Facebook are frantically trying to find out who leaked thousands of documents | Hacker News Reader

Facebook are frantically trying to find out who leaked thousands of documents

reclaimthenet.org

110 pointscolinprince33 comments

It’s difficult not to see the potential for divine retribution in this. Facebook, alongside Google, spearhead the “privacy is dead consumers, all your data are mine” assertion.

But someone dares to share FB’s data? Release the wolves.

Until/unless the actual docs emerge, we can only surmise that there’s a few ‘interesting’ gems in there - hence FB’s attentiveness to preventing dissemination.

I hope they are published irrespective of content. If we as individuals have no say in Facebook’s surveillance of us, there’s a modicum of comfort in knowing we can surveil it.

Reap as you sow Mr Zuckerberg.

—- EDIT: fixed grammar.

Do you see any possible difference between providing a free service in exchange for data useful for targeting ads, and illegally leaking internal company documents with the intent to hurt the company?

The leaker should have sold the data to third parties, then it would have been ok. /s

> a free service in exchange for data useful for targeting ads

Do you intend to argue that this is all Facebook have done with user data?

Is reclaimthenet.org a real news website? None of the writers looks real and I can't find any information on the website on who edits it and fund it. Some articles reek of bias

Said Mark222.

40 Karma points. Could be anybody!

I can think of one Mark it might be!

LOL

Anyone got a link to a mirror of the leaked docs?

This, please.

https://github.com/BuxtonTheRed/btrmisc

Article is from April 2019.

Are facebook still "digital gangsters"?

Probably graduated to gangsters, without the qualification.

You can buy the t-shirt and be one too https://www.spreadshirt.com/digital+gangster+unisex+tri-blen...

Yup

> Good enough for me!

Sounds a bit like:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PETk8eBbfN0&t=2m0s

If they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear from sharing data :)

Is the pool of people with access that big? Then it's their own damn fault.

Why fault? If Facebook is internally transparent and allows all/most of the employees access to all internal documents -- that's good transparency and good company culture in my eyes.

It does put a lot of responsibility on employees: Don't leak internal data, but do express your opinion if something doesn't look right (and yes, perhaps even leak the offending documents if something illegal or clearly unethical is happening in the company)

Facebook's hysterical reaction to the leak suggests the company didn't actually expect anyone to leak information about illegal and clearly unethical business practices.

I mean, assuming that Facebook wants to create an environment where employees leak information about unethical business practices is extremely inconsistent with how unethical Facebook has been routinely behaving in the past.

> that's good transparency and good company culture in my eyes

wrt sensitive information? Possibly even information relating to customers, or technical detail that can be exploited?

> Possibly even information relating to customers, or technical detail that can be exploited?

Yeah for sure.

Sometimes you need customer information to do your job (e.g. to repro a bug that only one person has seen). Facebook does a good job of making this available easily and quickly people who need it, while auditing and firing anybody who abuses the privilege to access data that is not strictly needed.

Regarding technical issues, you want as many people as possible to know about it so that it gets fixed quickly, other people know how to avoid the same mistake, and you build a culture of not keeping your own mistakes to yourself.

I didn't say technical issues, I said detail e.g architecture. Not all architectural issues are bugs that can be fixed if known.

In any case, building a "culture of not keeping your own mistakes to yourself" won't help when a bug is discovered by someone who intends to exploit it. 0-days borne from internal disclosures are not a "culture" problem.

We could apply the old anti-privacy trope and say that people (or companies) that do nothing wrong should have nothing to hide.

I don't think it's an issue of access pool. The NSA is notoriously segmented for instance and still have experienced leaks.

It is kind of strange that the author messed up is/are in the title but not in the first sentence.

The full title is grammatically correct, as '"Digital gangsters"' is modifying "Facebook" to be a plural noun. Later on, though, we have this mistake:

"The publications is [sic] among several media outlets..."

"Facebook personnel are" would work. But, I agree, "Facebook is" or "Facebook management is" would seem more grammatically correct.

In many countries companies and groups of people like managers are considered plural, so 'are' is grammatically correct.

This is common usage in non-US English to refer to companies.

It's kind of nice, actually - "are" helps remind us that Facebook are a company composed of many people. Using "is" makes it seem more abstract.

> the author messed up is/are

Facebook are a group of people. So you say 'Facebook are' in many countries.

In the US groups of people like companies are considered a single person in their own right. So you say 'Facebook is' in the US.

Is't not 'messing up'. It's a cultural difference.

So then it seems like using "is" in the first sentence would be strange? I do not understand why the usage would not be consistent.

> Facebook is trying really hard to plug...

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