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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

#101

Post by bostonsre »

himinlomax wrote: post #86
bostonsre wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> her suggestions really do not align with what the tech community wants at all. I feel like we as a tech community should take a step back and consider whether or not we should not be the only ones that decide what should or should not be done. It is a massive country with many opposing viewpoints. We have massive conflicts of interest and some tech companies have shown over and over that greed trumps morals in many…

> I feel like we as a tech community should take a step back and consider whether or not we should not be the only ones that decide what should or should not be done. As an engineer, I'm in a better position to understand what the f is going on regarding encryption and, say, nuclear power than most people. No amount of wishful thinking will change that. > It is a massive country with many opposing viewpoints. World.…

> As an engineer, I'm in a better position to understand what the f is going on regarding encryption and, say, nuclear power than most people.

Yes, you are an engineer and understand the implementation details and potential side effects, but what about the opposing viewpoints like those from law enforcement? Are you an expert in law enforcement? Your viewpoints should trump theirs why exactly? You really don't think that it's possible that you can't see the forest for the trees?

Do nuclear scientists define nuclear energy policies or do they provide advice to those that define them?

> World. Not country.

I don't think we have a world government that will make regulations in regards to facebook.

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

#102

Post by wakiza33 »

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 institutions believe that if Facebook were out that a lot of those dollars would flow back.

It's the heart of all of the facebook attacks.

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

#103

Post by Kalium »

bostonsre wrote: post #60
sanedigital wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, domain experts have a moral obligation to speak up regarding policy that involves their area of expertise. On the topic of encryption, we're the only community with an understanding of what "breaking encryption" means. There are no skeleton keys, only vulnerabilities. We have a moral and ethical duty to fight for encryption, privacy, and security, not against it.

Yes, I agree that we should absolutely provide advice on our area of expertise for topics in our domain but I don't think we should be the ones that make the decision. The other side of the debate aren't idiots, they have some valid view points, else this encryption debate would have been settled long ago. Encryption was not the only point brought up by the OP, they were also against government regulation. My main po…

Would you care to share what you think the valid view points against encryption are?

For my own part, I find it helpful to remember that questions over encryption have been ongoing for several decades. Historically, the arguments boiled down to shouting about CSAM, terrorism, drugs, etc. Mostly it tended to be really be about law enforcement agencies wanting to have the unfettered powers of surveillance.

What's perhaps most interesting to me is that the prevalence of encryption seems to have done very little to stop the FBI from catching people. I know this next point will be contentious, but perhaps there's room to question why these people who are indeed not idiots are so against encryption for you and me.

So yes, you're absolutely right. Let's look hard at our viewpoints and biases and expertise and paychecks and ask ourselves - why does the FBI want us to not have encryption? Why do we want it? Who has the valid view points here?

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

#104

Post by nanis »

ineedasername wrote: post #87
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…

Frances Haugen's own motives are not the defining factor regarding the public utility of leaking this material. Her motives are her own, and once her information is out in the open it isn't up to her to decide what we all do about it. I'm not about to dismiss what was revealed just because I disagree with some of her opinions about that material.

> Frances Haugen's own motives

Motives aside, whether she is acting as a mole for intelligence agencies to gather support for enabling more 'round the clock surveillance of wrong-think under the guise of "blowing the whistle" is a defining factor.

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

#105

Post by paisawalla »

helen___keller wrote: post #92
paisawalla wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's anticipating the objection re Snowden. You have to be angry about the fact that the information he released makes the govt look bad, and not just the fact of improper process, a la Clinton. Therefore, the treatment of whistleblowers really does depend on who's hand they're strengthening -- the govt or someone else's -- and not a generalized respect for the truth.

> Therefore, the treatment of whistleblowers really does depend on who's hand they're strengthening -- the govt or someone else's -- and not a generalized respect for the truth This is a very easy argument to make without resorting to political derailment, especially since it's basically a founding principle of our country (separation of powers, because we can't trust governing entities to police themselves, therefor…

Sure, but

1. a lot of people also find that entire situation to be such incredible bullshit

2. the counterargument discredits itself when it employs the mental gymnastics needed to explain that inconsistency

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

#106

Post by wakiza33 »

cudgy wrote: post #65
bogwog wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She seems more like a lobbyist than a whistleblower.

Perhaps she works for the CIA?

It's all little too perfect isn't it. I think the CIA connection scenario is certainly worth keeping in back of mind.

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

#107

Post by nradov »

himinlomax wrote: post #86
bostonsre wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> her suggestions really do not align with what the tech community wants at all. I feel like we as a tech community should take a step back and consider whether or not we should not be the only ones that decide what should or should not be done. It is a massive country with many opposing viewpoints. We have massive conflicts of interest and some tech companies have shown over and over that greed trumps morals in many…

> I feel like we as a tech community should take a step back and consider whether or not we should not be the only ones that decide what should or should not be done. As an engineer, I'm in a better position to understand what the f is going on regarding encryption and, say, nuclear power than most people. No amount of wishful thinking will change that. > It is a massive country with many opposing viewpoints. World.…

I have seen plenty of comments by engineers here containing wildly incorrect statements about nuclear power. In general engineers seem to overestimate their own competence in areas outside their immediate professional experience.

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

#108

Post by secondcoming »

sanedigital wrote: post #45
bostonsre wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> her suggestions really do not align with what the tech community wants at all. I feel like we as a tech community should take a step back and consider whether or not we should not be the only ones that decide what should or should not be done. It is a massive country with many opposing viewpoints. We have massive conflicts of interest and some tech companies have shown over and over that greed trumps morals in many…

In my opinion, domain experts have a moral obligation to speak up regarding policy that involves their area of expertise. On the topic of encryption, we're the only community with an understanding of what "breaking encryption" means. There are no skeleton keys, only vulnerabilities. We have a moral and ethical duty to fight for encryption, privacy, and security, not against it.

To play Devil's Advocate and use your own point against you;

Some software engineers might be experts in the domain of encryption, but there are other professions who are experts in the domain of National Security.

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

#109

Post by oconnor663 »

splatzone wrote: post #10

I wonder what the mood is like at Facebook at the moment. It must be pretty demoralising to see revelations about your company's behaviour in the press, especially if you believe in the mission. Yet I wonder if there's a different narrative that employees internally are believing in. I've been freelance my entire life and never worked for a large corp, so I don't know what it's like. But I'd be fascinated to be a fly…

Speaking from personal experience as a former FB employee (but 8 years ago at this point): It was pretty easy to put all the bad press out of mind, because so much of it was obviously mistaken and uninformed. Media coverage of Facebook is overwhelmingly written by people who don't know how websites or tech companies work, and who don't know how to evaluate or even acknowledge the tradeoffs involved in the subjects they write about.

To be fair, this is how media coverage of most things works. High quality criticism is rare, and you have to seek it out. Thoughtful people do seek it out. But as a matter of personal experience, the fact that most criticism is low quality makes it easy to ignore without losing any sleep.

On the other hand, maybe the press is much more negative now, and the situation is different? Could be. I've been out for too long to know.

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

#110

Post by TacticalCoder »

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.

> HN is a bit schizophrenic on this topic.

What if there was a way to send private message, in a decentralized manner, and where it's not even possible to tell if the recipient has actually read the message or not?

There are blockchains using ZK-proofs allowing to do that today. Not only it's decentralized so "fuck corporation surveillance/profiling" but it's also highly unlikely uncle sam and its offsprings can break the elliptic curves and ZK-cryptograhy in use by these blockchains, so "fuck state surveillance" too.

But then it's using the word "blockchain", so HN is pretty much against it.

And instead HN as a whole shall root for "secure" messengers that are leaking metadata like there's no tomorrow while explaining that they're the best thing since sliced bread "because they're easy to use".

Go figure.

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