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Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

theguardian.com

91–100 of 204 posts

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#91
post #23

This HHHH strategy phrase is made up by these lawyers. It's not like the Microsoft version their mimicking where Microsoft actually said it. It makes the headline misleading like it alleges they said it internally as their strategy.

>Microsoft actually said it

Not quite

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49400754

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#92

In the opening sentence: > according to a lawyer who is prosecuting the world’s largest social media company. The headline makes it sound like something internal at Meta got revealed. The catchy four-H phrase is the clever hook the lawyer came up with to try to hold the jury’s mind through the case. If you’re unfamiliar with how these trials work, the lawyers are trying to create a compelling narrative to support the…

The antidote to that would be for Meta to reveal all their internal communications. But they'll never do that because their own words and actions are likely far more damning than any story the DOJ could weave.

The trend I have noticed is anytime the actual truth leaks from these actors and companies, it's so much more evil than I could have imagined. Like the recent tell-all book from someone who worked directly with Zuckerberg, Careless People -- I was shocked at just how amoral those in leadership there. I had a dim view of them before, but their actual words and deeds were worse than I could have imagined.

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#93
post #8

I hate when people say things like “Google did this” or “Meta did that.” There are actual named humans making these decisions. I want them found and held accountable. As of late these people have more power than ever. A single contributor at a company like Meta can make a change that impacts 0.025% of users (potentially hundreds of thousands of people) with zero notice or oversight, for their own individual gain. Not…

The actual named humans making these decisions are very frequently not people who you would consider accountable. If Meta announced that they're firing hundreds of engineers and PMs for optimizing addiction-correlated metrics, even if there was a clear memo instructing them not to do that, nobody would be satisfied and everyone would see it as a deflection of responsibility by the executives. I know this because it's exactly what happened with the Wells Fargo fake account scandal.

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dissolve the company. Jail the C levels. End of story. If this ends in another fine to put into a ledger book I'll scream. The fine ends up back in their pockets in months in the form of loans and grants and tax avoidances and so on. The world no longer needs Facebook and its leaders. It does not need its technology. It does not need the ideas of the people that are there. If you are still working there, you are comp…

Voters put big tech in charge. Blaming the people who need jobs to not be homeless instead of the people who continually vote for billionaires to abuse everyone is ridiculous. Did you go door to door telling your neighbors to vote against the current president and his party? Voters are the ones voting for our current hellscape. It can only be stopped with voting.

There are other jobs though no? Or you could start a company.

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#95
post #29

I hope people can see Meta is funding the other side in order to get Child Safety laws passed so they can have an out when children use their parent's device and Meta spies on them. Child Safety laws are just mass surveillance in disguise which has always been Meta's game plan since day one.

>Child Safety laws are just mass surveillance in disguise which has always been Meta's game plan since day one. I thought they were pushing for on-device age verification, which from a "mass surveillance" perspective is pretty bad? If you wanted mass surveillance, you'd want mandatory ID verification by sites and/or government SSO, both of which allows you to capture a persistent identifier. Of course, meta isn't doi…

The only reason age verification isn’t mandatory is because it isn’t scalable. A few states are moving forward with digital drivers licenses. When there are digital drivers licenses, passports and social security cards you’ll see a renewal to push verification.

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#96

I hope people can see Meta is funding the other side in order to get Child Safety laws passed so they can have an out when children use their parent's device and Meta spies on them. Child Safety laws are just mass surveillance in disguise which has always been Meta's game plan since day one.

Dissolve the company. Jail the C levels. End of story. If this ends in another fine to put into a ledger book I'll scream. The fine ends up back in their pockets in months in the form of loans and grants and tax avoidances and so on. The world no longer needs Facebook and its leaders. It does not need its technology. It does not need the ideas of the people that are there. If you are still working there, you are comp…

> Jail the C levels.

Also the board and anyone who's ever held more than 1% of the stock.

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#97

I hope people can see Meta is funding the other side in order to get Child Safety laws passed so they can have an out when children use their parent's device and Meta spies on them. Child Safety laws are just mass surveillance in disguise which has always been Meta's game plan since day one.

I seriously doubt that the FaceMash guy was planning mass surveillance from day one. The people who propped him up might have, though.

Wrong. He literally made fun of users for giving information that he could use to spy on them and share that ability with friends. It was a childish form of spying but the intent was there and the monetization tactic came later.

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#98
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dissolve the company. Jail the C levels. End of story. If this ends in another fine to put into a ledger book I'll scream. The fine ends up back in their pockets in months in the form of loans and grants and tax avoidances and so on. The world no longer needs Facebook and its leaders. It does not need its technology. It does not need the ideas of the people that are there. If you are still working there, you are comp…

"The world no longer needs Facebook and its leaders. It does not need its technology." Meta owns WhatsApp, which is core infrastructure in many countries now where it has basically replaced the PSTN. If WhatsApp went down without a long transition process first, it would take myriad small businesses down with it. I would love to see harsh punishments and jailed executives, but the world still needs the company for th…

Wasn’t WhatsApp famously created by a team of 20 people?

It’s not meta’s contribution to the world. It can be cleanly extracted from the company. Or a replacement created if need be.

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#99
post #92

In the opening sentence: > according to a lawyer who is prosecuting the world’s largest social media company. The headline makes it sound like something internal at Meta got revealed. The catchy four-H phrase is the clever hook the lawyer came up with to try to hold the jury’s mind through the case. If you’re unfamiliar with how these trials work, the lawyers are trying to create a compelling narrative to support the…

The antidote to that would be for Meta to reveal all their internal communications. But they'll never do that because their own words and actions are likely far more damning than any story the DOJ could weave. The trend I have noticed is anytime the actual truth leaks from these actors and companies, it's so much more evil than I could have imagined. Like the recent tell-all book from someone who worked directly with…

The fun part is their internal communication might be relatively exculpatory, but a good prosecutor can find the crumb or two to hang them.

"Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I will find something in them to hang him." — Cardinal Richelieu (Armand Jean du Plessis)

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#100
post #22

Sounds like the lawyer's spinning what any successful business does with trying to acquire customers and serve their needs as though they were dealing drugs (granted, the line can be blurry between things that are simply enjoyable versus that which is more strongly addictive - some people get "addicted" to eating, but we can't really ban food, for example)

It’s easy to have a successful business by breaking the law. It’s easy to with races when you take performance enhancing drugs.

And ask yourself, would facebook be significantly less successful if they didn’t intentionally market to teen girls based on their emotional state and had the decency to ignore signs of depression and anxiety instead of monetizing them? They might be more successful over time.

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