
Facebook fired an employee who posted evidence of preferential treatment - RaitoBezarius
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-zuckerberg-what-if-trump-disputes-election-results
======
arkadiyt
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24077359](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24077359)

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ergodicity001
I saw a video recently where someone was discussing Facebook's "moat".
Essentially, among Big Tech, it has the least defensible moat, which I think
is true.

[https://youtu.be/4SrxqfKn9Bw?t=1605](https://youtu.be/4SrxqfKn9Bw?t=1605)

I think Facebook has very little choice right now. Libra could have been a
moat, but it is more or less dead now. They are being cornered into being more
pro-conservative, because otherwise their moat (engagement, which is what
advertisers pay for) will collapse by the time COVID is done. They need to
walk the fine line between proving their engagement and hoping that
advertisers would actually want to show ads to the group which is engaged.

~~~
save_ferris
> because otherwise their moat (engagement, which is what advertisers pay for)
> will collapse by the time COVID is done.

What makes you say this? I don’t quite follow.

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ergodicity001
I read that small businesses' ad spending account for over 90% of Facebook
revenue.

If there is one thing you don't want to be right now, it is a small business
owner fighting to bring employees back to work in an unsafe environment while
operating at reduced capacity. What's the incentive for the employee to return
to work? Jim Cramer said it well on CNBC when he asked how he can compete with
the federal government to bring people back to work:

[https://youtu.be/qG_Nq7kIojI?t=367](https://youtu.be/qG_Nq7kIojI?t=367)

This is Jim Cramer we are talking about. He can probably even afford to
overpay (and outbid the federal government) for a while to bring back his
restaurant staff. Regular small businesses don't enjoy such advantages.

When these small businesses start rolling over one by one, there will just be
a lot fewer small businesses left. And those who do survive will probably
shrink their ad budgets.

I once heard a funny comment: Google shows you ads for stuff you know you want
to buy. Facebook shows you ads for stuff you didn't know you want to buy
(search intent of course). I would say search intent will drive ad spend for
the foreseeable future. Plus, if it is a secular bear market for small
businesses, ad rates on Google would also come down for those small businesses
which do make it out alive at the end of COVID.

~~~
save_ferris
That all makes sense, I guess I don’t follow how the recession of the
advertising market would reduce engagement on FB. Sure, FB would probably see
a revenue decline, but the users would still engage whether or not there would
be ads on the site.

And while I agree that ad budgets are probably about get slashed across the
board, I see more companies shifting from older, more expensive ad spending
strategies towards online and Facebook. They’re in the most competitive
position in the aggregate advertising market, way cheaper and more effective
than traditional advertising channels.

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dangerface
The title buzzfeed came up with is misleading as the article isn't really
about an employee getting fired or their evidence. Its more a general
editorial on Facebook and the US election.

~~~
1024core
Did you read the entire article?

 _The engineer joined the company in 2016 and most recently worked on
Instagram. He left the company on Wednesday. One employee on an internal
thread seen by BuzzFeed News said that they received permission from the
engineer to say that the dismissal “was not voluntary.”_

~~~
renewiltord
It contains that information over two paragraphs but it took a lot of reading
to get there. It doesn't appear to be about that issue at all.

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A4ET8a8uTh0
It is mildly off-topic, but it is not intended to derail this conversation.
Did anyone else notice that Buzzfeednews and Yahoo news gotten somewhat decent
( as in, Yahoo actually had an in-depth analysis that wasn't all talking
points ).

~~~
pb7
From my basic understanding is that Buzzfeed != Buzzfeed News. News is
apparently a well run organization and it’s a shame that it uses the same
brand for this very reason.

~~~
MajorBee
I'm sure they must have had a conversation on the trade-off of having a "known
name" attached to their investigative journalism wing and that very "known
name" causing them to be negatively associated with vacuous listicles. Maybe
once Buzzfeed News becomes a brand strong enough to stand on its own it'll be
spun off as a separate organization altogether.

~~~
ardy42
IIRC, one of the reasons Buzzfeed News exists was to counter the negative
associations with the Buzzfeed brand and its vacuous listicles.

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mhoad
It feels like you have to squint fairly hard at this point to continue to see
Facebook in the same terms that they define themselves as just being
interested in "presenting the marketplace of ideas".

This seems to be the latest in a pretty long series of actions that seem
contrary to that idea and that something else might be the real motivating
factor.

~~~
sandworm101
"CERTIFICATE OF INCORPORATION OF FACEBOOK, INC. ARTICLE III: The purpose of
the Corporation is to engage in any lawful act or activity for which
corporations may be organized under the Delaware General Corporation Law."

[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312512...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312512046715/d287954dex31.htm)

Facebook is no different than any other Delaware corporation. Facebook exists
to do anything and everything that will profit its shareholders. Everything
else is just PR.

~~~
sjroot
This language is not exclusive to Delaware corporations, or even corporations.
It is standard practice when incorporating any kind of business entity.

Source: if you look at the articles of incorporation for my solely-owned and
operated LLC, you'd find an identical purpose statement.

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Miner49er
Facebook seems to have a conservative bias. I've never used it myself though,
so I can't completely say. I'm also not saying whether or not they should, but
they seem to.

Zuckerburg regularly hangs out with conservative political figures, but not
liberal or letist ones. [0]

They censor the left regularly [1]. Also, is there even any leftist
publications in the FB news tab?

They let the right slide by on things regularly though. They don't censor
racism. [2] And they apparently have a bias that allows right publications to
break their rules.

[0] [https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-holding-
priv...](https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-holding-private-
dinners-with-conservatives-2019-10?op=1)

[1] [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/04/24/facebook-
whil...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/04/24/facebook-while-black-
zucked-users-say-they-get-blocked-racism-discussion/2859593002/)

[2] [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-
employ...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-employee-
leaks-show-they-feel-betrayed)

~~~
twic
There was also this business about removing fact-checking of a bunk climate
science article at the behest of a Republican congressman:

[https://heated.world/p/fact-check-of-viral-climate-
misinform...](https://heated.world/p/fact-check-of-viral-climate-
misinformation)

My interpretation of this is not that Facebook has a conservative bias (what
does it even mean for a company to have a bias?), but that Facebook's leaders
are well aware that the company are extremely vulnerable to regulation, and
that keeping the current administration sweet is a good way of evading
regulation. If the US enters 2021 with a Democratic administration not
hamstrung by a Republican congress, i would expect the apparent bias to
evaporate or reverse.

~~~
munificent
_> My interpretation of this is not that Facebook has a conservative bias
(what does it even mean for a company to have a bias?)_

It would mean that the company's actions benefit members of one side of the
political spectrum more than the other.

We're free to speculate about _why_ a company's actions might do that and
whether it's deliberate or an emergent consequence of some other intention,
but I think it's fairly straightforward to define what bias would mean.

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bra-ket
Good job FB, don’t let woke liberals silence opponents

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jerkstate
It sounds like the issue is that fact-checkers are being overridden sometimes
when they flag right-wing news sources. I think that if you asked a right-wing
person, they would tell you that many of these fact-checker organizations have
a distinct left-wing bias. Maybe they (the fact-checkers) aren’t infallible
and get it wrong sometimes?

~~~
zo1
Another aspect is that a lot of non-left, or right-leaning viewpoints have
been categorized into "naughty idea" territory, despite a lot of reasonable
people holding them. E.g. Things such as: Being against mass-migration from
3rd world countries to the west, wanting racially homogenous societies,
removing welfare, building a wall, racial profiling, there being no gender
pay-gap, protesting spreads the virus, BLM are agitators, etc. All non-
inherently "evil" ideas, but we've moved into a territory where they're seen
as hateful and as such the mainstream is primed to attack them. That is now
manifesting (or stared in?) the internet, and we're seeing the consequences
everywhere as a result.

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angst_ridden
Wanting racially homegeneous societies _is_ an "evil idea" because to create
one, you have to remove groups of people from a society based on their race.

~~~
vimy
Eastern Europe is still homogeneous and they are being vilified for wanting to
keep it that way.

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angst_ridden
Eastern Europe has never been homogeneous, except in myth. There have been
waves of different peoples coming through since the ice ages, and there has
been mingling all along.

~~~
vimy
The population of Hungary is 98.3% ethnic Hungarians. Other Eastern European
countries are similar.

