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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

#111

Post by rustymonday »

whatshisface wrote: post #11
fireball_blaze wrote: post #2

"If the best Facebook can come up with is this disgusting attempt at character assassination, Haugen is telling God’s own truth. We should listen to her." A pretty powerful closing statement IMHO.

> 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.” This doesn't sound like character assassination, it's Facebook claiming that she was…

You're not wrong. But Facebook's attempt to discredit Frances Haugen is poor.

From the congressional hearing today, she did not answer questions beyond her expertise [1], and she had over a decade of relevant experience in Engagement Based Ranking algorithms [2], which was largely the focus of the hearing.

[1] https://youtu.be/GoSPmqqKams?t=4160

[2] https://youtu.be/GoSPmqqKams?t=3482

Re: Facebook’s attempt to smear the whistleblower

#112

Post by _3u10 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #108
rPlayer6554 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

They are addressing the testimony provided, not the documents which have not been provided.

Generally after hacking a company, the documents are provided in a ZIP for everyone to download. Information wants to be free, but we are only being provided with her summary of the documents rather than the evidence itself.

Re: Facebook’s attempt to smear the whistleblower

#113

Post by cirgue »

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…

How are they relevant?

Re: Facebook’s attempt to smear the whistleblower

#114

Post by etchalon »

xqcgrek2 wrote: post #72

The smear here is actually against Facebook. The whistleblower is clearly being boosted by Democratic operatives [1] and appeared in front of Congress the day after 60 minutes. [1] Jen Psaki's former employer https://www.dailywire.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-leftis...

Yes, the smear is against Facebook, and not the person releasing internal research from Facebook itself, that was not written by the whistleblower.

And obviously, discounting someone presenting factual evidence that at the moment is unchallenged based on perceived personal politics is fair game, reasonable, and the measure of good faith discussion.

Re: Facebook’s attempt to smear the whistleblower

#115

Post by _3u10 »

adolph wrote: post #30
fireball_blaze wrote: post #2

"If the best Facebook can come up with is this disgusting attempt at character assassination, Haugen is telling God’s own truth. We should listen to her." A pretty powerful closing statement IMHO.

"telling God’s own truth" Tremendously convincing.

If God is for us, who could be against us?

Re: Facebook’s attempt to smear the whistleblower

#116

Post by fleddr »

cherrycherry98 wrote: post #96
fleddr wrote: post #82

Not seeing any "character assassination" in any of the quotes. None of Facebook's defense lines, low quality as they may be, seem overly personal. For the record, I fully side with the whistleblower's claims. It's just that this article is very emotional, and could have been so much more. This is a fascinating quote the author failed to address fully: "Facebook PR: “Despite all this, we agree on one thing; it’s time…

Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing for regulation for years. He wants this for two reasons: 1. Abdicating responsibility so that when the public or politicians complain about Facebook hosting or not hosting some content he can say it's not his problem, he follows the law. 2. The second is for regulatory capture. Once a social network gets a stigma of being uncool, people move on to the next thing. His status and net wo…

Good points. I violently agree that regulation favors Big Tech, instead of harm them.

But I still believe there's a category of societal issues that are extremely hard to codify into rules, even if Facebook would be morally sound. It would still be hard or impossible.

Re: Facebook’s attempt to smear the whistleblower

#117

Post by ceejayoz »

_3u10 wrote: post #112
ceejayoz wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They are addressing the testimony provided, not the documents which have not been provided. Generally after hacking a company, the documents are provided in a ZIP for everyone to download. Information wants to be free, but we are only being provided with her summary of the documents rather than the evidence itself.

> They are addressing the testimony provided…

How? Where?

Re: Facebook’s attempt to smear the whistleblower

#118

Post by _3u10 »

glitchc wrote: post #103
caminante wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

She hasn't shared these documents with the public. All we have to go on is her summary of them, and the documents NBC News has selectively deemed relevant. NBC news has only shared 7000 pages, I'd assume this is probably 10% of the documents. We're essentially being asked to judge facebook when the prosecution is withholding 90% of the evidence.

edit: It appears the shared documents were from a previous leak, I can't locate any of the documents from this leak.

Re: Facebook’s attempt to smear the whistleblower

#119

Post by etchalon »

cpr wrote: post #4

I'm sure what she's saying is only part of the evil that Facebook represents, but there's something fishy about the whole setup. Why is she getting full media coverage and support, when previous whistleblowers were roundly ignored? She's a very wealthy person (1B estimated), so perhaps she's fairly well insulated from any blowback? But again, why is now the time to pile on Facebook, and why this person? [edit] Hint:…

This is nonsense.

She's receiving a large press and Congressional focus because she's testifying about harm to children.

Not political censorship, perceived bias, or internal politics.

It's a cleaner story.

Greenwald, like all politicians, is twisting the story to meet his narrative. He doesn't "nail it". He's just regurgitating his preferred talking point, and ignoring her actual testimony.

Re: Facebook’s attempt to smear the whistleblower

#120

Post by caminante »

bleachedsleet wrote: post #104
caminante wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 shou…

I get an argument that it's not pure, ad hominem character attacks as a "smear".

This is really more a flaw of the article, but can you add data that directly refutes the claims raised by this article?

e.g. in her leaked emails, does any of that refute the wording/claims raised in this article?

I'm asking in good faith.

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