Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta • Hacker News Board

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

#471

Post by Schmerika » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 10:48 PM UTC

superkuh wrote: post #460

Schmerika wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're on HN; a platform where the founders and CEO are big cheerleaders of DOGE. Where talk of many third rail topics is quietly flagged into oblivion, and discussions on the flagging processes are explicitly banned. YC were best buds with Peter Thiel... And literally had Sam "scan everyone's eyeballs" Altman as Pres for 5 years . They are actively seeking out "defense" tech to invest in; even during a US sponsored…

>I'll put it like this - what you're doing with that comment above is a lot like blaming smokers for feeding the tobacco companies. Despite all the lies and ads and manipulation, despite all the dirty tricks, despite the hard-core science used to get people hooked from every possible angle. I have never used Facebook and I never will. What they have done is immoral and unethical and deserves regulation. What I fear i…

> What I fear is that regulation will be informed from the false and dangerous equivalence you've made there comparing addictive drugs to looking at an audio-visual screen.

Let's be extremely clear - I'm not the one who first made that comparison. That would be the tech bros, who hire all manner of addiction and gambling specialists and scientists in order to make their products as addictive as possible.

> the screens and the radio are not the problem and they are NOT LIKE DRUGS

For a fully competent adult, you can make that argument. Kinda.

To an unsupervised 9yo? An 89 yo? Facebook is a lot like drugs, only with the mind-altering effects much easier to direct. No, that's not the screens fault (or the radio), and no one said it was.

> That drug comparison will lead to government's treating computers' like drugs which means heavy regulation of end users and violence against them.

If I really believed that avoiding such a comparison would prevent government from over-regulation and violence toward social media users, then I'd avoid it. But I don't.

Also, using the insanity and violence of the drug war to self-censor obvious comparisons is certainly a choice.

> We need regulation of the corporations intentionally doing random interval operant conditioning. Not regulation of the medium they do it over and the people enjoying using that medium.

No one anywhere was arguing for regulating your screen or the internet - except maybe the government which you insist on doing the regulation, and the corporations who are large enough to own politicians. If you got that impression purely from the tobacco analogy (which you then morphed into the drug war somehow) I'd encourage you to try and reinterpret the point.

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

#472

Post by alex1138 » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 10:48 PM UTC

jmye wrote: post #354

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…

> Nobody voted for Meta. Of course they did - they “voted” for them every time they signed on to Facebook or Instagram or used WhatsApp, and they doubled down every time they let their children use them. They vote for them every time they elect grifters and spineless toadies to office. These companies don’t have users by default. They have users because shitty people use shitty services made by even shittier people b…

It's not exactly choice. I'm well aware there were other social services that were before FB but you have to look at the timeline. The internet NOW is objectively probably still pretty young (it's hard to quantify age with something like this). Back then in 2004-6 even more so. There's a real need to connect with people (even if I have your email, "loose connections" are important. If I have a timeline, I can share my status update to my page and all my loose connections around the world - people I know now, people I lost touch with but have reconnected with, and other groups of people - in a way I wouldn't be doing with email)

Facebook was the thing that came along post Myspace and unfortunately is the product of someone with lacking ethical imagination. People feel forced to use it or else they don't know why it's bad. And I don't think people who use these things are automatically addicts. It's not their fault the company and leadership lies to them (about various things. Privacy and whatever else)

Of course people "can just stop". But that's hard. We shouldn't be punished for involving ourselves in the game of network effects, of wanting to have friends

When Mark Zuckerberg makes a policy like "it's ok to call certain groups mentally ill" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651178) it's rug pulling. Even if you didn't know about Dumb Fucks (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692122) you use these services both out of necessity and because you think it's a way to keep in touch. People don't "willingly choose" this. They had the rug pulled out repeatedly, whether it's censoring links to competitors, shadow profiles, impossible to delete an account, or whatever. It doesn't have to be like this but that doesn't mean people using their products are bad people for using their products

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

#473

Post by vntok » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 10:50 PM UTC

itsdesmond wrote: post #427

_heimdall wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just be aware that the author really doesn't get much of the money you're spending. The publisher takes a sizable chunk, as does Amazon if you ordered from there.

The fuck are you arguing here? Should they not buy the book?

They probably shouldn't indeed, if one is to believe some of the comments here.

> read the book and honestly the author is just as crazy as the rest of the executive team she skewers

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

#474

Post by ceejayoz » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 10:51 PM UTC

0x3f wrote: post #466

ceejayoz wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whatever term you've switched to using They're synonyms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inalienable_right goes to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rights_and_legal_right... . This happens a lot in English. "Natural rights are those that are not dependent on the laws or customs of any particular culture or government, and so are universal, fundamental and inalienable ..." > is that they're simply assertions So's…

> So's "we don't have natural rights". That's the null hypothesis. There are no teapots orbiting the sun, either.

How fascinating it is that your opinion is the only one not requiring support.

I think I will take feedback from someone who’s heard of a thesaurus.

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

#475

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 10:53 PM UTC

miki123211 wrote: post #447

Dylan16807 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some issues with someone that has very little experience being an adult. Once they have a couple years out of school and a couple years of being able to drink (if relevant), it's basically all the same.

With how fast the world is moving (especially in non-US, recently-ish westernized countries that had a lot of catching up to do over the last twenty-forty years, think former eastern bloc), things aren't so clear-cut. There's a difference between a person who grew up watching video cassettes on their neighbor's VCR, and a person who (barely) watched recaps over 1MB/s DSL. Two completely different childhoods, two comp…

Sure there's a difference in the kind of things they're used to, but it's not giving anyone an advantage which is what the earlier posts were about. Maybe a small advantage to the younger one which is the opposite of the worry above.

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

#476

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 10:55 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #448

miltonlost wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Age gaps in relationships is not inherently negative. Being a cougar is not a bad thing. The issue here was that Sandberg was the author's manager. Age isn't an issue when all parties are adults.

People in the C Suite should not be asking any employee to join them in bed whether they're that person's manager or not.

I think you're just using a narrower definition of "manager" than the person you responded to.

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

#477

Post by alex1138 » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 10:57 PM UTC

I am incredibly saddened by Facebook because "social" should have exploded along with the rest of the web. The web is this vast place (which Facebook is trying to change https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10791198) and there's no reason they should have been the winners (Friendster was apparently slow, Myspace had that awkward problem of discoverability with people using screen names and also the fact pages could be probably too excessively customized). I can think of several ways in which FB has hurt me directly and hurts other people. But we gave up our power to "they 'trust me', dumb fucks"

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

#478

Post by collinmcnulty » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 10:59 PM UTC

reenorap wrote: post #426

petcat wrote: post #26

My understanding is that as part of a severance package she received in 2017 she agreed to some kind of "non-disparagement" clause. She then went on to write a book disparaging the company. The arbitrator didn't rule on the disparagement itself or if anything was true or false. Only ruled that she had to abide by the contract she signed. It sounds like an interesting book, and I'll add it to the list. But it also sou…

Can't she just return the money from the severance agreement and rescind the NDA?

That's not how NDA's work. They would be useless even for legitimate purposes if they worked that way.

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

#479

Post by alex1138 » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 11:01 PM UTC

miki123211 wrote: post #452

none2585 wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in your boat, but I've been thinking more lately around how we create competitors to the sorts of things that people claim "lock them in" to using Facebook (events and messenger are the ones I hear the most anecdotally). Make these things reasonably self-sustaining monetarily (no ads) and just let it run.

Messenger does 3 things right: 1. Being able to discover people by name / surname, no phone number necessary. This is the most important privacy feature people care about, it's ironic that Meta had it from the get-go, while other platforms have barely caught up. 2. Used to have frictionless message sync, including in the event of a catastrophic loss of all devices, which put it far ahead of most apps (sadly nerfed by…

> sadly nerfed by E2E

Seriously, why? (Not you, I'm asking rhetorically to Facebook) This broke Messenger. People don't have each others' email addresses (FB has seen to that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433), it's Messenger. It was completely unforced and don't give me that malarky of "protecting messages"

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

#480

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 11:01 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #334

RIMR wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should not be legal to enforce this kind of thing 9 years after a person leaves your company. I get that it currently is legal, but have some principles. Just because this is legal doesn't mean it isn't morally reprehensible, and its legality should be challenged.

She didn’t have to agree to the contract. I don’t really want some arbitrary govt limit restricting what private parties can do with each other.

I very much want the government restricting employment-related contracts myself.

And NDAs and similar, with their entire purpose being restricting speech, should also be restricted pretty strongly.