Live data from Hacker News

Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

cnbc.com

341–350 of 444 posts

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

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but Blind is filled with the type of people who would fit right in at FB.

Ouch, there's honestly no worse insult than being compared to the average Blind user.

Oops my mistake for looking there, noped out after viewing the train wreck for myself.

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

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow! Source?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-data-... The person who runs Definers Public Affairs, Matt Rhoades was the opposition research director for Bush/Cheney 04. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definers_Public_Affairs https://definersdc.com/team/matt-rhoades/ > In 2004, he played a critical role in President George W. Bush’s winning re-election campaign, serving as the Research Director for Bush-Cheney…

Sheryl Sandberg and Zuck are a team. They are aligned in some bizarre goal that seems to function as a juggernaut that I got into tech specifically to avoid.

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

#344
post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 loc…

All these links are year or two old.

A big push towards openness and privacy has happened over the last year.

On an individual level, I don't think it's hard to opt out of Google's tracking.

I won't argue with Maciej's quote, though, because, just like with automobiles, people will still opt into the surveillance society willingly: because the utility it brings them outweighs other considerations.

Ask people if they want to be tracked at all times, and they'll say "no".

Ask people if they want to be able to locate their phone when they lose it, and their answer might be different.

Ask them if they'd want be able to cal 911 and ask to come and help them even if they aren't sure where they are, and you'll get a different distribution of answers again.

In the latter case, lack of "surveillance" is seen as a "tragic shortfall" [0], and adding it is a "feature"[1].

So see, it's not the surveillance per se that people object to. It's implementation details. Welcome to Ceglowski's world.

[0]https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/02/22/cellphone-911...

[1]https://money.cnn.com/2018/06/18/technology/apple-911-locati...

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

#345
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any communication platform that is easy to use and easy to reach people on, and will therefore be popular, is great channel of dissemination of fake news. Well, guess what, it is also a great channel for communicating nonfake news, and talking to people that matter to you, and sharing your interests with likeminded people, and... Blaming the platform for carrying fake news seems disingenuous. Fake news have been spre…

I think one needs to be very intentionally oblivious to not notice the qualitative difference between fake news of the past and fake news right now. Fake news in the past always had an identifiable source, because there was still an institution, a company, or someone with their name on the door between reader and publisher. As it stands, no such barrier exists any more. Things can be inserted by malicious actors into…

No it didn't, that's historical revisionism. Go read any historical text or even Chinese censorship propaganda today and you'll discover the authorities were/are obsessed with "rumours". Attempts to control what people can say are a historical constant, the only difference between then and now is the lingo has changed.

There's no need to change anything, people or companies. Left to their own devices people figure out propaganda eventually. It may not be in the direction to your liking, but then, as a supposedly rational person, you must accept that maybe it's you who is victim of propaganda and the other people who are not.

The best example of this in recent times is the large number of supposedly smart people who fell in love with "The US President is a Russian spy" as an idea, which was based on nothing - it was rumours, it was fake news, it was propaganda distributed by the press, and now 50% or more of the US population agree with their president that it was also a witchhunt. Seems like people were drowned in fake news and still, a large chunk of them understood it was fake. Of those who still believe it, it might be more accurate to say they wish it was true - but that's a common theme in all rumours and propaganda throughout history.

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

#346
post #38

I just spent three months hiring in NYC, and now that I think about it, I haven't seen a single person mention they were considering counteroffers from Facebook. For context, Facebook and Google are the two largest tech companies with a significant NYC presence. It's telling that a substantial portion of our candidates admitted to considering competing offers from Google, but literally no one was considering Facebook…

> one of the things candidates respond to most is the story we tell about our company's past, present, and future

I hear this storyline fairly often (though exclusively from corporate recruiters) and I have a super hard time understanding why this would matter. Can someone who actually listens to this kind of (IMO) propaganda weigh in and help me understand why it matters to them?

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

#347
post #224
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Obvious data privacy issues finally becoming mainstream is what is finally convincing programmers to not want to work there? Hasn’t all of this stuff been obvious forever to programmers?

> Hasn’t all of this stuff been obvious forever to programmers? Yes, but it wasn't at the "oh crap elections were manipulated, democracies toppled, dissidents tracked down, and genocides enabled" level. The fact that Apple, the world's richest company in the world, now has a mainstream marketing campaign around privacy tells you it is now officially mainstream mainstream, not just programmer mainstream.

None of those things have happened though, have they? Which democracies has Facebook toppled? Which genocides did they "enable"? And as for "elections were manipulated", I'll give you that one, but the only actual evidence I've seen of Facebook manipulating elections is shutting down the pages and followers of actual conservative political parties. The whole Russia story turned out to be smoke and mirrors, and based on rather huge assumptions about the efficiency of political advertising to begin with.

Apple use privacy as an attempt to differentiate themselves from Google despite in the phone market having very little actual differences between them. It doesn't seem to have helped: Android is globally dominant.

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

#348
post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one needs to be very intentionally oblivious to not notice the qualitative difference between fake news of the past and fake news right now. Fake news in the past always had an identifiable source, because there was still an institution, a company, or someone with their name on the door between reader and publisher. As it stands, no such barrier exists any more. Things can be inserted by malicious actors into…

Yes, the Internet has made spreading fake news easier, but let me reiterate my argument - the Internet has made communication as a whole easier, so it's only natural that fake news spreads easier. However, that is not the fault of any given communication platform on the Internet, unless that platform happens to explicitly select fake news stories to spread, and suppress anything else. Which certainly is not case for…

>Yes, the Internet has made spreading fake news easier, but let me reiterate my argument - the Internet has made communication as a whole easier, so it's only natural that fake news spreads easier.

I totally agree, but it doesn't follow that this means that the fake news situation is acceptable, or that Facebook isn't responsible as a platform which the OP argued.

With the increased density of urban living came more opportunity but also more crime and disease, but we don't shrug and accept that barowners have no responsibility as platforms, we give them a set of safety and health regulations and responsibilities, and we equip the police with tools to combat crime.

So in that spirit, just as the internet isn't the internet of the hacker and small community age, companies should have to deal with the problems they produce. Just like everyone else always had to.

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

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> be shipped around internally How is that a problem? The issue at hand is the irresponsible handling of data (especially wrt 3rd parties), not the general handling of 1st-party data competently within an internal network. So yes, it's a LOT better.

In what way? If Google uses your search history to target you with ads is that somehow better than them leaking the data and a third party service targetting you the same way? The end result is the same.

How are they same? Single source you trust versus multiple unknown parties having your data.

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

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you not quoting the rest of that sentence is quite disingenuous >"...For example, we use service providers to help us with customer support" As far as I'm aware there is no evidence that Google shares my personal information, without my explicit consent, with third parties like Cambridge Analytica, which collected tens of millions of individual user profiles.

Sorry, how is it disingenuous? I didn't consider the example relevant to the policy itself, and I provided a link to the source material for anyone to read. Giving a benign example is meant to downplay the fact that Google can do anything they want with your data.

Anything? How so? They are bound by their legal disclaimers and laws. Which prohibits many options automatically.
Post reply on HN