8 ms·

Whistleblower tells senators that Meta undermined U.S. security, interests

409 points by c420 2y ago

9283409232 2y ago
> Meta says it regularly discloses the fact that it generates advertising revenue from advertisers based in China but says that doesn’t mean that it operates services in China. It says its services are banned in China. This is phrasing is very weaselly. All foreign companies in China either partner with or are operated by a domestic company like Alibaba or Tencent. Saying "we don't operate our services in China" is like saying water is wet to people who know what that really means. It doesn't in anyway invalidate the claims made against them.
- amanaplanacanal 2y ago
  Yeah they are being weasly about it. They offer advertising services on China, just not their front end social media service.
- droopyEyelids 2y ago
  It might not be that weasley if they only allow Chinese companies to buy advertising It would not require a partnership to buy stuff outside the country
- wavemode 2y ago
  But this isn't Meta operating in China. This is Chinese companies operating in the US. It's not clear to me why it matters that Chinese companies advertise on Facebook, nor in what way this would give them leverage to force Facebook to commit the treason alleged by this article. Without further evidence the story isn't really adding up.
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    Pharmaceutical companies are huge advertisers for news publications and shows. It's not because the readers and viewers can buy the product because they can't. They advertise because it buys influence over the news.
Aurornis 2y ago
> And she says she has the “documents” to back up her accusations. Then show those documents? It's hard to take these allegations seriously when the mysterious proof is only alluded to, not submitted as part of the testimony.
- bbatsell 2y ago
  Almost certainly blocked by NDA; that is her inviting Congress to issue a subpoena so she has legal cover.
  - Aurornis 2y ago
    A corporate NDA doesn't block someone from cooperating with legal proceedings or submitting evidence to a hearing.
    - lokar 2y ago
      And an NDA being void due to such a situation does not stop the company from taking legal action against, costing you lots of money and time to defend
      - typeofhuman 2y ago
        Exactly. That's why the public hearing was held. To make her and the case famous. This is how you play the game. Now Meta can still sue but it risks damaging its public image by going after a famous whistleblower.
        confidantlake 2y ago
        One of the benefits of having a lot of scandals. Will get buried in the noise. Those that care about this kind of stuff already hated meta, those that don't care won't start caring now.
        _DeadFred_ 2y ago
        The US also has whistleblower protection laws.
curt15 2y ago
>In remarks to a hearing convened by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Wynn-Williams alleged that Meta executives worked vigorously to “win favor” with leaders in Beijing to build an $18 billion business in China. Has Hawley demonstrated similar interest about Elon's business dealings in China? Elon owes much of his net worth to the CCP's Shanghai factory.
- transcriptase 2y ago
  What does that have to do with the topic at hand? Nearly every CEO at a company making physical products from 1990 onward owes much of their net worth to Chinese factories.
  - cma 2y ago
    I think Musk got one of the biggest concessions ever without any precedent, something like 100% ownership where no other car plant ever got that before.
    - chasil 2y ago
      I don't think that anyone could have predicted one year ago where Elon Musk would be today. I think the same is true of next year. That man is full of surprises.
      - jxjnskkzxxhx 2y ago
        I predict he's not gonna be on Mars.
      - AtlasBarfed 2y ago
        That is charitable. I see a clear path of decline.
    - ashoeafoot 2y ago
      And Ukraine got the minsk agreements, the 1990 "assurances" of independence , concessions and contracts by countries without legal system and kinglike rulers are worthless. So he had a extraordinary piece of paper? So what..
goldchainposse 2y ago
> They have threatened her with $50,000 in punitive damages every time she mentions Facebook in public … even if the statements she is making are true,” he said. Unless Congress asks for the testimony, which is probably why Meta tried to stop the hearing.
- Alive-in-2025 2y ago
  But infinitely rich companies can of course bankrupt any ordinary human by suing them over and over again. They already look bad, so it doesn't make them look worse. Why wouldn't they just keep suing her?
  - leereeves 2y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...
    - gruez 2y ago
      Is that's what's happening here? The bit about suing her "even if the statements she is making are true" makes me think they're not trying to sue her via defamation, but through non-disparagement agreements. If that's the case, I'd hesitate to characterize this as SLAPP. If you voluntarily entered into a non-disparagement agreement and got something in exchange (eg. in exchange for severance or whatever), then at the very least it's slightly different than a journalist or whatever trying to expose some scandal.
      - ben_w 2y ago
        For such reasons, I count non-disparagement agreements as a curtailing of free speech. Everything that makes freedom of speech worth defending when the government wants your silence, also applies to businesses. The US puts freedom of speech on a pedestal. But stuff like this makes me aware that's a lot more limited than people would like to believe. (I've signed at least two non-disparagement agreements, but also I'm not in the US).
jongjong 2y ago
It's interesting to think about the way in which the Chinese government operates compared to the government of other countries like the US. The US government was conceived as merely a public utility to fund public works; there was no single ideological basis beyond that. Freedom isn't a "single" ideology because it encapsulates all possible ideologies. The ideology rested with the people themselves to implement on an individual basis. The CCP, on the other hand, was conceived as an ideological movement with specific goals. Now that the Chinese economy has become so important in the world, the ideological aspects are seeping into the economies of all countries, though it doesn't translate well into western politics. I think this is because the western political system was a limited-trust system, it only worked well when the state was anemic; if the state becomes big (cash-rich), companies will find that they can start to earn significant sums of money from the state, they will redirect their attention to catering to the needs of the state and away from the private sector. Unfortunately the western state has no intrinsic ideology, no intrinsic needs or goals, so it will lead to corruption or faux-adoption of external ideologies (as a means to serve private financial interests). Western governments cannot form genuine ideological movements (besides the ideology of economic pragmatism) IMO because their foundations aren't designed to support anything besides that. They are founded on the principles of individualism and limited state power.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- 486sx33 2y ago
  Precisely why China needs to be a whole lot less important to the world. Freedom and personal liberty actually are ideologies. They don’t encompass every ideology that doesn’t make sense at all. I’d say CCP and many other governments like Russia and Ukraine are FAR more corrupt than the US. Your argument really doesn’t make sense.
  - A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
    Dude the US is insanely corrupt, it's just that a lot of the corruption is called "lobbying" and "consulting." Sometimes also certain forms of "legal counsel." It's whitewashed and normalized.
neilv 2y ago
[flagged]
- neilv 2y ago
  At least 4 downvotes, no explanation. What's the problem? I'm curious what the situation is: did the person speak up internally, were they disempowered, did they go along with it but then have a change of heart at some point, etc.?
  - m-ee 2y ago
    She wrote a whole book about it, and yes that’s more or less her claim. Her telling is that she tried to avoid touching China policy as long as possible until she was forced into it, largely as retaliation for reporting sexual harassment from Joel Kaplan. Kaplan and Zuckerberg were directing most of the China policy personally so she had little to no ability to overrule them. The audiobook is free if you have Spotify premium.
zombiwoof 2y ago
Kinda wild this is a buried story. This should be top news
- nextworddev 2y ago
  probably a lot of "algorithmic" downvoters
loeg 2y ago
FWIW, she was fired in 2017 and only now is trying to become a "whistleblower." If the conduct needed whistle-blowing, surely it would have been more timely to come out almost a decade ago.
- trhway 2y ago
  She published a book with these FB "revelations" recently, like a month ago, so kind of PR tour.
  - MeetingsBrowser 2y ago
    Playing devil's advocate: If the allegations about Meta violating laws in the book are true, what would be an appropriate waiting period before the author testifies to the Senate, so that it doesn't appear to be a PR tour?
    - trhway 2y ago
      A negative value, about -7 years in this case.
    - loeg 2y ago
      She could have raised her concerns in 2017 or earlier, rather than 2025, when her knowledge is eight years out of date.
      - cookiengineer 2y ago
        Not sure why you are writing this bad faith argument. Not a single legal system on the planet is that fast. All class action law suits take years of preparation time in their discovery phase.
        loeg 2y ago
        What about this do you think is constrained to the legal system? Her book and the senate hearing are not moving through or constrained by the ordinary courts. (And while they're slow, they do generally move faster than eight years.)
gradientsrneat 2y ago
I despise Facebook for many reasons, privacy being a major factor. On the other hand, both Trump and Musk own competing social media companies, and the CEOs of other social media companies have attempted to curry their favor. So, there is a potential for conflict of interest here, which could lead to a misproportion of due process. Or, regardless of truthfulness, some form of leverage. Or the trial is just for show. Maybe the accusations are true, but there's a reason this person is coming forward now.
- travisgriggs 2y ago
  Won’t matter. A handful of judges will use big words, cite legalese, and it won’t matter. Every time I think “but the law/constitution won’t allow…” there’s some end run. The rule of law is only as good as thems that rule the law.
neuroelectron 2y ago
Not really surprising. I'm sure all the major tech companies are engaged in this kind of deal making. The influence of China over Amazon is obvious and there has been cases of algorithmic tampering and account unlocking in their favor.
vasco 2y ago
If you're a director of global public policy for seven years, who are you really whistleblowing, the company, or yourself? I appreciate the information coming out, but in some of these situations I can't help but picture that "the worst person in the room" in regards to the offenses might also end up being the person that then becomes the most holier than thou when they get out of the company. If you ever met someone who used to work in software ads and ask them about privacy you'll get what I mean.
- dralley 2y ago
  https://imgur.com/wTWW1fE https://imgur.com/wTWW1fE
- FrancisMoodie 2y ago
  I get your point, but also, so what? The point of this whistle-blowing is that the public gets to make informed decisions about these companies that provide us with services that much of us use daily, and that the government gets a chance to figure out whether this is the truth or not and take actions accordingly. It's not about who is guilty right now but what needs to be done to prevent this in the future, IMO. And whatever she might be guilty of doing, the chances of her ever having the same access to sensitive information in any company has gone drastically down after coming forward with this information.
- Capricorn2481 2y ago
  Everything is incentives of the company. People are not told to do something evil, they're told "We don't have the budget to look into that" or "don't do that until we hear from the higher-ups." I'm disinterested in who made what call because ultimately it's designed to be nebulous. Someone breaking out of that horrific cycle and telling us what it leads to is a good thing. Even though it will likely lead to nothing, like it did with Sophie Zhang [1] [1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-ignore-political-manipulation-whistleblower-memo?bfsource=relatedmanual https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook...
imiric 2y ago
A whistleblower is not required to determine that Meta, and all adtech companies, have been severely damaging not just to the US, but to all governments and societies where these platforms are used. They don't need to collude with any adversarial government for this to be true. The same tools built to manipulate people into buying things, are used to manipulate them into thinking and acting in ways that could be beneficial to someone. Advertising and propaganda use the same tactics, after all. When these tools are accessible to anyone, including political adversaries, it would be naive to think that they're not being used for information warfare. The Cambridge Analytica leak was just the tip of the iceberg. These companies and agencies are still operating at a global scale, and business is booming. Why adtech companies weren't heavily investigated and regulated after this became public is beyond me. These are matters of national security, which anyone sane would consider more important than any financial or practical value they might have. Banning TikTok was a step in the right direction, but that's far from the only service that needs to be heavily regulated. And even that decision is flip-flopped and very controversial, so the idea of going beyond must be unthinkable. Yet not doing so will lead to the eventual downfall of the US, and the current western hegemony. The instability we're seeing now is just the beginning, and my only hope is that it doesn't escalate to a major global conflict.
- Hojojo 2y ago
  Honestly, it's crazy that any country allows online media to control the national discourse about politics without having any insight into how the algorithms decide what kind of content is shown to whom and how content is moderated or controlled. Then there's bot/propaganda accounts run by who knows who poisoning any political discussion.
  - throw1222212121 2y ago
    "To save the public from propaganda, we must implement national controls on all political media dissemination"
    - rcxdude 2y ago
      More like "let's not have national controls on political media dissemination in the hands of large corporations and hidden from view"
avalys 2y ago
All I see in this story are a bunch of things that were under discussion at some point, but never happened. But then, “Meta considered doing business in China, evaluated and negotiated with the Chinese government what would be required to do so, and then did not proceed” isn’t a story that is going to sell a lot of books or get her a lot of attention. Another tell that this is a stunt for attention and not a genuine issue is her trying to blame China’s progress in AI on Meta’s release of an open-source model.
- apercu 2y ago
  > But then, “Meta considered doing business in China, evaluated and negotiated with the Chinese government what would be required to do so, and then did not proceed” isn’t a story that is going to sell a lot of books or get her a lot of attention It could be as simple as Meta did not want to give the Chinese government partial ownership and their IP.
  - surge 2y ago
    I remember when this happened, it was in the news then, except the conversation was everyone in SV was doing it, including Google. They decided not to. We don't convict for thinking about robbing a bank, you actually have to attempt it and nothing being discussed was explicitly illegal, merely unethical by some arguments, but then again, NSA has several listening posts at AT&T hubs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A), and Apple is building backdoors for iCloud in the UK, its the cost of doing business in western countries, that ethically its simply complying with local laws at that point, just degrees of magnitude.
- malshe 2y ago
  Read her book Careless People [1] where she shared many details. A crucial aspect of the China story is that FB/Meta conveyed to the Chinese officials that they were ready to do anything they asked for in the hope that they will be allowed in China. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Careless-People-Cautionary-Power-Idealism/dp/1250391237 https://www.amazon.com/Careless-People-Cautionary-Power-Idea...
1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
"Hawley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Crime and Counterterrorism Subcommittee, said that Meta or Facebook tried "desperately to prevent" him from holding the hearing. "They have threatened her with $50,000 in punitive damages every time she mentions Facebook in public ... even if the statements she is making are true," he said. "Facebook is attempting her total and complete financial ruin. They're attempting to destroy her personally, they're attempting to destroy her reputation and I think the question is, `Why?'" "What is it they are so afraid of?" Hawley asked."" Meta has a stellar reputation to protect. Honest people doing honest "work".
lazyeye 2y ago
You can watch the full Facebook whistleblower hearing here:- https://youtu.be/f3DAnORfgB8 https://youtu.be/f3DAnORfgB8
sudoshred 2y ago
Suicide by heart attack is imminent.

409 points by c420 2y ago

> Meta says it regularly discloses the fact that it generates advertising revenue from advertisers based in China but says that doesn’t mean that it operates services in China. It says its services are banned in China. This is phrasing is very weaselly. All foreign companies in China either partner with or are operated by a domestic company like Alibaba or Tencent. Saying "we don't operate our services in China" is like saying water is wet to people who know what that really means. It doesn't in anyway invalidate the claims made against them.

amanaplanacanal 2y ago
Yeah they are being weasly about it. They offer advertising services on China, just not their front end social media service.
droopyEyelids 2y ago
It might not be that weasley if they only allow Chinese companies to buy advertising It would not require a partnership to buy stuff outside the country
wavemode 2y ago
But this isn't Meta operating in China. This is Chinese companies operating in the US. It's not clear to me why it matters that Chinese companies advertise on Facebook, nor in what way this would give them leverage to force Facebook to commit the treason alleged by this article. Without further evidence the story isn't really adding up.
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  Pharmaceutical companies are huge advertisers for news publications and shows. It's not because the readers and viewers can buy the product because they can't. They advertise because it buys influence over the news.

Aurornis 2y ago

> And she says she has the “documents” to back up her accusations. Then show those documents? It's hard to take these allegations seriously when the mysterious proof is only alluded to, not submitted as part of the testimony.

bbatsell 2y ago
Almost certainly blocked by NDA; that is her inviting Congress to issue a subpoena so she has legal cover.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  A corporate NDA doesn't block someone from cooperating with legal proceedings or submitting evidence to a hearing.
  - lokar 2y ago
    And an NDA being void due to such a situation does not stop the company from taking legal action against, costing you lots of money and time to defend
    - typeofhuman 2y ago
      Exactly. That's why the public hearing was held. To make her and the case famous. This is how you play the game. Now Meta can still sue but it risks damaging its public image by going after a famous whistleblower.
      - confidantlake 2y ago
        One of the benefits of having a lot of scandals. Will get buried in the noise. Those that care about this kind of stuff already hated meta, those that don't care won't start caring now.
      - _DeadFred_ 2y ago
        The US also has whistleblower protection laws.

curt15 2y ago

>In remarks to a hearing convened by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Wynn-Williams alleged that Meta executives worked vigorously to “win favor” with leaders in Beijing to build an $18 billion business in China. Has Hawley demonstrated similar interest about Elon's business dealings in China? Elon owes much of his net worth to the CCP's Shanghai factory.

transcriptase 2y ago
What does that have to do with the topic at hand? Nearly every CEO at a company making physical products from 1990 onward owes much of their net worth to Chinese factories.
- cma 2y ago
  I think Musk got one of the biggest concessions ever without any precedent, something like 100% ownership where no other car plant ever got that before.
  - chasil 2y ago
    I don't think that anyone could have predicted one year ago where Elon Musk would be today. I think the same is true of next year. That man is full of surprises.
    - jxjnskkzxxhx 2y ago
      I predict he's not gonna be on Mars.
    - AtlasBarfed 2y ago
      That is charitable. I see a clear path of decline.
  - ashoeafoot 2y ago
    And Ukraine got the minsk agreements, the 1990 "assurances" of independence , concessions and contracts by countries without legal system and kinglike rulers are worthless. So he had a extraordinary piece of paper? So what..

goldchainposse 2y ago

> They have threatened her with $50,000 in punitive damages every time she mentions Facebook in public … even if the statements she is making are true,” he said. Unless Congress asks for the testimony, which is probably why Meta tried to stop the hearing.

Alive-in-2025 2y ago
But infinitely rich companies can of course bankrupt any ordinary human by suing them over and over again. They already look bad, so it doesn't make them look worse. Why wouldn't they just keep suing her?
- leereeves 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...
  - gruez 2y ago
    Is that's what's happening here? The bit about suing her "even if the statements she is making are true" makes me think they're not trying to sue her via defamation, but through non-disparagement agreements. If that's the case, I'd hesitate to characterize this as SLAPP. If you voluntarily entered into a non-disparagement agreement and got something in exchange (eg. in exchange for severance or whatever), then at the very least it's slightly different than a journalist or whatever trying to expose some scandal.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      For such reasons, I count non-disparagement agreements as a curtailing of free speech. Everything that makes freedom of speech worth defending when the government wants your silence, also applies to businesses. The US puts freedom of speech on a pedestal. But stuff like this makes me aware that's a lot more limited than people would like to believe. (I've signed at least two non-disparagement agreements, but also I'm not in the US).

jongjong 2y ago

It's interesting to think about the way in which the Chinese government operates compared to the government of other countries like the US. The US government was conceived as merely a public utility to fund public works; there was no single ideological basis beyond that. Freedom isn't a "single" ideology because it encapsulates all possible ideologies. The ideology rested with the people themselves to implement on an individual basis. The CCP, on the other hand, was conceived as an ideological movement with specific goals. Now that the Chinese economy has become so important in the world, the ideological aspects are seeping into the economies of all countries, though it doesn't translate well into western politics. I think this is because the western political system was a limited-trust system, it only worked well when the state was anemic; if the state becomes big (cash-rich), companies will find that they can start to earn significant sums of money from the state, they will redirect their attention to catering to the needs of the state and away from the private sector. Unfortunately the western state has no intrinsic ideology, no intrinsic needs or goals, so it will lead to corruption or faux-adoption of external ideologies (as a means to serve private financial interests). Western governments cannot form genuine ideological movements (besides the ideology of economic pragmatism) IMO because their foundations aren't designed to support anything besides that. They are founded on the principles of individualism and limited state power.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
486sx33 2y ago
Precisely why China needs to be a whole lot less important to the world. Freedom and personal liberty actually are ideologies. They don’t encompass every ideology that doesn’t make sense at all. I’d say CCP and many other governments like Russia and Ukraine are FAR more corrupt than the US. Your argument really doesn’t make sense.
- A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
  Dude the US is insanely corrupt, it's just that a lot of the corruption is called "lobbying" and "consulting." Sometimes also certain forms of "legal counsel." It's whitewashed and normalized.

neilv 2y ago

[flagged]

neilv 2y ago
At least 4 downvotes, no explanation. What's the problem? I'm curious what the situation is: did the person speak up internally, were they disempowered, did they go along with it but then have a change of heart at some point, etc.?
- m-ee 2y ago
  She wrote a whole book about it, and yes that’s more or less her claim. Her telling is that she tried to avoid touching China policy as long as possible until she was forced into it, largely as retaliation for reporting sexual harassment from Joel Kaplan. Kaplan and Zuckerberg were directing most of the China policy personally so she had little to no ability to overrule them. The audiobook is free if you have Spotify premium.

zombiwoof 2y ago

Kinda wild this is a buried story. This should be top news

nextworddev 2y ago
probably a lot of "algorithmic" downvoters

loeg 2y ago

FWIW, she was fired in 2017 and only now is trying to become a "whistleblower." If the conduct needed whistle-blowing, surely it would have been more timely to come out almost a decade ago.

trhway 2y ago
She published a book with these FB "revelations" recently, like a month ago, so kind of PR tour.
- MeetingsBrowser 2y ago
  Playing devil's advocate: If the allegations about Meta violating laws in the book are true, what would be an appropriate waiting period before the author testifies to the Senate, so that it doesn't appear to be a PR tour?
  - trhway 2y ago
    A negative value, about -7 years in this case.
  - loeg 2y ago
    She could have raised her concerns in 2017 or earlier, rather than 2025, when her knowledge is eight years out of date.
    - cookiengineer 2y ago
      Not sure why you are writing this bad faith argument. Not a single legal system on the planet is that fast. All class action law suits take years of preparation time in their discovery phase.
      - loeg 2y ago
        What about this do you think is constrained to the legal system? Her book and the senate hearing are not moving through or constrained by the ordinary courts. (And while they're slow, they do generally move faster than eight years.)

gradientsrneat 2y ago

I despise Facebook for many reasons, privacy being a major factor. On the other hand, both Trump and Musk own competing social media companies, and the CEOs of other social media companies have attempted to curry their favor. So, there is a potential for conflict of interest here, which could lead to a misproportion of due process. Or, regardless of truthfulness, some form of leverage. Or the trial is just for show. Maybe the accusations are true, but there's a reason this person is coming forward now.

travisgriggs 2y ago
Won’t matter. A handful of judges will use big words, cite legalese, and it won’t matter. Every time I think “but the law/constitution won’t allow…” there’s some end run. The rule of law is only as good as thems that rule the law.

neuroelectron 2y ago

Not really surprising. I'm sure all the major tech companies are engaged in this kind of deal making. The influence of China over Amazon is obvious and there has been cases of algorithmic tampering and account unlocking in their favor.

vasco 2y ago

If you're a director of global public policy for seven years, who are you really whistleblowing, the company, or yourself? I appreciate the information coming out, but in some of these situations I can't help but picture that "the worst person in the room" in regards to the offenses might also end up being the person that then becomes the most holier than thou when they get out of the company. If you ever met someone who used to work in software ads and ask them about privacy you'll get what I mean.

dralley 2y ago
https://imgur.com/wTWW1fE https://imgur.com/wTWW1fE
FrancisMoodie 2y ago
I get your point, but also, so what? The point of this whistle-blowing is that the public gets to make informed decisions about these companies that provide us with services that much of us use daily, and that the government gets a chance to figure out whether this is the truth or not and take actions accordingly. It's not about who is guilty right now but what needs to be done to prevent this in the future, IMO. And whatever she might be guilty of doing, the chances of her ever having the same access to sensitive information in any company has gone drastically down after coming forward with this information.
Capricorn2481 2y ago
Everything is incentives of the company. People are not told to do something evil, they're told "We don't have the budget to look into that" or "don't do that until we hear from the higher-ups." I'm disinterested in who made what call because ultimately it's designed to be nebulous. Someone breaking out of that horrific cycle and telling us what it leads to is a good thing. Even though it will likely lead to nothing, like it did with Sophie Zhang [1] [1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-ignore-political-manipulation-whistleblower-memo?bfsource=relatedmanual https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook...

imiric 2y ago

A whistleblower is not required to determine that Meta, and all adtech companies, have been severely damaging not just to the US, but to all governments and societies where these platforms are used. They don't need to collude with any adversarial government for this to be true. The same tools built to manipulate people into buying things, are used to manipulate them into thinking and acting in ways that could be beneficial to someone. Advertising and propaganda use the same tactics, after all. When these tools are accessible to anyone, including political adversaries, it would be naive to think that they're not being used for information warfare. The Cambridge Analytica leak was just the tip of the iceberg. These companies and agencies are still operating at a global scale, and business is booming. Why adtech companies weren't heavily investigated and regulated after this became public is beyond me. These are matters of national security, which anyone sane would consider more important than any financial or practical value they might have. Banning TikTok was a step in the right direction, but that's far from the only service that needs to be heavily regulated. And even that decision is flip-flopped and very controversial, so the idea of going beyond must be unthinkable. Yet not doing so will lead to the eventual downfall of the US, and the current western hegemony. The instability we're seeing now is just the beginning, and my only hope is that it doesn't escalate to a major global conflict.

Hojojo 2y ago
Honestly, it's crazy that any country allows online media to control the national discourse about politics without having any insight into how the algorithms decide what kind of content is shown to whom and how content is moderated or controlled. Then there's bot/propaganda accounts run by who knows who poisoning any political discussion.
- throw1222212121 2y ago
  "To save the public from propaganda, we must implement national controls on all political media dissemination"
  - rcxdude 2y ago
    More like "let's not have national controls on political media dissemination in the hands of large corporations and hidden from view"

avalys 2y ago

All I see in this story are a bunch of things that were under discussion at some point, but never happened. But then, “Meta considered doing business in China, evaluated and negotiated with the Chinese government what would be required to do so, and then did not proceed” isn’t a story that is going to sell a lot of books or get her a lot of attention. Another tell that this is a stunt for attention and not a genuine issue is her trying to blame China’s progress in AI on Meta’s release of an open-source model.

apercu 2y ago
> But then, “Meta considered doing business in China, evaluated and negotiated with the Chinese government what would be required to do so, and then did not proceed” isn’t a story that is going to sell a lot of books or get her a lot of attention It could be as simple as Meta did not want to give the Chinese government partial ownership and their IP.
- surge 2y ago
  I remember when this happened, it was in the news then, except the conversation was everyone in SV was doing it, including Google. They decided not to. We don't convict for thinking about robbing a bank, you actually have to attempt it and nothing being discussed was explicitly illegal, merely unethical by some arguments, but then again, NSA has several listening posts at AT&T hubs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A), and Apple is building backdoors for iCloud in the UK, its the cost of doing business in western countries, that ethically its simply complying with local laws at that point, just degrees of magnitude.
malshe 2y ago
Read her book Careless People [1] where she shared many details. A crucial aspect of the China story is that FB/Meta conveyed to the Chinese officials that they were ready to do anything they asked for in the hope that they will be allowed in China. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Careless-People-Cautionary-Power-Idealism/dp/1250391237 https://www.amazon.com/Careless-People-Cautionary-Power-Idea...

1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago

"Hawley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Crime and Counterterrorism Subcommittee, said that Meta or Facebook tried "desperately to prevent" him from holding the hearing. "They have threatened her with $50,000 in punitive damages every time she mentions Facebook in public ... even if the statements she is making are true," he said. "Facebook is attempting her total and complete financial ruin. They're attempting to destroy her personally, they're attempting to destroy her reputation and I think the question is, `Why?'" "What is it they are so afraid of?" Hawley asked."" Meta has a stellar reputation to protect. Honest people doing honest "work".

lazyeye 2y ago

You can watch the full Facebook whistleblower hearing here:- https://youtu.be/f3DAnORfgB8 https://youtu.be/f3DAnORfgB8

sudoshred 2y ago

Suicide by heart attack is imminent.