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Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis

nytimes.com

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Re: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis

#61

Post by roymurdock »

Balgair wrote: post #52

This Times piece should be taken seriously by FB, it's shareholders, employees, and users. With good sourcing, this paints a very immature picture of the company, from leadership on down to the users. Though the article uses the Russian interference as the launching off point, in my reading, it seems that these attacks on our democracy are essentially waived off. That the most pressing issue for Zuck was not that the…

less of a question of maturity (being self-sufficient, which Facebook and its employees clearly are), more of integrity

integrity implies that you are unified or "integrated" as a part of a stronger whole, and working towards the betterment of that whole

that you share certain core values and ethics with another group of people

in the past large companies might have been integrated and integral to a certain city, region, community, country, cause, etc. - or as you put it, "our democracy"

facebook, and most large tech companies, no longer have or need such ties towards individuals, communities, or countries

they pay their taxes in all different jurisdictions (or sometimes mostly just in ireland) and then are free to do as they like to their users who keep coming back for more screentime because they're addicted

facebook has no sense of care for the user, or a sense of being in it together as a relationship, nor is it really possible to have one at Facebook's scale

i wouldn't be surprised if Zuckerberg still considers the majority of Facebook's users "dumb fucks" and sheep to be monetized, an ethos that will inevitably trickle down through the company from the top

facebook's integrity is aligned with their customers, the advertisers, and that's about it

we can only hope that facebook employees are doing what they can to preserve their own integrity with their friends/family/community, and that this push is strong enough to shape the development of the platform for the better, instead of towards further addictive, attention-grabbing, echo chamber construction

Re: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis

#62

Post by jayess »

ilovecaching wrote: post #20

To me the negative press cycle involving Facebook and other advertising companies is more about the hidden war between the new age digital advertisers, and the former rulers of ads: the conventional news outlets. The news outlets will jump on any chance they can get to kill their competitors just like any other company. Without Facebook, they could become the sole source of news again, and reap the lost ad revenue th…

I think both can be the case: legacy media is actively attacking online media lately. I've seen a rise is poorly-veiled anti-first amendment articles recently from places such as the New York Times and the New Yorker. So I have no doubt legacy media feels very threatened. But at the same time, Facebook is fucking evil.

Re: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis

#63

Post by kitrose »

tobr wrote: post #40
astrange wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there an actual crisis, outside the media narrative? Yes, the part where Facebook is paying people to spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and supporting SESTA.

No, you don’t understand, an actual crisis is something that affects growth.

This comment is going on n-gate for sure.

http://n-gate.com/hackernews/

Re: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis

#64

Post by bilbo0s »

Balgair wrote: post #52

This Times piece should be taken seriously by FB, it's shareholders, employees, and users. With good sourcing, this paints a very immature picture of the company, from leadership on down to the users. Though the article uses the Russian interference as the launching off point, in my reading, it seems that these attacks on our democracy are essentially waived off. That the most pressing issue for Zuck was not that the…

>This extremely serious, and continuing, attack on the public seems to not really matter to any of the parties involved, only that they may get 'in trouble' or lose money...

???

Isn't that the modus operandi of every company. I'm just thinking in my head back through serious crises involving companies, and all of the ones I can recall have senior management concerned about the same thing. (Losing money, and getting in trouble.)

From Exxon Valdez, to Deepwater Horizon (BP), definitely crises like Taylor, Enron, and the recent banking system unpleasantness.

In fact, I remember a more bald faced arrogance out of the banker community. I still remember them sending the legislature of the United States a 3 page letter to sign off on, authorizing the transfer of $1 Trillion to them within the following 24 hours.

Now THAT was childish arrogance. (Or maybe just the reality of their power? I don't really know which?)

Re: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis

#65

Post by Balgair »

gonehome wrote: post #57
Balgair wrote: post #52

This Times piece should be taken seriously by FB, it's shareholders, employees, and users. With good sourcing, this paints a very immature picture of the company, from leadership on down to the users. Though the article uses the Russian interference as the launching off point, in my reading, it seems that these attacks on our democracy are essentially waived off. That the most pressing issue for Zuck was not that the…

From people that work there they are hiring unlimited headcount to work on integrity teams - the goal of which is to stop the kind of manipulation that happened in the 2016 election. Given the decisions Facebook has made Zuck seems like a really good CEO and when FB makes something their focus they usually pull it off - fixing mobile, instagram moves against snapchat, etc. The impression I get from people that work t…

That is fantastic to hear. All media, even the Times, should be looked at critically and has biases. If it is true that they are putting a lot more of their site through scrutiny, that bodes well for the future use of social media in general. It is unfortunate that this job will be largely thankless though. Like in plumbing, you'll only notice the bad jobs, not the good work.

Re: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis

#66

Post by eiaoa »

nkurz wrote: post #53
IBM wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few months ago Bloomberg published a story which I'm 99% sure was directed by Facebook PR, in-line with their strategy being reported on in this story [1][2]. Also can any mods tell me why all my comments are dead? [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-08/is-apple-... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17719607

Also can any mods tell me why all my comments are dead? Write to 'hn@ycombinator.com' and ask --- and report back what they say. It looks like it's because of your comment linking Russia and Assange, but it's not clear if this was because it was too pro, too anti, or just because it mentioned one or the other. I'd guess it's user flagging gone awry, but maybe it's a new automated system that's broken instead.

> It looks like it's because of your comment linking Russia and Assange,

I don't think so, my guess is that it was due to one of the comments prior to the one you mentioned, or some activity that occurred on the same IP IBM was using.

Re: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis

#67

Post by CamperBob2 »

skeptic_69 wrote: post #48
IBM wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few months ago Bloomberg published a story which I'm 99% sure was directed by Facebook PR, in-line with their strategy being reported on in this story [1][2]. Also can any mods tell me why all my comments are dead? [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-08/is-apple-... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17719607

I don't know if THIS article was directed by Facebook related PR but the times reporting says there is other PR basically identical to this. So I think we can decisively label your conjecture as "credible"

At the risk of earning one of those (dead) tags myself, I'm starting to think that Bloomberg is basically a PR Newswire for people who want to spread BS about something or someone.

The Facebook-planted story, combined with their recent questionable reporting on hacked motherboard hardware that nobody seems interested in corroborating, doesn't paint a trustworthy picture of the Bloomberg organization as a whole. At least not IMO.

Re: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis

#68

Post by radicaldreamer »

bepotts wrote: post #21
tareqak wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you consider a significant drop in Facebook's European user base to be crisis [0]? [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-revenue-and-user-gr... - Facebook's user base is declining in Europe, and that ought to terrify its American bosses

Losing 2 to 4 million users out of 375 million users is hardly "significant". It's something to look out for of course, but trying to insinuate that Facebook is in trouble in Europe with those numbers is a stretch.

The same network effect that allows social networks to grow at a blistering pace also work backwards.

Re: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis

#69

Post by IBM »

nkurz wrote: post #53
IBM wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few months ago Bloomberg published a story which I'm 99% sure was directed by Facebook PR, in-line with their strategy being reported on in this story [1][2]. Also can any mods tell me why all my comments are dead? [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-08/is-apple-... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17719607

Also can any mods tell me why all my comments are dead? Write to 'hn@ycombinator.com' and ask --- and report back what they say. It looks like it's because of your comment linking Russia and Assange, but it's not clear if this was because it was too pro, too anti, or just because it mentioned one or the other. I'd guess it's user flagging gone awry, but maybe it's a new automated system that's broken instead.

I actually sent them 3 over the past two weeks but never got a reply. I'm guessing no one stays on top of the inbox.

Re: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis

#70

Post by BeetleB »

throwawaymath wrote: post #60
TrevorAustin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than a quarter of Americans, and half of young people, report having deleted the flagship Facebook app from their phones in the wake of these scandals. ( https://www.recode.net/2018/9/5/17824116/delete-facebook-mar... ) The losses are offset in their topline numbers by growth in the developing world, but that's a lagging indicator, and those are much less lucrative user eyeballs. It's mitigated to the extent tho…

No. More than a quarter of Americans and half of "young people" have not reported anything about Facebook. In point of fact, a quarter of the 4,594 people surveyed by Pew Research between May 29 and June 11 report deleting the Facebook app.[1] Of those, half who qualify as young deleted the app. Stop getting your statistics from news. This kind of casual stats citing frustrates me beyond belief. Audit your sources. _…

>In point of fact, a quarter of the 4,594 people surveyed by Pew Research between May 29 and June 11 report deleting the Facebook app.[1] Of those, half who qualify as young deleted the app.

For a population of 330 million, if you want a 95% confidence level and a 2% margin of error, you need only 2401 people in your sample. This is assuming the survey sampled appropriately (i.e. random selection methodology).

It is standard to take well executed surveys and extrapolate to the population. Calling it out is calling the whole field of statistics out.

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