Hacker News Reader

Comment by mindgam3 | Hacker News Reader

“if he felt like Facebook was bending things the wrong way he'd say so”

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.

View on HN

A non-disparagement clause is so fucking bonkers. I read these things and would never sign something like that. It’s a blatant corporate attack on your freedom of speech and absolutely insulting as a human. You pay me. You do not control me!

You're not wrong.

But ethics can become a lot more flexible when someone's dangling a few million in stock options in front of your face.

Flip it around. If you are an employee partly compensated in stock, is it fair for a multi-billionaire who was one of your former bosses to flippantly trash talk the company in public after he cashes out, potentially damaging the value of your stock...? Wouldn't you want your employer to put some controls into place to prevent that kind of pointless harm to you?

You can still talk about literally anything else if you sign a non-disparagement clause or an NDA.

> 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...).

think about it another way: it's blackmail against your employer that is actually initiated by the employer itself. you don't even have to make any threats and it's not illegal!

Maybe the answer is just to make them illegal.

> You pay me. You do not control me!

That's why these things come with payment -- or for NDAs, a threat to make you pay them.

Check out what Ted Lieu, Representative from the LA area, had to say about NDAs:

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.

——-

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.

If you got paid what he is getting paid to keep your mouth shut, I think you would.

doubtful. he's already got f-u money. a couple million more doesn't matter.

what's probably more likely is that his net worth is highly correlated with facebook's, and disparagement could materially affect that.

Maybe he simply isn't that confident in that opinion to state it so bluntly. I agree with the "reading between the lines" interpretation that this guy probably thinks facebook is a bad thing. But, thinking that, and coming out strongly with that position while holding such an influential position are two very different things.

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.

> I read these things and would never sign something like that.

Ya, everyone does until they look at their bank account.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com