Facebook's PR feels broken • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#231

Post by nabla9 » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 1:31 PM UTC

From 2017:

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Is Hiring a Team Worthy of a 2020 Presidential Campaign - Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's latest hire is further fueling speculation that he could be planning a 2020 presidential bid https://people.com/politics/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-team-20...

>Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan have hired Democratic pollster Joel Benenson, a former top adviser and longtime pollster to President Barack Obama and the chief strategist of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, as a consultant,

>In January , Zuckerberg, 33, and Chan, 32, hired David Plouffe, campaign manager for Obama’s 2008 presidential run, as president of policy and advocacy. They also brought on Amy Dudley, a former communications adviser to Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine. Ken Mehlman, who ran President George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign, is also on the charity’s board.

>And Zuckerberg’s personal photographer, Charles Ommanney, was the photographer for Bush and Obama’s presidential campaigns, Business Insider reported.

Joel Benenson and David Plouffe are working elsewhere now. Amy Dudley is still the spokesperson for Zuckerberg iniative.

Zuckerberg has had incredible PR army working just for him, not for Facebook. I think there has been switch in his personal ambitions and change in PR people.

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#232

Post by kd5bjo » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 1:34 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #181

manfredo wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone who worked at Facebook for the better part of a decade responded that they felt the media coverage was unfair to Facebook. You were suprised by this response because from an outsider's perspective you felt that Facebook employees should be apologetic? What makes you more qualified to judge whether the public perception was accurate as compared to someone who actually worked there - an "FB vet" in your own wor…

>What makes you more qualified to judge whether the public perception was accurate as compared to someone who actually worked there - an "FB vet" in your own words? For starters, most of us here don't benefit financially from putting a positive spin on disasters at Facebook. As the Upton Sinclair saying goes, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.…

I was working at Facebook when the CA story broke, but not when the events happened. I was in a department far removed from any of the involved parties. I haven't worked for them for several years now, and I currently own no FB stock outside of broad-based index funds¹.

As I recall, the sense of unfairness that was going around was rooted mostly in it feeling like old news. CA was the ghost of a bad policy that had already been rescinded, and there was very little awareness of that in the media coverage. Instead, there were loud calls for Facebook to do something, but every reasonable thing had already been done years before.

When I worked there, nobody believed that the policy which birthed CA was a good idea, which is why it was long gone. Also, everything had played out already in the public eye (in the tech press) -- anyone who had been paying attention should have known about most of these things already.

¹ It seems silly to make all these disclaimers, but they seem necessary with the mood here.

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#233

Post by ori_b » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 2:32 PM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #229

ori_b wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From what I gather, Facebook did have a compliance program in place to ensure that data was only shared with those that met its usage policies. Aleksandr Kogan was working at the University of Cambridge at the time, so the claim that he was using this data for academic purposes would seem credible to Facebook As though simply working at a university is sufficient reason to trust someone.

This person held a research position in the psychology department of a world renowned university, and claimed to be writing an app to gauge Facebook users' personalities. T This is more than just "simply working at a university", Kogan held a research position and proposed an app with a purported academic purpose that was in his field of study.

So?

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#234

Post by sharcerer » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 2:54 PM UTC

Read this thread. I have been noticing a lot of reporting on tech by NYT etc, is wrong, not complete. In this case, a lot of arguments are there. But, an example from the past, they spread misinfo about Google's revenue figure from news industry(https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/06/that-4-7-billion-number-fo...)

https://twitter.com/antoniogm/status/1214685876095045632?s=1...

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#235

Post by michaelcampbell » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 3:09 PM UTC

kristianc wrote: post #212

Barrin92 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What makes you more qualified to judge whether the public perception was accurate as compared to someone who actually worked there - an "FB vet" in your own words? For starters, most of us here don't benefit financially from putting a positive spin on disasters at Facebook. As the Upton Sinclair saying goes, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.…

> For starters, most of us here don't benefit financially from putting a positive spin on disasters at Facebook. As the Upton Sinclair saying goes, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. Ugh, this quote. If someone is working at a SWE at Facebook, their career options are probably pretty good. They can get a salary most anywhere. Too often people u…

> Ugh, this quote. If someone is working at a SWE at Facebook, their career options are probably pretty good. They can get a salary most anywhere.

With all the demonstrable shenanigans at FB, the word "salary" is the thing you're going to criticize?

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#236

Post by cameronbrown » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 3:22 PM UTC

starfallg wrote: post #211

Aperocky wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conversation did not shift, both started from the opposite end and did not move, there were no conversation to begin with. And this is why we have the schism in our society. No one is willing to find the middle ground and listen any more. Everyone simultaneously believes that listening is others responsibility.

As I said, you need to agree there is a problem before we can talk about it productively. This is "being on the same page". If there is a obvious problem that one side is steadfastly refusing to acknowledge and insists on blaming it on others, then yeah we have a schism in our society as one side is just ignoring reality.

Of course one side is denying reality. I'll leave it up to you to decide which :)

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#237

Post by starfallg » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 3:48 PM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #228

starfallg wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's the extent of what Facebook could have done. If Kogan broke laws - and he probably did - that's the government's prerogative to charge and prosecute him. No. Facebook is aware of the damage that could have been done. Relying on a party that already breached their terms of use to the data (of FB users) to keep their word is negligence. They should have 1. structured their relationship better so that their is c…

#1 is speaking from a position of hindsight. As I said, we can claim that Facebook should have been more skeptical of the intentions of university researchers, but this far from being negligent in their enforcement of their data use policies. #2 Demonstrates persistent misunderstandings of what events transpired. Facebook was not breached in any way. Again, Camridge Analytica did not hack into Facebook's systems. Thi…

2. Breaching data privacy laws does not mean there was a data breach or break-in. It just means that your handling of user data is in contravention of the legal requirements.

1. The ICO disagrees with you. Facebook was fined specifically for breaching data privacy laws in the UK.

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#238

Post by starfallg » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 3:51 PM UTC

cameronbrown wrote: post #236

starfallg wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said, you need to agree there is a problem before we can talk about it productively. This is "being on the same page". If there is a obvious problem that one side is steadfastly refusing to acknowledge and insists on blaming it on others, then yeah we have a schism in our society as one side is just ignoring reality.

Of course one side is denying reality. I'll leave it up to you to decide which :)

Please. Only one side is portraying that Facebook is the victim.

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#239

Post by humanrebar » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

taurath wrote: post #192

humanrebar wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right to freely associate + the right to speak + the right to printed speech = the right to collaborate on speech i.e., there is free speech for groups as well as individuals Saying there's right to free speech for groups unless someone gets paid is a little silly and hard to enforce. Hence our current situation. From another perspective, there is obviously "freedom of the press" but the Constitution does not say…

For the same reason groups and corporations don't have voting rights, they shouldn't be able to monopolize speech by drowning out all others. Additionally, money is not speech. We disallow politicians directly giving people money to vote for them - why would we do that, since the politicians trade is in speech, he's simply delivering stump speech in the form of a $100 bill to his potential constituents.

Money is not speech, but speaking publicly on a scale larger than a literal soap box on a street corner has never been free. Banning spending money to express oneself is banning expression just like banning paying for raw milk is banning raw milk.

And groups do have voting rights. That's how Congress works. The U.S. is a republic.

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#240

Post by hogFeast » Sat, Jan 11, 2020, 4:26 PM UTC

austinheap wrote: post #144

hogFeast wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comment talking about bias, only mentions Fox News. Welcome to hell (imo, this is what you get when you don't teach people how to argue and feed them too many Disney films). No, the press shouldn't be regulated. Yes, bias is normal. No, Fox News doesn't "swing public opinion" (they reflect views that already exist, and pander to them). Life is difficult, you have to think for yourself.

Friendly feedback: your point would have been 10x more effective without the opener. I maybe agree but it never matters what you say; it matters how it’s heard.

I don't care about effectiveness, 95% of people have no interest in reality in this subject, there is nothing that you can say that will change their thinking.