- worked there for less than two years and had no direct reports
- never attended some sort of key meeting
- did not work on the subject matter in question
...and therefore, she lacks context which undermines some of her claims.
Which of those is a matter of character, or a "disgusting" attack? They might be wrong, or they might be right but bringing up irrelevancies, but the writer is acting like stating these is some sort of reprehensible smear.
The goal is to divert discussion from the issue and make the discussion about her personality. The "disgusting" part is not what Facebook says about her (their folks clearly don't have much to smear Haugen with if this is the worst), it's that they don't want to address the allegations directly. The "smear" such as it is, falls flat, but it's reprehensible for Facebook's people to want to make the discussion about her rather than about the practices of the company that employed her.
because they're not even attempting to refute anything she says, which the Verge article points out. If you're going to try to smear someone by attacking their lack of experience it would probably make sense to point out how that lack of experience manifests itself in errors in her judgement.
Of course they cannot do that because she is literally citing their own words. Which is why this is just a thinly veiled, pathetic attack on a worker.
They are trying to undermine her credibility - to say she wasn't important, that she doesn't really understand - whether it's a smear is borderline but it seems a pretty poor response to me.
OK, you're responding to the fact that Facebook is saying things that are not disgusting about the whistleblower, who revealed really important information that Facebook is doing reprehensible things that threaten the long term sustainability of the democratic political systems currently in place.
What about your focus on the word "disgusting" is worth resolving BEFORE we get to the threat to the long term sustainability of the democratic political systems currently in place?
It's typical for Vox reporting (parent company of the Verge) -- but also typical for pretty much any vaguely left leaning publication (see also nytimes). They seek out the most populist angle on every story, regardless of how eyerollingly absurd it is. See: https://www.city-journal.org/journalism-advocacy-over-report...
I always liked Edward R. Murrow's response to Senator McCarthy's attempt to smear him: "Since he made no reference to any statements of fact that we made, we must conclude that he found no errors of fact."
Not seeing any "character assassination" in any of the quotes. None of Facebook's defense lines, low quality as they may be, seem overly personal.
For the record, I fully side with the whistleblower's claims. It's just that this article is very emotional, and could have been so much more. This is a fascinating quote the author failed to address fully:
"Facebook PR: “Despite all this, we agree on one thing; it’s time to begin to create standard rules for the internet. It’s been 25 years since the rules for the internet have been updated, and instead of expecting the industry to make societal decisions that belong to legislators, it is time for Congress to act."
Facebook has a point here. We don't even know what Facebook is. A media company? A news organization? A shop? A dating site? And if it does all of these things, and does so at planetary scale, is has the potential to do harm to big parts of the world, in countless ways. Yet there's pretty much zero rules.
I think we vastly underestimate how complicated the balancing act is. If Instagram does mental harm to teenage girls, whilst this very likely was not the original intent, what exactly is the "correct" course of action, in a way codified in law? Should it be forbidden for other girls (influencers) to broadcast their beauty lifestyle? Should there be a maximum time cap for consumers to browse the feed? The China way? Should influencers just be deplatformed if we don't like them, taking away their income?
None of these rules or laws seem very plausible or sane to me, and this is just one example of how Facebook can do harm.
Anyway, to end constructively, I'd say a first step is to force Facebook to give full access to its underlying (anonymized) data. If we've created a planetary-scale monster, we should treat it as a special case.
Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing for regulation for years. He wants this for two reasons:
1. Abdicating responsibility so that when the public or politicians complain about Facebook hosting or not hosting some content he can say it's not his problem, he follows the law.
2. The second is for regulatory capture. Once a social network gets a stigma of being uncool, people move on to the next thing. His status and net worth are tied up in an entity he must aggressively defend against becoming the next MySpace. If he can't buy out upstarts anymore because of antitrust then the next best protection is to make it so difficult to build a new network without a team of lawyers and moderators that no one would even think about doing it.
"If the best Facebook can come up with is this disgusting attempt at character assassination, Haugen is telling God’s own truth. We should listen to her."
My guess is they're using the same strategy as the Snowden leaks - drop a new bombshell at regular intervals through the media, then eventually open source the whole thing. The idea is the maximize the impact of the leaks, not to hide anything (of course, you can disagree about whether it actually does maximize the impact.)
Snippets of the source documents are presented in the WSJ Facebook stories that preceded the naming of the whistleblower. They are paywalled here, but you might be able to find the stories on certain archive sites.
Yes. At this point in the world we need not take anyone's word for what a corpus says or does not say. Either the data, query, and processing exist and are documented or they may as well be making things up.
This is what passes for journalism these days? This reads like a snarky blog or Reddit post than an article. I’m surprised a few Zuckerberg memes weren’t included. I say this as someone who wants Facebook broken up or highly regulated.
The smear here is actually against Facebook. The whistleblower is clearly being boosted by Democratic operatives [1] and appeared in front of Congress the day after 60 minutes.
Yes, the smear is against Facebook, and not the person releasing internal research from Facebook itself, that was not written by the whistleblower.
And obviously, discounting someone presenting factual evidence that at the moment is unchallenged based on perceived personal politics is fair game, reasonable, and the measure of good faith discussion.
Facebook is staring to show some really bad cracks. I think they should start checking their PR a bit more because if they follow this path, they could have congress in their neck for some time.
It's tough to call Facebook's response a "smear" or "disgusting attempt at character assassination" since it didn't address her character at all. It certainly does attempt to discredit her, and it is cowardly and ultimately doesn't address the issues she brought up. But the author of this article is a bit hyperbolic.
Reading hacker news comments today, I found out that:
1. this is fishy
2. she is a political operative for the dems
3. she has a liberal bias therefore this is all fishy and she cannot be trusted
4. she is rich and has some backing so she is definitely a political operative. This one is especially true because if she was poor Facebook would have been SLAPPed her already into shutting up. So there's no winning here.
5. (US) adults are responsible enough for the government to not have to regulate social media. Let's conveniently temporarily forget about the Rohingya minority.
6. Facebook is a net positive for civilization
7. nothing is actually whistleblown, we already knew all that. Therefore, we're ok with it and we should ignore this. Also see 1.
8. We're dealing with Schrödinger's censorship. Conservative voices are being censored on Facebook which is ran by 'libs' and at the same time they're not censored as the government (also libs) prepares to censor them. Or censor them more? Who knows anymore. TLDR they're going to be censored.
9. the staple of 'tech companies' is discussed all over the place as someone is talking to congress about its internal workings so the news is all over HN. Super fishy (see 1) so definitely a hit piece. If there was only one or two links it would probably be fine. But so many links may definitely be the hand of some lib political operative. Or not? Who knows? We're just saying that to muddy the waters. Big if true!
I think I'm going to be taking a break from forums in general. Either some Facebook friendly PR machine got activated or the collective mind has been poisoned by years and years of misinformation and generally sowing mistrust to the point of 'everything is a conspiracy and nothing is real'.
Here are some points I notice about this whole thing:
- Facebook has stated (in the press release the article is reporting on) that they support regulation. This is typical for large market incumbents, who have been said to always support fixed-overhead regulation, because it hurts smaller competitors more than it hurts them.
- Washington loves regulating things and can be safely assumed to be pro-policy in most cases. More to the point, incumbents today are far more concerned about the possibility of being blindsided in their campaigns by maneuvers on a platform their own team doesn't know how to work with, than they are about the difficult to quantify pros and cons of balancing antitrust and libertarian policy. You'd expect them to be pro-regulation on average, if it reduces the importance of the internet in running campaigns.
- The public is not presently pro-regulation and nobody really knows what form the regulations should take.
So in a nutshell, everyone who's powerful in this situation wants the same outcome, and all that is left is to convince the public to support a bill which will probably be titled something like "Cyberspeech Freedom Act of 2022." Lobbyists may have already drafted it, and we can expect that well-meaning activists will be swept along by the push and end up supporting something they wouldn't like if they fully understood what it was.
I'm paraphrasing a similar comment I made on a different thread, but this whole situation seems fishy to me...
Out of the blue some larger-than-life person (with impeccable credentials, no less) comes out of the woodwork and is lauded with attention while the big news outlets make this massive push against Facebook, all while congress is holding hearings about regulating social media. Then a massive outage happens at Facebook right after the New York Times published an article titled "Facebook Is Weaker Than We Knew." (This could honestly just be atrocious luck and an incredible coincidence.)
This woman is also remarkably calm, well-spoken, knowledgeable, and articulate for someone testifying before the Senate for the very first time - all while being broadcast around the globe, live on television. Perhaps she's simply a natural, but I sense she received some coaching and preparation beforehand. Combine that with how well she is being received by senators from both parties and you start to wonder just how much of this was orchestrated in advance.
It's called a tipping point. Previous critics made similar denunciations, but most people and even the media just shrugged and pretended nothing bad was happening. It takes time for society to acknowledge inconvenient truths. Plus, here, Haugen provided a wealth of documentation.
She's receiving a large press and Congressional focus because she's testifying about harm to children.
Not political censorship, perceived bias, or internal politics.
It's a cleaner story.
Greenwald, like all politicians, is twisting the story to meet his narrative. He doesn't "nail it". He's just regurgitating his preferred talking point, and ignoring her actual testimony.
Facebook's defense is like if someone accuses me of stealing something from a store and then I say the accuser has no security experience and was only in the store for 10 minutes.
[+] [-] koboll|4 years ago|reply
- worked there for less than two years and had no direct reports
- never attended some sort of key meeting
- did not work on the subject matter in question
...and therefore, she lacks context which undermines some of her claims.
Which of those is a matter of character, or a "disgusting" attack? They might be wrong, or they might be right but bringing up irrelevancies, but the writer is acting like stating these is some sort of reprehensible smear.
[+] [-] cratermoon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Barrin92|4 years ago|reply
Of course they cannot do that because she is literally citing their own words. Which is why this is just a thinly veiled, pathetic attack on a worker.
[+] [-] klelatti|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fireball_blaze|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scotuswroteus|4 years ago|reply
What about your focus on the word "disgusting" is worth resolving BEFORE we get to the threat to the long term sustainability of the democratic political systems currently in place?
[+] [-] tapatio|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dnissley|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryandrake|4 years ago|reply
1: https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/edwardrmurrowtomcc...
[+] [-] prox|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dado3212|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cratermoon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klelatti|4 years ago|reply
> If this is all that your comms department can get through legal, you know what’s being said is almost 100% true.
[+] [-] fleddr|4 years ago|reply
For the record, I fully side with the whistleblower's claims. It's just that this article is very emotional, and could have been so much more. This is a fascinating quote the author failed to address fully:
"Facebook PR: “Despite all this, we agree on one thing; it’s time to begin to create standard rules for the internet. It’s been 25 years since the rules for the internet have been updated, and instead of expecting the industry to make societal decisions that belong to legislators, it is time for Congress to act."
Facebook has a point here. We don't even know what Facebook is. A media company? A news organization? A shop? A dating site? And if it does all of these things, and does so at planetary scale, is has the potential to do harm to big parts of the world, in countless ways. Yet there's pretty much zero rules.
I think we vastly underestimate how complicated the balancing act is. If Instagram does mental harm to teenage girls, whilst this very likely was not the original intent, what exactly is the "correct" course of action, in a way codified in law? Should it be forbidden for other girls (influencers) to broadcast their beauty lifestyle? Should there be a maximum time cap for consumers to browse the feed? The China way? Should influencers just be deplatformed if we don't like them, taking away their income?
None of these rules or laws seem very plausible or sane to me, and this is just one example of how Facebook can do harm.
Anyway, to end constructively, I'd say a first step is to force Facebook to give full access to its underlying (anonymized) data. If we've created a planetary-scale monster, we should treat it as a special case.
[+] [-] cherrycherry98|4 years ago|reply
1. Abdicating responsibility so that when the public or politicians complain about Facebook hosting or not hosting some content he can say it's not his problem, he follows the law.
2. The second is for regulatory capture. Once a social network gets a stigma of being uncool, people move on to the next thing. His status and net worth are tied up in an entity he must aggressively defend against becoming the next MySpace. If he can't buy out upstarts anymore because of antitrust then the next best protection is to make it so difficult to build a new network without a team of lawyers and moderators that no one would even think about doing it.
[+] [-] fleddr|4 years ago|reply
You guessed correctly.
Guess whom can't comply? Indeed, everybody else. That's why they welcome regulation.
[+] [-] angelzen|4 years ago|reply
Facebook is an entity that controls the information flow reaching its users and shapes it in the interest of the highest bidder.
[+] [-] fireball_blaze|4 years ago|reply
A pretty powerful closing statement IMHO.
[+] [-] whatshisface|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lukasb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] travoc|4 years ago|reply
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039
[+] [-] adolph|4 years ago|reply
Public forkable repo or gtfo.
[+] [-] zozin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xqcgrek2|4 years ago|reply
[1] Jen Psaki's former employer https://www.dailywire.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-leftis...
[+] [-] mthoms|4 years ago|reply
Absolutely disgusting. I can't believe intelligent people read, let alone cite, this Enquirer-level garbage.
[+] [-] etchalon|4 years ago|reply
And obviously, discounting someone presenting factual evidence that at the moment is unchallenged based on perceived personal politics is fair game, reasonable, and the measure of good faith discussion.
[+] [-] 0235005|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ai_ja_nai|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaywalk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waynesonfire|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _dw7s|4 years ago|reply
1. this is fishy
2. she is a political operative for the dems
3. she has a liberal bias therefore this is all fishy and she cannot be trusted
4. she is rich and has some backing so she is definitely a political operative. This one is especially true because if she was poor Facebook would have been SLAPPed her already into shutting up. So there's no winning here.
5. (US) adults are responsible enough for the government to not have to regulate social media. Let's conveniently temporarily forget about the Rohingya minority.
6. Facebook is a net positive for civilization
7. nothing is actually whistleblown, we already knew all that. Therefore, we're ok with it and we should ignore this. Also see 1.
8. We're dealing with Schrödinger's censorship. Conservative voices are being censored on Facebook which is ran by 'libs' and at the same time they're not censored as the government (also libs) prepares to censor them. Or censor them more? Who knows anymore. TLDR they're going to be censored.
9. the staple of 'tech companies' is discussed all over the place as someone is talking to congress about its internal workings so the news is all over HN. Super fishy (see 1) so definitely a hit piece. If there was only one or two links it would probably be fine. But so many links may definitely be the hand of some lib political operative. Or not? Who knows? We're just saying that to muddy the waters. Big if true!
I think I'm going to be taking a break from forums in general. Either some Facebook friendly PR machine got activated or the collective mind has been poisoned by years and years of misinformation and generally sowing mistrust to the point of 'everything is a conspiracy and nothing is real'.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] cpr|4 years ago|reply
Why is she getting full media coverage and support, when previous whistleblowers were roundly ignored?
She's a very wealthy person (1B estimated), so perhaps she's fairly well insulated from any blowback?
But again, why is now the time to pile on Facebook, and why this person?
[edit] Hint: She's in fact calling for more censorship of the views she doesn't like.
[edit] Greenwald nails it (just published): https://greenwald.substack.com/p/democrats-and-media-do-not-...
[+] [-] whatshisface|4 years ago|reply
- Facebook has stated (in the press release the article is reporting on) that they support regulation. This is typical for large market incumbents, who have been said to always support fixed-overhead regulation, because it hurts smaller competitors more than it hurts them.
- Washington loves regulating things and can be safely assumed to be pro-policy in most cases. More to the point, incumbents today are far more concerned about the possibility of being blindsided in their campaigns by maneuvers on a platform their own team doesn't know how to work with, than they are about the difficult to quantify pros and cons of balancing antitrust and libertarian policy. You'd expect them to be pro-regulation on average, if it reduces the importance of the internet in running campaigns.
- The public is not presently pro-regulation and nobody really knows what form the regulations should take.
So in a nutshell, everyone who's powerful in this situation wants the same outcome, and all that is left is to convince the public to support a bill which will probably be titled something like "Cyberspeech Freedom Act of 2022." Lobbyists may have already drafted it, and we can expect that well-meaning activists will be swept along by the push and end up supporting something they wouldn't like if they fully understood what it was.
[+] [-] BitwiseFool|4 years ago|reply
Out of the blue some larger-than-life person (with impeccable credentials, no less) comes out of the woodwork and is lauded with attention while the big news outlets make this massive push against Facebook, all while congress is holding hearings about regulating social media. Then a massive outage happens at Facebook right after the New York Times published an article titled "Facebook Is Weaker Than We Knew." (This could honestly just be atrocious luck and an incredible coincidence.)
This woman is also remarkably calm, well-spoken, knowledgeable, and articulate for someone testifying before the Senate for the very first time - all while being broadcast around the globe, live on television. Perhaps she's simply a natural, but I sense she received some coaching and preparation beforehand. Combine that with how well she is being received by senators from both parties and you start to wonder just how much of this was orchestrated in advance.
[+] [-] orzig|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leahbarton|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buitreVirtual|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlbertCory|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] etchalon|4 years ago|reply
She's receiving a large press and Congressional focus because she's testifying about harm to children.
Not political censorship, perceived bias, or internal politics.
It's a cleaner story.
Greenwald, like all politicians, is twisting the story to meet his narrative. He doesn't "nail it". He's just regurgitating his preferred talking point, and ignoring her actual testimony.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] andyxor|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] fedsglow|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] hellohntoday|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] thrill|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] falcolas|4 years ago|reply
Let them defend themselves without character assassination, please.
[+] [-] bovermyer|4 years ago|reply
While this article uses some pretty sensational language, it does accurately describe Facebook's response to Haugen's revelations.
[+] [-] fireball_blaze|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xmprt|4 years ago|reply