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Facebook Loses Top Executives, Including Chris Cox

nytimes.com

31–40 of 414 posts

Re: Facebook Loses Top Executives, Including Chris Cox

#31

Chris was one of the rare people who understood both the technical side and business side of a product/business. There were so many times where an engineer would start blabbling big terms to avoid doing something or an PM spouts MBA Bullshit and Chris just shuts it down. What outsiders who focused on the PR never knew is that there was a balance of power in FB that kept things going forward. Now, with these changes a…

What was the philosophical difference between the two? Short-termism vs what?

Re: Facebook Loses Top Executives, Including Chris Cox

#33

I just don't understand how anyone can believe his vision for "a privacy-focused social network" is even possible this late in the game. There is too much money riding precisely on the reductions of privacy Facebook has enabled for this to be realistic anymore. The ad dollars come from knowing you, not concealing you. Plus, once you're a public company, the rules change—you have shareholders to honor—and if you got t…

Some theories:

1. Rebranding Facebook as secure and private

2. If this increases usage, more opportunity to display ads

3. Their data shows they gain more information by monitoring what people publicly share, not say in private

4. Removes all responsibility to work with law enforcement and governments for illegal activity, since it's encrypted

Re: Facebook Loses Top Executives, Including Chris Cox

#35

I just don't understand how anyone can believe his vision for "a privacy-focused social network" is even possible this late in the game. There is too much money riding precisely on the reductions of privacy Facebook has enabled for this to be realistic anymore. The ad dollars come from knowing you, not concealing you. Plus, once you're a public company, the rules change—you have shareholders to honor—and if you got t…

I think the best way to fulfill this privacy-centric vision would be to create a decentralized system--something that FB, sadly, isn't really interested in.

Re: Facebook Loses Top Executives, Including Chris Cox

#37
They just spent the last 5 years drilling into their employees a culture where online privacy doesn't exist, I think it's going to be pretty steep turn of the ship. Nevertheless I hope the announcement is not merely lip-service. I'd love to see the same commitment out of Google.

Re: Facebook Loses Top Executives, Including Chris Cox

#39

Interesting spin from the NYTimes ("Facebook Loses Top Executives, Including Chris Cox"[0]): "The departures follow two years of scandals for Facebook around data privacy and disinformation. The issues have buffeted the Silicon Valley company, causing internal turmoil and a redirection in strategy." [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/technology/facebook-chris...

This is what pisses me off. I'm more than willing to criticize Facebook when they deserve it but IMO the media blitzkrieg has said more about the media than Facebook. Not that FB hasn't done scummy things but my faith in the whole attack angle has been reduced

Facebook has been consistently and intentionally abusive of their users since its founding.

The media isn't being too aggressive now: they've been too lenient for the previous decade. The outrage has finally caught up with the outrageous reality.

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