6 ms·

There is something that doesn't sit right with me about the whistleblower. Yes, she is a data scientist which gives her many many extra points. But, she was a P

by shmatt 5y ago

There is something that doesn't sit right with me about the whistleblower. Yes, she is a data scientist which gives her many many extra points. But, she was a PM for 2 years in FAANG. Her actual scope of the what was going on in FB as a huge org, as she's trying to comment on (the "I want to fix FB" quotes from 60 minutes) Everyone I know who works in FAANG, FB specifically, and PMs even more specifically, really have little idea of whats going on in the bigger picture. They kind of understand their little piece of the puzzle, but even then things can get ambiguous sometimes (and this is intentional, as I understand the inner workings at FB) Bringing her in to the media and Congress as this star witness that understands exactly whats going on seems misleading. People from outside this world are taking her word like we are hearing from someone at the C-suite or an executive who has been with the company for 10+ years That, and she seems to falsely claim she is an officially titled co-founder of Hinge on her Linkedin

1024core 5y ago
From her profile: > In June 2019, she joined Facebook. There, she handled democracy and misinformation issues, as well as working on counterespionage as part of the civic misinformation team, according to her personal website. So she's not just a random "PM" in Facebook; she was intimately involved in what she's talking about. Please stop trying to spread disinformation.
intended 5y ago
Are there any specific parts of her testimony that you disagree with? From what I have seen, everything she has said tracks correctly, and does not go outside her realm of knowledge. She has limited her focus very clearly, for example on FB prioritizing reshares vs a known increased risk of violence. So she is in perfect position say that FB has chosen to prioritize growth over user safety.
walrus01 5y ago
> Everyone I know who works in FAANG, FB specifically, and PMs even more specifically, really have little idea of whats going on in the bigger picture That's exactly the thing about the banality of evil, any individual person working on some small subsystem or component of something in a FAANG, to them it might not immediately be apparent that what they're doing is enabling the corrosion of democracy and discourse. And enabling the monetization of peoples' attention into endlessly scrolling social media feedback loops. It's the end result of all the work of hundreds, or thousands of 'engineers' and 'product managers' in facebook working together on their own projects, combined together in aggregate, that turn it into a monster. You can also see the same thing in hardware and software engineers that work on some small discrete component of some piece of equipment in the defense industry. They might not agree with the total product as it's used in the real world (precision US weapons sold to Saudi Arabia and deployed in Yemen, for instance). But all that one engineer sees is the small item or subsystem that is within their scope of work.
- aierou 5y ago
  You just compared a social media company to a weapons manufacturer. Elsewhere, I see comparisons to cigarettes, oxycontin, gambling. It is easy to see how one might think Facebook to be evil if they are constantly bombarded with these false equivalencies.
  - gameswithgo 5y ago
    Nothing false about those equivalencies. In the case of cigarettes and Facebook you have the exact same practice of optimizing for addiction with no regard for the harm it does.
    - entropicdrifter 5y ago
      Not to mention targeting children specifically to foster deeper, longer-term addiction
  - OvidNaso 5y ago
    You really cant see the comparison to gambling? not so long ago most would think that was absurd to put on the list as well
  - JohnFen 5y ago
    How are they false? The similarities being talked about center around those companies specifically leveraging the mechanisms of addiction in order to make more money in spite of the fact that doing so harms people. I think a very good argument can be made that Facebook (among others) are doing this very thing.
    - aierou 5y ago
      Let me put it this way: how would you go about measuring the harm that Facebook or any other social media company causes? With cigarettes, oxycontin, or weapons manufacturers, you can look directly at the physical harm they cause. We have statistics and studies that require little effort to interpret. With social media, it is nearly impossible to connect physical or psychological harm to a platform over the course of someone's life. The papers that draw conclusions in this space are based on limited studies and polls that could be influenced by any number of external factors. We judge these things based on little more than feeling. Now, I think it would be great to be able to make informed decisions based on diligently collected data (and maybe that's what we should be fighting for) but we don't have that right now. Why, in this case, do we seem eager to throw scientific rigor and frankly due process out the window?
rightbyte 5y ago
Maybe she read the internal docs and meeting notes? Most employees wouldn't notice an proverbial elephant farm in another department aslong as it didn't involve them directly. Even if it was advertized in mails and on billboards ...
jasondigitized 5y ago
The importance here is she understands the B2C model for revenue which is to test and test some more and let the date optimize your funnel. That’s the story and that method has lots of unintended chickens coming home to roost
alfalfasprout 5y ago
Well, yes and no. While as a PM (or IC) she'd be primarily working on a scoped area of work, the reality is also that she likely didn't come to learn all this on her own. At nearly any large tech company it's pretty easy to get in touch with someone on another team and learn more about their work, etc. The fact that she's been able to get all this context and significant supporting documentation points to her not having gone about this totally solo (despite her claims). There's also something to note about things being intentionally ambiguous-- that's by design to prevent most ICs from putting together broader context. But it's not clear that it would prevent a highly motivated employee from amassing broader context. Like I said before, with even a bit more context other ICs can be looped in to fill in the gaps. You're giving Facebook far too much credit here.
- aardvarkr 5y ago
  FYI the lady was the Product Manager and ran the entire Civic Engagement group. She's not just a project manager working on a team of devs.
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    Every small engineering team I have worked on had its own product manager.
  - alfalfasprout 5y ago
    Right, but my point is that even if she ran the entire civic engagement group it's naive to think she couldn't find out more about what's going on in other orgs if properly motivated. She'd have to go out of her way to do it and do a fair amount of digging but it's far from impossible.
  - shmatt 5y ago
    >FYI the lady was the Product Manager and ran the entire Civic Engagement group. She's not just a project manager working on a team of devs. See, i'd just like to hear more of this * How many direct reports did she have? * What was her official FB level? * What level of management were in meetings with her? * Who did she directly report into? All really good context most people are ignoring
aardvarkr 5y ago
What's your point here? This lady is a PRODUCT manger and heads up the entire product, in this case Civic Integrity, which was directly charged with tamping down hate on the platform related to civic engagement. She is not a PROJECT manager like what you deal with on your engineering team. She is by definition an expert on this segment of Facebook and you're dismissing her wrongly for being a "PM". She's a Harvard MBA with a degree in Computer Engineering and experience at Google and Pinterest. She's qualified to have a pretty significant role in the company and rightly so earned the job that she has. EDIT: I looked into the claim that she co-founded Hinge and it's mostly accurate. She worked with Justin McLeod (Hinge CEO) to build "Secret Agent Cupid" which was Hinge before it rebranded with the launch of it's new mobile app.
- tinyhouse 5y ago
  Her engineering degree from Olin is more impressive than her MBA from Harvard. If you highlight just one then highlight that. Every idiot with money can get an MBA from Harvard (this is going to be down-voted badly I know; but don't get me wrong, I worked with a lot of very smart MBAs but also with many idiots; the distribution is very wide) Also, a Facebook PM is not a senior role. While she does have a lot of experience, I doubt she led anything significant at FB with a PM role. With her experience I would expect her to be at least senior PM if not Principal. Probably didn't do well in the interview or maybe concerns about lack of promotions anywhere she worked.
  - johntiger1 5y ago
    Agree with the Olin point. But disagree on the scope argument; I agree with GP about banality of evil - doesn't matter how small or minor it is
- koheripbal 5y ago
  The issue is that her experience at Facebook did not put her in a position know the company strategy.
  - crooked-v 5y ago
aaroninsf 5y ago
There is not much mystery here IMO. The obvious options: - she went in with an agenda from the beginning intending to get this stuff - she went in, discovered that the sociopathic pattern she'd been warned about and had a nagging doubt about was worse than she though, got the religion, and got the stuff As an aside, Facebook hires smart. Both of these and her success are consistent with a smart and motivated person. Isn't that what we're supposed to be selecting for? Isn't drive and high functioning what Facebook is filtering for? More: isn't setting aside moral misgivings and agonizing, in pursuit of achievement of your mission, EXACTLY what Facebook is trying to filter for...? Always a shame when the sword cuts the wielder! But back to the point: does it matter which of these is true? Not to me, or to democracy; the bottom line is that it takes an action like this to force the endless malfeasance, amorality, and actual destructive behavior into public consciousness. Not least when fighting a machine that seeks to stifle criticism and control narrative: this is indeed exactly what she is bringing receipts on. The supposition seems to be that she is a plant, sent on a mission to bring down Facebook. Let's say that's the case. I have no issue with that, as Facebook belongs down. I don't care who paid for this skullduggery—especially if it's the US taxpayer. The GOP has done everything it can to curtail the ability of the state to challenge the power of accumulated capital. I would applaud a game leveling asymmetric warfare style methods to do the state's work. Indeed, this would be a remarkable and rare return on taxpayer money, should it bring about the dismantling of their profoundly caustic monopoly.
gameswithgo 5y ago
So who do you propose to bring in and testify against Facebook who does understand the bigger picture, shmatt? Are you arguing in good faith here?
- koheripbal 5y ago
  At minimum it needs to be someone who is aware of the company strategy. She simply doesnt have any relevant knowledge. This is all politics.
  - the_snooze 5y ago
    "Oh, they're a Corporal? They don't know the strategy." "Oh, they're a General? They don't know what's actually in the trenches."
    - Graffur 5y ago
      Question both then?
- shmatt 5y ago
  like i've written in other comments She has proven evil happened, we're now asking who directed it. The first thing we need to know is who did she report into, and who the most senior person in her teams meetings was. From there just keep going up, it will stop at some point (I have no doubt there will be zuck martyrs, just wondering at which level)
silverlake 5y ago
She collected all this info from Facebook Workplace. Nearly everything is available there. It’s very open.
6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
> Bringing her in to the media and Congress as this star witness that understands exactly whats going on seems misleading I mean, they tried bringing Zuckerberg in, but he apparently just lied, so she seems like the best option to get honest informed answers.
kentonv 5y ago
> But, she was a PM for 2 years in FAANG. More like 15 years. I've known Frances since 2009 when she was a PM at Google, where she worked on a few products including Google+. She also spent several years an Pinterest which, while not technically a FAANG, is certainly a major social network that does lots of algorithmic ranking. She is definitely an expert in the topics she is testifying about.
- shmatt 5y ago
  my point was, people who work for 2 years at FAANG, in 1 company, far from understand the complete scope. I did not mean she was 2 years into her career It can take 6 months to just fully understand what a 7 person team does After 2 years at Facebook, does she really understand the full strategy 4 levels above her? Her leak is super important, but she doesn't have all the answers the media is claiming she does
  - kentonv 5y ago
    I think her fundamental argument isn't even really about Facebook specifically. It's about algorithmic content ranking being intrinsically harmful to society. The thing that's specific to Facebook is that they actually have a ton of research quantifying this -- which she has released -- and yet they are still all-in on it. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of complexity to understand here about how Facebook works as a company. Their commitment to optimizing metrics over all else is well-known already. The interesting thing is the research showing how harmful that is.
- Graffur 5y ago
  I'm not surprised G+ wasn't brought up earlier. What a failure
farcebook 5y ago
So, what, we should just wait until Zuckerberg decides to get his act together one day and admit he's been a wee bit evil? The whole point of whistleblowing is so the average worker cna tattle on the unethical decisions made by leadership. The C-suite isn't going to volunteer for the guillotine.
unsui 5y ago
This is textbook ad hominem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem > attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself Question her motives or qualifications, rather than the claims themselves.
- shmatt 5y ago
  No. I want to see c-level, senior vp's, and around them start answering questions. Now that its in congress, subpoenas are pretty easy
  - elliekelly 5y ago
    Lucky for Zuck he’s spent the last decade cultivating lots of relationships in DC...
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  To me at least, something feels very off about this whole situation. Out of the blue some larger-than-life person comes out of the woodwork and is lauded with attention while the big news outlets make this massive push against Facebook, all the while congress is holding hearings and a massive outage happens at Facebook right after the New York Times published an article titled "Facebook Is Weaker Than We Knew." Edit: She is remarkably calm, well-spoken, knowledgeable, and articulate for someone testifying before the Senate for the very first time - all while being broadcast around the globe, live on television. Perhaps she's simply a natural, but I sense she received some coaching and preparation beforehand. Combine all of this with politicians chomping at the bit to fight online 'misinformation' and I become very skeptical. It certainly could all just be a perfect storm and Mark Z. has some terrible luck. But again, my intuition is telling me there is something coordinated going on here.
OldHand2018 5y ago
Let me ask you something: How much of the "bigger picture" did Snowden have? Because, you know, one person is male and the other is female, and I'd really like to believe that gender has nothing to do with it.
- shmatt 5y ago
  They're pretty much seem the same to me Same with Snowden. The person who needs to answer the question is 10 levels above him She is showing us "evil stuff happened" The question we're asking is "Did evil stuff happen on purpose, and who directed it" Both Snowden and Her can't honestly answer than question (Snowden wasn't really an official employee IIRC) My issue is her portrayal not by herself but mostly by the media like she can prove the latter
unethical_ban 5y ago
>Everyone I know who works in FAANG, FB specifically, and PMs even more specifically, really have little idea of whats going on in the bigger picture. First, I disagree with your assertion, based on my experience in, well, working anywhere. Two years as a PM in the field on which she is blowing the whistle is not a lack of credibility (others are saying her PM experience at FB dealt with the kinds of issues that would make her pretty informed). Second, if what you say is true, then what kind of Hell is Facebook? This behemoth of a company, this pillar of society is somehow so large that only a handful of privileged overseers can possibly understand its mechanics? Tear it down, then.

by shmatt 5y ago

1024core 5y ago

From her profile: > In June 2019, she joined Facebook. There, she handled democracy and misinformation issues, as well as working on counterespionage as part of the civic misinformation team, according to her personal website. So she's not just a random "PM" in Facebook; she was intimately involved in what she's talking about. Please stop trying to spread disinformation.

intended 5y ago

Are there any specific parts of her testimony that you disagree with? From what I have seen, everything she has said tracks correctly, and does not go outside her realm of knowledge. She has limited her focus very clearly, for example on FB prioritizing reshares vs a known increased risk of violence. So she is in perfect position say that FB has chosen to prioritize growth over user safety.

walrus01 5y ago

> Everyone I know who works in FAANG, FB specifically, and PMs even more specifically, really have little idea of whats going on in the bigger picture That's exactly the thing about the banality of evil, any individual person working on some small subsystem or component of something in a FAANG, to them it might not immediately be apparent that what they're doing is enabling the corrosion of democracy and discourse. And enabling the monetization of peoples' attention into endlessly scrolling social media feedback loops. It's the end result of all the work of hundreds, or thousands of 'engineers' and 'product managers' in facebook working together on their own projects, combined together in aggregate, that turn it into a monster. You can also see the same thing in hardware and software engineers that work on some small discrete component of some piece of equipment in the defense industry. They might not agree with the total product as it's used in the real world (precision US weapons sold to Saudi Arabia and deployed in Yemen, for instance). But all that one engineer sees is the small item or subsystem that is within their scope of work.

aierou 5y ago
You just compared a social media company to a weapons manufacturer. Elsewhere, I see comparisons to cigarettes, oxycontin, gambling. It is easy to see how one might think Facebook to be evil if they are constantly bombarded with these false equivalencies.
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  Nothing false about those equivalencies. In the case of cigarettes and Facebook you have the exact same practice of optimizing for addiction with no regard for the harm it does.
  - entropicdrifter 5y ago
    Not to mention targeting children specifically to foster deeper, longer-term addiction
- OvidNaso 5y ago
  You really cant see the comparison to gambling? not so long ago most would think that was absurd to put on the list as well
- JohnFen 5y ago
  How are they false? The similarities being talked about center around those companies specifically leveraging the mechanisms of addiction in order to make more money in spite of the fact that doing so harms people. I think a very good argument can be made that Facebook (among others) are doing this very thing.
  - aierou 5y ago
    Let me put it this way: how would you go about measuring the harm that Facebook or any other social media company causes? With cigarettes, oxycontin, or weapons manufacturers, you can look directly at the physical harm they cause. We have statistics and studies that require little effort to interpret. With social media, it is nearly impossible to connect physical or psychological harm to a platform over the course of someone's life. The papers that draw conclusions in this space are based on limited studies and polls that could be influenced by any number of external factors. We judge these things based on little more than feeling. Now, I think it would be great to be able to make informed decisions based on diligently collected data (and maybe that's what we should be fighting for) but we don't have that right now. Why, in this case, do we seem eager to throw scientific rigor and frankly due process out the window?

rightbyte 5y ago

Maybe she read the internal docs and meeting notes? Most employees wouldn't notice an proverbial elephant farm in another department aslong as it didn't involve them directly. Even if it was advertized in mails and on billboards ...

jasondigitized 5y ago

The importance here is she understands the B2C model for revenue which is to test and test some more and let the date optimize your funnel. That’s the story and that method has lots of unintended chickens coming home to roost

alfalfasprout 5y ago

Well, yes and no. While as a PM (or IC) she'd be primarily working on a scoped area of work, the reality is also that she likely didn't come to learn all this on her own. At nearly any large tech company it's pretty easy to get in touch with someone on another team and learn more about their work, etc. The fact that she's been able to get all this context and significant supporting documentation points to her not having gone about this totally solo (despite her claims). There's also something to note about things being intentionally ambiguous-- that's by design to prevent most ICs from putting together broader context. But it's not clear that it would prevent a highly motivated employee from amassing broader context. Like I said before, with even a bit more context other ICs can be looped in to fill in the gaps. You're giving Facebook far too much credit here.

aardvarkr 5y ago
FYI the lady was the Product Manager and ran the entire Civic Engagement group. She's not just a project manager working on a team of devs.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  Every small engineering team I have worked on had its own product manager.
- alfalfasprout 5y ago
  Right, but my point is that even if she ran the entire civic engagement group it's naive to think she couldn't find out more about what's going on in other orgs if properly motivated. She'd have to go out of her way to do it and do a fair amount of digging but it's far from impossible.
- shmatt 5y ago
  >FYI the lady was the Product Manager and ran the entire Civic Engagement group. She's not just a project manager working on a team of devs. See, i'd just like to hear more of this * How many direct reports did she have? * What was her official FB level? * What level of management were in meetings with her? * Who did she directly report into? All really good context most people are ignoring

aardvarkr 5y ago

What's your point here? This lady is a PRODUCT manger and heads up the entire product, in this case Civic Integrity, which was directly charged with tamping down hate on the platform related to civic engagement. She is not a PROJECT manager like what you deal with on your engineering team. She is by definition an expert on this segment of Facebook and you're dismissing her wrongly for being a "PM". She's a Harvard MBA with a degree in Computer Engineering and experience at Google and Pinterest. She's qualified to have a pretty significant role in the company and rightly so earned the job that she has. EDIT: I looked into the claim that she co-founded Hinge and it's mostly accurate. She worked with Justin McLeod (Hinge CEO) to build "Secret Agent Cupid" which was Hinge before it rebranded with the launch of it's new mobile app.

tinyhouse 5y ago
Her engineering degree from Olin is more impressive than her MBA from Harvard. If you highlight just one then highlight that. Every idiot with money can get an MBA from Harvard (this is going to be down-voted badly I know; but don't get me wrong, I worked with a lot of very smart MBAs but also with many idiots; the distribution is very wide) Also, a Facebook PM is not a senior role. While she does have a lot of experience, I doubt she led anything significant at FB with a PM role. With her experience I would expect her to be at least senior PM if not Principal. Probably didn't do well in the interview or maybe concerns about lack of promotions anywhere she worked.
- johntiger1 5y ago
  Agree with the Olin point. But disagree on the scope argument; I agree with GP about banality of evil - doesn't matter how small or minor it is
koheripbal 5y ago
The issue is that her experience at Facebook did not put her in a position know the company strategy.
- crooked-v 5y ago

aaroninsf 5y ago

There is not much mystery here IMO. The obvious options: - she went in with an agenda from the beginning intending to get this stuff - she went in, discovered that the sociopathic pattern she'd been warned about and had a nagging doubt about was worse than she though, got the religion, and got the stuff As an aside, Facebook hires smart. Both of these and her success are consistent with a smart and motivated person. Isn't that what we're supposed to be selecting for? Isn't drive and high functioning what Facebook is filtering for? More: isn't setting aside moral misgivings and agonizing, in pursuit of achievement of your mission, EXACTLY what Facebook is trying to filter for...? Always a shame when the sword cuts the wielder! But back to the point: does it matter which of these is true? Not to me, or to democracy; the bottom line is that it takes an action like this to force the endless malfeasance, amorality, and actual destructive behavior into public consciousness. Not least when fighting a machine that seeks to stifle criticism and control narrative: this is indeed exactly what she is bringing receipts on. The supposition seems to be that she is a plant, sent on a mission to bring down Facebook. Let's say that's the case. I have no issue with that, as Facebook belongs down. I don't care who paid for this skullduggery—especially if it's the US taxpayer. The GOP has done everything it can to curtail the ability of the state to challenge the power of accumulated capital. I would applaud a game leveling asymmetric warfare style methods to do the state's work. Indeed, this would be a remarkable and rare return on taxpayer money, should it bring about the dismantling of their profoundly caustic monopoly.

gameswithgo 5y ago

So who do you propose to bring in and testify against Facebook who does understand the bigger picture, shmatt? Are you arguing in good faith here?

koheripbal 5y ago
At minimum it needs to be someone who is aware of the company strategy. She simply doesnt have any relevant knowledge. This is all politics.
- the_snooze 5y ago
  "Oh, they're a Corporal? They don't know the strategy." "Oh, they're a General? They don't know what's actually in the trenches."
  - Graffur 5y ago
    Question both then?
shmatt 5y ago
like i've written in other comments She has proven evil happened, we're now asking who directed it. The first thing we need to know is who did she report into, and who the most senior person in her teams meetings was. From there just keep going up, it will stop at some point (I have no doubt there will be zuck martyrs, just wondering at which level)

silverlake 5y ago

She collected all this info from Facebook Workplace. Nearly everything is available there. It’s very open.

6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago

> Bringing her in to the media and Congress as this star witness that understands exactly whats going on seems misleading I mean, they tried bringing Zuckerberg in, but he apparently just lied, so she seems like the best option to get honest informed answers.

kentonv 5y ago

> But, she was a PM for 2 years in FAANG. More like 15 years. I've known Frances since 2009 when she was a PM at Google, where she worked on a few products including Google+. She also spent several years an Pinterest which, while not technically a FAANG, is certainly a major social network that does lots of algorithmic ranking. She is definitely an expert in the topics she is testifying about.

shmatt 5y ago
my point was, people who work for 2 years at FAANG, in 1 company, far from understand the complete scope. I did not mean she was 2 years into her career It can take 6 months to just fully understand what a 7 person team does After 2 years at Facebook, does she really understand the full strategy 4 levels above her? Her leak is super important, but she doesn't have all the answers the media is claiming she does
- kentonv 5y ago
  I think her fundamental argument isn't even really about Facebook specifically. It's about algorithmic content ranking being intrinsically harmful to society. The thing that's specific to Facebook is that they actually have a ton of research quantifying this -- which she has released -- and yet they are still all-in on it. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of complexity to understand here about how Facebook works as a company. Their commitment to optimizing metrics over all else is well-known already. The interesting thing is the research showing how harmful that is.
Graffur 5y ago
I'm not surprised G+ wasn't brought up earlier. What a failure

farcebook 5y ago

So, what, we should just wait until Zuckerberg decides to get his act together one day and admit he's been a wee bit evil? The whole point of whistleblowing is so the average worker cna tattle on the unethical decisions made by leadership. The C-suite isn't going to volunteer for the guillotine.

unsui 5y ago

This is textbook ad hominem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem > attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself Question her motives or qualifications, rather than the claims themselves.

shmatt 5y ago
No. I want to see c-level, senior vp's, and around them start answering questions. Now that its in congress, subpoenas are pretty easy
- elliekelly 5y ago
  Lucky for Zuck he’s spent the last decade cultivating lots of relationships in DC...
BitwiseFool 5y ago
To me at least, something feels very off about this whole situation. Out of the blue some larger-than-life person comes out of the woodwork and is lauded with attention while the big news outlets make this massive push against Facebook, all the while congress is holding hearings and a massive outage happens at Facebook right after the New York Times published an article titled "Facebook Is Weaker Than We Knew." Edit: She is remarkably calm, well-spoken, knowledgeable, and articulate for someone testifying before the Senate for the very first time - all while being broadcast around the globe, live on television. Perhaps she's simply a natural, but I sense she received some coaching and preparation beforehand. Combine all of this with politicians chomping at the bit to fight online 'misinformation' and I become very skeptical. It certainly could all just be a perfect storm and Mark Z. has some terrible luck. But again, my intuition is telling me there is something coordinated going on here.

OldHand2018 5y ago

Let me ask you something: How much of the "bigger picture" did Snowden have? Because, you know, one person is male and the other is female, and I'd really like to believe that gender has nothing to do with it.

shmatt 5y ago
They're pretty much seem the same to me Same with Snowden. The person who needs to answer the question is 10 levels above him She is showing us "evil stuff happened" The question we're asking is "Did evil stuff happen on purpose, and who directed it" Both Snowden and Her can't honestly answer than question (Snowden wasn't really an official employee IIRC) My issue is her portrayal not by herself but mostly by the media like she can prove the latter

unethical_ban 5y ago

>Everyone I know who works in FAANG, FB specifically, and PMs even more specifically, really have little idea of whats going on in the bigger picture. First, I disagree with your assertion, based on my experience in, well, working anywhere. Two years as a PM in the field on which she is blowing the whistle is not a lack of credibility (others are saying her PM experience at FB dealt with the kinds of issues that would make her pretty informed). Second, if what you say is true, then what kind of Hell is Facebook? This behemoth of a company, this pillar of society is somehow so large that only a handful of privileged overseers can possibly understand its mechanics? Tear it down, then.