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Comment by anonymouswacker | Hacker News Reader

Strategically speaking, it may be wise for her career prospects & image to appear like she is still loyal to the Corp.

she was not a technical employee, and she will be set for life in ngo, media, or political career fields. facebook has many enemies. she has probably correctly calculated that she will not actually suffer any negative consequences for this; good for her

> she was not a technical employee

Frances has an electrical & computer engineering degree from Olin, was a PM at Google (requires passing a technical interview), was also separately a software engineer at Google, and was the CTO of a startup.

Apparently if you develop other skills than engineering and don't spend 100% of your time doing it you're not technical anymore.

Most organizations do not like whistleblower types. No matter how right or noble you think you are/were, institutions hate accusations of malfeasance and scrutiny and will just pass on you. It's definitely a career-limiting move to go up against any big thing.

I've seen a few people who sued their employers in a public manner (with tech press following etc.) get snapped up by other employers that want to seem open and transparent. Such employees can give an organization an appearance of legitimately caring about such issues, even if they don't in practice.

It works both ways. It's likely that the kinds of enterprise orgs that don't like whistleblowers are the exact kind of org a former whistleblower wouldn't want to work at after past experiences anyway.

She’ll get a book deal, it’ll be okay. I’m certain she thought this through and has political connections that she made deals with. Remember, attacking social media is the same as when politicians sit around and debate Abortion. It’s mostly a non-issue (in the way Roe v Wade won’t ever be overturned, but will always be a discussion point to pretend like you are doing something without doing anything). Politicians won’t be able to curb social media, but they sure can act like they are on top of it. It’s the ultimate punching bag.

It’s the same way we have the stupid debt ceiling debate every few years. We know we’ll lift the debt ceiling, but for one month out of the year, all the politicians can grandstand about the budget deficit.

FB will be a trillion dollar company, and there’s nothing anyone will be able to do about it. The business model straight works, and money talks.

I don't really disagree with what you wrote, but it is pretty defeatist.

> The business model straight works, and money talks.

Yeah, well, so did slave labor for most of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries in America. People had to rise up and demand change that went against money. Until our collective greed abates or society comes unraveled, I guess we'll have to just sit around glued to our screens like the helpless pawns they want us to be.

We were explicitly dividing the union legislatively due to slavery. This was an existential threat to the whole concept of America. I can promise you the vast majority of Americans in the 1800s didn’t give a shit about the morality of slavery.

With respect to our current situation, change won’t come because everyone will realize that social media promotes some of the darker patterns of human nature (narcissism, vanity, compulsion/compulsive/obsessive consumption of gossip/conflict, grandstanding, etc), it’ll change for more … practical/clinical reasons. We don’t want our data and our privacy encroached upon. There won’t be a shred of human enlightenment involved.

Book deal and Oprah interview likely coming soon.

many enemies? Like who please?

why don't you try finding some positive coverage of fb from the last five years; most of the general popular disdain for tech is funneled toward facebook, it has almost no defenders

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