I wish that were true, but this is a rather naive perspective.
Facebook has a well documented history of requiring outgoing employees to sign non-disparagement clauses. For someone as high up as Chief Product Officer you’d better believe that they would have Chris sign something expressly forbidding any overt criticism of the company. Any severance package which in this case is worth millions or tens of millions would be contingent on signing.
I’m actually surprised he was able to say as much as he did.
But ethics can become a lot more flexible when someone's dangling a few million in stock options in front of your face.
You can still talk about literally anything else if you sign a non-disparagement clause or an NDA.
Why does this matter? It reminds me of the joke about how in America we value free speech so much that we can badmouth our leaders in public, but so what, in Soviet Russia they can badmouth the American leaders in public too. The question of how free your speech is, is determined by what you can't say, or can't get away with saying, without paying some hefty consequence (a punch, a fine, losing your job, imprisonment, forfeiting RSUs...).
That's why these things come with payment -- or for NDAs, a threat to make you pay them.
https://twitter.com/tedlieu/status/1105961668029358086
> @tedlieu I am authorized to make the following statement: If you feel silenced by an NDA and need help from a Congressional committee, please contact, or have your attorney contact, the House Judiciary Committee.
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For topics of societal and national concern, House subpoenas could be a good way to force disclosure — of things companies are trying to hide, via paying off employees in exchange for NDAs.
what's probably more likely is that his net worth is highly correlated with facebook's, and disparagement could materially affect that.
If I had such influence I'd certainly be hesitant to just go all guns blazing, and I'm someone that strongly believes social media (primarily facebook) is a serious threat to civilized society.
Ya, everyone does until they look at their bank account.
...said everyone ever who was asked to leave or decided to resign because of irreconcilable differences with the organization.