Hacker News Reader

Comment by tmp_anon_22 | Hacker News Reader

I think if Facebook got truly broken up worse apps would take its place, particularly in communities outside US jurisdiction. Say what you will about Facebook, but I believe some random FB employee can't just dive through my personal messages without consequences. Having met several, I believe their data scientists go to great lengths to strip PII and generally secure data sets in transit between teams and outside parties. Don't tell me some 3 person start-up is going to get even remotely close to that level of control.

View on HN

Facebook employee here. A significant chunk of onboarding is driving the message through that if you abuse your powers as an engineer to access personal user data, you will be insta-fired without warning. There are a number of checks in place to ensure that employees that don't need access to the data for their specific work cannot get it either.

Additionally, the privacy review process for new products/features is extremely stringent and time consuming. Product teams have been hamstrung significantly, with some engineers I know complaining that they're not even able to get half as much work done as they used to.

> you will be insta-fired without warning.

And not also sued and reported for criminal prosecution?

Because if someone didn't particular want a job at facebook, but interviewed for the experience and got the job or had been working there and wasn't happy there and was ready to quit-- the threat of instant termination alone may not be that much of a deterrent.

> A significant chunk of onboarding is driving the message through that if you abuse your powers as an engineer to access personal user data, you will be insta-fired without warning.

I think focusing on a rogue employee as the threat it missing the mark. The real threat is the ability for huge corporations to legitimize institutional access to data ("business reasons"), and to fight the legal fight if they are caught doing something wrong. Moral hazards of this mode of failure arguably has much more cumulative societal damage (e.g. Cambridge Analytica).

In other words, I worry less about an evil employee reading my messages than a scaled up corporate machinery milking all my data for dollars that feeds the machine back and also can fight any fight at the courts, DC and the public eye.

> I think if Facebook got truly broken up worse apps would take its place

Facebook has nothing approaching a monopoly on attention, social media, messaging, anything really. All of their products have serious, billion-dollar, hundreds-of-millions-of-users competitors. Even if they disappeared in a puff of smoke I don't think any competitive landscapes would change much.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com