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Comment by josefresco | Hacker News Reader

Laura is out selling the film, expect these type of click-bait, one-liners to trickle out as they make the rounds. It's actually a very boring and obvious statement, but it includes Facebook so it plays well around the web as an attention grabbing headline.

Sort of like Peter Thiel claiming that Twitter execs were smoking pot all day when promoting his book.

Say crazy shit = eyeballs on your product.

Edit: I should point out that I don't think the statement about Facebook was "crazy" or in this case even controversial. However my general statement about how PR uses click-bait headlines and takeaways holds true.

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It is strange to read what you've written.

Mostly because I personally think the long-term effects of corporations, particularly Facebook, ganging on our society is going to be immensely more deleterious than anything our government could do or wants to do. When Facebook thwarts free and organic growth of something in favor of content pushed by those who have money (shoddy companies selling fat-loss pills which are going to moreso fuck you up than make you lose weight), I consider that something seriously screwed up. When it reduces exposure of content that's non-compatible with your views on your feed to keep you warm and cozy, perhaps in an attempt to prime you for certain political ads, that's some serious shit.

Facebook really IS something extremely horrible, people don't realize it. It's very sad that even on HN you see strong defense of Facebook. Facebook and its founder have been involved in one sleazy act to another (from privacy zuckering (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebooks-evil-interfa...) to offering his friends private information -- "yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard; just ask; i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns" - http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/09/20/the-face-of-fac...).

Right now, it isn't Poitras who has done one thing after another to make me doubt the words coming out of her mouth, it's someone else.

I think you misread the point of my post. The statement about Facebook being great for intelligence gathering is accurate. My point was that the statement was obvious, and didn't present a new or interesting view on the subject.

That one line however, get's published across the web and because of the context (Snowden/NSA) and mention of Facebook, it will grab eyeballs.

I generally discount things people say in interviews while promoting something like a book, movie, product etc.

That a statement happens in the context of a promotional effort is utterly orthogonal to its truth.

EDIT: To clarify: if something is true, it's true, no matter where it's said.

ON HN FB epitomizes the ultimate goal of many wishful startup entrepreneurs. It's moral or ethical dilemmas are not always front and foremost.

I agree but the outrage narrative here is high and will probably always be. The truth is pretty much any cloud service hosted in the US is accessible in some way to US intelligence. The cloud migration isn't stopping nor is FISA ever going away, especially when we just watch the Canadian parliament almost get shot up. While its important to bring these messages to the masses, it seems that the masses have long reached an outrage exhaustion.

Now this kind of thing has reached the level of self-promoters, authors, etc all of whom want a cut of the outrage pie before it complete dissipates, the same way breathless exposes of the horrors of the Bush administration were hard sells by the time of his second term as outrage exhaustion was quickly met during his first.

Most media is run on PR, unfortunately. That we're discussing this subject in the context of Snowden instead of Binney or Klein is a result of this shitty truth. I'm thankful that pervasive surveillance finally has widespread attention, and for the group of loudmouth self promoters who made it so.

I'd love it if HN was generally more resistant to sensationalist promotional material. Barring that, getting this off the front page most likely just makes some other marketing message take its place. One that doesn't remind us about a deep uncomfortable truth of our profession.

(FWIW Even though I take issue with your comment, I think it being so light is a disgusting indicator of the state of HN. The reason downvoted comments were made harder to read is because downvotes were used sparingly, not simply on anything that might take away from the outrage)

Isn't Thiel a billionaire? I don't understand why he would do so much to promote a £9.99 book.

Getting exposure for your ideas is worth much more than however much money he would make on the book sales.

It's a very intriguing question. But yet we see examples of people with exceptional personal wealth, doing things and saying things that seem ... petty or at least beneath them in the financial context.

I think even billionaires want their causes to succeed, so even if it's a book that accounts for 1% of their wealth, they still want it to do well and will say and do things that help it to succeed.

Also, as AngrySkillzz pointed out, the "ideas" put forth in the book are more important to them (than the money earned) and they can indirectly benefit their business by having these ideas, or opinions take hold.

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