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

321–330 of 615 posts

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

#321

Post by prepend »

pests wrote: post #298
bena wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She’s attempting to use the public to bludgeon Meta. This is a fight among shitty people. I will not lionize either side. They both contributed to the shitty state of affairs today. Meta can burn and she can go broke. I’m fine with both

That's a good reaction to have. Thankfully she wrote the book so we know about all these bad deeds.

I don’t think the book revealed anything new about FB’s bad deeds, though. Was there novel info?

I think its just more exposure for already bad things.

Had she had a trove of emails or something, I might thing differently.

This is quite different from the recent lawsuits that produced novel material and evidence.

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

#322

Post by mortoc »

prepend wrote: post #317
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…

I think the author was complicit and only complained once FB stopped paying her. It was weird how the author claimed not to know how facebook targeted ads worked until 2016/2017 after she had made millions.

Literally anyone with the access to these people would be someone making bank. Do you think Cheryl Sandberg would bother to talk to a poor person?

That's kinda the nature of whistle-blowing. You're complicit, you have inside knowledge and THEN you choose to do the right thing. Snowden worked for the NSA before he exposed their lies about spying on US citizens, you think he did literally no work towards that end before blowing the whistle?

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

#323

Post by Cider9986 »

orochimaaru wrote: post #315

I don't agree with this ban. I also don't understand how a non-judicial US arbitration applies to the UK or in Europe. It shouldn't. From the book authors perspective, signing the severance (and by definition taking the payout) means you're giving up the rights of disparagement and legal action against the company. This happens a lot of times. For example, if you have a legal employment complaints against your superv…

100%. I was just about to post about how DRM-free copies should be made available. The danger for most media is obscurity. Although that is clearly not a problem with this one, doing so would only increase the popularity of the book, which should be the author's goal.

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

#324

Post by ryandrake »

kingofmen wrote: post #285
Oarch wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years ago I had a date with a backend engineer at Meta. I asked if they'd ever considered the societal implications of the work they did. They said "Oh wow I've never even thought about it". Probably a solid hire from Meta's perspective.

Or you missed the eye-rolling sarcasm in the answer they have to give on every goddam first date .

Maybe I'm just a wacky Bleeding-Heart, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect someone who worked on a product that amplified hate, leading up to a massacre in Myanmar, to at least address that without sarcasm while getting to know them.

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

#325

Post by navane »

RHSeeger wrote: post #287
matthewdgreen wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we require every whistleblower to be a saint, then we’ll never hear a whistle. If you have a serious criticism of their credibility , that’s potentially different, but arbitrary criticisms of someone’s moral worth is mostly irrelevant.

The fact that someone actively worked against the welfare of society as a whole, in significant and impactful ways, _is_ a criticism of their credibility. It speaks to their morals and empathy for others. It doesn't mean that what they're saying is a lie, but it puts them firmly in the bucket where what they say needs to be verified.

It doesn't matter if she's as bad as the others. The message is that the others are bad. Pointing out that she's also bad is meek at best.

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

#326

Post by prepend »

ktimespi wrote: post #238
Aurornis wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Yeah, the fact that she realized what's going on and still worked tirelessly to give Mark / Facebook more negotiating power speaks volumes. I also can't buy the whole "I have financial woes and can't escape" spin that she puts on her situation. Otherwise, great book.

“I only make $4M/ year in RSUs and am an attorney, however will I pay for daycare for my three kids and teacher husband. I better continue acting unethically and profiting from hosing people.”

This was such a weird argument. I think the author may actually be self-deluding herself as I can’t imagine her or her editors think anyone buys this argument.

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

#327

Post by wiseowise »

ryandrake wrote: post #244
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much easier to do when you exist 40ms and a firewall away from the world. The cloud companies ability to not share the experience of those using the service, to be remote, is a much greater retreat than what was possible 101 years ago, it feels like.

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…

> Do you think he talks to any of the staff of plumbers, electricians, HVAC repair people, gardeners, who maintain his homes?

Believe it or not, but yes. I remember overseeing his terrarium while he was still a small lizard, barely hatched from an egg.

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

#328

Post by ryandrake »

advael wrote: post #304
brabel wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Courage guided by righteousness or vengeance? I feel like the motivation is very important here.

I don't particularly think so. What matters is whether the stuff in the book was true, not whether the author is of unassailable character

When one's goal is to look for any reason to downplay facts, questioning the character of the messenger is a standard tactic.

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

#329

Post by prepend »

gortok wrote: post #23

Having listened to the book on Audible, I'm both shocked at the behavior of the executive team, and not surprised all at the same time. What bothers me about all of this is what it says about us. It says we're willing to give rich and powerful people a pass just because they make overtures towards something we care about. We wouldn't give our children a pass like this, nor would we teach our children to act this way,…

I think that was more about trying, in a dumb way, to make the pregnant woman not work all night than sexual harassment.

The author was 8 months pregnant and was going to stay up for 12 hours doing stuff. This seemed more like a commanding boss trying to stop a workaholic from working.

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

#330

Post by zeroonetwothree »

cousin_it wrote: post #261
ryandrake wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The phrase "voting with your wallet" is hilarious to begin with, because it admits that rich people have more voting power and implies that's how it should be.

Collectively “rich people” spend less than 50% of the total consumer spending so this isn’t actually true exactly.

If you mean an individual person then it really depends.

Post reply on HN