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“The Big Shift”: Internal Facebook Memo Tells Employees to Do Better on Privacy

54 points by freediver 6y ago

haolez 6y ago
This could be a smart move. Facebook could position themselves as the go-to platform for privacy aware users. They might capture users fleeing Google, Microsoft and Apple because of privacy. I'm assuming that "The Big Shift" is actually sincere and that Facebook's history won't be a show stopper. EDIT: my assumptions are not realistic, so this is probably an impossible outcome. My point was to evaluate if the described move would be beneficial or not. I believe it would.
- atonse 6y ago
  In what parallel universe would users be fleeing Apple to Facebook for privacy?
  - haolez 6y ago
    I thought my assumptions would make it very clear that this is not a realistic scenario. I'm just evaluating the idea proposed in the article, not its practicality.
- krastanov 6y ago
  It is not a "literally impossible" future, but given what the past has been, this is definitely an improbable incredulous future.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  Not sure if I should downvote you or flag you, as what you've written seems to come from some bizzaro parallel universe, but even then I can't grok a universe where someone could flee Microsoft for Facebook. "Yeah I was gonna finish this important Excel spreadsheet, but instead all I can do is like my not-really-friend's cat videos because I value my privacy."
  - haolez 6y ago
    I was thinking about Microsoft 365 when I mentioned Microsoft, since its an offering similar to that of Google regarding businesses. And I thought that my assumptions would make it clear that this is not a realistic scenario. Do you disagree that it would be a smart move for Facebook, regardless of the company's history and context?
dredmorbius 6y ago
It's not the employees at Facebook who are undermining privacy, but the founder.
- na85 6y ago
  Some of us have known this for years. Mark, after all, is the guy who got rich promoting "privacy is dead" and then used that money to buy all the mansions around his in order to protect his privacy. Blatant hypocrisy.
hyperion2010 6y ago
Hilarious. This is not something that employees and engineers have any control over, and framing it like this is passing the buck. Furthermore, user privacy is a fundamental top down engineering decision, not something that any individual can "do better on."
- na85 6y ago
  It was intentionally "leaked"; the whole thing is a PR move. Facebook's entire business is predicated upon having intimate knowledge of its users and is as such irreconcilable with the concept of privacy.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    Why is this downvoted? Zuck decried leaks for years when "leak it to the press" became the only way for rank-and-file employees to affect change on contentious topics, particularly in the wake of Cambridge Analytica. Anything sent to employees these days is 100% expected to be repeated in the press and would be written with that in mind.
    - rodgerd 6y ago
      > Why is this downvoted? HN is predominantly ad-tech or ad-tech related people. It's uncomfortable for them.
  - kantrowitz 6y ago
    Hi, I wrote the story. It was not leaked by PR. Did they anticipate it might go out? Perhaps. But consider: Boz wrote it a month ago. If they wanted this out in public, they did a poor job getting it out. This was an internal memo meant for an internal audience to address an internal problem.
    - na85 6y ago
      Who leaked it to you, then? > This was an internal memo meant for an internal audience to address an internal problem. Do you actually think this can address "the problem" or is it performance?
ericflo 6y ago
My cynical view on this is that Facebook has realized they can better protect their market dominance by raising the walls on their garden and locking down your data as much as possible, and calling that privacy. I expect them to fight data portability initiatives tooth and nail in the name of said "privacy."
- guram11 6y ago
  "Just the same stairs but now with only one giant step and <insert bigtech> is the one with giant legs" a quote from a recent post where Google has been testing a replacement for third-party cookies[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903049
thesausageking 6y ago
"Starting in January we are changing the way we approach product development in FRL" The key phrase here is "in FRL". Even if they follow through, Reality Labs is one small corner of Facebook.
tnash 6y ago
It makes clear in the memo, this is FRL (Oculus), not Facebook as a whole.
marcinzm 6y ago
This is being framed as "prioritizing privacy means we'll make more money in today's environment" which sounds exactly liked how Facebook operates. They don't care about anything except whatever makes them the most money. Today that's (some) privacy apparently. Tomorrow it may not be and they'll already have all your historical data to again start mining/selling/exploiting.
Mistri 6y ago
If this is truly a shift in ideology at the leadership level, it's long overdue, but a welcome change; Facebook has depended on privacy-breaching practices for far too long. There will have to be some serious innovation and effort from their end in order to come up with a different business model and undo the damage that they've done thus far. This could just be a big sham that the leadership is trying to make a big deal about, but I'm hopeful that they've finally realized that the path they're going down isn't sustainable.
waihtis 6y ago
It is near impossible for Facebook to successfully brand themselves as pro-privacy at this point. When their privacy breaches have been in the mainstream news for years now, the true Facebook business model is just too deeply embedded into the general populace. Between that and their revenue driver (ads) being seemingly mainly bot traffic based on many of the posts I’ve seen here, it wouldn’t be a wild stretch to say one single black swan event could bring Facebook crashing in the market. Too much negative sentiment and hot air, not enough true value.
duxup 6y ago
Why would "employees" need to be told this? Are we to believe random employees just happen to create these non pirvacy products and the VP(s) at Facebook have nothing to do with it?
- throwaway3699 6y ago
  It is definitely everyone involved, and having this memo out there means engineers can point towards it when working on a feature that could reduce privacy and try and shift direction slightly.
  - duxup 6y ago
    Does that really do anything? If your boss or your VP tells you to do something ... point to a memo from some other VP guy? If that's a solution it sounds like the problem is the managment, not the employees. Asking them to fight it out seems like bad advice / not likely to work.
gregshap 6y ago
Good chance to show they are serious by doing a Big Shift on requiring active Facebook account data for me to play Oculus ping pong against my socially distanced family members.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
OK, so this is coming from the head of Facebook Reality Labs, i.e. Oculus. Which is incredibly ironic, because Oculus very recently required FB accounts to use the device, which was met with a huge privacy-focused backlash, including from Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus. So either they are planning to reverse that completely anti-privacy decision, or the author is totally full of shit. Can't have it both ways.
- Lammy 6y ago
  > or the author is totally full of shit Bosworth's job is to come up with new flavors of Kool-Aid no matter what position he's officially in.
  - annadane 6y ago
    12 minute post and already downvoted to hell. Hello, fb employees.
    - sam1r 6y ago
      Haha. ^^ Great timing! Great minds not only think alike, But also I truly hope our comments receive at least one organic like.
    - dang 6y ago
      This comment breaks the site guidelines egregiously. Would you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here? We're trying for something a bit different than internet median here, and cheap accusations of manipulation are even a notch or two below that. I downvoted the post because it was a snarky one-liner, which is also bad for HN. I'm not a fb employee and I don't care about fb, but I do care about HN.
      - annadane 6y ago
        Fair enough. Apologies.
tracedddd 6y ago
It’s basically impossible without a radical change to their business model, so this is just PR psyops. Unfortunately investors would greatly prefer a slow death of the company, while committing constant invasions of privacy on the entire world, than the great risk of a self induced reform. Especially when they can get half the benefits for free by leaking fake memos and ineffective privacy control knobs.
orthecreedence 6y ago
"The Big Bullshift." Internal Facebook Memo Concocted by Executives and Released to Public via Employees to Dupe People Into Thinking the Company Gives a Shit About Them. There is no such thing as a modern advertising company that cares about privacy. The idea is laughable.
JoelMcCracken 6y ago
I hope at some point a congressperson asks pointed questions about this. "Why would you send this? Is your company so out of control that you need to send memos like this to get people to 'do better' on privacy? Why are these decisions not being made by the executive team? Does your company care so little about privacy that such concerns are irrelevant to executives? Or is this some poorly-conceived ploy to place the blame on employees?"
mromanuk 6y ago
> “We should become the undisputed leaders in providing privacy-aware software.” Are they leaving the user information and Ads business? ...
ChuckMcM 6y ago
Does anyone else hear the echoes of Bill Gates "Trustworthy Computing" memo[1] in this? Granted, it wasn't written by Zuck which would have given it more "oomph" as they say, but still the idea that "Crap, this externally applied criticism of our product now has become too onerous to continue ignoring." It would be a useful legacy if Facebook managed to impact the industry's privacy practices the way Microsoft impacted the industry's security practices, but I am not holding my breath. [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/10-years-since-the-bill-gates-security-memo-a-personal-journey/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/10-years-since-the-bill-gates-...
- rodgerd 6y ago
  > Does anyone else hear the echoes of Bill Gates "Trustworthy Computing" memo[1] in this? Granted, it wasn't written by Zuck which would have given it more "oomph" as they say, but still the idea that "Crap, this externally applied criticism of our product now has become to onerous to continue ignoring." Not at all. Nothing about Windows as a money-making product was antithetical to improving security; if anything "making secure computing more readily available to the masses" was in line with "making computers more readily available to the masses" which is something that, for all the many faults of their OSes and business, Microsoft has been pretty successful at. Facebook is surveillance capitalism. That's the business model. No privacy violations, no Facebook as a multi-billion dollar company.
29athrowaway 6y ago
Will Facebook make login optional on Oculus then? What would be better for privacy than not requiring an account? See? It is hard to believe this internal memo is not just a press release aimed to make people trust them more.
ogre_codes 6y ago
> prioritize privacy as they built their products, even to the detriment of the user’s experience. It's not a "Shift" so much as a wiggle. They are willing to sacrifice the users experience... what about profits? Are they willing to prioritize privacy over profits? . Crickets. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
quickthrower2 6y ago
A memo tells you nothing and staff will forget it in 6 months time. The key metrics by which they measure staff performance is what would be interesting to see what the real culture is.
vijaybritto 6y ago
Oh my god. Why are they always so terrible at this?! Can employees decide the direction and usage of a product? Absolutely not. This is a silly PR stunt by the Facebook management

54 points by freediver 6y ago

This could be a smart move. Facebook could position themselves as the go-to platform for privacy aware users. They might capture users fleeing Google, Microsoft and Apple because of privacy. I'm assuming that "The Big Shift" is actually sincere and that Facebook's history won't be a show stopper. EDIT: my assumptions are not realistic, so this is probably an impossible outcome. My point was to evaluate if the described move would be beneficial or not. I believe it would.

atonse 6y ago
In what parallel universe would users be fleeing Apple to Facebook for privacy?
- haolez 6y ago
  I thought my assumptions would make it very clear that this is not a realistic scenario. I'm just evaluating the idea proposed in the article, not its practicality.
krastanov 6y ago
It is not a "literally impossible" future, but given what the past has been, this is definitely an improbable incredulous future.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
Not sure if I should downvote you or flag you, as what you've written seems to come from some bizzaro parallel universe, but even then I can't grok a universe where someone could flee Microsoft for Facebook. "Yeah I was gonna finish this important Excel spreadsheet, but instead all I can do is like my not-really-friend's cat videos because I value my privacy."
- haolez 6y ago
  I was thinking about Microsoft 365 when I mentioned Microsoft, since its an offering similar to that of Google regarding businesses. And I thought that my assumptions would make it clear that this is not a realistic scenario. Do you disagree that it would be a smart move for Facebook, regardless of the company's history and context?

dredmorbius 6y ago

It's not the employees at Facebook who are undermining privacy, but the founder.

na85 6y ago
Some of us have known this for years. Mark, after all, is the guy who got rich promoting "privacy is dead" and then used that money to buy all the mansions around his in order to protect his privacy. Blatant hypocrisy.

hyperion2010 6y ago

Hilarious. This is not something that employees and engineers have any control over, and framing it like this is passing the buck. Furthermore, user privacy is a fundamental top down engineering decision, not something that any individual can "do better on."

na85 6y ago
It was intentionally "leaked"; the whole thing is a PR move. Facebook's entire business is predicated upon having intimate knowledge of its users and is as such irreconcilable with the concept of privacy.
- Lammy 6y ago
  Why is this downvoted? Zuck decried leaks for years when "leak it to the press" became the only way for rank-and-file employees to affect change on contentious topics, particularly in the wake of Cambridge Analytica. Anything sent to employees these days is 100% expected to be repeated in the press and would be written with that in mind.
  - rodgerd 6y ago
    > Why is this downvoted? HN is predominantly ad-tech or ad-tech related people. It's uncomfortable for them.
- kantrowitz 6y ago
  Hi, I wrote the story. It was not leaked by PR. Did they anticipate it might go out? Perhaps. But consider: Boz wrote it a month ago. If they wanted this out in public, they did a poor job getting it out. This was an internal memo meant for an internal audience to address an internal problem.
  - na85 6y ago
    Who leaked it to you, then? > This was an internal memo meant for an internal audience to address an internal problem. Do you actually think this can address "the problem" or is it performance?

ericflo 6y ago

My cynical view on this is that Facebook has realized they can better protect their market dominance by raising the walls on their garden and locking down your data as much as possible, and calling that privacy. I expect them to fight data portability initiatives tooth and nail in the name of said "privacy."

guram11 6y ago
"Just the same stairs but now with only one giant step and <insert bigtech> is the one with giant legs" a quote from a recent post where Google has been testing a replacement for third-party cookies[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903049

thesausageking 6y ago

"Starting in January we are changing the way we approach product development in FRL" The key phrase here is "in FRL". Even if they follow through, Reality Labs is one small corner of Facebook.

tnash 6y ago

It makes clear in the memo, this is FRL (Oculus), not Facebook as a whole.

marcinzm 6y ago

This is being framed as "prioritizing privacy means we'll make more money in today's environment" which sounds exactly liked how Facebook operates. They don't care about anything except whatever makes them the most money. Today that's (some) privacy apparently. Tomorrow it may not be and they'll already have all your historical data to again start mining/selling/exploiting.

Mistri 6y ago

If this is truly a shift in ideology at the leadership level, it's long overdue, but a welcome change; Facebook has depended on privacy-breaching practices for far too long. There will have to be some serious innovation and effort from their end in order to come up with a different business model and undo the damage that they've done thus far. This could just be a big sham that the leadership is trying to make a big deal about, but I'm hopeful that they've finally realized that the path they're going down isn't sustainable.

waihtis 6y ago

It is near impossible for Facebook to successfully brand themselves as pro-privacy at this point. When their privacy breaches have been in the mainstream news for years now, the true Facebook business model is just too deeply embedded into the general populace. Between that and their revenue driver (ads) being seemingly mainly bot traffic based on many of the posts I’ve seen here, it wouldn’t be a wild stretch to say one single black swan event could bring Facebook crashing in the market. Too much negative sentiment and hot air, not enough true value.

duxup 6y ago

Why would "employees" need to be told this? Are we to believe random employees just happen to create these non pirvacy products and the VP(s) at Facebook have nothing to do with it?

throwaway3699 6y ago
It is definitely everyone involved, and having this memo out there means engineers can point towards it when working on a feature that could reduce privacy and try and shift direction slightly.
- duxup 6y ago
  Does that really do anything? If your boss or your VP tells you to do something ... point to a memo from some other VP guy? If that's a solution it sounds like the problem is the managment, not the employees. Asking them to fight it out seems like bad advice / not likely to work.

gregshap 6y ago

Good chance to show they are serious by doing a Big Shift on requiring active Facebook account data for me to play Oculus ping pong against my socially distanced family members.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago

OK, so this is coming from the head of Facebook Reality Labs, i.e. Oculus. Which is incredibly ironic, because Oculus very recently required FB accounts to use the device, which was met with a huge privacy-focused backlash, including from Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus. So either they are planning to reverse that completely anti-privacy decision, or the author is totally full of shit. Can't have it both ways.

Lammy 6y ago
> or the author is totally full of shit Bosworth's job is to come up with new flavors of Kool-Aid no matter what position he's officially in.
- annadane 6y ago
  12 minute post and already downvoted to hell. Hello, fb employees.
  - sam1r 6y ago
    Haha. ^^ Great timing! Great minds not only think alike, But also I truly hope our comments receive at least one organic like.
  - dang 6y ago
    This comment breaks the site guidelines egregiously. Would you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here? We're trying for something a bit different than internet median here, and cheap accusations of manipulation are even a notch or two below that. I downvoted the post because it was a snarky one-liner, which is also bad for HN. I'm not a fb employee and I don't care about fb, but I do care about HN.
    - annadane 6y ago
      Fair enough. Apologies.

tracedddd 6y ago

It’s basically impossible without a radical change to their business model, so this is just PR psyops. Unfortunately investors would greatly prefer a slow death of the company, while committing constant invasions of privacy on the entire world, than the great risk of a self induced reform. Especially when they can get half the benefits for free by leaking fake memos and ineffective privacy control knobs.

orthecreedence 6y ago

"The Big Bullshift." Internal Facebook Memo Concocted by Executives and Released to Public via Employees to Dupe People Into Thinking the Company Gives a Shit About Them. There is no such thing as a modern advertising company that cares about privacy. The idea is laughable.

JoelMcCracken 6y ago

I hope at some point a congressperson asks pointed questions about this. "Why would you send this? Is your company so out of control that you need to send memos like this to get people to 'do better' on privacy? Why are these decisions not being made by the executive team? Does your company care so little about privacy that such concerns are irrelevant to executives? Or is this some poorly-conceived ploy to place the blame on employees?"

mromanuk 6y ago

> “We should become the undisputed leaders in providing privacy-aware software.” Are they leaving the user information and Ads business? ...

ChuckMcM 6y ago

Does anyone else hear the echoes of Bill Gates "Trustworthy Computing" memo[1] in this? Granted, it wasn't written by Zuck which would have given it more "oomph" as they say, but still the idea that "Crap, this externally applied criticism of our product now has become too onerous to continue ignoring." It would be a useful legacy if Facebook managed to impact the industry's privacy practices the way Microsoft impacted the industry's security practices, but I am not holding my breath. [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/10-years-since-the-bill-gates-security-memo-a-personal-journey/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/10-years-since-the-bill-gates-...

rodgerd 6y ago
> Does anyone else hear the echoes of Bill Gates "Trustworthy Computing" memo[1] in this? Granted, it wasn't written by Zuck which would have given it more "oomph" as they say, but still the idea that "Crap, this externally applied criticism of our product now has become to onerous to continue ignoring." Not at all. Nothing about Windows as a money-making product was antithetical to improving security; if anything "making secure computing more readily available to the masses" was in line with "making computers more readily available to the masses" which is something that, for all the many faults of their OSes and business, Microsoft has been pretty successful at. Facebook is surveillance capitalism. That's the business model. No privacy violations, no Facebook as a multi-billion dollar company.

29athrowaway 6y ago

Will Facebook make login optional on Oculus then? What would be better for privacy than not requiring an account? See? It is hard to believe this internal memo is not just a press release aimed to make people trust them more.

ogre_codes 6y ago

> prioritize privacy as they built their products, even to the detriment of the user’s experience. It's not a "Shift" so much as a wiggle. They are willing to sacrifice the users experience... what about profits? Are they willing to prioritize privacy over profits? . Crickets. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

quickthrower2 6y ago

A memo tells you nothing and staff will forget it in 6 months time. The key metrics by which they measure staff performance is what would be interesting to see what the real culture is.

vijaybritto 6y ago

Oh my god. Why are they always so terrible at this?! Can employees decide the direction and usage of a product? Absolutely not. This is a silly PR stunt by the Facebook management