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Someone who worked at Facebook for the better part of a decade responded that they felt the media coverage was unfair to Facebook. You were suprised by this res

Someone who worked at Facebook for the better part of a decade responded that they felt the media coverage was unfair to Facebook. You were suprised by this response because from an outsider's perspective you felt that Facebook employees should be apologetic? What makes you more qualified to judge whether the public perception was accurate as compared to someone who actually worked there - an "FB vet" in your own words? Having dug into the Cambridge Analytica story, I can see a number of reasons why Facebook workers would feel wronged by the coverage. In particular, many outlets omitted or downplayed the fact that Cambridge Analytica had lied about the purpose of their data collection, falsely claiming that it was for academic research. Dozens of other academic institutions were similarly allowed to solicit data from users, yet those go unmentioned because most people don't see users voluntarily sharing their data for academic purposes. But that's what Cambridge Analytica was, from Facebook's perspective. The picture painted by the media was one where Facebook brazenly sold people's data to nefarious actors, when in reality Facebook treated Cambridge Analytica just like other academic organizations in allowing them to solicit users for data - except it turned out that CA had lied about the purpose of its data collection. This story leaves makes me more empathetic towards your interviewer. If my company was so throughly demonized by the media such that candidates discount my own experience actually working at the company and are "floored" when when I tell them that the reality is different from public coverage, I'd be pretty salty too.

tipsysquid 7y ago
I'm no fan of Facebook, but this comment demonstrates the complexity of the situation in ways many entrepreneurs can appreciate
stefan_ 7y ago
Academic research isn't some magic word that you just need to invoke, particularly when it involves personal data. You need specific informed consent and the sign-off from an ethics committee on your study plan. To not ask that of someone pretending to use your data for academic research is willful ignorance. Of course, we are talking about Facebook, who have literally been in the news before for themselves running research experiments on uninformed, random users: http://laboratorium.net/archive/2014/06/28/as_flies_to_wanton_boys http://laboratorium.net/archive/2014/06/28/as_flies_to_wanto...
- prox 7y ago
  I remember playing with the FB tools back then, and I was surprised of how much information I could pull from it. As I can recall there were few bars of entry when it came to data collection.
acollins1331 7y ago
Facebook only made someone ask for data to give it to them and you think that's something they shouldn't feel wrong about?
starfallg 7y ago
I'm having a hard time believing that this is a legitimate opinion and not conjured up by Facebook PR. Facebook is the one that collected the data. It is their responsibility to ensure that who they give your data to is who they are, and that they are doing what they should be doing to your data. The should have a comprehensive compliance program for third parties with access to user data and have the necessary enforcement regime with enough bite to prevent abuse. Not to hide behind their policies until they get caught red-handed and then shrug off their responsibilities to everyone but themselves.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  I have a hard time understanding why your first sentence is necessary. Nothing against what you said subsequently (and I think it's totally right), and myself disliking facebook, your first sentence is entirely unnecessary and beside the point. From what I read, your parent comment sound entirely logical coming from a different POV. I don't see anything illegitimate about it, even if it WAS Facebook PR, the point within are entirely valid.
  - starfallg 7y ago
    The comment I replied to completely ignored FB's responsibility to its user's data and rather than accepting that FB was supposed to be responsible, proceeded to blame everyone else but themselves. I just don't see that as reasonable in discourse. I mean you can hold those beliefs, but if you do express them in public I think it's right to be called out on how unacceptable that is.
    - Aperocky 7y ago
      Yes, attack the idea, not the user. I also don't see you guys are on the same page either. For one, was there false reporting? It is entirely possible to do 5 bad things and have media report you did 10 bad things. And while 5 bad things was committed it doesn't excuse the media for wrong reporting, not saying that they did this in this case.
gfodor 7y ago
The great irony to me is that Facebook does a lot of stuff people should be angry and scared about, but oddly enough the Cambridge Analytica situation, which broke this whole dam open, is not one of them, and is one where I think they are being treated unfairly. The reason it ends up being an issue is because of politics: it gives people an explanation and someone to blame for an election that did not play out according to the expectations and/or hopes of half of the country.
- jariel 7y ago
  This is exactly it. CA is not actually that bad of a situation. There are much greater privacy and freedom of expression concerns.
- jyrkesh 7y ago
  Yeah, it's important to note that while my anecdote was from the "post-CA timeframe", they had also just had an exploit that resulted in mass harvesting of OAuth tokens[1]. And of course, a couple months later it came out that they were storing passwords in plaintext logs[2]. This wasn't just about CA. There was a class of problems that FB was facing, and the guy didn't acknowledge a single thing they could have done better. [1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/09/50-million-facebook-accounts-breached-by-an-access-token-harvesting-attack/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/09/50-mi... [2] https://www.npr.org/2019/03/21/705588364/facebook-stored-millions-of-user-passwords-in-plain-readable-text https://www.npr.org/2019/03/21/705588364/facebook-stored-mil...
nemild 7y ago
A common argument (that you also make) is that if you're on the inside, you obviously know better than those on the outside. There's a lot of reasons to believe that isn't true. First, you may not have the right training (e.g., media studies, media economics, privacy). Second, you favor your coworkers because they are your friends. Third, the positive news and justified criticism of external critics is widely shared internally, but the points that are appropriately critical are much less shared. A single flawed external article can lead to defensiveness, making it that much easier to dismiss tens of other appropriate articles. More poetically, it's like the Three Blind Men and elephant. The conviction of the blind men is so great, but their closeness leads to a misplaced confidence that they know the answer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant I call this effect the "truth distortion field," and liken it to the Facebook friend filter bubble: https://www.nemil.com/tdf/part1-employees.html https://www.nemil.com/tdf/part1-employees.html
Barrin92 7y ago
>What makes you more qualified to judge whether the public perception was accurate as compared to someone who actually worked there - an "FB vet" in your own words? For starters, most of us here don't benefit financially from putting a positive spin on disasters at Facebook. As the Upton Sinclair saying goes, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. I've not talked to Facebook employees personally but I've witnessed the same degree of delusion at other large tech companies. Some are straight-up like a cult with employees willing to defend just about anything their company does regardless of how hazardous it was. Which is even more baffling if one takes into consideration that these are usually salaried employees working there only for a few years with no personal stake whatsoever. The point isn't even to discuss some sort of internal nuance about the technical details of CA. If you are a company as large as Facebook and you allow user data to be abused to this degree, even if there is some nuance to it, when facing the public you apologize, tuck your tail between your legs, admit that you screwed up, and fix your problems, and you turn the arrogance and the world saving rhetoric down a notch.
- edanm 7y ago
  > I've not talked to Facebook employees personally but I've witnessed the same degree of delusion at other large tech companies. Some are straight-up like a cult with employees willing to defend just about anything their company does regardless of how hazardous it was. Which is even more baffling if one takes into consideration that these are usually salaried employees working there only for a few years with no personal stake whatsoever. Well I think I can solve this puzzle. It's possible some people disagree with you about how "hazardous" their company is. They're not "cult-like" or "delusional". They're not willing to "defend just about anything" despite the fact that they are only there a few years. They just don't agree with you on the amount of hazard their companies are doing. Note: This is regardless of whether you are in fact right or wrong. But it kind of bugs me that someone not having the same views is branded in such a way, as if somehow clearly you know the truth, so anyone who isn't automatically on your side must be delusional/evil in some way.
  - Barrin92 7y ago
yaih 7y ago
Unfortunately, the problem with your analysis is that your view only makes sense if seen in isolation. A lot of us are evaluating the entire picture, based in large part on the track record of Facebook over the last 10+ years. For example, everyone who takes a look at the "friendly fraud" [1] case comes away thinking "Boy, these Facebook employees will stop at nothing to make a buck". Now layer that on top of whatever came out during the CA scandal, and now you can see that the issue is Facebook employees are actually acting like a cult. And by the way, nothing has changed. You can see this in how every time someone from Facebook does any PR at all (e.g. podcast interviews), they take a lot of care to make sure they don't go on podcasts which bring up the privacy issue. Here is an open challenge to any Facebook employee who is reading this comment - go on an interview with a known "hostile" who is also not considered an idiot conspiracy theorist - e.g. DHH - and have them interview you. You know that you would never even consider doing it, because you do have a lot of shitty things still going on at Facebook that you wouldn't want to later contradict. By the way, the same challenge applies to folks working at Google. [1] https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/facebook-friendly-fraud-scandal-what-parents-need-to-know/ https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/facebook-friendly-fr...

tipsysquid 7y ago

I'm no fan of Facebook, but this comment demonstrates the complexity of the situation in ways many entrepreneurs can appreciate

stefan_ 7y ago

Academic research isn't some magic word that you just need to invoke, particularly when it involves personal data. You need specific informed consent and the sign-off from an ethics committee on your study plan. To not ask that of someone pretending to use your data for academic research is willful ignorance. Of course, we are talking about Facebook, who have literally been in the news before for themselves running research experiments on uninformed, random users: http://laboratorium.net/archive/2014/06/28/as_flies_to_wanton_boys http://laboratorium.net/archive/2014/06/28/as_flies_to_wanto...

prox 7y ago
I remember playing with the FB tools back then, and I was surprised of how much information I could pull from it. As I can recall there were few bars of entry when it came to data collection.

acollins1331 7y ago

Facebook only made someone ask for data to give it to them and you think that's something they shouldn't feel wrong about?

starfallg 7y ago

I'm having a hard time believing that this is a legitimate opinion and not conjured up by Facebook PR. Facebook is the one that collected the data. It is their responsibility to ensure that who they give your data to is who they are, and that they are doing what they should be doing to your data. The should have a comprehensive compliance program for third parties with access to user data and have the necessary enforcement regime with enough bite to prevent abuse. Not to hide behind their policies until they get caught red-handed and then shrug off their responsibilities to everyone but themselves.

Aperocky 7y ago
I have a hard time understanding why your first sentence is necessary. Nothing against what you said subsequently (and I think it's totally right), and myself disliking facebook, your first sentence is entirely unnecessary and beside the point. From what I read, your parent comment sound entirely logical coming from a different POV. I don't see anything illegitimate about it, even if it WAS Facebook PR, the point within are entirely valid.
- starfallg 7y ago
  The comment I replied to completely ignored FB's responsibility to its user's data and rather than accepting that FB was supposed to be responsible, proceeded to blame everyone else but themselves. I just don't see that as reasonable in discourse. I mean you can hold those beliefs, but if you do express them in public I think it's right to be called out on how unacceptable that is.
  - Aperocky 7y ago
    Yes, attack the idea, not the user. I also don't see you guys are on the same page either. For one, was there false reporting? It is entirely possible to do 5 bad things and have media report you did 10 bad things. And while 5 bad things was committed it doesn't excuse the media for wrong reporting, not saying that they did this in this case.

gfodor 7y ago

The great irony to me is that Facebook does a lot of stuff people should be angry and scared about, but oddly enough the Cambridge Analytica situation, which broke this whole dam open, is not one of them, and is one where I think they are being treated unfairly. The reason it ends up being an issue is because of politics: it gives people an explanation and someone to blame for an election that did not play out according to the expectations and/or hopes of half of the country.

jariel 7y ago
This is exactly it. CA is not actually that bad of a situation. There are much greater privacy and freedom of expression concerns.
jyrkesh 7y ago
Yeah, it's important to note that while my anecdote was from the "post-CA timeframe", they had also just had an exploit that resulted in mass harvesting of OAuth tokens[1]. And of course, a couple months later it came out that they were storing passwords in plaintext logs[2]. This wasn't just about CA. There was a class of problems that FB was facing, and the guy didn't acknowledge a single thing they could have done better. [1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/09/50-million-facebook-accounts-breached-by-an-access-token-harvesting-attack/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/09/50-mi... [2] https://www.npr.org/2019/03/21/705588364/facebook-stored-millions-of-user-passwords-in-plain-readable-text https://www.npr.org/2019/03/21/705588364/facebook-stored-mil...

nemild 7y ago

A common argument (that you also make) is that if you're on the inside, you obviously know better than those on the outside. There's a lot of reasons to believe that isn't true. First, you may not have the right training (e.g., media studies, media economics, privacy). Second, you favor your coworkers because they are your friends. Third, the positive news and justified criticism of external critics is widely shared internally, but the points that are appropriately critical are much less shared. A single flawed external article can lead to defensiveness, making it that much easier to dismiss tens of other appropriate articles. More poetically, it's like the Three Blind Men and elephant. The conviction of the blind men is so great, but their closeness leads to a misplaced confidence that they know the answer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant I call this effect the "truth distortion field," and liken it to the Facebook friend filter bubble: https://www.nemil.com/tdf/part1-employees.html https://www.nemil.com/tdf/part1-employees.html

Barrin92 7y ago

>What makes you more qualified to judge whether the public perception was accurate as compared to someone who actually worked there - an "FB vet" in your own words? For starters, most of us here don't benefit financially from putting a positive spin on disasters at Facebook. As the Upton Sinclair saying goes, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. I've not talked to Facebook employees personally but I've witnessed the same degree of delusion at other large tech companies. Some are straight-up like a cult with employees willing to defend just about anything their company does regardless of how hazardous it was. Which is even more baffling if one takes into consideration that these are usually salaried employees working there only for a few years with no personal stake whatsoever. The point isn't even to discuss some sort of internal nuance about the technical details of CA. If you are a company as large as Facebook and you allow user data to be abused to this degree, even if there is some nuance to it, when facing the public you apologize, tuck your tail between your legs, admit that you screwed up, and fix your problems, and you turn the arrogance and the world saving rhetoric down a notch.

edanm 7y ago
> I've not talked to Facebook employees personally but I've witnessed the same degree of delusion at other large tech companies. Some are straight-up like a cult with employees willing to defend just about anything their company does regardless of how hazardous it was. Which is even more baffling if one takes into consideration that these are usually salaried employees working there only for a few years with no personal stake whatsoever. Well I think I can solve this puzzle. It's possible some people disagree with you about how "hazardous" their company is. They're not "cult-like" or "delusional". They're not willing to "defend just about anything" despite the fact that they are only there a few years. They just don't agree with you on the amount of hazard their companies are doing. Note: This is regardless of whether you are in fact right or wrong. But it kind of bugs me that someone not having the same views is branded in such a way, as if somehow clearly you know the truth, so anyone who isn't automatically on your side must be delusional/evil in some way.
- Barrin92 7y ago

yaih 7y ago

Unfortunately, the problem with your analysis is that your view only makes sense if seen in isolation. A lot of us are evaluating the entire picture, based in large part on the track record of Facebook over the last 10+ years. For example, everyone who takes a look at the "friendly fraud" [1] case comes away thinking "Boy, these Facebook employees will stop at nothing to make a buck". Now layer that on top of whatever came out during the CA scandal, and now you can see that the issue is Facebook employees are actually acting like a cult. And by the way, nothing has changed. You can see this in how every time someone from Facebook does any PR at all (e.g. podcast interviews), they take a lot of care to make sure they don't go on podcasts which bring up the privacy issue. Here is an open challenge to any Facebook employee who is reading this comment - go on an interview with a known "hostile" who is also not considered an idiot conspiracy theorist - e.g. DHH - and have them interview you. You know that you would never even consider doing it, because you do have a lot of shitty things still going on at Facebook that you wouldn't want to later contradict. By the way, the same challenge applies to folks working at Google. [1] https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/facebook-friendly-fraud-scandal-what-parents-need-to-know/ https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/facebook-friendly-fr...