Okay, so Facebook has said she<p>- worked there for less than two years and had no direct reports<p>- never attended some sort of key meeting<p>- did not work on the subject matter in question<p>...and therefore, she lacks context which undermines some of her claims.<p>Which of those is a matter of character, or a "disgusting" attack? They might be wrong, or they might be right but bringing up irrelevancies, but the writer is acting like stating these is some sort of reprehensible smear.
I always liked Edward R. Murrow's response to Senator McCarthy's attempt to smear him: "Since he made no reference to any statements of fact that we made, we must conclude that he found no errors of fact."<p>1: <a href="https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/edwardrmurrowtomccarthy.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/edwardrmurrowtomcc...</a>
Top comment from the FT (paraphrased somewhat)<p>> If this is all that your comms department can get through legal, you know what’s being said is almost 100% true.
Not seeing any "character assassination" in any of the quotes. None of Facebook's defense lines, low quality as they may be, seem overly personal.<p>For the record, I fully side with the whistleblower's claims. It's just that this article is very emotional, and could have been so much more. This is a fascinating quote the author failed to address fully:<p>"Facebook PR: “Despite all this, we agree on one thing; it’s time to begin to create standard rules for the internet. It’s been 25 years since the rules for the internet have been updated, and instead of expecting the industry to make societal decisions that belong to legislators, it is time for Congress to act."<p>Facebook has a point here. We don't even know what Facebook is. A media company? A news organization? A shop? A dating site? And if it does all of these things, and does so at planetary scale, is has the potential to do harm to big parts of the world, in countless ways. Yet there's pretty much zero rules.<p>I think we vastly underestimate how complicated the balancing act is. If Instagram does mental harm to teenage girls, whilst this very likely was not the original intent, what exactly is the "correct" course of action, in a way codified in law? Should it be forbidden for other girls (influencers) to broadcast their beauty lifestyle? Should there be a maximum time cap for consumers to browse the feed? The China way? Should influencers just be deplatformed if we don't like them, taking away their income?<p>None of these rules or laws seem very plausible or sane to me, and this is just one example of how Facebook can do harm.<p>Anyway, to end constructively, I'd say a first step is to force Facebook to give full access to its underlying (anonymized) data. If we've created a planetary-scale monster, we should treat it as a special case.
"If the best Facebook can come up with is this disgusting attempt at character assassination, Haugen is telling God’s own truth. We should listen to her."<p>A pretty powerful closing statement IMHO.
This is what passes for journalism these days? This reads like a snarky blog or Reddit post than an article. I’m surprised a few Zuckerberg memes weren’t included. I say this as someone who wants Facebook broken up or highly regulated.
The smear here is actually against Facebook. The whistleblower is clearly being boosted by Democratic operatives [1] and appeared in front of Congress the day after 60 minutes.<p>[1] Jen Psaki's former employer <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-leftist-activist-lawyer-ukraine-impeachment" rel="nofollow">https://www.dailywire.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-leftis...</a>
Facebook is staring to show some really bad cracks. I think they should start checking their PR a bit more because if they follow this path, they could have congress in their neck for some time.
FYI, the official reply: <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2021/09/research-teen-well-being-and-instagram/" rel="nofollow">https://about.fb.com/news/2021/09/research-teen-well-being-a...</a>
It's tough to call Facebook's response a "smear" or "disgusting attempt at character assassination" since it didn't address her character at all. It certainly does attempt to discredit her, and it is cowardly and ultimately doesn't address the issues she brought up. But the author of this article is a <i>bit</i> hyperbolic.
Reading hacker news comments today, I found out that:<p>1. this is fishy<p>2. she is a political operative for the dems<p>3. she has a liberal bias therefore this is all fishy and she cannot be trusted<p>4. she is rich and has some backing so she is definitely a political operative. This one is especially true because if she was poor Facebook would have been SLAPPed her already into shutting up. So there's no winning here.<p>5. (US) adults are responsible enough for the government to not have to regulate social media. Let's conveniently temporarily forget about the Rohingya minority.<p>6. Facebook is a net positive for civilization<p>7. nothing is actually whistleblown, we already knew all that. Therefore, we're ok with it and we should ignore this. Also see 1.<p>8. We're dealing with Schrödinger's censorship. Conservative voices are being censored on Facebook which is ran by 'libs' and at the same time they're not censored as the government (also libs) prepares to censor them. Or censor them more? Who knows anymore. TLDR they're going to be censored.<p>9. the staple of 'tech companies' is discussed all over the place as someone is talking to congress about its internal workings so the news is all over HN. Super fishy (see 1) so definitely a hit piece. If there was only one or two links it would probably be fine. But so many links may definitely be the hand of some lib political operative. Or not? Who knows? We're just saying that to muddy the waters. Big if true!<p>I think I'm going to be taking a break from forums in general. Either some Facebook friendly PR machine got activated or the collective mind has been poisoned by years and years of misinformation and generally sowing mistrust to the point of 'everything is a conspiracy and nothing is real'.
I'm sure what she's saying is only part of the evil that Facebook represents, but there's something fishy about the whole setup.<p>Why is she getting full media coverage and support, when previous whistleblowers were roundly ignored?<p>She's a very wealthy person (1B estimated), so perhaps she's fairly well insulated from any blowback?<p>But again, why is now the time to pile on Facebook, and why this person?<p>[edit] Hint: She's in fact calling for more censorship of the views she doesn't like.<p>[edit] Greenwald nails it (just published): <a href="https://greenwald.substack.com/p/democrats-and-media-do-not-want-to" rel="nofollow">https://greenwald.substack.com/p/democrats-and-media-do-not-...</a>