Zuckerberg's war on whistleblowers
pluralistic.net
pluralistic.net
It might just be as primitive as "I have more money than God, therefore I am better than everyone else, nobody dare to challenge/disrespect me even in the slightest". Blind rage can make people do things that they themselves can't understand
It's pathetic and weird.
Anyone with a tiny bit of video game background called that out from miles away. It was so pathetic. Richest dude in world with spaceship company. Has nothing to prove. Cheats, lies, and gaslights when caught.
Has to be “number one” at a video game that has virtually zero skill where rank is almost entirely who grinds more. Eg time.
What a weird and sad thing to do. So unimaginably insecure.
Any billionaire you know the name of, is probably not too far off from this. There are alot of rich people who are secure with themselves. Zuck aint one if em.
It wasnt like he was moggin the ladder in LoL where it is pure skill no grind up to end game.
Recently I felt somewhat enlightened on this point, specifically in regards to Trump cheating at golf and some of his bald-faced lies, but I’d speculate it applies here too. Others pointed out to me that while it might look petty and ridiculous to normal people, it’s a social power move to get away with things, and serves the purpose of testing what can be gotten away with, and practicing or exercising the push dynamic. It may have little to do with winning a board game, and a lot to do with seeing what people will tolerate and what the thresholds are for being called out; it’s a test of one’s intimidation factor. It may be somewhat important that the cheating is visible. It can also be social signaling to see who comes to their defense when called out, which is an effect that has been playing out on the national stage with obvious lies being repeated, defended, or excused. It’s not about what’s true, but about people showing the rule breaker who’s on their side, and giving them the power to break rules.
This, BTW, to me is a depressing and pessimistic view of power and politics and humanity, and I don’t think these kinds of power moves are something to aspire to, nor do they always work. But as a framework I have to admit it has a lot of explanatory power.
Masha Gessen has written a fair bit about this.
The Fuckery is a demonstration of that power.
It's a test of loyalty via a show of power
If you don't call out my lie, you are just a bootlicker who cannot be trusted for anything requiring initiative.
If you do, then you can be a real partner.
There is still a subtlety. You have to call me out without making me lose face. If you can call out my lie and deflect the blame away from me, that's the best.
Is it possible you're confusing Catan with Monopoly or Pictionary or any party game ever?
I think most people who like board games would choose pictionary over it. At least that can fulfill a quick warmup role to move on to something better.
It's also a form of gaslighting. It makes people doubt their sanity, because nobody would lie about such a thing. It creates an aura of reality distortion around such people and inside that aura they can define reality as they see fit.
Until we learn to see through this stuff and stop elevating such people to positions of extreme power, we deserve what we get.
Unfortunately there’s a pretty large number of people who actually think we need people like this to “do things.” It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. If you stack the ranks of power with dark triad types, then of course that’s the only kind of person who can work in that world. You create a world where only toxic people can get things done and then are surprised that only toxic people can get things done.
It’s one of the most famous scenes in The Wire: when Marlo steals a lollipop.
Zuck cheating at board games me of Elon buying a claim to being a great Path of Exile and Diablo player. Nobody believes he is, and nobody is loyalty tested into praising his ability at computer games, not even people who work at his companies. He gets mocked for it on his own website. The few people that would actually be impressed by a claim of being good at Path of Exile and Diablo know exactly how bad he is at it and find it pitiful; ironically it actually dents his reputation with a demographic disproportionately likely to be impressed by other things about him. Other people aren't inclined to think highly of him for playing those games in the first place, never mind paying others to boost his account. The reality is simply that when he's interested in a game he can't abide the idea of not being really good at it, and cheating and getting others to do stuff for you is the easiest way to appear really good at it. Especially when you're used to ignoring people calling you out...
Also, narcissists don't need 4D chess levels of awareness and discipline to behave that way. It just emerges naturally from their base motivations.
This is textbook narcissism - confusing to those who expect some kind of object constancy who can't deliver it, but predictable from the syndrome.
He also intimidates and threatens more directly, but that doesn't get reported on the news.
Zuckerberg seems similarly fragile, but in a less overt way.
When you have insane levels of wealth your world revolves around your self-image and your desires, your peers are all at similar levels of dysfunction, no one else is likely to challenge you for obvious reasons, so you become socially unmoored and drift into Wealth Induced Psychosis.
Give him time. He's only 42. Trump at 42 had more "charm"/"charisma" in his pinky finger than Zuck has in his entire being.
For example, a director wrote a post internally solely with AI, didn't review it at all, directly plagiarized a bunch of stuff that other people wrote, and left a bunch of typos like [[link]]. It was just a post about why we need to use more AI or some bullshit like that.
I had a direct manager who did shit way worse than this on a regular basis. Once people just learn to expect constant psycho head games and shit testing 24/7, the lost good will is not recoverable.
I think the weird thing with meta is that this type of weird bullshit is a company-wide phenomenon. Like them turning around and forcing 8k people to do data labeling work. A lot of the victims were super late in their careers and highly specialized. And the same guy who forced this thing on everyone (the CTO) has now turned around and publicly criticized MZ for messing up morale.
Funnily enough, my manager did a lot of the same thing, maliciously creating a problem and then trying to blame it on someone else. A lot of these little games trickle down. As a company, they tend to select for people like Elizabeth Holmes
It's bizarre because there's this culture of really brazen leadership, but everyone is constantly criticizing them and laugh emoji reacting to their posts. But I think it's quieted down a bit before half year perf cycle
As he said “The Western World will find out much more about the situation in Poland from hearing that I was put to jail for giving tampons to a woman, than from reading the books and articles written by other people from the opposition.”
The only things this man and his companies produce are subpar software products, which I personally do not understand. How is that even possible for a company with that much money? Their best app is the one he bought, then filled with a TikTok copy.
For me, the surprising part is not just that he is obviously an evil piece of shit. It is that he is an evil, rather incompetent piece of shit. The amount of money he has thrown out the window just to promote cringe, nonsensical ideas like the Metaverse or their botched AI only confirms how surrounded he is by chronic yes men who keep approving his ridiculous ideas.
In some time he began to be caricature of it selves and make it all more even more bizzare.
'When it started' was 2003. The same year as his 'dumb fucks' quote or hacking reporters who were investigating him
That's not 'being a nerd [nice person] when it started'
"Facebook started as a way to nonconsensually rate the fuckability of Harvard graduates, and it only got worse from there."
There was a brief period where Facebook was cool enough to give it public credibility, buoyed by the fact that nobody knew who Mark Zuckerberg really was yet. After that point Facebook was big enough to just buy more credibility by buying more successful competition.
" Zuckerberg: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuckerberg: Just ask
Zuckerberg: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuckerberg: People just submitted it.
Zuckerberg: I don't know why.
Zuckerberg: They "trust me"
Zuckerberg: Dumb fucks "
If at 20, you don't act like that, then there is no question (and it is possible. In my 20's I was briefly a webmaster for a small org, and I noticed I had access of private info, and unlike Zuckerberg and you, I reported it to get it fixed. It does not mean you are a bad person, but it does mean that you should not consider that everyone would act like you did and that your way of acting was "normal").
If at 20, you act like that, there is a probability that you will grow up, and an even bigger probability that you will not grow up. It does not mean you should never be forgiven, but you have to own what you have done as a dumb kid, not just pretend it does not count, and provide elements to demonstrate that indeed you have changed.
In the case of Zuckerberg, his current actions demonstrate clearly he did not grow up.
Was it discussed here on Hacker News?
The same Joel Kaplan who was involved in a coup?
which coup, you're gonna have to be more specific
a way to secretly publish commitment hashes is to deposit some small amount of crypto into an address and use that address to embed the hashes into the blockchain (either as metadata or just destroying some crypto a few cents a time). it is important to string all the commitments together in some way (such as coming from the same address) otherwise there could be some doubt about the strategy (for example, spraying claims and disclosing only the ones you want to).
someone who can navigate that process can just use txt files and sha256sum and whatever poweruser wallet they are already using. this isn't a mass market appeal activity, someone serious about it will put in the time to learn if they were inclined to do this.
Most people don’t fancy a career as a whistleblower. They get their morals pushed further and further until they finally decide it is too much and they take the risk to their life and prosperity.
> it's much more credible and unassailable when the charge that the claims were made long after the fact for specific purposes is impossible.
If someone actually joined an org with plans to be a whistleblower I assume people complaining about whistleblowers trustworthiness would then be complaining that it was all lies because they always planned on leaking information.
Yeah, I mean that's just espionage and should raise your standard of evidence for any claim made. The credibility of whistleblowers comes partly from the idea that they basically believe in the org's mission and were working sincerely to achieve it until they discovered information that they had a higher moral duty to report on. If they came in already believing it was illegitimate and their goal was to find dirt to expose, then you know they were already comfortable with one act of deception and you should consider that they might be comfortable with a second. It's the same heuristic that says not to take Project Veritas videos at face value.
It's a pity that money poisoned blockchains for general use because they make a lot of sense in cases like this.
There's something else worse that they know could be in such a book, but isn't yet, and it is so bad that it is worth doing this.
Perhaps they know that Wynn-Williams could have put it in the book and didn't. Perhaps they know that someone else — someone else British, say? — could write such things in a book and so far hasn't.
Once you assume their motivation is grounded in real fear, it gets easier to see why this isn't bizarre at all; it's inevitable.
I genuinely don't know what this is in reference to but it's notable Christopher Wylie got suspended on FB
Which is obviously more of a priority than any number of horrible things you could report which never get taken down
Its Nick Clegg
What's the allegation?
I guess that the thread is implying his position would have given him access to newer claims, just as Wynn-Williams' had, and the method of his firing might give him motivation to reveal anything he knows.
Personally I feel that might be giving Clegg to much credit.
Because Zuckerberg had dragged his feet about creating the board until they needed the board in order to launder a decision they knew they might need to make.
But he wasn't just the oversight board; he was president of global affairs for three-odd years.
I don't intend to give Clegg credit, particularly. I'm not a fan. I'm just saying that people like him write books and he will surely have been approached to do so.
Clegg was more senior than wynn-williams. Kaplan reported to Clegg
I don't think Clegg will do something like that, because its not really in his way of doing things. He is extraordinarily well connected, and is currently riding the board of directors gravy train.
He's always been an operator. Moving to Meta after he left politics was an "Oh, of course."
1 minor party
2 major party
3 other major party
The British public blew it, because they bizarrely chose to have less of their own voting intentions recorded.
If someone says to you, “I’m going to take your money and bet it all on black on the roulette table.” and then comes back and says “sorry I lot it all because I bet it all on 22,” you’d be pissed! Now imagine they come back and say “not only have I lost it all but I borrowed an additional 3x in your name and also lost that”.
AV was an absolute non issue to most voters who elected them. Student debt was no1. Doesn’t matter if you think you know better than the people who elected you, it was a stupid gamble.
The LibDems, however, did not win the election.
If preferential voting happened, the LibDems and every other minor party could have had *vast ongoing influence over student loans and every other matter for generations to come*.
> AV was an absolute non issue to most voters who elected them.
Yes.
"Democracy basically means: Government by the people, of the people, for the people.... but the people are retarded."
- Osho
I mean thats one way to look at it. Another way was, the lib dems traded everything for the chance to change the voting from FPP to proportional representation, and failed.
Yes, he went back on tuition fees, and worse still wasn't able to make it a graduate tax (hence the stupid loan system)
but the gamble was that, and it was clear at the time.
unlucky for the libdems was they didn't get PR and got blamed for the tories being shites, and were wiped out accordingly.
That said, the country was reeling from the 2008 banking crisis, that even with a competent PM in Brown (despite his 'ignorant woman') comment was leading a Labour government into its 14th year. Even then David Cameron only won a minority government. If the lib dems hadn't backed the Tories into office, very likely we would have seen a second general election within short order.
I am well aware, I was in a libdem constituency as they made those promises in the early part of the 2000s. I think its even in one of the uni newspapers.
But the issue is this, government is about compromises. The libdems compromised to get in power. They had a "contract" that allowed for certain policies to be put forward in exchange for other policies by the tories. They thought, nievely that they could contain the worst parts of the osbourne/cameron system in exchange for long term voting reform.
It was a gamble that failed, and they were roundly punished for it.
The problem for us is that labour imploded, which left us with no effective opposition the post libdem years.
Its all very well to say "its a cynical ploy" but given that coalitions outside of war are never a thing in UK politics, its hard to see how the libdems planned it.
I can understand that you are angry about tuition fees. the unforgivable bit was the loan system rather than a graduate tax. Its regressive, it was known to be regressive at the time. But the tories wanted a loan and thus, here we are.
https://euroweeklynews.com/2026/06/26/nick-cleggs-wife-regis...
This would be shortly after Wynn-Williams’ 2017 departure from the policy role she describes in the book at hand. And it would be around the time that word was getting around about Facebook’s role in what Amnesty and the UN described as a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya minority in Myanmar. Among other things.
That story didn’t go on to a happy ending after 2017, and one imagines that, in the decade since, there have been fewer and fewer situations of strife, geopolitical gamesmanship, and civil conflict where Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp could avoid taking consequential policy decisions.
Meta were enmeshed in ample US domestic drama during that period, too; and Clegg’s replacement in the policy role was someone in the new administration’s orbit. Perhaps that’s fresh on the ancestor commenters’ minds.
Given the culture Ms. Wynn-Williams describes—and the tumult of the decade when he held the policy role—one imagines Mr. Clegg might have some stories to share should he choose to…
But it's obvious that Facebook want to make writing anything about them in a book and then publicising it an absolutely miserable experience.
I would say the very obvious target of such a message is Nick Clegg, no?
He's already written one memoir of his time in politics (didn't sell that well because he didn't have all that many fans left) but as a former Deputy Prime Minister in a really unusual coalition government, I think he's likely to have enough insights he will want to put in a book again by now (since it's plausible we be heading towards a coalition government involving the Lib Dems again, and he will think there are lessons to learn).
He also co-created the Facebook/Meta Oversight Board, which reported to him, and was the organisation finally constituted, ultimately, in time to de-platform Trump, which it then did.
And then he was president of global affairs.
He then left Meta shortly before it noticeably, shamefully and transactionally pivoted towards being Trump-compatible.
This is a book everyone wants to read, right? About the nexus of politics, extremism and social media.
And it won't get written.
And frankly getting into a shit fight with an unpopular American billionaire where he's actually the good guy would be pretty good reputation laundering for Clegg, and make a book Brits would be inclined to dismiss as self-serving nonsense sound like it had actual revelations in it. And he'd probably greatly enjoy doing a round of podcasts and TV interviews where he's not the bad guy saying sorry any more.
> But I think they've decided that this is a price worth paying, because:
> a) They've done even worse things since Wynn-Williams parted ways with the company; and
> b) They're laying off thousands of workers because their giant bet on AI has been a flop, leaving them with a massive cash crunch; and
> c) By destroying Sarah Wynn-Williams, they can terrorize all those thousands of bitter ex-employees into silence about the even graver sins the company has committed.
This is something I had to learn the hard way: there's a difference between being honest and being abrasive, and the latter is harmful to you and to everybody else, regardless of how correct you are.
What does this even mean?
I wouldn't. There's nothing I hate more than being dismissed as crazy. I try very hard not to do that to anyone else.
I really hate it when people dismiss things as "conspiracy theories", as if it was some nutjob idea. There are plenty of conspiracies to go around. People get organized and try to achieve their own goals. It's standard operating procedure.
I've always been open to such ideas. I'd ask for evidence before affirming such things myself, but I absolutely wouldn't dismiss the person as "crazy". I try very hard to evaluate arguments and form my own opinion on whatever matters I'm discussing.
> But I think they've decided that this is a price worth paying, because: [...] c) By destroying Sarah Wynn-Williams, they can terrorize all those thousands of bitter ex-employees into silence about the even graver sins the company has committed.
Mosquito - Human.
You don't swat a mosquito out of fear, you swat it out of preventing a minor nuisance.
A whistleblower is a mosquito that's bitten a human. The most likely outcome is an imminent, violent swat, resulting in career destruction.
Well, unless you're the president: https://www.npr.org/2009/06/18/105574084/peta-wants-obama-to...
Apparently you can get off scot-free in Britain even if you say/write things that are generally considered defamation per se as long as you claim that you utilized the "JDART" strategy:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50695593
JDART: "Joke that was badly received, therefore Deleted, with an Apology and then Responsive Tweets to move on from the matter."
Aren't the clauses on non-disclosure, arbitration, etc., common in non-Meta employment contracts as well?
They are.
Personally, I think the law should require that nondisclosure agreements should be strictly time-bound[0], ban all non-disparagement agreements[1], and replace binding arbitration with non-binding arbitration or mediation[2] that can still be escalated to a court if it breaks down.
[0] by how much I am uncertain, but outside of national security considerations I can't think of anything that needs to last longer than a patent would have.
[1] Two arguments: (a) basic freedom of speech; (b) I am British by birth. The UK is so famous for being an easy place to sue for libel that the US passed laws making fines from British courts non-enforceable in the US; why then does the US allow private companies to insert the same effect via contract? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism#United_States
[2] Court cases are really expensive for everyone. Arbitration is much cheaper and this itself can absolutely benefit workers and customers.
Non disclosures, non disparagements, and non solicits, are thrown out like candy by companies while severance payouts are rare outside of the largest orgs. Non compete agreements were also so prevalent that that we had subway sandwich makers being bound by them leading to them being bound and as I just learned when trying to find a source for that I discovered that ban has been abandoned by the current admin[1]
[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/09/05/nx-s1-5528937/ftc-noncompete-...
And it works.
We're not saying many ex or current Meta employees talking about their experiences here, even if I am sure that HN is pretty popular among this crowd.
And of course this is not unique to Zuck/Meta. We don't hear much from people working for Musk either.
This is just false I think. I'd have to search for it, but in some of the recent stories about how morale at Meta is at an all-time low due to the layoffs and fiefdom-building I recall seeing a number of current and former Meta employees comment.
Plus, my guess is that the vast, vast majority of Facebook employees just aren't privy to outright illegal acts, and most people aren't going to break their nondisparagement clause just to break the latest bitchy thing somebody said regarding Zuck.
This is funny, Blind is even more negative on the general company sentiment than this place. People are saying the current morale right now is the worst it's ever been.
I've worked in Big Tech and I know for sure the team you're on makes a big difference, regardless of the CEO.
Yeah this is true, but also if the company wants to make everyone suffer, they absolutely can. When companies have a bad reputation, people should believe it
Because they're being forced to works nights and weekends and don't have time
This is just one of countless obvious examples.
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...
For now. SC is becoming more partisan, which causes SC's credibility to decline. I assume there's a point where SC loses too much credibility and the existing system of balancing power breaks down.
In other news, Alito is claiming the Comstock Act is in full force, not the narrowed enforcement we’ve seen for the last, what 100 years?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_Act_of_1873
According to that theory, they can censor mail and any other common carrier (objects and information) on moral grounds. They want to apply it to abortion pills first, but the statements made by the court imply they’ll be clamping down on “obscenities”, sex ed, political speech etc.
Note that this court already overturned the right to privacy (and the 4th amendment) when they overturned Roe v Wade.
That, plus mandatory age checks, porn bans, vpn bans, etc are already happening in blue and red states throughout the US.
By the time 2028 rolls around, if we don’t elect a president willing to charge the current clown show with treason, we will not have a democracy in the US. Court packing would be a tragic under-reaction.
After all there was a constitutional amendment pass soon after to stop any president from doing what FDR did.
We don't think of him as a dictator, because a lot of what he did was ultimately reforms necessary to maintain America as a republic. The alternative would have been Nazi America. But he was still exercising dictatorial power, and he was responsible for massively increasing the power of the Presidency as a result. Hell, part of the reason why Trump is so dangerous is specifically because of the damage FDR did to the checks and balances on the Executive Branch.
Disgusting set of human beings Zuck and company.
Read the book and then decide if it's worth continuing on FB.
Unproductive schadenfreude aside, how does one get not punishing opinions—even those that would put the listener in danger if implemented—broadly accepted as a value? I hesitate to say “accepted again” because I’m getting the impression this was always a fringe position, it’s just that on occasion said fringe intersected with the similarly small circle of people whose opinions were broadly publicized.
Taking you literally, I don't think that's possible. Social punishment (in the form of shunning, boycotts, "cancelling", etc) has been around as long as human society has existed and is incredibly popular.
If someone figures out how to reliably solve that, a few nobel prizes are probably awaiting them.
If you want to take a subset of this problem, maybe it's possible: Like if you mean corporations specifically, not all private actors.
True. There’s a reasonable argument[1] that such things should continue to exist. The strongest way of phrasing it, I think, is that we do not want to have to pass a law against being an arsehole, nor do we actually want the letter of such a law enforced with the full might of the state, but there still needs to be some way of punishing it. The only counterpoint here is, I think, that the severity of such punishments seems to be vastly underestimated.
(If you’re going to refer to ancient societies, many of them used or accepted such a punishment as a substitute for the death penalty, as for instance with the Roman custom of permitting voluntary exile before conviction. And that still in a world where you could travel a few hundred kilometers in the right direction and reasonably expect nobody to ever learn of your sins.)
Also beside the point, however. The question is not whether we should shun people (we should, with a fair few qualifications), but whether such penalties should be levied for words. I posit that no, for an overwhelming majority of words they shouldn’t, where the possible exceptions are somewhere around ongoing mass murder and the Milles Collines[2]; and that letting your opponents speak and listening to them should by default be virtuous, socially rewarded behaviour.
[1] https://dynomight.net/bad/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Lib...
I suppose I disagree: Modern forms of this ("cancelling") are well-aware of the economic impact it can have on individuals, and indeed often this is the intended outcome. People on all sides of the political spectrum here understand the impact of impoverishment and homelessness (though they obviously disagree on what should be done about it).
> The question is not whether we should shun people (we should, with a fair few qualifications), but whether such penalties should be levied for words
I don't see how you ever disentangle these two. For a large part of the populace, there are some combinations of words they will find abhorrent and want to punish. The exact nature of that punishment is up for debate, but we've largely settled on the status quo here.
If you can find some way to keep people from wanting to punish some subset of words universally then congratulations, a few nobel prizes are indeed yours.
The reason why I assert this is because everyone who accepts a payoff from facebook also has to sign one. Like Facebook's employment contracts, which are essentially identical apart from the bonus, name, title and location, I strongly suspect the non-disparagement agreement is also largely the same.
They basically say that "Meta agrees to not call you a piece of shit, but you agree to never talk about facebook in public. if you do, we will ask for all that money back, as a debt"
Now, as its contract law, and depending on where the contract says its valid, there might be ways to allow what Wynn-Williams is doing. After all, you cant contract out of legal obligations.
If Cory spent more time actually doing research, rather than reeling off allegories like an LLM, we might have got some actual insight from him. Alas, its down to randoms on HN to do that.
> one who reveals something covert or who informs against another especially : an employee who brings wrongdoing by an employer or by other employees to the attention of a government or law enforcement agency
Wikipedia further asserts:
> Whistleblowing is the activity of a person, often an employee, revealing information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed wrongful – whether it be illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe, unethical, or fraudulent
Arguably, nothing the NSA was doing was illegal. Was Snowden not a whistleblower?
The Supreme Court disagreed; the surveillance program was illegal.
Non-Disclosure agreements to protect a company's legitimate business and trade secrets aren't nefarious.
But I'd argue that Non-Disparagement agreements or non-disparagement clauses that block disclosure of inappropriate personal behavior is, in fact, nefarious.
> Anyone who has worked in tech for any amount of time has signed an NDA.
Just because something is ubiquitous doesn't mean it's ok.
Not that NDAs are always bad, but they should have limited scope, and maybe expirations.
And blanket non-disparagement agreements that prevent employees from ever saying anything bad about their employer are clearly bad.
There's quite a bit of competition out there ,,,
The French Revolution was still fresh in minds of these elites - the July Monarchy having just taken place - and yet still they let it escalate to the point of near civil war.
Communist revolutions hurt the rich. As you say, they sowed the seeds of a new oppression. (It’s difficult to see how one could avoid that. If you put a group of people in charge of choosing who to execute and what property to take and give to whom, you’re going to have a tough time clawing that power back.)
Broadly speaking, people angling for violent revolution in America are idiots. The rich ones who count on winding up on top take for granted the quality of their lives in a democracy. The ones who aren’t billionaires, broadly, are historically illiterate about the direction wealth concentration flows amidst violence.
Source? I’ve seen this claim, but it doesn’t appear in any aggregate statistics from what I can tell.
Also, middle manager with a “CEO” title. The billionaire who owns the group is fine.
The ethics become laughably simple, with as far as they’ve taken the resource imbalance. They should be very worried.
The broader point, dating back to at least the French Revolution, is that once you establish the precedent that killing opponents is a way to win, it only takes a decade or two before the most ruthless killers become the winners. All proxy metrics are bad, including electability, but this one is especially awful. I’m more puzzled by why some violent movements do seem to have had some success than by why most didn’t.
He says that when order breaks down, thoughtful moderates are treated as weak cowards, and that simple-minded but aggressive people make the first move and kill off thoughtful people who think they will be able to make compelling arguments.
If billionaires fail to support the rule of law, especially if they wield their immense power to press on the scales, they should not be surprised when people lose faith in the more civil option.
Congratulations Assholes!
You didn't hear that out of Myspace or Friendster or anyone else that's trusted with information
Minimum threshold should be "People should be less forgiving of just giving away credentials but now that I have them I'll protect them with my life". Oh well. Apparently I'm just an idiot
He was just joking just like he was joking when he said he'd "fuck the Winklevosses in the ear"
And sometimes I outright wasn't being sarcastic. But my point was some people say "he was right for saying that". But you don't hear that from literally anyone else. Google doesn't say it. Banks don't say it. The minimum threshold as I said in my comment was "I'll defend personal info" even if you think people theoretically shouldn't give it a way. But Zuck for example has been known to password scrape
The whole comment was about me not liking him
> Lukashenka knew that arresting children for eating ice cream would make him a laughingstock abroad. Zuckerberg knows that threatening Wynn-Williams for standing in wooden silence on a stage makes him look like history's most guillotineable billionaire.
I don't think they think that. People this powerful who choose to surround themselves with fawning sycophants are undoubtably being told daily that the whole world is understanding and routing for them in their "perfectly reasonable response to these vicious attacks."
How ... how is that legal? Why would that ever be made legal?
Apparently businesses can use contracts to opt out of regular public courts and agree on using a neutral decision-maker; an arbitrator.
But then the post says:
> Meta got its arbitrator – a lawyer who is paid by Meta to adjudicate contractual disputes instead of an actual judge
Huh? How's that legal?
Turns out, the law requires arbitrators to be neutral, but not the people choosing the arbitrators.
Arbitration services are businesses. So even though Meta doesn't directly pay the arbitrator, they pay the business picking the arbitrator.
Meaning, Meta has a long-term relationship with the arbitration service provider. They can choose to take their business elsewhere, if unhappy.
Imagine being Wynn-Williams, having a company of this size put a target on your head. I wonder how many live in silence because the paycheck is too good or the punishment too bad.
But an even larger point: most of HN is probably employed by a company that aspires to be Meta; HN is run by a VC fund that wants to make many Metas; and worse, unfortunately, I sometimes dream of being a Zuckerberg.
I am thoroughly seduced by a power I've never felt, even if I see it as poison.
Meditate on the idea of the negative sum game the people who seek power prefer, and then about what you'd rather see them, or yourself do with that power. Because of the things I actually care about, I find that random fantastical/idealistic desire for power to be hollow, something much easier to see in comparison. I don't care about power, for powers sake (the best way, perhaps only way, to obtain power itself). All my power fantasies involve some sort of stopping people from using their power to abuse and take from others.
There's nothing wrong being seduced by power, if you're worried about how it might corrupt your ethical principals, just don't be foolish enough to copy the small minded power seekers (humans do love to emulate the people the see around them). You can seek and hold power, and then use it to do good things. Is that harder? Probably, but I can't articulate a single reason it would be harder than doing good things without power, which most people already don't do. So don't be tricked into power being the thing that corrupts. Most people are just shitty, and very few have meaningful power; sample bias can be a bitch.
This is the only point from Meta that is legitimate. If she accepted payment in exchange for signing an NDA and then violated it, the appropriate remedy in this should be that she returns the money.
Which doesn't change the fact that Zuckerberg should be ashamed of using NDAs as a weapon like this. It's very small minded from a man who clearly wants to see himself as a great man of history.
This is standard in companies. I've seen companies give a pittance in exchange for a binding NDA and the person took it because they needed to pay rent that month. Meta is evil but in this case so is almost every other company and especially tech companies. Also, giving it back doesn't undo the contract, the deal was done.
A judge can decide to invalidate the contract entirely, which is what I'm suggesting would be the correct remedy in this case.
Some will lie repeatedly to even avoid paying out a settlement.
In America you have no rights, your lucky if you get paid on time. Even then the actual process to get your back owed wages usually isn't worth the effort.
I worked for a clown once who waited 30 days to tell me he only pays every 60 days.
A friend of mine wasted a full week training, and the employer decided they didn't need him and didn't pay for the training.
If you DARE try and go the legal route you'll find you can basically beg for a settlement, but your employer can just say no.
Going to court isn't going to be worth it since the system is heavily stacked against you.
You have no other options because you need the money.
My friend who wasn't paid at all was told by a lawyer it wasn't worth pursuing.
So much of our legal system, and really society is based off gentlemen agreements. You don't still someone out of 600$ in wages because you don't do that.
When that gentlemen agreement is broken, realistically no lawyer is going to open a case over 600$, you have no real recourse.
This is 2012 data but it seems like the FBI is no longer reporting the stats when I went to their crime data tool[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wage_theft_versus_other_p...
They also agree to a non-disparagement agreement. this is where Meta agrees not to chat shit about you, in return for you never talking publicly about them. The problem is, thats a fairly effective tool to enforce a lowly employee not chatting shit about a former company.
What I don't know is, what her penalty is. Espcially as both parties have disparaged each other publicly.
https://ia803204.us.archive.org/15/items/gov.uscourts.cand.4...
128. The Merits Arbitrator refused to do so. Instead, during a status conference regarding the sanctions motion on April 22, 2026, the Merits Arbitrator held the motion open and stated that if Ms. Wynn-Williams voluntarily appeared at an event, including the Hay Festival, where she knows or should know that her book will be available for sale, or knows or should know that her presence there will likely encourage book sales, then she has likely violated the Interim Award.
129. As Ms. Wynn-Williams's counsel pointed out during the conference, this was an exceptionally broad conception of the scope of the Interim Award one that extended far beyond the text of the Severance Agreement and dramatically increased the burden on Ms. Wynn-Williams. Counsel attempted to clarify that the Merits Arbitrators comment applied only to situations in which the actual event organizer made the book available for sale in connection with Ms. Wynn Williams's appearance, pointing out that the Hay Festival, for example, did not appear to do so but instead simply had a link on the event website to another site run by a separate organization that offered books written by Hay Festival speakers. But, notwithstanding that the details of the Hay Festival appearance had been fully briefed by the parties in their submissions on the sanctions motion, the Merits Arbitrator refused to clarify, stating that there was too much factual granularity for him to give any further guidance and that Ms. Wynn-Williams needed to conform her conduct to what she thinks is appropriate given his endorsement of the Interim Awards vague proscription on promotion
135. In addition, fearful that anything she said could be the basis of another sanctions motion and wishing to protest that constraint on her speech, Ms. Wynn-Williams appeared for the panel but sat in silence for its entire duration, neither speaking nor responding to any question or remark. Ms. Wynn-Williams did not understand that speaking on a panel with Ms. Cadwalladr and Mr. Wu would violate the Interim Award given her intention not to refer to Meta or Careless People, but assumed that Meta would accuse her of endorsing things the other panelists whom Meta believes are some of its known critics might say. Ms. Wynn-Williams also believed that making the alternative decision to cancel her appearance due to the Interim Award would also have drawn attention to Careless People that Meta would interpret as promotion of the book.
136. Notwithstanding that Ms. Wynn-Williams remained silent and did not say anything about Meta or her book and that the Hay Festival removed her book as requested in order to avoid any suggestion of promotion under the Merits Arbitrators guidance, Meta wrote the Merits Arbitrator on June 12, 2026, to request the Merits Arbitrator rule on the sanctions motion immediately and impose additional sanctions based on the Hay Festival.
137. Meta based its request on the fact the other individuals on the panel are, in Meta's view, critics of Meta, suggesting that Ms. Wynn-Williams's mere appearance with those individuals in a public forum was a violation regardless of what she says or whether she speaks at all, and regardless of the fact that she does not control what those individuals say. Meta noted that Ms. Cadwalladr and Mr. Wu responded to Meta's campaign to silence Ms. Wynn-Williams in a manner that Meta found disparaging, alleging that the ensuing controversy resulted in additional sales of Ms. Wynn-Williams's book, notwithstanding that Meta's own actions created that controversy. Meta further suggested that Ms. Wynn-Williams's reaction to her silencing drew attention to herself in a manner that inevitably promoted sales of her book, notwithstanding that Meta's silencing campaign meant that any action Ms. Wynn-Williams took in response including withdrawing from the Hay Festival would have drawn such attention. Meta's exploitation of the Interim Award is thus calculated to make it impossible for her to avoid punishment.
138. Meta's sanctions campaign has been built on sustained surveillance of Ms. Wynn-Williams. Meta's evidentiary submissions in the arbitration have revealed that its representatives attended her public appearances in person, assembled photographs and written records of her movements, and traveled the length of the United Kingdom to do so including making the long journey to rural Wales for the Hay Festival all to document that at each event, Ms. Wynn-Williams said nothing about Meta or her book. In its most recent filing, Meta sought to escalate its coercive surveillance of Ms. Wynn-Williams, asking the Merits Arbitrator to compel Ms. Wynn-Williams to disclose, in advance, a list of her planned public appearances, so that it can continue to monitor where she goes and what she says
The people that work at the company are smart, and I’m sure many of them are compassionate. I just don’t know what kind of people can sign off on product decisions like this that truly erode trust, community fabric, and make our world ultimately so much worse. It’s heartbreaking that someone like zuck is the one leading this initiative, you could pick any random person off the street and they would lead the company in a direction that was better for mankind.
The rich man is also perceived by the lizard brain to be wise, intelligent, witty, and handsome.
Well (allegedly) being a robot lizard would explain that. Neither are known for a lot of empathy towards human beings.
That might be a bit generous to assume that he has this theory of mind
a) Meta is a nasty company
b) Zuck has neither the taste nor the vision to get Meta to build anything. He will continue to mine his current platforms to finance whatever is hot that day. Yesterday it was glasses, today it is betting and tomorrow it will be something else. Forever chasing what he can never attain.
c) Reality is banal. Zuck's merry band of sycophants lets him cheat at Settlers of Catan.
There is only one way to make him hurt: boycott all meta products. Uninstall facebook, instagram, whatsapp.
Edit -- I am getting downvoted for this comment. I can't say I am surprised, most of you are too programmed to think for yourselves.
I deleted my Meta account last year and haven't missed it.
I do -- meta's products are inherently addictive and the network effect is powerful, so people would rather cope and complain than take meaningful but inconvenient action. This is how zuck wins, every time.
> I deleted my Meta account last year and haven't missed it.
Me too and so has most of my family.
Zuckerberg et al. would actually prefer that we all think that, so that we just stop there and don't proceed to more-effective politics.
Your original comment makes it sound like you think that nothing else is possible, which would exclude things laws around privacy rights or liability for mishandling personal data.
Unlike what Cory Doctorow implies, Facebook is not a Soviet Dictatorship. There is no Berlin wall. If you don't like it, you can just leave.
... but eventually, external circumstances change, despite all the vain hope of those in power that they don't.
For Lukashenka, it's Ukraine blasting Russia's oil infrastructure to pieces - his regime has always depended on Mother Russia, but should Mother Russia (hopefully) collapse, he's done for.
And for Zuckerberg? And all the other vile big tech execs that kissed Trump's ring [1]? The population is fed up, radical (at least when measured by usual US standards) politicians have actual chances of getting elected on the Democrat side... they all will face justice.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/09/google-mi...
The Zuck has some skeletons in his closet.
This did not happen and I’m not aware of any evidence or allegations that it did. Williams claims that Meta indicated they would accept China’s demand to give the Chinese government access to Chinese users’ data, as a condition of being allowed to operate in China. This is not the same as access to “all of Facebook”, and it didn’t happen at all because operating permission was never granted.
So, the author is a liar who distorts facts to make for a more interesting article. Don’t waste your time listening to people with no integrity.
What else that this article claims is distorted bullshit, I wonder?
Next time you read an article from “Pluralistic”, ask yourself, are they telling the truth or are they lying to push an agenda?
I have no particular connection to Zuck or Meta. I just find this behavior incredibly obnoxious and hypocritical.
Her main allegations (that Facebook/Meta optimizes for profit at the expense of everything else) seem pretty unsurprising. I mean, given what has been observed, is this in any way controversial?
Here’s an article from the Atlantic that was sponsored by the Koch Brothers (so, good luck arguing one sided political bias!) on Zuck’s strategy for whitewashing censorship of political speech:
https://web.archive.org/web/20191115132324/https://www.theat...
> What else that this article claims is distorted bullshit, I wonder?
E.g., "including its knowing encouragement of a genocide in Myanmar." You can certainly accuse Facebook of being incompetent at monitoring and moderating speech in Myanmar but calling it "knowing" or "encouraging" is just a lie. There's plenty to criticize without lying, but the lying ruins your case.
> Zuck is also revealed to have given the Chinese state access to all of Facebook
Tbf, the book actually makes the right claim that it's Chinese user data, not all of Facebook so the article is to blame.
His appearance on Ezra Klein's podcast a couple months ago surfaced a fabricated story about nurses being offered lower pay based on their credit report: https://www.reddit.com/r/ezraklein/comments/1qzp3sz/doctorow...
If we're going to have an effective movement checking bad behavior of big tech companies, we better start policing people like Doctorow who put themselves at the center of things with made-up shit and risk blowing the credibility of the whole movement.
Arbitration is paid for by both parties and of course there isn't a judge when you go to arbitration due to having a civil dispute.
So sure, acknowledge that they are denying. The only thing it explains is that horrible entities tend to deny horrible behavior.
(It's a great book, Mark and co. are more awful people we thought they were.)
— Mandy Rice-Davies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_he_would,_wouldn%27t_he%3...