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I read "best" as "most talented", not "most moral".
Huh? I don't know what that means. Talented in fucking up the public perception of Facebook? Yeah they were good at that for sure.
> As part of this, I’m sad to share the news that Chris Cox has decided to leave the company. "this" reads as though Cox's departure is a result of the decision to build out a "privacy-focused social platform".
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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
Why? What level of criticism is acceptable, and what level is not, and why? This is something I've not really been able to understand about those who defend Facebook against these "attacks". Nothing reported (AFAIK) has been untrue. Facebook is one of the richest and most culturally central companies of the 21st century. It seems fair game to examine what they do.
"Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages." [0]
Netflix and Spotify have Messenger plugins that allow you to share movie trailers and songs from directly within the Messenger app. Spotify's desktop app also used to connect with Messenger to enable similar functionality. NYT equated having standard "read/write" permissions necessary for basic app functionality with Netflix and Spotify being able to access, store, and modify all of your private messages.
Read the comments on that article and any prior discussion of it on the internet and you'll see that many technology illiterate people misinterpreted what that meant.
Also, it's fair game to examine what Facebook has been doing, but it's also fair game to examine what NYT's motives are for scrutinizing them so closely. When Google, Twitter, Equifax, and others have been largely ignored one naturally begins to wonder if there's an underlying agenda at play.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/technology/facebook-priva...
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
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Why? What level of criticism is acceptable, and what level is not, and why? This is something I've not really been able to understand about those who defend Facebook against these "attacks". Nothing reported (AFAIK) has been untrue. Facebook is one of the richest and most culturally central companies of the 21st century. It seems fair game to examine what they do.
What do I see as the real issue with FB (and Instagram in particular)? It rots people's brains out. It's like crack. I know multiple people spending their life savings to travel the globe for the perfect Instagram shot. I know many, many relationships that have been utterly destroyed by Facebook. Turns out staying connected to all of your ex-partners on a social network kinda makes it hard to get into new relationships. Facebook has been an absolute blight on humanity, just not for the reasons the mass media tells you.
I've known Chris Cox since freshman year of college and he was an informal advisor to my first startup. The NYT article referenced in hashberry's earlier comment includes a key quote: “For over a decade, I’ve been sharing the same message that Mark and I have always believed: Social media’s history is not yet written, and its effects are not neutral,” Mr. Cox said in a note to employees on Thursday. “As its builders…
Maybe you are reading between the lines too much. Maybe he really just wants to do something else or spend more time with his family, and if he felt like Facebook was bending things the wrong way he'd say so. His point is more that progress in the right direction requires effort, and that instead of complaining we should take up our banner and work to make the future what we want it to be.
I wish that were true, but this is a rather naive perspective.
Facebook has a well documented history of requiring outgoing employees to sign non-disparagement clauses. For someone as high up as Chief Product Officer you’d better believe that they would have Chris sign something expressly forbidding any overt criticism of the company. Any severance package which in this case is worth millions or tens of millions would be contingent on signing.
I’m actually surprised he was able to say as much as he did.
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…
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As a person, maybe if I squint very very very hard. Legally, he has a duty to maximize value for his board and investors. And there hasn't been a business model that provides a free consumer web product without monetizing user data.
Why does this shareholder value meme keep getting perpetuated?
I've known Chris Cox since freshman year of college and he was an informal advisor to my first startup. The NYT article referenced in hashberry's earlier comment includes a key quote: “For over a decade, I’ve been sharing the same message that Mark and I have always believed: Social media’s history is not yet written, and its effects are not neutral,” Mr. Cox said in a note to employees on Thursday. “As its builders…
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
These are users who didn't even use it. But just seeing the Facebook login option there next to email (it was the only OAuth) gave them the creeps. These aren't tech savvy users either, just regular small town businesses
I think Facebook has a long, long, long way to go towards brand repair before anyone can 'trust' it in any way