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Facebook Employees In An Uproar Over Executive's Leaked Memo (nytimes.com)
According to The New York Times, "Facebook employees were in an uproar on Friday over a leaked 2016 memo from a top executive defending the social network's growth at any cost -- even if it caused deaths from a terrorist attack that was organized on the platform." From the report: In the memo, Andrew Bosworth, a Facebook vice president, wrote, "Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people. The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good." Mr. Bosworth and Facebook's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, have since disavowed the memo, which was published on Thursday by BuzzFeed News.
But the fallout at the Silicon Valley company has been wide. According to two Facebook employees, workers have been calling on internal message boards for a hunt to find those who leak to the media (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). Some have questioned whether Facebook has been transparent enough with its users and with journalists, said the employees, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. Many are also concerned over what might leak next and are deleting old comments or messages that might come across as controversial or newsworthy, they said. In the aftermath, some Facebook executives have taken to Twitter for a public charm offensive, sending pithy phrases and emoticons to reporters who cover the company. Adam Mosseri, Facebook's head of news, in recent days wrote unprompted to a BuzzFeed editor and to its chief executive reminiscing and telling a story about his mother. He also wrote to a reporter from the Verge tech site about the songs played at his wedding reception.
But the fallout at the Silicon Valley company has been wide. According to two Facebook employees, workers have been calling on internal message boards for a hunt to find those who leak to the media (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). Some have questioned whether Facebook has been transparent enough with its users and with journalists, said the employees, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. Many are also concerned over what might leak next and are deleting old comments or messages that might come across as controversial or newsworthy, they said. In the aftermath, some Facebook executives have taken to Twitter for a public charm offensive, sending pithy phrases and emoticons to reporters who cover the company. Adam Mosseri, Facebook's head of news, in recent days wrote unprompted to a BuzzFeed editor and to its chief executive reminiscing and telling a story about his mother. He also wrote to a reporter from the Verge tech site about the songs played at his wedding reception.
How did you employees THINK you earned your paycheck? By siphoning user's private data and selling it to corporations, politicians, or anyone else who wanted to pay, that's how. Now you're crying because it didn't happen *exactly* like you think it did? Or someone said slightly mean things about the results of your actions?
Grow up, snowflakes. You're in bed with a corporation that doesn't value people or their privacy very highly. Actions and internal memos speak louder than public statements. Time to deal with that fact.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
And here I sit, enjoying the flames.
I doubt they're going to go away, but anything to get people to distrust and use it less is a positive thing for all of us.
They have the luxury of deleting and controlling what others can find out about them and their views while the rest of us are data mined and politically manipulated. Nice standards.
#deletefacebook
But I'm glad some people are willing to move past the post 9/11 paranoia about a terrorist attack and making everything about preventing terrorism.
This is an executive who has a bottom line, and isn't afraid to tell it like it is.
Whether or not they REMAIN an executive remains to be seen.
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You cant hide from it. What did you expect to happen FB. This is the tip of that proverbial iceberg you all been manifesting.
[($)]
According to two Facebook employees, workers have been calling on internal message boards for a hunt to find those who leak to the media
So.. they want everyone to share data with Facebook, but don't want Facebook to share its data with everyone else.
I suppose it makes sense. After all, you don't get rich by writing a lot of checks. And so in an information economy you don't get rich by allowing symmetry in data access and control.
You tell 'em Boris.
Or perhaps actually a little bad for the guy who wrote the memo. You're getting dreadfully punished for actually having someone consider the potential negative consequences and put that to paper, instead of acting like you're oblivious to the possibility. It's like if you consider digital/cell phone cameras vs old film cameras. Will they be used for spying on people in the shower? Corporate espionage? Making kiddie porn? Yes. Yes. Yes. We're not going to outlaw them though. Facebook is connecting people, it's obviously going to connect good people with bad people and bad people with other bad people. I dread to think how that works as a general principle, like if you have a security risk you can't fix or haven't fixed yet let's not write it down. Because then we knew and did nothing, if we don't write it down we didn't know... yeah, that'll improve security.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You work for an ad company.
Your task is to sort people to make money.
People are the product.
The workers must be really bad at their day job not to have understood their brands mission.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Facebook employees in an uproar? What business did they think they were in?
Zuck may sugar coat what they are doing as "connecting people" but its basically an image/comment sharing site. Not some grandiose save the world mission.
Get real.
"Adam Mosseri, Facebook's head of news, in recent days wrote unprompted to a BuzzFeed editor and to its chief executive reminiscing and telling a story about his mother."
Translation: A Buzzfeed editor tweeted a joke about a new Facebook feature, and a Facebook exec tweeted back a joke reply.
I don't doubt there's some brown-nosing involved, but this is still one heck of a misleading summary.
Because on slashdot, even real news is not good enough unless it's made into trumped-up clickbait.
Russian troll farmers are people too, and Facebook wants to connect us, and if that turns out to have been destructive, oh well! \_()_/
What's really rather ironic, is that they aren't just on fire but they are on fire because they poured the gasoline all over themselves and then proceeded to actually light the match.
A company that has taken the admitted stance of connection at all cost, which has exploited its phone apps to mine for contacts, and which almost singlehandedly invented and then exploited the culture of over sharing so much that privacy isn't even a consideration for a whole generation is now hoist by their own revelations. And they have the nerve to complain that the problem isn't in the memo, but that the memo was leaked. That is truly rich. They are so far gone they don't even see the problem any more. They talk about "suicide bomber" employees who are just getting a job to destroy the company, spies, and state actors they don't see that the problem isn't with the act of revelation. I actually hope that some state actors are involved, because if they are I want to thank that country.
Here is a tidbit for Facebook, and every other social networking executive and employee in the world. Learn it, because it's important. The problem is never in the revelation. If you are afraid of how other people will react if an action is revealed, then you need to ask yourself if that fear of revelation isn't a part of your own psyche (call it a conscience if you like) making a last ditch effort at telling you that maybe what you're doing is wrong. If you are that far gone that all you have left to keep you in check is the fear of how normal people will react to what you're doing or saying, then you desperately need to listen to that fear until you can get back whatever humanity you can. Because it's not a matter of if, but when it will come to light.
I especially love the part where Bosworth tries to claim he didn't even agree with what he was saying as he was saying it. A note to him, that particular reaction isn't what I'm talking about above. Trying to claim you were just trying to spark discussion and were playing devil's advocate doesn't work when you are the vice president and your statements influence the actions and motivations of hundreds of employees.
oink? why did they get on *twitter* to make a public charm offensive. does that not break the "eat your own god-food" rule of trusting your own product oh wait, what was this story about again?
Nicely stated.
The way you phrase your analysis brought to mind another point of view about Facebook.
It is a cult.
Self-serving, self-aggrandizing, megalomaniacal autocrats promulgate a set of obscene antisocial philosophies that somehow hook in a group of followers solely on the basis of lies, subterfuge, or a perverse charisma (or money). They get their followers to "drink the Kool Aid" of thinking that there is something righteous in the plan or promotion. It all sounds so innocent or inspiring at first, but when it reaches its peak, or when the promoters slip up and "light the match", the dark side is revealed. It can happen on the small scale of the Manson Family, or on the massive scale of Hitler's Germany. Couched in the guise of a corporate entity giving its servile followers a free incentive (a website to post pictures of poochie), it all seemed so innocent, but Facebook is starting to look more and more like a genuine cult run by perverse leaders. (No disrespect is intended to anyone, reading this or otherwise, who is on Facebook.)
I have never been on Facebook - never understood the fascination, never understood how a medium that is inherently anti-social can be spun up as "social media", never understood the Kool Aid (Jonestown) that made others sign up, and never for a moment trusted that platform. Like a lot of young tech startups, it is sorely in need of of an adult or at least someone with a conscience somewhere in upper echelons.
How just it would be if Zuckerberg failed to show up for his Congressional hearing, and they found him dead, suicide, clutchinig a copy of Mein Kampf.
Mr. Bosworth's memo is a classic example of corporate thinking, and brilliant in its clarity and brevity.
It's a classic because it identifies certain ethical aspects of his company's conduct and then proceeds to declare all and any ethical considerations irrelevant. Ethics is placed in its proper corporate place, i.e. totally absent. The company is not malicious (there's no benefit in that) just completely a-moral.
The one and only thing that matters is what affects the company's continued economic success: growth. Growth which in turn hinges on whether a user's social circle ("friends") are on facebook. It is the clearest and most perceptive and most succinct statement I've yet encountered (from a manager) on how the "network effect" affects companies whose business it is to provide (and sell) connections.
This memo is also valuable from another perspective. Time and time again it's demonstrated that the question: "Am I being cynical?" is not relevant in conjunction with the corporate world. The correct question is: "Am I being cynical enough to accurately reflect reality?".
It also shows why corporate communications had better be phrased with both eyes on ways such communications expose the company or the sender to repercussions. Coming out and saying "We make money from connecting people, so that's what we will do, for good or for ill" is a bit crude. Not to say blunt. Mr. Bosworth might be due for a refresher course in proper corporate communication technique.
A more conventional phrasing of Mr. Bosworth's message is something like this: "We believe in connecting people. That's what we do and what continues to make us so successful. We will continue to serve the world in personal connectivity because we firmly believe that the good we do far outweighs any negative aspects. So for us the case is clear: we must expand our business as much as possible, as per our mission statement and the Good of Mankind."
There. Some people get that intuitively. It's part of them. Just look at Mr. Zuckerberg.
Last but not least it shows why certain things (like personal privacy) can only be achieved insofar as they are enforced by law.
Corporate self-regulation never works when corporations that don't follow self-regulation will simply outgrow and take over the ones that do. On the other hand, corporate self-regulation can work well when there is a high enough probability that the consequences of not following the rules are devastating for the rule-breaker.
So the opposite to connecting people is heavy censorship by a private company, and that's supposed to be better? How does that work?
Time for that shove yet?
There are no stupid questions, just stupid people.
That will work. Yeap.
Those robber barons also profited (immensely!!) from our communications, and cared not, if terrorists benefited from the ease of communication along with the billions of others!
Boycott and divest from all of the communication companies!
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
..."Scumbag Incorporated"
We connect people. That can be good if they make it positive. Maybe someone finds love. Maybe it even saves the life of someone on the brink of suicide. So we connect more people
That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools []
We connect people. Period. That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it.
He then later (recently) wrote:
I don't agree with this post and I didn't agree with it when I wrote it. The purpose of this post [...] was to bring to the surface many issues [...] I thought deserved more attention.
Don't worry folks. It was a a mind f*** on his employees intended to have some unknowable side effect. Us filthy commoners will never understand how the minds of the Grand Wizards of Facebook work.
This is the mindset of the leaders of Facebook. BTW, Bosworth still works there and was publicly backed up by Zuckerberg after this all came to light.
Zuckerberg defended the memo's author, one of his most trusted confidants, calling Bosworth a "talented leader who says many provocative things."