This seems to be a semi-comprehensive discussion of the findings: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039
Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs
651–660 of 734 posts
Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs
#652Earlier quoted context omitted.
My Mom said it to me with simpler terms when i was little... "we only have laws because of the assholes"
Same with contracts: you only need them when things go bad.
That's not entirely true. Contracts ensure you agree on important stuff up front when it's easy to do so and that you don't forget anything obvious.
Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs
#653I think a lot of people are choosing to ignore that a lot of companies have done things in the past that were not illegal at the time of action. However, those actions were later decided to be made illegal because the behavior was deemed to be antithetical to our values. For example, Standard Oil did not break any laws in its ruthless consolidation of the nascent oil industry. In fact, it exploited the law to allow i…
One fairly common pattern seen is that companies develop in a nascent space where there were few rules and were therefore able to basically outrun regulation/ the law that moves very slowly. When that regulation eventually comes it ends up solidifying the monopolistic advantage by essentially creating a moat and closing the door on practices that helped create such growth in the first place. I think when stakes are t…
Internet was funny. In the case of Uber, the nascent space was virtual but that was enough for them to ask for the ability to play with the old space with a fresh empty rule set.
Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs
#654I think a lot of people are choosing to ignore that a lot of companies have done things in the past that were not illegal at the time of action. However, those actions were later decided to be made illegal because the behavior was deemed to be antithetical to our values. For example, Standard Oil did not break any laws in its ruthless consolidation of the nascent oil industry. In fact, it exploited the law to allow i…
Same case with Enron. After the Enron scandal the Sarbanes - Oxley act was enacted to strengthen financial reporting practices along with a bunch of new modifications in the accounting principles and guidelines (GAAP).
The SOX Act was considered to be greatest and the most radical update in Accounting since the invention of the double entry method. Governance and stewardship was theorized in Accounting but they were pushed into practice with the SOX act.
Similarly we had the Dodd-Frank act post the financial crisis of '08.
Essentially law is a post-facto phenomenon. We can not be sure what to write into a legal framework unless there is an evidence for the need to such laws.
Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs
#655I think a lot of people are choosing to ignore that a lot of companies have done things in the past that were not illegal at the time of action. However, those actions were later decided to be made illegal because the behavior was deemed to be antithetical to our values. For example, Standard Oil did not break any laws in its ruthless consolidation of the nascent oil industry. In fact, it exploited the law to allow i…
Industrial ethics can be about ensuring longterm success as well. If a journalist can’t be trusted to keep an off-the-record source unnamed then they will never get another story. They can tarnish their entire organization, so they don’t do it even if they could get one incredibly powerful story out of it.
Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs
#656Earlier quoted context omitted.
Illegal isn’t just another word for “forbidden” and the Law isn’t just another word for “the rules”, particularly in the context of this larger discussion on Facebook’s actions. Your parents can punish you for eating all the cookies but the government will not sanction you nor them for doing so (even if a hypothetical and tyrannical government in theory could; maybe let’s not theorycraft absurd ordinances).
The issue for me with this scenario is that it's already so contrived that yea - of course you're not going to be arrested for eating all the cookies from the cookie jar. But only for that action - if you scale that action up to a significant level then you absolutely might be breaking a law. There are lots of things that are legal (or at least looked the other way at) on certain small scales and a lot of penalties e…
Alright, so the thing about the cookies and the cookie jar up in the original post: for the point the parent was trying to make, it was not actually contrived and the reason for that is because you can replace that specific example with about a billion other minor slightly unethical examples that also shouldn’t be illegal and his point still stands.
Where it gets contrived is when you start talking about hypothetical socialist cookie jars policed by tyrannical municipal governments or collector’s cookies. You steal $10K worth of cookie products off the shelf, that’s robbery. You take a single pack of cookies off the shelf: that’s petty theft, and if you eat all the cookies your mom or roommate made and leave none for anyone else, then you’re just an asshole. Strangely enough the law is quite capable of making distinctions.
What the law is not capable of doing though is giving people without a moral compass a moral compass, or aligning differing moral compasses from different cultures. For all the nuances the law can make, it’s still just a sledgehammer in the face of human behavior and social custom is how we self-govern ourselves the vast majority of the time without involving sheriffs and courts and legislators. Every time the law takes something governed by social convention and puts it into the hands of the courts, private society loses a little part of itself to the people with the bigger guns for good or for ill.
Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs
#657I am very conflicted about this situation. On one hand, I recognize that Facebook may be a sort of anger multiplier when people scroll only through content that reconfirms their biases and buries said people deeper into their "truth bubbles". I get it.
On the other hand, the two main pillars of this story: "won't somebody think of the children?" and "the democracy at risk" have been used to justify authoritarian measures all over the world. I do informal surveys of election news in some countries and often find that "the democracy is at risk" really means "people will elect somebody I don't like".
China has recently banned effeminate men from appearing on TV primarily due to a concern that "Chinese boys' masculinity was under attack".
I don't know this person and her politics, so I will not make judgments yet. I'd be disappointed if she is revealed to be an aspiring politician or one of those people who think every company they work at needs to follow their politics and moral compass.
Edit: I have visited her Twitter page and frankly was a bit disgusted. It looks like a corporate page readying to spring to a world of newfound fame through speaking gigs and book deals.
Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs
#658I think a lot of people are choosing to ignore that a lot of companies have done things in the past that were not illegal at the time of action. However, those actions were later decided to be made illegal because the behavior was deemed to be antithetical to our values. For example, Standard Oil did not break any laws in its ruthless consolidation of the nascent oil industry. In fact, it exploited the law to allow i…
If Congress invites you to speak without fear of arrest and the main stream media hold you up as a darling then you are NOT a whistleblower. You are doing the bidding of power... If you are exiled to Russia (Snowden) or locked up without trial like Assange THEN you are whistlw blower and dangerous to power. This chick is a shill
Bingo. The whole thing smells fishy. Of course, the headlines were talking about how evil Facebook is because it makes kids feel bad. But digging deeper, you can see exactly how this is meant to play out: More censorship and control by the NGOs and "Fact-Checkers" (since the gov't can't publicly dictate what content Facebook is censoring). But make no mistake, the same players that are calling the shots in DC will now be ensuring the public doesn't see any of that dangerous "disinformation".
It was a good 30 years or so for true free speech that was always the promise of the internet. But those days are gone.
Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs
#659>Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages
Ruh-roh!
Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs
#660What better way to shout into the void than posting on HN, a website that can't load more than one top-level comment on a page!