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Comment by prepend | Hacker News Reader

I think the author was complicit and only complained once FB stopped paying her.

It was weird how the author claimed not to know how facebook targeted ads worked until 2016/2017 after she had made millions.

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Literally anyone with the access to these people would be someone making bank. Do you think Cheryl Sandberg would bother to talk to a poor person?

That's kinda the nature of whistle-blowing. You're complicit, you have inside knowledge and THEN you choose to do the right thing. Snowden worked for the NSA before he exposed their lies about spying on US citizens, you think he did literally no work towards that end before blowing the whistle?

It's kind of the reason C-execs (and up) stay, the company keeps paying them more and more to hold the secrets.

If the author didn't want others to think of her as a "careless person", she should have refused a severance with a nondisparagement clause.

So you should never be allowed to comment on the behaviour of companies you worked for?

Allowed, sure. Celebrated, not really.

If you read the book it becomes clear the author was a key enabler of Mark and Sheryl. Should she be allowed to comment? Of course. But don't think for a second she's a good person for doing so.

I have read the book, I didn’t mind her conscience surfacing at all. I’m not sure I’d want to go up against an organisation like Meta, and having first hand accounts of how these people love money and power more than they do values and people.

Though if she was complicit she's probably in a good position to expose it now things have changed.

Seems to be a common pattern, it's better than the alternative but nonetheless it's not the brag they think it's.

So what? If we need unscrupulous people to tell us what other unscrupulous people do, so what?

Nothing, just keep in mind they're still unscrupulous.

That pretty much describes confidential informants (used by the police, all the time). Many of these CIs are risking a lot more than just getting sued, and they are seldom angels. Many of them do it, so they won't go down with the ship, or because the cops have real leverage over them.

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