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This book was SO GOOD. It's bleak. I always imagined that rich/powerful people only created suffering if that suffering was required for certain goals. It's ea

This book was SO GOOD. It's bleak. I always imagined that rich/powerful people only created suffering if that suffering was required for certain goals. It's easier for me to bear injustice when it's a zero-sum game. But the story of Facebook is not that. Facebook didn't make ethical sacrifices for profit -- its executives just didn't care to understand the consequences of their actions. I wish those folks could feel how much harm they've caused.

0x3f 7mo ago
I'm not sure these are functionally any different. Perhaps not caring is required to achieve certain goals.
truegoric 7mo ago
Why injustice being a zero-sum game would make it easier to bear?
- simpaticoder 7mo ago
  Because at least someone benefits. It's why theft is arguably better than vandalism. If you steal the thing, at least someone gets to use it. If it's vandalized, no-one does.
  - bluefirebrand 7mo ago
    > Because at least someone benefits Arguably this makes it worse, not better
    - rectang 7mo ago
      Indeed, that's why "salting the earth" is an age-old military tactic. "If I can't have it, then neither can you." But I can also see why someone might wish for there to be a reason behind suffering.
- malfist 7mo ago
  Not op but because there's a reason for injustice. It's not just chaos for choas's sake
analog8374 7mo ago
Understanding takes effort too, effort that might be better spent creating value. Also, understanding creates culpability. So that's a downside. It's like people who walk in front of you on the road and pretend to not notice you. If I don't see the badness then I am not responsible for the badness. And thirdly, never underestimate people's power to ignore.
- rectang 7mo ago
  > never underestimate people's power to ignore. One of the hardest things to do is to put yourself in the place of those you see as villains and recognize that they generally see themselves as heroes. The human capacity for self-justification is extremely powerful.
  - analog8374 7mo ago
    It's the flipside of focus/concentration of attention. Which is the key trick underlying all science, engineering, scholarship etc. The foundation of our civilization. So you might say that a vast ignorance is implicit to our way of life.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
Aurornis 7mo ago
> This book was SO GOOD. One of the (very valid, IMO) criticisms of the book is that the author tries to set herself apart from the culture she was deeply embedded within. I think it's becoming a trap to hold the author up as a hero when she was clearly part of it all to the very core. It was only after she got separated from the inner circle club that she tried to distance herself from it. So while reading it, be careful about who you hold up as a hero. In a situation like this it's possible for everyone to be untrustworthy narrators.
- zaphar 7mo ago
  There is nuance here though. Taking a step back and learning from an experience is something to be celebrated.
- jmull 7mo ago
  A strange response. Rather than address the comment you change the subject, “whaddabout the author!” Why do the dark work of deflecting on behalf of “Meta”? (lol, that name gets me every time. Might as well have renamed themselves NoIdeaWhatToDoNow)
  - Nifty3929 7mo ago
    Because recognizing the author as conflicted and an unreliable narrator changes how you should weight and consider the information they are providing. It doesn't necessarily mean anything is untrue - but it does add extra, valuable information to how much you trust it. If someone tells me something, I'm mostly likely to believe it without further investigation. But not always.
    - jmull 7mo ago
      Another one. Deflecting the criticism of Meta with a “whaddabout the author!” Formed as an answer to a question, but not one that was asked. A different account than last time, though, so I’ll ask you too: Why do the dark work of deflecting on behalf of Meta (lol)?
sifar 7mo ago
I felt it more being naive idealism in the beginning coupled with the thrill of achieving things before the realization. Yet certain things stand out like her trip to Myanmar. Why to subject oneself through that in that condition. The title is very apt, the executives, they simply didn't care. That was a fascinating glimpse
toss1 7mo ago
>> its executives just didn't care to understand the consequences of their actions. This, a day or two after a top story about Marc Andreessen refusing to engage in introspection. Nah, there's not a pattern here among the tech billionaires ... right?
prepend 7mo ago
I think the author was complicit and only complained once FB stopped paying her. It was weird how the author claimed not to know how facebook targeted ads worked until 2016/2017 after she had made millions.
- mortoc 7mo ago
  Literally anyone with the access to these people would be someone making bank. Do you think Cheryl Sandberg would bother to talk to a poor person? That's kinda the nature of whistle-blowing. You're complicit, you have inside knowledge and THEN you choose to do the right thing. Snowden worked for the NSA before he exposed their lies about spying on US citizens, you think he did literally no work towards that end before blowing the whistle?
  - saltyoldman 7mo ago
    It's kind of the reason C-execs (and up) stay, the company keeps paying them more and more to hold the secrets.
    - cindyllm 7mo ago
      [dead]
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
  - Aunche 7mo ago
    If the author didn't want others to think of her as a "careless person", she should have refused a severance with a nondisparagement clause.
- andy_ppp 7mo ago
  So you should never be allowed to comment on the behaviour of companies you worked for?
  - 7mo ago
BloondAndDoom 7mo ago
Do you work in or closely follow the tech world? I read this book thinking that it'll be some expose but honestly it was underwhelming in a sense, it's almost better than I thought. Everything in the book either was obvious for anyone who worked in the industry, or better than I thought it'd be. There were some weird personal things about Zuckerberg, but even those were expected or given. It was an OK read, however as I read it all I can think of author is just a naive person who didn't know what she was getting into, and remained naive for a long time. Author herself say this in the book couple of times as well. Maybe this is a book that's "eye opening" to someone who's an outsider but if you are somehow in this business the book is practically nothing burger, or even worse actually make Facebook look better than I actually have imagined they would be. Another similar book is : "Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble", I read it expecting some crazy story, but it was yet another case of an outsider's take of the standard industry practice. I'm sure this is interesting for those never been in these circles, but for everyone else it's just another day in today's tech world. (Just to be clear, I don't support or condone any of this stuff but it's such a common place and given, unfortunately not even interesting at this point).
- gfody 7mo ago
  normalizing toxic as standard industry practice is sort of like condoning it, imo
  - BloondAndDoom 7mo ago
    It's like saying "Today's big companies follow lots of dark patterns such as forcing customers to call them to close their accounts, which became a standard practice in banks, SaaS and other businesses." It's an observation, nothing more than that.
    - Eisenstein 7mo ago
      You posed it as an observation only known to insiders of the industry. This book was targeted to the general public. By saying 'its no big deal' to anyone who thinks it is, you are are saying that those in the industry are normalized to it, and that the normalization should be the status quo. Like working in a factory farm slaughterhouse and saying everyone should be normalized to the suffering that goes on in there, instead of trying to change it.

0x3f 7mo ago

I'm not sure these are functionally any different. Perhaps not caring is required to achieve certain goals.

truegoric 7mo ago

Why injustice being a zero-sum game would make it easier to bear?

simpaticoder 7mo ago
Because at least someone benefits. It's why theft is arguably better than vandalism. If you steal the thing, at least someone gets to use it. If it's vandalized, no-one does.
- bluefirebrand 7mo ago
  > Because at least someone benefits Arguably this makes it worse, not better
  - rectang 7mo ago
    Indeed, that's why "salting the earth" is an age-old military tactic. "If I can't have it, then neither can you." But I can also see why someone might wish for there to be a reason behind suffering.
malfist 7mo ago
Not op but because there's a reason for injustice. It's not just chaos for choas's sake

analog8374 7mo ago

Understanding takes effort too, effort that might be better spent creating value. Also, understanding creates culpability. So that's a downside. It's like people who walk in front of you on the road and pretend to not notice you. If I don't see the badness then I am not responsible for the badness. And thirdly, never underestimate people's power to ignore.

rectang 7mo ago
> never underestimate people's power to ignore. One of the hardest things to do is to put yourself in the place of those you see as villains and recognize that they generally see themselves as heroes. The human capacity for self-justification is extremely powerful.
- analog8374 7mo ago
  It's the flipside of focus/concentration of attention. Which is the key trick underlying all science, engineering, scholarship etc. The foundation of our civilization. So you might say that a vast ignorance is implicit to our way of life.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

Aurornis 7mo ago

> This book was SO GOOD. One of the (very valid, IMO) criticisms of the book is that the author tries to set herself apart from the culture she was deeply embedded within. I think it's becoming a trap to hold the author up as a hero when she was clearly part of it all to the very core. It was only after she got separated from the inner circle club that she tried to distance herself from it. So while reading it, be careful about who you hold up as a hero. In a situation like this it's possible for everyone to be untrustworthy narrators.

zaphar 7mo ago
There is nuance here though. Taking a step back and learning from an experience is something to be celebrated.
jmull 7mo ago
A strange response. Rather than address the comment you change the subject, “whaddabout the author!” Why do the dark work of deflecting on behalf of “Meta”? (lol, that name gets me every time. Might as well have renamed themselves NoIdeaWhatToDoNow)
- Nifty3929 7mo ago
  Because recognizing the author as conflicted and an unreliable narrator changes how you should weight and consider the information they are providing. It doesn't necessarily mean anything is untrue - but it does add extra, valuable information to how much you trust it. If someone tells me something, I'm mostly likely to believe it without further investigation. But not always.
  - jmull 7mo ago
    Another one. Deflecting the criticism of Meta with a “whaddabout the author!” Formed as an answer to a question, but not one that was asked. A different account than last time, though, so I’ll ask you too: Why do the dark work of deflecting on behalf of Meta (lol)?

sifar 7mo ago

I felt it more being naive idealism in the beginning coupled with the thrill of achieving things before the realization. Yet certain things stand out like her trip to Myanmar. Why to subject oneself through that in that condition. The title is very apt, the executives, they simply didn't care. That was a fascinating glimpse

toss1 7mo ago

>> its executives just didn't care to understand the consequences of their actions. This, a day or two after a top story about Marc Andreessen refusing to engage in introspection. Nah, there's not a pattern here among the tech billionaires ... right?

prepend 7mo ago

I think the author was complicit and only complained once FB stopped paying her. It was weird how the author claimed not to know how facebook targeted ads worked until 2016/2017 after she had made millions.

mortoc 7mo ago
Literally anyone with the access to these people would be someone making bank. Do you think Cheryl Sandberg would bother to talk to a poor person? That's kinda the nature of whistle-blowing. You're complicit, you have inside knowledge and THEN you choose to do the right thing. Snowden worked for the NSA before he exposed their lies about spying on US citizens, you think he did literally no work towards that end before blowing the whistle?
- saltyoldman 7mo ago
  It's kind of the reason C-execs (and up) stay, the company keeps paying them more and more to hold the secrets.
  - cindyllm 7mo ago
    [dead]
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
- Aunche 7mo ago
  If the author didn't want others to think of her as a "careless person", she should have refused a severance with a nondisparagement clause.
andy_ppp 7mo ago
So you should never be allowed to comment on the behaviour of companies you worked for?
- 7mo ago

BloondAndDoom 7mo ago

Do you work in or closely follow the tech world? I read this book thinking that it'll be some expose but honestly it was underwhelming in a sense, it's almost better than I thought. Everything in the book either was obvious for anyone who worked in the industry, or better than I thought it'd be. There were some weird personal things about Zuckerberg, but even those were expected or given. It was an OK read, however as I read it all I can think of author is just a naive person who didn't know what she was getting into, and remained naive for a long time. Author herself say this in the book couple of times as well. Maybe this is a book that's "eye opening" to someone who's an outsider but if you are somehow in this business the book is practically nothing burger, or even worse actually make Facebook look better than I actually have imagined they would be. Another similar book is : "Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble", I read it expecting some crazy story, but it was yet another case of an outsider's take of the standard industry practice. I'm sure this is interesting for those never been in these circles, but for everyone else it's just another day in today's tech world. (Just to be clear, I don't support or condone any of this stuff but it's such a common place and given, unfortunately not even interesting at this point).

gfody 7mo ago
normalizing toxic as standard industry practice is sort of like condoning it, imo
- BloondAndDoom 7mo ago
  It's like saying "Today's big companies follow lots of dark patterns such as forcing customers to call them to close their accounts, which became a standard practice in banks, SaaS and other businesses." It's an observation, nothing more than that.
  - Eisenstein 7mo ago
    You posed it as an observation only known to insiders of the industry. This book was targeted to the general public. By saying 'its no big deal' to anyone who thinks it is, you are are saying that those in the industry are normalized to it, and that the normalization should be the status quo. Like working in a factory farm slaughterhouse and saying everyone should be normalized to the suffering that goes on in there, instead of trying to change it.