| ▲ | Aurornis 11 hours 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. |
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| ▲ | julianeon 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| We would have no book if the author was a hero: they would say "I'm not doing this," quit, and that would be the end of it. By this definition, only an unheroic person could've written it. By the same definition, an firsthand expose of Meta could never be written by a trustworthy person. This obviously protects the company: you are ceding this ground to them, "No trustworthy person could work at your company and write an expose." I don't think we should cede that to them. |
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| ▲ | a4isms 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Why is it that the only people willing to testify against the cartel are murderers, drug dealers, and bank robbers? These are not trustworthy witnesses. Same problem. | |
| ▲ | mekoka 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | GP's point is not that only heroes should tell the tale, but rather that in this case the whistleblower was also an active part of the problem, but sought to distance herself from her then behavior by swapping it down instead for a more passive lack of situational awereness. That is, she reached for stupidity as an escape hatch from having to reckon with her own malice. And she's now being celebrated for it. The lack of accountability paired with the celebration of the "hero" are the problem. Not the fact of her testimony. EDIT: Some people who have similarly testified acknowledged the part they played in the situation they later denounced. So, it is possible for the story to be told and for the teller to also say "I knew what was up. I said nothing. I did nothing. I'm sorry." | |
| ▲ | prepend 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not really. Author could have whistleblown and quit early on revealing unsavory things. The book is mainly attempts to embarass Zuck (eg, he’s sweaty, he’s not good at Catan, etc). |
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| ▲ | ryandrake 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The fact that she did end up setting herself apart is what's remarkable. For every one of her who was able to self-reflect, become horrified of the ethics of what she was doing, and took the hard steps of stopping and breaking away, how many current and former Meta employees don't do this reflection and remain contributors to the problem? 1:100? 1:1,000? 1:10,000? |
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| ▲ | Oarch 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | A few years ago I had a date with a backend engineer at Meta. I asked if they'd ever considered the societal implications of the work they did. They said "Oh wow I've never even thought about it". Probably a solid hire from Meta's perspective. | | |
| ▲ | nostrademons 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I know an ex-Facebook employee who told me that "Nobody at Facebook ever makes a conscious decision about whether something is good or bad. You are given a metric, and your job is to make that metric go up. If it turns out that making the metric go up has negative consequences [for the business, I don't think it's anyone's job to worry about the rest of society], then somebody else is given another metric to ameliorate the negative consequences of you making your metric go up." He didn't last all that long, he had a conscience. I've heard similar things, but not quite in such clear words, from several other people I know who have worked at Facebook/Meta. | | |
| ▲ | jonah 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That's a really effective way to get a group of people to do horrible things. Break it up into small pieces where each one isn't that bad in and of itself. | |
| ▲ | motbus3 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I know couple of people who said exactly same thing. One of them is quite smart and I asked what was his/her personal opinion and I've heard: "I'd rather not talk about it ever again" | |
| ▲ | knollimar 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | That sounds mysterious and important |
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| ▲ | kingofmen 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Or you missed the eye-rolling sarcasm in the answer they have to give on every goddam first date. | | |
| ▲ | ryandrake 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Maybe I'm just a wacky Bleeding-Heart, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect someone who worked on a product that amplified hate, leading up to a massacre in Myanmar, to at least address that without sarcasm while getting to know them. | | | |
| ▲ | Dumbledumb 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Getting to know the views and values of your date is not a weird thing to do on the first date. If it’s a question that annoys them, they should consider why. | |
| ▲ | throwanem 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Imagine dating someone who works at Facebook, though. I can't imagine who would be so utterly dense as to offer so presumptuous a complaint, but he'd better be at least a 13 out of 10 or I'm not even bothering to pretend to go to the bathroom and then sneak out the back. | |
| ▲ | smohare 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | zeroonetwothree 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You sound fun to date | |
| ▲ | brabel 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | That can only be a sarcastic answer, don’t you think?? You really believe people would get a job at former Facebook, after lots of scandals have been exposed, and not even think about that?? Sorry no way. | | |
| ▲ | SpaceNoodled 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | You seriously underestimate how myopic people can be. Not everyone is a sophisticated and socially aware HN commenter like you and I. |
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| ▲ | BloondAndDoom 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Did you read the book? Because that's not the story, she way too many opportunities to do that, yet didn't. Only after she stopped getting paid, she did an "expose". I hate facebook more than the next guy but this person just helped Facebook to accomplish usual evil things, and only stopped once she cannot profit. I'm pretty sure she didn't start that way or maybe even saw it that way, but objectively (in her own narrative, if you only take actions and ignore her own emotional justifications) that's what happened. | |
| ▲ | bena 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | She didn’t set herself apart. She was fired. She was forced apart. That’s the issue here. Is this someone who found their morals or someone who found a stick with which to strike back at those who hurt her? One of those doesn’t require her to change at all. | | |
| ▲ | petre 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Even if she was fired it was an act of courage and a step in the right direction to write a book about it. The company is cancer, no wonder they named it Meta. | | |
| ▲ | brabel 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Courage guided by righteousness or vengeance? I feel like the motivation is very important here. | | |
| ▲ | advael 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't particularly think so. What matters is whether the stuff in the book was true, not whether the author is of unassailable character | | |
| ▲ | ryandrake 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | When one's goal is to look for any reason to downplay facts, questioning the character of the messenger is a standard tactic. | | |
| ▲ | advael 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Indeed it is. One can't help but wonder why such a well-known distraction tactic still remains so effective against so many |
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| ▲ | 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | dylan604 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Could be courage guided by a paycheck. Would not be surprised if the publisher did not reach out directly to suggest writing a book. |
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| ▲ | prepend 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | How is it courageous? She’s profiting off her book. Seems pretty normal. | | |
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| ▲ | tonetheman 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | matthewdgreen 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If we require every whistleblower to be a saint, then we’ll never hear a whistle. If you have a serious criticism of their credibility, that’s potentially different, but arbitrary criticisms of someone’s moral worth is mostly irrelevant. |
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| ▲ | RHSeeger 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | The fact that someone actively worked against the welfare of society as a whole, in significant and impactful ways, _is_ a criticism of their credibility. It speaks to their morals and empathy for others. It doesn't mean that what they're saying is a lie, but it puts them firmly in the bucket where what they say needs to be verified. | | |
| ▲ | navane 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | It doesn't matter if she's as bad as the others. The message is that the others are bad. Pointing out that she's also bad is meek at best. | | |
| ▲ | RHSeeger an hour ago | parent [-] | | You are missing the entire point > The message is that the others are bad The message is that they're bad and the fact that they did these bad things proves they're bad. And the key thing here is that we need to decide if we believe "they did these bad things". If the person reporting them is well known as someone the is truthful and trustworthy, we're likely to believe them with little proof. If the person reporting them is well known as a bad person that does things to harm others for their own benefit... we're less likely to believe them until we can verify the truth of their statements. You're completely skipping over the "is this person telling the truth" part; I assume because they're saying things that fit in with your pre-existing view of the world. And that's not a good thing. |
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| ▲ | jmull 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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) |
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| ▲ | Nifty3929 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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)? | | |
| ▲ | ashdksnndck 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Many of the juicy stories from the book have no supporting evidence other than the claims of the author. Their credibility is all we have to go on here. If someone wrote a message here saying that they were a fly on the wall at the publisher’s office where they had a workshop inventing these stories to sell more books, you’d be right to question their motives. | |
| ▲ | utbabya 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Even justice system considers the trustworthiness of a witness, evaluating incentive, conflict of interest. Having worked in another FAANG, I realize a large number of criticisms do come from imaginations, since I could see the contrast first hand. Nobody could tell exactly the consequences of all actions, most of the time it's just a buncha folks trying to figure out what to do, experimenting, iterating. Have you tried executing a conspiracy, like a surprise party? Good luck keeping a secret with more than 5 people. There's also the problem of perspective. To a less technical engineer who don't know what they don't know, having their deliverable rejected time and again could feel like a conspiracy against them. If you read a blog post from them you'd think the culture is very toxic when everyone is doing their best juggling to be considerate while keeping the quality high. As with others commenting on this, I've no idea how true the book is, in fact I have never read it. OTOH, even without the book, researches saying social media is making teenagers depress look convincing to me, and, although it's a losing battle, privacy matters a lot to me so I've personally stopped using social media for many years. None of these give me full confidence to trust nor distrust the narrator, for things that you can't observe externally. It's all percentage. | |
| ▲ | bena 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think the point is that up until she was fired, she was Meta. She wasn’t a random employee, she was their global public policy director. She wasn’t just implementing policy, she was responsible for creating it. The question remains whether or not she would have written this book had she not been fired. It’s not like she quit due to her ethical objections | | |
| ▲ | tzs 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The question does indeed remain, but is it a question whose answer matters? If someone exposes a shady organization why should I care if they did it for ethical reasons or for something less noble like revenge for getting kicked out of that organization? | | |
| ▲ | mech422 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | >> but is it a question whose answer matters? I think it does? "scummy person loses job, finds another way to cash in" almost seems to becoming a trope? I think it raises questions about what is left _out_ of the book, not just what's in it - are the issues raised the worst/most important, or just the ones that will sell the most books? Did we really need someone to 'tell us' meta/social media can be evil? There are reasons that (some) criminals are not allowed to profit from books/movies about their crimes. Anyway, that's just my general feelings about this sort book - I've never heard of the book or the author. And I honestly have no interest in reading it. Based on what I'm reading here - that would basically be rewarding/enriching one of the 'bad actors' ? | |
| ▲ | RHSeeger 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > but is it a question whose answer matters Yes. 100%. And the fact that you're not seeing why it does is confounding to me. This person has shown that they are willing to harm society (for their own benefit, presumably); by active choice. And, as such, anything they say needs to be viewed through the lens of "is this person lying for their own benefit". 1. Their previous actions do mean that we should not trust what they are saying outright, we should do (more) work verifying the information they provide. 2. Their previous actions to _not_ mean we should avoid holding other accountable when the information provided turns out to be true. You're asking your question like someone is arguing that this person's information doesn't matter (2); but the point being made is that we should (1). | |
| ▲ | bena 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Because it doesn’t really target the issue. Would she go do the same job at Alphabet? X? Probably, if they’d have her. And the only real thing that’d happened is the government has been used to remove other companies’ competition. Hooray I guess |
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| ▲ | pests 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > The question remains whether or not she would have written this book had she not been fired. Assume the answer is no. What does this change about any of this? | | |
| ▲ | bena 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | She’s attempting to use the public to bludgeon Meta. This is a fight among shitty people. I will not lionize either side. They both contributed to the shitty state of affairs today. Meta can burn and she can go broke. I’m fine with both | | |
| ▲ | pests 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | That's a good reaction to have. Thankfully she wrote the book so we know about all these bad deeds. | | |
| ▲ | prepend 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don’t think the book revealed anything new about FB’s bad deeds, though. Was there novel info? I think its just more exposure for already bad things. Had she had a trove of emails or something, I might thing differently. This is quite different from the recent lawsuits that produced novel material and evidence. | | |
| ▲ | pests 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Knowing something is happening and reading detailed descriptions of them actually occurring is different, IMO. I learned things I didn't know while reading it, at least. |
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| ▲ | jmull 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | A third “whaddabout the author”! It’s almost as if… |
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| ▲ | croes 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The fate of every whistleblower |
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| ▲ | Mezzie 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I believe what Sarah Wynn-Williams wrote in Careless People. I also think she's shown herself to be a person I'd want to stay away from. The reason this matters to me is because the more media attention Ms. Wynn-Williams gets, the more her ideas of what we should do about Meta will spread and be given credence. The more she will be given credence outside of simply reporting what she saw. I can both believe what she says and think it's best to stop fanning the flames and giving her personal attention. This entire saga reads to me as intra-elite fighting: Ms. Wynn-Williams is representing the cultural/educational elite, and obviously the Meta execs are the tech elite. As an ordinary person, I'm not under any delusion that either side has my best interest in mind when they fight, or when they advance policy, regulatory, or other suggestions. The derision and disdain Ms. Wynn-Williams has for people not in her milieu throw up a lot of red flags for me. It comes down to believing that Ms. Wynn-Williams wants to hurt Meta, not to help us. I also believe that blindly supporting people or organizations just because they also hate people or organizations you hate is a very bad idea. The enemy of your enemy can still be your enemy. In this case, regarding technological politics, Zuck and co. want us to become braindead addicted zombies, and Ms. Wynn-Williams will want us to have no control or access at all, because we can't handle it and it's for our own good. She's from the cultural group pushing for things like age restriction and verification, devices you can't root/restricting what you can install on your own device, etc. Both are bad. One sees us as cattle and the other sees us as toddlers. | | |
| ▲ | alex1138 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I think the view you put here is legitimate, Greenwald had an article about Frances Haugen kind of saying the same sorts of things |
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| ▲ | mykowebhn 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| To all future whistle-blowers: Please ignore comments like this one! What you are doing is a valuable service to society. |
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| ▲ | gitaarik 23 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| So in this way we should dismiss all whistleblowers? |
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| ▲ | DavidPiper 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I don't know if anyone is holding the author up as a hero, least of all herself. The book reads as a masterclass in grooming, manipulation and abuse. If anything, the title "Careless People" does a disservice to its message: the people above and around her clearly knew exactly what they were doing, and took great care to evade any and all responsibility for anything. |
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| ▲ | ktimespi 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Yeah, the fact that she realized what's going on and still worked tirelessly to give Mark / Facebook more negotiating power speaks volumes. I also can't buy the whole "I have financial woes and can't escape" spin that she puts on her situation. Otherwise, great book. |
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| ▲ | prepend 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | “I only make $4M/ year in RSUs and am an attorney, however will I pay for daycare for my three kids and teacher husband. I better continue acting unethically and profiting from hosing people.” This was such a weird argument. I think the author may actually be self-deluding herself as I can’t imagine her or her editors think anyone buys this argument. |
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| ▲ | b00ty4breakfast 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I haven't read the book, but I don't think there's anything dishonest about needing distance to see the context of what she was a part of. Now, if she is trying to paint herself as completely outside of that even while she was knee-deep in it, that's a different matter but hindsight isn't something to be dismissed. |
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| ▲ | BloondAndDoom 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > In a situation like this it's possible for everyone to be untrustworthy narrators. Even if you take her as trustworthy narrator (which I mostly did) she's stil evil in this story up until the publishing book. |
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| ▲ | zaphar 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There is nuance here though. Taking a step back and learning from an experience is something to be celebrated. |
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| ▲ | jancsika 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You read the book. Did she have the receipts or not? |
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| ▲ | j45 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Sometimes you can still learn from a story. Humans are about making mistakes and learning from them, not hiding behind the disease of perfectionism. If there's something the author needs to say, I'm sure they are capable of using their words. The other side that could have happened so easily is so much silence that there was no book. |
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| ▲ | SilverElfin 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You are probably right that she was part of it all. There what money and power do to you. We need to limit it. The eat the rich stuff is the wrong messaging but the right goal. We need to reduce concentration of wealth and power. |
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| ▲ | jmye 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > I think it's becoming a trap to hold the author up as a hero Cool, then don’t do that. Every single employee at Meta is still vile and making the world a worse place every single day, and anything exposing the depths of their shittiness, no matter the source, is a good thing. |
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| ▲ | popalchemist 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Waking up from a cult doesn't make you a hero, but stopping the cult might. |