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Comment by phantom_oracle | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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