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Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

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Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#281

Post by cratermoon »

amoshi wrote: post #96
q1w2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the reaction from a lot of companies is going to be to lock down internal documents under a need-to-know security model.

That's pretty much what happened after Snowden, everything is much more locked down, access is tightly controlled and employees are more closely monitored. That's why I'm glad he released as much as he did, any followup whistle-blower leak is bound to be much much harder.

That also happened somewhat under Sabanes-Oxley and HIPAA. Documents that might have once sat in an unlocked filing cabinet are now locked in vaults.

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#282

Post by plandis »

If you don’t like Facebook just don’t use Facebook, WhatsApp, or Instagram. Don’t know why so many people here think parents and adults are not capable of regulating themselves and their kids.

It’s honestly condescending to think you know better than your fellow citizens if you’re arguing for government intervention.

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#283

Post by vladd »

cutemonster wrote: post #267
vladd wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a poem (or book) makes 10% of its readers more likely to become geniuses and contribute to solving world problems such as cancer, but 0.1% of its readers are more likely to commit suicide, should that book be banned by law? Today's online society is based on posts created by content creators around the world, where algorithms can barely scratch the surface at interpreting their content, humans don't scale in revie…

It's a misleading comparison. From what I read, trafficking / sex slavery was (is) happening via some places on FB, the company knew about it, did nothing. For example. Edit: the article from this HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28741532 , search for "traffickers" and "drug cartels". /Edit. Understaffed moderation teams, although FB had lots of money

Let's try to phrase it in an actionable way for the law-makers to act upon it.

Are you suggesting that any profitable company hosting user-submitted content should invest all the profits in moderation teams to the point where they are either a) becoming profit-neutral or b) all the relevant content has been reviewed by a human moderator?

And how do you define relevant content -- having had 50 views? 10 views? 1 view? Who should decide where to set these limits? Do we believe politicians are going to do a better job at it rather than the existing situation? Or should we ban any non-human reviewed post just to move the certainty of illegal posts removals from 99.9% to 99.99%? (humans do make mistakes too)

(Facebook is really big so having just 99.99% of posts in compliance still means an awful amount of them escaping the system undetected)

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#284

Post by BitwiseFool »

unsui wrote: post #185
shmatt wrote: post #36

There is something that doesn't sit right with me about the whistleblower. Yes, she is a data scientist which gives her many many extra points. But, she was a PM for 2 years in FAANG. Her actual scope of the what was going on in FB as a huge org, as she's trying to comment on (the "I want to fix FB" quotes from 60 minutes) Everyone I know who works in FAANG, FB specifically, and PMs even more specifically, really hav…

This is textbook ad hominem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem > attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself Question her motives or qualifications, rather than the claims themselves.

To me at least, something feels very off about this whole situation. Out of the blue some larger-than-life person comes out of the woodwork and is lauded with attention while the big news outlets make this massive push against Facebook, all the while congress is holding hearings and a massive outage happens at Facebook right after the New York Times published an article titled "Facebook Is Weaker Than We Knew."

Edit: She is remarkably calm, well-spoken, knowledgeable, and articulate for someone testifying before the Senate for the very first time - all while being broadcast around the globe, live on television. Perhaps she's simply a natural, but I sense she received some coaching and preparation beforehand.

Combine all of this with politicians chomping at the bit to fight online 'misinformation' and I become very skeptical.

It certainly could all just be a perfect storm and Mark Z. has some terrible luck. But again, my intuition is telling me there is something coordinated going on here.

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#285

Post by fidesomnes »

asdff wrote: post #200
nradov wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could legislators draft such a law in a way that wouldn't be voided for vagueness? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagueness_doctrine?wprov=sfla1

Probably with the help of psychologists who can offer more concrete definitions of addictive behavior and dark patterns than you or I.

You sound like an absolute tool.

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#286

Post by threeseed »

asdff wrote: post #138
beaner wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is it , exactly?

There should be some laws about using addictive patterns imo. I'm sure that's fine and profitable and coca cola would continue to like putting cocaine into their drinks to make their customers want it all the more, but we have laws preventing that behavior in the meatspace and therefore we can have laws preventing this sort of evil behavior with technology companies too. Tie it into website accessibility laws that ar…

> There should be some laws about using addictive patterns

Of course there should be.

But then you would also need to ban casinos, sports gambling, gaming, porn, cigarettes, alcohol and the myriad of other things that are addictive in nature.

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#287

Post by asdff »

mpalczewski wrote: post #243
hunterb123 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point was a cig always causes cancer because it burns tobacco, so you need a banner to warn users. A social media behemoth does not need to use doom scrolling or private algorithms to be a social media site.

Smoking was happening in the 1800's. Lung Cancer rates didn't shoot up until the 1900's, it was rather rare. This is around the same time that tobacco companies figured out they could soak tobacco in ammonia. This allowed for inhalation into the lungs (e.g. it sucks to inflate a cigar deep into your lungs). It also made the cigarettes much more addicting, so people smoked way more and inhaled into the lungs. That's a…

That was probably because smoking was not common outside of wealthy men during the 1800s. It was not widespread at all among most of the public until after the world wars thanks to mass produced cigarettes (which weren't around until the late 1800s) now being added to rations. Smoking rate after WWI increased 350% and was high ever since. US government didn't stop issuing cigarette rations to soldiers until 1975. Lung cancer rates have followed lock step with smoking rates, its not really that smoking suddenly became harmful. It always was, it just wasn't common to smoke and even among those who did back in those days, it wasn't common to smoke very much at all and certainly not around the clock (kinda like hookah users today).

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#288

Post by zestyping »

kentonv wrote: post #195

I highly recommend watching the Senate hearing from today, and I'm a person who normally can't stand these things. This was totally different from any other hearing I've seen -- little grandstanding, no partisan bickering, no evading of questions. Most of the Senators seemed genuinely interested in what Frances had to say, and she gave meaningful insights backed by real data. A lot of what she's saying is stuff that…

Strongly agree. She is doing this in a way that no one has really done (certainly not at this level of skill) before: explaining the systemic issues, giving clear and direct answers, keeping the conflict away from the personal, and most of all delivering criticism with empathy and compassion for all involved.

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#289

Post by vincent_waters »

What is "incriminating"? It is legal to remove protected speech, but it's not illegal to not remove it. COVID and election "misinformation" are, for the most part, protected. In fact, the actual headline is just "Facebook's new whistleblower is renewing scrutiny of the social media giant," with no mention of incrimination.

The Hacker News version of the headline is misinformation.

Re: Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

#290

Post by brap »

plandis wrote: post #282

If you don’t like Facebook just don’t use Facebook, WhatsApp, or Instagram. Don’t know why so many people here think parents and adults are not capable of regulating themselves and their kids. It’s honestly condescending to think you know better than your fellow citizens if you’re arguing for government intervention.

I had to read through way too many comments to get to a sane one.
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