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Comment by jb1991 | Hacker News Reader

jb1991

> In one alleged incident, Tucker Bounds, a Facebook communications official, dismissed concerns about the platform’s role in 2016 election manipulation. “It will be a flash in the pan,” Bounds said, according to the affidavit, as reported by the Post. “Some legislators will get pissy. And then in a few weeks they will move on to something else. Meanwhile, we are printing money in the basement, and we are fine.”

Sounds like a really positive environment to work in. Lots of solid, meaningful contributions to the planet.

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It’s very likely that some employees were worried either for their employment or their stock grants. It’s easy to dismiss most tech workers as financially comfortable but some make commitments (buying a house being the obvious large one) based on the current value of their heavily Facebook-loaded portfolio.

There’s been a lot of things said about the 2016 elections, mostly about the company’s responsibility and possible actions to take; picking an extract of one answer isn’t always representative of that conversation. “We don’t expect meaningful financial impact for employees” is a reasonable answer to a legitimate employee question about what will happened to them personally but not a good summary of how the company talked about this.

"...dismissed concerns about the platform’s role in 2016 election manipulation." - A great deal of people dismiss those concerns, including myself. Is dismissing those concerns, because we believe they're insubstantial, now a crime that you can get whistle blown on? You would think these whistleblowers would be revealing crimes, but they're just revealing things that half the political spectrum wants to talk about. It's actually quite boring.

Why would you compare what an outsider knows about a company to what an insider knows about it?

You posted one quotation in which a Facebook employee shared his analysis of a situation.

I'm not sure what that quotation showed about Facebook's work environment.

And really it's just one short quotation from a single employee.

You posted one quotation in which a Facebook employee shared his analysis of a situation

Not "an employee", but an apparently very senior "communications official".

I'm not sure what that quotation showed about Facebook's work environment.

For starters: a management culture that is profoundly cynical, and completely devoid of principle.

I dunno, as far as respect is concerned I personally rank most legislators somewhat below, say, the addicts in Tenderloin. Regardless of who does it, something that makes them upset but impotent would be a big positive in my book.

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