4 ms·

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 lo

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.

chromecanary 8y ago
I have huge huge grips with tech news reporting. NYT/WaPo are reasonably decent usually. You should look at how unbalanced recent tech articles are: Look at this horrendous article by Josh Constine: https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/28/facebook-research-teens/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/28/facebook-research-teens/ > "So 18 percent of research testers were teens. It was only less than 5 percent when Facebook got caught. " Very very colloquial term plus hugely biased+loaded terms like 'caught' are being used. Even basic Journalistic standards are not being met. This isn't a new article. That's an opinion piece (and I am not disagreeing with his facts but with how opinionated his presentation is). There's a difference between "GSW lose to Celtics 129-95" and "Low energy GSW show disinterest in the game and get walloped by Celtics 129-95". And Josh is one of the more popular tech 'journalists'. So you can imagine how problematic the whole industry is. There's no "news". There's just opinion pieces - all of which are from a single elite SF/NY/LA bubble
- chromecanary 8y ago
  The latest from Josh Constine: https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/06/facebook-living-room/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/06/facebook-living-room/ "Perhaps this will just be more lip service in a time of PR crisis for Facebook." "Now Facebook might finally see the dollar signs within privacy." Shamefully opinionated comments again from Josh.
forgottenpass 8y ago
>It's not like PMs at Facebook are sitting around wondering how they can exploit people's privacy. I'd bet serious money there are. They won't let themselves think of it in terms "exploiting privacy", but use some friendly-sounding framing like "leveraging data collection" which is still inherently inseparable from the exploitation of privacy.
- jmathai 8y ago
  Meh .... the same could be said of virtually every job. You'd be hard pressed to find any company (including yours, or your clients if you freelance) who have squeaky clean operations. By that example do you think everyone working at Nike are using friendly-sounding framing like "making high performance shoes affordable at scale" when really what they're doing is exploiting kids in developing countries? There is a cost of doing things at scale and living a modern day life where you don't directly benefit from that is virtually impossible.

chromecanary 8y ago

I have huge huge grips with tech news reporting. NYT/WaPo are reasonably decent usually. You should look at how unbalanced recent tech articles are: Look at this horrendous article by Josh Constine: https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/28/facebook-research-teens/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/28/facebook-research-teens/ > "So 18 percent of research testers were teens. It was only less than 5 percent when Facebook got caught. " Very very colloquial term plus hugely biased+loaded terms like 'caught' are being used. Even basic Journalistic standards are not being met. This isn't a new article. That's an opinion piece (and I am not disagreeing with his facts but with how opinionated his presentation is). There's a difference between "GSW lose to Celtics 129-95" and "Low energy GSW show disinterest in the game and get walloped by Celtics 129-95". And Josh is one of the more popular tech 'journalists'. So you can imagine how problematic the whole industry is. There's no "news". There's just opinion pieces - all of which are from a single elite SF/NY/LA bubble

chromecanary 8y ago
The latest from Josh Constine: https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/06/facebook-living-room/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/06/facebook-living-room/ "Perhaps this will just be more lip service in a time of PR crisis for Facebook." "Now Facebook might finally see the dollar signs within privacy." Shamefully opinionated comments again from Josh.

forgottenpass 8y ago

>It's not like PMs at Facebook are sitting around wondering how they can exploit people's privacy. I'd bet serious money there are. They won't let themselves think of it in terms "exploiting privacy", but use some friendly-sounding framing like "leveraging data collection" which is still inherently inseparable from the exploitation of privacy.

jmathai 8y ago
Meh .... the same could be said of virtually every job. You'd be hard pressed to find any company (including yours, or your clients if you freelance) who have squeaky clean operations. By that example do you think everyone working at Nike are using friendly-sounding framing like "making high performance shoes affordable at scale" when really what they're doing is exploiting kids in developing countries? There is a cost of doing things at scale and living a modern day life where you don't directly benefit from that is virtually impossible.