What is the real harm of not rescinding this guy's internship? Seems punitive and petty. It's not like anyone actually believes that FB cares about privacy. Whatever reputation or brand damage there was done a long time ago by FB's repeated violations of user privacy, which is just the natural state of things given their advertising-based business model.
FB could have turned this around and scored a marketing coup: "look we're hiring the hacker who exposed a security flaw, he'll be patching up the hole he found this summer - because at FB we're committed to user privacy and saving baby harp seals!"
But then again, is this really a big surprise? Just another data point in the growing contradiction between what SV is and what SV wants to be.
> Way back in 2005, a kid named Chris Putnam wrote a computer virus that rapidly spread across Facebook. [...] Pretty quickly, Facebook's COO, Dustin Moscovitz, was able to figure out Putnam was behind the attack. But instead of having Putnam arrested, Facebook hired him.
> "I will be forever grateful that the company was so sympathetic toward people like myself. It's one of the things that really sets Facebook apart with its passion for scrappy, hacker-type engineers."
Everybody loves a cool hacker persona. Except when it's directed against you :) And, facebook, imo, is more of "get shit done", rather than "break shit". This was more of the latter.
But really, if you work for a company, even if just as an intern, you really should be looking out for their interests. If you aren't, then why would they keep you?
but then, it really isn't a smart PR move from facebook. Now we know that not only do they mess up with privacy big times, but that they're not hiring anyone that wants to raise public awareness on that subject. As if public awareness was detrimental to facebook.
Which it obviously is, but by hiring that personn anyway, and have him work on privacy and ethic inside fb they could have shown some good will.
anon8418|10 years ago
FB could have turned this around and scored a marketing coup: "look we're hiring the hacker who exposed a security flaw, he'll be patching up the hole he found this summer - because at FB we're committed to user privacy and saving baby harp seals!"
But then again, is this really a big surprise? Just another data point in the growing contradiction between what SV is and what SV wants to be.
DanBC|10 years ago
Almost everyone knows that Facebook the company is hostile to user privacy.
But most people hope that individual Facebook employees have limited strictly audited access to user data.
RodericDay|10 years ago
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-i-attacked-facebook-with-...
> Way back in 2005, a kid named Chris Putnam wrote a computer virus that rapidly spread across Facebook. [...] Pretty quickly, Facebook's COO, Dustin Moscovitz, was able to figure out Putnam was behind the attack. But instead of having Putnam arrested, Facebook hired him.
> "I will be forever grateful that the company was so sympathetic toward people like myself. It's one of the things that really sets Facebook apart with its passion for scrappy, hacker-type engineers."
mildbow|10 years ago
But really, if you work for a company, even if just as an intern, you really should be looking out for their interests. If you aren't, then why would they keep you?
amirmc|10 years ago
He didn't 'break' anything.
bsaul|10 years ago
Which it obviously is, but by hiring that personn anyway, and have him work on privacy and ethic inside fb they could have shown some good will.