even be inclined
| to leave. Thus the problem perpetuates itself.
|
| If you ever find yourself working for one of this hell hole
| companies then leave. Don't buy into the false narrative that
| this is normal, it's the same everywhere, keep your mouth shut
| and don't rock the boat. You'll come to realize the money
| doesn't make up for what's been done to your mental health and
| the quality of your life.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > The other problem with thinking "this is what everybody
| does" is there's the unstated "so keep your mouth shut and
| just go along with it" that's really unhealthy for us all.
|
| I agree with you that most people have status quo bias making
| up the majority of their moral compass. But I disagree with
| your defense of isolated demands for ethical behavior, which
| are dangerous and counterproductive.
|
| First off, they cheapen principle by making it a conditional
| bludgeon, used to attack only unpopular entities.
| Participating in the lie that FB is doing something
| uncommonly nefarious implicitly shields every other actor
| that (eg) HN doesn't feel such obsessive hate for.
|
| Secondly, it provides a scapegoat so people can ignore the
| difficult work of actually addressing systemic rot. If this
| is a widely-used tactic, and we agree that it's harmful, then
| perhaps there's a structural issue to be addressed. You can't
| even have this conversation if everyone thinks it's just
| something uniquely evil that FB did.
|
| This was my problem with the way my social milieu handled
| Trump. I think the guy was a dangerous lunatic, but my
| friends/family's tendency to immediately assign all of the
| world's ills solely to him (kids in cages! 100s of ks of
| covid deaths!) gave them an excuse to ignore the systemic rot
| underlying society's actual problems (borders inherently rob
| people of their humanity, and our public health agencies have
| severe cultural issues).
|
| It's not "defending the bad guy" to say that turning them
| into the literal Devil, solely responsible for all evil, is
| harmfully letting others off the hook.
| alphabetting wrote:
| What is "unhealthy" about telling public TikTok is a danger?
| thinkyfish wrote:
| Facebook has no motivation to make true accusations against
| TikTok. There may be legitimate criticisms that can be
| made, but facebook doesn't have a reason to care, and being
| tasked with making those criticisms in an environment where
| anything that sticks is rewarded, regardless of the truth,
| will have their honesty and truthfulness compromised, and
| will be encouraged to view that as normal, compromising
| their wisdom.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| If Facebook wants to say that, they should say it
| themselves, not hide behind a fake grassroots campaign.
| That is "unhealthy."
| prewett wrote:
| "Inauthentic", even
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| I spent five years at Facebook, and it was probably the best
| place I've ever worked.
|
| The people were fantastic (except a the ex G and Amazon folks
| who were a lot less fun to work with), the problems were fun
| and the culture and tools were phenomenal.
|
| Granted, I don't agree with what they're doing in this
| article, but if you think they're the only big tech company
| that does this, I have a bunch of bridges to sell you ;)
|
| Generally, large, publicly traded companies tend to behave
| like psychopaths, but personally I think FB held out a lot
| longer than most.
| Woberto wrote:
| Can I ask what kind of problems you enjoyed working on
| there?
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Honestly, fixing ads related data science problems gave
| me a lot of satisfaction. I fully admit to being a
| weirdo, though.
| vkou wrote:
| > If you work for Facebook and you think this is the norm
| then you're not going to be inclined to question this
| behavior
|
| If Facebook is anything like the typical SV mega-corp, the
| rank and file questions this kind of behaviour. A lot.
|
| But as the saying goes, a dog barks, the wind carries it
| away.
|
| The politicians at the head of the firm don't care about what
| their workers think about political matters. [1]
|
| [1] And would like everyone who isn't them to stop being
| political. #nopolitics, and all that jazz. We're just trying
| to do work here, not get involved in an unsanctioned-from-
| corporate culture war...
| tyleo wrote:
| Wholeheartedly agree. This is not the norm at a couple multi-
| billion dollar companies where I've worked and I would leave
| if it were. If you are doing this you are making the world a
| worse place. Do not do this. Do not accept this. Find purpose
| in the world and strive to add to it rather than take away.
| relaxing wrote:
| How do you know?
| raiyu wrote:
| This is definitely not the norm for many large companies and
| really shows the emotional context of the leadership. If they
| feel attacked, or threatened, often they will resort to the
| same behavior in reverse.
|
| Similarly, this seems to affect consumer companies a bit more
| often than B2B companies, but that isn't to say that they are
| immune.
|
| Certainly not surprising to hear this about Facebook given it's
| history.
| alphabetting wrote:
| This is par for the course. Done by majority of big corps and
| nothing wrong with it imo. Stating TikTok is a danger isn't a
| stretch. The hyperventilating in this piece is hyped up by
| republican and FB angles but almost every big company is doing
| comms like this.
| _3u10 wrote:
| Some have even bought the entire newspaper to make sure it
| stays on message.
| tomatowurst wrote:
| At what point does:
|
| - having Facebook/Meta experience on your resume starts hurting
| you against others who don't
|
| - selling your company to Facebook/Meta or product on it hurts
| your brand and perceived to be immoral
|
| Is Facebook/Meta the Tobacco company of our generation? The
| harmful effects of smoking were covered up for almost a century,
| much as the impact of mass remote dopamine manipulation is not as
| prolific.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > - having Facebook/Meta experience on your resume starts
| hurting you against others who don't
|
| Would you penalize a mechanical engineer for having Volkswagen
| on their resume because you read about the VW emissions
| scandal? Should we refuse to hire anyone who interned for
| politicians who were later involved in scandals?
|
| Of course not, because it's dumb to punish former engineers for
| something a previous employer did over which they had no
| control.
|
| Good engineers are good engineers. Period. Trying to get
| revenge on a company you don't like by forcing former employees
| in unrelated departments to suffer the consequences of your
| anger is ridiculous.
| moritonal wrote:
| I think if a candidate said they worked at Volkswagen between
| 2009 to 2015, followed by a 3-year gap in their resume I'd
| likely not hire them. Regardless of your position in a
| company, your existence there does endorse it, and some
| responsibility (to varying extents obviously) must be
| acknowledged.
|
| 1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41053740
| coldpie wrote:
| VW emissions scandal is small potatoes compared to what
| Facebook is doing to the world. Working for a war machine
| company (Lockheed, GD, etc) would be a much better analogy,
| and I think the question is a valid one for employees of
| those companies, too.
| zajio1am wrote:
| Today, people from Ukraine are glad of products of such war
| machine companies.
| kmlx wrote:
| > what Facebook is doing to the world.
|
| connecting people?
| pwython wrote:
| The VW emissions violations are 100% proven deceit among
| customers and governments, as nefarious programming in
| their vehicles is much harder to detect than say, an
| editorial funded by FB spreading rumors about a competitor
| where the reader can form their own opinion. Unethical,
| yea, but 'small potatoes' compared to VW.
| coldpie wrote:
| Facebook is party to genocide and is actively working to
| end democracy. Lying on emissions reports is small
| potatoes compared to that, yes.
| pwython wrote:
| While the VW scandal is based on facts with hard evidence
| [1], your other theory is currently conjecture.
|
| [1]
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22830414-800-how-
| did-...
|
| "Volkswagen programmed its on-board software to detect
| when cars with its TDI diesel engine were undergoing an
| emissions test, using information from the steering,
| brakes and accelerator. It then tweaked the engine
| settings to minimise levels of nitrogen oxides (NOx)."
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Are we writing off most of FAANG then? Maybe just reduce it
| down to "AN", assuming we aren't yet too annoyed with Apple and
| Netflix? Amazon and Google as well are both certainly full of
| dark patterns and badness. I'm certain that they have both
| tried to crush their competition as well. Can we assume that
| anyone who has worked at any of those companies has at best
| dubious morals, or are they instead small players in a big
| machine?
| notreallyserio wrote:
| I would be very hesitant to hire anyone with Google on their
| resume for the same reason. Maybe they're good, but maybe
| they're one of those engineers willing to trade in ethics for
| bucks. (I'm thinking specifically of those engineers that
| write the code used to terminate accounts without sufficient
| recourse).
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| > I'm thinking specifically of those engineers that write
| the code used to terminate accounts without sufficient
| recourse
|
| Do people typically put that specific information on their
| resume? Alphabet employs over a hundred thousand people,
| 99% of them won't have looked at that at all. I personally
| don't work at a FAANG but I'd take the chance if I got it -
| the bucks are so monstrous compared to my current
| compensation it would be borderline unethical to not accept
| a position when I know how much it could help my family.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| They might put that they worked on, say, Google Play,
| which would certainly raise concerns. I'd need to figure
| out what they worked on before making any sort of offer.
| If they didn't say what products they worked on, the
| resume would go right in the bin (of course).
| hnaccount141 wrote:
| > Can we assume that anyone who has worked at any of those
| companies has at best dubious morals, or are they instead
| small players in a big machine?
|
| Why not both? They certainly are small players in a big
| machine, but the reality is that any engineer capable of
| getting a job in FAANG has plenty of other options that are
| less morally dubious. If they chose FAANG in spite of this
| they either don't believe it's immoral or are willing to look
| the other way for money/prestige.
|
| I certainly wouldn't advocate for writing people off entirely
| based on their work history (after all, it could be that they
| went in not realizing the extent of the harm and that's why
| they're leaving), but I do think it's a factor worth
| considering.
| pjmlp wrote:
| > having Facebook/Meta experience on your resume starts hurting
| you against others who don't
|
| Depends if one is a React, Folly, BOLT, OCaml, GHC, clang
| contributor or not.
| 0des wrote:
| I look at it less like smoking and more like obesity because
| people know its bad, but will foam at the mouth if someone
| dares address it.
| jka wrote:
| There were vocal complaints about the introduction of indoor
| smoking bans in the UK and Ireland before they were enacted;
| in practice the vast majority of people seemed happier
| afterwards.
|
| Part of the playbook of any addiction-based industry is to
| encourage outrage at the prospect of the product being
| restricted; it builds their moat and delays the resolution of
| the problem (allowing their revenue streams to continue for
| longer).
| dvtrn wrote:
| We're here I think. I've seen a few hiring threads on other
| communities where the topic came up and there was a healthy
| sample of "will never a former Fbook/Meta" prognosticators in
| the room
| [deleted]
| bko wrote:
| > - having Facebook/Meta experience on your resume starts
| hurting you against others who don't
|
| Why would it hurt you? They're at the forefront of technical
| challenges of scaling an immensely popular product and
| developing internal tooling. These aren't necessarily
| applicable everywhere, but they're incredibly valuable. If
| anything, I think the fact that they're working at a place
| where a very vocal minority of their peers jeers at is a
| positive signal. They can withstand a snarky comment from some
| hipster at a party to potentially work on interesting technical
| challenges (money is good too).
|
| > - selling your company to Facebook/Meta or product on it
| hurts your brand and perceived to be immoral
|
| I think you're in a bubble. Facebook is a very popular brand
| name outside of a very vocal minority of internet commenters
| and tech journalists. They have a few of the most popular
| consumer apps in the world with 3 billion total users across
| the products. When you consider their products in open source
| like GraphQL and React, it's even more.
|
| I get it, you don't like Facebook. But don't gaslight yourself
| into thinking they're some toxic entity that everyone hates and
| is on the verge of irrelevance
| fartcannon wrote:
| I sure would think twice about hiring from Facebook. It's
| like hiring someone from a weapons company that targets
| teenagers.
|
| Edit: I've had a chance to think about it after a cup of
| coffee and I take back my comment. Everyone deserves a second
| chance. Everyone gets the same ethical review.
| krageon wrote:
| If you were a weapons company (and really, most successful
| big IT corps are in this metaphor) and you need specific
| targeting (you do) then you absolutely would. Perhaps you
| have trouble with their moral fiber, but you would then
| basically be alone in the business world. Corporations hate
| integrity in their workers (except when it comes to keeping
| corporate secrets).
| fartcannon wrote:
| They're making new talent every day. No need to hire the
| tainted.
| kylevedder wrote:
| Good luck explaining to your boss that you can't fill the
| hiring rec because, even though you found qualified
| candidates, you disliked the fact that they had the
| audacity to be employed by a tech company you don't like
| and so they're "tainted". In expectation it's better for
| the business to lay you off and get someone not
| ideologically possessed to do hiring, in the same way
| it's better for the business to not have racist hiring
| managers.
| krageon wrote:
| It is not at all similar to racism, and you should not
| pretend corporate dehumanising is something to be
| expected or even logical. These demands are wrong and we
| are correct to talk about them as such.
| kylevedder wrote:
| Being unable to find the best candidates because you have
| racial prejudices or prejudices towards anyone with prior
| employment at the F in FAANG are both bad for business.
| You have a massive systematic blind spot that will make
| your company less competitive relative to peers because
| you have a personal ax to grind.
|
| I might add that prior employment at Facebook is very
| positively correlated with engineering talent -- you are
| not just selecting against something orthogonal to
| engineering talent, you are actually selecting against
| something that indicates they are a good engineer,
| meaning you have a smaller labor force you are willing to
| hire _and a lower quality one_. Go tell HR and your boss
| that you have prejudices against people from Facebook and
| you are going to discriminate against them in hiring as a
| consequence, see how well that goes for you.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| > smaller labor force you are willing to hire and a lower
| quality one.
|
| The first part is true. The second is a leap, plenty of
| high quality talent actively chooses to not work at FB,
| or happens to not work there. By not selecting from the
| former FB pool I have not lowered the overall quality of
| my labor pool. I have increased the integrity standards
| though.
| kylevedder wrote:
| Given the nebulous notion of a set of high quality talent
| (assume quality is a scalar and they're the people above
| a given threshold), it's pretty clear that:
|
| len(set(high quality talent) - set(ever employed at
| facebook)) < len(set(high quality talent) - set(refuses
| to work at facebook))
|
| Note that "refuses to work at facebook" doesn't select
| for engineering talent, while "ever employed at facebook"
| explicitly does, meaning the average talent in the set
| containing facebook employees is higher.
|
| Given all this, you have to fill the roll (or why hire?)
| and you don't have infinite time (there is a cost
| associated with every day you've not filled the role
| relative to it being filled). Given those constraints, if
| you limit your pool due to prejudice the optimal outcome
| is for you to hire a lower quality person versus the
| situation if you were not prejudiced; if you hire the
| same quality person, it means you likely paid for it in
| another form, namely the cost associated with the role
| being unfilled longer.
| krageon wrote:
| You are again enshrining (purely) fiscal motivation as
| expected and logical. I'm sorry, I just don't agree. I
| doubt you will start seeing it my way. Let's just leave
| it at that.
| kylevedder wrote:
| All I've said is that your ideological prejudices will
| cause you to have more difficulty finding good quality
| candidates (you are selecting against things correlated
| with quality) and you'll be paying more for equal quality
| candidates as a result.
| krageon wrote:
| If you work in this field (and if you're looking at these
| candidates, you are at least adjacent to it) then you
| _are_ the tainted. Not hiring someone else because they
| had the audacity to also work in that sector is
| hypocritical.
| fartcannon wrote:
| You're right, I was too harsh. Everyone gets the same
| ethical review.
| dominotw wrote:
| curious where do you work?
| anon23anon wrote:
| bko wrote:
| I wouldn't work at a place that doctrineer. Seems like a
| red flag to me that the company is overly consumed with
| politics.
| long_time_gone wrote:
| Maybe they are consumed with ethics, rather than
| politics. As this article (and many others) explains,
| Meta does not act in an ethical manner with their actions
| towards users, the government, competitors, etc.
|
| Why wouldn't a future employer take that into account?
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I don't think it hurts from a technical perspective but from
| an ethical and moral perspective facebook is harmful to
| society. The good news is someone in a job interview is
| looking to get away from facebook and that should carry some
| weight.
| [deleted]
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| You conflate toxicity, popularity and commercial success.
| Someone in tech might have a skewed view of the latter two
| given their environment but they're well capable of
| evaluating the potential danger of the tools being built
| there. They're also the ones doing the recruiting.
|
| Anecdotally, I had a friend who used to work at Monsanto and
| he told me of a few very uncomfortable social encounters when
| people learned where he worked. It made him question whether
| he should find a job somewhere else. I don't think we're
| there with Facebook, the general public mostly seems focused
| on misinformation rather than privacy but who knows what the
| future holds.
| tomatowurst wrote:
| I didn't really present any strong opinions just raising
| questions off what I am reading and seeing based on trends.
|
| It's quite bizarre that you would go out of your way to try
| and gaslight me that Facebook's toxicity is my own
| imagination.
|
| Do you work for facebook in some way, sold a company to them
| or own their stocks?
| [deleted]
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Forefront of technical challenges? Are you effin' kidding me?
| That website that can't get its shit together for 15+ years I
| use it. Constantly and consistently there are tons of bugs in
| its behavior. Doubling comments, missing pictures, can't
| create photo albums, then they are created twice, site
| unavailable, some parts of site not working, feed not
| loading, videos not playing, back button almost completely
| broken. I could go on and on and on. Any browser, anytime.
|
| I've never ever experienced any other popular system/service
| so broken.
|
| I am sure behind it all is complex overengineered cathedral
| of frameworks, systems and libraries. Some of it may be even
| cool. But the final result is piece of shit, no matter how I
| look on it, no matter how many chances I give it.
|
| Compared to quality of say various google apps is... well
| incomparable. So yeah, having this on resume is
| underwhelming, even without looking at moral topics.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| I really dislike FB, but I can't say I have your
| experience. Both mobile and desktop versions of FB worked
| flawlessly for me for the time that I used it, starting
| back in 2005 when our University was granted access.
| mkdirp wrote:
| > having Facebook/Meta experience on your resume starts hurting
| you against others who don't
|
| It already does. Meta is reportedly paying more to hire talent
| because of their reputation.[0]
|
| [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-pays-brand-tax-
| hire...
| shmatt wrote:
| When you see a Meta candidate you know
|
| * They went through one of the hardest interview loops in the
| industry
|
| * They went through one of the hardest promotion ladders in the
| industry
|
| * They solve all problems at huge scale out of the box
|
| * If you aren't paying top of market and they're still
| interested, they're most likely financially comfortable from
| their years at Meta and won't be jumping ship every 18 months
| for a 20% raise
|
| I'd say that's pretty attractive as a hiring manager
| long_time_gone wrote:
| I think all of this assumes the candidate is for a highly
| technical position, which is not all Meta jobs.
|
| Even then, why do we assume they were promoted, or solved
| "all problems", or have some altruistic reason to make less?
|
| The only thing we know is that they were hired by Meta
| sometime in the past.
| rvz wrote:
| > Is Facebook/Meta the Tobacco company of our generation?
|
| Yes. It is a digital pharmaceuticals drugs company and it was
| 'addictive' for the previous generation back then. Not so for
| this generation as it has no effect on them. Facebook(tm) and
| Instagram(tm) do not work on them anymore.
|
| The new digital crack / cocaine is TikTok(tm), manufactured by
| ByteDance. Another generation will find another _' hit'_ to be
| addicted to once they get bored off on this one.
|
| Rinse and repeat.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| It already does. I spoke to several trainees that don't want
| companies like Facebook or Shell on their resume.
|
| Problem is those companies start to attract people that thrive
| in toxic cultures, worsening the problem.
| sgt wrote:
| Why is Shell so bad? I spoke to a Shell employee the other
| day and the guy couldn't stop talking about all the great
| things they are doing for the environment and with new green
| technologies. /s
| woliveirajr wrote:
| There's a good book about it: https://www.goodreads.com/book/
| show/1476637.Political_Ponero...
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| I, for one, won't touch anything with Zuck's fingerprints on
| it. Oculus is dead to me and many other game developers.
| sgt wrote:
| But that is balanced out by having Carmack's prints on it. He
| has status as a God on HN.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Carmack lost a lot of his shine working at Facebook. He was
| a champion of an industry when he was young, but now he's
| just some guy helping further entrench Facebook.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Didn't he leave Facebook years ago shortly after
| basically being aquired along with oculus?
| coldpie wrote:
| He still consults for Facebook and is still a big Meta
| booster, see this from just a few months ago:
| https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/10/john-carmack-
| sounds-a...
| galangalalgol wrote:
| That is disappointing. I very much admired his thoughts
| on coding.
| Garlef wrote:
| No it's not. If someone walks through your living room with
| dirty shoes you don't get the floor cleaned up by having
| someone over who takes their shoes off.
| jdrc wrote:
| It seems the whole industry considers underhanded tactics a
| good thing. Facebook has been exploiting users' phonebooks from
| Day 1, it's not new. It's just that the industry bent towards
| facebook-like rather than the reverse
| kodah wrote:
| I pretty well despise Meta, but not hiring people from there
| because you disagree with the product is not okay. If I did
| that I'd never hire another former Googler in my life. I'd
| never hire someone from Microsoft, and I'd certainly never hire
| someone from Amazon.
|
| This kind of thinking, first and foremost, will only result in
| a culture of fear (eg: what company will be next to be unsafe
| on my resume?) It also is a quiet signal that certain people
| have given up on the long fight to change things. Changing
| things is hard, but it is just that - a long exhausting
| process. It requires patience and changing people's minds and
| perspectives, not by strong arming, but by aligning incentives
| in a direction that's better for the majority.
| crate_barre wrote:
| At no point. You'll only hear the opposite from a small cohort
| that can hop around faangs. There's plenty of people working in
| all kinds of industries that overall suck for humanity.
| curtisblaine wrote:
| > having Facebook/Meta experience on your resume starts hurting
| you against others who don't
|
| I'd say never. There will always be some company more than glad
| to hire high-merit developers without paying a premium. As a
| result, you know that all these Meta developers you're
| rejecting are going straight in the arms of your competitor.
| This tends to balance the market.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Good luck getting anyone to do anything about it though,
| tobacco was an easy target because it causes cancer...
| Americans are much better at solving medical problems than
| mental health problems.
| amin wrote:
| A media company publishing a negative article on Facebook is like
| Ford publishing a negative article on Tesla
| account-5 wrote:
| TL;DR:
|
| Company a threat to American children pays a company to accuse
| another company that's a threat to American children of being a
| threat to American children.
| 0des wrote:
| Its a negative for everyone, no nationality or age required
| sudden_dystopia wrote:
| They should have paid more. Perhaps they could have been useful
| for once.
| SilasX wrote:
| "Can you believe these jackals obfuscated the data that would
| have told us our advertising was ineffective?!"
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Gen-Z doesn't give a damn about Facebook, or Republicans.
| rchaud wrote:
| Gen Z is the largest or second largest user group for
| Instagram, a wholly owned subsidiary of FB. Saying that X
| doesn't care about FB indicates ignorance of the simple fact
| that one is spending a lot of time reading what FB thinks you
| should be reading.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| That's like saying Gen Z loves Office365 because they play
| XBox. It's just simply not the case. Facebook and Instagram
| are different products, Facebook is bleeding millions of
| users, and growth rates for Instagram are levelling out.
| These are just facts and it's mostly because Gen Z.
| hereforphone wrote:
| Completely unnecessary. TikTok maligns itself.
| pluc wrote:
| How convinced are you that your opinion is coming from actions
| of TikTok itself and not reports of alleged actions by TikTok?
| The American public (and by association, a large controlling
| part of the digital hivemind) is very easy to sway
| alphabetting wrote:
| > very easy to sway opinion of American public
|
| Compared to what? Chinese public?
| pluc wrote:
| Compared to the non-average American public that might have
| an educated opinion about any given topic
| nmilo wrote:
| What is a "Republican strategy firm?" A consulting firm with the
| Republican party as one of their clients? What's the point of
| making "Republican" so prominent in the article? Is it just to
| use the negative connotation most WP readers have about the
| Republican party to malign Facebook a little more? It seems like
| we're just spectating an op-ed war, and discussing this article
| as if there's any meaning to it other than to malign Facebook.
| baryphonic wrote:
| My guess would be that Facebook hired a GOP firm for two
| reasons. 1) The national mood is leaning significantly toward
| the GOP, with major Republican gains likely in both the House
| and Senate (potentially supermajorities in both chambers).
| Democrats are so weak right now that they can't get anything
| done, so may as well follow the trends. TikTok isn't going to
| kill Facebook in nine months, so they can hold out till a
| Republican Congress in January. 2) The messaging is aligned
| with recent Republican victories or even just Democrat losses.
| The election in Virginia and the recall of the SF school board
| both highlight that Dems appear tone-dead with respect to
| protecting kids. (Even in FL, the Dems and media have
| essentially lied by maligning the new law restricting public
| schools from exposing K-through-3 students to sexual content as
| a bill banning anyone from saying the word "gay." This
| dishonesty is only necessary and effective because Democrats
| are exceptionally weak at protecting kids.)
|
| I doubt the use of a GOP firm reflects anything beyond a desire
| to persuade Republican voters and lawmakers.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> A consulting firm with the Republican party as one of their
| clients?_
|
| Political consulting firms -- especially those that specialize
| in strategy, oppo, or ads -- are very often partisan-aligned.
| That's how the biz works.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| If you check their website, they openly market themselves as
| primarily existing to serve advertising and PR roles for
| Republican campaigns. The CEO used to be the digital director
| for the Romney campaign. It seems reasonable to me to call them
| a Republican firm.
| vmception wrote:
| You're grasping.
|
| Try again.
|
| Its just an adjective.
| scotuswroteus wrote:
| "Spectating an op-ed war" is a super weird way of saying
| "negative opinion about Facebook." Opeds are for reading. WP is
| a left leaning outlet. No war is going on here, and reading an
| oped isn't spectating a war.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Having worked im the political data space, most usually the
| firm os closely associated with a given party, revolving door,
| etc.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| https://targetedvictory.com/team/
|
| 12 matches for republican 1 match for conservative 0 matches
| for democrat
|
| It's a firm comprised of former republican political talent.
| Maybe you're just as willing to fan the flames of political war
| as those you accuse?
|
| They also seem to be into crypto.
| testbjjl wrote:
| > What's the point of making "Republican" so prominent in the
| article? Is it just to use the negative connotation most WP
| readers have about the Republican party to malign Facebook a
| little more?
|
| A person self identifies with a party that has questionable
| (/s) practices in a democracy and they're being maligned. Jokes
| are funny because they have truth.
| Clubber wrote:
| >a party that has questionable (/s) practices
|
| If you don't see that in both predominant US parties, you
| probably aren't looking. Of course Facebook pays the
| Democratic Party millions a year to look the other way. Can't
| have good privacy laws, ya know.
|
| https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/meta/totals?id=D000033563
| s28l wrote:
| Most political consulting firms do the majority of their work
| for a single party, so they can reasonably be identified as
| either "Republican" or "Democratic". Some non-nefarious reasons
| why this clustering tends to occur:
|
| * The firms are the next career stepping stone for campaign
| workers. If you have worked on half a dozen Democratic
| campaigns, you presumably believe in the cause and are unlikely
| to want to start working on Republican campaigns where you
| disagree with the candidate. (Maybe you won't be as good at
| working on GOP campaigns either). * If you are a politician,
| you are unlikely to be too excited to hire the firm that in the
| last election cycle wrote an ad trashing some of the positions
| you old. You are also more likely to get referred to a firm by
| a politician from the same party as you.
|
| You might have firms that work with both parties, but they are
| likely to be working with centrist candidates from those
| parties.
|
| So if this is a strategy firm that has mostly done political
| work for Republican candidates and causes, it seems perfectly
| reasonable to call it a "Republican strategy firm"
| pessimizer wrote:
| The US doesn't have real political parties with memberships, so
| a more realistic view of them is that they are central
| coordinators of, and lobbyists on the behalf of, huge networks
| of consultants.
|
| Having a political career means shifting between consulting
| companies strongly associated with political parties, direct
| party employment, campaign employment, government employment
| when your party is in power, "think tanks," "journalism," and
| employment as a lobbyist for government contractors or
| industries with a legislative agenda.
|
| Journalists drop the keyfabe when they're speaking casually,
| sometimes accidentally. They do go out of their way to do so
| when the subject is associated with a party their employer
| doesn't approve of.
|
| Including the truth about party association doesn't make a
| story more or less truthful. The problem is when they leave it
| out, or create an association out of whole cloth to fit a
| narrative.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > as if there's any meaning to it other than to malign
| Facebook.
|
| I don't think this is malignment, per se: Facebook makes a big
| show of being a progressive company (internally) with a
| nominally neutral political outlook. Hiring a Republican
| strategy firm undermines that image: it demonstrates that, push
| come to shove, Facebook's commitment to these things is
| primarily a facade intended to deflect criticism.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _Facebook makes a big show of being a progressive company
| (internally) with a nominally neutral political outlook._
|
| Ask any progressive, they will say there's nothing
| politically neutral about preventing unionization:
| https://theintercept.com/2020/06/11/facebook-workplace-
| union...
|
| I also don't think people are falling for rainbow capitalism
| internally or not. I think people generally understand that
| it _is_ just a show and the only color on the rainbow they
| care about is green.
| woodruffw wrote:
| We're in agreement. The point I was making is that it isn't
| "malignment" because it clearly is in line with Facebook's
| actual values.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Lots of comments to this miss the point. If another tech
| company uses a "Democrat strategy firm", the report won't
| mention it, or even put it in the title.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Every article about Mark Penn's work for Microsoft mentioned
| that he was a Democratic strategist at the time.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Yes. That's exactly the same.
| nneonneo wrote:
| > The Arlington, Va.-based firm advertises on its website that
| it brings "a right-of-center perspective to solve marketing
| challenges" and can deploy field teams "anywhere in the country
| within 48 hours."
|
| The firm itself seems to advertise a "republican" outlook, and
| was also apparently founded initially as a strategy firm for
| the Republican Party.
| [deleted]
| Clubber wrote:
| Yes, political division sells papers. I looked for the
| "opinion" label, which is used to justify this type of
| manipulation but didn't see one. It's an article manipulating
| you talking about how Facebook uses a company that the GOP uses
| (and probably Dems too) to manipulate you. I suspect it
| wouldn't mention that some of these articles this company uses
| to manipulate you are probably published in The Washington
| Post, but that's just "opinion," so it's ok to say.
| ModernMech wrote:
| First of all the word Republican does not even appear in the
| title of the wall piece. It appears in the first paragraph to
| characterize the firm, which is a fact and how they
| characterize themselves. The word Republican appears a total
| of 4 times in the entire price. I'm really failing to see
| manipulation or opinions. Can you point them out?
| Clubber wrote:
| >Can you point them out?
|
| Sure, to me it reads like Facebook and the GOP are working
| hand in hand to defame poor startup TikTok. In reality,
| Facebook donates millions of dollars to the Democratic
| Party to ensure their operations and ... practices ... are
| safely legal and unregulated.
|
| https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/meta/totals?id=D000033563
|
| I'm not certain how much different it would have made to
| the main thrust of the story to mention that it worked with
| a GOP firm. Based on the donations, I'm pretty sure they
| have used Democrat firms as well for similar purposes, if
| not this one. The author doesn't mention it, but assuming
| omission means it didn't happen isn't a safe assumption.
|
| Another point, not sure it's a realistic idea to paint
| TikTok as anything other than a data harvesting tool for
| the CCP. Seems like they would be similar to Kapersky in
| that it's just a spying / infiltration tool used by
| adversarial governments.
| nmilo wrote:
| Don't split hairs; it says "GOP", same thing. And words in
| the title and lead paragraph hold about 10x the weird.
| mbostleman wrote:
| I don't know the intent of the writers or editors, but I
| would think a political strategy firm is reasonably aligned
| to one party or the other and its alignment is totally valid
| context. I didn't get the impression it was overplayed here.
| I think what does happen sometimes is that when there is a
| negative connotation, as there is here, and the association
| is with the Democratic party, that context is downplayed or
| omitted entirely.
|
| Aside from that, the choice of a Republican focused group
| makes sense since the strategy was to assert threats to
| traditional values and appeals to nationalism / anti-China
| sentiment.
| tangue wrote:
| From the article : "Launched as a Republican digital consulting
| firm by Zac Moffatt, a digital director for Mitt Romney's 2012
| presidential campaign, Targeted Victory ... The firm is one of
| the biggest recipients of Republican campaign spending, earning
| more than $237 million in 2020, according to data compiled by
| OpenSecrets. Its biggest payments came from national GOP
| congressional committees and America First Action, a pro-Trump
| super PAC."
| nmilo wrote:
| So, yes, it is nothing more than a consulting firm with the
| Republican party as one of their clients. The other questions
| still stand:
|
| > What's the point of making "Republican" so prominent in the
| article? Is it just to use the negative connotation most WP
| readers have about the Republican party to malign Facebook a
| little more?
| cortesoft wrote:
| The consulting company markets itself as a
| Republican/conservative operation. If it was important
| enough for them to put it front and center on their own
| website, it makes sense to include that info in the
| article.
| rchaud wrote:
| Are you even bothering to read the article?
|
| > The firm is one of the biggest recipients of Republican
| campaign spending, earning more than $237 million in 2020,
| according to data compiled by OpenSecrets. Its biggest
| payments came from national GOP congressional committees
| and America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >What is a "Republican strategy firm?"
|
| A consulting firm that advertises itself as being "born from
| political campaigns" and being "right of center." Both things
| on the second slide of their homepage.
| polyomino wrote:
| >Stagwell, formerly The Stagwell Group, is a global marketing
| and communications group. Founded in 2015 by Mark Penn.
|
| >Penn was a chief strategist and pollster in the Hillary
| Clinton 2008 presidential campaign
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| And further in Mark Penn's Wikipedia article
|
| >Penn met with Trump in February and November 2019 to give
| him advice on his 2020 re-election strategy.
|
| The company claims to be right wing, why would you deny it?
| polyomino wrote:
| I'm not denying that they claim to be republican, but
| their actions do serve both parties. As such, I don't
| think their claim to be republican is particularly
| meaningful.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| He worked for D's in 2008 and the firm was founded in
| 2015 with primarily R political cleintelle.
|
| What's contradictory about a strategist who worked for Ds
| in 2008 and was working for Rs by 2016? Hell, there's a
| whole term describing the large set of people who made
| that shift in that exact time period:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obama%E2%80%93Trump_voters
| pessimizer wrote:
| Clinton-people and Obama-people did not and do not like
| each other.
|
| This might be a better link:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_Unity_My_Ass
| dailyrorschach wrote:
| Also worth context here that Stagwell is set up like
| another major holding company. They own Targeted Victory
| (R) and SKDKnickerbocker (D) as their two pillars in
| DC/public affairs/campaign comms. They also own other
| non-political communications companies.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| hahaha amazing. This isn't contradictory at all tho. "I'm
| not saying she's a republican, I'm just saying _the
| republicans_ think she 's a republican."
| alpha_squared wrote:
| For companies that operate in the political sphere
| (strategists, consultancies, etc.), it is impractical to work
| in a bipartisan manner. Once you take on a client in one party,
| members of the other party distrust your services because
| they'll expect you're already politically aligned with their
| rivals and could disclose information to those rivals. So a
| <party> strategy firm likely means their clientele is
| exclusively of that party.
| bitwize wrote:
| Absent sources that are explicitly conservative, American media
| are prone to reinforce the narrative that the Republican Party
| is bad and does bad things, any chance they can.
|
| I noticed this back in the late 2000s when I read newspapers
| about state politicians who were caught in corruption scandals.
| If the politician were a Republican, their party affiliation
| would be mentioned in the headline. If they were a Democrat,
| that fact would be mentioned in the article's continuation on a
| page farther back in the newspaper, if at all.
|
| I offer no judgement on whether this is right or wrong, but it
| is what is done.
| [deleted]
| throwaway4good wrote:
| It is not unlikely that if Trump had won a second term, then
| TikTok would have been banned in the US.
|
| Facebook made a gamble though and as a downside they probably
| have less goodwill with the current administration compared to
| what they could have had.
| FYYFFF wrote:
| vijaybritto wrote:
| At this point I simply would not be surprised even if Facebook is
| accused of murder
| krapp wrote:
| Why not, they've already been accused of genocide.
| throwaway29303 wrote:
| They still haven't learned a thing.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/may/12/facebook-...
| corn13read2 wrote:
| Silly clickbait title. Why not say Democrat Facebook paid
| Republican strategy firm to malign Democrat TikTok?
| Lamad123 wrote:
| I am sure Sandberg is evil enough to do such stuff (she et al.
| have even blessed bloodshed in multiple countries), but I find it
| kinda ironic this is published in a newspaper owned by another
| one of these evil companies.
| atotic wrote:
| I was wondering where did all these "I started with fresh
| account, randomly clicked, and found something awful" articles
| about TikTok came from. Now I know.
|
| It was so puzzling, because my experience has been so different.
| TikTok is the most positive, large scale, social platform I've
| ever used. It has exposed me to disabled people's, LGBTQ, POV and
| all kinds of neat things I'd have never even thought of.
|
| California forever, goodbye!
| FYYFFF wrote:
| eric_b wrote:
| Why the focus on the fact that it was a Republican strategy firm?
| Why does that matter?
|
| Being the Washington Post, I'm sure it's to insinuate that all
| the bad things that happen are Republican-led. Only the GOP plays
| dirty tricks, right? After the Steele dossier, the Biden laptop,
| the Russia collusion misinformation campaign, and willfully
| hiding the mental decline of the current president - you'd think
| we'd get past the whole "only Republicans bad" narrative. But I
| guess that just goes to show how successfully the WashPo and
| others are running their own strategies to push agendas...
| zerop wrote:
| If there is anything happening around you which influences, it is
| staged and driven by someone.
| croon wrote:
| What influenced you to believe that?
| ummwhat wrote:
| Paul Graham's submarine essay probably.
| yunohn wrote:
| Obviously, every HNer religiously reads and memorizes PG's
| mediocre essays.
|
| There's no way you could hold the opinion that PR and
| influence pervade our society, without having read
| "Submarine".
| Natsu wrote:
| That was a good essay, honestly, but just reading the
| media is enough to tell you that the media is fake. I
| mean, we've all seen headlines that switch narratives on
| a dime, just within mainstream media orgs, going only by
| their own headlines.
|
| But yeah, anyone who knows how social media sites got
| started with faked engagement shouldn't believe most of
| the things they see online.
| engineeringwoke wrote:
| > Obviously, every HNer religiously reads and memorizes
| PG's mediocre essays.
|
| Idk, I like PG. I've read the really long-form pieces
| like "What I've Done", etc., but from what I gather by
| following his Twitter, he's less and less defined by
| creative or unique ideas and has turned towards more
| standard neo-con, gen X silicon valley. More than
| anything, there is a noticeable lack of emotional
| intelligence that doesn't hold up to the standards of
| youth today.
|
| He went to RISD; cool, awesome; he's a brilliant computer
| scientist; okay, cool. The world is more global now, a
| lot of people have these Renaissance man-type
| experiences, and haven't yet made the money that will put
| a veil over their eyes. A lot of the essays are mediocre.
| A lot of them are good. But I think it's just less his
| time in 2022 for what he was trying to do.
| dazh wrote:
| Whose essays do you like? I'm always looking for good
| writing to read.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I was skeptical for precisely that reason, so despite the
| fact that it isn't a secret (see for example
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/checks-
| balanc...) I didn't believe it until I saw the sausage
| getting made. Obviously I understand why you might not trust
| some random guy on this, but I've personally seen a billion
| dollar company where an outright majority of news coverage
| originated with its PR team, and nobody involved found this
| atypical or strange.
| croon wrote:
| I'm not saying the concept isn't real, I'm just generally
| skeptical of prescriptive statements such as GGP.
|
| There are plenty of things happening around me that
| influence me, like kind gestures big or small, the birth of
| my children, learning about things (that are verifiable),
| which I can assure you are not staged or driven by someone.
| yunohn wrote:
| > There are plenty of things happening around me that
| influence me
|
| You're being really pedantic with those examples -
| obviously, they weren't talking about events like the
| "birth of a child"...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I like the complete disallowance of nuance in your statement.
| _Everything_ influential is staged.
| elsewhen wrote:
| http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > Of the stories you read in traditional media that aren't
| about politics, crimes, or disasters, more than half probably
| come from PR firms.
|
| Stories not about politics, crimes, or disasters ... are not
| news?
|
| But I would add _corporate malfeasance_ to the list of
| "politics, crimes, or disasters" (or does that count as
| crime?).
| swayvil wrote:
| Herpes spreading dirty rumors about gonorrhea.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| >The campaign includes placing op-eds and letters to the editor
| in major regional news outlets, promoting dubious stories about
| alleged TikTok trends that actually originated on Facebook, and
| pushing to draw political reporters and local politicians into
| helping take down its biggest competitor. These bare-knuckle
| tactics...
|
| Letters to the editor and soliciting reporters is considered
| "bare-knuckle"!?!
|
| >In October, Targeted Victory worked to spread rumors of the
| "Slap a Teacher TikTok challenge" in local news, touting a local
| news report on the alleged challenge in Hawaii. In reality, no
| such challenge existed on TikTok. Again, the rumor started on
| Facebook, according to a series of Facebook posts first
| documented by Insider.
|
| I guess this was not communicated to the entire WaPo newsroom...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/10/06/tiktok-slap...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/10/08/tiktok-t...
| newhotelowner wrote:
| Facebook also gave cheap ad rates to BJP[1] (Party of the current
| prime minister of India). Facebook seems like align more with the
| right group.
|
| [1]https://thewire.in/political-economy/for-campaign-ads-on-
| fac...
| annadane wrote:
| They absolutely do.
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/mark-zuckerberg...
| edmundsauto wrote:
| That isn't how it works. The study clearly states that the
| targeting criteria was not included in the analysis. If you
| look at any 2 advertisers running their own campaigns, and one
| is a savvier user of auction based ad systems, a 29% difference
| in CPM excluding targeting is common.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Is it coincidence that WashingtonPost maligns Facebook, but is
| owned by Bezos whose Amazon has been seriously upping their
| advertising game?
| ncr100 wrote:
| Meh. WP reports negatives on Amazon too.
| idrios wrote:
| I quit Facebook in 2016 because my news feed became filled with
| politics. Washington Post was among the biggest offenders as
| news producers trying to stir up controversy and being heavily
| politically slanted while acting like they're neutral (I'll
| never forget that they ran 16 anti-Bernie Sanders stories in
| one day). If this kind of article is making it to the front of
| HN then I may quit HN too.
| JadeNB wrote:
| I'm all for Bezos-focussed conspiracy theories, but I don't
| think you need a conspiracy theory to explain negative coverage
| of Facebook.
| johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
| This is what I've been saying for months. TikTok has been an
| instrumental tool to help fight racist right wing propaganda.
| We've to join in with China and fight racist right wing
| propaganda against China.
| specialist wrote:
| The part I find most dumb about these "revelations" is that
| Facebook doesn't even bother to hide their efforts. No shame, no
| contrition. So normalized this kind of crap has become.
| troll_v_bridge wrote:
| Should this story have a disclaimer that the paper is owned by
| the founder of Amazon, who is a competitor?
| newsclues wrote:
| What social network does Amazon own?
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| It's digital advertising, not social media that is the
| competition.
| bmelton wrote:
| Twitch
| newsclues wrote:
| Interesting, I e never considered them social media,
| although the content delivery platform does have social
| aspects.
|
| I don't think twitch or YouTube are the same as Facebook or
| Twitter.
| ChoGGi wrote:
| Facebook market place...? Not really sure either
| curiousgal wrote:
| > _who is a competitor_
|
| It is? In which markets?
| sharperguy wrote:
| Amazon owns twitch and Facebook runs Facebook gaming which is
| a direct competitor.
|
| Amazon Prime video is also an indirect competitor to other
| time wasting products like social media apps / video sharing
| etc.
|
| edit: Also don't forget data collection / AI / advertising.
| [deleted]
| mbesto wrote:
| Seems like a bit of stretch. Twitch and FB Gaming are like
| a drop in the ocean for both companies revenue.
|
| How would you explain articles like this: https://www.washi
| ngtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/01/amazon-...
| fairity wrote:
| Digital advertising. Amazon generates $40b per year in
| advertising revenue.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Persuasive tech company accuses persuasive tech company that its
| tech is too persuasive.
| quantified wrote:
| I have argued in the past that the real problem of misinformation
| lies with users not FB. However, when FB itself actively supports
| the sourcing of false info that endangers teachers to boot, they
| should get the hammer.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Ie, bribery continues to be alive and celebrated in the USA
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > Meta spokesperson Andy Stone defended the campaign by saying,
| "We believe all platforms, including TikTok, should face a
| level of scrutiny consistent with their growing success."
|
| Gross -- the way they try to spin it.
| maxlamb wrote:
| Paying a company to spread dirt on your competitor is not
| bribery.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Here's what's sad about this; TikTok was a product clearly built
| for "younger" users (Gen Z, younger millennials) the same way
| Facebook was in the aughts for its youthful cohort (older
| millennials). Facebook then evolved their product and made
| massive inroads with older audiences, sending their value and
| userbase soaring... point.
|
| But in doing so Facebook left younger users underserved they
| chose TikTok. And now to paper over their product failure they're
| crying to the government.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| Well that's not entirely true. Instagram (a Meta property) is
| more the competitor to TikTok. And this isn't crying to the
| government. This is trying to push the dangers of TikTok on
| right wing cultural outlets. The thing is, this is true, the
| incentives of TikTok are not pro-social. Then again, neither
| are those of Instagram (or Facebook for that matter).
| lupire wrote:
| Has FB met any kids? "Mom say TikTok will corrupt my morals"
| is recruiting campaign, not a destructive attack.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| Not in many culturally conservative households. These
| parents exert a lot more control over what their children
| are exposed to / allowed to engage with.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| They _try_ to exert a lot more control over what their
| children are exposed to. I'm not sure they're always
| successful.
| dylan604 wrote:
| This is definitely true in my case. The harder they
| tried, the more I pushed back.
|
| Also, as anecdotal evidence, there's a reason there's a
| stereotype of PKs (preacher's kids).
| gadders wrote:
| Where does the Republican angle come in to it?
| josefresco wrote:
| FTA:
|
| "The firm is one of the biggest recipients of Republican
| campaign spending, earning more than $237 million in 2020,
| according to data compiled by OpenSecrets. Its biggest payments
| came from national GOP congressional committees and America
| First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC."
| gadders wrote:
| I guess, but that's not massively relevant to the story, is
| it? It looks like they've tried to shoe-horn in a political
| angle.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| Just when you think those guys can't stoop any lower, they go and
| surprise you yet again.
| mayowaxcvi wrote:
| The Washington Post (a media organisation) malign Meta/Facebook
| (a media organisation) who were maligning TikTok (a media
| organisation).
|
| Perhaps the most blatant case of "Always accuse your enemy of
| exactly what you are doing yourself."
| PaulHoule wrote:
| (1) Facebook has consistently acted on a partisan basis
| supporting Republicans and right-wing causes as much as it can.
| Any normal company would have thrown Sheryl Steinberg under the
| bus for funding anti-semitic conspiracy theories but that kind of
| stuff is at the DNA core of Facebook. (2) That doesn't mean
| TikTok isn't toxic.
| legalcorrection wrote:
| So even if that's true, every other big tech company supports
| left wingers and left-wing causes.
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