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No surprise to me. At one point when they had an API, I could follow and see posts from "locked" accounts that I couldn't see from the website. I reported it an

No surprise to me. At one point when they had an API, I could follow and see posts from "locked" accounts that I couldn't see from the website. I reported it and they said something like "oh yeah we're making a lot of changes right now" and of course never fixed it (until they decommed their API which effectively fixes it). They're up against the world, and they're spreading themselves very thin, aiming to replace all of the "big tech" use cases, for better or for worse. They hate Silicon Valley but they "move fast and break things" more than anybody, arguably by necessity. I'll cut them some slack if their public platforms have some bugs, but they shouldn't do anything with sensitive user data.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
federona 6y ago
With cancel culture security of all personal and public communication is now a matter of making a living. Especially in this domain. This is a fact, if you wish it censored you are a liar.
- orblivion 6y ago
  I can't quite parse exactly what your point is, but if people want to communicate securely they should use Signal or something.
  - federona 6y ago
    My point is that if someone hacks and steals all the data on your social media site then they can expose random people by doing analysis on the site's data and make individuals lose their job. Whether that is something good or bad depends on your point of view. Should the consequences of having opinions against mainstream views and venting about them in public make you liable for those views to your employer? Sometimes the venting is honestly stating your feeling about the subject which causes gasps, the firing of the recent Mandalorian star comes to mind.
    - 8note 6y ago
      The Disney example doesn't really square? She posted in public purposefully, and under her own name, whilst having a job where she's representing Disney with her name That's a very different case from some private individual speaking privately in a situation where they don't represent their employer For a more generic case, during your interview, you tell your prospective employer that you agree with their values and want to work together, then after getting hired, you tell them you disagree with their values. Should they still have to work with you? Eg. You become a teacher at a Catholic school, but you only pretended to be a Catholic in the interview
      - federona 6y ago
        What are corporate values? The only thing you are legitimately saying to your employer is you pay me and I do the work and we both make money. That is all. Anything more than that infringes on your personal rights outside of your employment, as these comments are my own. The fact that we have the reach of corporations way outside of work in public life is not right in my opinion, it's akin to slavery. This corporation employs people with these sorts of thoughts??? That does not really register in my mind as any sort of sound reasoning for dismissal, for having the wrong thoughts and saying them in public.
        andrewzah 6y ago
        There is no right to a job. There is no right to immunity from consequences from saying things online. The end. If you don't like how Disney operates, then vote with your wallet. That's literally the only thing companies care about, and is the only reason why she was let go in the first place. Saying we should force companies to retain hires despite what they say online, is ridiculous.
        federona 6y ago
        If you were to make a general rule, it's saying if you want employment then don't say anything online, period. So it is in fact depriving any employee the right to speak about things publicly all the time. It's like putting a muzzle on a dog so he does not bark. If that's not slavery I don't know what is. As for right to employment, well how far can you push it. And how does that not violate white privilege principles or corporate privilege principles. We have a corporate class which holds most of the wealth and if you say anything you will lose the right to make a living. That smacks of privilege, in fact white privilege. Only the corporate class may speak. It's not sound in any way.
yrgulation 6y ago
The cto should focus on strategic thinking and have one or two devs that lead daily work - and code review for such basic issues (or use a code analyser) to detect sql, xss, xsrf, session management, password based user data encryption, message encryption, and other trivialities. Not that i like gab, but i wonder how many rookie mistakes like this one are then blamed on ”foreign agents” and other media bollox.
- gkoberger 6y ago
  You're right in general, however I think you're over-estimating the size of Gab. In this case, it's more of a "everyone gets a CxO title because there's fewer than 26 of us" type thing.
- claytongulick 6y ago
  I'm of the general mindset that the CTO should be the most technical. I think we see a lot of tech company failures when the CTO is just a manager type that doesn't understand the technology and doesn't have the ability to contribute to it.
  - dividedbyzero 6y ago
    In every company I've ever worked for, and any company I know these kinds of things about, the position of a CTO is a high-level managerial role, with lots and lots of budgeting strategizing communcating yadda yadda, so you had better have someone on that seat who is a good manager and good at high-level, big-picture thinking and good with people and a very strong communicator. If you require that person to also be the most technical person in the room at all times, whew. Either that's a very tall order or recruiting/hiring needs work. More technical than that person who's spent a career getting absolutely ace in their niche? More technical than the data scientist who spends 8 hours a day digging really deep into bleeding edge neural networks? I'm totally with you that a manager should be able to understand the thing they manage to a certain (not too shallow) depth, but you hire experts for a reason, and in ordinary circumstances, and in an ordinary IT department, a C-level manager should not strive to out-expert the experts under their purview. That kind of micromanagement/smartassery will just drive away the experts, and then you need a new CTO and new experts and maybe go bust. Exception to the rule: If you're in a startup where the IT departmend consists of a CTO and one guy remoting in from Bulgaria who runs the servers and is really really cheap, you as the CTO actually should be the most technical person in the room. But once you hire the first actual expert, you should take a step back and get more big-picture-y.
zelon88 6y ago
> I'll cut them some slack if their public platforms have some bugs... Your generosity naively assumes that given enough time they would resolve your concerns. That is never the case with these anti-social social media companies. It's taboo to talk about, but the correlation between political conservatism and overwhelming amounts of technical debt leading to non-existent operational security is hard to overlook.
- carmen_sandiego 6y ago
  I’m not sure it’s taboo to talk about as much as it’s just a totally baseless claim.
  - zelon88 6y ago
    Voat wasn't viable [1], 4Chan wasn't viable [2], 8Chan was screwed over by their own moderator [3], Gab obviously isn't secure [4], and Parler was neither secure nor viable [5]. Daily Stormer survived by the skin of their teeth [6]. While I realize that all major platforms have had their dark days, those days usually pale in comparison to a dark day at a conservative-based platform. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/22/22195115/voat-free-speech-right-wing-reddit-clone-shutdown-investor https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/22/22195115/voat-free-speec... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/09/25/absolutely-everything-you-need-to-know-to-understand-4chan-the-internets-own-bogeyman/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/09... [3] https://greatawakening.win/p/11SJjocsHm/-one-of-the-moderators-on-8kun-p/c/4DvnfIQPi0g https://greatawakening.win/p/11SJjocsHm/-one-of-the-moderato... [4] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/rookie-coding-mistake-prior-to-gab-hack-came-from-sites-cto/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/rookie-coding-mistak... [5] https://www.wired.com/story/parler-hack-data-public-posts-images-video/ https://www.wired.com/story/parler-hack-data-public-posts-im... [6] https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/24/16200002/daily-stormer-dreamhost-anonymous-ddos-attack https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/24/16200002/daily-stormer-dr...
    - carmen_sandiego 6y ago
      Why are we now conflating business viability with technical or security chops? I think you’ll find extremists of all stripes perform poorly, mostly due to the much smaller talent pools involved. Can you name a handful of highly successful extreme left tech companies? Moreover, assigning any random highly successful tech company as ‘leftist’ seems silly. What’s less leftist than a vehicle for minting billionaires and further enriching existing ones?
ugh123 6y ago
I think a lot of it also speaks to the pool of quality engineers who are willing to work for a company like Gab, Parler, etc. Companies like that appearing on your resume will no doubt cause friction with would-be employers down the line, for better or worse. I certainly wouldnt work there unless I was absolutely desperate and couldn't look more than a few years down the road.
- lawnchair_larry 6y ago
  It doesn’t say anything like that. I guess you missed the part about him being a facebook employee. Go ahead, say facebook hires low quality engineers...
  - bitdizzy 6y ago
    Facebook hires low quality engineers.
  - kcartlidge 6y ago
    Not saying they do (not the poster you responded to) but why would you assume they wouldn't hire low quality engineers? No recruitment/HR/filtering process is perfect, no candidates are perfect, no hiring decision is perfect. There seems to be an assumption that the big tech firms are inherently better at picking the better 'engineers'. Having experienced a lot of what they produce (not specifically Facebook, but Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc) I'm inclined to assume the opposite personally.
  - orwin 6y ago
    The guy from facebook was not en engineer but a developper advocate. I'd say this is VERY different.
- user-the-name 6y ago
  I'd like to think people would not work for far-right hosts of hatred, racism, sexism and often terrorisms for other reasons than just "it would look bad on my CV". I would hope people would have enough of a moral compass to be able to tell that these companies are, in fact, not morally good.
0x4d464d48 6y ago
"move fast and break things" More like "move fast and break yourself."

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

federona 6y ago

With cancel culture security of all personal and public communication is now a matter of making a living. Especially in this domain. This is a fact, if you wish it censored you are a liar.

orblivion 6y ago
I can't quite parse exactly what your point is, but if people want to communicate securely they should use Signal or something.
- federona 6y ago
  My point is that if someone hacks and steals all the data on your social media site then they can expose random people by doing analysis on the site's data and make individuals lose their job. Whether that is something good or bad depends on your point of view. Should the consequences of having opinions against mainstream views and venting about them in public make you liable for those views to your employer? Sometimes the venting is honestly stating your feeling about the subject which causes gasps, the firing of the recent Mandalorian star comes to mind.
  - 8note 6y ago
    The Disney example doesn't really square? She posted in public purposefully, and under her own name, whilst having a job where she's representing Disney with her name That's a very different case from some private individual speaking privately in a situation where they don't represent their employer For a more generic case, during your interview, you tell your prospective employer that you agree with their values and want to work together, then after getting hired, you tell them you disagree with their values. Should they still have to work with you? Eg. You become a teacher at a Catholic school, but you only pretended to be a Catholic in the interview
    - federona 6y ago
      What are corporate values? The only thing you are legitimately saying to your employer is you pay me and I do the work and we both make money. That is all. Anything more than that infringes on your personal rights outside of your employment, as these comments are my own. The fact that we have the reach of corporations way outside of work in public life is not right in my opinion, it's akin to slavery. This corporation employs people with these sorts of thoughts??? That does not really register in my mind as any sort of sound reasoning for dismissal, for having the wrong thoughts and saying them in public.
      - andrewzah 6y ago
        There is no right to a job. There is no right to immunity from consequences from saying things online. The end. If you don't like how Disney operates, then vote with your wallet. That's literally the only thing companies care about, and is the only reason why she was let go in the first place. Saying we should force companies to retain hires despite what they say online, is ridiculous.
        federona 6y ago
        If you were to make a general rule, it's saying if you want employment then don't say anything online, period. So it is in fact depriving any employee the right to speak about things publicly all the time. It's like putting a muzzle on a dog so he does not bark. If that's not slavery I don't know what is. As for right to employment, well how far can you push it. And how does that not violate white privilege principles or corporate privilege principles. We have a corporate class which holds most of the wealth and if you say anything you will lose the right to make a living. That smacks of privilege, in fact white privilege. Only the corporate class may speak. It's not sound in any way.

yrgulation 6y ago

The cto should focus on strategic thinking and have one or two devs that lead daily work - and code review for such basic issues (or use a code analyser) to detect sql, xss, xsrf, session management, password based user data encryption, message encryption, and other trivialities. Not that i like gab, but i wonder how many rookie mistakes like this one are then blamed on ”foreign agents” and other media bollox.

gkoberger 6y ago
You're right in general, however I think you're over-estimating the size of Gab. In this case, it's more of a "everyone gets a CxO title because there's fewer than 26 of us" type thing.
claytongulick 6y ago
I'm of the general mindset that the CTO should be the most technical. I think we see a lot of tech company failures when the CTO is just a manager type that doesn't understand the technology and doesn't have the ability to contribute to it.
- dividedbyzero 6y ago
  In every company I've ever worked for, and any company I know these kinds of things about, the position of a CTO is a high-level managerial role, with lots and lots of budgeting strategizing communcating yadda yadda, so you had better have someone on that seat who is a good manager and good at high-level, big-picture thinking and good with people and a very strong communicator. If you require that person to also be the most technical person in the room at all times, whew. Either that's a very tall order or recruiting/hiring needs work. More technical than that person who's spent a career getting absolutely ace in their niche? More technical than the data scientist who spends 8 hours a day digging really deep into bleeding edge neural networks? I'm totally with you that a manager should be able to understand the thing they manage to a certain (not too shallow) depth, but you hire experts for a reason, and in ordinary circumstances, and in an ordinary IT department, a C-level manager should not strive to out-expert the experts under their purview. That kind of micromanagement/smartassery will just drive away the experts, and then you need a new CTO and new experts and maybe go bust. Exception to the rule: If you're in a startup where the IT departmend consists of a CTO and one guy remoting in from Bulgaria who runs the servers and is really really cheap, you as the CTO actually should be the most technical person in the room. But once you hire the first actual expert, you should take a step back and get more big-picture-y.

zelon88 6y ago

> I'll cut them some slack if their public platforms have some bugs... Your generosity naively assumes that given enough time they would resolve your concerns. That is never the case with these anti-social social media companies. It's taboo to talk about, but the correlation between political conservatism and overwhelming amounts of technical debt leading to non-existent operational security is hard to overlook.

carmen_sandiego 6y ago
I’m not sure it’s taboo to talk about as much as it’s just a totally baseless claim.
- zelon88 6y ago
  Voat wasn't viable [1], 4Chan wasn't viable [2], 8Chan was screwed over by their own moderator [3], Gab obviously isn't secure [4], and Parler was neither secure nor viable [5]. Daily Stormer survived by the skin of their teeth [6]. While I realize that all major platforms have had their dark days, those days usually pale in comparison to a dark day at a conservative-based platform. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/22/22195115/voat-free-speech-right-wing-reddit-clone-shutdown-investor https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/22/22195115/voat-free-speec... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/09/25/absolutely-everything-you-need-to-know-to-understand-4chan-the-internets-own-bogeyman/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/09... [3] https://greatawakening.win/p/11SJjocsHm/-one-of-the-moderators-on-8kun-p/c/4DvnfIQPi0g https://greatawakening.win/p/11SJjocsHm/-one-of-the-moderato... [4] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/rookie-coding-mistake-prior-to-gab-hack-came-from-sites-cto/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/rookie-coding-mistak... [5] https://www.wired.com/story/parler-hack-data-public-posts-images-video/ https://www.wired.com/story/parler-hack-data-public-posts-im... [6] https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/24/16200002/daily-stormer-dreamhost-anonymous-ddos-attack https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/24/16200002/daily-stormer-dr...
  - carmen_sandiego 6y ago
    Why are we now conflating business viability with technical or security chops? I think you’ll find extremists of all stripes perform poorly, mostly due to the much smaller talent pools involved. Can you name a handful of highly successful extreme left tech companies? Moreover, assigning any random highly successful tech company as ‘leftist’ seems silly. What’s less leftist than a vehicle for minting billionaires and further enriching existing ones?

ugh123 6y ago

I think a lot of it also speaks to the pool of quality engineers who are willing to work for a company like Gab, Parler, etc. Companies like that appearing on your resume will no doubt cause friction with would-be employers down the line, for better or worse. I certainly wouldnt work there unless I was absolutely desperate and couldn't look more than a few years down the road.

lawnchair_larry 6y ago
It doesn’t say anything like that. I guess you missed the part about him being a facebook employee. Go ahead, say facebook hires low quality engineers...
- bitdizzy 6y ago
  Facebook hires low quality engineers.
- kcartlidge 6y ago
  Not saying they do (not the poster you responded to) but why would you assume they wouldn't hire low quality engineers? No recruitment/HR/filtering process is perfect, no candidates are perfect, no hiring decision is perfect. There seems to be an assumption that the big tech firms are inherently better at picking the better 'engineers'. Having experienced a lot of what they produce (not specifically Facebook, but Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc) I'm inclined to assume the opposite personally.
- orwin 6y ago
  The guy from facebook was not en engineer but a developper advocate. I'd say this is VERY different.
user-the-name 6y ago
I'd like to think people would not work for far-right hosts of hatred, racism, sexism and often terrorisms for other reasons than just "it would look bad on my CV". I would hope people would have enough of a moral compass to be able to tell that these companies are, in fact, not morally good.

0x4d464d48 6y ago

"move fast and break things" More like "move fast and break yourself."