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A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

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Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#21

Post by dfadsadsf »

Supermancho wrote: post #19
dfadsadsf wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worked in three companies and in all of them every single fired (as was the case here) individual was offered severance. Usually it's 2 months + 2 weeks per year of work but higher severances are routinely offered if company feels person can be a problem. 64k (4-5 months of pay) is essentially go away money - not FB trying to really hush somebody. Even baseless rejected EEOC complain will cost more to resolve.

I was not talking about "severance" per se, but about a non-disparaging agreements. I would agree that severance is typical. That being said, California, Oregon, Washington State, Georgia, getting 4-5 month's pay as severance? That doesn't even make sense from a business perspective, imo. If you're small enough you are face to facing investors, everyone has experience with volatile employees. If you're larger, you do…

Most (if not all) severance agreements in case of firing include non-disparagement. Severance is just cost of business - HR sees volatile employee and automatically offer severance with not-sue, not-disparage agreement. Employment lawyers are $600/hour and a huge distraction.

http://www.shpclaw.com/Schwartz-Resources/severance-and-rele...

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#22

Post by dfadsadsf »

Supermancho wrote: post #19
dfadsadsf wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worked in three companies and in all of them every single fired (as was the case here) individual was offered severance. Usually it's 2 months + 2 weeks per year of work but higher severances are routinely offered if company feels person can be a problem. 64k (4-5 months of pay) is essentially go away money - not FB trying to really hush somebody. Even baseless rejected EEOC complain will cost more to resolve.

I was not talking about "severance" per se, but about a non-disparaging agreements. I would agree that severance is typical. That being said, California, Oregon, Washington State, Georgia, getting 4-5 month's pay as severance? That doesn't even make sense from a business perspective, imo. If you're small enough you are face to facing investors, everyone has experience with volatile employees. If you're larger, you do…

As a personal anecdote in California, somebody I managed got 1 month of fake employment (technically employed but without access to anything) + 2 month severance after being fired after 8 months on the job without any push from me or fired employee. And he was extremely nice and non-confrontational, just could not do the job.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#26

Post by carabiner »

Missing from article is any causality between Facebook bot farms and any real world effects, election outcomes or deaths. It just says, oh there were a million fake likes on a post in this country... months later some political unrest. Like this has never happened before Facebook?

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#27

Post by brundolf »

> Still, she did not believe that the failures she observed during her two and a half years at the company were the result of bad intent by Facebook’s employees or leadership. It was a lack of resources, Zhang wrote, and the company’s tendency to focus on global activity that posed public relations risks, as opposed to electoral or civic harm.

> “Facebook projects an image of strength and competence to the outside world that can lend itself to such theories, but the reality is that many of our actions are slapdash and haphazard accidents,” she wrote.

> “We simply didn’t care enough to stop them”

This is the key takeaway, IMO. Not as an excuse for Facebook, but as an indictment of "slapdash" information technology in general, particularly social media. It's becoming more and more clear that "bringing the world closer together" is a pandora's box, one that Facebook is not equipped (motivated?) to deal with the consequences of. Maybe no company ever could be. Maybe this is simply a thing that shouldn't exist.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#28

Post by souprock »

Facebook itself, the corporation, is global political manipulation.

Both https://joebiden.info/ and https://kamalaharris.info/ are blocked on Facebook, and on Instagram which is owned by Facebook. The block is silently applied to private messages on Instagram, with the sender seeing it go out but the recipient never getting it.

Facebook isn't turning a blind eye. Facebook is actively participating, by purposely blocking one side.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#29

Post by cpascal »

souprock wrote: post #28

Facebook itself, the corporation, is global political manipulation. Both https://joebiden.info/ and https://kamalaharris.info/ are blocked on Facebook, and on Instagram which is owned by Facebook. The block is silently applied to private messages on Instagram, with the sender seeing it go out but the recipient never getting it. Facebook isn't turning a blind eye. Facebook is actively participating, by purposely block…

Perhaps this is because the url has a .info gTLD coupled with a political domain name and is getting tripped up by some sort of spam filter. It sort of sounds like a shadow ban.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#30

Post by mark_l_watson »

This sounds really bad. In searching the web for this title it seems like small news services are running this. To be fair to Facebook, I am willing to wait a day and see what they and other organizations/news/people say about this disclosure.
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