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Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

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Re: Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

#241

Post by village-idiot »

Barrin92 wrote: post #156
elorant wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just look at the amount of personal information Google knows/records about you. Your search history, web stats through Chrome, location history through Android, with whom you exchange emails if you're using GMail, which sites you visit and how long you stay on them through Google Analytics, probably online purchases with a combination of AdSense/AdWords & Analytics, everything you watch on YouTube etc. They definitel…

>They definitely collect much more data than Facebook. The only reason they haven't faced the same shitstorm is because they don't seem to share all that data with 3rd parties. And that is something that is much more relevant to many users. I don't mind sharing a lot of my data as long as I know where my data actually ends up. If Google uses my data to improve their ad algorithm I'm fine with it, if my Facebook data…

Anecdote time.

My wife and I typically donate to a few non profits, such as the ACLU and Trout Unlimited. They occasionally mail us, but we did give them our address so that’s ok.

But one day she donated to the environmental defense fund. Since then the number of surveys and donations requests from random non profits has exploded to 3-4 a week, including weird ones like evangelical surveys and pro-Israeli things. My wife is pissed at the EDF, and will never give them another dollar.

The point? We were both fine having the non-profits having our address and using it, but knowing that one of them sold that data really pissed her off.

Re: Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

#242

Post by srcmap »

mrtksn wrote: post #64
clairity wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "It's telling that a substantial portion of our candidates admitted to considering competing offers from Google, but literally no one was considering Facebook." intersting anecdote. google is a bigger concern for privacy and personal liberty, yet jobseekers are shunning facebook because of the more wide-ranging negative press.

>google is a bigger concern for privacy and personal liberty Big claim. Any proofs? With Facebook, what annoyed me was that they set up internal teams to help with political candidates social media campaigns - no matter who the candidates are. Extremely worrisome if you prefer to have people elected through a democratic process that is based on the discussion. This is not like understanding what people want or how do…

https://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/democrats.energycomme...

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/googles-sensorvault-ca...

Sensorvault:

“includes detailed location records involving at least hundreds of millions of devices worldwide and dating back nearly a decade.”

US law enforcement had been regularly accessing Sensorvault user data in a dragnet-like fashion to obtain location details for hundreds or thousands of users

Re: Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

#243

Post by Despegar »

taurath wrote: post #206
Balgair wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also an issue with the 'evaporative' effect. If no one who works there is seen as 'ethical', then you'd expect the people that do work there to be unethical/dubious. So, trying to get a promotion is then more cut-throat, the lunch crew has a few more 'jerks', the HR is a bit more biting, etc. Your hackels get raised and you are more suspicious of the motivations (however begnin) of others. Better to just not…

Sheryl hired the swiftboat campaigners to stop Congress. Finding out about that made me assume that over time most of their employees would trend in the opposite direction of optimistic.

I wonder if the exec team realizes that the ad-tech industry had their Great Financial Crisis. Nobody is in love with them anymore. They'll get as much reception from politicians as Wall Street did when Congress passed Dodd-Frank. Banks don't earn much more than their cost of capital anymore.

Re: Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

#244

Post by 50656E6973 »

return1 wrote: post #240

The self-righteous people should be alarmed by this: this means facebook will be hiring even worse scum and do more evil things. Save the world from evil facebook, go work for them.

Let it die, this accelerates the process

Re: Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

#245

Post by gonehome »

freedomben wrote: post #235

I've known several people that would no longer work for Facebook, but the Cambridge Analytica isn't the biggest concern. It's the fact that they are censoring people, even within private groups. I have a friend that jokingly said (in a private group) that men are vile pigs. We knew she was joking - it was good natured. Yet, Facebook issued her a warning and removed her post and threatened her with a ban. First they c…

For a detailed nuanced piece about how FB handles some of this complexity check this out: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/men-are-scum-inside-...

FB has its problems, but I generally find the negative press overstated and wonder if Zuck's approach to interact with the press and congress actually backfires (compare to the other companies which largely ignore them). I appreciate how often he talks to the press to explain what they're trying to do though.

I also see the Cambridge Analytica scandal as what it is - permissive APIs that were abused and then locked down. Cambridge Analytica is to blame in this for abusing TOS and behaving badly, FB is arguably negligent - but I think the reaction is extreme.

Plus from people I know inside FB there really is a huge funded effort to stop abuse and manipulation via 'integrity' teams. It'll be interesting to see how they modify things given Zuck's recent pivot towards focusing on privacy as a core feature.

Re: Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

#246

Post by arctux »

romwell wrote: post #171
la_barba wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has Google ever disclosed exactly what data they collect, what they do with it, who can look at it, etc? We "know" that Google takes privacy "seriously", but that is a faith based position.

Actually, Google has. [0] And I can't vouch for all of Google, but regarding location data, Google has been pretty transparent regarding which data is collected and stored; papers like NYT covered it extensively - see [1]. And Google also gives you clear ways to delete this data, as referenced in that NYT article [2]. And moreover, Google has been consistently on track to store less private data . Example: location d…

> And I can't vouch for all of Google, but regarding location data, Google has been pretty transparent regarding which data is collected and stored; papers like NYT covered it extensively - see [1].

How did you read that article and come away with the conclusion that Google has been "pretty transparent". The story was written after more than a year of other news outlets reporting on law enforcement using Google's location data to fish for suspects. Google has been providing this data for at least two years before the Times reported on it [0].

> And moreover, Google has been consistently on track to store less private data.

Such as credit card transaction data collected without most people's knowledge [1] or location data after you've explicitly told it not to [2]?

Technology companies need to understand that both words "informed consent" are important. We currently have very little in the way of choices when it comes to data collection. It is simply not possible to opt-out anymore without tremendous effort and personal cost. I like this quote from Maciej Ceglowski:

"A characteristic of this new world of ambient surveillance is that we cannot opt out of it, any more than we might opt out of automobile culture by refusing to drive. However sincere our commitment to walking, the world around us would still be a world built for cars. We would still have to contend with roads, traffic jams, air pollution, and run the risk of being hit by a bus. Similarly, while it is possible in principle to throw one’s laptop into the sea and renounce all technology, it is no longer be possible to opt out of a surveillance society."

[0]: https://www.wral.com/Raleigh-police-search-google-location-h...

[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/24/google-can-now-track-your-of...

[2]: https://www.apnews.com/828aefab64d4411bac257a07c1af0ecb

Re: Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

#248

Post by throwawaymath »

gambler wrote: post #44

>Facebook candidates are asking much tougher questions about the company’s approach to privacy, according to multiple former recruiters. This narrative is highly suspicious. Zukerberg openly and repeatedly said that he doesn't care about anyone's privacy for well over a decade [1]. The whole company is built around collecting and selling private information. Why would people who care about privacy interview with Face…

Mark Zuckerberg does not say he doesn't care about anyone's privacy in the article you cited "openly and repeatedly" or otherwise. I suppose you can infer that from the actions of the company he runs, but your citation does not support what you've said here. Someone reading your comment without reading the entire Guardian article could come away with an incorrect impression of what he's publicly said.

Re: Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

#249

Post by [deleted] »

Kinnard wrote: post #3
algaeontoast wrote: post #2

I actively turned down a facebook offer out of college, however, boy does facebook throw money at people who seem to turn a blind eye to online ethics... $$$

Is it possible that ppl who work at facebook have ethics that merely differ from yours?

[deleted]

Re: Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

#250

Post by solveit »

UncleEntity wrote: post #239
killjoywashere wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Far better than an itemized list, you can download all your data from Google https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en > The default should be zero/as little as possible collection of data. Really? What about telemetry for self-driving cars? Is it immoral to develop a system that leads to less blunt trauma and death on roads? We (HN users, I don't work for any of these companies) can define your term "…

> What about telemetry for self-driving cars? They own the cars so they can track them all they want. Tracking me all over the place after I click the "Do Not Track Me" button isn't acceptable. > Is it immoral to develop a system that leads to less blunt trauma and death on roads? It quite could be. Just as we humans decided to not use the scientific research generated by the Nazis on unwilling human subjects there a…

Collectively, we did no such thing. Many individual researchers and journals refused to use Nazi research, but many felt that it was unethical not to use it if it could save lives. In particular, I believe that the results of Nazi hypeothermia experiments were extensively used after the war. It's certainly not a cut-and-dry problem with an obvious ethical answer.
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