Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

thetimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 615 posts

Re: Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

#271

Post by alterom »

chrisrogers wrote: post #259
ryandrake wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The leadership team of Meta (and all other giant mega corps) are much more isolated from the real world than 40ms and a firewall. These people don't interact in any way with normal people. They live in a different world than us, and don't even think about us, let alone wonder if their actions are hurting us. Do you think Zucc does his own shopping and has to interact with store employees? Do you think he talks to any…

The billionaire class can do those things, but they don't have to. Same with non-celebrity Royalty.

They don't have to.

But they do.

Re: Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

#272

Post by alterom »

mathgradthrow wrote: post #183
pwdisswordfishy wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should not be legal to enforce full stop. If you don't want to be disparaged, make your conduct worthy of not being disparaged. When you're being lied about, sue for defamation; "non-disparagement clauses" are redundant at best, an attack on free speech at worst.

You don't have to agree to a disparagement clause... She accepted a lot of money to agree to it.

Yeah, clearly the employee and the company have the same leverage in negotiation here.

It's a free market! If she didn't like the offer, she could've just gotten herself fired from some other company instead. /s

Re: Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

#273

Post by avidiax »

ethin wrote: post #35
ceejayoz wrote: post #6

> The ruling, awarded without proper notice by an emergency arbitrator (a non-court mediator that is part of the American Arbitration Association), actually said nothing about the truth or otherwise of Sarah’s devastating claims in her book. It made no mention of defamation. Instead, it relied on a non-disparagement clause in her severance agreement with Facebook to silence her. It's well past time to rein in arbitra…

Honestly, I would be all for outright abolishing arbitration. I have yet to see anything actually good come out of arbitration other than a ruling that protects the entity that forced arbitration in the first place.

Arbitration does help with the problem of overwhelmed and expensive courts. What is needed is fair arbitration.

The outcome should approximate the outcome of the full court proceeding.

Make the arbitration rulings appealable in court on the basis of factual errors, errors of law, corruption, and potential errors by omission (i.e. failure of discovery). And make the company responsible for the full costs of the litigation if the arbiter's judgement is overturned. And punish the arbiter, perhaps a 2 year ban on accepting any case from that industry.

I'm sure more adjustments would be needed, but it should be possible to get both the arbiters and the companies to want arbitration to be a faster, cheaper route to the same outcome as the courts, rather than a steamroller that avoids all accountability for the company.

Re: Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

#274

Post by pests »

bena wrote: post #245
jmull wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another one. Deflecting the criticism of Meta with a “whaddabout the author!” Formed as an answer to a question, but not one that was asked . A different account than last time, though, so I’ll ask you too: Why do the dark work of deflecting on behalf of Meta (lol)?

I think the point is that up until she was fired, she was Meta. She wasn’t a random employee, she was their global public policy director. She wasn’t just implementing policy, she was responsible for creating it. The question remains whether or not she would have written this book had she not been fired. It’s not like she quit due to her ethical objections

> The question remains whether or not she would have written this book had she not been fired.

Assume the answer is no. What does this change about any of this?

Re: Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

#275

Post by giwook »

ryandrake wrote: post #208
giwook wrote: post #4

I'm going to place an order for the book right now. I encourage you all to do the same. We the people hold the power to keep in check the immoral companies, governments, and other unscrupulous entities that would exploit the collective to enrich the few. And ultimately that's through our money and how we spend it. Screw Meta and their anti-human business model.

Unlike an elected government, who the common people at least in theory have a chance to replace via elections, the public pretty much has no say in what these companies and their leadership are allowed to do. Nobody voted for Meta. Nobody voted for Palantir. Nobody voted for Philip Morris. You can say that someone "voted with their wallet," but that doesn't point to a viable solution. "Not voting with your wallet" es…

I don't disagree with you entirely.

But we're not powerless. I'd argue that we saw the impact we can have when we act collectively when Trump tried to pressure ABC into cancelling Jimmy Kimmel. It took ABC a few days maybe before they capitulated (again, except this time to their customers).

Re: Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

#277

Post by toss1 »

surprisetalk wrote: post #10

This book was SO GOOD. It's bleak. I always imagined that rich/powerful people only created suffering if that suffering was required for certain goals. It's easier for me to bear injustice when it's a zero-sum game. But the story of Facebook is not that. Facebook didn't make ethical sacrifices for profit -- its executives just didn't care to understand the consequences of their actions. I wish those folks could feel…

>> its executives just didn't care to understand the consequences of their actions.

This, a day or two after a top story about Marc Andreessen refusing to engage in introspection.

Nah, there's not a pattern here among the tech billionaires ... right?

Re: Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

#278

Post by j45 »

Aurornis wrote: post #162
surprisetalk wrote: post #10

This book was SO GOOD. It's bleak. I always imagined that rich/powerful people only created suffering if that suffering was required for certain goals. It's easier for me to bear injustice when it's a zero-sum game. But the story of Facebook is not that. Facebook didn't make ethical sacrifices for profit -- its executives just didn't care to understand the consequences of their actions. I wish those folks could feel…

> This book was SO GOOD. One of the (very valid, IMO) criticisms of the book is that the author tries to set herself apart from the culture she was deeply embedded within. I think it's becoming a trap to hold the author up as a hero when she was clearly part of it all to the very core. It was only after she got separated from the inner circle club that she tried to distance herself from it. So while reading it, be ca…

Sometimes you can still learn from a story.

Humans are about making mistakes and learning from them, not hiding behind the disease of perfectionism.

If there's something the author needs to say, I'm sure they are capable of using their words.

The other side that could have happened so easily is so much silence that there was no book.

Re: Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

#279

Post by mindslight »

zaphar wrote: post #240
rkomorn wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd agree with you if there wasn't a significant power imbalance that virtually always skews way more in favor of the corporation. It is far more likely that an individual would do best to agree to a corporation's terms even if they favor the corporation than the other way around.

The antidote to a power imbalance is to recognize that there is no power imbalance and go about your life that way. Pretending there is one lands you in an imaginary trap. Build a society where we recognize that and you build a society where the imaginary trap disappears.

You're the one pretending here. The economy is unfortunately designed around most people relying on an income stream that remains at the whims of someone else.

Re: Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

#280

Post by margalabargala »

alterom wrote: post #272
mathgradthrow wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to agree to a disparagement clause... She accepted a lot of money to agree to it.

Yeah, clearly the employee and the company have the same leverage in negotiation here. It's a free market! If she didn't like the offer, she could've just gotten herself fired from some other company instead. /s

Different entities having different amounts of leverage in a negotiation is neither unusual nor inherently immoral.

If someone gives you the option to accept $ to sign a contract agreeing not talk about something that is legal but morally bad, and you say yes, then talk about the thing, you will correctly be losing the lawsuit, no matter how bad the thing is.

Post reply on HN