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Comment by alphabetting | Hacker News Reader

Given the discourse on their website, FB should have known the optics here would spur negative pieces like this. That said, not buying the insinuation that CIA itself is influencing their former employees. Former employees shouldn't carry a scarlet letter with them to companies they go to after leaving government. The author's history of sensationalist posts in defense of authoritarian govts is pretty suspect as well.

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I can only imagine that this comment was written in total ignorance of the CIA's storied history. Suffice it to say that it is not a government agency like any other [1]. If "former" FSB agents held key positions controlling social media content in your country, that would likewise not be concerning, right?

And regardless of just how scarlet the letter should be that "ex" CIA employees carry, it goes without saying any (social) media organization that wants to maintain even the thinnest pretense of neutrality and independence cannot give "ex" intelligence agents, of any country, editorial control.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2khAmMTAjI - "The CIA is a terrorist organization", also discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25245026

If someone spent 15 years rising up to the top ranks of the CIA and then left to lead Meta's policy and content moderation, what story is logical to you?

That they were considering moving out of public sector work and someone in their network had moved to Meta and Meta pay and perks dwarfed anything they could have made by continuing to work for the federal government.

Yes that sounds like a good incentive to move to the next level doing much of the same thing.

If you were previously part of an organization that violates human rights, I have every right to hold it against you.

This is a company of 60k people. Take issue with their hiring sure, but using the hiring of a couple staffers who are former govt data analysts (these aren't Jason Bourne/blackwater types) to define the company is silly.

Now if we are looking at Tiktok's parent company, which has CCP members on their board, I think it is more fair question the motives of the company there.

cia is an organization that uses torture (among other unethical things). if you ever worked for such an organization, I'm not even looking at rest of your cv. your ethics are clearly lacking.

So its OK when Facebook does it but bad when tiktok does it?

No I'm saying Tiktok is much worse

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