> True, Zhang was dismissed and ignored inside Facebook.

Zhang wasn't ignored. She made a huge fucking impact internally. The problem is the department that she was trying to affect change is run by a bastard.

There’s often significant payouts associated with whistleblowing because it’s so financially risky. The SEC has paid people way more than 500k and it’s not uncommon for those people to regret it.

https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/whistleblower-pro...

> Fair point, but the issue isn’t that she got paid.

Then we shouldn’t assert that it matters. I’m glad we agreed ultimately it doesn’t, but I just want to be very clear there.

The half-million advance does not mean she can’t be going bankrupt. As I said, it’s not exactly lottery money, especially when 10% of that is at risk for every offense she’s up for, and she is struggling to get the rest of her money the book would net because of their blocking it. You’re ignoring a ton of context and overstating how much 500k should solve her financial woes.

Also, it’s not “buried,” it’s in the article clear as day. You just think it should be the first thing stated.

Frankly I’m not sure what your aim is here. You’re being wildly charitable to Facebook here, whereas I would think we should start on her side until we see reason not to be.

I don’t understand how this is confusing or otherwise perplexing. People can’t just spend years doing this stuff for free, I’m sure we both know this and it’s strange for you to pretend otherwise.

We don’t have a system that provides for that unless you’re incredibly privileged/financially set already.

> When a behavior hurts the society the society puts a law against it

Laws are passed by politicians, not society. And the more removed they are from actual working people, the more different their incentives are. You and I as members of society have very little actual control over what gets passed.

On any given issue, there's something between 0 and 30% of the population who actually care.

- Immigration? Maybe 30% cares, the rest doesn't.

- Gay marriage? Maybe 10%, idk really.

- Whether training an ML model is derivative work? Right now, I'd guess close to 1%, hopefully it'll go up.

- Whether online services should disclose evidence of causing addiction? I bet that's maybe 2% now.

- Trans rights? Depending on country, it's between 0 and, say, 10%. This issue is massively hyped up by people who benefit from dividing the population to distract them from other issues. No, seriously, most people should have no need to dictate other people's lives, but frame is as an attack on moral values and you get supporters.

The issue with democracy is that you don't vote on issues, you vote for parties. And even if you live in a democracy which isn't totally broken by degenerating into 2 parties, there are still way fewer parties than combinations of issues. So you can't express your view in any meaningful way.

It's like describing a precise point in N-dimensional space (your entire opinion) by picking 1 of a dozen predefined points. When you realize this, you realize how incredibly dumb is it.

You do realize that laws like that get passed in part because of leaks... right?

I proudly admit I do not read the Guardian on principle.

I wasn’t the GP