14 ms·

Facebook’s attempt to smear the whistleblower

255 points by fireball_blaze 5y ago

ai_ja_nai 5y ago
FYI, the official reply: https://about.fb.com/news/2021/09/research-teen-well-being-and-instagram/ https://about.fb.com/news/2021/09/research-teen-well-being-a...
fireball_blaze 5y ago
"If the best Facebook can come up with is this disgusting attempt at character assassination, Haugen is telling God’s own truth. We should listen to her." A pretty powerful closing statement IMHO.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  >Facebook PR: “Today a Senate Commerce subcommittee held a hearing with a former product manager at Facebook who worked for the company for less than two years, had no direct reports, never attended a decision-point meeting with C-level executives — and testified more than six times to not working on the subject matter in question.” This doesn't sound like character assassination, it's Facebook claiming that she wasn't informed enough. It would be like the NSA telling us not to listen to Snowden because he didn't actually work on the programs that he obtained documents about.
  - chalst 5y ago
    Character assassination is not done in one press release. It's done in a campaign of PRs and cossetting friendly journalists and newspapers. Perhaps it's premature to call it character assassination, but we've seen this play out quite a few times.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Smoosh 5y ago
      I believe that the term of art is "backgrounding". As in the company provides "background" information such as seems to be the case here. Of course, this is really the company framing the conversation and deflecting the criticisms without addressing them. I see the discussion here is largely fixated on whether this constitutes a "smear" or not. So, it seems to be working from Facebook's point of view as we are not discussing the actual allegations against them.
  - compscistd 5y ago
    It’s a rather unconvincing but mean way to discount someone. If anything, FB saying how unrelated she is to these problems absolves her of being a part of it. Focus on the documents. Despite that, not everyone has the will to connect these dots.
  - melvinmt 5y ago
    Sounds to me this type of language can also backfire; next step of Congress could be to then subpoena someone who did work on the subject matter and did have C-level exec access...
  - rustymonday 5y ago
    You're not wrong. But Facebook's attempt to discredit Frances Haugen is poor. From the congressional hearing today, she did not answer questions beyond her expertise [1], and she had over a decade of relevant experience in Engagement Based Ranking algorithms [2], which was largely the focus of the hearing. [1] https://youtu.be/GoSPmqqKams?t=4160 https://youtu.be/GoSPmqqKams?t=4160 [2] https://youtu.be/GoSPmqqKams?t=3482 https://youtu.be/GoSPmqqKams?t=3482
- adolph 5y ago
  "telling God’s own truth" Tremendously convincing.
  - amelius 5y ago
    As opposed to alternative truths.
    - adolph 5y ago
      Just as long as a stack of bibles is involved.
      - boomboomsubban 5y ago
        The use of "God" in that statement refers to an objective source. While I'm not a fan of the phrase, it clearly means an absolute truth. No bibles necessary.
        adolph 5y ago
        > The use of "God" in that statement refers to an objective source. Do tell.
        boomboomsubban 5y ago
        Like I said, it means a supposed absolute truth. As there is no objective source, you can use a term for what would be an objective source, "god."
        adolph 5y ago
        "[A] supposed absolute truth" Is that like a redundancy (absolute and truth) wrapped in a contradiction (supposed and absolute truth)? If there is no such thing (i.e. no objective source) why would one use any term for it? Why would one modify truth to be "god's own?" Is it a rhetorical claim to the authority/authenticity of an unseen third party?
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  What a heavily editorialized statement for something that isn't marked as opinion. The whole article reeks of being written by someone who literally hates Facebook. And the use of the term "God's own truth" feels like a really underhanded and unjustified rhetorical trick. To use a analogy, It feels like they are declaring a winner during the opening argument of the prosecution, before the defense has even had a chance to fully respond: "If Facebook had evidence, it would show it." Doesn't the author realize that kind of counter evidence will come later?
  - commandlinefan 5y ago
    > someone who literally hates Facebook No, the author doesn't hate Facebook, nor does the "whistleblower". This isn't being drive by hate, it's being driven by love: love of government-mandated censorship. They're not alone, either, Zuckerberg himself is a huge fan; that's why his pushback here was so weak. Facebook was running TV commercials last summer calling for tighter legal restriction on social media.
- amelius 5y ago
  Sounds more like a logical fallacy.
- spfzero 5y ago
  What she's telling, or not telling, is irrelevant, and indeed, partly because she has little experience at FB and not in a position that would make her privy to nefarious plots. What is relevant, is the documents, which are not being released in full. Only after they are will we see the full picture, so anything happening before that is just manufactured narrative to serve someone's purpose.
hellohntoday 5y ago
Zuck is having to up his being a dick game... Bezos is really bringing the fight to him as world's biggest douche. What a fascinating battle. It's hard to pick a winner, right now they are neck and neck.
cpr 5y ago
I'm sure what she's saying is only part of the evil that Facebook represents, but there's something fishy about the whole setup. Why is she getting full media coverage and support, when previous whistleblowers were roundly ignored? She's a very wealthy person (1B estimated), so perhaps she's fairly well insulated from any blowback? But again, why is now the time to pile on Facebook, and why this person? [edit] Hint: She's in fact calling for more censorship of the views she doesn't like. [edit] Greenwald nails it (just published): https://greenwald.substack.com/p/democrats-and-media-do-not-want-to https://greenwald.substack.com/p/democrats-and-media-do-not-...
- buitreVirtual 5y ago
  It's called a tipping point. Previous critics made similar denunciations, but most people and even the media just shrugged and pretended nothing bad was happening. It takes time for society to acknowledge inconvenient truths. Plus, here, Haugen provided a wealth of documentation.
- leahbarton 5y ago
  What's your source on her wealth? I'm only finding second hand sources stating up to 5 million...
  - dntrkv 5y ago
    There is no source because nobody under the C-level is worth anywhere close to that much.
    - gruez 5y ago
      maybe 1B is family wealth rather than personal wealth?
    - busterarm 5y ago
      She's one of the cofounders of Hinge, which was acquired by Match Group.
thrill 5y ago
How dare Facebook try to defend itself against public accusations.
- fireball_blaze 5y ago
  The point the author is making is that the rebuttal has very little substance. The signal to noise ratio is low.
- falcolas 5y ago
  As the article pointed out, they didn't defend themselves. They simply attempted to discredit the whistleblower, and change the subject. Let them defend themselves without character assassination, please.
  - rPlayer6554 5y ago
    > Facebook PR: “Today a Senate Commerce subcommittee held a hearing with a former product manager at Facebook who worked for the company for less than two years, had no direct reports, never attended a decision-point meeting with C-level executives — and testified more than six times to not working on the subject matter in question.” Where does it mention her character??
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      Where does it address "the subject matter in question"? She leaked 18k documents. How does the number of direct reports she supervised affect their veracity?
      - _3u10 5y ago
        They are addressing the testimony provided, not the documents which have not been provided. Generally after hacking a company, the documents are provided in a ZIP for everyone to download. Information wants to be free, but we are only being provided with her summary of the documents rather than the evidence itself.
0235005 5y ago
Facebook is staring to show some really bad cracks. I think they should start checking their PR a bit more because if they follow this path, they could have congress in their neck for some time.
whatshisface 5y ago
Has anyone got the documents themselves, or only reporter's descriptions of the documents?
- adolph 5y ago
  Yes. At this point in the world we need not take anyone's word for what a corpus says or does not say. Either the data, query, and processing exist and are documented or they may as well be making things up. Public forkable repo or gtfo.
  - josephg 5y ago
    Facebook would fight tooth and nail to get those documents removed if they show up on GitHub. They’d win, too - since they own copyright.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107 > Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. (Emphasis mine.)
      - falcolas 5y ago
        Fair use is a positive defense though, so you'd have to go through a trial (assumption being Facebook throws enough lawyers at it to make it impossible for a "it's obviously fair use" argument work) to assert it.
    - adolph 5y ago
      A repo need not be in a US or any jurisdiction. If it is important enough to have legislative talking time, it is important enough to be made public for people to make their own decisions about it. By keeping it private this is all hat and no cattle.
jaywalk 5y ago
It's tough to call Facebook's response a "smear" or "disgusting attempt at character assassination" since it didn't address her character at all. It certainly does attempt to discredit her, and it is cowardly and ultimately doesn't address the issues she brought up. But the author of this article is a bit hyperbolic.
- shill_cunt 5y ago
  screw Facebook. i hope they are regulated out of existence. stop shilling for them.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 5y ago
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klelatti 5y ago
Top comment from the FT (paraphrased somewhat) > If this is all that your comms department can get through legal, you know what’s being said is almost 100% true.
koboll 5y ago
Okay, so Facebook has said she - worked there for less than two years and had no direct reports - never attended some sort of key meeting - did not work on the subject matter in question ...and therefore, she lacks context which undermines some of her claims. Which of those is a matter of character, or a "disgusting" attack? They might be wrong, or they might be right but bringing up irrelevancies, but the writer is acting like stating these is some sort of reprehensible smear.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  because they're not even attempting to refute anything she says, which the Verge article points out. If you're going to try to smear someone by attacking their lack of experience it would probably make sense to point out how that lack of experience manifests itself in errors in her judgement. Of course they cannot do that because she is literally citing their own words. Which is why this is just a thinly veiled, pathetic attack on a worker.
  - caminante 5y ago
    >If you're going to try to smear someone by attacking their lack of experience Re-read the parent comment. How is the whistleblower getting smeared based on the assertions above? Are they not factual AND relevant? edit: I see comments below talking past this sub-thread. Let's get down to definitions. > Smear: damage the reputation of (someone) by false accusations; slander. At best, the article's premise that FB's claims "smear" the whistleblower is flawed and non-constructive even if you're seeking to slit FB's throat.
    - Barrin92 5y ago
      they're not relevant at all because you don't even need to work at facebook to disseminate facebook's research. It's a smear because it's a completely irrelevant ad hominem. The research is straight forward enough, and now public, so that everyone can actually come to the exact same conclusion she did simply by reading it. What she has done is made it public. And Facebook does not refute is because they cannot, so they go after the person's CV. Can you explain to me using basic logic what the connection is between your career status at facebook and reading research of the effects of facebook products on its users? what's next, do I need to work at Exxon to understand climate science?
fedsglow 5y ago
Anyone else thinking this lady glows?
xqcgrek2 5y ago
The smear here is actually against Facebook. The whistleblower is clearly being boosted by Democratic operatives [1] and appeared in front of Congress the day after 60 minutes. [1] Jen Psaki's former employer https://www.dailywire.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-leftist-activist-lawyer-ukraine-impeachment https://www.dailywire.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-leftis...
- etchalon 5y ago
  Yes, the smear is against Facebook, and not the person releasing internal research from Facebook itself, that was not written by the whistleblower. And obviously, discounting someone presenting factual evidence that at the moment is unchallenged based on perceived personal politics is fair game, reasonable, and the measure of good faith discussion.
- mthoms 5y ago
  Wow. That was some hit piece. Nothing was spared — They even managed to "casually" reveal her sexuality. For some reason. Absolutely disgusting. I can't believe intelligent people read, let alone cite, this Enquirer-level garbage.
  - listless 5y ago
    Ok yes. But lots of things are true here 1) that’s a hit piece and 2) Francis is all about Francis and 3) Facebook is an awful company.
ryandrake 5y ago
I always liked Edward R. Murrow's response to Senator McCarthy's attempt to smear him: "Since he made no reference to any statements of fact that we made, we must conclude that he found no errors of fact." 1: https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/edwardrmurrowtomccarthy.htm https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/edwardrmurrowtomcc...
- cratermoon 5y ago
  Murrow really was a treasure.
- prox 5y ago
  Brilliant. Ever since watching “good night, and good luck” Edward R Murrow has been a favorite.
- dado3212 5y ago
  I think they're also saying that there's issues of fact?
  - scotuswroteus 5y ago
    cite em
fleddr 5y ago
Not seeing any "character assassination" in any of the quotes. None of Facebook's defense lines, low quality as they may be, seem overly personal. For the record, I fully side with the whistleblower's claims. It's just that this article is very emotional, and could have been so much more. This is a fascinating quote the author failed to address fully: "Facebook PR: “Despite all this, we agree on one thing; it’s time to begin to create standard rules for the internet. It’s been 25 years since the rules for the internet have been updated, and instead of expecting the industry to make societal decisions that belong to legislators, it is time for Congress to act." Facebook has a point here. We don't even know what Facebook is. A media company? A news organization? A shop? A dating site? And if it does all of these things, and does so at planetary scale, is has the potential to do harm to big parts of the world, in countless ways. Yet there's pretty much zero rules. I think we vastly underestimate how complicated the balancing act is. If Instagram does mental harm to teenage girls, whilst this very likely was not the original intent, what exactly is the "correct" course of action, in a way codified in law? Should it be forbidden for other girls (influencers) to broadcast their beauty lifestyle? Should there be a maximum time cap for consumers to browse the feed? The China way? Should influencers just be deplatformed if we don't like them, taking away their income? None of these rules or laws seem very plausible or sane to me, and this is just one example of how Facebook can do harm. Anyway, to end constructively, I'd say a first step is to force Facebook to give full access to its underlying (anonymized) data. If we've created a planetary-scale monster, we should treat it as a special case.
- fleddr 5y ago
  I forgot to add one important part: guess which company will be uniquely capable to comply with whatever regulation comes up with? You guessed correctly. Guess whom can't comply? Indeed, everybody else. That's why they welcome regulation.
- cherrycherry98 5y ago
  Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing for regulation for years. He wants this for two reasons: 1. Abdicating responsibility so that when the public or politicians complain about Facebook hosting or not hosting some content he can say it's not his problem, he follows the law. 2. The second is for regulatory capture. Once a social network gets a stigma of being uncool, people move on to the next thing. His status and net worth are tied up in an entity he must aggressively defend against becoming the next MySpace. If he can't buy out upstarts anymore because of antitrust then the next best protection is to make it so difficult to build a new network without a team of lawyers and moderators that no one would even think about doing it.
andyxor 5y ago
[flagged]
zozin 5y ago
This is what passes for journalism these days? This reads like a snarky blog or Reddit post than an article. I’m surprised a few Zuckerberg memes weren’t included. I say this as someone who wants Facebook broken up or highly regulated.
_dw7s 5y ago
Reading hacker news comments today, I found out that: 1. this is fishy 2. she is a political operative for the dems 3. she has a liberal bias therefore this is all fishy and she cannot be trusted 4. she is rich and has some backing so she is definitely a political operative. This one is especially true because if she was poor Facebook would have been SLAPPed her already into shutting up. So there's no winning here. 5. (US) adults are responsible enough for the government to not have to regulate social media. Let's conveniently temporarily forget about the Rohingya minority. 6. Facebook is a net positive for civilization 7. nothing is actually whistleblown, we already knew all that. Therefore, we're ok with it and we should ignore this. Also see 1. 8. We're dealing with Schrödinger's censorship. Conservative voices are being censored on Facebook which is ran by 'libs' and at the same time they're not censored as the government (also libs) prepares to censor them. Or censor them more? Who knows anymore. TLDR they're going to be censored. 9. the staple of 'tech companies' is discussed all over the place as someone is talking to congress about its internal workings so the news is all over HN. Super fishy (see 1) so definitely a hit piece. If there was only one or two links it would probably be fine. But so many links may definitely be the hand of some lib political operative. Or not? Who knows? We're just saying that to muddy the waters. Big if true! I think I'm going to be taking a break from forums in general. Either some Facebook friendly PR machine got activated or the collective mind has been poisoned by years and years of misinformation and generally sowing mistrust to the point of 'everything is a conspiracy and nothing is real'.
deleted 5y ago
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waynesonfire 5y ago
Social media legislation will just benefit fb since it'll ultimately cripple every social competitor.

FYI, the official reply: https://about.fb.com/news/2021/09/research-teen-well-being-and-instagram/ https://about.fb.com/news/2021/09/research-teen-well-being-a...

fireball_blaze 5y ago

"If the best Facebook can come up with is this disgusting attempt at character assassination, Haugen is telling God’s own truth. We should listen to her." A pretty powerful closing statement IMHO.

whatshisface 5y ago
>Facebook PR: “Today a Senate Commerce subcommittee held a hearing with a former product manager at Facebook who worked for the company for less than two years, had no direct reports, never attended a decision-point meeting with C-level executives — and testified more than six times to not working on the subject matter in question.” This doesn't sound like character assassination, it's Facebook claiming that she wasn't informed enough. It would be like the NSA telling us not to listen to Snowden because he didn't actually work on the programs that he obtained documents about.
- chalst 5y ago
  Character assassination is not done in one press release. It's done in a campaign of PRs and cossetting friendly journalists and newspapers. Perhaps it's premature to call it character assassination, but we've seen this play out quite a few times.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Smoosh 5y ago
    I believe that the term of art is "backgrounding". As in the company provides "background" information such as seems to be the case here. Of course, this is really the company framing the conversation and deflecting the criticisms without addressing them. I see the discussion here is largely fixated on whether this constitutes a "smear" or not. So, it seems to be working from Facebook's point of view as we are not discussing the actual allegations against them.
- compscistd 5y ago
  It’s a rather unconvincing but mean way to discount someone. If anything, FB saying how unrelated she is to these problems absolves her of being a part of it. Focus on the documents. Despite that, not everyone has the will to connect these dots.
- melvinmt 5y ago
  Sounds to me this type of language can also backfire; next step of Congress could be to then subpoena someone who did work on the subject matter and did have C-level exec access...
- rustymonday 5y ago
  You're not wrong. But Facebook's attempt to discredit Frances Haugen is poor. From the congressional hearing today, she did not answer questions beyond her expertise [1], and she had over a decade of relevant experience in Engagement Based Ranking algorithms [2], which was largely the focus of the hearing. [1] https://youtu.be/GoSPmqqKams?t=4160 https://youtu.be/GoSPmqqKams?t=4160 [2] https://youtu.be/GoSPmqqKams?t=3482 https://youtu.be/GoSPmqqKams?t=3482
adolph 5y ago
"telling God’s own truth" Tremendously convincing.
- amelius 5y ago
  As opposed to alternative truths.
  - adolph 5y ago
    Just as long as a stack of bibles is involved.
    - boomboomsubban 5y ago
      The use of "God" in that statement refers to an objective source. While I'm not a fan of the phrase, it clearly means an absolute truth. No bibles necessary.
      - adolph 5y ago
        > The use of "God" in that statement refers to an objective source. Do tell.
        boomboomsubban 5y ago
        Like I said, it means a supposed absolute truth. As there is no objective source, you can use a term for what would be an objective source, "god."
        adolph 5y ago
        "[A] supposed absolute truth" Is that like a redundancy (absolute and truth) wrapped in a contradiction (supposed and absolute truth)? If there is no such thing (i.e. no objective source) why would one use any term for it? Why would one modify truth to be "god's own?" Is it a rhetorical claim to the authority/authenticity of an unseen third party?
BitwiseFool 5y ago
What a heavily editorialized statement for something that isn't marked as opinion. The whole article reeks of being written by someone who literally hates Facebook. And the use of the term "God's own truth" feels like a really underhanded and unjustified rhetorical trick. To use a analogy, It feels like they are declaring a winner during the opening argument of the prosecution, before the defense has even had a chance to fully respond: "If Facebook had evidence, it would show it." Doesn't the author realize that kind of counter evidence will come later?
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  > someone who literally hates Facebook No, the author doesn't hate Facebook, nor does the "whistleblower". This isn't being drive by hate, it's being driven by love: love of government-mandated censorship. They're not alone, either, Zuckerberg himself is a huge fan; that's why his pushback here was so weak. Facebook was running TV commercials last summer calling for tighter legal restriction on social media.
amelius 5y ago
Sounds more like a logical fallacy.
spfzero 5y ago
What she's telling, or not telling, is irrelevant, and indeed, partly because she has little experience at FB and not in a position that would make her privy to nefarious plots. What is relevant, is the documents, which are not being released in full. Only after they are will we see the full picture, so anything happening before that is just manufactured narrative to serve someone's purpose.

hellohntoday 5y ago

Zuck is having to up his being a dick game... Bezos is really bringing the fight to him as world's biggest douche. What a fascinating battle. It's hard to pick a winner, right now they are neck and neck.

cpr 5y ago

I'm sure what she's saying is only part of the evil that Facebook represents, but there's something fishy about the whole setup. Why is she getting full media coverage and support, when previous whistleblowers were roundly ignored? She's a very wealthy person (1B estimated), so perhaps she's fairly well insulated from any blowback? But again, why is now the time to pile on Facebook, and why this person? [edit] Hint: She's in fact calling for more censorship of the views she doesn't like. [edit] Greenwald nails it (just published): https://greenwald.substack.com/p/democrats-and-media-do-not-want-to https://greenwald.substack.com/p/democrats-and-media-do-not-...

buitreVirtual 5y ago
It's called a tipping point. Previous critics made similar denunciations, but most people and even the media just shrugged and pretended nothing bad was happening. It takes time for society to acknowledge inconvenient truths. Plus, here, Haugen provided a wealth of documentation.
leahbarton 5y ago
What's your source on her wealth? I'm only finding second hand sources stating up to 5 million...
- dntrkv 5y ago
  There is no source because nobody under the C-level is worth anywhere close to that much.
  - gruez 5y ago
    maybe 1B is family wealth rather than personal wealth?
  - busterarm 5y ago
    She's one of the cofounders of Hinge, which was acquired by Match Group.

thrill 5y ago

How dare Facebook try to defend itself against public accusations.

fireball_blaze 5y ago
The point the author is making is that the rebuttal has very little substance. The signal to noise ratio is low.
falcolas 5y ago
As the article pointed out, they didn't defend themselves. They simply attempted to discredit the whistleblower, and change the subject. Let them defend themselves without character assassination, please.
- rPlayer6554 5y ago
  > Facebook PR: “Today a Senate Commerce subcommittee held a hearing with a former product manager at Facebook who worked for the company for less than two years, had no direct reports, never attended a decision-point meeting with C-level executives — and testified more than six times to not working on the subject matter in question.” Where does it mention her character??
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    Where does it address "the subject matter in question"? She leaked 18k documents. How does the number of direct reports she supervised affect their veracity?
    - _3u10 5y ago
      They are addressing the testimony provided, not the documents which have not been provided. Generally after hacking a company, the documents are provided in a ZIP for everyone to download. Information wants to be free, but we are only being provided with her summary of the documents rather than the evidence itself.

0235005 5y ago

Facebook is staring to show some really bad cracks. I think they should start checking their PR a bit more because if they follow this path, they could have congress in their neck for some time.

whatshisface 5y ago

Has anyone got the documents themselves, or only reporter's descriptions of the documents?

adolph 5y ago
Yes. At this point in the world we need not take anyone's word for what a corpus says or does not say. Either the data, query, and processing exist and are documented or they may as well be making things up. Public forkable repo or gtfo.
- josephg 5y ago
  Facebook would fight tooth and nail to get those documents removed if they show up on GitHub. They’d win, too - since they own copyright.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107 > Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. (Emphasis mine.)
    - falcolas 5y ago
      Fair use is a positive defense though, so you'd have to go through a trial (assumption being Facebook throws enough lawyers at it to make it impossible for a "it's obviously fair use" argument work) to assert it.
  - adolph 5y ago
    A repo need not be in a US or any jurisdiction. If it is important enough to have legislative talking time, it is important enough to be made public for people to make their own decisions about it. By keeping it private this is all hat and no cattle.

jaywalk 5y ago

It's tough to call Facebook's response a "smear" or "disgusting attempt at character assassination" since it didn't address her character at all. It certainly does attempt to discredit her, and it is cowardly and ultimately doesn't address the issues she brought up. But the author of this article is a bit hyperbolic.

shill_cunt 5y ago
screw Facebook. i hope they are regulated out of existence. stop shilling for them.
deleted 5y ago
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klelatti 5y ago

Top comment from the FT (paraphrased somewhat) > If this is all that your comms department can get through legal, you know what’s being said is almost 100% true.

koboll 5y ago

Okay, so Facebook has said she - worked there for less than two years and had no direct reports - never attended some sort of key meeting - did not work on the subject matter in question ...and therefore, she lacks context which undermines some of her claims. Which of those is a matter of character, or a "disgusting" attack? They might be wrong, or they might be right but bringing up irrelevancies, but the writer is acting like stating these is some sort of reprehensible smear.

Barrin92 5y ago
because they're not even attempting to refute anything she says, which the Verge article points out. If you're going to try to smear someone by attacking their lack of experience it would probably make sense to point out how that lack of experience manifests itself in errors in her judgement. Of course they cannot do that because she is literally citing their own words. Which is why this is just a thinly veiled, pathetic attack on a worker.
- caminante 5y ago
  >If you're going to try to smear someone by attacking their lack of experience Re-read the parent comment. How is the whistleblower getting smeared based on the assertions above? Are they not factual AND relevant? edit: I see comments below talking past this sub-thread. Let's get down to definitions. > Smear: damage the reputation of (someone) by false accusations; slander. At best, the article's premise that FB's claims "smear" the whistleblower is flawed and non-constructive even if you're seeking to slit FB's throat.
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    they're not relevant at all because you don't even need to work at facebook to disseminate facebook's research. It's a smear because it's a completely irrelevant ad hominem. The research is straight forward enough, and now public, so that everyone can actually come to the exact same conclusion she did simply by reading it. What she has done is made it public. And Facebook does not refute is because they cannot, so they go after the person's CV. Can you explain to me using basic logic what the connection is between your career status at facebook and reading research of the effects of facebook products on its users? what's next, do I need to work at Exxon to understand climate science?

fedsglow 5y ago

Anyone else thinking this lady glows?

xqcgrek2 5y ago

The smear here is actually against Facebook. The whistleblower is clearly being boosted by Democratic operatives [1] and appeared in front of Congress the day after 60 minutes. [1] Jen Psaki's former employer https://www.dailywire.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-leftist-activist-lawyer-ukraine-impeachment https://www.dailywire.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-leftis...

etchalon 5y ago
Yes, the smear is against Facebook, and not the person releasing internal research from Facebook itself, that was not written by the whistleblower. And obviously, discounting someone presenting factual evidence that at the moment is unchallenged based on perceived personal politics is fair game, reasonable, and the measure of good faith discussion.
mthoms 5y ago
Wow. That was some hit piece. Nothing was spared — They even managed to "casually" reveal her sexuality. For some reason. Absolutely disgusting. I can't believe intelligent people read, let alone cite, this Enquirer-level garbage.
- listless 5y ago
  Ok yes. But lots of things are true here 1) that’s a hit piece and 2) Francis is all about Francis and 3) Facebook is an awful company.

ryandrake 5y ago

I always liked Edward R. Murrow's response to Senator McCarthy's attempt to smear him: "Since he made no reference to any statements of fact that we made, we must conclude that he found no errors of fact." 1: https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/edwardrmurrowtomccarthy.htm https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/edwardrmurrowtomcc...

cratermoon 5y ago
Murrow really was a treasure.
prox 5y ago
Brilliant. Ever since watching “good night, and good luck” Edward R Murrow has been a favorite.
dado3212 5y ago
I think they're also saying that there's issues of fact?
- scotuswroteus 5y ago
  cite em

fleddr 5y ago

Not seeing any "character assassination" in any of the quotes. None of Facebook's defense lines, low quality as they may be, seem overly personal. For the record, I fully side with the whistleblower's claims. It's just that this article is very emotional, and could have been so much more. This is a fascinating quote the author failed to address fully: "Facebook PR: “Despite all this, we agree on one thing; it’s time to begin to create standard rules for the internet. It’s been 25 years since the rules for the internet have been updated, and instead of expecting the industry to make societal decisions that belong to legislators, it is time for Congress to act." Facebook has a point here. We don't even know what Facebook is. A media company? A news organization? A shop? A dating site? And if it does all of these things, and does so at planetary scale, is has the potential to do harm to big parts of the world, in countless ways. Yet there's pretty much zero rules. I think we vastly underestimate how complicated the balancing act is. If Instagram does mental harm to teenage girls, whilst this very likely was not the original intent, what exactly is the "correct" course of action, in a way codified in law? Should it be forbidden for other girls (influencers) to broadcast their beauty lifestyle? Should there be a maximum time cap for consumers to browse the feed? The China way? Should influencers just be deplatformed if we don't like them, taking away their income? None of these rules or laws seem very plausible or sane to me, and this is just one example of how Facebook can do harm. Anyway, to end constructively, I'd say a first step is to force Facebook to give full access to its underlying (anonymized) data. If we've created a planetary-scale monster, we should treat it as a special case.

fleddr 5y ago
I forgot to add one important part: guess which company will be uniquely capable to comply with whatever regulation comes up with? You guessed correctly. Guess whom can't comply? Indeed, everybody else. That's why they welcome regulation.
cherrycherry98 5y ago
Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing for regulation for years. He wants this for two reasons: 1. Abdicating responsibility so that when the public or politicians complain about Facebook hosting or not hosting some content he can say it's not his problem, he follows the law. 2. The second is for regulatory capture. Once a social network gets a stigma of being uncool, people move on to the next thing. His status and net worth are tied up in an entity he must aggressively defend against becoming the next MySpace. If he can't buy out upstarts anymore because of antitrust then the next best protection is to make it so difficult to build a new network without a team of lawyers and moderators that no one would even think about doing it.

andyxor 5y ago

[flagged]

zozin 5y ago

This is what passes for journalism these days? This reads like a snarky blog or Reddit post than an article. I’m surprised a few Zuckerberg memes weren’t included. I say this as someone who wants Facebook broken up or highly regulated.

_dw7s 5y ago

Reading hacker news comments today, I found out that: 1. this is fishy 2. she is a political operative for the dems 3. she has a liberal bias therefore this is all fishy and she cannot be trusted 4. she is rich and has some backing so she is definitely a political operative. This one is especially true because if she was poor Facebook would have been SLAPPed her already into shutting up. So there's no winning here. 5. (US) adults are responsible enough for the government to not have to regulate social media. Let's conveniently temporarily forget about the Rohingya minority. 6. Facebook is a net positive for civilization 7. nothing is actually whistleblown, we already knew all that. Therefore, we're ok with it and we should ignore this. Also see 1. 8. We're dealing with Schrödinger's censorship. Conservative voices are being censored on Facebook which is ran by 'libs' and at the same time they're not censored as the government (also libs) prepares to censor them. Or censor them more? Who knows anymore. TLDR they're going to be censored. 9. the staple of 'tech companies' is discussed all over the place as someone is talking to congress about its internal workings so the news is all over HN. Super fishy (see 1) so definitely a hit piece. If there was only one or two links it would probably be fine. But so many links may definitely be the hand of some lib political operative. Or not? Who knows? We're just saying that to muddy the waters. Big if true! I think I'm going to be taking a break from forums in general. Either some Facebook friendly PR machine got activated or the collective mind has been poisoned by years and years of misinformation and generally sowing mistrust to the point of 'everything is a conspiracy and nothing is real'.

deleted 5y ago

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waynesonfire 5y ago

Social media legislation will just benefit fb since it'll ultimately cripple every social competitor.