'How the Hell Did Document Leak?' – Meta Internal Mail After a News Report | Hacker News Reader

'How the Hell Did Document Leak?' – Meta Internal Mail After a News Report

thewire.in

Yeah what makes this story interesting is that these emails and leak are (largely) fabricated. See

https://twitter.com/swodinsky/status/1579847763499847681?s=4...

another giveaway is the missing article in the headline quote - very common with Indian speakers of English, very rare for a Western speaker.

And the email purported to have been written by Andy Stone (who does not seem to be Indian) is rife with indicators that it was written by an Indian English speaker:

  * How the hell <report> got leaked? (non-standard conjugation)
  * Why didn't anyone of you bother... ("anyone" for "any one")
  * Put <names> on watchlist. (dropped article)
  * Send me ... for last one month. (dropped article)

I'd add that "link me up" isn't a standard idiom in American English -- a US speaker would probably say "send me the link" or "link me to it".

I believe proper American parlance is "I'mma need the link".

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

Where the link at

Pretty sure that’s a common expression (in American English too) referring not to URLs but making contact with people.

“Why didn’t anyone bother to put me in touch” is how I’d interpret it.

While "to link up" is an idiom in American English, "to link <someone> up" is not. The phrase is intransitive -- even if the referent were a person, one would usually say "to link up with <someone>". Moreover, the phrase implies a casual social encounter, which wouldn't be appropriate here; a more formal introduction would be implied by a phrase like "get me in touch".

I'd point out that "link me up" isn't a phrase used in Indian English either, so the person who fakes this wasn't really trying hard.

Given the history of Facebook, there are high chances that the leaks are true. The tweet that you linked claimed the leaks to be fabricated based on following 3 points and imho, none of the 3 points make much sense.

>> 1. "http://instagram.workplace.com" isn't a URL that exists lmao 2. any emails sent from andy et al would be " @meta ," not " @fb " 3. a source just confirmed there's no email alias called "Internal"

If a url is not available to public that does not mean that the url does not exist “Lmao”

> any emails sent from andy et al would be " @meta ," not " @fb"

Right! The reasonings does not make any sense, especially the above. Why would FB change its email addresses to Meta? Their stock ticker is still FB.

> Why would FB change its email addresses to Meta?

To go all in on the name change? `@fb.com` will probably just forward.

> Their stock ticker is still FB.

Not true since June 9[0]. Their NASDAQ ticker is $META[1]. Links to $FB[2] redirect to the correct one.

[0]: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/facebook-ticker-cha...

[1]: https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/meta

[2]: https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/fb

> Not true since June 9[0]. Their NASDAQ ticker is $META[1]. Links to $FB[2] redirect to the correct one.

Indeed! Thanks for the correction.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/META?p=META&.tsrc=fin-srch

> If a url is not available to public that does not mean that the url does not exist

Compare the behavior of the following URLs:

http://cisco.workplace.com/

http://contoso.workplace.com/

http://google.workplace.com/

Two of these are real companies that have signed up for Workplace. One is not. See if you can tell which is which.

Now, which of these does http://instagram.workplace.com/ seem most like?

(Of course, it is possible that Meta has done something special to make their Workspace instance behave exactly like a nonexistent one. I can't rule that out. But it would be very unusual for them to build in a confusing special case just for themselves.)

Some context:

Yesterday an Indian news site reported that "If India's Ruling Party IT Head report a post, Meta will take it down right away without any question." [1] [2]

Today's news is about how Meta's staff is acting in response to that report.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33152394 [2] https://thewire.in/tech/amit-malviya-instagram-meta-xcheck

Surely Meta sees the irony in being frustrated that people want to broadcast your words and actions to the world. The people are now "more connected" to what is going on after all.

The Wire's reply: Apart from Meta's 'fabrication' charge, some folks are saying The Wire may have been 'played' by unknown elements out to 'discredit' us or further some outlandish conspiracy. This is ridiculous. Our stories came from multiple Meta sources—whom we know, have met & verified

https://twitter.com/svaradarajan/status/1580069016387092482

The email is fake. The sender (along with most meta employees) now has a @meta.com address.

States use centralized services to facilitate perception management. Centralized services only too happy to comply. More at 11.

Well I guess now they know the leaker is somebody on that mailing list.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com