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My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook Goodbye post

alecmuffett.com

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Re: My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook Goodbye post

#211

Post by jjulius »

will4274 wrote: post #179
numair wrote: post #112

There’s no honor among thieves. What this guy, and the whistleblower, and Mark Zuckerberg, and Roger McNamee, and everyone else are doing is simple — they’re all turning on each other. Don’t try to figure out who is “right” or “wrong” or whatever, or if it’s the government going after them, blah blah blah. It’s just a bunch of dirty people pointing fingers at others, trying to wash their karma. Somewhere in the vault…

> unrepentant sexual predator What is this? I don't have any context.

The user you're responding to reported Parker to the FBI alleging he witnessed him rape a 16 year-old. He's also got some prior history involving FB and how they treated an app he developed years back. Here are a few links related to this that I discovered by Googling "numair sean parker" just now.

His Twitter feed also alludes to many other people being involved with underage boys.

https://mobile.twitter.com/numair/status/1408055869481254912...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26725402

https://numair.medium.com/15-years-is-enough-time-silicon-va...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2134289

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Edit: It's worth pointing out that this post of his from 2006 aged like milk, given his current views of Parker and (as I've read in other threads lately) Zuckerberg/FB.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070107220225/http://www.numair...

Re: My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook Goodbye post

#212

Post by madrox »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #2

As cited in this article, Frances Haugen is arguing against allowing Facebook to use end-to-end encryption because she suggests Facebook should have more surveillance of private communications: https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1452309133928054799?s... A lot of people jumped to the defense of the Facebook leaker because the media so successfully framed it as a “whistleblower” situation, but that’s not really wha…

I haven't been able to find a clip of it, but Biden recently brought up that democracies are having a hard time keeping up socially with the pace of innovation, and that autocracies are reacting quicker. He wasn't advocating for autocracy; merely pointing out that democracy is struggling on this point. I've been thinking about this a lot whenever government oversight is brought up.

I'm not convinced the war against misinformation is any more winnable than the war on drugs in a free, self-determining society. The best we can hope for is to curb the worst consequences by slowing virality.

Re: My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook Goodbye post

#213

Post by [deleted] »

helen___keller wrote: post #39
yodsanklai wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is a bit schizophrenic on this topic. On one hand, it seems everybody wants more freedom and less surveillance, but they give FB a hard time for not monitoring content better. Hopefully these aren't the same people expressing these contradictory points of view. I'd be curious to know what both side think the ideal social network should look like.

Like any social network, HN falls into polarized, sometimes unproductive, discussion with certain topics. For HN, that's frequently discussion of big tech and their antics and discussion of censorship/moderation/surveillance. Links about the intersection of these topics, such as apple/CSAM or facebook/moderation, are most likely to have comments that devolve into polemic without much productive discussion taking plac…

[deleted]

Re: My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook Goodbye post

#214

Post by wnissen »

wakiza33 wrote: post #102
pfraze wrote: post #21

Just saying, at this stage, if I were Facebook and I wanted to take the pressure off, I’d be putting out little stories that make the story about the whistleblower instead of about Facebook. I’d also focus on stories that will make us disagree with her over various particulars rather than with Facebook. Facebook has a pretty simple problem: they pissed off too many people, either by taking too much of the winnings fo…

That's a fair perspective. The part of it though that is nefarious is that the main segment they have angered is the media. Simply put, the advertising dollars that used to go to newspapers now go to Facebook and Google (because you can reach the same audience far more efficiently). Unfortunately, it's pretty clear the media 'has it out for' facebook, ultimately, for monetary reasons. Particularly the big institution…

Given that the newspapers watched Facebook first co-opt their content, and then their revenue, and continually jerked them around with misleading or even fraudulent metrics ("pivot to video!"), I think they have been remarkably restrained. And that's leaving aside the damage of email, community forums, and democracy that don't directly affect the media.

Re: My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook Goodbye post

#215

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

yodsanklai wrote: post #5
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #2

As cited in this article, Frances Haugen is arguing against allowing Facebook to use end-to-end encryption because she suggests Facebook should have more surveillance of private communications: https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1452309133928054799?s... A lot of people jumped to the defense of the Facebook leaker because the media so successfully framed it as a “whistleblower” situation, but that’s not really wha…

HN is a bit schizophrenic on this topic. On one hand, it seems everybody wants more freedom and less surveillance, but they give FB a hard time for not monitoring content better. Hopefully these aren't the same people expressing these contradictory points of view. I'd be curious to know what both side think the ideal social network should look like.

> On one hand, it seems everybody wants more freedom and less surveillance, but they give FB a hard time for not monitoring content better.

That seems perfectly consistent. FB is already going all-in on surveillance and ignoring any notion of freedom; if they must destroy privacy, the least we can ask is that they actually do something useful with it.

Re: My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook Goodbye post

#216

Post by loeg »

tayistay wrote: post #173

> I built a great team, built the product, and unlike the current crop of whistleblowers I submitted my resignation and fostered strong relationships with my soon-to-be-ex-colleagues, because there is a lot more impact to be had through constructive engagement than in rage-quitting. Nonsense, and smug. Nobody would have heard of this guy were it not for "the current crop of whistleblowers." And we've all seen that Fa…

> Nobody would have heard of this guy were it not for "the current crop of whistleblowers."

You might not have heard of him, and that's fine, but Alec Muffet has had a Wikipedia article dating back to 2013. He's been a public figure since long before this crop of "whistleblowers."

Re: My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook Goodbye post

#217

Post by loeg »

gverrilla wrote: post #117

“make the world more open and connected” only means "scale fast and get as much products as you can to later sell to advertisers". being connected or open won't end slavery, homelessness, crime or ignorance.

> being connected or open won't end slavery, homelessness, crime or ignorance.

Is any other corporation (Visa, Saudi Aramco, Apple, ...) expected to solve slavery, homelessness, crime, and ignorance? This is an absurd criticism.

Re: My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook Goodbye post

#218

Post by csmoak »

lowkey_ wrote: post #7
yodsanklai wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is a bit schizophrenic on this topic. On one hand, it seems everybody wants more freedom and less surveillance, but they give FB a hard time for not monitoring content better. Hopefully these aren't the same people expressing these contradictory points of view. I'd be curious to know what both side think the ideal social network should look like.

> On one hand, it seems everybody wants more freedom and less surveillance, but they give FB a hard time for not monitoring content better. I don't think these are conflicting views: (1) Less monitoring on private messages (2) More monitoring on public posts

How do you look at spamming private messages to many recipients, resulting in a similar effect to posting publicly?

I know of bullying on FB where the harasser sends the same message to dozens of friends of the harassed. FB makes this easy to do since a list of someone's contacts are often easy to find online and there is no recourse to find or report these messages (as with a public post).

To me this presents a particularly tricky double-edged sword. E2E encryption is good in many cases, but tied to an easy way to send many messages and easily-accessible lists of people to target a message to, can result in a similar but more hidden version of public posts.

My guess is that this is being used today to disseminate similar content that is being restricted on public posts.

As far as I can tell, restrictions to limit the number and speed of private messages have not been effective against this kind of approach, and new accounts can always be created. In some cases, these messages go to a different "inbox" for non-contacts, but not always, and this just delays the receipt of the message since, again, they cannot be found or reported.

I don't know a good solution to this problem, but it's not one I've seen talked about.

Re: My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook Goodbye post

#219

Post by mensetmanusman »

“ AM: I believe that the pushback we are seeing from Governments against Facebook for pursuing this goal, is substantial and aimed squarely at making an example of FB to discourage further adoption of end-to-end encryption.”

Who to trust…

Re: My interview with Steven Levy re. leaking of my Facebook Goodbye post

#220

Post by gnramires »

yawnr wrote: post #43
lowkey_ wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On one hand, it seems everybody wants more freedom and less surveillance, but they give FB a hard time for not monitoring content better. I don't think these are conflicting views: (1) Less monitoring on private messages (2) More monitoring on public posts

My question is what constitutes a public post? I feel like that definition is evolving. Is a WhatsApp group with 1k members spreading disinformation still a private message?

It really does not seem like a terrible idea to set off an arbitrary point at say 50 or 100 messages. Not everyone is going to be happy, sure, but it's clear.

More important I think is the kind of "control" that's exerted: it of course should be around developing factually accurate sources and promoting those instead (maybe a warning "This post contains keywords detected anonymously that suggest misinformation. Here is an alternative position"

The fundamental problem is that we are building our entire lives around a few systems that are completely opaque. Facebook, Google, and many other algorithms are still closed source, and to their own detriment they cannot reveal details of their inner workings. That's why we need a way to move to a radically open society that still allows for innovation and advanced technology.

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