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Zuckerberg Takes Steps to Calm Facebook Employees

nytimes.com

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Re: Zuckerberg Takes Steps to Calm Facebook Employees

#41

Post by sp527 »

madez wrote: post #10

Facebook is an enabler for individuals to successfully undermine our democratic mechanisms. It shouldn't feel nice to work for a company that has to explain itself in front of the government. The employees of Facebook should be aware of what monster they are building.

No they’re not. They’re in denial. I used to work there as an intern, so I get a front row seat to how a lot of employees are reacting. The word I would use is: indignation.

I’ve seen this us-against-them mentality play out elsewhere in various toxic cult-like organizational cultures. The NSA was a great public example of just how manifestly horrifying things can get with tens to hundreds of decent people willfully participating in corrupt or unethical practices.

The way this all works is terribly fascinating, but the short of it is that you have to become closed off and indoctrinated in order to fit in. Particularly at places like Facebook, Google, and generally anywhere else that provides free on-campus dinners (a good heuristic), employees build their social circles and identities around the company. This, coupled with various other factors, permits an astounding cognitive dissonance amongst a large group of otherwise benign and rational people.

EDIT There’s an interesting additional complication I’ve seen at times: internal spin. The media gets things about companies so wrong so frequently that it’s almost too easy to discount the things with an uncomfortable shred of truth as ‘fake news’.

Re: Zuckerberg Takes Steps to Calm Facebook Employees

#42

Post by esman1 »

mehrdadn wrote: post #2

I feel like someone should also give Zuckerberg the memo that it's only a matter of time before an insider also goes rogue and abuses data access (edit: or otherwise; see below). Facebook fundamentally seems to trust itself way too much, and it worries me that it thinks the only threats are external entities... to me, this is another silently ticking time bomb. EDIT: And don't forget that going rogue is just one scen…

FWIW, as a Facebook engineer you have a ton of trainings on how to handle data privacy. And not only is every place where you can touch data actively logged/audited/monitored (this includes DB reads from code, admin tools, etc.), but to access any data you have to explicitly request permission for that specific data.

Re: Zuckerberg Takes Steps to Calm Facebook Employees

#43

Post by mehrdadn »

zawerf wrote: post #16
gboudrias wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who says it hasn't happened already? How would we ever know? For that matter, how would Zuck?

Anecdotally I've heard of interns getting fired for just looking at profiles (that they aren't actual friends with) even around 5 years ago. So at least they take it somewhat seriously.

> Anecdotally I've heard of interns getting fired for just looking at profiles (that they aren't actual friends with) even around 5 years ago. So at least they take it somewhat seriously.

So the customer's privacy got violated, because interns had blanket access to private customer data. To me that's very much not taking security seriously.

Re: Zuckerberg Takes Steps to Calm Facebook Employees

#44

Post by tptacek »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #39
tptacek wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really short list of companies, though! There are a lot of companies that each independently hold a ghastly amount of information about random people that have virtually no meaningful controls over this stuff. "No meaningful controls" is the norm. I'd also say it's the norm among most Fortune 500 non-tech companies.

Yep. Equifax, Experian and Transunion come to mind.

Consider also every large adtech firm.

Re: Zuckerberg Takes Steps to Calm Facebook Employees

#45

Post by cornellwright »

iamdave wrote: post #24
cornellwright wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source?

http://theweek.com/articles/474339/facebookinsider-memoir-sk...

I think the previous commenter must have meant "had" as that says as of sometime before the 2012 date on that article the master password allegedly no longer worked.

Still egregious if that sort of early stage stuff hung around that long, but not the same as it being there today.

Re: Zuckerberg Takes Steps to Calm Facebook Employees

#46

Post by ihsw2 »

colordrops wrote: post #6

What could they possibly do to fix things that wouldn't destroy their business model?

Their business model is leaky abstractions as a rule and malicious compliance when exceptions occur -- we (our policymakers) have to know the underlying complexity (of Facebook in order to issue permission for its continuing existence), otherwise it's a foot-gun by default (for constituents of those policymakers), and furthermore when we need Facebook's help to clean up its messes then it's half-hearted and doesn't address the underlying issue.

There's not much they can do other than assume absolute pacifism and absolute neutrality, to a fault. Effectively they must be resolute in their support for the stability of society, and that includes putting down political activists like Antifa and BLM. Facebook must no longer be a platform for activism of any kind, where all content deemed objectionable by anyone is pruned.

Re: Zuckerberg Takes Steps to Calm Facebook Employees

#47

Post by throwaway2041 »

mehrdadn wrote: post #2

I feel like someone should also give Zuckerberg the memo that it's only a matter of time before an insider also goes rogue and abuses data access (edit: or otherwise; see below). Facebook fundamentally seems to trust itself way too much, and it worries me that it thinks the only threats are external entities... to me, this is another silently ticking time bomb. EDIT: And don't forget that going rogue is just one scen…

Correct. There are many stats relevant to the national discussion that a patriotic Facebook employee might leak. One is the effective CPM (eCPM) rate between the Trump and Clinton campaigns. My hunch is there was a massive disparity there, in favor of Trump. Facebook has only released the "paid CPM" rates, which is suspicious. Most Facebook advertisers look at eCPM, which combines paid + "organic" reach, in other words: the net reach per dollar spent.

Re: Zuckerberg Takes Steps to Calm Facebook Employees

#48

Post by gt_ »

madez wrote: post #10

Facebook is an enabler for individuals to successfully undermine our democratic mechanisms. It shouldn't feel nice to work for a company that has to explain itself in front of the government. The employees of Facebook should be aware of what monster they are building.

Big misconception here.

Private interests incentivize individuals to undermine our democratic mechanisms. If we let them, we are fools to expect anything else.

The only reason many other companies don’t have to have to explain themselves to governments is they are legally allowed to incentivize the opposite with capital. It’s called lobbying.

Re: Zuckerberg Takes Steps to Calm Facebook Employees

#49

Post by justincormack »

SirLJ wrote: post #25
tehlike wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is pretty easy to call for resignation as an outsider. This is not an elected position, i do not think people get to call this.

As a shareholder I do, this kid works for me and it is time to take full responsibility and go home...

Zuck has full control of the company by design, those shares you bought are participation options with no control.

Re: Zuckerberg Takes Steps to Calm Facebook Employees

#50

Post by debacle »

tbrock wrote: post #40

I respect Facebook and their engineering chops as much as the next person, they are truly world class programmers, but how the holy hell is everyone daydreaming that they don’t work for an advertising company? You sell and use people’s data to get money: this is the business plan. Full stop. Connecting people can definitely be lucrative and useful in other ways but facebooks particular implementation is impression ba…

I respect Google and their engineering chops as much as the next person, they are truly world class programmers, but how the holy hell is everyone daydreaming that they don’t work for an advertising company?

You sell and use people’s data to get money: this is the business plan.

Are people working there really so nieve(sic) as to believe that this is surprising?

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