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Comment by ilovecaching | Hacker News Reader

Can we please stop with the constant barrage of anti-FB posts? This is supposed to be a community for hackers. Many of our friends and colleagues work at Facebook, Google, and other advertisers, those people help build the open source projects we use to run our businesses, go to the same conferences as us, and its asinine to assume that because they choose to work there they've sold out their morals and that Facebook is an irredeemable den of evil. We're already all aware of the issues at Facebook, and that Facebook is working on fixing them. Constantly dragging them through the mud on HN is just going to build a wall instead of promote a dialogue about what they could be doing to improve.

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What exactly are you asking people to do here? See an article about Facebook, the company, and not post it because it may result in people saying mean things in the comments about the people who work there?

Facebook's behavior and the recent interest in covering it by the media surfaces the many ethical issues we, as hackers, have a responsibility to confront head-on in our industry and frankly includes things many people have been warning about happening for decades. These articles about the negative impacts (intentional or otherwise) of the software systems that Facebook has created are the very definition of Hacker News.

I'm not the commenter you're replying to, but I would personally ask folks to not post these kinds of articles. In contrast I like the recent NYTimes piece, "Delay, Deny, Deflect" about Facebook.

But this? This isn't news. Do you know how many patents Facebook has? Do you know how many it - or any other large tech company - has that would form the basis of a similar article? What are we getting out of this? It's not like we didn't know they have these kinds of patents. Go look at Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple's patents.

There's been four or five articles on Facebook posted today, most of which were NYT hit pieces. The comments are just mud slinging. It's not brave to call something evil over and over again with no one to rebuttable, and with no provided evidence. It's not the hacker way to berate any technology we don't agree with without considering the alternatives and positives of said technology. That's hacker amateur hour.

Facebook is one of the most powerful and influential companies in the world. With great power comes great responsibility, and scrutiny. Your pleading to treat them like garage-company hackers is absurd and out of touch with reality.

I'm saying there's nothing more for us to say about Facebook that's going to be productive, and that we should at least respect the people who work there enough to stop dragging them through the mud five times a day.

Oh come on, they pled no such thing...must we constantly do this with Facebook? There's nothing about the comment that's absurd or out of touch with reality, they're just expressing exasperation at the utterly repetitive deluge of news about Facebook and the incessently rehashed discussion that follows.

I can understand going over these talking points when a sprawling piece of investigative journalism with legitimately new information is published. But we have to do this song and dance when Buzzfeed searches Google Patents with the keyword "Facebook" now too? How many patents do you think Facebook has that would draw the conspiratorial ire of HN? We'll be here day in and day out for months.

While we're at it, for those downvoting - why don't you take a close look at all the similar patents registered by every tech company that competes with Facebook. Every large tech company has patents like these. This is not news, this is just outrage bait.

I’ve defended FB plenty of times on HN, mostly because I’ve managed to use it in moderation, to keep up distant friebdships without getting caught in the daily newsfeed grind. But the assertion that “We’re already all well aware” of FB’s issues is just horseshit. Until the NYT published their months long investigation, FB’s leadership wasn’t apparently aware that the PR firm it hired was throwing around the Soros trope to discredit its critics. FB has had plenty of days to bask in positive press, as its past stock performance shows. That it now takes its lumps over damaging revelations is not reason to cry for sympathy.

> promote a dialogue

Well, the dialogue here is pretty clear: Using their panopticon collection of personal data to infer who and where you live with is creepy. People don't like this idea. Maybe they shouldn't do it.

I know patents often aren't something you ever actually plan to do, but I'm not sure what you want here. Everyone to just quietly ignore this because it's only a patent?

> and that Facebook is working on fixing them.

Facebook's business model & DNA is probably antithetical to seriously fixing them.

I mean, it's also not great to bury your head in the sand…

Are you implying the recent NY Times piece or this patent are not news-worthy? Or not technically relevant?

Stop whining.

It's a shit organization. FB isn't working to fix their issues. Their DNA is to unethically acquire and sell as much data as possible. No one is saying that everyone who works there is shit. The truth, however, is that they all did make a decision to work there knowing what their company peddles. They, like you, are adults who get to live with the consequences of that decision.

You're the problem I'm taking about. You're comment isn't constructive or insightful. Your just bandwagoning the opinion of the day. You have no idea what the day to day inside of Facebook is like. You're also calling me our for dissenting against your dogmatic opinion because you could never conceive of any alternative than your personal view.

No, I'm telling you to stop whining. You're yelling into the wind, wishing that reality was different. Your desire to see FB as an entity that is free from the consequences of its unethical actions is troubling.

Poor little Facebook being dragged through the mud on the hacker website just because it destroyed like not even 10 democracies yet.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Nice try, Facebook PR department.

I hear ya, I find it old and repetitive too. I feel like a lot of it is virtue signaling to other people on HN. It's no different than any other group/clique.

I wouldn't like this to stop, it is always enjoyable to watch a mass hysteria, especially one that has little probability to resort t serious physical harm.

Hey, if Facebook ain't bad, they can take it.

>This is supposed to be a community for hackers.

Yes exactly. A community where privacy is a major concern.

It's ok to care about privacy. But we're supposed to be above mud slinging and bandwagoning. Facebook isn't news, and we're not improving privacy by continually dragging down the people who are working to fix those issues.

facebook applying for a privacy-invading patent is absolutely news which belongs on a "news for hackers" site

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