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I honestly don't know why Facebook (the tool in this problem) is getting more flack for this then the candidates who used the tool to do the damage. Can we do

I honestly don't know why Facebook (the tool in this problem) is getting more flack for this then the candidates who used the tool to do the damage. Can we do the same thing for gun companies, how about death in general? It wasn't X's fault, he used a remington (tool) to kill someone but really it's Remington's fault, their CEO should go to jail.. Next we'll start blame Amazon for being the company that transporting the problem.

zaidf 9y ago
I have come to believe the biggest mistake Facebook made is not hiring the right lobbyists. The disproportionate attack on Facebook versus, for example, Experian is stunning.
- desu_ 9y ago
  You might be right to believe that Facebook's PR team is weak or that Experian's practices are bad, but the Experian comparison isn't stunning. Experian's name recognition is nowhere near as strong as Facebook's and it makes the potential loot for journos less interesting.
  - zaidf 9y ago
    A large part of a solid PR team’s job is to cultivate relationships with journalists so when situations like these arise, they feel compelled to cover the issue in a more nuanced and educated manner. I don’t mean to say the PR team has to strive to spread lies or dishonesty, but rather be able to get your company somewhat fair coverage. I don’t think that is happening. I’ll go a step further and argue that for a company like Facebook, you should have a dozen folks whose job is to simply come in everyday and think about the possible attack vectors from the PR side. And then you work backwards from the worst case scenarios of each to begin addressing the issue from various sides (engineering, BD, Corp dev etc), ideally long before it plays out. To give you an example, google PR for a long time has been super aware of getting caught in a media tsunami charging it for being a monopoly. My hunch is that every public speaker representing google has been made aware of this and is provided guidance. For example, you won’t find google engineers talking at big data conferences even joking about world domination. Instead, in public, google underplays its larger ambition to err on the side of caution.
pxmpxm 9y ago
IMO Facebook got caught up in the media Trump hysteria over the "hacked elections" narrative and at that point they were SOL. PR in that context is ineffective, because Facebook's message would be going against deep-set beliefs of the authors and convincing them otherwise would obviously introduce cognitive dissonance. (ie if the only way you can comprehend reality is that the elections were manipulated, then facebook must be culpable in this malfeasance). Scott Adams has a bunch of articles on how cognitive dissonance tends to impact judgement. That's honestly my best take on the situation, otherwise it's rather difficult to explain articles like the one below, that talks about the very same facebook issue with a completely opposite bias: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-data-machine-facebook-election https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-...
- d0lph 9y ago
  To me it's more about people waking up and realizing exactly how much and what data is collected on them. Private messages, texts, things facebook has no business having etc.

zaidf 9y ago

I have come to believe the biggest mistake Facebook made is not hiring the right lobbyists. The disproportionate attack on Facebook versus, for example, Experian is stunning.

desu_ 9y ago
You might be right to believe that Facebook's PR team is weak or that Experian's practices are bad, but the Experian comparison isn't stunning. Experian's name recognition is nowhere near as strong as Facebook's and it makes the potential loot for journos less interesting.
- zaidf 9y ago
  A large part of a solid PR team’s job is to cultivate relationships with journalists so when situations like these arise, they feel compelled to cover the issue in a more nuanced and educated manner. I don’t mean to say the PR team has to strive to spread lies or dishonesty, but rather be able to get your company somewhat fair coverage. I don’t think that is happening. I’ll go a step further and argue that for a company like Facebook, you should have a dozen folks whose job is to simply come in everyday and think about the possible attack vectors from the PR side. And then you work backwards from the worst case scenarios of each to begin addressing the issue from various sides (engineering, BD, Corp dev etc), ideally long before it plays out. To give you an example, google PR for a long time has been super aware of getting caught in a media tsunami charging it for being a monopoly. My hunch is that every public speaker representing google has been made aware of this and is provided guidance. For example, you won’t find google engineers talking at big data conferences even joking about world domination. Instead, in public, google underplays its larger ambition to err on the side of caution.

pxmpxm 9y ago

IMO Facebook got caught up in the media Trump hysteria over the "hacked elections" narrative and at that point they were SOL. PR in that context is ineffective, because Facebook's message would be going against deep-set beliefs of the authors and convincing them otherwise would obviously introduce cognitive dissonance. (ie if the only way you can comprehend reality is that the elections were manipulated, then facebook must be culpable in this malfeasance). Scott Adams has a bunch of articles on how cognitive dissonance tends to impact judgement. That's honestly my best take on the situation, otherwise it's rather difficult to explain articles like the one below, that talks about the very same facebook issue with a completely opposite bias: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-data-machine-facebook-election https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-...

d0lph 9y ago
To me it's more about people waking up and realizing exactly how much and what data is collected on them. Private messages, texts, things facebook has no business having etc.