Hacker News Reader

Comment by 38932ur98u | Hacker News Reader

Somebody explain this to me, as I've never worked at a large company. Facebook has tens of thousands of employees. How is more not known about the extent that they track you like this (and other slimy practices)? I imagibe if somebody leaks something it would be impossible to pinpoint who exactly did so. Does really nobody whistleblow?

View on HN

I read a thread on Twitter about this. It's an interesting take by the guy who used to be CSO at Facebook, has since resigned, and at some point commented that Zuckerberg should step down [1]:

https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1185954967086981125

[1]: https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/24/18637823/alex-stamos-fa...

Because the company is large and the churn in the app is very high, it is hard to keep track of what's happening across the app.

Does Facebook activate the camera during feed? The answer may depend on which user is logged in (A/B test), which device is being used, which version of the app (weekly releases), etc. A definitive answer may depend on when you ask, or not exist at all.

Maybe this is the default behavior, but it's possible that this is an experiment that Maddux happened to fall into. You can imagine that Facebook would be interested in gauging facial reactions to feed items.

It also may legitimately be a bug. It's reasonable that if you navigate to a camera surface, and then back, that the camera is not turned off. Because Facebook releases so often, the cost of bugs is reduced, so the number of bugs rises.

(Not trying to defend Fb here, simply answering the question.)

Another factor is that for a lot of people the value of their comp is much greater than any reward they might receive as a whistleblower.

Why rock the boat when you can keep your head down and keep getting $500k/year? At that rate you can retire comfortably after 5 years.

I work for Facebook.

Most of internet articles about Facebook is complete trash and over exaggeration. And most HN commenters are paranoids.

There are no leaks because there’s actually nothing to leak. Thousands of engineers routinely perform thousands of experiments on different features (including both UI and data), and there’s no mastermind who designs or even approves all these changes. Sometimes bugs happen, sometimes bug in data handling happen (like tables joined which are not supposed to be joined).

Also, I don’t know about Facebook’s significantly slimy practices. Facebook collected my phone number and matched it to something? I don’t care, because the worst can happen is I will get more interesting ads. I know that Facebook (despite these endless accusations on HN) does not sell data, my credit card won’t be stolen, I won’t get unwanted phone or email spam, and that’s good enough for me.

Besides refuting some maybe overly dramatic criticism, you also have nothing to hide. Why are you using a throwaway account?

So ironic. Exercises his right to privacy/anonymity but questions those that lament the loss of theirs.

You must be talking about CA again, the issue resolved many years before the first post on HN. That’s because there’s really nothing against FB.

Please keep personal swipes out of your comments here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Company policy (literally almost any company) prohibits talking about the company publicly. Simply because any words can be misinterpreted by bad journalists looking for the next sensation.

So Facebook has something to hide. And you are exercising civil disobedience, which means that you also have something to hide. This argument isn't just sophistry. Think about it.

It was fine to ask a sincere question about a throwaway account, but please don't push the point. People shouldn't be hounded for sharing information about situations they know a lot about, such as their employers. We don't want to disincentivize people from showing up to add information, and if they feel a need to create a temporary account to do that with, that's fine.

Routinely using throwaways is not fine, though. All this is in the site guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

"because the worst can happen is I will get more interesting ads" -> euphemism of the year.

> because the worst can happen is I will get more interesting ads

I guess you could also define this whole scandal as millions of users getting "more interesting ads" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...

The problem was solved several years before journalists learned about it. When Facebook grew, they started working with data more carefully, that’s it.

We discuss it over and over again simply because people have nothing serious to use against the company.

This actually anecdotally confirms the thread from Alex Stamos I posted about in reply:

> There are a couple of big differences between Uber and FB that make whistleblowing less likely, namely 1) a much stronger HR culture and 2) the fact that even internal critics see external criticism as often unfair or incorrect.

> [...]

> On 2), there is a lot written about FB that is seen as directionally correct but unfair or incorrect in the details. This reduces the trust internal critics have in the external press; nobody wants to leak and have their statements twisted to fit the media's narrative.

> Even to internal Cassandras, it is clear that there is a moral panic around Facebook that reduces the pressure in the media to get the story straight. As a result, 20-70% of the details in any story are wrong and that is clear to most employees.

> For example, the NY Times has done a number of privacy stories that are directionally correct, in that the proliferation of partnerships and APIs creates a real data protection challenge.

> However, sloppy details like the idea that Netflix is reading your Messenger messages or the mixing of real data-sharing with APIs that allow for 3rd-party clients makes it clear to employees that the story is getting mangled.

> Likewise, the discussion of Myanmar. This is a spectacularly complicated situation that a lot of Facebook employees feel sick to their stomachs about. But there isn't a clean issue to blow the whistle on nor does the external discussion encourage FBers to participate.

> [...]

> The media portrayal of the situation as simple or FB as not caring does not match up to the experience of the hundreds of people working on this problem, which makes it much less likely that they will talk to the press.

> This doesn't mean the media should go easy on FB, but if you portray mistakes as intentional decisions made for the most venal of reasons, then don't be surprised when the actual people working on these problems don't DM you for your Signal.

[1]: https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1185954967086981125

Reply on news.ycombinator.com