24 ms·

Careless People

• bk496 2y ago
  How abstract is this book? Are there many examples of things that are relevant at meta today, especially on the web and developer front?
  • actionfromafar 2y ago
    Maybe depends on if by relevant you mean, "I'm working on airflow surface turbulence" vs "am I making a cruise missile?"
• brickfaced 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • martin_a 2y ago
    I don't think so. It just underlines the title of the book "Careless People". Facebook doesn't care about anything, takes no responsibility, "can't be touched", be it on their home turf or across the globe.
  • mariusor 2y ago
    I think the comparison is not meant to be between degrees of horribleness between the two events, but between degrees of complicity and denial on the part of Facebook management.
    • brickfaced 2y ago
      Complicity in what, exactly? Democracy? Personally I'm less concerned about Facebook staying neutral in 2016 and more concerned about their election sabotage in 2020: https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3616579-zuckerberg-tells-rogan-that-facebook-suppressed-hunter-biden-laptop-story-after-fbi-warning-defends-agency-as-legitimate-institution/ https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3616579-zuckerberg-tel... Of course in the end things turned out for the best, but that's almost certainly not what Sheryl wanted, so I guess it's on theme for the book.
      • pjc50 2y ago
        US nationals being subject to arbitrary detention by ICE, with the plan to deport them to irretrievable offshore prisons, is probably not the best.
        • brickfaced 1y ago
          Big if true. Meanwhile, most are pleased with the bans on men in women's sports and DoD doctors sterilizing children, among other executive actions.
      • falcor84 2y ago
        I'm not following, which things turned out for the best?
        • brickfaced 1y ago
          The 2024 general election.
      • mariusor 2y ago
        > Complicity in what The massacres in Myanmar and in the propagation of misinformation relating to the elections in the US in 2020, and probably 2024[1]. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46590890 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46590890
  • PaulRobinson 2y ago
    The comparison is that there are two events that Facebook couldn't mentally or emotionally acknowledge their involvement in even though they were clearly involved and had influenced, not that there is moral equivalence between the two events.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• matthewdgreen 2y ago
  I’m only part of the way through the book, so have nothing to spoil here. But it’s entertaining. And shocking. The author will relate a scene that’s so absurd that you think “ah, this can’t be true, this is made up for dramatic effect, nobody would act like that” and then you Google it and you realize the absurd thing is totally true and was fully documented at the time. All the author is adding is a perspective from the inside. I understand why Facebook people might have wanted the book to go away. That their attempt to do so comically backfired and resulted in entirely the opposite effect, well, that’s also pretty much what you’d expect from this crew after reading the book.
  • bondarchuk 2y ago
    What is the thing? (you can rot13 it for spoilers)
    • kreddor 2y ago
      It's hardly just one single thing. The book is full of absurd scenes all the way through.
  • binaryturtle 2y ago
    It's called the Streisand Effect. :)
    • rsynnott 2y ago
      It's kind of amazing that people still hit this, really. Like, if you're Facebook's lawyers, how are you not telling them "don't talk about this; anything you say or do will only promote it further"? The lawyers must _know_.
      • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
        After reading the article, it seems plausible that they were advised against this and, well... didn’t care. (Perhaps it’s more accurate to say they did not think it would manifest but that’s not a fun play on words.)
• foobarkey 2y ago
  Its a good book I read it, the only thing that she messed up though is not letting her exec level shares vest and be quiet until then imo :)
  • kbrtalan 2y ago
    just the opposite. She put her money where her mouth was and didn't trade her dignity for some cash
    • foobarkey 2y ago
      Yes correct in some absolute ethical context, but would have been easier to fight with a few hundred million budget to pay for legal fees
  • RistrettoMike 2y ago
    While her boss continues to sexually harass her? Doesn’t sound like a mistake to me. There’s more to life than money, as the author makes quite clear throughout the book, IMO.
  • stackbutterflow 2y ago
    Did she say that she renegotiated her compensation? Because early in the book she wrote that unlike basically everyone else she's working with, she poorly negotiated her comp and that she's working for a regular and unimpressive salary while her coworkers are flashing luxury brands that she can't afford. I've stopped reading after the Myanmar episode so I don't know if she's ever renegotiated her package.
• grunder_advice 2y ago
  Whenever these kind of articles pop up, I always think how sad it is that PyTorch, Llama and many widely used opens source projects are tied to Meta.
  • Aeolun 2y ago
    They are open-source. Shouldn’t we be happy that at least something good comes of that sentient pile of cash?
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  • conartist6 2y ago
    So get a group of other sympathetic people and fork them. This is virtually the only place where you have a chance to take power from them by your actions. "The best way to complain is to create things," and yes that's a poster I got for free back when I worked at Facebook.
    • diggan 2y ago
      > fork them This requires all of the "source" to be available. For PyTorch and a bunch of other projects, this is trivial as all the source is straight up on GitHub. But for proprietary things like Llama, it's really hard to fork something when you don't even have access to what they used to build it (software-wise, not even thinking about the hardware yet). How could you fork something like Llama when Meta don't even speak clearly about what data they used, literally none of the training code is available, and you have to agree to terms and conditions before you're "allowed" to do anything with it?
      • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
        > you have to agree to terms and conditions before you're "allowed" to do anything with it I don’t have experience with this so I’m taking it at face value; if this is true, it’s so strange that I have an idea of this being an “open” model. As in, not that they PR’ed to make people believe it but that people who were required to accept those terms seem to believe it (as users seem to repeat it). Seems a little bit of critical thinking should dispel that notion. Are there any, more reasonably open models? Is LLaMa just called open because it’s the most accessible?
• TheAceOfHearts 2y ago
  > There's Zuck, whose underlings let him win at board-games like Settlers of Catan because he's a manbaby who can't lose (and who accuses Wynn-Williams of cheating when she fails to throw a game of Ticket to Ride while they're flying in his private jet). Why does this seem to be a recurring pattern among the modern ultrawealthy? Does anyone who fails to bend over backwards for them just end up getting exiled? Have the elites through history always been this insecure or is it a modern phenomenon? If you're wildly successful at something with significant real world influence, why would you care so strongly about something as relatively inconsequential as a board game or a video game? Being good at any kind of game is mostly a function of how much time and energy you've invested into it. If you claim to be an extremely hardcore worker who has any kind of family life there just aren't any leftover hours in the day for you to grind a top position in a game. And anyway, if you're playing games for fun and to bond with people, you probably shouldn't be playing tryhard optimal strategies every game, and should instead explore and experiment with more creative strategies. This is a lesson that took me a while to learn.
  • js8 2y ago
    > Have the elites through history always been this insecure or is it a modern phenomenon? Yes. As a kid, I read a legend that one of the Charlemagne's knights got so annoyed for losing a game of chess that he killed his opponent with the chessboard.
    • laserlight 2y ago
      > this insecure I agree that such an event would demonstrate insecurity. I would also argue that past elites were not “that insecure”, because they put their lives at risk by waging wars. Of course, later elites figured out ways to address the downsides.
      • pjc50 2y ago
        There's a frame question in this, and the history of duelling. Is your image, or self-image, in matters of honor or social status more important than your life? Is it secure or insecure to risk your life simply because of an insult? To what extent does "security" in this context boil down to the capacity for violence, rather than anything else?
• K0nserv 2y ago
  The book is a good read and she also testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee[0], repeating many of the claims from the book under oath. One of the striking things is that it's clear that Mark and several others from Facebook perjured themselves in prior hearings. I expect there will be no consequence for this. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3DAnORfgB8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3DAnORfgB8
  • grafmax 2y ago
    As long as we have this concentration of wealth in this country we are going to have this selective enforcement of laws based on class lines.
    • hermitcrab 2y ago
      "The big thieves hang the little ones." Czech Proverb
      • matusp 2y ago
        It's actually Roman: Magni minores saepe fures puniunt
        • hermitcrab 1y ago
          Where does it come from? I Googled "Magni minores saepe fures puniunt" and mostly found pages in Czech.
          • hadeson 1y ago
            "Magni, inquit, fures minorem puniunt" - Appeared in Pseudo-Caecilius Balbus.
            • hermitcrab 1y ago
              I found it here: https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/caeciliusbalbus.html https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/caeciliusbalbus.html And from: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011605246 https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011605246 "The so-called Caecilius Balbus is mainly an ancient Latin translation of a Greek collection of maxims. "
• vmurthy 2y ago
  I read the book. It’s a very interesting read. A few things stood out ( no spoilers ) - Casual indifference at exec level to atrocities happening because of FB/ Meta. - Money/power does make you insensitive - Tech bro view of the world permeates most decisions that Meta takes. - Casual sexual harassment for women ( follows from the tech bro worldview I guess ) - US centric world view influencing how execs treat world leaders. All in all worth a read or two!
  • diggan 2y ago
    Maybe I'm jaded, but this is how I understand all US technology companies to be run. In fact, I'd be surprised if all of those things weren't true for most of the enormous "tech bro" companies coming from SV.
    • geerlingguy 2y ago
      There's a reason the Silicon Valley TV show's humor was so biting.
    • apical_dendrite 2y ago
      I would put Meta, the Elon Musk companies, Uber, and some others in a separate category from Amazon, Apple, and Google. To be sure, Amazon, Apple, and Google have done some very immoral things, but there does seem to be something in the culture of those companies that understands that they wield enormous power and that sees value in acting responsibly - even if it's just because they think being cartoonishly evil isn't in their long-term interest. I do think there's been a change in ethos from the Jobs/Bezos/Page/Brin generation of leadership to the Musk/Zuckerberg generation.
  • HexPhantom 2y ago
    The casual indifference part really got to me too.
    • rubzah 2y ago
      Then you realize that Facebook has been extraordinarily active banning Palestinian posts and accounts over the last year. So the "casual indifference" is at the very least selectively applied.
• lud_lite 2y ago
  Don't mess with a Kiwi I guess :) That said FB sounds evil not careless.
  • meigwilym 2y ago
    The banality of evil.
  • sdl 2y ago
    Evil and careless can be one and the same. They (FB) could not care-less about the consequences of their actions on other peoples' lives. "The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference." - Elie Wiesel
  • immibis 2y ago
    Leave it to a Kiwi to be naive about someone's intentions. There's a reason New Zealand scores well on the corruption perception index. Emphasis on perception.
• _j87n 2y ago
  I'm responding to TheAceOfHearts, I can't seem to reply directly to the original comment. The question was "if you're wildly successful at something with significant real world influence, why would you care so strongly about something as relatively inconsequential as a board game or a video game?" You kind of answered the question yourself. He cares so much because he is successful in something else and has extended that need for success into other areas of his life. It seems this is common among successful people, they try to be successful in everything else in their lives, perhaps not realizing they might have got lucky in one area and are convinced they can apply that to all other areas of their lives.
• ryandrake 2y ago
  This book probably could have been written about any major company. Our corporate system's built-in moral imperative that profits must be optimized above absolutely everything else virtually guarantees that these kind of people end up at the top of each and every one of them.
  • fellowniusmonk 2y ago
    It's very odd that we consider corporations to have personhood in the U.S., if you were to actually describe most of these top, predatory companies like Nestlé, Meta, etc. and their action as something "a person" did we would all immediately say that person should be jailed, is evil and that allowing them to interact with the general population is too risky. That person once in jail would assuredly never pass a parole board. Companies should either be treated as people or as companies, what we have is a ongoing classification error that makes all natural persons lives worse as our rights are subordinate to unnatural persons. It's insane how we build our own cages. That being said, the environment is bad but not all individual companies are the same and saying so is not only false but creates an environment of acceptance and equivocation. "Pay ratio" is often a good indicator of where on the evil spectrum a company is... If only every company could have the moral standards of a HEB or Costco the world would be better than it is.
• baritone 2y ago
  I look forward to reading the book, but I’m not anti-Zuck. Individuals can change the world. Groups with ideology can change the world. This is why many of us are here at HN- for the discussion of ideas and for idealism. Few want to be supreme jerks that ruin things on a massive scale. Zuck, if you’re reading this- thanks for being part of the thing that allowed me to continue communication with my friends when they weren’t nearby, and thanks for continuing to provide that for my children. Are things fucked up? Were lives ruined? Sure. We all fuck shit up and ruin lives, some of us more than others. Then we own up to that as much as we can and use what we have left to try to continue doing what we did before to try to make the world a better place.
  • thrance 2y ago
    The great man theory [1] has been thoroughly debunked at this point. I you feel grateful for old Facebook, do thank the thousand nameless engineers that actually built it, not the single man that took all the credit (and money). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory
    • madebylaw 2y ago
      Where is it “thoroughly debunked” in that link?
  • piva00 2y ago
    Very few people actively try to be supreme jerks and ruin things, that's very abnormal behaviour for a human being. It's much more common that your inner narrative keeps finding justifications for why what you are doing is important, and the damage you are causing is either justified or not perceived as so damaging. The issue is the system we live under doesn't really incentivise moral and ethical behaviour, the rewards to be reaped are much larger if you act immorally, people like Zuck are able to tell themselves what they are doing is ok for "making the world a better place". But there's no reward for making the world a better place, the reward is for you showing revenue growth, user growth, and Zuck chased that even though there was an inflection point where the "good" was outweighed by the "bad". > Zuck, if you’re reading this- thanks for being part of the thing that allowed me to continue communication with my friends when they weren’t nearby, and thanks for continuing to provide that for my children. All of that could still have existed without all the appendages included to extract more money from the machine. Without creating feeds of content measured by "engagement" to the point it became detrimental to the users themselves, all the good Meta has done could have existed if morals and ethics trumped profit-seeking. And for that I do not thank Zuckerberg, at all, even though I do understand he is also a product of the system, in the end he (and Meta) abused one of the most powerful feelings of humans (connection among each other) to extract as much money as they could without regards to the dangerous side-effects that many pointed out were happening when Facebook was growing, there was no care about anyone, you and I were swindled. It's unfortunate, I hope you can see that, for all the good provided over years on fostering connections, it was just spoiled in the end by his greed, and carelessness. We can do better than that, no need to thank Zuckerberg for fucking us over.
• UnreachableCode 2y ago
  > "[Zuck] blows key meetings because he refuses to get out of bed before noon." Is this meant to be taken literally or is it an expression for arrogance?
  • gmac 2y ago
    Can't see any reason not to take it at face value. It's not a common phrase or expression.
  • scryers_bloom 2y ago
    I suddenly now imagine Zuck no differently from some of my unemployed friends.
  • RistrettoMike 2y ago
    I read the book. It’s something that comes up & happens multiple times, and the potential meetings being described are with various global heads of state.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• xdkyx 2y ago
  This may be a little naive from my side, but I'm wondering - is every big tech company the same as Meta and it's leadership? Or is there something special, a perfect storm of circumstances that we only hear so much about so many instances of outright - can't even find the right word here - evil, stupidity, brashness? If we assume that every big (let's say FAANG) company is the same, why we hear about Meta time and time again?
  • dunsany 2y ago
    Have you heard the stories about Uber?
    • ozornin 2y ago
      I haven't. What stories?
  • hermitcrab 2y ago
    Because Zuckerberg is a worse human being than the senior people in the other FAANG companies.
  • moolcool 2y ago
    I think Facebook's core product is inherently evil in a way that other FAANG's core products may not be.
    • aprilthird2021 2y ago
      It doesn't have anything to do with this though. It has to do with having so much power and money in a "meritocracy" and the mental gymnastics needed to maintain those two opposing propositions. Meta's core product is a machine to sell ads, just like YouTube, TikTok, Netflix (now), etc. It's not that unique. And these stories are all over the valley for even much less powerful individuals
      • akudha 2y ago
        I haven't used FB in over a decade, so maybe I am not up-to-date. While YouTube and FB are both machines to sell ads, I'd take YouTube over FB any day. I can pay YouTube a few dollars and avoid ads, YouTube is an insanely useful learning tool as long as I avoid politics/influencer-idiots and comments - is there any useful part of FB? Maybe marketplace, not sure. Is it even possible to avoid ads on FB?
• drdrek 2y ago
  This is exactly the type of people the cultural purge in big tech came to flush out. Trying to change a multi billion dollar company from the inside is delusional, self serving, narcissistic and ineffective. Who the hell do you think you are in the great machine of 100,000+ employees companies, of billions invested in them. The change is going to be political, regulatory. These companies always can't change until regulation is there, and then they miraculously adapt. If you took big tech money for 7 years you were not part of the solution. The lengths some people will go to self explain why they were not egotistical is amazing! This is not an expose, everything is well known, this is a books worth of convincing herself she is a good person after all.
  • sanderjd 2y ago
    I don't understand your "delusional, self serving, narcissistic and ineffective" / "egotistical" point. All of this would apply to people trying to change things from the outside too. Who the hell do you think you are in the great machine of hundreds of millions of US citizens, or billions of people globally, to think you can effect political and regulatory change? And yet, this is how things change, by people working to change them, from either the inside or the outside. Maybe your point is right that anyone trying to be a change agent is self serving and egotistical. But don't fool yourself that there is some big difference here between internal and external activists.
    • drdrek 2y ago
      You are equating "Hard" with impossible. Its impossible to turn a for profit company against itself from the inside, its hard to push for regulatory change. One system is built to create shareholder value, the other is to create social value. Its like a vegan working in a pig farm for 7 years to change the industry from the inside, at some point you need to ask yourself, is she just whitewashing her time there.
      • sanderjd 2y ago
        This just isn't true that one thing is hard and the other is impossible. Both things are nearly impossible to a similar degree. What system is "built ... to create social value"? You mean government? My friend, I'm sorry, but no. Government is built to wield power. Bending that power toward social value is just as hard as bending a business toward ethical behavior.
• concordDance 2y ago
  Disgruntled ex-employee disparaging their old colleagues and bosses is extremely common, I don't get why this is getting so many upvotes...
  • K0nserv 2y ago
    Speculating about her motives isn't fruitful, because her motives don't matter particularly. It has many upvotes because the information in the book is newsworthy and relevant for a place like HN.
    • oldpersonintx 2y ago
      [dead]
  • nuorah89 2y ago
    ex-employes can be disgruntled for good reasons
  • sanderjd 2y ago
    Because it's an interesting and positive review of a popular book about the industry covered by this forum. It would be really weird if an article like this didn't get upvoted here...
• dkga 2y ago
  Will definitely read the book after this readout. Trying to get Xi to name his child is both completely tone deaf to the point of being offensive, and incredibly debilitating for his child's self-esteem as just a bargaining chip.
• xyst 2y ago
  It’s a good memoir and like the author of this review. I too only picked it up because of Mark/Meta’s attempt to suppress the promotion of it. Listened to a couple of chapters on an audiobook service before picking up physical copy and was hooked.
• hermitcrab 2y ago
  >Zuck learns Mandarin. He studies Xi's book, conspicuously displays a copy of it on his desk. Eventually, he manages to sit next to Xi at a dinner where he begs Xi to name his next child. Xi turns him down. I do wonder what the point of amassing all that money and power is, if it means you end up grovelling to a despot like Xi (or a would-be despot like Trump).
  • kashunstva 2y ago
    Just riding that hedonic treadmill, probably. Once you have bought all the properties you want, airplanes, helicopters and yachts, I imagine your hedonic set-point adjusts to that level and you begin to cast about for what's missing. (What's missing of course, is what all these people can't seem to find, which is an unwavering set of human-centred values.)
    • hermitcrab 2y ago
      Once you have several mansions, a helicopter and a super yacht, the only possible reason to want more is for status. And you have to be some sort of sociopath to use that much of the world's resources just have a yacht 5m longer than the other guy.
    • hinkley 2y ago
      Chronologically, this event happens a good bit before Mark realizes just how much power he has. I don’t know if he would repeat that behavior now.
• hudo 2y ago
  I read the book. After the part where she was giving a birth to her child, while still writing emails and doing work stuff, I take everything she said with a grain of salt. As a father, the way she prioritised work to family through out many years of her work at FB, I find it very repelling and disgusting. I believe that Zuck&team are slimy greedy spoiled brats, but I could also say few things about her. Which make me wonder what is actual truth, book is very biased.
  • 3np 1y ago
    Judging authors parenting is way off topic.
• yapyap 2y ago
  It’s jarring when people refer to having read something and then it turns out they listened to the audiobook. This is not a jab on this specific blogger but a general thing. There should be a term for listening to an audiobook that’s not reading but does refer to a book on audio level, or just say you listened to the book.
  • DreaminDani 2y ago
    Reading an audiobook is reading. As a partially blind person, it is the only way I can read comfortably. I'm not sure how a different word would help. If one was reviewing the audiobook, specifically, they might call it out in order to comment on the narration quality, etc. But if you listened to the book, you've read it.
    • righthand 2y ago
      I don’t agree. Your eyes sending signals to your brain is different than your ears. It is a different way to digest information. People tend to remember 20% of what they hear and only 10% of what they read. While the hearing is greater it doesn’t include the same process of acquiring information. “Listening is reading” is a false generalization just because you were able to gather the same information doesn’t mean you “read” the book. I don’t consider a person in a wheel chair a “walker” but I would go for a “stroll” (roaming) with them.
      • ujkiolp 1y ago
        pls consider strolling away
  • eviks 2y ago
    What's wrong with "listening" as that term?
  • prophesi 1y ago
    Some of the books that have stuck with me for the longest are the ones I listened to during the years I had a grueling 45+ minute commute. The only downside I've found is that it's a lot harder to find and reference passages you've found of interest. Otherwise I think it's a perfectly valid method of ingesting information. If you listen while doing something that really should require your undivided attention, then I'd agree that it falls short to reading the text. They also state up front that they listened to the audiobook, so I'm not sure how much value there'd be in defining a term to differentiate reading versus listening to a book.
• bix6 2y ago
  Why does our country continue to exalt people like this? Can we have some compassion up top for once?
  • MrMcCall 2y ago
    [dead]
• havaloc 2y ago
  To be fair, Catan really brings out the worse in people, despite it being a friendly Euro game. It's worse than Monopoly in a lot of ways.
• yubblegum 2y ago
  "Careless" is doing some seriously heavy duty lifting here.
  • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
    Yeah, that’s rather the point of the article. They are careless in many ways as the author points out.
  • throw4847285 2y ago
    I assumed the word choice was a reference to this line from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” Given the way the novel is written, this is intentional understatement.
    • hinkley 2y ago
      That’s what she is referring to. That line is quoted either in the foreword or the first chapter.
• throw4847285 2y ago
  It's nice to know that despite playing fast and loose with the facts, the film The Social Network does capture something fundamentally true about Zuckerberg's psychology. The pathological need to dominate can be disguised when you're the underdog, but the more power you accrue the more it becomes the sole motivation. To paraphrase Robert Caro, "power does not corrupt, it reveals."
  • lithocarpus 2y ago
    I think power also can and often does corrupt. Partly due to the corrupting pressure that comes at a person who has power.
  • hinkley 2y ago
    David Brin has it as “absolute power attracts the absolutely corruptible.”
• plumbees 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • ageitgey 2y ago
    The opposite - Zuck begged Xi to name Zuck's child as a form of flattery.
    • plumbees 2y ago
      ;) I know but it can be read both ways. Leaning into the ambiguity.
      • hinkley 2y ago
        In the book it’s unambiguous.
• hermitcrab 2y ago
  Compliments to the author of this piece, Cory Doctorow, who I believe coined the useful term "enshittification". He has consistently championed consumer rights (presumably at a significant risk of having powerful people come after him) and lots of other worthwhile causes. And his writing is excellent.
• 0xCafeBabee 2y ago
  Anyone else notice how losing at simple board games seems scarier to billionaires than losing millions in business? Makes you wonder if it's because they can't control the outcome with money or power...
• WoodenChair 2y ago
  I used the form on the author of the book's website a few weeks ago to invite her on our books podcast: https://sarahwynnwilliams.com https://sarahwynnwilliams.com She didn't respond, which is fair enough, it's probably not big enough to be interesting to her. But then I got auto-added to her PR mailing list. I didn't ask or consent to be on the PR mailing list (all the page says as of now is "To contact Sarah, please complete the form below"). Seems I was just added because I used the "contact" form. Auto-adding someone who contacts you to a PR mailing list is a dark pattern. Seems she learned something at Facebook. I found it ironic.
  • aredox 2y ago
    She certainly didn't code that contact form. Still an oversight from her, but...
    • pixelatedindex 2y ago
      But what? It’s her website and is ultimately responsible. “I didn’t code it” is not an excuse.
      • aredox 1y ago
        Do you assume full responsability for all the dependencies of all the software you write and use?
        • deleted 1y ago
          [deleted]
        • pixelatedindex 1y ago
          That’s neither here nor there. This a very specific situation where someone comes to my website/company, takes an action they believe is safe, and gets a bunch of spam. That would absolutely be my responsibility - it’s where the buck stops.
          • 1y ago
• insane_dreamer 2y ago
  I don’t find the anecdotes very interesting—people with great power are or turn out to be assholes; sure, what else is new?—but this little gem stood out to me. Not that I’m surprised, just that it’s the first I heard of it: > According to Wynn-Williams, Facebook actually built an extensive censorship and surveillance system for the Chinese state – spies, cops and military – to use against Chinese Facebook users, and FB users globally. They promise to set up caches of global FB content in China that the Chinese state can use to monitor all Facebook activity, everywhere, with the implication that they'll be able to spy on private communications, and censor content for non-Chinese users.
• acyou 2y ago
  Zuckerberg and co. always seem so basic. Settlers of Catan and Ticket To Ride? I can't imagine more flavorless, generic games. Wait, those are the games that I play... I remember listening to Zuckerberg speak at length about the various epochs of Facebook including the fast pivot to global, it's overall a fascinating and compelling story that the book surely capitalizes on well.
  • bena 2y ago
    I'm not a big fan of Catan. Players can get locked out of the game with no way to meaningfully play. Ticket to Ride is decent though. Simple, straight-forward rules. Enough strategy and randomness to make playing interesting. No one can gum up the game by being intransigent.
    • acyou 2y ago
      My Ticket To Ride games are usually very passive, everyone has a sort of truce that lasts essentially throughout. But sometimes someone gives up on a big route and devotes themselves to messing up other people, and then things get spicy. Then again, I think we play wrong, because we don't ever use Stations (I think those are only in Ticket To Ride Europe though)?
      • bena 1y ago
        Probably. We have the original base game and the Ticket to Ride Junior edition. Neither of those have stations.
• silexia 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • dokyun 2y ago
    signed, "I have had more money than I will ever need for the last decade". Get fucked.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • silexia 2y ago
      Signed, 8 month old AI generated account meant to push far left propaganda and should be deleted by dang as it violated HM guidelines.
      • dokyun 2y ago
        [dead]
• ranger207 2y ago
  Doctorow touches on this, but I really think the biggest problem with society today is simply that too many people in power simply don't experience consequences
  • obscurette 2y ago
    I think that's true for our society in general at the moment. Everyone can behave like an asshole and it's completely OK for a society if they say "I had a tough childhood and haven't received a professional help".
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    • watwut 1y ago
      Literally none of these people claims that. What they actually say is "acting like an asshole is a cool manly thing". Meanwhile, the help for people with tough childhoods is slashed and protection for kids is scaled back. People who had tough childhoods and did not received professional help are getting roughly no help or benefit of doubt.
      • obscurette 1y ago
        I didn't talk about these people, I was talking about society in general. And the problem with even slight erosion of responsibility is that sociopaths benefit most.
  • gessha 1y ago
    I think the problem is people feel so entitled they think they can avoid consequences. And much to everybody’s surprise, they can do it if they pay the right people.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• xivzgrev 2y ago
  this cracked me up "When he gets to the mic, he spontaneously promises that Facebook will provide internet access to refugees all over the world. Various teams at Facebook then race around, trying to figure out whether this is something the company is actually doing, and once they realize Zuck was just bullshitting, set about trying to figure out how to do it. They get some way down this path when Kaplan intervenes to insist that giving away free internet to refugees is a bad idea, and that instead, they should sell internet access to refugees. Facebookers dutifully throw themselves into this absurd project, which dies when Kaplan fires off an email stating that he's just realized that refugees don't have any money. The project dies."
  • CrystalCuckoo 2y ago
    The author of the post tries to use this as an example of Kaplan being an idiot but (having read the books) struck me as a rare case of him being the only sane man in the room - Facebook pivoting from "we have to give free internet to refugees" to "we have to sell it" smacks of broader leadership not considering the wider context.
• selkin 2y ago
  This review is as naive as Wynn-Williams portrays herself in her memoir (which I enjoyed!) In the book, Wynn-Williams described herself as a wide-eyed, almost helpless person, which doesn't align with her pre-Facebook career as a lawyer in the a diplomatic corps. And when at FB, she was in the rooms where it happened, and had a job enabling some of it. She could've quit, but did not. She was one of the titular careless people at the time, and excuses it now by pointing at others who were even more careless. It's not atonement, it's whitewashing.
  • gr__or 1y ago
    How does her attempt to change things from the inside, by confronting their higher ups, who constantly put her down for it and collectivizing with other insiders, still lead you to such a harsh judgment of her character?
    • mistrial9 1y ago
      a crucial weighting is -- how much was this person implementing the things being decried, versus "change from the inside". Without having read this book, I will personally take away the benefit of doubt on "change from inside" given that this person is an attorney by trade, and has been hired for real money by this company.
      • selkin 1y ago
        I'd contrast Wynn-Williams with Susan Fowler: Fowler was only a few years out of school when she took a software engineer position at Uber, didn't had managerial position, yet actually stood up when things happened and made a change.
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    • Slava_Propanei 1y ago
      [dead]
  • 1y ago
• jimt1234 2y ago
  > ... but then Meta's lawyer tried to get the book suppressed and secured an injunction to prevent her from promoting it. Sounds like the work of Barbra Streisand's PR firm LOL
• boogieknite 2y ago
  here's a callous question: will it ever get to a tipping point where major businesses bail on react? is it already happening? asking specifically because our backend is pretty much just esri and were heavily considering porting all of our web products to experience builder because of how robust it is these days. experience builder is on react, which sucks imo, but would be helpful to avoid getting the rug pulled on us
  • gr__or 1y ago
    I don't think that's a necessary consequence. React is free, a sort-of recruitment loss-leader for Meta. Imo you can get to a moral zero on this pretty easily despite still using React, by supporting out-of-Meta React OSS and using your platforms to denounces Meta's carelessness. On the other hand: Companies pay for Microsoft's offerings and they support the Israeli military in their genocidal campaign in Gaza, I think getting to a moral zero on that is significantly harder.
• akudha 2y ago
  Wynn-Williams gets Zuck a chance to address the UN General Assembly. As is his wont, Zuck refuses to be briefed before he takes the dais Holy moly! No matter what your feelings are towards the effectiveness of U.N, addressing the general assembly is a huge opportunity to stand out, send a message, do something good etc. What a waste
  • disqard 2y ago
    "Zuck it! We'll do it live!!"
• ycombinatornews 2y ago
  Almost finished with it after few days. I think it is must read and the fact author testified adds more reasons. Glad to see this on HN.
• joejoo 1y ago
  [dead]
• lifefeed 1y ago
  This is a small bit, and I don't know anything about Zuckerberg's personal life, but "he refuses to get out of bed before noon" is normally more a sign of depression than laziness.
  • ycombinatrix 1y ago
    True but we don't know if the dude is getting drunk every night like the CEO from Ex Machina
  • banannaise 1y ago
    Far more likely to be "keeps insane hours and refuses to change them"
• malwrar 1y ago
  > Wynn-Williams's firsthand account of the next decade is not a story of these people becoming more reckless, rather, it's a story in which the possibility of consequences for that recklessness recedes, and with it, so does their care over those consequences. I often feel similar when I witness rich people operate, and I’m sure others on different wealth scales observe the same in me. It’s wild to observe someone take risky/dangerous positions, fail, and then shrug it off when you would have been ruined. One of those observable moments of privilege. I feel like it would be something interesting to study.