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A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

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Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#91

Post by icelancer »

hash872 wrote: post #59
cabaalis wrote: post #37

None of this would be important if social media gave us what they originally sold us: See updates from your friends, family, and people you want to see updates from, in chronological order, rather than based upon weird engagement algorithms and privacy-destroying ad networks.

What I've long wondered is- would it really be that hard/expensive to build an open source social media alternative that does exactly that? Updates & photos from friends & family, in chronological order, and little else. Social media has been around for a while now, I have to imagine that most of the hard problems around a customized feed and so on have been solved. Probably some idealistic ex-FB and IG engineers wou…

I think you misunderstand.

People want to be mad. They like it.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#92

Post by CGamesPlay »

catsarebetter wrote: post #88
CGamesPlay wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like she published an internal memo, somebody else leaked it, and the personal information was a fourth party's.

I hope that person that leaked her memo had a ridiculous amount of social capital built up with her, though I seriously doubt it.

Reading it over more closely, the article doesn't exclude the possibility that the person who leaked the memo was actually Ms Zhang. The anonymous "other software engineer" might just be another source the authors know, or even a reference given by the "leaker".

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#93

Post by sriku »

cabaalis wrote: post #37

None of this would be important if social media gave us what they originally sold us: See updates from your friends, family, and people you want to see updates from, in chronological order, rather than based upon weird engagement algorithms and privacy-destroying ad networks.

On a slight tangent ... the one thing about HN that lets me breathe is that the links that turn up are the same for everyone on the planet and is not "personalized". If it were, I'd be gone in a jiffy.

Maybe we should rename "personalization" to something with a -ve connotation - perhaps "bubblification"? "narcissization"? "comfortzoned"?

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#94

Post by Supermancho »

dfadsadsf wrote: post #21
Supermancho wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was not talking about "severance" per se, but about a non-disparaging agreements. I would agree that severance is typical. That being said, California, Oregon, Washington State, Georgia, getting 4-5 month's pay as severance? That doesn't even make sense from a business perspective, imo. If you're small enough you are face to facing investors, everyone has experience with volatile employees. If you're larger, you do…

Most (if not all) severance agreements in case of firing include non-disparagement. Severance is just cost of business - HR sees volatile employee and automatically offer severance with not-sue, not-disparage agreement. Employment lawyers are $600/hour and a huge distraction. http://www.shpclaw.com/Schwartz-Resources/severance-and-rele...

> Most (if not all) severance agreements in case of firing include non-disparagement.

I've never seen it. Employment lawyers are very happy to take cases against companies, who have money. Just like non-competes, they have been dropped from contracts over the last few decades (severability applies anyway) on the west coast.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#95

Post by dwaltrip »

sriku wrote: post #93
cabaalis wrote: post #37

None of this would be important if social media gave us what they originally sold us: See updates from your friends, family, and people you want to see updates from, in chronological order, rather than based upon weird engagement algorithms and privacy-destroying ad networks.

On a slight tangent ... the one thing about HN that lets me breathe is that the links that turn up are the same for everyone on the planet and is not "personalized". If it were, I'd be gone in a jiffy. Maybe we should rename "personalization" to something with a -ve connotation - perhaps "bubblification"? "narcissization"? "comfortzoned"?

Spoonification

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#97

Post by brundolf »

thundergolfer wrote: post #81
brundolf wrote: post #27

> Still, she did not believe that the failures she observed during her two and a half years at the company were the result of bad intent by Facebook’s employees or leadership. It was a lack of resources, Zhang wrote, and the company’s tendency to focus on global activity that posed public relations risks, as opposed to electoral or civic harm. > “Facebook projects an image of strength and competence to the outside wo…

“A lack of resources” is not a thing a 500+ billion dollar company gets to lean on, and Sophia does acknowledge that. This is the old “don’t tell me what you care about, show me your balance sheet and I’ll tell you what you care about”.

Right, which was the reason for the "(motivated?)". It is a genuinely hard problem, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's intractable even for a motivated organization, but at the very least there's no profit-incentive to put real effort into solving it. So for one reason or another, I don't think any company can be relied upon to keep a handle on this problem.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#98

Post by [deleted] »

BurningFrog wrote: post #78
strangeloops85 wrote: post #2

"“I have personally made decisions that affected national presidents without oversight, and taken action to enforce against so many prominent politicians globally that I’ve lost count,” she wrote." The scale of how the platform's being used for political manipulation in every country is enormous, and it's clear that if a junior data scientist is having to independently make these decisions, that there's little intere…

I have real doubts about how big this power of individuals are. But if random FB engineers actually can affect global political power, it is 100% certain that the intelligence services of the world are putting serious efforts into placing their own people in these positions!

[deleted]

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#99

Post by fiblye »

souprock wrote: post #28

Facebook itself, the corporation, is global political manipulation. Both https://joebiden.info/ and https://kamalaharris.info/ are blocked on Facebook, and on Instagram which is owned by Facebook. The block is silently applied to private messages on Instagram, with the sender seeing it go out but the recipient never getting it. Facebook isn't turning a blind eye. Facebook is actively participating, by purposely block…

Every .info domain I've ever seen in my life has been a spam site. I didn't click the link because of that preconceived notion and opted to google it instead. And of course, this is the tagline:

> Creepy Uncle Joe Biden is back and ready to take a hands-on approach to America's problems!

Sure enough, it's a spam site.

Re: A whistleblower says Facebook ignored global political manipulation

#100

Post by notyourwork »

gkop wrote: post #18
jdc wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know someone who got extra severance conditional on non-disparagement when leaving a pretty modest Canadian tech company. Is this a more rare event than I thought?

Yes, grandfather comment is overly dramatic. What you’re describing is the status quo termination agreement that companies require you sign in exchange for a severance payout. When people don’t have first-hand knowledge of unethical and dramatically harmful behavior by the company, and often even when they do, they sign it because they want the severance. What’s unusual in this case is not only did Sophie courageousl…

> she selflessly forfeited her severance payout.

Without discrediting her desire for the greater good. It is a lot easier to turn this kind of money done when you consider compensation in these big tech companies. To most $64k sounds like a lot, for a big tech employee that could be a fraction of one stock vesting event. She worked there for over a year so she at least saw one vesting event and Facebooks stock has been explosive over last year. She very well could have net $100k or more in a single vesting event. I'm sure she has enough money to tide her over until her next job.

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