
Internal Tensions at Facebook Are Boiling Over - laurex
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/facebooks-tensions-zuckerberg-sandberg
======
ams6110
_“It’s otherwise rational, sane people who’re in Mark’s orbit spouting full-
blown anti-media rhetoric, saying that the press is ganging up on Facebook,”_

Well, the press probably is ganging up on Facebook. That's what the press
does. They are sharks. When they smell blood (a story), they move in. Breaking
new stories and scooping the other guys is what they live for.

Welcome to the world outside the bubble.

~~~
dcole2929
Maybe I'm reading too much into your tone here, but this seems a pretty
disingenuous take, and I'm disappointed it's the top comment. You're making it
seem like the press is circling Facebook out of some undue desire to turn non
stories into breaking news but that's far from the truth. This isn't TMZ
following around a philandering star. There is, as you so aptly put, blood in
the water here, because when you're a company with the size and reach of
Facebook, what you do MATTERS. Facebook counts it's user base in the billions,
it holds personally identifying information on even more than that. It
arguably has the influence to swing elections and shape public discourse (you
can debate how much but at this point it's pretty apparent that it has a
measurable effect). It's similar to how politicians are public figures simply
by nature of their position. When you hold that much power and influence, your
actions, good or bad, are and should be a matter of public record. And it has
always been the press' job to hold powerful figures and companies accountable
to the public. Facebook has been, especially over the past few years, at best
an amoral actor. That has to be news. It has to be. Where ever you fall on the
social economic political spectrum, it has to be news worthy when Facebook
does something that implies they are trying to manipulate or evade
accountability because more so than anyone else that is something we cannot
allow the powerful (individual or organization) to do.

~~~
pasabagi
I'm no Facebook fan, but the chronology seems remarkable here. Facebook were
irritating Rupert Murdoch, and traditional media in general, by refusing to
pay fees for articles that appeared in people's feeds. About a month before
everybody started running hit-pieces on Facebook, the negotiations broke down,
with Facebook telling the news guys to go take a hike.

Suddenly, everybody is absolutely horrified by the fact that Facebook is
selling people's data. Despite the fact that it's always been their explicit
business model.

Facebook is absolutely a horrible idea, but the news are hardly being
impartial. It's incumbent publishers trying to knock out a new rival, using
their reputation and power to get the newcomer dragged through the mud by
politicians. Nobody should be surprised that the most news-sensitive, not the
most privacy-sensitive governments were the ones to attack Facebook most
directly. The UK, for instance, is perhaps the most invasive surveillance
state west of China - and yet, they've been leading the charge against
Facebook. Despite the fact that the same government has floated ideas about
monetizing government data about its own citizens!

~~~
dcole2929
I mean that's just revisionist history. Yes everyone knew Facebook was selling
your data. That's always been clear, but just since 2016 I can think of
numerous legitimate stories:

1\. Russian interference in the election and the fact that FB knew about it
and did nothing.

2\. FB running psychological experiments in the newsfeed not only to see if
they can make you spend more time there (questionably ok) but also to see if
they could affect your mood (definitely not ok).

3\. Facebook censoring news in the newsfeed based on political leanings.

4\. FB tracking you even after you log out.

5\. Zuck lying on capital hill about what he knew and when.

6\. FB hiring a pr firm to right negative articles about an investor.

Also to be clear, even if Murdoch was the catalyst for the media turning a
critical eye on FB, which is at best unsubstantiated conjecture, it is
undeniable that very valid, very concerning stories have been revealed as
result of the media's renewed scrutiny.

~~~
pasabagi
Well, sure, Facebook are a bunch of tech bros without any real interest in
ethics. But I think the point is, they played that way right from the start -
and most of those things are just what everybody does. It's not a story when
an tech company tracks you when you're not even using their product. It's just
ordinary operating procedure. Everything that's been aired about facebook is a
bit like that - in real terms, obviously awful, but in the world we live in?
It's hardly chopping up a journalist and putting him in a suitcase. It's
milquetoast, everybody-in-SV-is-doing-it stuff.

So color me revisionist, but I smell a rat when it makes the headlines.

~~~
dcole2929
I mean if all of SV is doing what FB has been accused of, that is a story in
and of itself. Maybe FB does typify or even exemplify SV tech bro culture but
just because companies were once able to play hard and fast with the rules
doesn't meant it's behavior that the rest of the world is okay with. Startups
are mainstream now. And with all that new attention and money comes scrutiny
because you aren't just operating out of someone's garage anymore. Move fast
and break things doesn't fly anymore when the things you can break affect
millions to billions of lives and dollars.

------
elgenie
Ex-Facebooker perspective: the only news in this article is that the preferred
replacement for the Secret app [0] at Facebook is the Blind app.

A few of the 33,606 people [1] working at Facebook anonymously complaining
about their employer and management in the midst of a bad press cycle is
remarkably unsurprising.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_(app)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_\(app\))
[1] [https://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/](https://newsroom.fb.com/company-
info/)

------
baby
Do employees at facebook really feel the heat? I'm just picturing management
trying to find solutions (or to wait it out) while most other employees must
be mostly going on with their work.

In the end, most of the critics seem to miss the point that Facebook grew
really fast, and just wasn't ready to police the world. A lot of it focuses on
the negative aspects of Facebook conquering the world, but what about the
positive aspects? Is there another app that, indeed, connects the world?

It might not be clear to people here, who are not heavy users of Facebook and
reside mostly in the US. But for me, I have hundreds of friends scattered
around the world and Facebook has been the only way to keep in touch with
them.I've met so many people through Erasmus groups and Communities on
Facebook as well. No, the alternatives are not everywhere in the world.

~~~
reaperducer
_most of the critics seem to miss the point that Facebook grew really fast_

Growth rate is not an excuse for the evils that have been enabled by Facebook.
It is perfectly within Facebook's power to slow its growth to a rate it can
actually manage.

And don't play the "shareholder" card. Zuck is the majority shareholder, and
can do whatever he wants with the company, including making it not be evil.

 _Is there another app that, indeed, connects the world?_

E-mail. The PSTN. Text messages. Actual mail.

WhatsApp, YouTube, and probably several hundred others that I don't know about
because I'm not much of an SMS person.

~~~
yourbandsucks
I quit facebook in 2010, so don't take me for any sort of fanboy, but what
'evils' were 'enabled', specifically?

It looks like most of the election stuff was normal humans reposting things of
their own volition. Yeah, there were lots of lies in it, some of it was actual
fake newspapers being run out of Macedonia or whatever, but are we making
facebook a scapegoat just for being the medium? Before 2016, I never heard
anyone saying FB had an obligation to fact-check political speech..

Maybe we, as a society, need to figure out how to handle social media rather
than expecting a guy like Zuck to do it for us.

~~~
empath75
Just a little light genocide:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-
facebo...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-
genocide.html)

~~~
yourbandsucks
I didn't know about that, thanks for the link.

Here's my beef, though: People still did that. Facebook isn't your daddy, and
Zuckerberg will never be a different person.

Facebook isn't the problem. We are.

~~~
ben_w
If you know how to manipulate 1% of the population — never knowing who, in
advance, just that it’s on average 1% — and you sell that power to the highest
bidder, I’d totally argue you’re responsible for whatever the winner does with
that power.

Especially if you go to great lengths to keep the bidders anonymous, or even
merely allow them to make themselves unknown to you because “we can’t scale
that”.

~~~
apersona
> and you sell that power to the highest bidder

You make it sound like FB _knew_ that the accounts that "...posed as fans of
pop stars and national heroes" were run by a military operation.

> because "we can't scale that"

And how would _you_ scale that?

I don't think there is any easy solution (or even an "ideal" solution).

Not to mention that FB is on now dealing with actual dam military operations
by an authoritarian government. How would you defend yourself against that?

~~~
ben_w
> And how would you scale that?

If I was Facebook, ot if I was a government?

If Facebook: First idea, probably naive, is to require large minimum spending
per advertiser so that all can be checked manually.

If government: I’d pass a law requiring all advertisers be checked to some
standard, which is what I care about, _and let Facebook invent its own
solution_.

I want to be clear: I don’t care if that bankrupts them, any more than I care
about bankrupting surgeons who can’t afford soap.

------
madhadron
The sources here appear to be leaks from a group that is the internal
equivalent of 4chan and former employees who have an axe to grind. The
portrait painted from them does not match the reality I experience day to day
in any meaningful way.

~~~
Despegar
The reality is that the tech industry, specifically the ad-tech industry, has
had its Lehman moment and now the bloom is off the rose. Facebook and Google
are increasingly going to be regulated and subject to more scrutiny going
forward. That's just the reality of it.

You're not going through anything unique. There were plenty of bankers that
felt that politicians, the press and the public were being unfair to them.

~~~
solveit
> There were plenty of bankers that felt that politicians, the press and the
> public were being unfair to them.

Weren't they? One rule that pretty much seems to be a law of the universe is
that popular sentiment will be completely wrong on almost every particular
point even when its conclusions are completely right.

------
snowwrestler
> People are “hoping for a Sundar or Dara moment,” one former senior Facebook
> employee told BuzzFeed News, referring to past leadership changes at Google
> and Uber in which founding employees stepped aside from top jobs. A second
> senior employee echoed the view, suggesting that some inside the ranks are
> looking for a shakeup to come from the outside.

Ballmer to Nadella would be another example.

For me, this hints at an interesting shift in tech culture, away from the
unquestioned mythography of the original founder. Typically the departure of
the founder has been seen as the biggest challenge for evolving startups, and
the return of the founder as a moment of salvation. Think of Apple, or
Twitter.

Now, there are examples of where the departure of the founder acted as a
release valve for public pressure, and a chance for the company to reset and
evolve.

Or maybe it's more like an addition to the culture--a new set of stories that
illustrate a different path for startups toward long-term success.

This might also reflect a shift in how the public views tech companies.
They're not just fun, harmless get-rich-quick stories anymore. The
consequences of their success (intended or not) weigh more on people's minds.

~~~
xiphias2
I don't view Sundar as somebody who has any power over Larry.

When Eric Schmidt was the CEO, he had his own opinions, but whenever Sundar
was asked any question on TGIF, he was just looking at Larry to see if what
he's saying is what Larry wants to hear.

Sergey doesn't really care about politics, he just wants to do cool stuff.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
Also the fact that Larry is the CEO of Alphabet. Sundar is the CEO of Google.
Therefore, Larry is still the real CEO.

------
reaperducer
This is my favorite part:

 _Another former senior employee noted a growing sense of paranoia among
current employees. “Now, people now have burner phones to talk shit about the
company — not even to reporters, just to other employees,” they told BuzzFeed
News._

Facebook employees so afraid of Facebook spying on them, that they need
burners. Presumably, not loaded with any Facebook apps.

~~~
compiler-guy
More likely just phones without access to facebook's internal corporate
network, which grants many more privileges to the app and the company than
everyday facebook access gets. They likely also dodge accounts connected to
the one their employer recognizes.

Calling these "burner phones" is a little silly. They are just completely
private, non-corporate phones.

I've never trusted any company to either pay for my own phone or plan, if that
requires allowing it special access.

~~~
iamdave
_Calling these "burner phones" is a little silly. They are just completely
private, non-corporate phones._

So a phone used to duck surveillance from a powerful entity to conduct
discussions about things you don't want that entity knowing about,
colloquially goes by what other name then?

I get it if the implicit association between a "real" burner phone and these
devices might not be a complete and perfect parallel but I think here the term
is apt (unless we're legitimately just talking about someone's every day
personal phone, but that wasn't the impression I got-the article doesn't
really talk more about what these devices are)

~~~
compiler-guy
They don't duck surveillance from facebook as you and I know it, but from
facebook as an employer, which is very different.

If a company provides your phone, then it has access to it, and if you don't
want your company to have access to what you do on it, you use a different
phone. If you want the convenience of a personal phone that you can check your
work mail (or work facebook groups) on, then you grant access to that company.

It isn't any different from when a law firm or bank provides its employees
phones. If you don't want that firm or bank to read what you write on it, then
you need another phone.

A "burner phone" gets thrown away--"burned"\--to prevent the someone from
tracking you. You don't allow anyone to know you use it.

No one at facebook cares if you use a second phone. So some better terms would
be "personal phone" or "non-corporate phone".

~~~
iamdave
_If a company provides your phone, then it has access to it, and if you don 't
want your company to have access to what you do on it, you use a different
phone. If you want the convenience of a personal phone that you can check your
work mail (or work facebook groups) on, then you grant access to that
company._

Right, and as I said in another comment, my statement here isn't to suggest I
don't know what a burner phone is. My statement above is because I'd think
someone would either say "We use our personal phones" or something similar to
describe how they talk about FB without FB knowing it.

Describing your personal phone as a "burner phone" seems odd and possibly
telling that there's something else there.

There very well might NOT be, but as I mentioned before: the article doesn't
really say much further so it's hard to know.

~~~
diminoten
> Describing your personal phone as a "burner phone" seems odd and possibly
> telling that there's something else there.

Doesn't seem odd to me, in the context of a) a former employee
sensationalizing the situation and/or b) hiding behavior from _any_ employer.

~~~
Varcht
Next you will tell us that Trump really had his "wires tapped"...

------
docker_up
The quotes from Blind are laughable and completely destroy any hints of
journalistic integrity in this article. It reeks of desperation for any type
of quote that supports their narrative.

I'm a heavy user of Blind since its inception and it is nothing but a cesspool
of anger and bitterness. It's fun if you want to blow off some steam and
engage in mass trolling, almost like 4chan with its memes, but if you believe
for one second that any sort of honest discussion can occur on that platform,
you are delusional. It's literally the worst of the worst, and only people who
enjoy trolling will engage on that platform.

~~~
stevenwliao
Aside from the trolling, there's real conversation happening about culture and
compensation that doesn't happen anywhere else online. Be the change that you
want to see.

------
GauntletWizard
I will not name him, but I had a friend who worked at Facebook. At one point,
he talked shit about the company to another employee in a facebook chat. His
HR representative quoted said chat at him in a meeting.

Facebook will claim that this is ethical because your Facebook account is
linked to the work systems and therefore your chats are company property. I
will pass judgement - even if it had been talking shit on a purely internal
chat application, such as a corporate slack, it would not be okay for HR to
bring up talking shit - They would need to have had a dang good reason (A
complaint from the other party of the chat that you had made threats, reason
to believe you were discussing illegal activity or actively causing the
company harm). What Facebook did was absolutely immoral, and it is clear that
it is standard company policy.

~~~
CGamesPlay
When I worked there 4+ years ago, all employee:employee facebook messenger
conversations (on production www.facebook.com) came with a little red circle,
with alt text saying "employee to employee conversations are recorded".

So I wouldn't have been surprised by this in the least.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
But isn't it creepy that they were _proactively_ monitoring them and reading
for negative comments? Then _reprimanding_ the participants for feelings they
expressed privately to another individual? That's behavior one might expect
from North Korea.

------
roadkillon101
It doesn't take much for a "darling" social media or dotcom company to become
a thing of the past. If my memory serves me correctly, before Google, there
was AltaVista
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltaVista](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltaVista)
. Before Facebook, there was MySpace
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myspace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myspace)
. Yahoo is on it's way out especially after the data breach
[https://money.cnn.com/2017/10/03/technology/business/yahoo-b...](https://money.cnn.com/2017/10/03/technology/business/yahoo-
breach-3-billion-accounts/index.html) Facebook is NOT the only social media
company around and some other company WILL emerge and fill its place in the
ecosystem if they don't recover from their mistakes.

~~~
buboard
they were all replaced by better alternatives, not by bad press.

------
gnicholas
> _People at Facebook are focused on building products that help people
> connect and have a positive impact in the world._

I don't remember seeing that last part before! Does this mean that they don't
want to connect people who (they believe) will have a negative impact on the
world?

~~~
smt88
I think "have a positive impact' is referring to the products, not the people.

Facebook has/had a near-religious devotion to the idea that connecting a globe
of strangers is inherently good. I strongly disagree.

~~~
erobbins
Boz's 'the ugly' that got leaked is probably the best well known documentation
of this cult. My whole time there it creeped me out.

------
aplummer
> “Again [it's] the female card that has caused so much damage in such a short
> time, not just at Facebook,” another poster wrote.

I don’t think I’ve ever read such a deeply toxic comment in my life. On the
surface polite, but underneath such a corrupt worldview. Good on Sheryl for
just surviving in an environment with people like that.

~~~
malvosenior
I don't think it's toxic, it's an accurate observation. As soon as you let
gender politics into the building, you've started an unwinnable war between
the sexes that will ultimately rip your company apart. It's very telling that
the people commenting on this have to do it with Blind as they're obviously
afraid of voicing their opinion in public. That type of fear is only going to
fester and grow.

Same with the comment from the black ex-employee about how there are more
Black Lives Matter posters than actual black employees (which I don't doubt
for a second). There is no way to play these progressive games at work that
won't come back and shoot you in the foot from the left, right and center.
Keep politics out of the workplace.

~~~
shaki-dora
Also: the comment about posters was intended to criticize the lack of black
employees, not the abundance of posters.

...which makes your take, i. e. That removing the posters would solve the
problem sort of funny, in a very depressing way.

~~~
malvosenior
Removing the posters solves the problem of injecting politics into the
workplace. If there’s _also_ a racism problem, that would need to be dealt
with on a case by case basis. I took the original post by the black ex-FB
employee to mean he saw the posters as meaningless virtue signaling that had
no effect on what he saw as a racism problem at Facebook.

------
tinyhouse
The FB stock value today is roughly where it was almost two years ago. While
the stock value of some other tech companies (Twitter, Netflix, Amazon)
doubled in the same time period. The performance evaluation period in two
months will be interesting this year I'm sure. I guess they will award lots of
RSU refreshers to keep strong performers around.

------
flexie
A lot of criticism from anonymous sources.

Even if they had names, would it even be worth mentioning what a bunch of
hysterical 20-something year old developers are complaining about?

Yes, it's inconvenient for them that they bet on the wrong horse. But if they
don't like the direction their company is taking, they can quit and find
another job.

~~~
forapurpose
> A lot of criticism from anonymous sources. ... if they don't like the
> direction their company is taking, they can quit and find another job.

I don't understand what you mean. The sources that agree with your position
are also anonymous - the article depicted three sides to the debate, and all
are represented by anonymous sources:

 _Internally, the conflict seems to have divided Facebook into three camps:
those loyal to Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg; those
who see the current scandals as proof of a larger corporate meltdown; and a
group who see the entire narrative — including the portrayal of the company’s
hiring of communications consulting firm Definers Public Affairs — as examples
of biased media attacks._

------
dreamcompiler
Mark Zuckerberg wanted a tool to help him get laid, and he built a tool that
has the power to undermine democracy. He and everyone else in FB management
seems to think their little toy is still just a chuckleworthy way to meet cute
chicks and get rich. Serious adult scrutiny is exactly what FB needs right
now, before they screw around and blow up the world.

~~~
visarga
> Mark Zuckerberg wanted a tool to help him get laid, and he built a tool that
> has the power to undermine democracy.

This reminds me of the paperclip maximiser AGI - an agent tasked with, say,
maximising the production of paperclips would hypothetically destroy humanity
just to reach its goal.

Maybe Zuck is just like paperclip-AGI?

------
iamleppert
If you're a talented engineer, there are a lot better places than Facebook in
which to spend your time. Get the monkey off your back.

------
jeffrallen
The time is coming when Facebook will be a stain on a resume. If you work
there now, you need to be working on your exit strategy.

------
philwelch
> a group who see the entire narrative — including the portrayal of the
> company’s hiring of communications consulting firm Definers Public Affairs —
> as examples of biased media attacks

Of course they are biased media attacks. The tech industry in general, and
Facebook in particular, is an existential threat to the legacy news media and
will be viciously attacked for that reason alone. That's why Facebook, which
made a little bit of money selling targeted ads to Russian trolls, is being
blamed by the mainstream media for an election result that had more to do with
those same media outlets doing 24/7 coverage of Donald Trump's antics for the
entire 2016 election cycle.

I don't work for Facebook and I don't even particularly _like_ Facebook, but
it's hard not to see a Two Minutes Hate for what it is.

------
sjg007
Facebook does need to police its platforms. Fake news and the mob mentality
will destroy not only Facebook but also the world. And that is a very tall
order. Oddly enough this may not actually be possible. I think they could put
in some global filters to reduce virality/contagion as well as automated
bot/troll detection.

~~~
makomk
I think that anyone who thinks that this is fixable doesn't understand how bad
or difficult the misinformation problem is. For example, remember that time no
less a person than the White House Press Secretary tweeted a video which had
been doctored by selectively speeding parts up to make it look more violent?
There was a really viral, popular video on Twitter which vividly demonstrated
this by overlaying that version on the original and got 10.4 million views.

The proof video was doctored, and not subtly either - the original video is 6
or 7 frames behind the overlaid video from the very start and remains that way
the whole way through. When watching it at normal speed the faintness of the
overlay made this almost invisible except during fast motion, giving the
illusion that the overlaid video was sped up during those parts, but if you
look at it in freeze-frame mode the very first frame gives the game away. _No-
one noticed_. Every right-thinking, smart, social media savvy person now
thinks that they caught an evil attempt to deceive the world with faked video,
when in reality they'd been conned by some really simple video trickery - and
nothing will ever change this.

(This is also why the expert AP got to look at it frame by frame couldn't
point to any part of the video that had been sped up. There wasn't any since
he got the initial frame alignment right. I've compared the two for myself.)

Oh, and even the White House Press Secretary seems to have now been convinced
that the video was sped up despite the fact that it wasn't.

------
ogcufugic
This article is really funny. Reading things like employees comparing Zuck to
Hitler was over the top but still funny. While the media circus in the US
revolves around US elections, let us not forget about Facebook's role in the
UN documented genocide in Myanmar or in the election of Rodrigo Duterte who
ran death squads as Mayor and is killing people left and right.

[https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/27/facebook-bans-
military-m...](https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/27/facebook-bans-military-
myanmar-un-report/)

The comment on Sheryl Sandberg as an icon of the left is also funny because
she's still a capitalist that leads an authoritarian organization. A real
leftist would fight for democracy but that's the level of discourse we have in
this country.

------
danielor
In the end, Facebook's success will be its biggest headwind. They had been on
a tear for years since inception. That type of success makes it harder for
people to switch gears when problems arise. It is fundamentally unclear how
Facebook will navigate these turbid waters.

------
lewisj489
I find it quite (weird/funny/amusing) that BuzzFeed has been writing non-stop
articles about Facebook.

BuzzFeed was built on Facebook, and I'm not sure how far they would have got
without them. But the year is nearly 2019 and Buzzfeed no longer relies on
Facebook for users.

~~~
mkirklions
I used to rely on reddit for traffic.

Now I don't.

Times change. Reddit quality has gone down too.

~~~
chapium
The biggest change i see in reddit is its not ron paul obsessed any more. In
what ways has the quality decreased?

~~~
odiroot
Identity politics ruined it. Even thematical subs.

------
jhcl
I thought that that kind of toxic culture just surrounded the political
parties but by the looks of it is a basic part of the American (business)
culture. If a big company like that has employees like that (i.e. without
conscience) we're in for a ride.

~~~
kazen44
from a non US perspective, lets say "cruel bussiness culture" is usually
associated with american companies. The main thing that seems to foster suchs
an enviroment is the lack of worker represenation in US companies.

concepts like works councils[1] seem totally foreign to many US companies.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council)

------
Mc_Big_G
_"...the only survival strategy is to quit or fully buy in."_

I hope anyone worth their salt quits. As a hiring manager, it would be hard to
overlook "fully buy[ing] in" to FB after how apparent it's become that they're
fundamentally evil.

~~~
diogenescynic
I think it's already happening. I've received a few emails from recruiters
about jobs at Facebook in the past few weeks and before this hadn't received
any. Same with my wife. It's obviously anecdotal, but we were both surprised
to get emails from recruiters for the same company a few weeks apart. My first
thought was that they must be having more trouble hiring people.

------
zjdkxbz
“Now, people now have burner phones to talk shit about the company — not even
to reporters, just to other employees,”

I find it unsettling that FB employees feel they need to use burner phones to
criticize the company.

------
dschuetz
I cannot really understand Facebook's concerns over the press ganging them up.
Zuckerberg doesn't talk, or is lying through his teeth, or through Sandberg's,
so people find other ways to get into Facebook's internal affairs (see the
story about UK's MP disclosing memos). Now Zuck and Sheryl are loosing trust
from their own employees. Though break.

------
metabagel
Lots of comments about burner phones here. I merely took it as a cheap
throwaway phone which they purchased explicitly because it would not be
trackable or monitorable, and the phone number would not be registered under
their name.

------
duxup
"Now, as its stock price declines "

I guess that is when they start to object to the things they were doing, or is
it just that it hasn't worked out for them... but they were ok with what the
company did?

------
acjohnson55
Anyone who buys into a company's stock when it's rigged to insulate the CEO
from accountability either doesn't care about accountability or is a fool.

------
malandrew
> full-blown anti-media rhetoric, saying that the press is ganging up on
> Facebook

I don't like facebook, but they are not wrong to feel this way because that is
exactly what the media is doing because it is profitable. If it bleeds it
leads. The media, like facebook's newsfeed, has the greatest engagement and ad
revenue when they are actively selling controversy. Manufacturing or even just
exaggerating controversy is at fault here.

There really is no difference between everything shitty about Facebook and the
news media these days. They are both afflicted with the same disease.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
Yeah. Except "the media" is reporting actual facts, that not even Facebook is
disputing. And you're making some case that would be true _no matter what_ the
media focusses on.

So: why Facebook, and not Apple? Why Volkswagen, and not Toyota? Why Michael
Cohen, and not some other lawyer nobody had ever heard of?

------
Animats
The actual documents the UK Parliament pried out of Facebook are here.[1]

Excerpts:

Exhibit 172 – Discussion of changing ‘read call log’ permissions on Android

From email dated 4 February 2015

Michael LeBeau – ‘He guys, as you know all the growth team is planning on
shipping a permissions update on Android at the end of this month. They are
going to include the ‘read call log’ permission, which will trigger the
Android permissions dialog on update, requiring users to accept the update.
They will then provide an in-app opt in NUX for a feature that lets you
continuously upload your SMS and call log history to Facebook to be used for
improving things like PYMK, coefficient calculation, feed ranking etc. This is
a pretty high-risk thing to do from a PR perspective but it appears that the
growth team will charge ahead and do it.’

Yul Kwon

‘The Growth team is now exploring a path where we only request Read Call Log
permission, and hold off on requesting any other permissions for now. ‘Based
on their initial testing, it seems this would allow us to upgrade users
without subjecting them to an Android permissions dialog at all. ‘It would
still be a breaking change, so users would have to click to upgrade, but no
permissions dialog screen.

[1] [https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-
committees/cultu...](https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-
committees/culture-media-and-sport/Note-by-Chair-and-selected-documents-
ordered-from-Six4Three.pdf)

~~~
why_only_15
I was just watching Survivor: Cook Islands and seeing Yul Kwon come up in such
a totally random way is bizarre. Guess he needs more than the million

------
_hardwaregeek
Non AMP link:
[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/facebooks...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/facebooks-
tensions-zuckerberg-sandberg)

~~~
joshstrange
@dang can we please change the URL to this? The current one has full width
text which is hard to read.

~~~
sctb
Updated!

~~~
joshstrange
Thank you! Quick question, is there a good way to "summon" a mod? I've always
used @dang to do it but they obviously aren't the only mod here, I just don't
know the correct way to do it.

~~~
sctb
That doesn't do any summoning anyway, so please email hn@ycombinator.com and
we'll be sure to see it.

------
kraig
good

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malvosenior
I still don't understand why the Soros thing is a news story. I've never seen
so many major media outlets come to the defense of the "helpless"
_billionare_. If someone that powerful was bad mouthing my company, I'd also
want to know why they were doing that.

~~~
drak0n1c
I'm Jewish myself and I don't understand how Soros being the subject of neo-
nazi memes renders his political activity immune to criticism in general. The
Koch brothers are frequently vilified by angry neo-marxists, but that doesn't
seem to discourage journalists from writing about how projects and funds are
tied to the Kochs.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
Quick: name one specific project by George Soros.

Among the reasons why the criticism of him is generally seen as Anti-Semitic
is that it rarely goes any further than "rich Jew". The Open Society
Foundations supports hundreds of initiatives. They are all listed on their
website. Go find something objectionable!

~~~
buboard
billionaires using their wealth to meddle in politics is generally viewed as
suspicious, as it should. Can you name another rich political activist who is
not being criticized but praised?

The honest way for a rich person to make political change is by putting
himself up for election.

~~~
shaki-dora
Bill gates

~~~
buboard
bill gates is political?? i d have to visit his wiki page to find out his
political affiliation, let alone ambition

