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Zuckerberg Takes Steps to Calm Facebook Employees

nytimes.com

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Re: Zuckerberg Takes Steps to Calm Facebook Employees

#221

Post by craigyk »

legostormtroopr wrote: post #148
Mc_Big_G wrote: post #34

I hope anyone worth their weight in salt leaves Facebook as an employee and as a user. Employees should already feel shame since the election. They all know what Facebook is built on and what they've done and what they're doing.

Which election are you talking about? The 2016 one where everyone cares about Facebook helping elect the US president, or the 2008 and 2012 elections where everyone was ok with Facebook helping elect the US president?

I've seen this nonsense spouted a few places now. Personally, I think there is a big difference between the two, one focused primarily on cheerleading to get out the vote, the other using inflammatory fabrications to enrage your base (and get out the vote). I see this as a classic example of when "the ends don't justify the means".

Re: Zuckerberg Takes Steps to Calm Facebook Employees

#222

Post by craigyk »

mynameishere wrote: post #185
yorby wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can't wait for the next Snowden

I still remember the first Snowden, who revealed to a shocked world that the NSA was involved in signals intelligence. I suspect that the next Snowden will reveal to a shocked world that 3rd party databases have a tendency to leak into other 3rd party databases.

What amazed me the most from the first Snowden leak was that the NSA was vastly more effective and competent in their efforts than I had expected.

Re: Zuckerberg Takes Steps to Calm Facebook Employees

#223

Post by blub »

seattle_spring wrote: post #152
anonytrary wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sheryl Sandberg is under the impression that Facebook, quote, "does not sell your data": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1CTHFEcoJc She is either wrong, or lying, or has her own ideas of what "selling your data" means.

They don't sell your data. Your actions and data are used to put you into categories, and advertisers pay to show their ads to people associated with those categories. No one is given direct access to your data. This strategy is not unique to Facebook-- it's how Google, Yahoo, and other major advertising-based tech companies work.

We do know that Facebook gave the data away for free to all apps, just like Google's Android. So that "they don't sell your data" is a deluded statement.

Maybe they also sell it (processed into aggregated reports, not raw), I wouldn't be surprised.

Re: Zuckerberg Takes Steps to Calm Facebook Employees

#224

Post by mehrdadn »

kerng wrote: post #145
sulam wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know there isn’t a team at Google doing this? It’s standard practice at companies of even middling size and Google is so large your friend might just be unaware of it.

A Google security manager told me at a conference when chatting about this in 2016. They were thinking of staffing a breach team, but did not have one then.

I thought Project Zero tries to find vulnerabilities in Google stuff too?

Re: Zuckerberg Takes Steps to Calm Facebook Employees

#225

Post by blub »

renaudg wrote: post #196
anonytrary wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of the day, your data goes into a black box, gets jumbled around and then sold. To suggest this is different than "selling your data" is pedantic and misleading. For Sheryl to deny this "selling of data" reveals her concern with words and reception over real actions and effects.

No, it's not a pedantic distinction at all and it's actually the "selling people's data" narrative that's misleading, not the other way round. Facebook does not sell user data, it sells targeted ad space which is the exact opposite business model. Their competitive edge in this business purely relies on being the only entity in the world who can target so well, precisely because they hold onto that data like a treasu…

Their competitive edge is quite dull then, because all FB apps had access to the user data. FB PR needs to work on another excuse now... "don't sell your data" is a joke after the CA scandal.

Re: Zuckerberg Takes Steps to Calm Facebook Employees

#226

Post by sp527 »

pm90 wrote: post #161
sp527 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they’re not. They’re in denial. I used to work there as an intern, so I get a front row seat to how a lot of employees are reacting. The word I would use is: indignation. I’ve seen this us-against-them mentality play out elsewhere in various toxic cult-like organizational cultures. The NSA was a great public example of just how manifestly horrifying things can get with tens to hundreds of decent people willfully p…

I think it also kinda helps that most of the engineers are probably not "rich kids"; they're probably mostly from middle class backgrounds. They've never seen that kind of wealth before, never seen that insane level of benefits. Its much easier to think of someone (or some org) as benign, to give them a second chance, when they treat you personally so well. Its kinda what immigrants feel when they do well in the US a…

I wanted to include this in the original post as well. My cynical/ironic phrasing of this phenomenon is “not wealthy enough to have principles”.

Which I totally get. I’ve been a victim myself. And the truth is it’s hard to find successful companies that aren’t profiting off of some kind of exploitation (e.g. pollution, natural resources stolen from a developing nation, behavioral manipulation of users, injecting animals with antibiotics, high fructose corn syrup, lobbying (institutionalized corruption, preying on people’s fears (media), child labor (lots of clothing supply chains), predatory lending, extreme leverage ratios in a too big to fail context, etc).

It’s weird to me that people often don’t understand the root problem here is unrestrained/underregulated capitalism. In any naturally competitive system without adequate rules, the winners will be cheaters/exploiters. In reverse: you often cannot win unless you cheat.

Hence: most people dont have the luxury of working exclusively for socially responsible companies.

Re: Zuckerberg Takes Steps to Calm Facebook Employees

#227

Post by blub »

KMag wrote: post #66
debacle wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respect Google and their engineering chops as much as the next person, they are truly world class programmers, but how the holy hell is everyone daydreaming that they don’t work for an advertising company? You sell and use people’s data to get money: this is the business plan. Are people working there really so nieve(sic) as to believe that this is surprising?

Former Googler here. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of Googlers understand they work for an advertising company with a gigantic and generally well-run software "engineering" department. I don't mean that in any derogatory sense. Well-regulated advertising is important in helping consumers make informed purchasing decisions.

That's just something advertisers tell themselves to sleep better at night. And failing that, they just rub some dollar bills on their faces and then sleep like babies.

Advertising (regulated or not) is important in manipulating people into buying more stuff. There's no benefit in having your movies, music listening, games or your reading interrupted by ads. There's no benefit in a pair of breasts distracting you on the road from a billboard. There's no benefit in having to throw away all the crap you get per mail.

If someone needs something, they will look for it and buy it, but this pull model doesn't result in as many sales as the push model and CxOs have to eat.

Re: Zuckerberg Takes Steps to Calm Facebook Employees

#228

Post by underwater »

robrenaud wrote: post #202
underwater wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an ex-employee, I feel much more confident in Facebook's processes than the company you're describing. Facebook would have no problem terminating people who do what you're describing.

Imagine you are the Egyptian government. You want to squash a social media fueled rebellion, lead by some anonymous person. How hard is it to get one of your bright and loyal minds hired by Facebook? How much data could such a person exfiltrate before getting fired? The 'We will log your access and fire you' line of defense prevents nothing from someone who only has a job for the purpose of moving data out.

Batch scrapping or drip feeding data via a monitored internal tool? I doubt they’d get much out at all. It’s inherently a low bandwidth and very obvious channel.

Someone in that position would be much better off building a back door into the system. But if they could also build a backdoor into iCloud, or scrape Gmail data from within Google.

I assume that Facebook has mechanisms to check that new hires (especially foreign nationals) are legitimate.

Re: Zuckerberg Takes Steps to Calm Facebook Employees

#229

Post by woolvalley »

bamboozled wrote: post #151
ramphastidae wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they’re paid well. Very well. Everyone I know that works at FB for 2+ years is making 300-500k (including stock) and already owns or is on their way to purchasing a home. That makes it a lot easier to ignore the reality of FB. Meanwhile chumps like me that consider the ethics of their employer will be renting forever. I honestly don’t blame them.

Agreed, a lot of cognitive dissonance happening on campus.

Maybe what the article says it is and what reality is a bit different?

Re: Zuckerberg Takes Steps to Calm Facebook Employees

#230

Post by sah2ed »

tbrock wrote: post #195
ramphastidae wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they’re paid well. Very well. Everyone I know that works at FB for 2+ years is making 300-500k (including stock) and already owns or is on their way to purchasing a home. That makes it a lot easier to ignore the reality of FB. Meanwhile chumps like me that consider the ethics of their employer will be renting forever. I honestly don’t blame them.

To be clear, I'm not criticizing or holier than thou —- I'd work there in a heartbeat without complaint and love it. The part I don't get is that it seems everyone who does work there is in shock and awe that this is going on. SHOCKED! It's comical to the point of parody.

It's a cognitive bias that kicks in when your monthly salary is involved, as succinctly noted in 1935 by Upton Sinclair:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

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