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Why I'm Leaving Meta
- _ts0v 2y agoAfter years as a frontend engineer at Meta, working on React and other major projects, I’ve decided to leave — and not for the usual reasons. The company isn’t what it appears to be. There’s a hidden backdoor in their infrastructure that bypasses user privacy settings, allowing access to personal data, with full knowledge of leadership. Questioning these practices? You’ll be silenced, derailed, or pushed out. Meta’s culture thrives on secrecy, and ethics are an afterthought. If you’re thinking about joining, consider what you’re really signing up for. – Christopher Chedeau (Ex-Meta Engineer)
- llamaimperative 2y agoAren't you describing a pretty standard "break glass" mechanism? I don't know who, if anyone, is under the impression that Facebook employees can't access the data you store on their platform, and I don't really understand the ominous undertone of this "revelation." In any case, yeah Facebook is an immoral company, has been (very obviously) for a long time, and I strongly doubt it was just naivety that lured you in ($$$).
- _ts0v 2y agoSorry, looks like my hacker news account got compromised. It was using a very weak password. I didn’t write this post nor post it on Hacker News.
- orionblastar 2y agoI'm considering not using Facebook and Meta, but all my friends and relatives are on it. We just got rid of Alexa as Facebook advertisements show up based on what we speak near it. For example, mention motorcycles and get bombarded with ads for motorcycles.
- jprete 2y agoEssentially all of Facebook is useless except for Messenger. If you can get people to message you on something else you could delete your whole account.
- sys_64738 2y agoOlder folks use Facebook so the answer is probably no.
- tootie 2y agoQuit years ago. Humans existed for a long time without social media
- maleldil 2y ago"Humans existed for a long time without [...]" is an exceptionally bad argument when you consider that humans have existed for a long time without many unquestionably good modern things, too.
- slater 2y agoSomething about this article smells a bit fishy, but I can't put my finger on it.
- talldayo 2y ago> A hidden mechanism exists within the code base that allows Meta to bypass any user-facing controls, enabling them to access personal data even if you’ve set your privacy settings to the most restrictive levels. While concerning, this is worded so vaguely that it could conceivably apply to any code that changes at runtime. You could be referring to anything from an iOS/Android CVE to a poorly-programmed Javascript library. Without serious details it's hard to say what you're talking about, and therefore it's hard to judge the threat you're whistleblowing.
- slater 2y agoAlso, isn't this kind of access necessary to comply with e.g. law enforcement requests/warrants?
- _ts0v 2y agoI want to be careful for legal reasons. Maybe I'll create a follow-up post.
- _ts0v 2y agoAgain, this has been written while my account was compromised.
- omoikane 2y agoI had a similar thought, and wondered if any external security researchers found anything related to this backdoor. If it's not exploitable outside of Meta, I am not sure it would be called a backdoor in the front-end, but perhaps more of an internal Meta tool that they probably needed for law enforcement and things.
- stonethrowaway 2y ago> I can’t do it anymore. I can’t keep contributing to a machine that’s built to exploit, manipulate, and ultimately, control the narrative of billions of people’s lives. Meta is not the future of technology I want to be a part of. Until you actually do something to counter it, as in, actively counter it, you’ve just given up a very prized chair that millions of people would gladly fill. And haven’t improved the status quo whatsoever. The rate of population and new software devs being minted far exceeds the throughput rate of people resigning from Meta due to privacy concerns. Also, this isn’t the first “I’m leaving meta because privacy” blog post we’ve seen. Others came before you, and others will come after you. Seems like no one actually does anything other than leave. And then get quickly replaced. So let me ask you - how many years were you there for, and how much money did you make before ethics suddenly became a concern? You going to hand all that money back to Zuck or what’s the score?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- morgante 2y agoThis article is likely fake, since it's not on vjeux's actual blog[0] and there's no mention on Twitter.[1] The style is also all off. [0] https://blog.vjeux.com/ https://blog.vjeux.com/ [1] https://x.com/Vjeux https://x.com/Vjeux
- samatman 2y agoMust be a pretty deep conspiracy then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41613132 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41613132 Created in 2011, that's quite a long con...
- jsnell 2y agoThe HN account being compromised seems like the obvious explanation.
- samatman 2y agoNo, this is not at all the obvious explanation. It could, conceivably, be the correct explanation, but it isn't the obvious one. Someone else mentioned two xx in the Medium name, there are two xx in the email in this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40335319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40335319 So the existence of another Medium account with one x is a fairly weak argument for the case so many people are making here. I'm not sure on what basis you all are coming to the conclusion you're coming to. Edit: this is fairly persuasive, however: https://x.com/Vjeux/status/1837639825203384412 https://x.com/Vjeux/status/1837639825203384412 That had not been posted when I wrote this, just a brand new green-name account talking about an unused Medium account with one of two variations on the name which Vjeux uses online. It does seem more likely at this point that his HN account, and not his Twitter account, is the compromised one.
- jsnell 2y agoNo, it really was the obvious explanation already at the time of that message. You'd already been shown that this post was not present on the author's blog, nor linked to on their active Twitter account. Both of these things were noted in the GP. Whose account is not green, and whom you were implying was making up a conspiracy theory about this post being fake. As for the post itself, it was on an otherwise empty Medium blog (you didn't need to look into how many xs the name had, just note that this blog had no other posts at all). On the other hand, the only link to legitimacy the post had was that it was posted by an old HN account. But it's also not a very active account. It's easy to see why and how somebody who had hijacked the HN account would use to to give legitimace to the fake. Your alternate theory that the Twitter account was actually compromised is preposterous. There's no motive for it, and it's hard to see how the timing would work out (the attacker using the HN account for misinformation gets to choose the timing of the misinformation; an attacker hacking a Twitter account to suppress the post doesn't).
- mircea 2y agoI don't know what's with the Medium username `peravi8126` but the article is also available at https://medium.com/@vjeuxx/why-im-leaving-meta-c3ab43491204 https://medium.com/@vjeuxx/why-im-leaving-meta-c3ab43491204
- grahamj 2y agoAssuming this is real, what took you so long? We all know it's a shit company with no ethics. Why didn't you?
- neilv 2y agoI don't understand what is being claimed. > A hidden mechanism exists within the code base that allows Meta to bypass any user-facing controls, enabling them to access personal data even if you’ve set your privacy settings to the most restrictive levels. This isn't clear how it isn't just normal system architecture, just with substandard controls to prevent employees snooping on production data. (Of course Meta has access to all the data that is put into the system; that's how pretty much all these systems work, occasionally excluding payment data.) But if we read to later in the piece, it alludes to ongoing effort into some intentional backdoor, for the use of unspecified parties, and which is hush-hush. Maybe the writer was weighing what they can and can't say, and the process load of that tends to result in unclear communication (e.g., harder to track the mind of the reader, across edits and mental deliberations). Or maybe they were just stressed or fatigued, around a big career/life change like this. Anyway... If it's something illegal, then you have the option of contacting authorities. (Or, if there's a reason that won't work, and you're willing to have your life to possibly suck even harder than that whistleblowing mode, then you could contact a good journalist.) They can investigate and, if appropriate, communicate effectively about the problem. If it's not something illegal, then maybe there's an employment NDA that applies. Appreciate the FAANG cushion to your finances, and make ethics/transparency/impact/whatever a bigger factor in what company you go to next.
- blastonico 2y agoA javascript software engineer, probably at level E4 or E5, is not even superficially aware of what this person is claiming here.
- jitl 2y agoFake per vjeux on Twitter: https://x.com/Vjeux/status/1837639825203384412 https://x.com/Vjeux/status/1837639825203384412
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoWho is OP here then?
- WCSTombs 2y ago> Here’s the scandal no one at Meta wants you to know: There is a backdoor built into Meta’s front-end infrastructure. Yes, you read that right. This isn’t a conspiracy theory; it’s fact. A hidden mechanism exists within the code base that allows Meta to bypass any user-facing controls, enabling them to access personal data even if you’ve set your privacy settings to the most restrictive levels. Isn't that just how the vast majority of platforms work? To not have this capability requires deliberate design like end-to-end encryption, and that's always going to be advertised as a feature.
- vid 2y agoOk, but how could we really trust these companies? I'm not saying to "give up," but aside from "pinkie swear we'll never make a mistake or exploit a loophole again," how can companies be trusted with the most intimate details of people's lives (and the lives of people who never signed up but get dragged in incidentally), such that it becomes trivial to deceive or even obviate or impersonate them? And how to get away from this being normal, so every company with an IT department or cloud subscription has their own spy agency? Especially since even deletion policies may let them hang onto data for years, in which time divisions can change hands or laws change. And also, they've become embedded in state security policies as a sort of branch of the secret police.
- dang 2y agoSince this article is fake (per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41613875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41613875), we've removed the link from the submission.