Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

npr.org

1,143 pointssizzle692 comments

I think a lot of people are choosing to ignore that a lot of companies have done things in the past that were not illegal at the time of action. However, those actions were later decided to be made illegal because the behavior was deemed to be antithetical to our values.

For example, Standard Oil did not break any laws in its ruthless consolidation of the nascent oil industry. In fact, it exploited the law to allow it to grow into the monstrosity that it eventually became. In response, Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890 which subsequently prevented the actions that Standard Oil had used to consolidate the market.

There should be no question, that what FB is doing here, while not illegal, is highly dubious ethically.

I really appreciate this point. I often see it as written rules (laws) and unwritten rules (ethics). If something breaks the unwritten rules we have about how people are supposed to interact with each other, then we often codify that rule into law. Many people will say "I didn't break the law" but where many people would say that person did break an unwritten law.

> There should be no question, that what FB is doing here, while not illegal, is highly dubious ethically.

At the same time, I believe some of the stuff FB has done is currently illegal, such as this example in one of the whistleblower's disclosures to the SEC [0]:

> Our anonymous client is disclosing original evidence showing that Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) has, for years past and ongoing, violated U.S. security laws by making material misrepresentations and omissions in statements to investors and prospective investors, including, inter alia, through filings with the SEC, testimony to Congress, online statements, and media stories.

So it could be a combination of them both violating ethics and violating the law.

[0]: https://twitter.com/jason_kint/status/1445248400237244423?s=...

My Mom said it to me with simpler terms when i was little... "we only have laws because of the assholes"

> I often see it as written rules (laws) and unwritten rules (ethics).

I think this is a very dangerous line to walk. A common phrase in law is "the law often allows what honor forbids" and that is because there is a difference between the law and ethics and IMO that is a good thing.

Is it ethical to eat all the cookies in the cookie jar and leave none for anyone else? No. Should it be illegal? No.

Then there is the case of things are illegal, but are not enforced. Leading to the question of what is the law? What is written, or how it is enforced?

How many of you went above the speed limit today?

I suspect that much of what goes on in the stock market is similar.

AFAIK SEC laws and regulations about misrepresentation are only sporadically enforced to encourage compliance by example. Look at what Musk and his companies have gotten away with. Of course, I am all for these disclosures, which of course FB will pay their way out of without admitting wrongdoing. Because corporations manage our government, not the other way around.

If a poem (or book) makes 10% of its readers more likely to become geniuses and contribute to solving world problems such as cancer, but 0.1% of its readers are more likely to commit suicide, should that book be banned by law?

Today's online society is based on posts created by content creators around the world, where algorithms can barely scratch the surface at interpreting their content, humans don't scale in reviewing every post, but statistics such as the above could be arguably inferred easily based on a combination of engagement (click/scrolls) data and attrition/session-revisits numbers.

Which is really problematic, because codifying into law rules and punishments based on aggregated outcomes and impact to us as a society (or to society sub-segments such as teens) makes it a very hard process to navigate between censorship vs. positive overall outcome vs. specific negative outcome on some outliers.

That is the problem of following the absolute minimum standards in life - we (the society as a whole) have accepted that as long as businesses follow the law, its all good. We've accepted that the sole purpose of businesses is to make money within the bounds of the law. While this makes sense logically, it isn't good for anyone in the long run, practically. Also remember that all kinds of unfair laws can be passed, if you have enough money to buy politicians.

We should strive for higher standards, but who am I kidding - we live in a world of "greed is good" mantra.

> the sole purpose of businesses is to make money within the bounds of the law.

It's worse than that. Businesses constantly make risk/reward/punishment tradeoffs and will flout the law according to their estimation of the risk of being caught and paying fines. There are precious few illegal behaviors that bubble up to criminal charges for executives, so the risk is quantifiable in dollar amounts.

The problem is that without laws, what would those "standards" be?

You have to do more than the law? But how does any business in the future know what that is?

The great things about law are predictability and flexibility. If the law is not enough, we can change it. Then everyone is held to that new standard. But having a standard that is not laid out, is the same thing as having no standard at all.

Going into an area where we say companies have to meet an unwritten ethical and/or moral standard is ripe for abuse. Under those conditions, if I show certain messages or ads on my website that are wholly unethical and immoral, but not necessarily illegal in the written law, I'm opening myself up to liability based on violating unstated ethics and morals.

Scarcity exists.

You cannot follow the maximum standards, because you only have so many resources. We can sort our 'recycling' and go through 'security theater' at the airport but those involve necessary trade-offs to real care for the environment or security.

I don't mind when wealth and education allows us to voluntarily do better or more. But there's danger in punishing people using hindsight.

There is another aspect about how new the industry is. It will be some time before we have well-considered laws about things like digital privacy. Tech companies can either advocate for good laws based on their advanced knowledge or be greedy and exploit/promote lackluster laws.

I think you're close to understanding why modern societies that aren't capitalistic always end up failing.

Capitalism (with legal guardrails and social policies) works because it accepts that you can't fully stop greed.

To clarify, can you specify exactly what law you would like made? What do you want to be done exactly?

I would rather take the stance of feed algorithms and moderation logs be PUBLICLY available. Transparency instead of censorship.

Treat addictive social media companies like addictive cigarette companies. Lets see some huge warning labels about how mentally harmful it is to continue scrolling on facebook right on the first result where its unavoidable to see. Lets tax the hell out of social media companies to generate local revenue just like sin taxes. It won't be a huge change but it will be a great starting point and will come with revenue that can fund potentially mental healthcare programs for people damaged by these companies.

Simply disallowing corporations to reach the scale of Facebook/ConAgra/Amazon/WalMart would solve many many problems.

These companies do awful things because:

1. They have few viable alternatives so ethical consumers end up choosing them when they might not otherwise.

2. They have enough money that it is profitable to do bad things and pay for the damage control.

3. They have enough power to defeat regulation and government oversight.

4. They are so large and monolithic that they can hide their internal workings more easily.

5. The org chart is so deep that those in power are psychologically removed from much of the consequences of their overpowered actions.

What do you want to be done exactly?

Public algorithms, or at least some 3rd party review. Ban infinite-scroll on social media platforms. Require feeds to be configurable (users can set to "newest first" or "top picks" or whatever else). I'm sure I could come up with more, that's just off the top of my head.

> I would rather take the stance of feed algorithms and moderation logs be PUBLICLY available. Transparency instead of censorship.

I think that removing CDA Sec 230 protections for algorithmically-curated feeds is the answer. It's one thing to have a basic FIFO feed, it's another to hide or reveal content based on your own internal engagement/revenue targets. At the point where you're crafting bespoke engagement-maximizing feeds, you're creating a gestalt creative work that has a life of its own and that is no longer merely a passthrough for the works of users of the platform.

In other words, consider Facebook's curated feeds as Facebook's speech, not only the speech of their users, so Facebook faces liability for that speech.

I think that's the right approach. Legally you could require every social media company that collects and sells data on its users to advertisers to allow the users to access their internal algorithmic interface (for their own account).

Now, what controls are on the internal algorithmic dial? Apparently that's top secret, but a legal requirement to expose the interface to the users seems reasonable.

Note that this might not affect what ads you get served (that seems more on the private business side, although banning prescription pharma ads makes sense), but it would affect what shows up in your feed, what content you get served, etc. You could write your own exclude lists, for example (i.e. if you never want to see content from MSNBC, FOX, or CNN, that would be your decision - not the algorithms, etc.)

If you get too big, you can't buy your competition (e.g. FB buying IG). Or if you get too big, you have to open your stuff up like email does. Or if you lie to congress, you get penalized. Or if you get too big, you have to make your algorithms publicly available.

I would ban algorithmic targeted media -- ie no personalized feed based on an "engagement" algorithm, for social media just see a chronological feed of posts from the people you follow. This is the most addictive and radicalizing part of social media - and the most lucrative. Much like the nicotine in Big Tobacco's case.

>> To clarify, can you specify exactly what law you would like made? What do you want to be done exactly?

Honestly, social media issues are for the most part a parenting issue. If you don't have access to your kids phone, or know what platforms they are on and who they are talking to and what they're sharing, I'm not sure legislating social media is going to do much of anything. New platforms will pop up, more private networks will be started and suddenly, everything becomes to fragmented to really oversee.

I would create laws that have teeth and address issues like bullying, doxxing, SWATING and other ways people weaponize social media against other people. You start to put some teeth into laws where people are facing serious consequences for bullying and pushing people to suicide, then you might see some changes.

No recommendation algorithms for certain classes of websites.

News feeds must be sorted in chronological order only. Users may selectively filter their feeds if they choose.

No infinite scrolling.

In my opinion if social media is important to society the way it seems there should be a government funded social network for users and businesses. In the USA like NPR and PBS.

The problem is companies selling peoples data and optimizing the algorithms on probability. Instead what if everyone paid some taxes to have a social network which helps people interact and businesses promote themselves, you can get rid of the ads AND the algorithms. Let users customize settings which dictate the algorithm.

> I would rather take the stance of feed algorithms and moderation logs be PUBLICLY available. Transparency instead of censorship.

Ok let’s say that’s now the case. The FB source is now open. What changed? Any negative consequences are still occurring, and if anything, we just have had actors better visibility into what to exploit.

The testimony was about what you expect.

It looks like the recco algorithms will be carved out from the neutral platform protections they enjoy.

A lot of these issues seem difficult to regulate but one that seems more realistic is usage by minors.

What if social media platforms required all minors to have their account associated with a parent account? The parent could monitor activity, institute time limits, etc.

How about an age limit. You have to be 18 or above.

Make spying on people illegal, even when a computer does it to billions of people rather than one creep doing it to one person. If you have to collect info about people to provide a product or service, make it strictly illegal to transfer or sell that info or anything derived from it. Don't like it, get into another business. No one's making you collect people's info. Yes, this should apply to e.g. credit card companies, not just big tech. This'd need some fine points hammered out (don't laws always?) but it's not that crazy.

Do something to make platforms responsible when their "algorithms" promote something. Not just hosting it, but when they promote it. Don't like it? Don't curate, then, or have a human do it so you're sure nothing you're deliberately promoting is shitty enough to land you on the wrong end of a lawsuit. "But how will tech companies show every visitor a totally different home page of content they're promoting (but in no way responsible for), and how will Youtube find a way to recommend Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan videos next to every damn thing? How will tech companies make every part of their 'experience' algorithmically-selected, personalized recommendations of content they farmed from randos?" They won't, they won't, and... they won't. You're welcome.

Make data leaks so cripplingly expensive that no company would dare hoard personal data it didn't absolutely need to get by.

Force the quasi-official credit reporting agencies not to be so shitty. In particular, "freezes" should be free and should be the default, alerts for activity should be free, and access to one's own info should be on demand at any time, not once per year per agency. Or just outlaw the bastards completely, IDGAF.

I dunno, lots of things we could do to make the current personal data free-for-all less hellish.

Freedom of speech also includes from being compelled to speak of things you don't want to, so forcing companies to make their recommendation and moderation systems publicly visible would be eve more of a free speech issue than expecting companies to moderate violent, hateful, or deliberately misleading content.

It's astounding to me that too little censorship is characterized as "antithetical to our values", "highly dubious ethically", and worthy of potential legal sanction in the top-ranked comment on HN.

Is it too little censorship or rather amplifying problematic things and suppressing heathier things because of perverse incentives? FB and Instagram timelines are not raw feeds from ones friends/follows. They are tuned by human calibrated algorithms.

Kids need to eat vegetables and lean protein sources. But if school districts instead optimize for profit they may end up feeding the kids borderline poison like sodas and candy. When companies come to dominate a public space, like huge parts of digital comms, then maybe it's OK to demand more responsible behavior of them.

What if it is not censorship but rather we apply same standards for Facebook feed that we have for newspapers. If a newspaper publishes something false that hurts someone, they can sue newspapers because editors should have caught false information.

Facebook or social media algorithms now optimize feeds for engagement even if information is false or harmful. To me algorithms are new editors. So people who are hurt by these algorithms should be able to sue companies that run these algorithms.

If social media companies want section 230 protection, then they should not use any form of algorithms. Show everything without prioritizing anything.

It's astounding that something like a chronological timeline free of Facebooks outrage algorithms is portrayed as censorship.

And honestly the defense of Facebooks unethical behaviour is following a real simple pattern at this point: Shift blame to the users and make it look like Facebook critics want "more censorship".

Facebook shareholders making a few dollars less (if thats even the case) is absolutely not my problem.

One fairly common pattern seen is that companies develop in a nascent space where there were few rules and were therefore able to basically outrun regulation/ the law that moves very slowly. When that regulation eventually comes it ends up solidifying the monopolistic advantage by essentially creating a moat and closing the door on practices that helped create such growth in the first place. I think when stakes are that high, companies are generally rewarded and incentivized to be unscrupulous rather than virtuous, especially when the unscrupulous actors just become wealthy enough to buy out the virtuous ones.

I wouldn't be surprised if we are currently in the middle of a version of this regarding social media and how privacy of personal information is handled right now.

What would a developed civilization do? I doubt we would be able to prevent the “bubble up and close the door” behavior, so should it also ensure that corporations are regularly rotated (ie dismantled for others to take the space) so only those which can succeed fairly in the current law framework would survive?

This argument is brought up a lot, but it seems the lack of regulation hadn't really stopped FB and Google from monopolizing their markets anyway (or, oligopolizing if we think they're in the same market).

Internet was funny. In the case of Uber, the nascent space was virtual but that was enough for them to ask for the ability to play with the old space with a fresh empty rule set.

Build the moat then break up the corps involved as needed.

Not everyone has the same moral compass. It isn’t even clear that the whistleblower herself was guided by concern for society: she first went to the SEC with these complaints. That’s a weird place to go with concerns about social media’s impact on society. I wonder why? Perhaps…just maybe…it was because the SEC will give her 10-30% of any fines levied against Facebook, leading to a potential windfall of $1 billion or more to her personally.

It takes truly egregious behavior for society to agree that new laws must be passed to outlaw it. The current state of social media says much more about human behavior than Facebook’s behavior. Everyone here would also almost certainly reject the kinds of laws that would be required to make Facebook/IG a healthier place. They would likely involve serious privacy violations, just for starters. So given that legislation in this area has almost no chance of passing, it is unclear what the point of this is, other than a huge payday for the whistleblower.

How about she went to SEC because for certain things that the right place to go to? And the SEC has to fine FB first, which would mean that FB committed illegal acts. That alone is behavior that needs to be encouraged, exposing corporate wrong doing is a net positively for society.

Not that I disagree about the monetary award, but the SEC is one of the federal agencies that has actual teeth these days. Where else would she go, the FTC (ha!)?

It really bums me out to see these sentiments at the top of HN. What to do about "misinformation" is an interesting question for private actors to think about, if they wish, but what the government should do about it is not an interesting question. The debate has been had for a couple hundred years, already. It's over. One side already won.

Enron is another fascinating example, there is an interview with the former CFO where he talks about what he calls "legal fraud" - practices that are highly dubious but technically not illegal [1].

[1] https://youtu.be/goQhGqQtFZ4

There's no such thing as "legal fraud". Fraud is always illegal.

Facebook may not be doing anything illegal, but it is immoral. While morality is subjective, and not enforceable, the public needs to know what is happening, so they can make their mind about supporting a given company.

Facebook is not doing anything illegal only because there are in relatively new space the law hasn't caught up with yet.

i agree, legislating morality has never worked. However, legislation to inform the consumer has worked.

Social media should be forced to inform the consumer when/how they're being targeted. When a user is shown 15 pieces of content it should be crystal clear the platform is trying to tease out an emotional response from them and not just showing them their friend's posts. Maybe a warning label like "This content was algorithmically curated to elicit the maximum emotional response from you".

"In response, Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890 which subsequently prevented the actions that Standard Oil had used to conslidate the market."

This tech company employee (aka the "Facebook Whistleblower") is refusing to share the documents she stole with the FTC.

Although she did share them with several attorneys general.

It appears she does not support antitrust inquiries. Heavy consolidation of "social media" with no meaningful competition is acceptable to her.

Needless to say, some would argue competition provides incentives for large players to improve their services.

> This tech company employee (aka the "Facebook Whistleblower") is refusing to share the documents she stole with the FTC.

Source?

Standard oil reduces the cost of oil, delighted customers, and had already a massive decline in market share by the time the antitrust stuff happened. It was driven by people who couldn't compete.

As someone who has studied this fairly extensively, I believe this comment to be factually correct.

It also didn't hurt Rockefeller in the slightest. To the contrary, he actually became far wealthier post-breakup, possibly because all former business units became more efficient in the light of open competition.

Many of them live on today, such as Texaco, Chevron, and Mobil.

https://historyincharts.com/the-legacy-of-the-breakup-of-sta...

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Standard-Oil

In general, trustbusting almost never actually works as planned, but it always seems like a good idea -- a desperate solution, perhaps the only possible solution -- at the time.

The only thing that tends to work is upstart competition driven by new technology that blindsides the older company.

When it comes to a monopolist, the one thing that we can say historically is that, "This too shall pass."

Illegality is dangerous to define and enforce when it comes to speech. Especially if Glenn Greenwald[1] is right that this is not an attempt to weaken facebook, but to commandeer its power to censor.

Directory of Policy Communications for Facebook Lena Pietch just called for "standard rules" for the whole internet, increasing the danger because whomever would get that power could widely censor unwanted popular dissent and counter narrative viewpoints. Facebook already caused damage doing this by censoring the lab leak hypothesis, which delayed potential lifesaving insights.

The whistleblower also has a political connection that should be investigated; The law firm representing the whistleblower also represent Whitehouse Press Secretary Jen Psaki, and the whistleblowers lawyer Andrew P. Bakaj[2] was the principal attorney representing the whistleblower who filed the initial complaint that led to the Trump impeachment process.

[1] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/democrats-and-media-do-not-... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_P._Bakaj

This is much more concise reporting on what is happening here and makes much more sense.

I disagree that hiring a lawyer must mean there is a political connection, but the way media frames the issue is again predictable and I personally would frame this as misinformation.

We also have seen no documents. Blindly believing media isn't good advice if the problem is allegedly misinformation.

This is an interesting and somewhat irritating take by Greenwald. I'll just put a counterpoint to one point he made that I was careful to get a grasp of what was going on:

Greenwald [Today]> Their control over multiple huge platforms that they purchased enables them to punish and even destroy competitors, as we saw when Apple, Google and Amazon united to remove Parler from the internet forty-eight hours after leading Democrats demanded that action, right as Parler became the most-downloaded app in the country

Greenwald [Jan 12]> The day after a united Apple and Google acted against Parler, Amazon delivered the fatal blow. The company founded and run by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, used virtually identical language as Apple to inform Parler that its web hosting service (AWS) was terminating Parler’s ability to have AWS host its site: “Because Parler cannot comply with our terms of service and poses a very real risk to public safety, we plan to suspend Parler’s account effective Sunday, January 10th, at 11:59PM PST.” Because Amazon is such a dominant force in web hosting, Parler has thus far not found a hosting service for its platform, which is why it has disappeared not only from app stores and phones but also from the internet.

This is kind of along the right lines but gets the details wrong. Greenwald is intelligent, insightful, has good sources and is not afraid to annoy people, so it is tiresome that he has a bad habit of fudging details to make a shiny claim that is not quite right. With another journalist, I'd think what happened is the journalist was under pressure, so wrote up a story whose details they didn't quite follow, but with Greenwald, I am not sure what is going on. My least unlikely guess so far is that he rewards his sources with sympathetic coverage, which in this case he gave to Parler executives.

Some thoughts:

The big truth: The triple whammy from three of the four biggest tech firms, all of which have sophisticated lobbying operations, did indeed effectively cripple Parler.

The biggest error: None of the three companies were in competition with Parler. In my opinion, the businesses of both Google and Apple would benefit from a strong rival to Facebook and Twitter; Amazon has a close relationship with Twitter, so this is a little less clear, but on the face of it AWS should normally benefit from hosting a client. This was pointed out by many commentators on the Jan 12th post, but he repeats it today.

Continued mythmongering: Greenwald's Jan 12th story essentially misses the backstory on Parler's bad relationship with Amazon, who had for several weeks essentially refused to answer demands that they comply with their TOS. There is competition in the hosting business (Greenwald's characterisation of Amazon's dominance on jan 12th was itself an error), but I don't think any major hosting provider - e.g., neither Digital Ocean nor Hetzner have major lobbying operations - would have kept the left the servers up under the circumstances. I commented on this at the time on the HN thread of Greenwald's story - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25759115 - to my knowledge Greenwald has not since given a more faithful account of Amazon's role.

[Today]: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/democrats-and-media-do-not-... (repeating your link)

[Jan 12]: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/how-silicon-valley-in-a-sho... Jan 12, 2021

Good point. The state doesn't decide what's "good" or "bad". We must not forget that.

Laws are useful but are an application of power. Power of who? Of the people? Of some bureaucrats? The answer will not be black and white in most cases, but what's important is not to regard any body that can legislate as a source of moral authority based on that power alone.

And one consequence is not to buy big corp arguments about evil practices "but it's legal!". Yeah, it's legal because it hasn't been outlawed _yet_, because of strong lobbying... b/c of whatever. Never relegate the moral judgement to just "it's legal/illegal".

Same case with Enron. After the Enron scandal the Sarbanes - Oxley act was enacted to strengthen financial reporting practices along with a bunch of new modifications in the accounting principles and guidelines (GAAP).

The SOX Act was considered to be greatest and the most radical update in Accounting since the invention of the double entry method. Governance and stewardship was theorized in Accounting but they were pushed into practice with the SOX act.

Similarly we had the Dodd-Frank act post the financial crisis of '08.

Essentially law is a post-facto phenomenon. We can not be sure what to write into a legal framework unless there is an evidence for the need to such laws.

Hmm ... I'm personally getting tired of this "well, it's currently legal" .. law changes start with moral indignation. We are at that junction now. Although accurate, let's park the legality lines.

"In response, Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890 which subsequently prevented the actions that Standard Oil had used to conslidate the market."

This tech company employee (aka the "Facebook Whistleblower") is refusing to share the documents she stole with the FTC.

Although she did share them with several state attorneys general.

It appears she does not support antitrust inquiries. Heavy consolidation of "social media" is to her an acceptable status quo.

Needless to say, some would argue competition provides incentives for large players to improve their services.

I think she didn't really blew the whistle on anything yet. Since tech and Washington are close, I would expect access to said document anyway and they aren't available to the public. So blind trust is required, not a good recommendation if we talk about misinformation.

The problem is, very often the law is unable to keep up, especially on technical issues. And even when it does, sometimes is way too late. Gates knew it when he asked to implement the AARD code - yes, they were sued, but they settled out of court and made the competitor's product irrelevant. A lot of Microsoft behavior in the 90s was just this: they could get away with it, but it simply didn't feel right.

I think a lot of people are choosing to ignore that a lot of companies have done things in the past that were not illegal at the time of action. However, those actions were later decided to be made illegal because the behavior was deemed to be antithetical to our values.

Which, on good days, is why we have legislatures. To make new laws to cover new situations.

Law is always lagging behind social norms, for many reasons.

Because of that, I don't think laws can change the world, this is the opposite, laws are merely acknowledging the common rules of the majority.

Technology also change the world and we need time to figure out new rules to adapt, in the case of Facebook and other giants, some changes are clearly in need, at least it seems to be a growing consensus.

Laws can absolutely change the world (at least if we take the world to mean one country). Look at de-segregation. It's obviously that the world was segregated before the de-segregation laws were passed. Of course, the laws were passed because there was ample enough support for them, but that doesn't mean that the laws only aknowledged an existing state of affairs. Even more so, the laws themselves helped accelerate the perception of segregation as evil among the majority of the population, whereas before it was just a regular part of life to many (many on the good part of the segregated world, of course).

If Congress invites you to speak without fear of arrest and the main stream media hold you up as a darling then you are NOT a whistleblower. You are doing the bidding of power... If you are exiled to Russia (Snowden) or locked up without trial like Assange THEN you are whistlw blower and dangerous to power. This chick is a shill

Bingo. The whole thing smells fishy. Of course, the headlines were talking about how evil Facebook is because it makes kids feel bad. But digging deeper, you can see exactly how this is meant to play out: More censorship and control by the NGOs and "Fact-Checkers" (since the gov't can't publicly dictate what content Facebook is censoring). But make no mistake, the same players that are calling the shots in DC will now be ensuring the public doesn't see any of that dangerous "disinformation".

It was a good 30 years or so for true free speech that was always the promise of the internet. But those days are gone.

whistleblower : a person who informs on a person or organisation regarded as engaging in an unlawful or immoral activity.

absolutely. To me it sounds like she is exacting revenge on FB for something or may be like the other commenters suggested she is trying to get that whistleblower share of a SEC fine/settlement with FB if one is to come out of this story. Otherwise it is kind of strange turn of heart on her part from profit off the users to suddenly being so caring about the users - I mean she herself founded what is now Hinge dating app https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/hinge/ :

"And like so many dating apps, Hinge asks users to connect their Facebook account to sign in to the app. Remember, when you connect a social media account like Facebook to a dating app, both Facebook and the dating app now potentially collect more information together."

"Hinge definitely shares user data with around 45 other Match Group companies, such as Tinder, OK Cupid, and Plenty of Fish among others. The company also shares data with third parties for purposes such as advertising and analytics."

Industrial ethics can be about ensuring longterm success as well. If a journalist can’t be trusted to keep an off-the-record source unnamed then they will never get another story. They can tarnish their entire organization, so they don’t do it even if they could get one incredibly powerful story out of it.

Your point is a good one, but we should be careful not to equate [edit: completely] Facebook's actions with those of Standard Oil.

If we say that the Sherman Antitrust Act was only necessary because of unethical behavior on the part of players like Standard Oil, we cannot say the same in this situation.

If you consider Facebook's behavior unethical, how do you view the behavior of the millions of people who fund them and provide them such market power? There are many many alternatives to Facebook. But non-Facebook parties routinely force people to Facebook if they want to be involved in an event or receive a notification or provide feedback.

If you would shame Facebook for their behavior, you should also shame others for using Facebook. Users enable Facebook's behavior.

Conversely, if you hold Facebook users harmless, it is harder to sympathize with complaints about Facebook's behavior.

Their are clear parallels between Facebook and Standard Oil. But it is useful to note where there are differences, too.

Standard Oil had gone from >90% market share to < 60% by the time any legislation related to it was enacted. The legislation hurt their competitors, who were catching up using similar business strategies, more than SO.

Agreed. Facebook has a fiduciary duty to it's shareholders to maximize profits. Unfortunately, it's up to the government to create legal boundaries to prohibit the means by which they can do that.

Frankly, I'm not expecting any meaningful legislative response, given US antitrust has blessed the WhatsApp and Instagram acquisitions by Fb as well as Google's acquisition of DoubleClick and YouTube.

If their internal docs show that they know their product causes harm and is engineered to be addictive, it could be a big tobacco moment from a mental health perspective.

> a lot of companies have done things in the past that were not illegal at the time of action. However, those actions were later decided to be made illegal because the behavior was deemed to be antithetical to our values.

What you are saying is literally the opposite of hundreds of years of the rule of law.

If FB did break the law as written, then prosecute them for that in a fair trial by a jury of their peers, but yours (or anyone else's) personal feelings about "our values" should never be able to override the plain language of the law, especially retroactively.

The point they’re making is you don’t prosecute Facebook for something that we think is unjust but is not yet illegal. You make it illegal, and then after that point if anyone continues with the now illegal course of action then you prosecute them. Prosecuting someone for something that wasn’t illegal when they did it would of course be wrong.

> I think a lot of people are choosing to ignore that a lot of companies have done things in the past that were not illegal at the time of action. (...)

The definition of what represents good and evil does not come from what's passed as legislation, nor does the negative influence on society as a whole of a business.

Legislation is also a moot point given that these mega-corporations actively lobby law-makers into not passing any inconvenient legislation.

>There should be no question, that what FB is doing here, while not illegal, is highly dubious ethically.

Why, what exactly are they doing that is ethically dubious? So far based on what I have read of this whistleblower's revelations, I do not have a problem with Facebook doing any of it.

Really? You don’t have a problem with an app that causes 1% of teens that use it to develop suicidal thoughts? By the way, according to the leaked study these teens directly attributed their suicidal ideation to Instagram.

> it exploited the law to allow it to grow into the monstrosity that it eventually became

If law was code, then what they did was hacking.

Hacking is by definition: using something in ways it was not intended to be used.

If computer hacking is punishable, then so should "law-hacking".

> while not illegal

While not currently illegal.

Call your representatives and tell them you find this reprehensible.

Let's make it illegal. We live in a representative democracy.

What is it, exactly?

I don’t personally use FB and don’t have a very favorable view of their products.

I would, however, like to see the same level scrutiny applied to the general American media, especially the news media. FB has come in and started eating their lunch. There’s a deeper problem here, and it feels more like the powers that he want to take down FB.

I’m not denying any allegation made against FB, but why is it that Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and Hollywood get a pass when they’ve been damaging America for much longer than FB has existed?

If the government sees a problem and wants to get involved - great. But let’s hold an equal bar.

I agree, and further it smacks of Manufactured Consent. First, notice the surge in specifically anti-facebook stories over the past month.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=fa...

While twitter and the corporate media are largely absent from the same scrutiny, as you note. They are just as responsible for eroding democratic norms, eroding trust and whipping up the public into a frothing, misinformed rage.

Now this culminates with an impeccably credentialed, rich, Harvard elite `whistleblower` who is largely repeating what we've long known? And who just started a twitter account and web site while on a whirlwind tour. And who is roundly supported by the corporate media and government. This doesn't strike me as speaking truth to power. It's the opposite.

Contrast with Snowden, who came out with new revelations and knowingly took on a great amount of risk to do so. There was no anti-NSA media surge leading up to his appearance. He was not embraced by the ruling class. Rather he infuriated them. That is speaking truth to power.

What we are seeing is the ruling class desperately trying to reassert control over the flow of information. Using facebook as a mechanism to take back control is smart, clearly. Both sides of the aisle want to regulate them. Mark is not a sympathetic character. People want to see a powerful corporation and CEO finally get more than a slap on the wrist. We thirst for a hanging. It appears they are going to give it to us, but I fear we will regret it in the end. As the response will reach far beyond the walls of facebook.

To understand the dynamic we are seeing play out, the book `Revolt of the Public` is worth reading.

“All over the world, elite institutions from governments to media to academia are losing their authority and monopoly control of information to dynamic amateurs and the broader public. This book, until now only in samizdat (and Kindle) form, has been my #1 handout for the last several years to anyone seeking to understand this unfolding shift in power from hierarchies to networks in the age of the Internet.” --Marc Andreessen

https://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Public-Crisis-Authority-Millen...

I've definitely had much darker thoughts after reading a lot of traditional media than looking at Instagram.

This past year, I think immediately back to believing and repeating the grotesque lie that Brian Sicknick had his brains savagely bashed in with a fire extinguisher by Jan 6 rioters. That never happened, but it was major news for a few days. I actually feel a bit violated for believing and repeating something so false.

On the other hand, I haven't had a FB account of any type for over five years, so it hasn't directly affected my personal life.

The elephant in the room here is the First Amendment. The government, legally, cannot do anything to censor "hate speech" or "misinformation" on CNN or Fox News. They also can't do anything to censor "hate speech" or "misinformation" on Facebook, but they can certainly harass Facebook into doing it for them.

Not completely true. Historically mass media was regulated. Lying also isn't legally protected if it causes injury (fire in a crowded theater being the canonical example, libel another).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

Breaking up Facebook would probably be the way to go; it has less troubling side effects than trying to regulate “hate speech” via a clever legal trick.

And this is exactly what they're doing. In effect they're loopholing the 1st amendment. Bring in Zuckerberg, hound him about removing specific "disinformation" under the threat of future political action if they don't comply. Then they get to throw the private company bs flag whenever someone says it's stomping on the 1st amendment.

> but they can certainly harass Facebook into doing it for them.

I believe you are exactly right here, or at least giving them cover to censor more with "the public's blessing."

Both mass media and social media are sleeping in the same bed with the same 'influencers' and 'voices of authority' on a pile of ad dollars.

They can both go fuck themselves.

It looks like the problem here is that CNN, MSNBC, Hollywood, Fox News, etc. are in general controlled by the either the same people or people with the same interests as top political elites. For Facebook, while they are trying really really hard to be the good boys, it's not the case. While they doing a lot of effort to "suppress misinformation" (i.e. prevent any heretical thought from being voiced) they are, by nature, less efficient in this than centralized legacy media. It's not possible to be a heretic on CNN. It's still possible - though increasingly hard - to be one on Facebook. This is going to be fixed, and what you're witnessing is the process of implementing this fix.

Hey I said that. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28762415

When you phrase your argument like that, it comes off as whataboutism.

You are free to campaign against Fox News, CNN, and the like. I will even upvote and share those HN posts if you do.

Facebook gets to say "its the users being polarizing"; where traditional media gets to enjoy libel and slander laws.

If Facebook's editorial decisions rendered them subject to those laws, would that be equal enough?

There are answers to this question that do not easily summarize as "we need more rules about who gets to say what". We gots plenty of rules. Let's apply them fairly and equally for once.

Opinion: Facebook is eating their lunch because humans love being fed belief-affirming drivel for dopamine. It's easy to churn out this content when you have no integrity or regard for the truth.

Tinfoil hat: Bad actors are freaking out because their greatest mis/disinformation tools (Facebook, Twitter, etc) are about to be regulated. The jig is up.

NBC doesn't watch you constantly, know when you're feeling anxious, then target your 14 year-old brain with ads at your most vulnerable moments. There is no comparison here.

The press and media are an old and mature ecosystem that has legal framework around it . These new companies are using free content, and sometimes free moderation but still act like the press. There's something unsustainable about that and sooner or later the society and the law would have to deal with it.

There's something particularly unethical about companies that hide behind "User generated content" and "external fact-checkers".

One thing that makes Facebook distinct from other big Internet companies is that they allow far-right speech on their platform.

That is probably why the Democrats and liberal media are targeting Facebook but not twitter, YouTube, reddit, Snap, TikTok etc.

Have you read the comments on youtube?

I note that the "general American media" is subject to quite a few more constraints than Facebook and others of similar ilk.

At the lowest level, the "general American media" can have advertising pulled if they get too far out of hand. Going further, they have to live with their editorial decisions---see, for example, your own antipathy to them. Ultimately, they can be sued.

Facebook, on the other hand, can offer not to associate someone's advertising with that content, but someone else will surely be happy to fill the spot and FB will be making money on both. Facebook doesn't have to live with its (non-) editorial decisions---that's user generated content, right? And you can't really sue Facebook either.

The bar has never been equal, but not in the way you think.

Will users eventually be more empowered against the publications? All of these publications try to play against human biases to receive attention and sell ads. There are psychological tricks. By now we should have tools that distill whose interests are upheld by an article (liberals, cocacola, war or peace, workers, some researcher/university which is selling their latest drug). We’ll be able to “pagerank” who is upholding who.

One, most of the mainstream news has at least basic editorial processes in place that do a rudimentary check on truthiness. Facebook, along with some of the sketchier news outlets, are the opposite: they profit off (and optimize for) disinformation.

Two, it's a matter of scale. Facebook reaches a far larger audience and has far more detail into their preferences and can nano-target personalized stories for them and corral them into groups, creating perfect echo chambers. The news companies are way too small and in some way irrelevant. Even if they all went bankrupt overnight, Facebook's algorithms will keep working, keep producing personalized truth bubbles. Is fake news a problem in general? Sure. But the news companies are tiny compared to Facebook, and not the immediate and persistent threat to democracy that Facebook is, just because they're much smaller. Even if you take the entirety of local news networks as a whole, they don't have the same saturation and engagement feedback loops that Facebook has.

The Powers That Be are typically reactionary forces, and has long battled the news industry over free speech and censorship etc. Facebook is a relatively new villain, different than the old ones, and way more powerful. Further regulating the news industry won't really deal the Facebook issue since they can keep on aggregating from anywhere and everywhere. It's a different beast altogether.

I agree with holding all media accountable. But the problem with what you say is that for millions and millions 'news' is actually BS opinion shows. On both sides but from my perspective Fox & Murdoch's empire abroad has done far more harm than say Maddow preaching whatever riles that audience up.

The actual press, WaPo, NyTimes (which does great docs, so does Vice imho) have rigid editorial process. Yet I still on HN people say NyTimes is liberal which I don't belive either.

1. The mainstream news pushed numerous stories over the past years without those rudimentary truthiness checks.

2. I disagree with many points in that paragraph: - echo chambers: when was the last time you heard a nuanced "from the other aisle" opinion from a NYT reader; an opinion that wasn't covered in the NYT. Same echo chamber, just a different format. - news companies are small and irrelevant: Seems like this narrative has captured everybody's imagination today. Everybody is talking about it. It might even lead to action in Congress. Are news companies really that small and irrelevant as you claim them to be?

I’d heavily recommend Matt Taibbi’s Hate Inc to learn more about how news media lies, how it addicts people to its consumer product, and ultimately how high bar publications have been long dead. From the book;

“The public largely misunderstands the “fake news” issue. Newspapers rarely fib outright. Most “lies” are errors of omission or emphasis. There are no Fox stories saying blue states have lower divorce rates, nor are there MSNBC stories exploring the fact that many pro-choice Democrats, particularly religious ones, struggle with a schism between their moral and political beliefs on abortion.”

> One, most of the mainstream news has at least basic editorial processes in place that do a rudimentary check on truthiness.

Come on, man. There are just so many counter examples, from the "paper of record" NYT (1619 Project) to MSNBC (Russia nonsense) to Fox News (literally everything) to Rolling Stone (A Rape on Campus) I could sit here all day listing outright lies and untruths published in the pages of mainstream media outlets in order to push an agenda.

Facebook has more rudimentary checks on truthiness than any of mainstream news organizations.

>"basic editorial processes in place that do a rudimentary check on truthiness"

I think this is merely an illusion. The beauty of English is that you can spin a story a dozen different ways while still presenting 'true' facts/details about an event. (Edit: "Fiery, but mostly peaceful" is a quintessential example of this.) You can also shape how strongly the public reacts to something by how much you decide to cover the story. I guarantee you that if the Fall of Kabul happened under Donald Trump's administration we'd still be getting daily news stories about the fallout.

Furthermore, the press has done an excellent job of branding itself as an impartial arbiter of truth, whereas in reality they're just another business run by people with their own motivations.

> at least basic editorial processes in place that do a rudimentary check on truthiness

I mean, you really need to watch a whole Tucker Carlson episode.

The vast majority of what you could call disinformation is directly downstream of mainstream media sources. FB is a platform: the content has to come from somewhere, and it’s usually downstream of these news companies. Should FB be banning Fox and MSNBC? What’s the expectation here?

Have you ever watched fox? People die every day because of their anti vaccine crap. Basic editorial process.

FB is much worse because there's no sense of moderation.

In mainstream media, there's someone who vets content, fact checkers etc. You can disagree on whether you think Tucker Carlson is "factual" but effort goes into not running afoul of legal rules and fear of being sued. Scripts are written, it's edited, etc.

With social media, it's just straight up lies. Not even "a little bias" but just straight up garbage. They hide behind "free speech" and "light moderation" but the reality is that there's no rules like traditional media have to take into account.

> when they’ve been damaging America for much longer than FB has existed

Has modern mainstream media been implicated in major events like the Jan 6th insurrection?

I highly recommend watching the Senate hearing from today, and I'm a person who normally can't stand these things. This was totally different from any other hearing I've seen -- little grandstanding, no partisan bickering, no evading of questions. Most of the Senators seemed genuinely interested in what Frances had to say, and she gave meaningful insights backed by real data.

A lot of what she's saying is stuff that has been generally known in the tech industry for some time -- that algorithmic content ranking amplifies division and outrage. But the detail she gave about actual research quantifying it goes way deeper than I think most of us were aware of.

https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2021/10/protecting%20kids%20...

Strongly agree. She is doing this in a way that no one has really done (certainly not at this level of skill) before: explaining the systemic issues, giving clear and direct answers, keeping the conflict away from the personal, and most of all delivering criticism with empathy and compassion for all involved.

Thats future Senator Francds Haugen to you

Just wanted to thank you for the comment. You weren't kidding; everything she says seems data driven. I especially liked her observation (around ~1h) that FB can determine the real age of users by "working backwards" and doing cohort analyses.

I don't care about Facebook, and am not interested in using it, but after reading the spiral of consequences Facebook has been in, it made me think:

1. To all the governments that want to tighten more control on communication, this is great kindling to show people "we the government should further control tech for your own good".

2. You can hardly get the US gov to agree on anything, but when it's about hating each other as much in the digital world as in the physical world via a common source, everyone's at attention.

3. Facebook is so ill-equipped to handle most of the issues that were brought forth. The expectation that the gov/people places on Facebook =/= reality of what Facebook can deliver. Facebook is running around frantically trying to manage an existing mess of a switchboard, they are not going to pull a miracle.

> 1. To all the governments that want to tighten more control on communication, this is great kindling to show people "we the government should further control tech for your own good".

I'm genuinely shocked that the popular sentiment on HN leans toward more government intervention and control of internet communications. So many comments here are calling for more laws and regulation, but few people can even begin to elaborate what they want those laws to do.

If laws are passed, they won't be targeted at a specific company, nor will they be limited to specific bad actors on Facebook. There is no magic law that makes all of the bad parts of the internet disappear without also having some chilling effects on the part of the internet that you actually like. If anything, large incumbents like Facebook tend to come out ahead of the smaller companies when onerous regulations are put in place.

>> I'm genuinely shocked that the popular sentiment on HN leans toward more government intervention and control of internet communications

I'm not seeing that as the popular sentiment here. I think we just want FB to stop algorithmically boosting stuff in order to boost engagement numbers and to also start applying the rules equally.

> 3. Facebook is so ill-equipped to handle most of the issues that were brought forth. The expectation that the gov/people places on Facebook =/= reality of what Facebook can deliver. Facebook is running around frantically trying to manage an existing mess of a switchboard, they are not going to pull a miracle.

Do we expect a miracle? Frankly, a modicum of decency would be a huge step forward...

1. Yes and no. Look at how the world's autocrats are using facebook: As a propaganda machine with their troll army, they kick it out of their country or shut it down when convenient and facebook is OK with it (e.g. on Turkey). FB has no spine. So some regulation would actually hold the governments accountable for their abuses.

2. Thats because facebook transgresses common decency. People dont argue politics with base insticts in a parliament.

3. The solution is not to dump their externalities to the public forever. The whole idea of "social media" as mob media is ill-thought.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that all successful online sites are damaging to mental health, and have destroyed our collective attention spans, if nothing else. What sets FB apart is simply that it holds the top spot.

Cut off FB's dopamine dispenser, and people will just rush to the next one over. And so on and so forth.

Even Hacker News... I refresh front page several times a day, looking for another hour I can throw away in my short life, making comments like this that I will then check every hour to see how many upvotes I got from total strangers.

Our brain was not made for the current world we live in. And companies are ruthless in exploiting it. We were made to feel this dopamine of approval from our few tribe members, who we would spend all our lives with until we would die in battle, or hunting or from some disease. We live in such a farfetched environment, most people don't realise how much this affects us.

We're striving for the same things that in a hunter-gatherer context would make us happy. Now they don't. We are not meant to be surrounded by strangers, we're not meant to have approval dopamine hits from them and from thousands of them. Our brain must even have trouble understanding what that is. We're not meant to go to some magical device to find a partner to spend the rest of the life with while in the process discarding other strangers, (...)

The title here doesn't match the article headline. The documents make Facebook look bad but so far I haven't seen anything incriminating, in the sense of violating a US Federal criminal statute. Are there credible allegations of something like securities fraud or wire fraud here?

Note that there is no generally no law against disseminating incorrect or "harmful" information.

The section at the end -- "Haugen contacted state officials and the SEC" talks about the parts of the whistleblower documents that show that Facebook was misleading investors. That is criminal under current US law.

I think people are more mad about the other things in the documents--most people are more sympathetic to harm done to kids' mental health than to investors' bottom line, but lying to investors is the one that's illegal.

This might fall under Matt Levine's theory that "everything is securities fraud"

The fact that it's possible to question whether or not any illegal behavior has been revealed doesn't mean that Facebook didn't cause – and is not causing – any harm doesn't mean there's no basis to Haugen's revelations.

Rather, it means that under the current regulatory regime, there are no penalties for behavior harmful to consumers. That the only recourse is to file with the SEC alleging harm to the stockholders is simply a reflection of the fact that the mantra of "shareholder value" has become the only law that corporations have to follow.

IMO Twitter and Reddit cause more mental harm than all FB properties combined.

Yeah this appears to just be some embarrassing things but nothing outright illegal or really even surprising. What company doesn't have embarrassing secrets they'd rather not be leaked? None that I've worked at anyway, and none of those were evil.

They’ve lied to the public and (if the lies were material to investors) that’s securities fraud.

Which says more about the emasculated regulatory regime in the US than anything else. There are no penalties, or none of any real meaning, for causing to harm to consumers or the community, but violating the holy tenet of maximizing shareholder value is almost a cardinal sin.

If you don’t like Facebook just don’t use Facebook, WhatsApp, or Instagram. Don’t know why so many people here think parents and adults are not capable of regulating themselves and their kids.

It’s honestly condescending to think you know better than your fellow citizens if you’re arguing for government intervention.

If you don't like Oxycontin, just don't use Oxycontin, Dilaudid, or Fentanyl. Don't know why so many people here think adults are not capable of regulating themselves.

And yet, regulating off-label usage of opioids doesn't seem to be very effective at reducing addiction either. So perhaps this analogy doesn't work, and we should acknowledge that using social media and becoming addicted to opioids are substantively different?

I have actually done this, and it works great! Would recommend.

Chemical dependency is a real thing with serious medical effects. Severe cases of withdrawal can actually be fatal.

You realize ending the drug war is largely favorable to most people on here right?

Chemical Addiction != scrolling facebook

We haven't banned cigarettes or alcohol, but we have put labels, restrictions and public ad campaigns into place to govern the behavior of their sellers, and to inform the public of their dangers.

I think it is a terrible place where government does not have a responsibility, as the union of the people, to help inform citizens of the dangers of addictive products and to regulate unethical behavior of the sellers of such products.

Your perspective completely ignores the intentionally addictive design of the products, and the network effects of having everyone and every business you know also using it.

There is no amount of tobacco, and probably no amount of alcohol, that has any health benefits. It's completely toxic.

What you're advocating is more like suggesting we might also consider putting labels on cheese about the risk of eating too much saturated fat, or heck, a warning on most green vegetables for people taking Coumadin and other blood thinners.

The warning labels anyway are not placed on these things you mention on the basis of addictive qualities.

The problem with that is what is and isn't disinformation isn't as clear cut as alcohol/tobacco being harmful for your health.

The former could be easily abused to create a certain narrative.

Pardon but network effect much? In my area, FB is a huge resource for community groups and news. It would probably make local parent life more difficult to unilaterally cut off FB.

It's a good market opportunity actually. Too bad NextDoor is basically known as "racist people alerting their neighbors that a black person is out walking their dog" or some nonsense.

While I agree, and while I do that myself, the social pressure to use Facebook/WhatsApp/Instagram is immense. And it's worse for kids.

I have to constantly explain to people why I don't use those, and they still keep trying to convince me that I should.

There are places in the world where these services are the only option if you wish to engage in the US equivalent of simple text messaging. I have been "that guy" that doesn't want to use the platform the rest of the social group uses, and it sucks.

Is it so much to ask for honesty from a company these days?

Because they're authoritarians. There's a large cultural push by people to use government to bludgeon everyone else with their values.

I'm not sure when it switched but it's seems to be more and more acceptable to force people into acting a certain way. It's really anti-american and anti-progressive imo.

A government controlled social media ripe for propaganda seems far more terrifying to me than what's currently on facebook.

FB has money to buy the smartest developers, psychologist, and advertisers to make you buy stuff, keep you on their platform, and make you feel what they want you to feel. Is it as addictive as heroin? Probably not, but if they can do that they probably will some day. Of course they should be regulated.

> If you don’t like Facebook just don’t use Facebook, WhatsApp, or Instagram.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46105934

if you don't like being poor, just be rich, don't know why so many people here think parents and adults are not capable of regulating themselves and their kids.

I had to read through way too many comments to get to a sane one.

The problem is roundabout externalities. If you're a genocide victim in Myanmar, whether or not you stayed off FB is irrelevant.

The other problem is informed consent. Kids don't have the mental defences to avoid the dopamine trap. Whether parents allow the kids is beside the point. A parent can allow a kid to have sex but it's still illegal because the kid isn't capable of consenting.

"If you don't like vaccines..."

At first I thought that was a bit too facile, they have nothing to do with each other, but ... is that true? Other people using Facebook to spread hate and misinformation (including vaccine misinformation) does affect me. They affect who gets elected (or appointed) and what policies get enacted. We're already seeing real tangible effects at the state level, and with the 2022 elections we might see more at the federal level. (That's just the US. The same is absolutely true elsewhere, but it's harder for me to come up with examples that are both accurate and familiar to most readers.) In the sense that they both affect public health - political/economic/social in one case, physical in another - hate/misinformation and vaccine refusal are similar. And for the same reasons, "if you don't like..." is an unhelpful response.

Exactly how does it affect you if you're vaccinated?

I am very conflicted about this situation. On one hand, I recognize that Facebook may be a sort of anger multiplier when people scroll only through content that reconfirms their biases and buries said people deeper into their "truth bubbles". I get it.

On the other hand, the two main pillars of this story: "won't somebody think of the children?" and "the democracy at risk" have been used to justify authoritarian measures all over the world. I do informal surveys of election news in some countries and often find that "the democracy is at risk" really means "people will elect somebody I don't like".

China has recently banned effeminate men from appearing on TV primarily due to a concern that "Chinese boys' masculinity was under attack".

I don't know this person and her politics, so I will not make judgments yet. I'd be disappointed if she is revealed to be an aspiring politician or one of those people who think every company they work at needs to follow their politics and moral compass.

Edit: I have visited her Twitter page and frankly was a bit disgusted. It looks like a corporate page readying to spring to a world of newfound fame through speaking gigs and book deals.

It goes far beyond electing people you don't like and to leave it at that is either brutally ignorant or willfully ignorant. thanks to facebook you have people refusing vaccinations and injesting horse dewormer. in the before times that sort of behavior would be relegated to those crazy few who would read tabloid rags, now we have police and fire departments who are unable to convince their first responders to get vaccinated.

Now do the same for CNN, Fox News and every other sophisticated media company who have all created Skinner boxes to get more eyeballs. The entire system needs a hard examination.

This is straight-up deflection. It makes sense to start somewhere, so why not the biggest player in town? That would be Facebook, with billions of active users. None of those cable channels are even close to 100s of millions of viewers.

I mean, I think this should be an 'and' thing, not an 'or' thing. Don't deflect from FB. But when FB's dirty laundry is aired, air these other groups' too.

Main stream media and social media are recursive.

Social media shares main stream media stories.

Main stream media stories use social media as sources.

Social media shares social media source as story.

Considering the claim that FB committed securities fraud based on the evidence we've seen so far is pretty laughable, it appears her testimony is designed to encourage new laws and regulations for (social in particular) media companies. As such a conversation about the industry at large and its practices makes sense.

None of those cable channels are even close to 100s of millions of viewers. That is not fair at all. TV networks are local, there are only 330M ppl in the US. Also, you are not counting how many viewers TV networks and their employees reach via FB/Twitter.

No, calling out more fundamental and broker problem is the first step to address the root problem.

Otherwise, you are just whacking moles, and pretending that one day there would be no more moles...

Or rather, you indeed are OK with a constant number of moles indefinitely. That's OK. But the premise of the parent is obviously that the moles are growing too numerous and are not staying constant at all...

Oh come on, they’re not comparable.

If you turn on CNN or Fox News right now I know exactly what you’ll see. Because it’s exactly what I’d see if did the same.

What’s on your Facebook feed right now? No clue. How are different types of content weighted? No way of knowing.

Facebook holds a lot more secrets than any traditional media company about what they’re showing their users. Leaks from FB are much more valuable.

What will you see? 24-7, Emotionally charged "Breaking News" which is simply a different fruit from the same horrible tree. CNN and Fox News are just using different methods based on the data they have available which comes from focus groups, Nielsen, and a whole cottage industry that most people are unaware of.

I suspect the reaction from a lot of companies is going to be to lock down internal documents under a need-to-know security model.

Easier said than done though. My wife works for a massive company that now makes you classify every email as external, internal, or confidential and after numerous emails, training and constantly calling people out on things, nobody can still figure out the difference (and thus marks everything far less secure than it is), despite it being trivial.

That's pretty much what happened after Snowden, everything is much more locked down, access is tightly controlled and employees are more closely monitored.

That's why I'm glad he released as much as he did, any followup whistle-blower leak is bound to be much much harder.

Well if the precedent from this is any employee can leak whatever they want, violating their NDA and claim the company is committing securities fraud by having secrets why wouldn't they?

And greatly reduce their efficiency

That helps the public good too.

My tinfoil theory about the outage yesterday is that it was done on purpose, as a way to create an opportunity to "hide" as many internal documents as possible without anyone noticing.

whataboutism...

those deserve their own attention on their own merits.

But not directly relevant to this discussion, particularly if it defers or interferes with the FB discussion specifically.

The system's imploding.

i disagree

What concrete information has been revealed that implicates Facebook in illegal behavior?

How does the "whistleblower"'s stated desires wrt goverment-mandated moderation standards differ from those articulated by representatives of the company itself? Such a framework would shift liability away from the company, possibly reduce their moderation load, and create a significant barrier for entry for potential competitors.

> What concrete information has been revealed that implicates Facebook in illegal behavior?

I'll leave it up to the legal system to decide what FB has done that's currently illegal. However, you don't just blow the whistle when you think laws are being broken. Sometimes you do it to start a discussion that can change the laws.

It's clear from the Facebook Files stories and documents that FB has known about the effects of their product on consumers (especially kids) and 1. lied to the public 2. lied to lawmakers 3. didn't change the product in ways that positively impacted kids.

That's obviously messed up and is not (afaik, ianal) covered under current US laws. I do strongly believe that it should. Platforms have responsibility, and S230 entirely takes the responsibility away from them.

The whistleblower is taking a huge legal risk here. I wonder if the Wall Street Journal has really explained the consequences to the leaker.

In the 60 minutes interview her lawyer cites part of Dodd-Frank that protects whistleblowers going to the SEC. Their position is that the documents are material to investors re:valuation and that Facebook was negligent by not providing it.

https://youtu.be/_Lx5VmAdZSI?t=596

What I don't understand is how this is different than Nike making shoes with child labor overseas in the "global south", etc. That harms children, for profit.

Facebook is a for profit organization. This is the rule with organizations like this. If given enough time, size, and lack of shielding, any corporation will eventually cause harm in some way.

We seem to have less focus on "Nike whistleblowers" or similar, you get the idea.

Is Zuckerberg lying to congress illegal behavior? These docs seem to have made a pretty clear case that he did that.

The claim is FB mislead shareholders about their product and committed securities fraud.

If you can't moderate your platform, you shouldn't have a platform.

This "Boo hoo we can't moderate ... " wipes tears with billions of dollars... is deadly comedy, yet lots of people fall for it.

Firstly, it is sad to say that HN is becoming more negative like the rest of the internet. On the front page there are more articles devoted to the ever-evolving shit-show of American-focused news issues. There are far less links to things that I THINK HN is more suited for: like BGP protocol or building your own ham radio.

That aside, my theory about whistleblowing is that it is a counter-intuitive exercise that results in very little at the expense of orgs tightening their security policies. Case in point: Snowden and the NSA

Leaks don't seem to happen after the first one. One or two small bills to "change a law" doesn't fix an endemic problem.

Facebook will continue after this blip. They have enough money to spin the PR in their favor and to grease the hands of their political-dependents there in Washington.

> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate

> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit

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

Two of the front page articles right now are about BGP - one about exploring it, one about playing Battleship over it. That seems... relevant?

But we all have to live in a world influenced by social media, Facebook is really the most overtly evil of them (What's Good for Zuck is Good for Zuck! seems to be their guiding principle lately - anything for more ZuckBucks), and as it comes out that they've known that what they're doing is evil, and continue doing it? This is relevant tech news.

And, yes, I'm exceedingly "negative" about social media anymore. The downsides in terms of ripping apart society outweigh the upsides of making a lot of money for a few people.

> That aside, my theory about whistleblowing is that it is a counter-intuitive exercise that results in very little at the expense of orgs tightening their security policies.

Oftentimes this is the point. An organization with tighter internal security policies and lower levels of trust internally is significantly less efficient. Over time, this leads to them being unable to respond to competitive pressures and then getting eclipsed in the marketplace. It's not that the whistleblower kills the organization, it's that the whistleblower triggers the organization into killing itself.

This was the explicit goal of Wikileaks and of Osama bin Laden. They knew they couldn't take down governments themselves, but they can make government so inefficient that their own citizens take them down.

facebook, inc. is not just an amiercan issue. For years they have been nefariously bribing other countries to promote their website.

Take for example internet.org internet takeover attempt in India, or a better example, in Brazil facebook, inc. bribes local telcom providers to provide whatsapp access for free ( users are not charged data usage )

their agenda is clear. abuse and lie through their teeth, making as much money and power as possible.

facebook, inc. is a cancer on our global society.

It’s because that blockchain someone made is being used as national currency somewhere (and contributing needlessly to global energy consumption), and because that photo sharing site is causing body image issues, and that ad-tracker is building a digital trail of everything you do, and that ML algo is identifying protestors, and and and …

We are not discussing the shit show, we are the shit show.

The headline on this hacker news entry says "Incriminating". I didn't find that word anywhere in the linked npr article. Is what has been leaked in fact incriminating?

>...allegations involve the difference between what Facebook knew about its platform and what it said publicly. He said misleading investors is a crime under U.S. securities law.

yes, she posits that Facebook materially misled investors and shareholders (illegal in the US) and shared it with the SEC under whistleblower protections.

What are the potential legal ramifications for the whistleblower?

That’s a good question. Leaking internal company documents doesn’t automatically grant someone whistleblower protection. She appears to be trying an angle where she claims that Facebook’s activities have harmed shareholders in an attempt to capture some degree of whistleblower protection, but that’s a huge stretch given that she’s arguing they made choices in the interest of profits without violating any actual laws.

At this point, I think her best chance is to hope that Facebook will simply try to minimize the legal issue to avoid making her into too much of a martyr.

anything FB does against her will undermine the PR damage control campaigns underway. They may wait for all this to "blow over" and then try to go after her once their very expensive campaigns make some impact.

It's more likely that they will collude with other big tech firm and lobby for aggressive legislation against whistleblowers to prevent something like this from ever happening.

Edit -- there are reports suggesting the whistleblower is represented by the PR firm where the current US govt press secretary held a SVP role, so her case is unofficially aligned to the current administrations agenda: https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1445438141775683584

I don't think it is what you are getting at, but she may be entitled to financial compensation if Facebook is fined as a result of her whistleblowing.

> Whistleblower awards can range from 10-30% of the money collected when the monetary sanctions exceed $1 million.

[0]: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2021-149

Seeing as how the actual mechanics of the leak were orchestrated by an attorney, and the documents were sent to an enforcement division of the Federal Government, it would be a pretty fair guess that they have considered it and are on solid legal ground.

Potentially severe for leaking company IP. There are explicit legal protections for whistleblowing to the SEC but I don't believe there is anything protecting one's right to go to journalists with privileged information. However, Facebook would be 100% insane to press legal charges because that just drags this on even longer and reinforce the perception that they're bullies

What could come out in court if they shut her up could be much more damaging to FB's reputation than it's worth, and it'd probably be hard to find a jury likely to convict her when she hasn't directly gained financially from it.

Depends how she play it. From a work perspective she sadly might have a tough time getting employed at other companies. It would depend on how she plays the next bit though. That said I wouldn't be surprised if theres a book that comes out of this given the amount of media already surrounding this.

I am curious what her longer term goals are - she is clearly intelligent, has solid PM experience in the industry and is certainly aware of what she is doing. I'm guessing there is a strategy of some sort at play - maybe leading an NFP for better corporate practices. Best of luck either way hope this changes things in a meaningful way!

This program says there's an act passed 10 years ago protecting whistleblowers who report internal documents to the state.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-frances-...

No more Facebook for her.

My issue is that the government shouldn't allow companies - especially tech companies - to become so big to begin with.

There are ways the government can begin to minimize the growth of said companies. There can be taxes based on the amount of MAU, strictly prohibit any acquisition of other "social media" after a certain size, etc.

In my opinion Facebook should be forced to break up WhatsApp, Insta, etc. In addition, the new broken up Facebook organizations should be taxed heavily (call it a network effect tax, that's progressive and highly de-incentivizes being so huge).

Alternatively, the government could just deem certain internet activity "marked" and make it so all "marked" internet activity to require payment. This would include pornography, social media, etc.

That being said the challenge would be creating a reasonable definition of what "marked" includes.

So you would tax HN based on the number of monthly active users it has?

“Whistleblower” - with the heaviest use of air quotes.

"Facebook does not moderate content in a way that I approve of" is a long way off from "incriminating"

The fact that the whistleblower has connections to the Democratic Party (donations, legal representation), and is calling for more censorship... makes me wonder about the possible ulterior motives

What is "incriminating"? It is legal to remove protected speech, but it's not illegal to not remove it. COVID and election "misinformation" are, for the most part, protected. In fact, the actual headline is just "Facebook's new whistleblower is renewing scrutiny of the social media giant," with no mention of incrimination.

The Hacker News version of the headline is misinformation.

She leaked info to the SEC about Facebook materially misleading shareholders and investors, which is illegal. Reread the full article till the end.

A frustration is how often these discussions are America centric, and the whistleblower herself pointed out how little integrity work is done on most other languages - that integrity software is not even pushed to those regions. The specific example discussed was Ethiopia where facebook has integrity teams(?) for 2 out of 5 languages.

However, its remiss to say this is just a FB thing. Want to work on hate detection in any complex region. The ease with which you can do hate speech detection in English (with all its caveats) pales in comparison to working on commonly shared content in other regions.

I'd like it if he at least addressed the real criticisms face-on instead of at a glance:

>The argument that we deliberately push content that makes people angry for profit is deeply illogical. We make money from ads, and advertisers consistently tell us they don't want their ads next to harmful or angry content. And I don't know any tech company that sets out to build products that make people angry or depressed. The moral, business and product incentives all point in the opposite direction.

The actual argument is that companies like Facebook make money by increasing user engagement and that polarizing and outrage-inducing content is one way to effectively increase engagement (be it deliberate or recommender algorithms simply discovering on their own that this kind of content is effective for engagement).

He also glides over the issue of incentives and the algorithmic aspect. Simply saying "no tech company sets out to make people angry or depressed" is a truism that has no bearing on the argument. Of course their end goal isn't to make people angry or depressed. But is it an instrumental goal? Is it an unintended consequence that they nevertheless find useful, or at least find it too profitable and difficult invest 100% of their effort into mitigating it when it happens?

This is the kind of vague, wishy-washy, feel-good politics/CEO-speak that everyone hates. It's inauthentic and calculated. Have a genuine, honest, PR/lawyer handler-free discussion about this in public and then maybe a few people can at least try to throw your behemoth of a quasi-nation-state a tiny bit of the benefit of the doubt. With this kind of defensive, political approach, you'll do nothing but lose even more of the sympathy you're already so bereft of.

There is something that doesn't sit right with me about the whistleblower. Yes, she is a data scientist which gives her many many extra points. But, she was a PM for 2 years in FAANG. Her actual scope of the what was going on in FB as a huge org, as she's trying to comment on (the "I want to fix FB" quotes from 60 minutes)

Everyone I know who works in FAANG, FB specifically, and PMs even more specifically, really have little idea of whats going on in the bigger picture. They kind of understand their little piece of the puzzle, but even then things can get ambiguous sometimes (and this is intentional, as I understand the inner workings at FB)

Bringing her in to the media and Congress as this star witness that understands exactly whats going on seems misleading. People from outside this world are taking her word like we are hearing from someone at the C-suite or an executive who has been with the company for 10+ years

That, and she seems to falsely claim she is an officially titled co-founder of Hinge on her Linkedin

What's your point here? This lady is a PRODUCT manger and heads up the entire product, in this case Civic Integrity, which was directly charged with tamping down hate on the platform related to civic engagement. She is not a PROJECT manager like what you deal with on your engineering team. She is by definition an expert on this segment of Facebook and you're dismissing her wrongly for being a "PM".

She's a Harvard MBA with a degree in Computer Engineering and experience at Google and Pinterest. She's qualified to have a pretty significant role in the company and rightly so earned the job that she has.

EDIT: I looked into the claim that she co-founded Hinge and it's mostly accurate. She worked with Justin McLeod (Hinge CEO) to build "Secret Agent Cupid" which was Hinge before it rebranded with the launch of it's new mobile app.

> Everyone I know who works in FAANG, FB specifically, and PMs even more specifically, really have little idea of whats going on in the bigger picture

That's exactly the thing about the banality of evil, any individual person working on some small subsystem or component of something in a FAANG, to them it might not immediately be apparent that what they're doing is enabling the corrosion of democracy and discourse. And enabling the monetization of peoples' attention into endlessly scrolling social media feedback loops.

It's the end result of all the work of hundreds, or thousands of 'engineers' and 'product managers' in facebook working together on their own projects, combined together in aggregate, that turn it into a monster.

You can also see the same thing in hardware and software engineers that work on some small discrete component of some piece of equipment in the defense industry. They might not agree with the total product as it's used in the real world (precision US weapons sold to Saudi Arabia and deployed in Yemen, for instance). But all that one engineer sees is the small item or subsystem that is within their scope of work.

> But, she was a PM for 2 years in FAANG.

More like 15 years. I've known Frances since 2009 when she was a PM at Google, where she worked on a few products including Google+. She also spent several years an Pinterest which, while not technically a FAANG, is certainly a major social network that does lots of algorithmic ranking. She is definitely an expert in the topics she is testifying about.

From her profile:

> In June 2019, she joined Facebook. There, she handled democracy and misinformation issues, as well as working on counterespionage as part of the civic misinformation team, according to her personal website.

So she's not just a random "PM" in Facebook; she was intimately involved in what she's talking about. Please stop trying to spread disinformation.

This is textbook ad hominem:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

> attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself

Question her motives or qualifications, rather than the claims themselves.

Let me ask you something: How much of the "bigger picture" did Snowden have?

Because, you know, one person is male and the other is female, and I'd really like to believe that gender has nothing to do with it.

>Everyone I know who works in FAANG, FB specifically, and PMs even more specifically, really have little idea of whats going on in the bigger picture.

First, I disagree with your assertion, based on my experience in, well, working anywhere. Two years as a PM in the field on which she is blowing the whistle is not a lack of credibility (others are saying her PM experience at FB dealt with the kinds of issues that would make her pretty informed).

Second, if what you say is true, then what kind of Hell is Facebook? This behemoth of a company, this pillar of society is somehow so large that only a handful of privileged overseers can possibly understand its mechanics?

Tear it down, then.

Are there any specific parts of her testimony that you disagree with?

From what I have seen, everything she has said tracks correctly, and does not go outside her realm of knowledge.

She has limited her focus very clearly, for example on FB prioritizing reshares vs a known increased risk of violence.

So she is in perfect position say that FB has chosen to prioritize growth over user safety.

Well, yes and no.

While as a PM (or IC) she'd be primarily working on a scoped area of work, the reality is also that she likely didn't come to learn all this on her own. At nearly any large tech company it's pretty easy to get in touch with someone on another team and learn more about their work, etc.

The fact that she's been able to get all this context and significant supporting documentation points to her not having gone about this totally solo (despite her claims).

There's also something to note about things being intentionally ambiguous-- that's by design to prevent most ICs from putting together broader context. But it's not clear that it would prevent a highly motivated employee from amassing broader context. Like I said before, with even a bit more context other ICs can be looped in to fill in the gaps.

You're giving Facebook far too much credit here.

She collected all this info from Facebook Workplace. Nearly everything is available there. It’s very open.

> Bringing her in to the media and Congress as this star witness that understands exactly whats going on seems misleading

I mean, they tried bringing Zuckerberg in, but he apparently just lied, so she seems like the best option to get honest informed answers.

Maybe she read the internal docs and meeting notes? Most employees wouldn't notice an proverbial elephant farm in another department aslong as it didn't involve them directly. Even if it was advertized in mails and on billboards ...

So who do you propose to bring in and testify against Facebook who does understand the bigger picture, shmatt?

Are you arguing in good faith here?

The importance here is she understands the B2C model for revenue which is to test and test some more and let the date optimize your funnel. That’s the story and that method has lots of unintended chickens coming home to roost

So, what, we should just wait until Zuckerberg decides to get his act together one day and admit he's been a wee bit evil?

The whole point of whistleblowing is so the average worker cna tattle on the unethical decisions made by leadership. The C-suite isn't going to volunteer for the guillotine.

There is not much mystery here IMO.

The obvious options: - she went in with an agenda from the beginning intending to get this stuff - she went in, discovered that the sociopathic pattern she'd been warned about and had a nagging doubt about was worse than she though, got the religion, and got the stuff

As an aside,

Facebook hires smart. Both of these and her success are consistent with a smart and motivated person. Isn't that what we're supposed to be selecting for? Isn't drive and high functioning what Facebook is filtering for?

More: isn't setting aside moral misgivings and agonizing, in pursuit of achievement of your mission, EXACTLY what Facebook is trying to filter for...?

Always a shame when the sword cuts the wielder!

But back to the point: does it matter which of these is true?

Not to me, or to democracy; the bottom line is that it takes an action like this to force the endless malfeasance, amorality, and actual destructive behavior into public consciousness. Not least when fighting a machine that seeks to stifle criticism and control narrative: this is indeed exactly what she is bringing receipts on.

The supposition seems to be that she is a plant, sent on a mission to bring down Facebook.

Let's say that's the case.

I have no issue with that, as Facebook belongs down.

I don't care who paid for this skullduggery—especially if it's the US taxpayer.

The GOP has done everything it can to curtail the ability of the state to challenge the power of accumulated capital.

I would applaud a game leveling asymmetric warfare style methods to do the state's work.

Indeed, this would be a remarkable and rare return on taxpayer money, should it bring about the dismantling of their profoundly caustic monopoly.

Let's assume Facebook does invest into policing their platform to the extent necessary for it to not result in political consequences ("misinformation and disinformation"). There's still the rest of the internet. There's still all the open-source tools available that can be used for good or ill. The problem is much larger than Facebook.

I read a line in the NYT article that makes me judge all software engineers at FB ~~~~“She didn’t know how basic stacks worked,” wrote one Facebook engineer, referring to a term used by the engineering team to describe how data is structured in computer programming. He said all of her testimony should be disqualified.~~~~

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/10/technology/facebook-whist...

This seems to be a semi-comprehensive discussion of the findings: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039

Can anyone provide links to the actual documents?

For anyone like me who actually likes keeping up with friends / signing up to groups and events on FB, check this FB alternative out: https://mewe.com/myworld

The subscription based revenue model by itself makes it hugely different from FB and unlikely to evolve similarly. And while there are of course network effects etc. , this one seems surprisingly large already, so it might just have a chance...

Heaven forbid parents be held responsible for their kids' mental health. We saw this with rock 'n roll, video games, and marijuana. Your kid saw someone possibly wearing a more expensive outfit on social media? Scarred for life, right? Imposing stricter age verification to clamp down on trafficking and the like is perfectly reasonable, but this social media demonization is the latest moral panic, and I hope it dies down before Congress does something stupid.

Am I the only one who found the Facebook Files reporting very overwrought and stretched? There were some issues and red flags in there, but mostly it seemed... not that bad?

Appears to be the emerging consensus at least at hacker news.

How do you see the files?

The link claims that thousands of documents were shared. Wonder if we will get a list of what these were at some point - perhaps just title if not the full docs.

why would you reveal yourself if you don't have guanareteed protection?

Facebook likely knew the identity of the leaker right away. There was little advantage to maintaining the illusion of anonymity at this point.

She went through the FTC which adds a layer of potential whistleblower protection.

I think FB is having its MySpace moment.

From what I remember, right around the time FB was picking up, MySpace was facing a lot of scrutiny especially around predators preying on children, which was one of the main, if not the only, reason for MySpace's downfall.

The time is ripe for a competitor to enter this space.

> I think FB is having its MySpace moment.

No. Beyond USA, Facebook and its app ecosystem is used by people all over the world as a way to do business, this is especially true in developed country, people sell goods via Facebook, adversative and communicate to their customers via Facebook... MySpace never had as much reach and was never central to anybody's life. For many people all over the planet, Facebook and Whatsapp are the only apps they use. A lot of people on HN, because they are westerners, completely fail to understand that and only see how Facebook "fails to moderate the speech they don't agree with".

> MySpace was facing a lot of scrutiny especially around predators preying on children, which was one of the main, if not the only, reason for MySpace's downfall.

No, Myspace failed mostly for racist reasons, ironically, when young white educated people left Myspace for Facebook when the latter was deemed, and I quote, "less ghetto".

As a technologist, to me this is technology being disruptive without sufficient control. In this case disruptive to human communication. And FB doesn't also have a comprehensive suite of human ethics sufficiently in their loop.

Why did FB do this: She identified a disconnect between the FB Civic Engagement team recommendations and FB acting on those recommendations, in one of the 60 Minutes videos.

She says people at FB aren't trying to be evil, however:

> "... also detailed how she says Facebook quickly disbanded its civic integrity team — responsible for protecting the democratic process and tackling misinformation — after the 2020 U.S. election."

What ethics does FB corporation stand for, factually? [Spare the cynical "profit" ethic - other than that.] Is it "connecting people for .. " some reason?

Today's hearings indicate an evolution to COPPA, at the least, may be a legal outcome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvYB9_PR3sQ

I mean disbanding the civic integrity team after a huge civic event seems reasonable? It could have been the team was more of a task force and comes together when large events occur. We don't really have any/much insight into how they spun up a war room for the 2020 election.

A related situation might be how Lyft/Uber have massive war rooms and special ops teams to handle Halloween and New Years (massive heavy traffic events on these platforms). There is a special ops team and several marketplace teams that get pulled in, but they get "disbanded" and go work on more standard things after

Not to defend FB, but could we please dispense with the notion that she's an actual "whistleblower" at this point? She retained an ultra expensive law firm (same lawyer as in Ukraine-gate), a PR firm, got 60 minutes interview, got verified on twitter within 2 days, got a congressional hearing within a week, and is currently organizing a PR tour in Europe. It's pretty clear this is being funded and directed externally, in a coordinated fashion, in an attempt to ensure Zuck's full compliance ahead of the midterms, without which they are going to lose. Greenwald wrote about this on his Substack earlier today: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/democrats-and-media-do-not-...

ShareBlue shills are out in full force: first downvote within half a second, a personal record.

I'm not outraged or surprised by the revelations. Everyone knows there is toxicity on Facebook and other social media products.

Social media is sometimes toxic because people are sometimes toxic. Moreover, people are drawn to toxicity because it is grotesquely fascinating. This is also the case for movies, video games, and other media; much of it is anti-social and misleading.

Condemning Facebook for the toxicity of some of its users is like condemning the manufacturers of mirrors because you don't like what you see in them. If you are appalled by society's propensity for producing and consuming toxicity, then consider directing your attention to shortcomings of our education and healthcare systems rather than a company that is simply providing a useful service to its users and value to its stockholders.

FB was not censoring enough harmful information and users, so now they have to really censor harmful information and users.

I suspect this will be downvoted into oblivion, but this just seems fishy and convenient.

EDIT: I removed a misquote from this comment after another user pointed out my mistake.

There do appear to be a few legitimate concerns worth investigating, but it’s starting to feel like the media has sensed that Facebook is the villain du jour and they’re throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. These stories seem to dance around the subject of what exactly Facebook did, but instead focus on the existence of a whistleblower. If there was a story here, I feel like they’re working hard on overplaying their hand at the risk of losing the audience once the initial frenzy wears off. That’s fine for media companies who can move on to the next bogeyman, but it’s not going to help the underlying cause.

Did you actually read the article or are you just trying to create controversy? That quote comes from a Facebook spokesperson trying to push back against the negative attention.

> Facebook issued a lengthy statement from director of policy communications Lena Pietsch titled "Missing Facts from Tonight's 60 Minutes Segment."

> She pointed to Facebook's investment to monitor for harmful content; disputed the way Facebook's own research on teenagers' mental health has been reported; and rejected the claim that the social network has furthered political polarization.

How can you say "If there was a story here, I feel like they’re working hard on overplaying their hand at the risk of losing the audience once the initial frenzy wears off." when you have clearly demonstrated that you didn't bother to read the story in the first place and just like to cherrypick quotes out of context to prove a point?

EDIT: And now the OP has edited their post but still stands by their claim that this is a nothingburger, without evidence this time. For context, the OP originally quoted "She pointed to Facebook's investment to monitor for harmful content" out of context as evidence of something good that facebook did but this article is trying to trump up into something bad.

I have to say it's extremely bad form to retroactively completely reedit your post so that your original statements (which were shown to be wrong) don't show anymore.

> Facebook issued a lengthy statement from director of policy communications Lena Pietsch titled "Missing Facts from Tonight's 60 Minutes Segment."

You are quoting something Facebook used as a defense

Funny how those articles are popular, hating on big tech creates high engagement. Haven't we heard that argument before?

That was a quote from Facebook’s official response to the leaks.

The display ad on mobile cuts the article in a really odd way.

It was pointed at by PR director, of course she tried to find some good things about FB

Frances Haugen stands to earn hundreds of millions to billions of dollars from the SEC whistleblower award. That seems relevant to the conversation when she's accusing FB of prioritizing profit over the public good. What are her priorities?

In terms of teens' mental health personally I feel that school affected me more negatively than social media. I would be surprised if the majority of those who responded to the surveys didn't feel the same. It seems the likely result (if any) of all this will be to further entrench FB by making onerous regulations that only they can afford to comply with.

Text only link: https://text.npr.org/1042921981

"Whistleblower" more like a Plant.

BTW: Mark where are your "i give 99% of my wealth to a good thing?"

Imagine planting your own leak to claim you don’t censor enough to justify your plans to censor more.

Time to talk about Section 230 again?

Not surprised after seeing "aliens are our ancestors" ads on FB for a while.

hmm, without facebook.com, I would surely would not have been able to catchup with my old schoolmates, with me having left the hometown 20 years ago.

>Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages

Ruh-roh!

Imagine unironically whistleblowing and stoking outrage that the censorship isn't enough.

It is bad that the company knew that Instagram is harmful to teenagers' mental health and still marketed to them anyway. But "Facebook doesn't do enough to stop the spread of misinformation" is the most ridiculous narrative on something like this I've ever heard, and honestly I'm not surprised such a narrative got a 60 minutes special. The problems I have with Facebook are the real problems, like how it is designed to get people addicted and steal their lives from them, how Instagram is designed to instill envy so as to maximize use. These are real problems, bad problems. "Facebook isn't doing enough to prevent vaccine hesitancy" is not on anyone's radar that seriously cares about the effect Facebook is having on our societies, the only people hammering on this narrative are misdirecting at best, working a propagandistic angle most likely.

Anecdotally, all of the people I know who are addicted to FB (and they were before COVID) are also all anti-vax.

The government doesn't belong in the bedrooms of the nation, but somehow should decide which meme graphics two adults can share online. Lets Go Brandon.

Meta: Be warned that anyone who is anonymous and commenting on the validity of the whistleblower, may be speaking in the interests of facebook and spreading disinformation.

This story is on the current frontpage with 3 seperate threads, two even linking to the same outlet (NPR). When you go into the threads criticism of this call for greater government regulation of speech is met with personal attacks and other fallacious arguments. Might be just humans being overly excited humans, but this sure seems very organic.

My $0.02, but it seems like the moderation team (dang in particular) has been less active over the last 24 hours.

Usually there are reminders in large threads to click the "more" button to see all comments, but there was no such comment on the huge "Facebook-owned sites were down" post yesterday. They usually also merge duplicates and add top level comments with links to the other conversations taking place on the same topic.

The moderation team usually does a lot to reign in problem behavior, but there seems to have been a lot questionable comments making it through lately.

I have also noticed a lot of comments by users with "throwaway" in their usernames - seems like a shift in who is using HN and how they are using it.

I assume not all of it concerns relevant information. Therefore I ask myself why not leaking only information relevant to the public?

A ‘whistleblower’ who claims FB isn’t censoring enough?

Isn’t manipulating and curating political views enough?

Gimme a break...

This is like something you’d read in the Gulag Archipelago.

She is not arguing for censorship at all. She's actually arguing that content-based censorship doesn't work because the AI algorithms are so inaccurate.

She is arguing against algorithmic content ranking, and in favor of chronological feeds, as well as other measures that do not attempt to judge the content itself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com