3 ms·

Facebook employee here. A significant chunk of onboarding is driving the message through that if you abuse your powers as an engineer to access personal user da

Facebook employee here. A significant chunk of onboarding is driving the message through that if you abuse your powers as an engineer to access personal user data, you will be insta-fired without warning. There are a number of checks in place to ensure that employees that don't need access to the data for their specific work cannot get it either. Additionally, the privacy review process for new products/features is extremely stringent and time consuming. Product teams have been hamstrung significantly, with some engineers I know complaining that they're not even able to get half as much work done as they used to.

nullc 5y ago
> you will be insta-fired without warning. And not also sued and reported for criminal prosecution? Because if someone didn't particular want a job at facebook, but interviewed for the experience and got the job or had been working there and wasn't happy there and was ready to quit-- the threat of instant termination alone may not be that much of a deterrent.
acituan 5y ago
> A significant chunk of onboarding is driving the message through that if you abuse your powers as an engineer to access personal user data, you will be insta-fired without warning. I think focusing on a rogue employee as the threat it missing the mark. The real threat is the ability for huge corporations to legitimize institutional access to data ("business reasons"), and to fight the legal fight if they are caught doing something wrong. Moral hazards of this mode of failure arguably has much more cumulative societal damage (e.g. Cambridge Analytica). In other words, I worry less about an evil employee reading my messages than a scaled up corporate machinery milking all my data for dollars that feeds the machine back and also can fight any fight at the courts, DC and the public eye.

3 ms·

Facebook employee here. A significant chunk of onboarding is driving the message through that if you abuse your powers as an engineer to access personal user da

by nicolashahn 5y ago

nullc 5y ago
> you will be insta-fired without warning. And not also sued and reported for criminal prosecution? Because if someone didn't particular want a job at facebook, but interviewed for the experience and got the job or had been working there and wasn't happy there and was ready to quit-- the threat of instant termination alone may not be that much of a deterrent.
acituan 5y ago
> A significant chunk of onboarding is driving the message through that if you abuse your powers as an engineer to access personal user data, you will be insta-fired without warning. I think focusing on a rogue employee as the threat it missing the mark. The real threat is the ability for huge corporations to legitimize institutional access to data ("business reasons"), and to fight the legal fight if they are caught doing something wrong. Moral hazards of this mode of failure arguably has much more cumulative societal damage (e.g. Cambridge Analytica). In other words, I worry less about an evil employee reading my messages than a scaled up corporate machinery milking all my data for dollars that feeds the machine back and also can fight any fight at the courts, DC and the public eye.