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Facebook’s attempt to smear the whistleblower

theverge.com

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Re: Facebook’s attempt to smear the whistleblower

#101

Post by kurikuri »

iammisc wrote: post #75
fireball_blaze wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of those could also be said of Snowden, but he found some impactful, explosive material.

Snowden advocated in favor of the government following their own law (not spying on people without judicially issued warrants). This 'whistleblower' is asking the government to violate their own law (the first amendment) by banning individual speech on these platforms. EDIT: Honestly, I could care less about facebook. Although I think Mark Zuckerberg should be in jail (look at the allegations that his company knowing…

>asking the government to violate their own law (the first amendment)

I don’t believe this is the case, isn’t the whistleblower accusing Facebook of lying to its investors and has filed SEC complaints for the matter?

Re: Facebook’s attempt to smear the whistleblower

#102

Post by Barrin92 »

caminante wrote: post #98
Barrin92 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because they're not even attempting to refute anything she says, which the Verge article points out. If you're going to try to smear someone by attacking their lack of experience it would probably make sense to point out how that lack of experience manifests itself in errors in her judgement. Of course they cannot do that because she is literally citing their own words. Which is why this is just a thinly veiled, path…

>If you're going to try to smear someone by attacking their lack of experience Re-read the parent comment. How is the whistleblower getting smeared based on the assertions above? Are they not factual AND relevant? edit: I see comments below talking past this sub-thread. Let's get down to definitions. > Smear: damage the reputation of (someone) by false accusations; slander. At best, the article's premise that FB's cl…

they're not relevant at all because you don't even need to work at facebook to disseminate facebook's research. It's a smear because it's a completely irrelevant ad hominem. The research is straight forward enough, and now public, so that everyone can actually come to the exact same conclusion she did simply by reading it. What she has done is made it public. And Facebook does not refute is because they cannot, so they go after the person's CV.

Can you explain to me using basic logic what the connection is between your career status at facebook and reading research of the effects of facebook products on its users? what's next, do I need to work at Exxon to understand climate science?

Re: Facebook’s attempt to smear the whistleblower

#103

Post by glitchc »

caminante wrote: post #98
Barrin92 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because they're not even attempting to refute anything she says, which the Verge article points out. If you're going to try to smear someone by attacking their lack of experience it would probably make sense to point out how that lack of experience manifests itself in errors in her judgement. Of course they cannot do that because she is literally citing their own words. Which is why this is just a thinly veiled, path…

>If you're going to try to smear someone by attacking their lack of experience Re-read the parent comment. How is the whistleblower getting smeared based on the assertions above? Are they not factual AND relevant? edit: I see comments below talking past this sub-thread. Let's get down to definitions. > Smear: damage the reputation of (someone) by false accusations; slander. At best, the article's premise that FB's cl…

No, they are all ad hominem attacks. She shared ~18000 documents. Doesn't matter who the messenger is at this point, it's all about the veracity of the documents themselves.

Did Facebook deny creating those documents? No. Did they refute statements from those documents? No. Hence statements about the whistleblower are not relevant.

Re: Facebook’s attempt to smear the whistleblower

#104

Post by bleachedsleet »

caminante wrote: post #98
Barrin92 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because they're not even attempting to refute anything she says, which the Verge article points out. If you're going to try to smear someone by attacking their lack of experience it would probably make sense to point out how that lack of experience manifests itself in errors in her judgement. Of course they cannot do that because she is literally citing their own words. Which is why this is just a thinly veiled, path…

>If you're going to try to smear someone by attacking their lack of experience Re-read the parent comment. How is the whistleblower getting smeared based on the assertions above? Are they not factual AND relevant? edit: I see comments below talking past this sub-thread. Let's get down to definitions. > Smear: damage the reputation of (someone) by false accusations; slander. At best, the article's premise that FB's cl…

If I tell you the sky is green the best way to refute that to your audience is to ignore me entirely as a person and instead tell people to go outside and look up: Show them some evidence and factually refute my claim. You don’t say “this man isn’t a sky expert, has never spoken to sky experts, and should therefore be dismissed!”

The parent comment’s point would seem to be that this person is making a claim that should be refutable with evidence. But the evidence is Facebook’s own data supporting her claim so they can’t do that. Instead, they diminish her credibility. It’s not “smearing” in the sense of calling her a baby eater, but it is a credentials fallacy meant to make people dismiss her claims regardless of validity.

Re: Facebook’s attempt to smear the whistleblower

#105

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

cratermoon wrote: post #99
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because it hurts smaller competitors more than it hurts them Is this always true? I always thought that these companies do want to fix themselves but fixing yourself when your competition won't means that you lose. Regulation helps force everyone to fix themselves.

Regulatory capture and barriers to market entry. See, for comparison, Intuit. https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...

I'm aware. I'm asking if this is always the case.

Re: Facebook’s attempt to smear the whistleblower

#106

Post by BitwiseFool »

ihasdofijqwer wrote: post #90
BitwiseFool wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did indeed include the possibility that she's just perfectly suited for this: >"Perhaps she's simply a natural" That is certainly within the realm of possibility. That being said, to me , it seems incredibly unlikely that someone in her situation would be so articulate, collected, and unflappable after being suddenly thrust onto the national stage in just a few short days. Even if she knew she was going to attract…

So my suggested points of investigation would be: How many whilst blowers have tried to take down facebook? How many of those have been articulate etc i.e. have the skills this woman has? What are the examples of inarticulate, poorly spoken whilstblowers who have taken down organisations in the information age? Not sure who the burden of proof is on here tbh. Proof takes work.

I've been trying to couch my comments around the fact that I am only talking about my gut-feelings. I don't have the means to deliver on the burden of proof because I completely lack the resources to investigate. Heck, even if my suspicions are actually correct, how in the world would I be able to uncover that? When something feels fishy, what else can you do?

I just have suspicions because everything just seems too perfect. I would expect a whistleblower to be some Average Joe/Jane, not some wunderkind with an amazing background and unflappable presentation. I would expect a lot more stuttering and sweating - Edward Snowden was jittery during his first several interviews and his body language just screamed uncertainty about the future.

But I digress. Just because something feels wrong doesn't mean it really is. Could just be a false-positive.

Re: Facebook’s attempt to smear the whistleblower

#107

Post by ceejayoz »

SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #87
whatshisface wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are some points I notice about this whole thing: - Facebook has stated (in the press release the article is reporting on) that they support regulation. This is typical for large market incumbents, who have been said to always support fixed-overhead regulation, because it hurts smaller competitors more than it hurts them. - Washington loves regulating things and can be safely assumed to be pro-policy in most case…

> The public is not presently pro-regulation and nobody really knows what form the regulations should take. A majority of Americans support regulation of big tech https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/07/20/56-of-ameri...

Sure, but within that majority, they support vastly different concepts of regulation.

It's like asking "do you think the government should do something about abortion?" Banning it and enshrining it as a right are both "doing something", but the two groups are unlikely to see themselves as agreeing with each other.

Re: Facebook’s attempt to smear the whistleblower

#108

Post by ceejayoz »

rPlayer6554 wrote: post #79
falcolas wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the article pointed out, they didn't defend themselves. They simply attempted to discredit the whistleblower, and change the subject. Let them defend themselves without character assassination, please.

> Facebook PR: “Today a Senate Commerce subcommittee held a hearing with a former product manager at Facebook who worked for the company for less than two years, had no direct reports, never attended a decision-point meeting with C-level executives — and testified more than six times to not working on the subject matter in question.” Where does it mention her character??

Where does it address "the subject matter in question"?

She leaked 18k documents. How does the number of direct reports she supervised affect their veracity?

Re: Facebook’s attempt to smear the whistleblower

#109

Post by iammisc »

ceejayoz wrote: post #81
iammisc wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snowden advocated in favor of the government following their own law (not spying on people without judicially issued warrants). This 'whistleblower' is asking the government to violate their own law (the first amendment) by banning individual speech on these platforms. EDIT: Honestly, I could care less about facebook. Although I think Mark Zuckerberg should be in jail (look at the allegations that his company knowing…

> If bakers must bake cakes, this is only fair. SCOTUS decided in favor of the bakers in that case, even if SCOTUS left the underlying question undecided (in either direction). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...

SCOTUS didn't comment on the question, remanded the case back. When another person brought a similar case to the CO board, they found against the baker: https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/18/us/jack-phillips-colorado-bak...

You should pay attention to what's going on before commenting on out of date news.

Also, a similar case in washington of an old lady florist forced to provide flowers for an event she doesn't believe in. This is like asking a jewish deli to cater the nazis.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/gay-couple-wins-case-florist...

In that case, the SC explicitly denied the request, thus de facto legalizing forcing individual people with consciensce disagreements working in their own business to do business with those they disagree with. This is an obvious violation of the individual right to freedom of conscience.

Meanwhile, facebook, a multi-billion dollar powerful corporation, which does not enjoy constitutional rights neither by nature nor law, is given a free pass to exercise its conscience. Sorry... I'll speak for the little guy.

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