31 ms·

Facebook Fired Employee Who Collected Evidence of Potential Political Bias

388 points by erentz 6y ago

aspenmayer 6y ago
For this employee’s sake, I hope they have adequate legal representation, and that they intend to sue. > While there are signs Facebook will stand up to Trump in cases where he violates its rules — as on Wednesday when it removed a video post from the president in which he claimed that children are “almost immune” to COVID-19 — there are others who suggest the company is caving to critical voices on the right. In another recent Workplace post, a senior engineer collected internal evidence that showed Facebook was giving preferential treatment to prominent conservative accounts to help them remove fact-checks from their content. > The company responded by removing his post and restricting internal access to the information he cited. On Wednesday the engineer was fired, according to internal posts seen by BuzzFeed News.
ergocoder 6y ago
US politics is so fucked - Fake news is bad - Government taking out fake news is actually bad?? - But facebook taking out fake news based on its own judgement with absolutely no due process is obviously okay??? Now it becomes a shouting match to get Facebook to ban posts/people they don't like. Who can harass Facebook employees the most will probably win the shouting match.
- cheez 6y ago
  Government has a monopoly on legal use of violence so a monopoly on accepted expression would be the logical next step for power hungry people. That's why it's undesirable. I haven't used Facebook for at least 5 years now. I use WhatsApp occasionally, so you can in fact, be blocked on Facebook and live. You cannot be blocked from participating in society and be free.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  Facebook is a business, the government is not. Facebook can remove whatever it wants, the government can't. First amendment applies to the government.
  - lmm 6y ago
    The first amendment was written when the idea of a corporation as large and powerful as Facebook was unthinkable. We need better protection for free speech that applies to corporate platforms (or perhaps to just apply the same common carrier rules we apply to the phone system to other platforms).
    - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
      > first amendment was written when the idea of a corporation as large and powerful as Facebook was unthinkable The First Amendment was adopted in 1791 [1]. The Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602 [2]. The British East India Company even earlier [3]. Massively powerful global corporations pre-date the United States by a century. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_Unite... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company#/media/File%3ACoat_of_arms_of_the_East_India_Company.svg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company#/media/Fi...
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - three_seagrass 6y ago
      Not true. The Dutch West Indies Corporation, one of the largest in history, existed before and during the ratification of the U.S. constitution. You are projecting presentism to assume that the 'founding fathers' were ignorant to large corporations.
      - sjwright 6y ago
        If you think the Dutch West Indies Corporation ever had even a patch on the cultural influence that Facebook has though the behaviour of it’s algorithm, you’re being utterly delusional.
        6y ago
- three_seagrass 6y ago
  The very first amendment of the U.S.'s constitution outlies that the government cannot censor the expression of speech. There's a big difference between a private company determining what is hosted on their servers vs. the U.S. government forcing a private company to censor speech.
  - sneak 6y ago
    > The very first amendment of the U.S.'s constitution outlies that the government cannot censor the expression of speech. Turns out, they don't need to. Due to the fact that most people do not exercise any real control over the devices they use to read most expression, all they have to do is be able to regulate trade between app publishers and the {App,Play} Store. This is how the US government is presently engaging in censorship of apps published by ByteDance (and soon Tencent). They can prohibit Apple/Google from transacting with the publisher, and because Apple/Google control the phones of the end users, the end users are effectively prohibited from reading the content published by that publisher. It's an end run around the constitution.
    - three_seagrass 6y ago
      First, only Apple devices have the issue of limited store access, which is a tangential antitrust problem unto itself. Second, despite the claims of the president, the white house does not have the power to block TikTok or Bytedance from the public. The president can only block armed forces from installing apps on their owned devices.
      - realusername 6y ago
        > First, only Apple devices have the issue of limited store access, which is a tangential antitrust problem unto itself. Android is also problematic on that aspect, even Epic Games gave up on distributing Fortnite outside the Play Store. If the most well known game in the world can't make it outside the Play Store, who could?
        6y ago
- neilv 6y ago
  My impression (albeit, based partly upon my poor understanding of the world as a child) is that there used to be more general US clarity about the goodness/badness of propaganda, censorship, the press, etc. I've heard that part of that clarity was because Cold War holding the US in contrast to the Soviets was itself a bit of perception management or PR. I could speculate on other factors, but I'm sure some historians and social scientists understand it vastly better. Anecdotally, I do remember a time when, say, TV news programs would at least set some good examples of reasoning, not lower themselves closer to the transparently bad Fox News or talk radio behavior, which seemed to be to be even more ridiculous than what we'd been told the Soviets did. (Of course, the US has a history of abuse by those who control presses, but the institution still seemed to have merit.) And I don't recall hearing of anything, even a decade ago, like apparently large numbers of people acting against their own other interests, solely for the adversarial sports team fan idea of "owning the libs". And also some inexplicably self-defeating behavior from elements of "the other side" (though I don't think that notion of "sides" is accurate or complete.) I've been wondering whether the US populace used to be better at critical thinking. It's felt that way, but maybe the examples I'm aware of aren't representative. Where we are now, talking about dotcoms being asked to gatekeep speech, I have only an ordinary citizens' understanding of many of policy issues, but I do have an experienced technologist's understanding that some of these dotcoms haven't been pinnacles of trustworthiness, integrity, etc. And the civic-minded American me wouldn't trust any of those dotcoms very far at all, with something that seems so fundamentally important to what I've grown up believing are bedrock principles of the US.
- newacct583 6y ago
  > - But facebook taking out fake news based on its own judgement with absolutely no due process is obviously okay??? That's literally the opposite of what is alleged to be happening. Facebook's fact check policy is notionally implemented by third party fact checkers over whom Facebook exerts no control. But the contention in the article is that Facebook executives then intervene in the process to UN-flagging content that fits their personal political bent.
  - ergocoder 6y ago
    It's not very different. Who is the third party? Why do we trust them? Is their process rigorous, public, and auditable? It seems like just another private org that can determine what is true or false. If someone has to do the job, I'd rather my government do it.
- wsc981 6y ago
  > - Government taking out fake news is actually bad?? Government definitely shouldn't be the one to decide what is and isn't fake news [0]. > - But facebook taking out fake news based on its own judgement with absolutely no due process is obviously okay??? Since it's a private company I feel it's ok. Personally I'm more right-wing / libertarian oriented and I feel my Twitter account got banned because of me expressing more right-wing views. I tried to ask Twitter employees what was the offending post that got me banned, but never got a response. At that point I stopped using Twitter altogether. I feel Jack Dorsey himself is more open to different view points, but perhaps many of his employees are more left-wing oriented and might feel it's their mission to curtail right-wing views, but this is just my gut feeling that I can't proof. Since it's a private company I feel it's ok they operate like that. But at the same time I won't bother with Twitter anymore (I also don't use Facebook by the way). --- [0]: https://euobserver.com/opinion/141458 https://euobserver.com/opinion/141458
- rideontime 6y ago
  > Who can harass Facebook employees the most will probably win the shouting match. Or who spends the most on ads. > Citing “partner sensitivity," the rep noted that PragerU runs a lot of ads, and argued that the content in question qualified as opinion and was therefore exempt from being fact-checked.
- geofft 6y ago
  Facebook is a private company and is subject to competition. The government is not. We might have worried about Prodigy and CompuServe restricting speech (and we literally did, and that got us Section 230), but they're irrelevant now. We might have worried about MySpace, but it's irrelevant now. But the decisions the US government made in the 1990s and 2000s are incredibly relevant today, despite multiple changes in which party had the upper hand. The Constitution places restrictions on what the government can do because government overreach is a particular, unique problem. It also provides for popular election to the government for the same reason - and nobody says that it's bad that we can't elect Facebook's leaders. Now, perhaps the argument is that Facebook has grown too large and too powerful, to the point where Facebook censorship is worse than government censorship. If that's happened, that means we should have regulated Facebook a long time ago (and if we don't, we're on our way to your favorite cyberpunk dystopia where corporations are the real governments), and we should get around to doing so. But it hardly means that we should give in, treat Facebook like a government, and start saying "Facebook shall make no policy" any more than it means that we should vote for Facebook's CEO.
wiredone 6y ago
“Potential” Political bias. Can we just acknowledge for a moment what it’d be like to have a colleague who’s desperately trying to prove that your work is a “big conspiracy” when you’re honestly all just trying to do your best. I see so many of these stories of weirdly rogue political activist type employees recently surprised when they their employer doesn’t like that they’re purposely trying to undermine them and their employees work. I’m sure Facebook isn’t perfect, but I know enough good people who work there to know they’re not all out to “get” us. This smells like sour grapes* from an employee who focused more on their plans to take down their employer than their actual job. *ed: previously written as “sour apples”...it’s been a long day.
- sapienwastey 6y ago
  Amen.
  - iron0013 6y ago
    ^ it’s neat to see a sleeper account being brought out of dormancy. Be interesting to see what you have to say between now and November 3.
    - sapienwastey 6y ago
      Simply agreeing with the parent motivated you to examine my post history and draw some conclusion about my political alignment?
      - iron0013 6y ago
        Inauspicious first couple of comments. Might want to burn this one and move on to the next account on the list. Try starting more subtly next time; ease in with a few banal comments on a Rust thread or something
        dang 6y ago
        I just replied to your comment upthread saying that this is not ok, but I need to add more. You've been using HN primarily for ideological warfare for a long time now. Your recent comments in particular have been breaking the site guidelines egregiously and repeatedly. You've pulled this "sleeper account" attack before as well (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23859828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23859828). If you keep breaking the site guidelines, we are going to ban you. Actually, you're well into bannable territory as it is. I'm shocked at how much and you badly you've crossed the line. We've cut you way more slack than most people get here. If you don't want to be banned on HN, please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on. For all its many flaws, this is a community, and to participate in a community while constantly destroying the commons is incongruent. People who use this place need to take care of it, not burn it. That goes for everyone, regardless of what their political views are or how intensely they feel them, and that includes you.
andrewflnr 6y ago
Of course this happens because if Facebook actually nukes pages like Breitbart, right-wingers will claim this is evidence of Facebook's leftist bias. I see this claim on my feed all the time already. There is nothing Facebook can do that won't cause a riot. But if there's truly no acceptable action for Facebook and similar platforms, maybe the only option in the long-run is for them to cease to exist.
- thehappypm 6y ago
  Not really true. Content policy can take a lot of different forms. There’s a purely compliant approach — only respecting the legal requirements, like illegal content — and then there’s an approach of being Big Brother, taking a censorship role. Facebook seems to want to be at least a little bit of a censor.
  - andrewflnr 6y ago
    This article is about Facebook trying not to be a censor, and consequently getting slammed for not acting strongly enough against "Fake News". Changing to lower or higher levels of censorship will just result in different amounts of yelling from one side or the other. The middle of the road is a no-mans-land where you get shelled by both sides of the political spectrum.
    - thehappypm 6y ago
      The “middle of the road” is actually impossible — there’s no Goldilocks level of censorship. Once your policy becomes less permissive than the legal minimum you are inciting a whole world of criticism.
      - andrewflnr 6y ago
        I mean, that's basically another way of stating the same point I'm making, except that I think "legal minimum" is also non-viable for similar reasons (unless you're 4chan apparently). I can't see any safe ground, any way that for-profit social media can scale sustainably.
trident1000 6y ago
This type of thing happens to people on the right so often it doesn't even make the news anymore.
- erentz 6y ago
  Does it? Example of what you mean? Note it appears a majority of Facebooks top ten posts are from right wing sources. [1] This is not me suggesting a bias on the part of FB, but it‘s a clear data point against the now common talking point that “the right” are persecuted victims, not fairly represented on the Internet. [1] https://mobile.twitter.com/FacebooksTop10 https://mobile.twitter.com/FacebooksTop10
  - trident1000 6y ago
    Im talking across the entire corporate landscape especially in tech and media...and institutionally in academia.
  - throwaway1801 6y ago
    There’s more concentration of media on the right. It’s why Fox News can have the highest ratings in spite of the media being dominated by the left. You have to look at the long tail of content and the distribution over all content. How many smaller right wing creators are censored vs left wing?
  - trident1000 6y ago
    Literally had my comment to you as flagged and removed. Point proven.
    - bikeshed 6y ago
      Not really.
- sanderjd 6y ago
  The other post asking for examples is downvoted, but I think your statement could really use some. I can only think of one highly visible one, and it's interesting how much it reminds me of this one, though on the opposite side. But more examples would be illuminating.
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solidsnack9000 6y ago
Taking this together with the recent house hearings and with other material, like AOC's questioning of Zuckerberg, it seems like leftist people (a) are distrustful of the tech giants' business and wealth and don't really believe it's been beneficial; and yet (b) trust them to regulate speech and want them to do so more aggressively. It's not logical.
- JamisonM 6y ago
  Seems like your (b) is mistaken, they want them to regulate speech (the "aggressively part let's leave aside) and do so within clear parameters. It seems fairly clear that they are not trusted to regulate the speech but rather expected to and are to be closely monitored for how they do so.. the hearings themselves are evidence of that.
  - DuskStar 6y ago
    > and do so within clear parameters. I'd disagree with this part pretty strongly. What clear parameters are you thinking of, besides "get rid of my enemies"? Can you formulate a "no endorsing violence" policy that keeps the current protests/riots while banning Trump's latest idiocy, or one for "no racial discrimination" that keeps White Fragility and bans "they're not sending their best... Murderers, rapists" or similar? That kicks off Infowars or Richard Spencer while leaving Malcolm X or Ta-Nehisi Coates? Sure, the political right tends to cross those lines further - but it's often a case of degree and direction, not kind. I think it's either a really hard line to draw in a viewpoint-neutral fashion, or a huge political fight. (Whether you choose to ban Trump without the Left, or you try to ban both, people will be furious)
    - nemothekid 6y ago
      >Can you formulate a "no endorsing violence" policy that keeps the current protests/riots while banning Trump's latest idiocy Yes, it’s quite simple and I’m wondering if you are intentionally or accidentally being obtuse by trying to frame the current protests as riots. There were plenty of peaceful protests all over the country - no endorsing violence simply means not highlighting peaceful protests over violent ones. It’s not rocket science except to those grasp at straws in order to equate civilians walking in the streets to Trump implying police shoot civilians.
chrisco255 6y ago
"Preferential treatment" ... "when it comes to misinformation...from right leaning sources" Some people don't understand how bias works. BuzzFeed itself is a leftist clickbait organization that's completely incapable of reporting news in an unbiased way.
lalos 6y ago
Unrelated but anybody found the timing uncanny between the Instagram TikTok competition being launched the same week that Trump starts talking about banning it? That and all the heat Facebook/Zuckerberg have been taking to enable political ads (compared to Twitter/Dorsey), plus private dinners with the current administration that is very protectionist? Anyways, it's interesting to see how the US government will handle all this foreign established tech companies to handle their data by messing with the free market.
fbthrowaway31FB 6y ago
As a Facebook Employee who watched this thing unfold: His arguments and reasoning were edited for tone and posted by others and HR did not take any of that down. He wasn't fired for what he said, but how he said it. His post was vicious and demeaning toward other FB employees. It directly attacked the character and ethical constitution of specific employees in the company. That said, HR did later revoke open access to some of the specific details he used to make his case (conversations around investigating and escalating user reports). FB gives employees access to much more than most companies, so the sort of things HR made secret would not be visible at most US companies. Although I think at FB there are many things you can't say, his actual beliefs were not bold or rare. Many people say similar things all the time. But you can't go around attacking people like that.
- baby 6y ago
  Don’t know that specific story but the culture at FB is pretty open and people ask hard questions all the time on workplace and at Q&As. So it’s sad to see some people abusing this knowing that not that many companies are open to such internal dialogues. Tragedy of the common.
  - xoxoy 6y ago
    what about the engineer who jumped to his death after a bad review?
    - baby 6y ago
      Do you have a specific question? It’s tragic obviously and impacted many of us.
      - shajznnckfke 6y ago
        (different commenter here) Of the handful of people I know who work at FB, all of them are super smart and motivated. Half of them have expressed a lot of anxiety, stress, and imposter syndrome to me over their reviews. I’ve seen this at other companies when a project is failing but I hear about it at FB from A players who are working on successful projects. It gives me the impression the managers must be brutal - like they just push harder than other companies and make people feel they aren’t good enough to get more output. These are my impressions as an outsider. Does it seem fair to you?
xoxoy 6y ago
is it just me or would it be very hard to work at Facebook these days without constantly experiencing cognitive dissonance day in and day out? feels like the only way to enjoy working there is to either be someone who only cares about the money and prestige and/or convince yourself that the criticisms against Facebook are invalid
- baby 6y ago
  I can assure you that what you’re imagining Facebook to be has nothing to do with how Facebook is on the inside. There are way more of these debates and internal discussions, which reflects that Facebook’s employees have pretty diverse point of views.
- deleted 6y ago
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three_seagrass 6y ago
Sounds like the James Damore event for Facebook.
- waheoo 6y ago
  Yea except James damore didn't do anything wrong. Sounds like this guy actually went after certain people. James damore just asked a question.
  - three_seagrass 6y ago
    >James damore just asked a question. Relevant: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions I'm sorry, but Damore claimed that women biologically lacked the ability to fill as leadership and programmer roles as men, which broke his employment agreement with Google to not perpetuate stereotypes, hence he was fired. The window dressing and weak-worded arguments in his memo may have you thinking otherwise, but he was fired specifically for this reason, and even he confirmed as much to the press. Edit: For all the Damore apologists replying, here's the statement in question that he made: >>I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
    - AbrahamParangi 6y ago
      Not to pick a side, but did you read the Damore memo?
      - three_seagrass 6y ago
        Yes, more than once, hence the comment about how it's weakly worded. Did you?
        AbrahamParangi 6y ago
        I did, which was why I was surprised by the statement "Damore claimed that women were biologically incapable of leadership and programmer roles"
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luxuryballs 6y ago
“Facebook employees want CEO Mark Zuckerberg to explain what the company would do if the leader of the free world uses the social network to undermine the results of the 2020 US presidential election” this is so silly, and later when the article claims “misinformation”, it’s a tricky situation to claim you know the 100% truth about everything and anything that goes against what you believe is considered misinformation that will undermine an election... totally ignoring the possibility that you might actually not be correct and that things aren’t as black and white as you think they are
- newacct583 6y ago
  > this is so silly Why is it "silly" exactly? Are you saying that Facebook wouldn't allow itself to be used this way, that the government wouldn't try, or that it's not possible? Are you contending that the results of an election are not "black and white"?
  - fastball 6y ago
    Clearly the results of an election are not always black-and-white, otherwise there wouldn't be contested elections. "Undermine" is obviously a subjective judgement, not an objective one. Which in turn makes it difficult to legislate "prevent people from using social networks to undermine elections" in an objective way. And this is now my personal opinion, but legislation that cannot be enforced with some amount of objectivity is a recipe for disaster down the road.
  - luxuryballs 6y ago
    it’s silly to assume that you are so sure of what you believe that you can call something that doesn’t align with your beliefs to be “misinformation” or an attempt to “undermine election results” when things are not black and white, both sides of a polarizing topic have truth to them, that’s why it’s always those topics that get this type of treatment, nobody is going around saying the sky is purple or the sun is a cube
jgacook 6y ago
Eye-opening how many HN comments are framing this guy as a demented political extremist. He’s a whistleblower exposing one of the most frightening threats to modern democracy that exists. We are beyond the speculation point here. Facebook has demonstrated that it has the capability to spread misinformation and sway political opinion very effectively and never for the right reasons. The pandemic is the most recent example of Facebook’s fuckery: post something that tells people that Covid is caused by 5G and that Bill Gates wants to implants microchips in you? You might get a small disclaimer on your FB post saying that “parts of it” “may be” inaccurate. You are constantly fed anything to keep you engaged with the platform and increasing Facebook’s bottom line. Zuckerburg has just spun to Congress that Facebook is going to extreme lengths to moderate their platform - this employee’s testimony is proof that Facebook doesn’t care in the least or worse, they may be actively trying to help along candidates who will be politically lenient towards their behavior. We just discovered a “bug” caused Republican ads to show at a more frequent rate than Democratic ads - I don’t know what’s more worrying: that a bug on Facebook could swing the election or that it wasn’t a bug at all. People need to stop with the “I know good people at Facebook” B.S. It’s beside the point. Facebook is a rogue actor that has enormous social and political power to completely mislead the general public into practically any belief. They have continued to demonstrate that they cannot be trusted with this power. This man should be praised as a whistleblower for exposing the charade that is an unregulated Facebook. We need more like him in tech to show people how serious the problem is. Give me a break with the analyses on whether he should have been fired or not and recognize the scope of the problem he is trying to warn is about. The quality of our democracy is absolutely at stake.
- badmadrad 6y ago
  Not just Facebook but Twitter and social media as whole. We are are all voluntarily choosing to support technology that beams us deception, mistruths, and lies of omission at all times. Worse, we like it because of our own vanity. Aldous Huxley warned about a society where people voluntarily enter into a totalitarian society because they are both easily deceived and receive cheap instant gratification from those in control. Seems like we are about here. Aldous Huxley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alasBxZsb40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alasBxZsb40
- 6y ago
iron0013 6y ago
The actual title of this article is “Facebook Fired An Employee Who Collected Evidence Of Right-Wing Pages Getting Preferential Treatment”
- dang 6y ago
  The submitter rewrote it because it didn't fit the 80-char limit. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24077718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24077718
fb5400 6y ago
This is a rough situation. The guy was pulling on an important thread to unravel a complex issue and get us all transparency. And then he wrote a company wide memo that called Mark a "robber baron, slaver, and plunderer", directly blamed Mark for covid deaths due to his implied support of Trump, and levied a bunch of other personal attacks. I can't imagine any person at any company who wouldn't get fired after publicly speaking to the CEO that way. It's a shame, because if this guy had an emotional intelligence he could have personally driven change. Now he's a martyr at best.
- travisjungroth 6y ago
  It’s weird coming into this thread after just finishing Schindler’s List. It’s like the polar opposite of how to effectively operate in an evil system. For anyone who believes they’re participating in an evil system: quit, whistleblow, or sabotage. Don’t be like this guy.
  - mneubrand 6y ago
    Maybe this was him "quitting" and he knew this would happen but e.g. he still wanted to be eligible for unemployment benefits
  - Miner49er 6y ago
    He literally did all 3? He whistleblew, sabatoged by doing this in a way that it got to the media and by insulting Zuck, and he got himself fired.
    - travisjungroth 6y ago
      Whistleblowing would be working with the media or regulators to get out as much information as possible. Sabotaging is staying at the company and thwarting their efforts. What he did (calling attention internally to messages that were already available for employees to see) barely counts as either of those. Sure, you could say he effectively quit.
  - thunkshift1 6y ago
exogeny 6y ago
I can't believe there's an actually a debate at all about what's going on here. There are multiple sources indicating that conservative sites work in concert to amplify, at best, specious content and at worst, complete misinformation. Facebook selectively enforces discipline on these sites because: 1. Conservative information (Fox News, Charlie Kirk, Breitbart, etc.) is consistently shared more than other content 2. They don't want the optics of making it seem like they're censoring conservative voices because they're afraid of the blowback, so they're hiding behind the veil of "It's not our job" 3. They don't want to lose the ad spend running up to the election season nor do they want to lose the vanity metrics of DAU/MAU/etc because they're a publicly traded company Zuck is a feckless coward, full stop. And while I don't know his personal political leanings, this non-policy certainly has the earmarks of Thiel and Joel Kaplan all over it.
- jariel 6y ago
  The issue of 'amplifying narratives' is not at all exclusive to any 'side' and the misinformation is everywhere, it just takes on different forms. I believe that the issue of the 'right wing side' in this case is possibly as you've indicated - in that there is just more sensitivity around it. The Valley is Left/Anarcho/Libertarian with 'traditionally minded' immigrants, and so there's more suspicion in certain camps of legit bias on 'one side'. I think this is where the sidedness of the issue might derive. As to the materiality of it ... who knows ...
- newacct583 6y ago
  Those aren't even all separate points. At the end of the day, Facebook is beholden to republican (not really "right wing" per se) advertising dollars more than it is to spending on opposing points. This is just for demographic reasons: Facebook has to compete hard for eyeballs among young/urban/techie/minority users. Those folks are fickle with their tastes and willing to try more platforms. And they're less sensitive to advertising in general. Facebook has lots of them, but they certainly aren't dominant in that market. But old white folk? They're all on Facebook. Really, they're ALL on Facebook. Facebook probably has 90%+ of all social media advertising revenue in this demographic. And they skew heavily republican. So who's interests are they going to serve? When Facebook's executives feel pressure to put their fingers on the fact check scale, in which direction are they going to tilt it?
solidsnack9000 6y ago
With regards to right wing pages who contact Facebook to get their flags resolved, the article seems to suggest it's inappropriate that they reached out directly -- but the business relationship is between Facebook and the user with a profile, not the user with a profile and a 3rd party. These and other interventions appear to be in violation of Facebook’s official policy, which requires publishers wishing to dispute a fact check rating to contact the Facebook fact-checking partner responsible. [...] Instead of appealing to the fact-checker they immediately call their rep at Facebook... This is a little like when my package gets lost, and -- very rarely -- the shipper tells me to contact the post office instead of simply claiming the insurance and refunding me. These shippers often don't give me the receipt I need to show the post office that it was insured -- because telling me to contact the post office is just another way to say, not my problem. The post office is likely to say: please contact the shipper... If the user isn't happy with what Facebook did -- regardless of whose advice Facebook took -- they have every right to contact Facebook.
jungletime 6y ago
A day ago, "Facebook removed from Trump’s official account the post of a video clip from a Fox News interview in which he said children are “almost immune” from covid-19." (source WP) Is this really misinformation, or a false statement, worthy of censoring a presidents speech. For one, "almost immune", is not the same as claiming "immune". So its not even like its even a false statement, anymore than saying I "almost caught" a fish, when you didn't. The implication is that children have low infection rate. Regardless of the truth value, of "almost immune", removing the post, also robs people of valuable information, like for example, if Trump is leaning to have schools open in September.
- shripadk 6y ago
  My question is why censor the US President? Let people know what Trump says and make their own judgement. I hate this sort of political censorship by social media giants. At the same time, you can literally find porn and gore on these sites which aren't taken down automatically. What with advancements in AI and all it should be easy to remove right? Nope. These are the videos that linger on even after you report them. And they have ads running on them too. If they think people are fools and won't notice it they are so wrong. It is only going to amplify voices for an alternative platform. My fear is that it will create platforms divided on political biases rather than a truly free platform where people from all sides can participate. This sort of polarization is not healthy.
known 6y ago
Listed companies should have comprehensive Whistle blower protection programs; Govt should amend laws accordingly;
kanox 6y ago
Good, companies shouldn't employ people who deliberately smear and sabotage them.
smsm42 6y ago
As an example of bias, I've recently seen on Facebook a post that instructed the readers to shoot law enforcement people in the face. Not exaggerating, those are the exact words, "shoot him in the face". Facebook told me this is well within the "community standards". Yet for example Zuckerberg personally promised to ban any page that promotes protests against COVID lockdown. So, calling for protesting lockdown - ban, calling for murdering the police - OK. Sounds like a bias.
comfyinnernet 6y ago
"Facebook did not answer questions about why a partner manager would cite ad volume as a reason for not acting against a group of pages." Oops somebody said the thing out loud.
mattnibs 6y ago
Counter point: https://www.projectveritas.com/news/another-facebook-whistleblower-interference-on-a-global-level-in-elections/ https://www.projectveritas.com/news/another-facebook-whistle... Depending on which media outlet you turn to Facebook is trying to skew the election towards Trump or Biden. Depending on your political bias you get the story that fits your narrative. Perhaps our framing is off?

388 points by erentz 6y ago

For this employee’s sake, I hope they have adequate legal representation, and that they intend to sue. > While there are signs Facebook will stand up to Trump in cases where he violates its rules — as on Wednesday when it removed a video post from the president in which he claimed that children are “almost immune” to COVID-19 — there are others who suggest the company is caving to critical voices on the right. In another recent Workplace post, a senior engineer collected internal evidence that showed Facebook was giving preferential treatment to prominent conservative accounts to help them remove fact-checks from their content. > The company responded by removing his post and restricting internal access to the information he cited. On Wednesday the engineer was fired, according to internal posts seen by BuzzFeed News.

ergocoder 6y ago

US politics is so fucked - Fake news is bad - Government taking out fake news is actually bad?? - But facebook taking out fake news based on its own judgement with absolutely no due process is obviously okay??? Now it becomes a shouting match to get Facebook to ban posts/people they don't like. Who can harass Facebook employees the most will probably win the shouting match.

cheez 6y ago
Government has a monopoly on legal use of violence so a monopoly on accepted expression would be the logical next step for power hungry people. That's why it's undesirable. I haven't used Facebook for at least 5 years now. I use WhatsApp occasionally, so you can in fact, be blocked on Facebook and live. You cannot be blocked from participating in society and be free.
ehsankia 6y ago
Facebook is a business, the government is not. Facebook can remove whatever it wants, the government can't. First amendment applies to the government.
- lmm 6y ago
  The first amendment was written when the idea of a corporation as large and powerful as Facebook was unthinkable. We need better protection for free speech that applies to corporate platforms (or perhaps to just apply the same common carrier rules we apply to the phone system to other platforms).
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > first amendment was written when the idea of a corporation as large and powerful as Facebook was unthinkable The First Amendment was adopted in 1791 [1]. The Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602 [2]. The British East India Company even earlier [3]. Massively powerful global corporations pre-date the United States by a century. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_Unite... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company#/media/File%3ACoat_of_arms_of_the_East_India_Company.svg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company#/media/Fi...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - three_seagrass 6y ago
    Not true. The Dutch West Indies Corporation, one of the largest in history, existed before and during the ratification of the U.S. constitution. You are projecting presentism to assume that the 'founding fathers' were ignorant to large corporations.
    - sjwright 6y ago
      If you think the Dutch West Indies Corporation ever had even a patch on the cultural influence that Facebook has though the behaviour of it’s algorithm, you’re being utterly delusional.
      - 6y ago
three_seagrass 6y ago
The very first amendment of the U.S.'s constitution outlies that the government cannot censor the expression of speech. There's a big difference between a private company determining what is hosted on their servers vs. the U.S. government forcing a private company to censor speech.
- sneak 6y ago
  > The very first amendment of the U.S.'s constitution outlies that the government cannot censor the expression of speech. Turns out, they don't need to. Due to the fact that most people do not exercise any real control over the devices they use to read most expression, all they have to do is be able to regulate trade between app publishers and the {App,Play} Store. This is how the US government is presently engaging in censorship of apps published by ByteDance (and soon Tencent). They can prohibit Apple/Google from transacting with the publisher, and because Apple/Google control the phones of the end users, the end users are effectively prohibited from reading the content published by that publisher. It's an end run around the constitution.
  - three_seagrass 6y ago
    First, only Apple devices have the issue of limited store access, which is a tangential antitrust problem unto itself. Second, despite the claims of the president, the white house does not have the power to block TikTok or Bytedance from the public. The president can only block armed forces from installing apps on their owned devices.
    - realusername 6y ago
      > First, only Apple devices have the issue of limited store access, which is a tangential antitrust problem unto itself. Android is also problematic on that aspect, even Epic Games gave up on distributing Fortnite outside the Play Store. If the most well known game in the world can't make it outside the Play Store, who could?
      - 6y ago
neilv 6y ago
My impression (albeit, based partly upon my poor understanding of the world as a child) is that there used to be more general US clarity about the goodness/badness of propaganda, censorship, the press, etc. I've heard that part of that clarity was because Cold War holding the US in contrast to the Soviets was itself a bit of perception management or PR. I could speculate on other factors, but I'm sure some historians and social scientists understand it vastly better. Anecdotally, I do remember a time when, say, TV news programs would at least set some good examples of reasoning, not lower themselves closer to the transparently bad Fox News or talk radio behavior, which seemed to be to be even more ridiculous than what we'd been told the Soviets did. (Of course, the US has a history of abuse by those who control presses, but the institution still seemed to have merit.) And I don't recall hearing of anything, even a decade ago, like apparently large numbers of people acting against their own other interests, solely for the adversarial sports team fan idea of "owning the libs". And also some inexplicably self-defeating behavior from elements of "the other side" (though I don't think that notion of "sides" is accurate or complete.) I've been wondering whether the US populace used to be better at critical thinking. It's felt that way, but maybe the examples I'm aware of aren't representative. Where we are now, talking about dotcoms being asked to gatekeep speech, I have only an ordinary citizens' understanding of many of policy issues, but I do have an experienced technologist's understanding that some of these dotcoms haven't been pinnacles of trustworthiness, integrity, etc. And the civic-minded American me wouldn't trust any of those dotcoms very far at all, with something that seems so fundamentally important to what I've grown up believing are bedrock principles of the US.
newacct583 6y ago
> - But facebook taking out fake news based on its own judgement with absolutely no due process is obviously okay??? That's literally the opposite of what is alleged to be happening. Facebook's fact check policy is notionally implemented by third party fact checkers over whom Facebook exerts no control. But the contention in the article is that Facebook executives then intervene in the process to UN-flagging content that fits their personal political bent.
- ergocoder 6y ago
  It's not very different. Who is the third party? Why do we trust them? Is their process rigorous, public, and auditable? It seems like just another private org that can determine what is true or false. If someone has to do the job, I'd rather my government do it.
wsc981 6y ago
> - Government taking out fake news is actually bad?? Government definitely shouldn't be the one to decide what is and isn't fake news [0]. > - But facebook taking out fake news based on its own judgement with absolutely no due process is obviously okay??? Since it's a private company I feel it's ok. Personally I'm more right-wing / libertarian oriented and I feel my Twitter account got banned because of me expressing more right-wing views. I tried to ask Twitter employees what was the offending post that got me banned, but never got a response. At that point I stopped using Twitter altogether. I feel Jack Dorsey himself is more open to different view points, but perhaps many of his employees are more left-wing oriented and might feel it's their mission to curtail right-wing views, but this is just my gut feeling that I can't proof. Since it's a private company I feel it's ok they operate like that. But at the same time I won't bother with Twitter anymore (I also don't use Facebook by the way). --- [0]: https://euobserver.com/opinion/141458 https://euobserver.com/opinion/141458
rideontime 6y ago
> Who can harass Facebook employees the most will probably win the shouting match. Or who spends the most on ads. > Citing “partner sensitivity," the rep noted that PragerU runs a lot of ads, and argued that the content in question qualified as opinion and was therefore exempt from being fact-checked.
geofft 6y ago
Facebook is a private company and is subject to competition. The government is not. We might have worried about Prodigy and CompuServe restricting speech (and we literally did, and that got us Section 230), but they're irrelevant now. We might have worried about MySpace, but it's irrelevant now. But the decisions the US government made in the 1990s and 2000s are incredibly relevant today, despite multiple changes in which party had the upper hand. The Constitution places restrictions on what the government can do because government overreach is a particular, unique problem. It also provides for popular election to the government for the same reason - and nobody says that it's bad that we can't elect Facebook's leaders. Now, perhaps the argument is that Facebook has grown too large and too powerful, to the point where Facebook censorship is worse than government censorship. If that's happened, that means we should have regulated Facebook a long time ago (and if we don't, we're on our way to your favorite cyberpunk dystopia where corporations are the real governments), and we should get around to doing so. But it hardly means that we should give in, treat Facebook like a government, and start saying "Facebook shall make no policy" any more than it means that we should vote for Facebook's CEO.

wiredone 6y ago

“Potential” Political bias. Can we just acknowledge for a moment what it’d be like to have a colleague who’s desperately trying to prove that your work is a “big conspiracy” when you’re honestly all just trying to do your best. I see so many of these stories of weirdly rogue political activist type employees recently surprised when they their employer doesn’t like that they’re purposely trying to undermine them and their employees work. I’m sure Facebook isn’t perfect, but I know enough good people who work there to know they’re not all out to “get” us. This smells like sour grapes* from an employee who focused more on their plans to take down their employer than their actual job. *ed: previously written as “sour apples”...it’s been a long day.

sapienwastey 6y ago
Amen.
- iron0013 6y ago
  ^ it’s neat to see a sleeper account being brought out of dormancy. Be interesting to see what you have to say between now and November 3.
  - sapienwastey 6y ago
    Simply agreeing with the parent motivated you to examine my post history and draw some conclusion about my political alignment?
    - iron0013 6y ago
      Inauspicious first couple of comments. Might want to burn this one and move on to the next account on the list. Try starting more subtly next time; ease in with a few banal comments on a Rust thread or something
      - dang 6y ago
        I just replied to your comment upthread saying that this is not ok, but I need to add more. You've been using HN primarily for ideological warfare for a long time now. Your recent comments in particular have been breaking the site guidelines egregiously and repeatedly. You've pulled this "sleeper account" attack before as well (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23859828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23859828). If you keep breaking the site guidelines, we are going to ban you. Actually, you're well into bannable territory as it is. I'm shocked at how much and you badly you've crossed the line. We've cut you way more slack than most people get here. If you don't want to be banned on HN, please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on. For all its many flaws, this is a community, and to participate in a community while constantly destroying the commons is incongruent. People who use this place need to take care of it, not burn it. That goes for everyone, regardless of what their political views are or how intensely they feel them, and that includes you.

andrewflnr 6y ago

Of course this happens because if Facebook actually nukes pages like Breitbart, right-wingers will claim this is evidence of Facebook's leftist bias. I see this claim on my feed all the time already. There is nothing Facebook can do that won't cause a riot. But if there's truly no acceptable action for Facebook and similar platforms, maybe the only option in the long-run is for them to cease to exist.

thehappypm 6y ago
Not really true. Content policy can take a lot of different forms. There’s a purely compliant approach — only respecting the legal requirements, like illegal content — and then there’s an approach of being Big Brother, taking a censorship role. Facebook seems to want to be at least a little bit of a censor.
- andrewflnr 6y ago
  This article is about Facebook trying not to be a censor, and consequently getting slammed for not acting strongly enough against "Fake News". Changing to lower or higher levels of censorship will just result in different amounts of yelling from one side or the other. The middle of the road is a no-mans-land where you get shelled by both sides of the political spectrum.
  - thehappypm 6y ago
    The “middle of the road” is actually impossible — there’s no Goldilocks level of censorship. Once your policy becomes less permissive than the legal minimum you are inciting a whole world of criticism.
    - andrewflnr 6y ago
      I mean, that's basically another way of stating the same point I'm making, except that I think "legal minimum" is also non-viable for similar reasons (unless you're 4chan apparently). I can't see any safe ground, any way that for-profit social media can scale sustainably.

trident1000 6y ago

This type of thing happens to people on the right so often it doesn't even make the news anymore.

erentz 6y ago
Does it? Example of what you mean? Note it appears a majority of Facebooks top ten posts are from right wing sources. [1] This is not me suggesting a bias on the part of FB, but it‘s a clear data point against the now common talking point that “the right” are persecuted victims, not fairly represented on the Internet. [1] https://mobile.twitter.com/FacebooksTop10 https://mobile.twitter.com/FacebooksTop10
- trident1000 6y ago
  Im talking across the entire corporate landscape especially in tech and media...and institutionally in academia.
- throwaway1801 6y ago
  There’s more concentration of media on the right. It’s why Fox News can have the highest ratings in spite of the media being dominated by the left. You have to look at the long tail of content and the distribution over all content. How many smaller right wing creators are censored vs left wing?
- trident1000 6y ago
  Literally had my comment to you as flagged and removed. Point proven.
  - bikeshed 6y ago
    Not really.
sanderjd 6y ago
The other post asking for examples is downvoted, but I think your statement could really use some. I can only think of one highly visible one, and it's interesting how much it reminds me of this one, though on the opposite side. But more examples would be illuminating.

deleted 6y ago

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solidsnack9000 6y ago

Taking this together with the recent house hearings and with other material, like AOC's questioning of Zuckerberg, it seems like leftist people (a) are distrustful of the tech giants' business and wealth and don't really believe it's been beneficial; and yet (b) trust them to regulate speech and want them to do so more aggressively. It's not logical.

JamisonM 6y ago
Seems like your (b) is mistaken, they want them to regulate speech (the "aggressively part let's leave aside) and do so within clear parameters. It seems fairly clear that they are not trusted to regulate the speech but rather expected to and are to be closely monitored for how they do so.. the hearings themselves are evidence of that.
- DuskStar 6y ago
  > and do so within clear parameters. I'd disagree with this part pretty strongly. What clear parameters are you thinking of, besides "get rid of my enemies"? Can you formulate a "no endorsing violence" policy that keeps the current protests/riots while banning Trump's latest idiocy, or one for "no racial discrimination" that keeps White Fragility and bans "they're not sending their best... Murderers, rapists" or similar? That kicks off Infowars or Richard Spencer while leaving Malcolm X or Ta-Nehisi Coates? Sure, the political right tends to cross those lines further - but it's often a case of degree and direction, not kind. I think it's either a really hard line to draw in a viewpoint-neutral fashion, or a huge political fight. (Whether you choose to ban Trump without the Left, or you try to ban both, people will be furious)
  - nemothekid 6y ago
    >Can you formulate a "no endorsing violence" policy that keeps the current protests/riots while banning Trump's latest idiocy Yes, it’s quite simple and I’m wondering if you are intentionally or accidentally being obtuse by trying to frame the current protests as riots. There were plenty of peaceful protests all over the country - no endorsing violence simply means not highlighting peaceful protests over violent ones. It’s not rocket science except to those grasp at straws in order to equate civilians walking in the streets to Trump implying police shoot civilians.

chrisco255 6y ago

"Preferential treatment" ... "when it comes to misinformation...from right leaning sources" Some people don't understand how bias works. BuzzFeed itself is a leftist clickbait organization that's completely incapable of reporting news in an unbiased way.

lalos 6y ago

Unrelated but anybody found the timing uncanny between the Instagram TikTok competition being launched the same week that Trump starts talking about banning it? That and all the heat Facebook/Zuckerberg have been taking to enable political ads (compared to Twitter/Dorsey), plus private dinners with the current administration that is very protectionist? Anyways, it's interesting to see how the US government will handle all this foreign established tech companies to handle their data by messing with the free market.

fbthrowaway31FB 6y ago

As a Facebook Employee who watched this thing unfold: His arguments and reasoning were edited for tone and posted by others and HR did not take any of that down. He wasn't fired for what he said, but how he said it. His post was vicious and demeaning toward other FB employees. It directly attacked the character and ethical constitution of specific employees in the company. That said, HR did later revoke open access to some of the specific details he used to make his case (conversations around investigating and escalating user reports). FB gives employees access to much more than most companies, so the sort of things HR made secret would not be visible at most US companies. Although I think at FB there are many things you can't say, his actual beliefs were not bold or rare. Many people say similar things all the time. But you can't go around attacking people like that.

baby 6y ago
Don’t know that specific story but the culture at FB is pretty open and people ask hard questions all the time on workplace and at Q&As. So it’s sad to see some people abusing this knowing that not that many companies are open to such internal dialogues. Tragedy of the common.
- xoxoy 6y ago
  what about the engineer who jumped to his death after a bad review?
  - baby 6y ago
    Do you have a specific question? It’s tragic obviously and impacted many of us.
    - shajznnckfke 6y ago
      (different commenter here) Of the handful of people I know who work at FB, all of them are super smart and motivated. Half of them have expressed a lot of anxiety, stress, and imposter syndrome to me over their reviews. I’ve seen this at other companies when a project is failing but I hear about it at FB from A players who are working on successful projects. It gives me the impression the managers must be brutal - like they just push harder than other companies and make people feel they aren’t good enough to get more output. These are my impressions as an outsider. Does it seem fair to you?

xoxoy 6y ago

is it just me or would it be very hard to work at Facebook these days without constantly experiencing cognitive dissonance day in and day out? feels like the only way to enjoy working there is to either be someone who only cares about the money and prestige and/or convince yourself that the criticisms against Facebook are invalid

baby 6y ago
I can assure you that what you’re imagining Facebook to be has nothing to do with how Facebook is on the inside. There are way more of these debates and internal discussions, which reflects that Facebook’s employees have pretty diverse point of views.
deleted 6y ago
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three_seagrass 6y ago

Sounds like the James Damore event for Facebook.

waheoo 6y ago
Yea except James damore didn't do anything wrong. Sounds like this guy actually went after certain people. James damore just asked a question.
- three_seagrass 6y ago
  >James damore just asked a question. Relevant: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions I'm sorry, but Damore claimed that women biologically lacked the ability to fill as leadership and programmer roles as men, which broke his employment agreement with Google to not perpetuate stereotypes, hence he was fired. The window dressing and weak-worded arguments in his memo may have you thinking otherwise, but he was fired specifically for this reason, and even he confirmed as much to the press. Edit: For all the Damore apologists replying, here's the statement in question that he made: >>I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
  - AbrahamParangi 6y ago
    Not to pick a side, but did you read the Damore memo?
    - three_seagrass 6y ago
      Yes, more than once, hence the comment about how it's weakly worded. Did you?
      - AbrahamParangi 6y ago
        I did, which was why I was surprised by the statement "Damore claimed that women were biologically incapable of leadership and programmer roles"

deleted 6y ago

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luxuryballs 6y ago

“Facebook employees want CEO Mark Zuckerberg to explain what the company would do if the leader of the free world uses the social network to undermine the results of the 2020 US presidential election” this is so silly, and later when the article claims “misinformation”, it’s a tricky situation to claim you know the 100% truth about everything and anything that goes against what you believe is considered misinformation that will undermine an election... totally ignoring the possibility that you might actually not be correct and that things aren’t as black and white as you think they are

newacct583 6y ago
> this is so silly Why is it "silly" exactly? Are you saying that Facebook wouldn't allow itself to be used this way, that the government wouldn't try, or that it's not possible? Are you contending that the results of an election are not "black and white"?
- fastball 6y ago
  Clearly the results of an election are not always black-and-white, otherwise there wouldn't be contested elections. "Undermine" is obviously a subjective judgement, not an objective one. Which in turn makes it difficult to legislate "prevent people from using social networks to undermine elections" in an objective way. And this is now my personal opinion, but legislation that cannot be enforced with some amount of objectivity is a recipe for disaster down the road.
- luxuryballs 6y ago
  it’s silly to assume that you are so sure of what you believe that you can call something that doesn’t align with your beliefs to be “misinformation” or an attempt to “undermine election results” when things are not black and white, both sides of a polarizing topic have truth to them, that’s why it’s always those topics that get this type of treatment, nobody is going around saying the sky is purple or the sun is a cube

jgacook 6y ago

Eye-opening how many HN comments are framing this guy as a demented political extremist. He’s a whistleblower exposing one of the most frightening threats to modern democracy that exists. We are beyond the speculation point here. Facebook has demonstrated that it has the capability to spread misinformation and sway political opinion very effectively and never for the right reasons. The pandemic is the most recent example of Facebook’s fuckery: post something that tells people that Covid is caused by 5G and that Bill Gates wants to implants microchips in you? You might get a small disclaimer on your FB post saying that “parts of it” “may be” inaccurate. You are constantly fed anything to keep you engaged with the platform and increasing Facebook’s bottom line. Zuckerburg has just spun to Congress that Facebook is going to extreme lengths to moderate their platform - this employee’s testimony is proof that Facebook doesn’t care in the least or worse, they may be actively trying to help along candidates who will be politically lenient towards their behavior. We just discovered a “bug” caused Republican ads to show at a more frequent rate than Democratic ads - I don’t know what’s more worrying: that a bug on Facebook could swing the election or that it wasn’t a bug at all. People need to stop with the “I know good people at Facebook” B.S. It’s beside the point. Facebook is a rogue actor that has enormous social and political power to completely mislead the general public into practically any belief. They have continued to demonstrate that they cannot be trusted with this power. This man should be praised as a whistleblower for exposing the charade that is an unregulated Facebook. We need more like him in tech to show people how serious the problem is. Give me a break with the analyses on whether he should have been fired or not and recognize the scope of the problem he is trying to warn is about. The quality of our democracy is absolutely at stake.

badmadrad 6y ago
Not just Facebook but Twitter and social media as whole. We are are all voluntarily choosing to support technology that beams us deception, mistruths, and lies of omission at all times. Worse, we like it because of our own vanity. Aldous Huxley warned about a society where people voluntarily enter into a totalitarian society because they are both easily deceived and receive cheap instant gratification from those in control. Seems like we are about here. Aldous Huxley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alasBxZsb40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alasBxZsb40
6y ago

iron0013 6y ago

The actual title of this article is “Facebook Fired An Employee Who Collected Evidence Of Right-Wing Pages Getting Preferential Treatment”

dang 6y ago
The submitter rewrote it because it didn't fit the 80-char limit. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24077718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24077718

fb5400 6y ago

This is a rough situation. The guy was pulling on an important thread to unravel a complex issue and get us all transparency. And then he wrote a company wide memo that called Mark a "robber baron, slaver, and plunderer", directly blamed Mark for covid deaths due to his implied support of Trump, and levied a bunch of other personal attacks. I can't imagine any person at any company who wouldn't get fired after publicly speaking to the CEO that way. It's a shame, because if this guy had an emotional intelligence he could have personally driven change. Now he's a martyr at best.

travisjungroth 6y ago
It’s weird coming into this thread after just finishing Schindler’s List. It’s like the polar opposite of how to effectively operate in an evil system. For anyone who believes they’re participating in an evil system: quit, whistleblow, or sabotage. Don’t be like this guy.
- mneubrand 6y ago
  Maybe this was him "quitting" and he knew this would happen but e.g. he still wanted to be eligible for unemployment benefits
- Miner49er 6y ago
  He literally did all 3? He whistleblew, sabatoged by doing this in a way that it got to the media and by insulting Zuck, and he got himself fired.
  - travisjungroth 6y ago
    Whistleblowing would be working with the media or regulators to get out as much information as possible. Sabotaging is staying at the company and thwarting their efforts. What he did (calling attention internally to messages that were already available for employees to see) barely counts as either of those. Sure, you could say he effectively quit.
- thunkshift1 6y ago

exogeny 6y ago

I can't believe there's an actually a debate at all about what's going on here. There are multiple sources indicating that conservative sites work in concert to amplify, at best, specious content and at worst, complete misinformation. Facebook selectively enforces discipline on these sites because: 1. Conservative information (Fox News, Charlie Kirk, Breitbart, etc.) is consistently shared more than other content 2. They don't want the optics of making it seem like they're censoring conservative voices because they're afraid of the blowback, so they're hiding behind the veil of "It's not our job" 3. They don't want to lose the ad spend running up to the election season nor do they want to lose the vanity metrics of DAU/MAU/etc because they're a publicly traded company Zuck is a feckless coward, full stop. And while I don't know his personal political leanings, this non-policy certainly has the earmarks of Thiel and Joel Kaplan all over it.

jariel 6y ago
The issue of 'amplifying narratives' is not at all exclusive to any 'side' and the misinformation is everywhere, it just takes on different forms. I believe that the issue of the 'right wing side' in this case is possibly as you've indicated - in that there is just more sensitivity around it. The Valley is Left/Anarcho/Libertarian with 'traditionally minded' immigrants, and so there's more suspicion in certain camps of legit bias on 'one side'. I think this is where the sidedness of the issue might derive. As to the materiality of it ... who knows ...
newacct583 6y ago
Those aren't even all separate points. At the end of the day, Facebook is beholden to republican (not really "right wing" per se) advertising dollars more than it is to spending on opposing points. This is just for demographic reasons: Facebook has to compete hard for eyeballs among young/urban/techie/minority users. Those folks are fickle with their tastes and willing to try more platforms. And they're less sensitive to advertising in general. Facebook has lots of them, but they certainly aren't dominant in that market. But old white folk? They're all on Facebook. Really, they're ALL on Facebook. Facebook probably has 90%+ of all social media advertising revenue in this demographic. And they skew heavily republican. So who's interests are they going to serve? When Facebook's executives feel pressure to put their fingers on the fact check scale, in which direction are they going to tilt it?

solidsnack9000 6y ago

With regards to right wing pages who contact Facebook to get their flags resolved, the article seems to suggest it's inappropriate that they reached out directly -- but the business relationship is between Facebook and the user with a profile, not the user with a profile and a 3rd party. These and other interventions appear to be in violation of Facebook’s official policy, which requires publishers wishing to dispute a fact check rating to contact the Facebook fact-checking partner responsible. [...] Instead of appealing to the fact-checker they immediately call their rep at Facebook... This is a little like when my package gets lost, and -- very rarely -- the shipper tells me to contact the post office instead of simply claiming the insurance and refunding me. These shippers often don't give me the receipt I need to show the post office that it was insured -- because telling me to contact the post office is just another way to say, not my problem. The post office is likely to say: please contact the shipper... If the user isn't happy with what Facebook did -- regardless of whose advice Facebook took -- they have every right to contact Facebook.

jungletime 6y ago

A day ago, "Facebook removed from Trump’s official account the post of a video clip from a Fox News interview in which he said children are “almost immune” from covid-19." (source WP) Is this really misinformation, or a false statement, worthy of censoring a presidents speech. For one, "almost immune", is not the same as claiming "immune". So its not even like its even a false statement, anymore than saying I "almost caught" a fish, when you didn't. The implication is that children have low infection rate. Regardless of the truth value, of "almost immune", removing the post, also robs people of valuable information, like for example, if Trump is leaning to have schools open in September.

shripadk 6y ago
My question is why censor the US President? Let people know what Trump says and make their own judgement. I hate this sort of political censorship by social media giants. At the same time, you can literally find porn and gore on these sites which aren't taken down automatically. What with advancements in AI and all it should be easy to remove right? Nope. These are the videos that linger on even after you report them. And they have ads running on them too. If they think people are fools and won't notice it they are so wrong. It is only going to amplify voices for an alternative platform. My fear is that it will create platforms divided on political biases rather than a truly free platform where people from all sides can participate. This sort of polarization is not healthy.

known 6y ago

Listed companies should have comprehensive Whistle blower protection programs; Govt should amend laws accordingly;

kanox 6y ago

Good, companies shouldn't employ people who deliberately smear and sabotage them.

smsm42 6y ago

As an example of bias, I've recently seen on Facebook a post that instructed the readers to shoot law enforcement people in the face. Not exaggerating, those are the exact words, "shoot him in the face". Facebook told me this is well within the "community standards". Yet for example Zuckerberg personally promised to ban any page that promotes protests against COVID lockdown. So, calling for protesting lockdown - ban, calling for murdering the police - OK. Sounds like a bias.

comfyinnernet 6y ago

"Facebook did not answer questions about why a partner manager would cite ad volume as a reason for not acting against a group of pages." Oops somebody said the thing out loud.

mattnibs 6y ago

Counter point: https://www.projectveritas.com/news/another-facebook-whistleblower-interference-on-a-global-level-in-elections/ https://www.projectveritas.com/news/another-facebook-whistle... Depending on which media outlet you turn to Facebook is trying to skew the election towards Trump or Biden. Depending on your political bias you get the story that fits your narrative. Perhaps our framing is off?