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I think big tech has it very different, given how much they know about their personal employees lives. Some information should leak within a healthy society so

I think big tech has it very different, given how much they know about their personal employees lives. Some information should leak within a healthy society so backlash and corrections can occur before an election might be compromised by a horrific breach. For a view on what's different an excerpt from a Guardian piece is below. --- “It’s horrifying how much they know,” he told the Guardian, on the condition of anonymity. “You go into Facebook and it has this warm, fuzzy feeling of ‘we’re changing the world’ and ‘we care about things’. But you get on their bad side and all of a sudden you are face to face with [Facebook CEO] Mark Zuckerberg’s secret police.” The public image of Silicon Valley’s tech giants is all colourful bicycles, ping-pong tables, beanbags and free food, but behind the cartoonish facade is a ruthless code of secrecy. They rely on a combination of Kool-Aid, digital and physical surveillance, legal threats and restricted stock units to prevent and detect intellectual property theft and other criminal activity. However, those same tools are also used to catch employees and contractors who talk publicly, even if it’s about their working conditions, misconduct or cultural challenges within the company. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/16/silicon-valley-internal-work-spying-surveillance-leakers https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/16/silicon-v...

amarkov 9y ago
One of the important qualities of a great place to work is that decisions are made based on sober analysis rather than reflexive corrections. Maybe you're right, and Facebook is just too important to allow that, but I think it's fair for Facebook employees to be unhappy about this.
- marricks 9y ago
  Do you honestly believe you can’t have both? I’m not saying all data should be public, what I am saying is if what you’re discussing is morally repugnant given your past history it shouldn’t surprise you if it gets leaked.
  - amarkov 9y ago
    The problem is that lots of people find lots of different things morally repugnant. If it's normalized for people to leak things that they consider morally repugnant, that means there are serious costs to engaging in any controversial discussion. There's no way I'm going to talk about diversity at my company if I think someone might go tell a reporter what I said; there's no viewpoint on the issue which isn't offensive to someone.
hinkley 9y ago
I think we’ve all blocked out the scary part of Pinocchio, where the boys go to the carnival (Pleasure Island). Spoilers: it ends with them being treated as literal livestock.

amarkov 9y ago

One of the important qualities of a great place to work is that decisions are made based on sober analysis rather than reflexive corrections. Maybe you're right, and Facebook is just too important to allow that, but I think it's fair for Facebook employees to be unhappy about this.

marricks 9y ago
Do you honestly believe you can’t have both? I’m not saying all data should be public, what I am saying is if what you’re discussing is morally repugnant given your past history it shouldn’t surprise you if it gets leaked.
- amarkov 9y ago
  The problem is that lots of people find lots of different things morally repugnant. If it's normalized for people to leak things that they consider morally repugnant, that means there are serious costs to engaging in any controversial discussion. There's no way I'm going to talk about diversity at my company if I think someone might go tell a reporter what I said; there's no viewpoint on the issue which isn't offensive to someone.

hinkley 9y ago

I think we’ve all blocked out the scary part of Pinocchio, where the boys go to the carnival (Pleasure Island). Spoilers: it ends with them being treated as literal livestock.