"If the best Facebook can come up with is this disgusting attempt at character assassination, Haugen is telling God’s own truth. We should listen to her."
A pretty powerful closing statement IMHO.
A pretty powerful closing statement IMHO.
This doesn't sound like character assassination, it's Facebook claiming that she wasn't informed enough. It would be like the NSA telling us not to listen to Snowden because he didn't actually work on the programs that he obtained documents about.
Perhaps it's premature to call it character assassination, but we've seen this play out quite a few times.
As in the company provides "background" information such as seems to be the case here. Of course, this is really the company framing the conversation and deflecting the criticisms without addressing them.
I see the discussion here is largely fixated on whether this constitutes a "smear" or not. So, it seems to be working from Facebook's point of view as we are not discussing the actual allegations against them.
Despite that, not everyone has the will to connect these dots.
From the congressional hearing today, she did not answer questions beyond her expertise [1], and she had over a decade of relevant experience in Engagement Based Ranking algorithms [2], which was largely the focus of the hearing.
And the use of the term "God's own truth" feels like a really underhanded and unjustified rhetorical trick. To use a analogy, It feels like they are declaring a winner during the opening argument of the prosecution, before the defense has even had a chance to fully respond: "If Facebook had evidence, it would show it." Doesn't the author realize that kind of counter evidence will come later?
No, the author doesn't hate Facebook, nor does the "whistleblower". This isn't being drive by hate, it's being driven by love: love of government-mandated censorship. They're not alone, either, Zuckerberg himself is a huge fan; that's why his pushback here was so weak. Facebook was running TV commercials last summer calling for tighter legal restriction on social media.
Tremendously convincing.
Do tell.
If there is no such thing (i.e. no objective source) why would one use any term for it?
Why would one modify truth to be "god's own?" Is it a rhetorical claim to the authority/authenticity of an unseen third party?
What is relevant, is the documents, which are not being released in full. Only after they are will we see the full picture, so anything happening before that is just manufactured narrative to serve someone's purpose.