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Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

wsj.com

171–180 of 627 posts

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#171

have they defined what "hate speech" and "misinformation" mean these days? More often than not these terms are used by one party to silence & suppress opposing views of another. Thankfully Zuckerberg doesn't give a damn, one would be hard-pressed to find a better CEO for social media company who can stand up to all this whining.

Oppressive Speech: https://doi.org/10.1080/00048400802370334 Performative Hate Speech Acts. Perlocutionary and Illocutionary Understandings in International Human Rights Law: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334199177_PERFORMAT...

the whole concept of "oppression" in modern context holds absolutely no merit, it's a divisive racist view of American culture and it's been used for political gain again and again.

Since it's published by supposedly reputable academics I think it's a perfect example of misinformation.

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#172

have they defined what "hate speech" and "misinformation" mean these days? More often than not these terms are used by one party to silence & suppress opposing views of another. Thankfully Zuckerberg doesn't give a damn, one would be hard-pressed to find a better CEO for social media company who can stand up to all this whining.

Oppressive Speech: https://doi.org/10.1080/00048400802370334 Performative Hate Speech Acts. Perlocutionary and Illocutionary Understandings in International Human Rights Law: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334199177_PERFORMAT...

You are attempting to frame state controls on speech as some form of "liberation". This is quite literally 1984 "Freedom is Slavery" kind of thinking.

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#173
post #137

have they defined what "hate speech" and "misinformation" mean these days? More often than not these terms are used by one party to silence & suppress opposing views of another. Thankfully Zuckerberg doesn't give a damn, one would be hard-pressed to find a better CEO for social media company who can stand up to all this whining.

It’s simple really. “All X are Y” where X is an immutable characteristic and Y is something negative = hate speech. “Covid vaccines contain 5G microchips” is misinformation. Do you have any examples of what you’re alluding to?

What characteristics are immutable these days?

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oppressive Speech: https://doi.org/10.1080/00048400802370334 Performative Hate Speech Acts. Perlocutionary and Illocutionary Understandings in International Human Rights Law: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334199177_PERFORMAT...

the whole concept of "oppression" in modern context holds absolutely no merit, it's a divisive racist view of American culture and it's been used for political gain again and again. Since it's published by supposedly reputable academics I think it's a perfect example of misinformation.

There has been oppression and struggle against it for as long as human civilization has existed and writing to record the struggles of the oppressed.

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#175
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. I have a relative who processes digital intakes for a CA ACLU chapter, and they get a huge number of interview-related complaints, which get referred directly to legal assistance who are interested in such cases. My opinion is we likely don’t hear about it because each case is small, and companies have no incentive to publicize settlements.

The ACLU lost its legitimacy when it stopped defending the civil liberties of people they don't agree with.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#176
post #129
post #119

I'm glad she shared what she shared. Facebook is a cancer on society IMO. In many cases, although perhaps not this one, whistleblowers have had an extremely active and political Twitter account when hired, or are literally being hired _because_ of their wokeness. Do silicon valley companies not screen for intensity of political views during job interviews in order to prevent issues like this? They certainly don't see…

> Do silicon valley companies not screen for intensity of political views during job interviews in order to prevent issues like this? It would seem that they actively select for it. > It would seem like it would be better for business to just not let people join the organization if they're relatively likely to one day go on a moral crusade. To be fair: Blue Team straight up hit the panic button when Trump was elected…

Could you expand on "His "Law and Order" tweets during all the rioting were absolutely pathetic."?

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there no consumer protection laws which forbids a company from pushing a product to market that they know to be harmful to their customers? IANAL but it seems pretty illegal to my eyes.

I hate Facebook, but your statement begs the question: "who defines what is harmful"

The "who defines" question isn't really much of a gotcha for laws. Either the legislature specifies when the pass the law, or courts get to decide when a case comes before them. Sometimes a jury is also involved.

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To expand on the sibling comment, Facebook has two classes of shares. Class A shares have one vote and are the shares that are traded on stock exchanges. Class B shares get 10 votes each and are held by Zuckerberg and friends. Zuckerberg has enough Class B shares that he really can't be outvoted by other investors.

> Facebook has two classes of shares I had no idea companies could legally create vastly unequal schemes like that. How do people even find out about things like this? Is this information available somewhere? Impossible to make good investment decisions without this sort of knowledge.

It adds a level of stability. Some institutional investors don't want shareholders to have power over a company because that opens the doors to things like hostile takeovers. Having all the voting power vested in the core "founders" means the company won't ever be subject to change from outside. So, if you like things as they are, you can rest assured that things likely will never change. Only a long term investor, someone willing to retain shares during a corporate crisis, really cares about actually voting out one board for another. A short term investor wants to ride on the coattails but will jump rather than attempt to change where those coattails are headed.

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#179
post #119

I'm glad she shared what she shared. Facebook is a cancer on society IMO. In many cases, although perhaps not this one, whistleblowers have had an extremely active and political Twitter account when hired, or are literally being hired _because_ of their wokeness. Do silicon valley companies not screen for intensity of political views during job interviews in order to prevent issues like this? They certainly don't see…

Most companies who work at population scales end up being toxic cuz there is a power and information asymmetry, that your average corporate robot with factory defaults, will find hard to resist exploiting.

Its what they are programmed to do.

When the work environment is exploitative in nature triggering people within the org happens all ths time.

The difference today is people who get triggered woke or non woke, can take advantage of networks effects like never before to do serious damage. Companies cant do shit about it.

Look at the people she connected with Andrew Bakaj, Jeff Horwitz, 60 minutes etc.

Re: Facebook whistleblower says she wants to fix company, not harm it

#180
post #119

I'm glad she shared what she shared. Facebook is a cancer on society IMO. In many cases, although perhaps not this one, whistleblowers have had an extremely active and political Twitter account when hired, or are literally being hired _because_ of their wokeness. Do silicon valley companies not screen for intensity of political views during job interviews in order to prevent issues like this? They certainly don't see…

It might be a good idea for companies to be up front about their significant moral choices. Then regardless of disgruntled employees, they can defend and discuss their behavior and any mistakes with a majority of consistent internal and external communications. And maybe avoid doing most really bad things. This consistency of purpose and avoidance of causing surreptitious harm is called “integrity”.

As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." When over a trillion dollars of value is on the line, history tells us that people will generally act poorly and come up with any plausible justification for why they're doing good.

This isn't to excuse Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, or anybody else in a decision-making position. The first time your business model is widely seen to have played a determining role in a genocide [1], the ethical decision is unambiguous--it's a good time to step down and take your billions to lobby against that business model. There's no moral excuse for doing otherwise.

[1] https://time.com/5197039/un-facebook-myanmar-rohingya-violen...

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