
Early Facebook Employees Regret the Monster They Created - alecco
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/10/early-facebook-employees-regret-the-monster-they-created
======
ghostcluster
This article keeps ridiculously pushing the false narrative that Facebook and
"the Russians" are responsible for the outcome of the 2016 election. The
amount of placed advertisments on Facebook from shadowy Russian sources was
miniscule and had nothing to do with the massive rallies of people and the
media coverage of the Trump campaign. $100,000 of ad buys on Facebook swung
the election and caused this horror?

It is such a dishonest narrative.

I thought it would be a story about the wider cultural effects of social media
and Facebook, but it was more partisan conspiracy theories.

I'm disapointed in Vanity Fair for running this type of piece.

~~~
ihsw2
The left has needed a scapegoat since election night.

It has ranged from:

* Bernie Sanders (second pick for Democrat candidate)

* James Comey (former FBI Director)

* Huma Abedin (deputy chief of staff for Clinton Campaign)

* Russian hackers

* Vladimir Putin (President of Russia)

* Wikileaks (ie: more Russian hackers)

* the Benghazi Committee

* the "Basket of Deplorables" (ie: white America)

* white women (ie: 53% of white women voted for Trump)

* white men (ie: universally reviled by progressive supremacists everywhere)

It seems the Democratic Party will never recover as it is more fragmented than
ever, with ailing Nancy Pelosi and out-of-touch NYC urbanite Chuck Schumer
being the only notable Democrats as of late. All they can do is respond with
righteous indignation rather than form a coherent party platform, especially
given extremists of all flavors left-of-center being unable to form anything
beyond a rickety coalition under shredded banner of "Democrat."

Self-reflection and soul-searching is totally beyond the left's comprehension.

Clinton was just an awful candidate and the shrieking of the liberal media --
from WaPo to CNN to has-been celebrities -- was (and continues to be)
tasteless. Whether Clinton's campaign was ever more than "shame on everybody
that won't vote for me, also it's a woman's turn now" is irrelevant because
that was the only message that got out there.

I would love to see a candidate campaign on, specifically, "tolerance, shared
responsibility, and mutual respect." The Democratic Party has truly abandoned
tolerance, shared responsibility, and mutual respect, and returning to it
would go a long way to bridging the ever-widening gap between Democrats and
Republicans.

~~~
0x445442
Great comment!

In addition to "tolerance, shared responsibility and mutual respect" it would
be awesome to see a candidate with a platform that was fiscally conservative
and socially liberal (i.e. the middle) which is what I think most Americans
have wanted for decades.

Unfortunately, wedge politics and the two party system has driven the
electorate to a game of political ping pong for those same decades in a single
file march toward an ever increasing indebted, imperialistic, totalitarian
police state

~~~
brm
It's really actually quite difficult to be fiscally conservative and socially
liberal.

You can be fiscally conservative and socially neutral maybe or socially
laissez faire but not socially progressive or socially liberal.

If you want social liberalism, money has to be spent on programs that enable
social progress or has to be spent on enforcement of socially liberal laws and
regulations, (history has shown it won't happen otherwise). This is the
opposite of what we know fiscal conservatism to be in America.

I know this sounds nitpickish, but the closest you can get is to say something
like I want liberal policies as cheaply as possible and unfortunately for
those who want to claim the middle with that, that's essentially the policy of
liberalism and the left. That's what liberals want too...

What socially liberal, fiscally conservative generally means is I don't care
what you do but I don't wanna pay for it and that's not the middle, that's
libertarian.

Sorry for the rant but I'm generally tired of seeing a claim for the middle
being used as a substitute for I want socially liberal policies but I don't
want to feel bad about not fully supporting them because I don't wanna give up
any money...

This probably isn't you of course, but it sure is a lot of people who claim to
be "socially liberal, fiscally conservative"

~~~
vintageseltzer
This is a very reasonable comment.

The primary difference between being socially liberal and socially
conservative is the idea of the government’s role in our lives (and more
generally, collectivism vs. individualism). The socially liberal concepts of
universal health care, social security, welfare, public schools and
universities, environmental regulations and others all require funding in the
form of taxation and then spending in form of government programs.

This type of taxation and the growth of government spending goes against the
basic principles of fiscal conservatism.

Until robot-powered post-scarcity and UI changes the fundamental structure of
society and government, social liberalism and fiscal conservatism is a
paradox.

~~~
libertyEQ
When I think of liberal, I think of people like Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson,
Benjamin Franklin. I realize my US-bias is showing, but when the country was
founded the idea of a country where liberty was to be maximized was
inconceivable. Currently, the people called conservatives are trying to
conserve the liberal ideas of the late 18th century.

According to Wikipedia,

"Classical liberalism is a political ideology and a branch of liberalism which
advocates civil liberties under the rule of law with an emphasis on economic
freedom."

I think universal health care is fundamentally incompatible with both civil
liberties and economic freedom.

What some consider progress, like more centralized power from elites that live
X,000s miles away, others consider a regression. The biggest problem with
monarchies was not their bloodline-based successions or validation by the
Pope, it was their highly-centralized power.

------
rgbrenner
_" how Russia used it during the election to elect Trump"

"while the ads may have only reached a small group of people, Trump won the
electoral college by a small number of votes, too."_

Russia interfered (and we should definitely do something about that)... but
Clinton ran a badly managed campaign, and that's why she lost.

First major party nominee to never step foot in Wisconsin since 1972? Clinton
[0]

SEIU says to Clinton campaign that they are moving their staff to Michigan
toward the end of the campaign (like they wanted to from the beginning)..
Clinton's response: turn the bus around and go back to Iowa[1]

 _Michigan operatives relay stories like one about an older woman in Flint who
showed up at a Clinton campaign office, asking for a lawn sign and offering to
canvass, being told these were not “scientifically” significant ways of
increasing the vote, and leaving, never to return. A crew of building trade
workers showed up at another office looking to canvass, but, confused after
being told there was no literature to hand out like in most campaigns, also
left and never looked back._ [1]

I mean come on... how can she expect to win Wisconsin when she never even
stepped foot in the state?

0\. [http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-
politics/hil...](http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-
politics/hillary-clinton-hoping-to-win-wisconsin-without-setting-foot-
in/article_b39afbf6-c85c-5cba-becd-addfa03f841a.html)

1\. [http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/michigan-hillary-
clint...](http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/michigan-hillary-clinton-
trump-232547)

~~~
smcl
Yep exactly - an awful candidate with an awful campaign. The lack of
campaigning in key states like Wisconsin. The nauseating cult of personality
around her. Dismissing the Bernie Sanders voters as "Bernie Bros" (despite the
large number of young women who supported him). The tone-deaf "America is
already great" slogan which existed in complete ignorance of the poor. Her
awkward inability to appear like a human being (google "I'm just chillin' in
cedar rapids!" and cringe). Her inability to come out in favour of a $15
minimum wage. The fact that the Clinton family are scandal-ridden even before
the emails, and so obviously in the pocket of big business. We could go on all
day. In my opinion Trump is far worse, but it seems that many Democrat voters
didn't "defect" and vote Republican (GOP votes were pretty steady from '08,
'12 and '16) ... they just didn't turn out for Hillary. I don't blame them.
What an awful choice to be forced to make - Trump or Hillary.

~~~
hrasyid
> awful candidate

less awful than the winner, so I doubt this is why she lost.

~~~
dragonwriter
As a candidate she was more awful; while she had slighty lower unfavorables,
they were much _firmer_.

Yes, she'd be far better actually doing the job, but it was clear to anyone
with any knowledge of politics that she was the worst major party candidate,
_as a candidate_ , in a very long time.

------
avar
"Half the world is cracking up in laughter. The United States doesn’t just
interfere in elections. It overthrows governments it doesn’t like, institutes
military dictatorships. Simply in the case of Russia alone—it’s the least of
it—the U.S. government, under Clinton, intervened quite blatantly and openly,
then tried to conceal it, to get their man Yeltsin in, in all sorts of ways.
So, this, as I say, it’s considered—it’s turning the United States, again,
into a laughingstock in the world." \--Noam Chomsky[1].

1\.
[https://www.democracynow.org/2017/4/4/chomsky_half_the_world...](https://www.democracynow.org/2017/4/4/chomsky_half_the_world_is_laughing)

------
chiefalchemist
"Like many C.E.O.s, Zuckerberg does run the risk of being aloof. In
particular, Zuckerberg has few friends outside of Facebook. Beyond the time he
spends with his wife and young children, he does very little that doesn’t, in
some way, point back to his work at the company he runs. This sort of
discipline becomes problematic when you learn that some of the people who
surround Zuckerberg on a daily basis—the vast majority being current Facebook
employees—seem to think (like Zuckerberg) that most of the Russian involvement
in the election is overblown and that the company is being used as a scapegoat
for a dysfunctional country..."

Ironic. Washington DC has the exact same problem: isolated, life in a bubble,
mono-vision, etc.

Blaming FB and only FB is an oversimplification, to say the least, but it's a
great spin that protects the elites (from their responsibility for the build
up to Nov 2016 and all that has come to light since).

------
chiefofgxbxl
I assumed the story would be a critical oversight of Facebook as a whole, from
employees' perspective. There are fundamental issues with any social media
platform these days that goes beyond this particular case of foreign
intervention.

How have filter bubbles changed our political landscape? How has the obsession
for "likes" and "shares" incentivized certain speech over others? Has it
diminished the variety of opinions? How do we create a platform that
encourages people to step outside their comfort zone and learn things they may
initially disagree with? How do we get people of differing opinions, who in
our current world _demonize each other_ , to sit down and share their stories
and listen to? Is it even possible to build a popular platform that fights
against our innate biases, like selection bias, confirmation bias, etc.?

Be the alleged Russian involvement as it may, I think that the above questions
are far more damaging to the _long term_ political stability in this country.

------
convery
The whole narrative about the Russian hacking is so strange. Someone from
Russia, government or citizens, bought 100K worth of advertising; meanwhile
the candidate spent upwards of 1.3 Billion on their campaign. Yet those 100K
were what got one of the most disliked persons in the world elected. It's just
silly.

------
malloreon
If these people truly regretted the millions they made through the growth of
facebook's monstrosity and the part they played in it, they'd put their time
and money where their anonymous quotes are and be working to break it apart.

------
ecommerceguy
Seems some Facebook employees can't but help themselves...

"Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News"

[https://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-
sup...](https://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-suppressed-
conser-1775461006)

------
corysama
This backs up a story I heard from a FB employee recently. That there is a FB
office full of people who are so upset with themselves now that they've
realized FB's negative influence on politics that they are holding what he
terms "weekly self-flagellation meetings" to go over how bad it is. The good
news is that they are very motivated to redeem themselves to the world. They
just haven't yet figured out effective ways to do so.

~~~
alehul
Facebook employees desiring to impact elections is the stuff of nightmares,
and would have a much more severe impact than any potential inference, if
true, had.

------
indubitable
This article reads like it was written before details about the ads were
leaked. The "vast majority" of "Russian ads" did not mention the election,
voting, or any particular candidate. That effectively means that any ad,
purchased by a poorly defined "Russian" individual, that discussed LGBT issues
was counted as a hit. If that same standard of "meddling" were applied to all
countries in the world, I suspect that $100k of spend from Russian users would
be the butt of a joke. And I say Russian "users" because there were "more than
3,000" ads spending a total of "at least $100,000". That's an average of $33
per ad. The ads also supported both sides of the issues mentioned, some were
expressing support of groups like Black Lives Matter. I see no justifiable
reason, given the present evidence, to frame this as some giant Russian
conspiracy.

Washington Post discussion of the leaks framing this information, nonetheless,
in favor of a Russian conspiracy:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/russian-o...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/russian-
operatives-used-facebook-ads-to-exploit-divisions-over-black-political-
activism-and-
muslims/2017/09/25/4a011242-a21b-11e7-ade1-76d061d56efa_story.html)

Something related to that article as well is this one is that I think people
for whom these stories confirm their biases (e.g. the Russian conspiracy is
true) should try to read only the facts. There are indeed lots of facts within
these articles, but they're constantly buried within extremely suggestive and
extremely unsupported rhetoric. For instance in Washington Post article, they
state that "$100,000 worth of Facebook ads could have been viewed hundreds of
millions of times." Let's think about that for a minute. In the election both
parties spent about $6 billion on advertising and of course most all of it
targeting the US. Going on with that figure from the Washingon Post that $6
billion could have resulted in tens of trillions of views. To put that another
way, that would be each and every man, woman, and child in America seeing
30,000 ads _at the minimum_. And that minimum is multiplicative as I assumed
"hundreds of millions of views" = exactly 100 million views. That is clearly
in no way a reasonable suggestion, yet that's the sort of thinking it takes to
support the views implicitly expressed within this article.

------
tyingq
I use, and like PHP, despite the various warts.

However, I assumed the headline was going to lead to a story about their
regrets around PHP, HHVM, Hack, etc.

~~~
porfirium
[https://gist.github.com/nikcub/3833406](https://gist.github.com/nikcub/3833406)

~~~
tyingq
Ah, didn't know some source was leaked.

Assuming it's sarcasm, at least someone seemed to be aware of the issues....

 _/ / Holy shit, is this the cleanest fucking frontend file you've ever
seen?!_

------
dude01
Does everyone know that HN is big enough that
organizations/corporations/governments pay people to come here to influence
the discussions? No way we can have a civil discussion here on this topic
because of that interference. Using the label "conspiracy theory" is a good
example of disrupting a discussion.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
It's also just a side effect of the voting system. Once the population gets
big enough, people vote based on whether or not they agree with the poster
instead of whether or not the post advanced the conversation. Over time, those
downvoted stop replying due to a perception that they're part of the out-
group, and an echo chamber forms.

To prevent this, this site really needs to work hard to maintain an
interesting, thought-provoking culture that welcomes dissenting opinions as
long as they're well wrote and not overly emotional.

~~~
dude01
I agree with what you said, and I agree with what I said. :-)

It's funny how technical discussions are much better here, and anything
touching politics is terrible. Kind of reminds me of how you can hear good
debates on sports radio, but not politics.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
Humans get weird when emotion becomes involved. Technical discussions usually
have binary, definite solutions, while political opinions stem from culture
and emotion, and usually don't have a definite solution. Then when people get
stressed or feel attacked, they retreat into a tribal us-vs-them mentality
that amplifies itself on the internet.

Plus I do highly suspect that there is significant astroturfing with political
issues as well, but because that line of thinking accomplishes nothing but
makes me ignore opposing political opinions(which is bad!) I try to avoid that
mode of thinking.

~~~
dude01
I hear you. Though what I try to do lately is: recognize when a partisan /
wedge issue / kind of argument is being used. Then ask myself why.

I think the goal of some people is to intentionally cause feelings of
hopelessness, thus reducing civic involvement and rates of voting. You have to
fight that!

------
0x445442
Good Lord can't these media outlets accept reality. HRC lost, deal with it. In
almost no way is the left's frustration over a Trump presidency different or
more justified than the right's was over the Obama presidency. My advice to
the left and their media fronts; quit screaming "RUSSIANS" and develop a
platform that works for the fly over states and not just the coasts.

~~~
1_2__4
Maybe this isn’t an appropriate comment for HN.

~~~
TheAceOfHearts
I'd also be interested in understanding why you think it's not appropriate for
HN.

Many others share GP's view that the whole Russia thing is potentially
overblown. Personally, I'm still rather skeptical of the whole matter,
considering I haven't been presented with sufficiently strong evidence to make
me agree that it played a large role in the 2016 election.

~~~
majewsky
> I'd also be interested in understanding why you think it's not appropriate
> for HN.

Because this kind of comment usually incites a debate that is below the
intellectual standards of HN.

This is not a statement about the comment's merit. Just a few days ago, there
was a submission about how the US and Israel are leaving UNESCO. I was
initially disappointed to see it being flagged off the front page because I
was hoping for some insightful commentary on this development, but 90% of
comments was arguing about whether there is a Jewish world conspiracy going
on. That's why political stories and comments are very often flagged or
downvoted to death.

~~~
0x445442
Oh please help us all. Is the following really any better?

Can someone please explain why the left's frustration over a Trump presidency
is any more justified than the right's was over the Obama presidency. And can
they also explain how screaming "RUSSIANS" is better than developing a
platform that works for the fly over states and not just the coasts.

Honestly, is couching everything in the Socratic method the blessed way to
comment on HN?

Sometimes I don't want to discuss I just want to make a statement.

~~~
chillwaves
Because Trump is woefully unqualified for the job? Because the words he uses
matter and he lies constantly?

Even if I agreed with the man's vile philosophy, if I was a supporter I would
be frankly embarrassed by the man's performance. He is not even able to staff
his branch of government.

The man is a failure by every metric. I am speaking now more to the
"frustration" over a Trump presidency that the entire country has, not "the
left" as you identify them.

------
starchild_3001
Pretty idiotic article. Blaming Facebook for Trump’s election is like blaming
freedom or internet for the same.

------
pavlakoos
I general I admire Zuckerberg's work, achievements and philanthropy, but his
VR pursuit terrifies me. "One billion people in VR" \- his goal for the next
few years - is nothing else than what we've seen in Matrix the Movie.

Does anyone want it to happen? Really?

~~~
mysterydip
I moved for work last year and now live 7 hours from all the roots I had
growing up. Until personal teleportation exists and I can be with my extended
family and friends in the evenings and weekends while at work during the week,
VR seems like the next closest thing. I get that there’s plenty of cons to VR,
especially one controlled by facebook. But the draw here is similar to that of
social media to begin with for me anyway, to reconnect with people lost by
distance.

------
lamacase
How does the author think Zuckerberg's VR Avatar resembles clippy the
paperclip?

------
Buttes
>People who know Zuckerberg think he’s losing touch with what it’s like to
suffer real loss, and that he’s on his way to becoming a modern-day Howard
Hughes

This is a prettyyyyyy unflattering comparison

~~~
aaron-lebo
It's also pretty denigrating of Hughes. Hughes set aviation records, made
major Hollywood films (as an outsider), designed really impressive planes and
ran a diverse and massive empire before he was 45. Howard Hughes became that
shell they are referring to because he broke most of the bones in his body in
a plane crash, barely survived, got addicted to painkillers, and had an
undiagnosed mental disorder.

Zuckerberg just has a bad case of affluenza, always has.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
Zuckerberg created one of the largest multinational corporations from scratch,
has data on billions of people, and is one of the richest people on the
planet. Implying that he hasn't done much in his lifetime is pretty
disingenuous. Sure, he was lucky, but you can't be a bumbling idiot and gain
that kind of power.

