The Facebook whistleblower is heroic and terribly wrong | Hacker News Reader

The Facebook whistleblower is heroic and terribly wrong

mattstoller.substack.com

67 pointsnull_object53 comments

I'm not sure we should be taking the whistle-blower's policy recommendations too literally, since her recommendations about what to do are going to directly influence whether people think she's a credible witness. It's much easier to say "Oh I think we should just do better" whilst also saying "And here's how facebook murders babies" rather than "We should shut down facebook". Because if you say "We should shut down facebook" when you present evidence that facebook murders babies, people will just say "Oh well you would say that, you just want to shut down facebook".

I think this article misses the main way we got here today. The reason we are here today is because Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram are 1 company. This should never have happened. It was totally anti-competitive. Social media will innevitably have network effects, so it kind of makes sense that you'll end up with giants. What doesn't make sense is that you then allow that giant to go around stamping on all its competitors. What is the best competition for Instagram today? Tiktok. Why is Tiktok the best competition? Because it's the one company facebook can't buy. Facebook has extended its life by acquiring any competitive threats or copying those that it couldn't. Simple traditional governance around mergers could have avoiding this situation. Social media companies will grow big through network effects, but until recently, they didn't stay big - because the natural ebb and flow of users meant interests change and different demographics want to differentiate themselves.

You wouldn't need to regulate facebook if it had real competition, because its influence would be smaller and it would face real competitive pressure to improve its platform.

> You wouldn't need to regulate facebook if it had real competition

And it would if the existing regulatory bodies did their jobs. But apparently they can be dodged with a truckload of political contributions.

As would any future regulatory body that legislators come up with. Ask people who live downwind of a chemical plant if the EPA works.

> But apparently they can be dodged with a truckload of political contributions.

I like your rage. I think it's mis-targetted though. In the Reagan era, Supreme Court nominee & Nixon criminal Robert Bork got put in charge of the FTC, and re-defined Anti-Trust to only apply when consumer prices went up. Any other kind of monopoly was ok. Because of this, the FTC hasn't has a regulatory basis to manage jack nor shit for 40 years. This isn't just the typical dump-truck-loads full of money problem: this is a 4 decade old crisis of the government being unable and unwilling to govern.

Cory Doctorow has many great threads on this all, but here's two:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/10/borked/#zucked

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/06/calera/#fuck-bork

America needs to unwind the damage of Borkism, & start trying to regulate itself. Right now, we cannot.

Worth remembering that Paul Graham defended the Facebook/Instagram merger as the expected, non-malicious outcome of a healthy startup economy - see under the heading "Understand" in http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html .

I'm inclined to believe that Paul Graham understands the startup economy well, and therefore that this isn't a problem unique to regulating Facebook, this is a problem that will keep happening, in many ways, if regulators / lawmakers leave the startup economy as it is.

I feel like this is a variation of the Two Generals Problem, but instead of it being about communication, it's about accountability:

"You have many people. One of these people gains more power than the rest. They can abuse that power, so there needs to be someone to monitor that power, but _that_ person can abuse power. How do you effectively hold everyone accountable about abuses of power without requiring that absolutely everyone become a regulator to create a loop?"

I think the situation you are outlining is most aptly described by the Roman proverb: "quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"

Funny how a crude joke about someone's wife liking to sleep around almost two thousand years ago gets applied to a conversation about legal frameworks and regulation of one of the most significant corporations in the 21st century world.

I'm not so sure. I think real competition would just force Facebook to be even more awful - more rage, more racism, more everything that drives engagement and lets them sell ads.

That is an interesting topic. Does their lack of competition mean that they can push more rhetoric to get engagement or would a more reasonable competitor cause them to calm down or turn it to 11?

Ultimately can you drive engagement with reasonable articles?

Lots to think about there

That would accelerate the flight from facebook. We put up with the awful aspects of it because there are no alternatives that perform the same function in a less awful way.

Why does a whistleblower need to give any policy advice? If they have suggestions I suppose that’s fine but I think that goes beyond the responsibility of a whistleblower.

All a whistleblower needs to do is… blow the whistle. We have existing mechanisms to address the problem or we can create new ones.

I certainly hope nobody is waiting to blow the whistle until they have a solution.

> The reason we are here today is because Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram are 1 company. This should never have happened

That’s not Facebook’s fault.

It is, though.

They deliberately bought or squashed anything that could compete in their space over the years.

This is anti-competitive behavior and it should have been stopped years ago.

Why is buying companies anti-competitive? Pretty much every big tech company does that. 95% of exits and funding in tech would not happen if getting bought by a big company was not possible.

When companies buy other companies, they create consolidation in their respective markets. This isn't good for customers or for workers.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2019/08/29/business...

I personally don't understand why, as a whistleblower, she should also be proposing policies. "Hey there's something wrong" and "Here's how you fix it" seem like they should be very distinct in these cases where someone could easily use their leverage as a "high profile" whistleblower to push a particular political agenda.

People ask for Snowdens take on everything too. I think it's just that as a whistle-blower they're somewhat of a verified good guy who also has domain expertise.

I think legislators want to hear opinions from people that have experience in the subject matter.

I understand the objection, but I think she is a subject matter expert having worked for Facebook, Yelp, and Pinterest. Also, while at Facebook, she worked in their civic integrity department, which is supposed to handle issues like what she was testifying on. Legislators can either take her suggestions or ignore them.

Video that discusses her possible biases and the trojan horse suspicion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRjSjjyfN1U

Louder with Crowder? Really?

Well he certainly is familiar with bias. I'll give you that.

So... nothing to refute? Just don't like the guy?

Post a link to content posted by someone who isn't a bully and a homophobe and I'll look at it. Crowder is a cut-rate Rush Limbaugh without the gravitas and he has the same approach.

I don't have any opinion about him as a person but as a source of information he isn't reputable and I'd not waste my time listening to him.

Is it not what is said a concern for you rather who is saying it?

Your comment on why you’re not viewing it:

> someone who isn't a bully and a homophobe

Your explanation of your own comment:

> I don't have any opinion about him as a person […] as a source of information he isn't reputable

I think at some level, you recognize that you’re ignoring a source based on your opinion of him as a person, so you feel the need to claim the opposite.

You’d think if your second paragraph were true, you’d have commented on his failures as a source and not him as a person as the basis of your objection in the first paragraph.

>Post a link to content posted by someone who isn't a bully and a homophobe and I'll look at it.

That's.. Not coherent. GP didn't ask you to look, you volunteered that you don't want to look.

Just because you don't think she goes far enough doesn't mean you need to tear her down. It seems disingenuous if you're a self-described reformer like this author.

Why is it Frances Haugen's responsibility to fix everything? Can't the author start with "yes, and"?

I guess it just seems unproductive to use such a click-baity title.

> I guess it just seems unproductive to use such a click-baity title.

Titles that aren't 'click baity' don't get noticed anymore. Sad but true

> First, we need to ratchet back Section 230 as Haugen suggests (or even further), which would simplify the business model.

I give the [EFF] money not because of the bad players in this whole mess, but because of the people with good intentions who aren't as enmeshed in the grit of how stuff works. Every revision of section 230 I've seen proposed would be catastrophic for things entirely unrelated to the intent of the revision.

[EFF]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks

(though I'd agree with the top-level take that drastic anti-monopoly action needs to be a piece of the pie here)

> First, we need to ratchet back Section 230 as Haugen suggests

I don't understand how Facebook can get Section 230 protection if they moderate your feed? How is that not publishing?

Are you referring to the current state of affairs, or the state of affairs on a hypothetical world without 230? In the world with 230, Facebook is not considered the publisher because they are a "provider" of an "interactive computer service", and the content they are showing is "information provided by another information content provider." Therefore they are not treated as the publisher. That is what s230 does.

In a world without s230, whether they moderate or not, they'd be liable as a publisher for anything their service shows. They would have to dramatically restrict the spread of information to limit risk of litigation, e.g. in the case of people who might sue them for an individual user's slander. Note that this same issue would apply to anyone running newsgroup servers, website hosting, forums, wikis, etc. Republishing UGC would probably become economically challenging.

> the content they are showing is "information provided by another information content provider."

But they aren't. They make decisions about what goes into someone's feed. When they started out and the feed was just a list of items posted by people or groups you followed then it was just 'showing' content.

Using an algorithm to show people content that they will engage with more is not 'showing' something. It crosses the line into publishing. Facebook makes a decision about content

> They make decisions about what goes into someone's feed.

That's irrelevant to the law. The information itself is provided by another information content provider (i.e. whoever posted the status initially). That's who is liable for any damages caused by the content under the law today.

> Using an algorithm to show people content that they will engage with more is not 'showing' something.

All possible mechanisms of showing someone something with a computer involve algorithms. Even if you choose randomly, that is an algorithm. Same goes for sorting by date or alphabetically, since any sort is an algorithm by definition. There's nothing in the law that makes a special case for algorithmic decisions about what to show.

> It crosses the line into publishing.

I'm not sure whether you're expressing a preference here, or a belief about the legal status of Facebook's procedures. In case it is the latter: in fact, it does not cross the line into publishing, legally.

Allowing or not allowing something that someone else said is not the same as saying something yourself

I’m amazed at the amount of conspiracy theory support I’ve seen about her here on HN (and conspiracy theories I’ve seen on HN in general lately). Am I the only one perceiving an uptick in this stuff?

Articles about Facebook bring the worst of this site.

No, I'm with you on that. There has also been a massive uptick in extremely polarized political statements and beliefs, as well. Not sure why.

The two major political parties in the US (the majority of the audience of this board, for better or worse) are pitting their voterbases against each other in a desperate bid to retain their power in the face of undirected populist sentiment spread via Internet.

"The Facebook whistleblower is heroic but I think she got one thing wrong"

would be a better title.

I don't want to make any wild guesses, but something about this particular whistleblower case makes my spidey-sense tingle. Something is amiss. I suppose time will tell.

Is it the fact that "major news outlets" didn't even really vet her before doing hours of B roll and wide reaching confident stories as to the veracity and intent of her reports...?

You're not the only one. I have absolutely no proof to counter taking everything at face value. But my gut tells me that there's something not quite right with this whole thing, and I find it unsettling. I'm not willing to wave the flag for either the whistleblower or Facebook at the moment.

I agree. Something smells funny. Doesn't mean that good things can't happen because of it, but there's definitely a fishy smell in the area.

I listened to her testimony and the reactions to it and thought that she illustrated the problem with social media but I don't know that there is a solution to the problem of Facebook that doesn't address the issues of scale and a lack of social accountability.

Corporations are typically run by the type of person that will do whatever they can to maximize profits and the central theme of her testimony is that the 'anything we can do to make money' drive is the core issue.

Facebook turns a blind eye to things that will impact their engagement numbers and increasing new users.

Which, as Matt points out in his article, isn't an issue except for the sheer scale of Facebook.

For me the factor complicating is that you can't 'solve' the problem here because the core problem is the drive to maximize profits and increase users at all costs. Any corporate structure is going to run a social media company in the same fashion. And will build up to the size of Facebook if it is allowed to do so.

SO you can't 'fix' it

Core issue for some. For others, the centralization of power is more worrisome. Would it be an improvement if, instead of chasing profits, Facebook used their power to instead suppress your favored political movement?

I don't think chasing profits is necessarily a problem. Profits over everything else is. When your moral compass has to be thrown out to continue to push engagement then you have a problem.

And which political movement is it that you think is being suppressed?

I read that more as a theoretical - how would you feel if your political leanings were suddenly suppressed everywhere facebook touches?

I don't think there's a win here for facebook as it currently stands. They can't let unfettered bullshit keep happening, and they can't truly moderate without becoming arbiters of some truth they've decided.

When they are the largest company in this space, and they apply their moral compass, I guess you're just assuming that moral compass points to where you want to go?

> I read that more as a theoretical

I only ever see it being offered as a 'theoretical' by conservatives who think they are being 'shadow banned' or 'cancelled'.

The implication being that because only conservatives complain about it, concentration of power is nothing to worry about?

Do only conservatives worry about the consolidation of traditional media [1], too? Or is that something others, besides conservatives, also worry about, and is therefore a legitimate concern, unlike the consolidation of social networks?

What about the other way around - if only liberals complain about something, and not conservatives, do you also use that to dismiss the concerns?

[1] https://www.webfx.com/blog/internet/the-6-companies-that-own...

The Facebook whistleblower is a clear government plant sent there to justify government take over of Facebook's popular opinion control apparatus. The Republicans want to shut down the faction that want Trump back and the Dems want to shut down the Bernie bros and Yang's new party, so both parties are united in their desire to regain control of public discourse. When's the last time you've ever seen a whistleblower treated so kindly by the feds?

I disagree, this "whistle-blower" is not heroic. I bet that it will be found that FB paid her to "come out" on this to try to convince the public to want more censorship.

What?

Can you elaborate?

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