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Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

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Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#61

Post by basch »

librish wrote: post #54

It does feel like a lot of the news are misrepresented or skewed. Take CA as an example. This was FB acting as a developer portal and the following happened (to the best of my knowledge) using Apple as a substitute. 1. Your friend downloads a slick email app from company X on the AppStore 2. The OS warns you with a big blocking screen that this app wants to read all emails from your address book, your friend clicks a…

Exactly. FB has done some crappy things (changing default without clear communication of consequences being a major one http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/) that LEAD to CA being a problem. Im willing to bet 99% of people dont realize that WHEN they signed up for facebook changed the default settings, and that their defaults might be different than their friends. And letting developers have access to "public data" can be debated, especially when they are playing so fast and loose with what gets posted publicly by default.

BUT, the developer itself is the one that got people to fork over their friends info, and having friends that will give up their friends privacy to play a personality quiz speaks way more to the public than it does to facebook.

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#62

Post by EngineerBetter »

As a person who has never had a Facebook account, can someone explain what societal good they've done? I see none.

I see espionage on a massive scale. I see democracies weakened for profit. I see self-obsessed shallow folks constantly taking selfies to post online. I see the degeneration of political discourse into pithy statements that can be 'liked'.

What good have they done, exactly? Helped people share photos and status updates?

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#63

Post by warp_factor »

fbemployee1234 wrote: post #36

Throwaway for obvious reasons. Opinions are my own. I joined in the last year. I had major issues with FB before, reflecting typical HN user stance. I joined because I was curious and their promises sounded like an amazing place to work. And it is. They treat us better than any other company in terms of autonomy and input. Everyone has a tea seat at the table. And what I’ve seen, the external perceptions don’t match…

Let me disagree on this.

I think You joined Facebook, and they showed you the "Employee side" where everything is beautiful, with free food and free toys and you became convinced. Yes, they treat employees super well, nobody contradicts that. But how does it change anything related to how bad the product is (and all the bad things it does to people that use it a lot).

It is easy to let the beautiful inner side of Facebook take over the product side of Facebook that everyone else is seeing from the outside.

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#64

Post by badfrog »

throwawaysow wrote: post #52
fbemployee1234 wrote: post #36

Throwaway for obvious reasons. Opinions are my own. I joined in the last year. I had major issues with FB before, reflecting typical HN user stance. I joined because I was curious and their promises sounded like an amazing place to work. And it is. They treat us better than any other company in terms of autonomy and input. Everyone has a tea seat at the table. And what I’ve seen, the external perceptions don’t match…

This argument sounds a lot like gaslighting. You can put this argument for any unethical company and it would work.

> This argument sounds a lot like gaslighting.

That's just a matter of whether you think OP truly believes what they said.

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#65

Post by fiftyacorn »

EngineerBetter wrote: post #62

As a person who has never had a Facebook account, can someone explain what societal good they've done? I see none. I see espionage on a massive scale. I see democracies weakened for profit. I see self-obsessed shallow folks constantly taking selfies to post online. I see the degeneration of political discourse into pithy statements that can be 'liked'. What good have they done, exactly? Helped people share photos and…

At a basic level it lets people stay in touch with family and friends they might not otherwise see. That's not a bad thing?

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#66

Post by basch »

EngineerBetter wrote: post #62

As a person who has never had a Facebook account, can someone explain what societal good they've done? I see none. I see espionage on a massive scale. I see democracies weakened for profit. I see self-obsessed shallow folks constantly taking selfies to post online. I see the degeneration of political discourse into pithy statements that can be 'liked'. What good have they done, exactly? Helped people share photos and…

It's a tool right, and from a usability, stability, security, and functionality perspective its second to none. No other program (for me) works more seamlessly between desktop and mobile.

It's messaging app is first class. Tons of features. I can type a message on a pc, and carry my phone with me and pick up where I left off.

It's groups allow people to self organize, at a scale I dont see anywhere else.

It's newsfeed is what you make of it. If you follow your friends you get what your friends share. If you follow ars technica, foreign policy, indewire, mit, open culture, priceonomics, saveur, you get ars technica, foreign policy, indewire, mit, open culture, priceonomics, saveur. Theres really no one to blame but yourself and the people you follow if your newsfeed sucks, or isnt what you want it to be. Follow better people. Fake news, tribalism, viral videos as the new opiate/soma of the masses, speaks to human nature and what we have become, not the tool that lets us mindlessly consume and push away our problems.

It's gmail, google news, twitter, instagram, youtube, reddit, all rolled into one. For a lot of people who want a stable product that works well, that does those things, it gets the job done. I totally think facebook wields its power irresponsibly at times, but blaming it alone for weakening democracy is like blaming roads for bad drivers.

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#67

Post by badfrog »

warp_factor wrote: post #63
fbemployee1234 wrote: post #36

Throwaway for obvious reasons. Opinions are my own. I joined in the last year. I had major issues with FB before, reflecting typical HN user stance. I joined because I was curious and their promises sounded like an amazing place to work. And it is. They treat us better than any other company in terms of autonomy and input. Everyone has a tea seat at the table. And what I’ve seen, the external perceptions don’t match…

Let me disagree on this. I think You joined Facebook, and they showed you the "Employee side" where everything is beautiful, with free food and free toys and you became convinced. Yes, they treat employees super well, nobody contradicts that. But how does it change anything related to how bad the product is (and all the bad things it does to people that use it a lot). It is easy to let the beautiful inner side of Fac…

> But how does it change anything related to how bad the product is

From OP:

> I hear real change from leadership

> Fb has invested hugely in protecting elections, possibly more than any single government. They have doubled that on integrity, etc.

> I think FB, and especially Zuckerberg, have done a great job responding to these issues to try and solve them.

You might think they're misinformed or incorrect, but you can't say they didn't address product/company issues.

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#68

Post by warp_factor »

I would love for FB employees to explain to me how they justify that their product literally hooks fragile users to internet, creating chronic depression, FOMO etc etc.

To me, it is no different than Heroin given to a Junkie.

You just need to travel anywhere in the world and look at all the tourists spending their time Instagram-ing everything. On the other side of the screen you have fragile teens that get depressive because their life is not as good as the fake paradise that can be seen on Facebook//Instagram.

This is the culture that Facebook and "attention-grabbing" social networks have created. As an employee at Facebook, you directly contribute to that! Yes, it is a symptom of something more deeply broken in society, but you act like Heroin to a Junkie, facilitating the intake.

If we had to number this, I would probably put Facebook and other predatory attention-grabbing networks (Youtube is another one) in my top 3 of worst things going on in the world right now.

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#69

Post by jmathai »

docker_up wrote: post #8

Most of what the press reports is a distortion of the truth, or making something sound worse than it really is. Sure there are issues but all companies have them, just like Google, Amazon, etc. There are a lot of good people doing good work here, and connecting the world for the better. You don't hear about the 99.99% of the good things because that won't encourage clicks for the news rags. If the press took an inter…

This should be the top comment.

Let's take a current headline: "Facebook is facing criticism for not allowing users to opt out of a feature that lets people look them up using their phone number or email address."

There are so many ways to explain how this could come to be and the vast majority of those would not be attributed to malicious intent.

It's not like PMs at Facebook are sitting around wondering how they can exploit people's privacy. They work on a massively complex product which sits on extremely sensitive data. Releasing a feature without properly vetting all of the ramifications (some of which exist completely outside of your purview or knowledge) is the reality.

Could Facebook have better cultural practices within the company when it comes to privacy? Sure. But that's a far leap from assuming that workers there are intentionally trying to exploit people's privacy.

I'm by no means absolving Facebook of the responsibility they have with regard to individual and global impact. But I imagine Facebook employees are aware of the amazing benefit Facebook has provided as much as they are the negative impact it's had. It's not hard to see how many people would believe the good outweighs the bad.

Re: Ask HN: Current and former FB employees, what's the other side to the story?

#70

Post by tdhoot »

throwawaysow wrote: post #52
fbemployee1234 wrote: post #36

Throwaway for obvious reasons. Opinions are my own. I joined in the last year. I had major issues with FB before, reflecting typical HN user stance. I joined because I was curious and their promises sounded like an amazing place to work. And it is. They treat us better than any other company in terms of autonomy and input. Everyone has a tea seat at the table. And what I’ve seen, the external perceptions don’t match…

This argument sounds a lot like gaslighting. You can put this argument for any unethical company and it would work.

How is this gaslighting?
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