
Facebook Loses Top Executives, Including Chris Cox - minimaxir
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/technology/facebook-chris-cox.html
======
mindgam3
I've known Chris Cox since freshman year of college and he was an informal
advisor to my first startup. The NYT article referenced in hashberry's earlier
comment includes a key quote:

“For over a decade, I’ve been sharing the same message that Mark and I have
always believed: Social media’s history is not yet written, and its effects
are not neutral,” Mr. Cox said in a note to employees on Thursday. “As its
builders we must endeavor to understand its impact — all the good, and all the
bad — and take up the daily work of bending it towards the positive, and
towards the good.”

“This is our greatest responsibility,” he added.'

When the Chief Product Officer says on his way out that "social media is not
neutral" and encourages all employees to bend it towards the good... you
barely have to read between the lines to understand what's really happening.

The real story here isn't the "spin" from the NYT. It's the fact that Facebook
is hemorrhaging its best people as those on the inside finally start waking up
to the fact that Zuckerberg's vision of Facebook as a good thing for the world
was a lie.

If the guy who is officially in charge of product and who has been there since
2005 can't make a difference, what chance does anyone else have?

Source: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/technology/facebook-
chris...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/technology/facebook-chris-
cox.html)

~~~
passn
"Zuckerberg's vision of Facebook as a good thing for the world was a lie" \-
That is such a broad generalization. In the developing world where I live
Facebook gives me the opportunity to maintain contact with my family who live
on the other side of the world, as I walk the streets of São Paulo, for free.
There are hundreds of millions of others like me who keep in contact with
their family because of Facebook (and the companies they own). The alternative
(cel phone calls and sms) is literally an inch away on our smartphone, but it
is such bad quality and so expensive its unusable. For all of us, Facebook is
definitely a good thing.

~~~
madeofpalk
> In the developing world where I live Facebook gives me the opportunity to
> maintain contact with my family who live on the other side of the world, as
> I walk the streets of São Paulo, for free.

Cool. In other developing countries it lead to a massacre.

~~~
dang
Would you mind reviewing
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and following the rules when posting here?

They include: " _Don 't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and
substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive._"

------
throwaway23445
Chris was one of the rare people who understood both the technical side and
business side of a product/business. There were so many times where an
engineer would start blabbling big terms to avoid doing something or an PM
spouts MBA Bullshit and Chris just shuts it down.

What outsiders who focused on the PR never knew is that there was a balance of
power in FB that kept things going forward. Now, with these changes along with
Jan Koum leaving last year, I don't know if there is anyone with enough
influence to counterbalance the Sheryl-driven short-termism view.

For people without real defined values, "privacy centric" is yet another empty
cover to do exactly the opposite.

~~~
james_s_tayler
Sheryl-driven development?

~~~
hashberry
I'm curious about this as well. From her Wikipedia article[0] and experience
in online sales, maybe it means this:

> Author Shoshana Zuboff called Sandberg "the Typhoid Mary of surveillance
> capitalism."

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheryl_Sandberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheryl_Sandberg)

------
yaseer
Facebook is big tobacco. Intelligent people generating profits that knowingly
harms society (even if you do get some joy from a cigarette, that doesn't
justify working for a tobacco company).

I really hope the smart people at Facebook see the obvious parallel, and
choose another career.

History will judge you.

~~~
jedberg
Not exactly. Tobacco has no benefits to society except possibly a dopamine hit
for the user.

Facebook has a lot of positives to go along with its negatives. For me, it's
the only way I stay in touch with a lot of my friends from high school. And I
know that it's only because of Facebook, because Facebook didn't exist for the
first 10 years after I graduated, and most of my friends didn't get on it
until about 15 years after graduation. It was great finally reconnecting them
with them all.

They are people whose company I enjoyed, but we just didn't have the time to
have individual conversations every week with the 50 people we knew from
school. Having a way for them to broadcast updates has been super helpful.

Also, the Portal is great. I got a pair when they came out, and it's easy
enough that my four year old will call her grandparents regularly without my
help. It's the only platform that we've found that is easy enough for both the
four year old and my parents.

I use messenger and WhatsApp to keep in touch with friends in other countries.
They are easy to find because we're friends on Facebook.

So yeah, Facebook still has a lot of positives for society. I don't judge
someone who works there just for working there. I hope that they are working
to enhance the positives and minimize the negatives. From what I've seen with
the folks I've talked to, that is always the case.

~~~
tedivm
I hear this quite a lot from the people who have worked at "damaging"
companies (facebook, reddit, twitter, uber) but I still have to wonder if the
personal benefits these platforms bring are really worth the societal cost,
and if people are just using the idea that they can "change things from
inside" as a justification for taking money to damage the world.

Don't get me wrong, I think that communication is great. It's fantastic that
grandchildren can talk to their grandparents without their parents having to
get off the couch and help. But is it worth people literally dying[1][2]? Is
being able to post funny memes worth giving violent communities a place to
thrive[4]?

At the end of the day people have to make their own decisions about things,
but I think that tech workers as a whole are way to eager to wash their hands
of the matter, take a paycheck, and blame others while ignoring that these
companies could not function without them.

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2019-facebook-
neverending...](https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2019-facebook-neverending-
crisis/)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-
facebo...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-
genocide.html)

[3] [https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/facebook-un-myanmar-
geno...](https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/facebook-un-myanmar-genocide.php)

[4] [https://www.fastcompany.com/90244757/the-inside-story-of-
red...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90244757/the-inside-story-of-reddits-
struggle-to-deal-with-its-most-toxic-pro-trump-users)

~~~
aikinai
It’s sounds like you’re arguing we should shut down the Internet.

------
DataJunkie
I used to be a fan of Facebook, but I was never obsessed with it. I even used
to work there.

I'm over it.

It's useful for groups, some of the ads really are useful, it's nice to
sometimes keep up with people that are far away, but the news feed has had
done way more harm than good for our society, including my own life.

After the 2016 Election, Facebook posts lead to so much drama in my family
that certain "branches" of the tree have unfriended and blocked each other and
we haven't spoken since. My dad and I constantly argue because he will see
some comment I made on someone else's post and have to give his own opinion,
or read to me what the other person said back. There is no way to turn this
part of the feed off.

Overall, it is a totally unpleasant product to use now. The only reason I want
it to succeed is because I own stock from when I worked there.

~~~
mullingitover
> There is no way to turn this part of the feed off.

Unfollow everyone, and you don't get sucked into interacting with the facebook
feed. Use it for Messenger, groups, and events. I've been doing that, and
facebook is a perfectly good communication utility without any of the grief.

Honestly, we as users should demand a simple switch that entirely disables the
feed. It turns facebook from a socially messy skinner box into something
benign and generally quite useful.

~~~
DataJunkie
I don't care about seeing other people's comments, but I'd like to be able to
prevent people seeing my comments on other peoples' posts unless it is a
mutual friend or something. No matter what it is I comment on, a news article,
or a group post, and my dad (and I am sure other FB friends) see it even if we
aren't connected to the same groups and sites.

------
shosko
Why would anyone want to work for Facebook these days? When you are
maintaining the largest advertising stream since TV while actively destroying
society's discourse, I'm not sure what redeeming qualities it has. I think the
most important thing any of us can do is get away from Facebook and move
towards pursuits that fix problems, including the ones Facebook helped create.

~~~
x3n0ph3n3
My wife has been doing taxes for a few people at Facebook (including engineers
and PMs) -- many of them make an absurd amount of money. (>$800k / year)

~~~
streblo
I'm not sure if it's a fiduciary duty of an accountant not to disclose this
kind of stuff, but it should be.

~~~
iscrewyou
As long as she doesn’t associate names with those salaries in the
conversation, i don’t think it’s unethical. Or she doesn’t act on those
salaries and commit some kind of security fraud, it’s just a conversation.

------
howard941
> As part of this, I’m sad to share the news that Chris Cox has decided to
> leave the company.

"this" reads as though Cox's departure is a result of the decision to build
out a "privacy-focused social platform".

~~~
dboreham
That's how it is intended to read.

------
hashberry
Interesting spin from the NYTimes ("Facebook Loses Top Executives, Including
Chris Cox"[0]):

"The departures follow two years of scandals for Facebook around data privacy
and disinformation. The issues have buffeted the Silicon Valley company,
causing internal turmoil and a redirection in strategy."

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/technology/facebook-
chris...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/technology/facebook-chris-
cox.html)

~~~
annadane
This is what pisses me off. I'm more than willing to criticize Facebook when
they deserve it but IMO the media blitzkrieg has said more about the media
than Facebook. Not that FB hasn't done scummy things but my faith in the whole
attack angle has been reduced

~~~
untog
Why? What level of criticism is acceptable, and what level is not, and why?

This is something I've not really been able to understand about those who
defend Facebook against these "attacks". Nothing reported (AFAIK) has been
untrue. Facebook is one of the richest and most culturally central companies
of the 21st century. It seems fair game to examine what they do.

~~~
o10449366
Significant portions of NYT's reporting have been highly misleading, to the
extent that it's difficult to conclude it wasn't intentional.

"Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually
all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, and gave
Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages." [0]

Netflix and Spotify have Messenger plugins that allow you to share movie
trailers and songs from directly within the Messenger app. Spotify's desktop
app also used to connect with Messenger to enable similar functionality. NYT
equated having standard "read/write" permissions necessary for basic app
functionality with Netflix and Spotify being able to access, store, and modify
all of your private messages.

Read the comments on that article and any prior discussion of it on the
internet and you'll see that many technology illiterate people misinterpreted
what that meant.

Also, it's fair game to examine what Facebook has been doing, but it's also
fair game to examine what NYT's motives are for scrutinizing them so closely.
When Google, Twitter, Equifax, and others have been largely ignored one
naturally begins to wonder if there's an underlying agenda at play.

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/technology/facebook-
priva...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/technology/facebook-privacy.html)

~~~
noelsusman
I'm confused. Netflix and Spotify did have the ability to read anyone's
private messages. That's what they reported, and as far as I know none of the
involved parties disputed that.

The point isn't that somebody at Spotify was sitting there reading everyone's
messages. The point is that they could have been doing that, and Facebook had
nothing in place to know if they were doing that, and none of the users
sharing a song with friends would think that doing so would enable them to do
that, and such extensive privileges were not necessary to implement a simple
sharing feature.

~~~
MrOwen
Without regulatory oversight and third party auditing of certified access
logs, you can't really be sure what was or was not accessed. Of course, if you
imposed those kind of requirements on Facebook, that would take a significant
amount of resources and therefore reduce their profit margins. Probably not
very investor-friendly.

------
ordinaryradical
I just don't understand how anyone can believe his vision for "a privacy-
focused social network" is even possible this late in the game. There is too
much money riding precisely on the reductions of privacy Facebook has enabled
for this to be realistic anymore. The ad dollars come from _knowing_ you, not
_concealing_ you. Plus, once you're a public company, the rules change—you
have shareholders to honor—and if you got to that IPO by being shady or
unethical, backing out of that position is going to be nigh impossible. Their
entire business model developed itself on a privacy-destroying data-suck of
colossal proportions so where is profitability without that?

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends
upon his not understanding it."

~~~
hashberry
Some theories:

1\. Rebranding Facebook as secure and private

2\. If this increases usage, more opportunity to display ads

3\. Their data shows they gain more information by monitoring what people
publicly share, not say in private

4\. Removes all responsibility to work with law enforcement and governments
for illegal activity, since it's encrypted

~~~
ilovecaching
Could you ever consider that Zuck has enough money, and that he really
believes in making a product to connect people for the greater good and use
ads to make it available to everyone?

~~~
floatrock
As a person, maybe if I squint very very very hard.

Legally, he has a duty to maximize value for his board and investors. And
there hasn't been a business model that provides a free consumer web product
without monetizing user data.

~~~
smrq
Why does this shareholder value meme keep getting perpetuated?

~~~
floatrock
Because that's who a CEO reports to and that's how a CEO gets fired.

Some CEO's like Elon and Jobs can spin a great story and hold on by sheer
force of personality, but pension funds aren't buying FB in bulk to get more
green cars on the road.

~~~
vonmoltke
> Because that's who a CEO reports to and that's how a CEO gets fired.

That has nothing to do with the legal requirements of the company or the CEO.
That would be the same as saying I am "legally required" to go to work
tomorrow, because I could get fired for not showing up.

------
nhf
For those who aren't FB insiders, what is the read on this? Do the two Chris'
reputation in the company have any bearing on how this is read?

------
arunv
Chris Cox is a huge loss for Facebook. His first day speech is still the
reason Facebook has the strongest culture in the valley.

~~~
tyre
> Facebook has the strongest culture in the valley

For a company so regularly beset by scandal, this feels like a bold assertion.

Culture of what?

~~~
arunv
Any other company in their shoes would have had a mass exodus. Chris was a big
part of making employees feel like they shared a piece of the dream.

Whatever your thoughts about Facebook, the fact that some of the smartest
people have worked, and continue to work at a company "beset by scandal"
should give you pause.

~~~
bobdole12345
Smartest people? Their tech stack is a dated cargo-culting of Google, hell,
their newest thing is just using kubernetes with a thin wrapper.

Their AI platform is a also ran in pretty much every aspect.

Where exactly are the smart people?

~~~
solidasparagus
FAIR is one of the most advanced AI research labs in the world. PyTorch has
massively growing adoption because it is substantially better than the
competitors and FAIR work consistently pushes the state of the art forward.
Calling their AI work 'also ran' is ridiculous.

~~~
bobdole12345
FAIR is just an advanced PUBLIC AI research lab.

Just because they're the best ones talking about what they're doing, doesn't
mean they're anywhere near the best.

------
o10449366
(Reposting since the parent comment I replied to was deleted)

Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Whatsapp have all been (and continue to be)
exploited to spread messages of hate and ignorance. It seems strange to me
that Facebook is coming under so much criticism relative to the other
platforms when, from my perspective, they've also been the most proactive
about trying to address these issues and dedicated significant resources to
moderation. That isn't to say that these moves have been successful or
productive, but I haven't heard anything from Twitter recently regarding
trying to minimize hate speech and ignorance on its platform (and its the
worst service for divisiveness, in my opinion). Google only just recently
demonetized anti-Semitic and anti-vax material on YouTube and only after
significant backlash from its advertisers (not its users who have been calling
for a response for years). Why is this?

------
hemantv
Some of the good things are happening, they are starting to lose good talent,
it's only a matter of time before they are replaced.

Repeating what I said earlier

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17614163](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17614163)

This company is the drug dealer of Silicon Valley. They have consciously
destroyed a generation attention span using psychological tricks.

------
exabrial
They just spent the last 5 years drilling into their employees a culture where
online privacy doesn't exist, I think it's going to be pretty steep turn of
the ship. Nevertheless I hope the announcement is not merely lip-service. I'd
love to see the same commitment out of Google.

~~~
zecg
Google+ was good privacy-wise.

~~~
o10449366
In what sense? Google exposed the information of 500,000 Google+ users and
tried to conceal it.

"Chief Executive Sundar Pichai was briefed on the plan not to notify users
after an internal committee had reached that decision, the people said." [0]

[0] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-exposed-user-data-
feared...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-exposed-user-data-feared-
repercussions-of-disclosing-to-public-1539017194)

------
munk-a
[https://outline.com/yTPSbh](https://outline.com/yTPSbh)

(An outline version for those tracking aware or blocked on corporate nets)

~~~
neonate
That was the original submission. The current article is at
[http://archive.is/VTCwx](http://archive.is/VTCwx).

------
Toine
> But after 2016, we both realized we had too much important work to do to
> improve our products for society

"Primum non nocere."

I cannot help but laugh at this statement. I think Facebook has done, and is
still doing, way more harm than good for society. Like many other addiction-
based services, it generated massive revenues for very few people, at the
expense of society.

~~~
stickfigure
My friends and I derive significant value from keeping in touch via Facebook.
I find your attitude condescending and insulting.

~~~
Toine
You just proved my point.

~~~
praneshp
"In other words, Toine is being condescending"

------
untog
> The differences stemmed from Mr. Zuckerberg’s asserting control over his
> company and its apps — Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger — by
> rolling out a plan to integrate the services into a single privacy-focused
> platform, according to six people involved in the situation.

I'm mystified as to why Zuckerberg would let them leave over this. It very
simply doesn't seem like a good idea (how many WhatsApp users know FB even
owns it? What good does it do to remind them?) and when you've got major
product heads disagreeing with you it's time to make a clear argument. So far
I haven't seen one.

------
musicale
Here is my informal ranking of Facebook's biggest problems:

1\. Facebook itself (built on multiple harmful feedback loops)

2\. Facebook's business model (selling eyeballs, etc. to advertisers)

3\. Mark Zuckerberg (expansion justifies anything)

4\. Facebook's customers (advertisers who only care about influence)

5\. Facebook's users (rotting apples in a rotten barrel)

------
ulfw
The rats are leaving the sinking privacy nightmare ship?

If the co-founders of your only significantly growing products (Whatsapp and
Instagram) leave (publicly in disgust about product direction) and your Head
of Product for similar reasons now too this makes me wonder what working in
Product Manaqgement at Facebook is like these days.

It's the Zuck way or the out-the-door way? Why would any semi-creative person
want to work under those circumstances?

------
tuxxy
Are these choices of the individuals or were they asked to resign? It seems
pretty odd that all these people would just decide to leave _at the same
time_.

------
_bxg1
I don't see how they can make money on truly private communications channels.
If they aren't gathering data, and they aren't showing ads (who would put up
with ads in IM?), where does the money come from? Is it just a way to hold on
to users for future monetization?

~~~
_underfl0w_
I think it's actually just a red herring. I think one could better define
"private" in this context to mean "between two individuals", with the false
implication that they mean "away from advertisers". Facebook has proven itself
an exception to Hanlon's Razor by this point, so I'd say its probably
deliberate.

~~~
_bxg1
Perhaps, but WhatsApp is already (allegedly) "truly private". I've never
understood how it makes money.

------
zestyping
Interesting. The article seems to emphasize that the conflict was over merging
the messaging apps (Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp).

What are the upsides and downsides of merging the messaging apps? I wonder if
there's any way that could turn out to be a good thing.

------
known
FB seems to be a reincarnation of
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster)

------
WhuzzupDomal
Has no one heard of planned obsolescence? Facebook has outserved its
usefulness; it is little better than a rudderless ship under the current
leadership and business model. The bell has tolled; and the Feds are at the
gates. Cease operations and move on. There's a plot available in the social
media graveyard next to MySpace with Facebook's name on it.

~~~
trophycase
That's not what planned obsolescence is, but there are certainly cycles of
capital whereby businesses build great and useful products with the initial
help of capital infusions, then slowly degrade the usefulness of said product
or increase their exploitativeness in order to reduce costs or increase
prices. Perhaps that is happening with facebook now.

------
keyle
Side note... Outline.com doesn't want to outline nytimes articles anymore...?

------
mohsen1
What happened to their "Blockchain" division?

~~~
i_am_nomad
It’s forked.

------
endofcapital
So the possible #2 (it was debatable as to whether Sandberg or Cox would have
take over) and the person who run Whatsapp just quit.

Some pretty big power struggles going down it seems.

------
i_am_nomad
“privacy-focused social platform”

See also:

“sobriety-focused keg party”

“health-focused donut shop”

“quality-focused downvotes”

~~~
sixothree
This sort of thinking fits into the old mindset of how people envisioned
facebook. Just a year or two ago the prevailing consensus was "don't post it
if you don't wan't it public".

But people have since realized that facebook collects far more than what you
give them. It pays for data. It mines data from millions of web sets. It
follows you around in ways people don't understand.

maybe "key part where the host sneakily follows you around on a daily basis to
better understand your drinking habits" would be more appropriate.

------
Touche
Can someone tldr; this please? It seems like some people "left" the company
because Facebook is taking a PR hit on its bad privacy practices. Is that
right?

------
ElijahLynn
What is the tldr of this?

------
milin
And nothing about the massive downtime fb just experienced yesterday.

~~~
sgt
Luckily it's not a critical service, nor is Instagram. WhatsApp is probably
the most critical as a lot of people depend on it every day, even for business
purposes.

~~~
kzrdude
Why is that, is it incidental or based on the features they offer?

~~~
chc
Out of the handful of messaging services with end-to-end encryption, I'm
pretty sure Whatsapp is the most popular. So the security would probably be
the main driver, and the popularity would be why Whatsapp in particular.

