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As cited in this article, Frances Haugen is arguing against allowing Facebook to use end-to-end encryption because she suggests Facebook should have more survei

As cited in this article, Frances Haugen is arguing against allowing Facebook to use end-to-end encryption because she suggests Facebook should have more surveillance of private communications: https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1452309133928054799?s=20 https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1452309133928054799?s... A lot of people jumped to the defense of the Facebook leaker because the media so successfully framed it as a “whistleblower” situation, but that’s not really what’s happening here. She’s very much an activist, and some of her suggestions really do not align with what the tech community wants at all. Any time someone goes in front of the government and insists on less encryption and more government control of tech companies, we should be worried and proceed with extreme caution. No matter how much you dislike Facebook, this situation is no exception.

md2020 5y ago
As much as some on HN like to criticize Moxie/Signal for their decisions (Intel SGX debacle), seeing these kinds of sentiments get cheered on in the media makes me really glad they exist. Same for the Tor Project, Matrix.org Foundation, EFF, etc. Can’t be easy being in their positions ever, but especially right now.
abrahamepton 5y ago
I don’t understand why it matters what Haugen believes - whether in “no encryption” or space fairies or whatever - instead of what she proved, which is the profoundly amoral and dishonest nature of the company.
- vintermann 5y ago
  It matters because she's using the one to promote the other. We should be able to say that the leaks themselves are good, but also that they are making a transparent political play for control over Facebook (more than reining in their amorality and dishonesty). Whistleblowers do not usually have the support of a top tier lobbying firm (Bryson Gillette) paid for by a rival tech billionaire (Pierre Omidyar). I say take the leaks, but say no thanks to the "advice" it comes with.
- WillPostForFood 5y ago
  She isn’t just a neutral presenter of data, she is a spokesperson and advocate. She is positioning herself to be a decision maker, or help decision makers.
  - dls2016 5y ago
    Isn’t a whistleblower by definition not neutral? I’m not even sure what a neutral whistleblower would look like. Should her motivations be questioned? Absolutely! But if you don’t like her stance, just say so instead labelling her an “activist” or “advocate” like there’s something inherently bad about those things.
    - WillPostForFood 5y ago
      I didn't intent to imply anything bad about being labeled an activist or an advocate. Whistleblower carries something of a neutral veneer. A whistleblower are often seen as exposing something objectively wrong, a broken law or crime. That's not really what is happening here (though it wouldn't be surprising to see laws have been broken). The main thrust here is Facebook is bad for society, which, IMO is more activism than whistleblowing. No objective answer here! Just how I read the nuance of the language.
yodsanklai 5y ago
HN is a bit schizophrenic on this topic. On one hand, it seems everybody wants more freedom and less surveillance, but they give FB a hard time for not monitoring content better. Hopefully these aren't the same people expressing these contradictory points of view. I'd be curious to know what both side think the ideal social network should look like.
- thereddaikon 5y ago
  HN isn't one person with a single set of ideals and opinions. Its a website, with many people who's worldview ranges quite drastically. Tech, like anything else in the world, is going to have a cross section of humanity in it. You have libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, traditional GOP and Dems, European Socialists and full on communists here. You can't expect such a diverse group to have a homogenous view.
  - boringg 5y ago
    Exactly - every community has a diverse set of opinions (whether its discernible to the average person or not is a different question) and rarely do you find a homogenous group of individuals without a very strictly enforced control mechanism which suppress differences from being seen then creating a homogenous community.
- lowkey_ 5y ago
  > On one hand, it seems everybody wants more freedom and less surveillance, but they give FB a hard time for not monitoring content better. I don't think these are conflicting views: (1) Less monitoring on private messages (2) More monitoring on public posts
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    > 1) Less monitoring on private messages The Facebook leaker is explicitly arguing against this though. She cites Facebook’s push for end-to-end encryption of private messages as a problem.
arthur_sav 5y ago
There's no rational discussion around these e-mob hate trains. It boils down to "You're either with us or against us". I guess we're focusing on hating facebook this year.
Closi 5y ago
I also don't see anything too 'whistle-blower' worthy in the goodbye post. It just seems to be a vague message that although social media sometimes have a positive impact, it also sometimes has a negative impact, and that Facebook has employed strategies to help it grow. Hardly shocking findings!
capableweb 5y ago
> some of her suggestions really do not align with what the tech community wants at all I agree in general with your comment, but what I don't like is anyone (Haugen, you or anyone else) speaking for "the tech community". We all have different opinions, and you can't generalize with that. For example, plenty of people I know including myself would be strongly against less encryption, but strongly for more government control of tech companies (not via less encryption but via other means). It's really hard to generalize, and in this case we gain nothing by generalizing so let's do it less, not more.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > For example, plenty of people I know including myself would be strongly against less encryption, but strongly for more government control of tech companies (not via less encryption but via other means). But that’s not what Haughen is lobbying for. She’s explicitly saying that end-to-end encryption is bad because it doesn’t allow Facebook to monitor private communications enough. I’d be surprised if you could find more than a tiny minority in the tech communicate who agree with this.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    I understand that, that's why I expressed that I don't like them expressing it as something the "tech community" wants...
nojito 5y ago
This is a very common deflection tactic by corporations. Try and discredit the leaker over the information that was leaked. We saw it with Wikileaks and now we will see as more and more tech employees start sharing what goes on behind the curtains.
- vintermann 5y ago
  The leak is more important than the leaker. That I support and value the Snowden leaks doesn't mean I always have to agree with Snowden (I think he's terrible on macroeconomics and crypto, for instance). No whistleblower has ever received such a red carpet as Frances Haugen. In itself, it's good that she's aggressively defended by the political establishment rather than facing reprisals and jail. But it should make you question what's going on here, quite apart from the contents of the leak itself. One of the things Haugen proposes, repealing section 230 protection, is even supported by Facebook itself and strongly opposed by antimonopolists (who argue that it will be far easier to comply for Facebook than any would be competitor).
bostonsre 5y ago
> her suggestions really do not align with what the tech community wants at all. I feel like we as a tech community should take a step back and consider whether or not we should not be the only ones that decide what should or should not be done. It is a massive country with many opposing viewpoints. We have massive conflicts of interest and some tech companies have shown over and over that greed trumps morals in many cases. We are humans and we are not a group of enlightened arbiters that know what is best for the world. We have done a shit job so far of managing ourselves. Sure in lots of cases we have made the world a better place but I think we need to be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that greed has crept in and supplanted that "making the world a better place" mission.
- sanedigital 5y ago
  In my opinion, domain experts have a moral obligation to speak up regarding policy that involves their area of expertise. On the topic of encryption, we're the only community with an understanding of what "breaking encryption" means. There are no skeleton keys, only vulnerabilities. We have a moral and ethical duty to fight for encryption, privacy, and security, not against it.
  - bostonsre 5y ago
    Yes, I agree that we should absolutely provide advice on our area of expertise for topics in our domain but I don't think we should be the ones that make the decision. The other side of the debate aren't idiots, they have some valid view points, else this encryption debate would have been settled long ago. Encryption was not the only point brought up by the OP, they were also against government regulation. My main point is that we are tech workers that have conflicts of interest and that we should look hard at our viewpoints and ask ourselves if they are better for us or better for everyone. We are humans and like other industries, greed has crept in and we don't always make great decisions when left on our own.
    - LastMuel 5y ago
      > We are humans and like other industries, greed has crept in and we don't always make great decisions when left on our own. I feel strange having to point out that Governments are made up of people too. If it's not people that are making the good decisions, whom do we turn to?
watwut 5y ago
Whistleblower and activist are not mutually exclusive. Most are both, like Snowden was both. Reality Winner too. And whether I agree with someone views is really not relevant toward whether they are whistleblower.
- dls2016 5y ago
  I’d go one step further and say a whistleblower is by definition an activist. The entire point of leaking is to instigate change.
masswerk 5y ago
I think, two entirely different topics became mixed up here: the privacy of point to point messages and the impact of algorithmic enhancement of public messages. To my best abilities, I fail to see a connection. (That is, you may suggest that the latter may lead to an increase of "problematic" calls to action in private messages, but, then, you've already messed up in the first place, by enhancing the impact of public messages.)
newaccount2021 5y ago
Haugen is Tipper Gore for the web era...the "enlightened intellectual" who will save us from ourselves Frances Haugen is really just bothered by the fact that some stubborn betas refuse to conform to her worldview...but like Tipper Gore, she'll have to settle for the equivalent of a Parental Advisory warning
swalsh 5y ago
Web 3.0 offers the best solution to this. Web 2.0 companies, and the people that control them are just going to continue reaching for more control of the data we create, and give them for free. It's a problem that a small group of elite engineers have so much power.
ineedasername 5y ago
Frances Haugen's own motives are not the defining factor regarding the public utility of leaking this material. Her motives are her own, and once her information is out in the open it isn't up to her to decide what we all do about it. I'm not about to dismiss what was revealed just because I disagree with some of her opinions about that material.
- nanis 5y ago
  > Frances Haugen's own motives Motives aside, whether she is acting as a mole for intelligence agencies to gather support for enabling more 'round the clock surveillance of wrong-think under the guise of "blowing the whistle" is a defining factor.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    If you have evidence of her working as a secret intelligence agency undercover operative, then I'll be incorporate that into views on this issue. However, I think I'd still be glad that the information she leaked is now public, just like I'd be glad if a plot by intelligence agencies to systematically censor social media was made public, just like I've been glad when prior abuses by the government have been made public. Get it all out in the open.
- adolph 5y ago
  > motives are not the defining factor regarding the public utility of leaking this material An evaluation of likely motives is incorporated into the evaluation of the evidence. There are a lot of things that can't be known: How much is true? How much made up? How much is true but not representative of the totality?
berkes 5y ago
"what the tech community wants" is pluriform and broad. However, what we clearly see here, is how one company can almost dictate "what all of us get". If Facebook decides to have e2e, that is what we have. If it decides to have "less encryption" that is what we get. The real issue is not what governments, tech communities or whistleblowers want. The real issue is that it matters very little, because in the end we get "what facebook wants" regardless. And that, according to those leaks, is entirely driven by profit.
wavefunction 5y ago
> her suggestions really do not align with what the tech community wants at all. Speak for yourself. Facebook has become a threat to my country's democracy and stability and has enabled all sorts of horrific violence. If Facebook could be trusted to do the right thing I would feel differently but they've shown time and again they don't have the capacity or will to do so. "Move fast and break things" apparently applies to everything Facebook touches and so they should be regulated and controlled like a toddler.
jmull 5y ago
There isn't any reason someone can't be both a whistleblower and an activist. > and some of her suggestions really do not align with what the tech community wants at all For what it's worth, she says her views on E2E encryption have been misrepresented. Also, where is this single "tech community" with cohesive views on all this? I've never seen it. I'm pretty skeptical of anyone claiming to speak for the tech community.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > For what it's worth, she says her views on E2E encryption have been misrepresented. My link above has direct quotes from Haughen regarding E2E encryption. I don’t understand why people are so eager to project something different on to what she’s directly saying.
  - jmull 5y ago
    I'll just note, I'm not projecting anything. Do you really think those tweeted screen shots sum it all up accurately, though? Considering that she says her views are being mispreresented, couldn't those two quotes be cherry-picked? You know the reputation of the Telegraph, right? A guy tweeted that someone said (unattributed, but I assume the Telegraph) that she said.... It's just not solid. If you're going to accept that uncritically, I think you're essentially believing what you want to believe.
dmix 5y ago
> against allowing Facebook to use end-to-end encryption Apparently three of her lawyers are connected to the US intel agencies. This is entirely US-gov friendly whistleblowing and they know which horses to back.
ashtonkem 5y ago
One can believe that the whistleblower is correct in their identification of the problem and believe that the whistleblower is wrong about the best solution. This is not an inconsistent position.
gadders 5y ago
One other interesting thing to note is that the whole Facebook whisteblower campaign is being funded by Pierre Omidyar https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/20/22737042/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-pierre-omidyar https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/20/22737042/facebook-whistl...
lmc 5y ago
He's quoting a Telegraph article which misrepresented Haugen's view. She's for end-to-end encryption but concerned Facebook's implementation of it will be closed-source and not open to scrutiny. It's about 2h15 into yesterday's UK Online Safety Bill Committee testimony: https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/cddf75b6-4279-43db-9ac9-9146ef5fe03f https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/cddf75b6-4279-43db...
CarelessExpert 5y ago
> As cited in this article, Frances Haugen is arguing against allowing Facebook to use end-to-end encryption because she suggests Facebook should have more surveillance of private communications: https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1452309133928054799?s https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1452309133928054799?s... That's because encryption is incredibly problematic. And I say that as a huge fan of digital privacy and an avid user of Signal. I'm not so blind as to think that perfect encryption is an unalloyed good, and in that screenshot (which, I'll point out, excludes any broader context for her remarks) Haugen touches on just one of many very legitimate problems with the technology. Now, in the end, I think (though I'm not certain) I believe the upsides outweigh the downsides. But don't pretend as though she doesn't raise a valid concern, even if you don't agree with her conclusion. > A lot of people jumped to the defense of the Facebook leaker because the media so successfully framed it as a “whistleblower” situation, but that’s not really what’s happening here. She’s very much an activist All whistleblowers are activists. Do you really think Snowden didn't have an agenda? Of course he did! His act was specifically and explicitly political. Hell, Wikileaks has proven itself to be nakedly political. The only reason I'm betting you don't see it that way is you happen to agree with their politics. > some of her suggestions really do not align with what the tech community wants at all. Don't deign to speak for me. There is no unified "tech community" on this topic, even if your echo chamber leads to to believe otherwise.
madrox 5y ago
I haven't been able to find a clip of it, but Biden recently brought up that democracies are having a hard time keeping up socially with the pace of innovation, and that autocracies are reacting quicker. He wasn't advocating for autocracy; merely pointing out that democracy is struggling on this point. I've been thinking about this a lot whenever government oversight is brought up. I'm not convinced the war against misinformation is any more winnable than the war on drugs in a free, self-determining society. The best we can hope for is to curb the worst consequences by slowing virality.
rst 5y ago
That's not the position that Haugen took testifying before Parliament in the UK -- where she expressed strong support for e2e encryption. She said her views had been misreported earlier -- that she'd questioned whether Facebook could be trusted to implement e2e properly, and that the reporters had garbled it. See, e.g., https://twitter.com/sleepdefic1t/status/1452724217393434636 https://twitter.com/sleepdefic1t/status/1452724217393434636
macshaggy 5y ago
Based on what. The twitter link is just a picture but there is zero source attribution. He uses his own twitter status for his article. So, he's the source of his own article. At this point the entire blog post, twitter post, and the credibility of the author I find lacking. I'm not defending anything that Frances Haugen did do, or say, but I find it disturbing that anyone can take the author seriously if he can't find support for his argument that doesn't come from himself than he has no argument and linking to other "sources" means nothing he writes is verifiable beyond the actual documents he does link to.

md2020 5y ago

As much as some on HN like to criticize Moxie/Signal for their decisions (Intel SGX debacle), seeing these kinds of sentiments get cheered on in the media makes me really glad they exist. Same for the Tor Project, Matrix.org Foundation, EFF, etc. Can’t be easy being in their positions ever, but especially right now.

abrahamepton 5y ago

I don’t understand why it matters what Haugen believes - whether in “no encryption” or space fairies or whatever - instead of what she proved, which is the profoundly amoral and dishonest nature of the company.

vintermann 5y ago
It matters because she's using the one to promote the other. We should be able to say that the leaks themselves are good, but also that they are making a transparent political play for control over Facebook (more than reining in their amorality and dishonesty). Whistleblowers do not usually have the support of a top tier lobbying firm (Bryson Gillette) paid for by a rival tech billionaire (Pierre Omidyar). I say take the leaks, but say no thanks to the "advice" it comes with.
WillPostForFood 5y ago
She isn’t just a neutral presenter of data, she is a spokesperson and advocate. She is positioning herself to be a decision maker, or help decision makers.
- dls2016 5y ago
  Isn’t a whistleblower by definition not neutral? I’m not even sure what a neutral whistleblower would look like. Should her motivations be questioned? Absolutely! But if you don’t like her stance, just say so instead labelling her an “activist” or “advocate” like there’s something inherently bad about those things.
  - WillPostForFood 5y ago
    I didn't intent to imply anything bad about being labeled an activist or an advocate. Whistleblower carries something of a neutral veneer. A whistleblower are often seen as exposing something objectively wrong, a broken law or crime. That's not really what is happening here (though it wouldn't be surprising to see laws have been broken). The main thrust here is Facebook is bad for society, which, IMO is more activism than whistleblowing. No objective answer here! Just how I read the nuance of the language.

yodsanklai 5y ago

HN is a bit schizophrenic on this topic. On one hand, it seems everybody wants more freedom and less surveillance, but they give FB a hard time for not monitoring content better. Hopefully these aren't the same people expressing these contradictory points of view. I'd be curious to know what both side think the ideal social network should look like.

thereddaikon 5y ago
HN isn't one person with a single set of ideals and opinions. Its a website, with many people who's worldview ranges quite drastically. Tech, like anything else in the world, is going to have a cross section of humanity in it. You have libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, traditional GOP and Dems, European Socialists and full on communists here. You can't expect such a diverse group to have a homogenous view.
- boringg 5y ago
  Exactly - every community has a diverse set of opinions (whether its discernible to the average person or not is a different question) and rarely do you find a homogenous group of individuals without a very strictly enforced control mechanism which suppress differences from being seen then creating a homogenous community.
lowkey_ 5y ago
> On one hand, it seems everybody wants more freedom and less surveillance, but they give FB a hard time for not monitoring content better. I don't think these are conflicting views: (1) Less monitoring on private messages (2) More monitoring on public posts
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > 1) Less monitoring on private messages The Facebook leaker is explicitly arguing against this though. She cites Facebook’s push for end-to-end encryption of private messages as a problem.

arthur_sav 5y ago

There's no rational discussion around these e-mob hate trains. It boils down to "You're either with us or against us". I guess we're focusing on hating facebook this year.

Closi 5y ago

I also don't see anything too 'whistle-blower' worthy in the goodbye post. It just seems to be a vague message that although social media sometimes have a positive impact, it also sometimes has a negative impact, and that Facebook has employed strategies to help it grow. Hardly shocking findings!

capableweb 5y ago

> some of her suggestions really do not align with what the tech community wants at all I agree in general with your comment, but what I don't like is anyone (Haugen, you or anyone else) speaking for "the tech community". We all have different opinions, and you can't generalize with that. For example, plenty of people I know including myself would be strongly against less encryption, but strongly for more government control of tech companies (not via less encryption but via other means). It's really hard to generalize, and in this case we gain nothing by generalizing so let's do it less, not more.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> For example, plenty of people I know including myself would be strongly against less encryption, but strongly for more government control of tech companies (not via less encryption but via other means). But that’s not what Haughen is lobbying for. She’s explicitly saying that end-to-end encryption is bad because it doesn’t allow Facebook to monitor private communications enough. I’d be surprised if you could find more than a tiny minority in the tech communicate who agree with this.
- capableweb 5y ago
  I understand that, that's why I expressed that I don't like them expressing it as something the "tech community" wants...

nojito 5y ago

This is a very common deflection tactic by corporations. Try and discredit the leaker over the information that was leaked. We saw it with Wikileaks and now we will see as more and more tech employees start sharing what goes on behind the curtains.

vintermann 5y ago
The leak is more important than the leaker. That I support and value the Snowden leaks doesn't mean I always have to agree with Snowden (I think he's terrible on macroeconomics and crypto, for instance). No whistleblower has ever received such a red carpet as Frances Haugen. In itself, it's good that she's aggressively defended by the political establishment rather than facing reprisals and jail. But it should make you question what's going on here, quite apart from the contents of the leak itself. One of the things Haugen proposes, repealing section 230 protection, is even supported by Facebook itself and strongly opposed by antimonopolists (who argue that it will be far easier to comply for Facebook than any would be competitor).

bostonsre 5y ago

> her suggestions really do not align with what the tech community wants at all. I feel like we as a tech community should take a step back and consider whether or not we should not be the only ones that decide what should or should not be done. It is a massive country with many opposing viewpoints. We have massive conflicts of interest and some tech companies have shown over and over that greed trumps morals in many cases. We are humans and we are not a group of enlightened arbiters that know what is best for the world. We have done a shit job so far of managing ourselves. Sure in lots of cases we have made the world a better place but I think we need to be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that greed has crept in and supplanted that "making the world a better place" mission.

sanedigital 5y ago
In my opinion, domain experts have a moral obligation to speak up regarding policy that involves their area of expertise. On the topic of encryption, we're the only community with an understanding of what "breaking encryption" means. There are no skeleton keys, only vulnerabilities. We have a moral and ethical duty to fight for encryption, privacy, and security, not against it.
- bostonsre 5y ago
  Yes, I agree that we should absolutely provide advice on our area of expertise for topics in our domain but I don't think we should be the ones that make the decision. The other side of the debate aren't idiots, they have some valid view points, else this encryption debate would have been settled long ago. Encryption was not the only point brought up by the OP, they were also against government regulation. My main point is that we are tech workers that have conflicts of interest and that we should look hard at our viewpoints and ask ourselves if they are better for us or better for everyone. We are humans and like other industries, greed has crept in and we don't always make great decisions when left on our own.
  - LastMuel 5y ago
    > We are humans and like other industries, greed has crept in and we don't always make great decisions when left on our own. I feel strange having to point out that Governments are made up of people too. If it's not people that are making the good decisions, whom do we turn to?

watwut 5y ago

Whistleblower and activist are not mutually exclusive. Most are both, like Snowden was both. Reality Winner too. And whether I agree with someone views is really not relevant toward whether they are whistleblower.

dls2016 5y ago
I’d go one step further and say a whistleblower is by definition an activist. The entire point of leaking is to instigate change.

masswerk 5y ago

I think, two entirely different topics became mixed up here: the privacy of point to point messages and the impact of algorithmic enhancement of public messages. To my best abilities, I fail to see a connection. (That is, you may suggest that the latter may lead to an increase of "problematic" calls to action in private messages, but, then, you've already messed up in the first place, by enhancing the impact of public messages.)

newaccount2021 5y ago

Haugen is Tipper Gore for the web era...the "enlightened intellectual" who will save us from ourselves Frances Haugen is really just bothered by the fact that some stubborn betas refuse to conform to her worldview...but like Tipper Gore, she'll have to settle for the equivalent of a Parental Advisory warning

swalsh 5y ago

Web 3.0 offers the best solution to this. Web 2.0 companies, and the people that control them are just going to continue reaching for more control of the data we create, and give them for free. It's a problem that a small group of elite engineers have so much power.

ineedasername 5y ago

Frances Haugen's own motives are not the defining factor regarding the public utility of leaking this material. Her motives are her own, and once her information is out in the open it isn't up to her to decide what we all do about it. I'm not about to dismiss what was revealed just because I disagree with some of her opinions about that material.

nanis 5y ago
> Frances Haugen's own motives Motives aside, whether she is acting as a mole for intelligence agencies to gather support for enabling more 'round the clock surveillance of wrong-think under the guise of "blowing the whistle" is a defining factor.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  If you have evidence of her working as a secret intelligence agency undercover operative, then I'll be incorporate that into views on this issue. However, I think I'd still be glad that the information she leaked is now public, just like I'd be glad if a plot by intelligence agencies to systematically censor social media was made public, just like I've been glad when prior abuses by the government have been made public. Get it all out in the open.
adolph 5y ago
> motives are not the defining factor regarding the public utility of leaking this material An evaluation of likely motives is incorporated into the evaluation of the evidence. There are a lot of things that can't be known: How much is true? How much made up? How much is true but not representative of the totality?

berkes 5y ago

"what the tech community wants" is pluriform and broad. However, what we clearly see here, is how one company can almost dictate "what all of us get". If Facebook decides to have e2e, that is what we have. If it decides to have "less encryption" that is what we get. The real issue is not what governments, tech communities or whistleblowers want. The real issue is that it matters very little, because in the end we get "what facebook wants" regardless. And that, according to those leaks, is entirely driven by profit.

wavefunction 5y ago

> her suggestions really do not align with what the tech community wants at all. Speak for yourself. Facebook has become a threat to my country's democracy and stability and has enabled all sorts of horrific violence. If Facebook could be trusted to do the right thing I would feel differently but they've shown time and again they don't have the capacity or will to do so. "Move fast and break things" apparently applies to everything Facebook touches and so they should be regulated and controlled like a toddler.

jmull 5y ago

There isn't any reason someone can't be both a whistleblower and an activist. > and some of her suggestions really do not align with what the tech community wants at all For what it's worth, she says her views on E2E encryption have been misrepresented. Also, where is this single "tech community" with cohesive views on all this? I've never seen it. I'm pretty skeptical of anyone claiming to speak for the tech community.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> For what it's worth, she says her views on E2E encryption have been misrepresented. My link above has direct quotes from Haughen regarding E2E encryption. I don’t understand why people are so eager to project something different on to what she’s directly saying.
- jmull 5y ago
  I'll just note, I'm not projecting anything. Do you really think those tweeted screen shots sum it all up accurately, though? Considering that she says her views are being mispreresented, couldn't those two quotes be cherry-picked? You know the reputation of the Telegraph, right? A guy tweeted that someone said (unattributed, but I assume the Telegraph) that she said.... It's just not solid. If you're going to accept that uncritically, I think you're essentially believing what you want to believe.

dmix 5y ago

> against allowing Facebook to use end-to-end encryption Apparently three of her lawyers are connected to the US intel agencies. This is entirely US-gov friendly whistleblowing and they know which horses to back.

ashtonkem 5y ago

One can believe that the whistleblower is correct in their identification of the problem and believe that the whistleblower is wrong about the best solution. This is not an inconsistent position.

gadders 5y ago

One other interesting thing to note is that the whole Facebook whisteblower campaign is being funded by Pierre Omidyar https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/20/22737042/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-pierre-omidyar https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/20/22737042/facebook-whistl...

lmc 5y ago

He's quoting a Telegraph article which misrepresented Haugen's view. She's for end-to-end encryption but concerned Facebook's implementation of it will be closed-source and not open to scrutiny. It's about 2h15 into yesterday's UK Online Safety Bill Committee testimony: https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/cddf75b6-4279-43db-9ac9-9146ef5fe03f https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/cddf75b6-4279-43db...

CarelessExpert 5y ago

> As cited in this article, Frances Haugen is arguing against allowing Facebook to use end-to-end encryption because she suggests Facebook should have more surveillance of private communications: https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1452309133928054799?s https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/1452309133928054799?s... That's because encryption is incredibly problematic. And I say that as a huge fan of digital privacy and an avid user of Signal. I'm not so blind as to think that perfect encryption is an unalloyed good, and in that screenshot (which, I'll point out, excludes any broader context for her remarks) Haugen touches on just one of many very legitimate problems with the technology. Now, in the end, I think (though I'm not certain) I believe the upsides outweigh the downsides. But don't pretend as though she doesn't raise a valid concern, even if you don't agree with her conclusion. > A lot of people jumped to the defense of the Facebook leaker because the media so successfully framed it as a “whistleblower” situation, but that’s not really what’s happening here. She’s very much an activist All whistleblowers are activists. Do you really think Snowden didn't have an agenda? Of course he did! His act was specifically and explicitly political. Hell, Wikileaks has proven itself to be nakedly political. The only reason I'm betting you don't see it that way is you happen to agree with their politics. > some of her suggestions really do not align with what the tech community wants at all. Don't deign to speak for me. There is no unified "tech community" on this topic, even if your echo chamber leads to to believe otherwise.

madrox 5y ago

I haven't been able to find a clip of it, but Biden recently brought up that democracies are having a hard time keeping up socially with the pace of innovation, and that autocracies are reacting quicker. He wasn't advocating for autocracy; merely pointing out that democracy is struggling on this point. I've been thinking about this a lot whenever government oversight is brought up. I'm not convinced the war against misinformation is any more winnable than the war on drugs in a free, self-determining society. The best we can hope for is to curb the worst consequences by slowing virality.

rst 5y ago

That's not the position that Haugen took testifying before Parliament in the UK -- where she expressed strong support for e2e encryption. She said her views had been misreported earlier -- that she'd questioned whether Facebook could be trusted to implement e2e properly, and that the reporters had garbled it. See, e.g., https://twitter.com/sleepdefic1t/status/1452724217393434636 https://twitter.com/sleepdefic1t/status/1452724217393434636

macshaggy 5y ago

Based on what. The twitter link is just a picture but there is zero source attribution. He uses his own twitter status for his article. So, he's the source of his own article. At this point the entire blog post, twitter post, and the credibility of the author I find lacking. I'm not defending anything that Frances Haugen did do, or say, but I find it disturbing that anyone can take the author seriously if he can't find support for his argument that doesn't come from himself than he has no argument and linking to other "sources" means nothing he writes is verifiable beyond the actual documents he does link to.