After Facebook staff walkout, Zuckerberg defends no action on Trump posts | Hacker News Reader

After Facebook staff walkout, Zuckerberg defends no action on Trump posts

reuters.com

22 pointsawb14 comments

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Was there really a walkout? According to jwz there wasn’t.

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/06/everyone-at-facebook-is-qwh...

I am not defending Zuck, but it seems like the media is trying to paint a story about Facebook that is not.

FYI, your link doesn’t work - apparently jwz redirects links from HN.

I forgot about that. It's just a referrer check, it opens on cmd/ctrl + click just fine.

Any idea what his issue is? Did he get kicked off of HN or something?

Although some may think the reason why Mark Zuckerberg has come out against fact-checking politicians is so that he can reap profits and sow division while cackling maniacally, I think instead he has simply put a lot of thought into the problem, and not only realized how difficult it is, but also that it cannot work well long-term. He is much more concerned about the long-term future (decades) of Facebook than he is about some upsetting posts made by an upsetting person.

Your comment would make sense if his position was consistent, but he already has a team of partisan "fact checkers" for other posts, including their new "supreme court" (which is similarly stacked with partisans).

Additionally, there's the outright censorship he allows due to government pressure, particularly in Europe.

If Zuckerberg was a principled man, where's E2EE on Facebook's messaging products? It was announced then totally vanished, never to be mentioned again (presumably after he got a tap on the shoulder from some alphabet agencies).

Zuckerberg is a position chameleon, and he appears whatever color he thinks the audience wants him to appear as.

I don't think he's necessarily taking the best ethical option at every turn, just that he's playing a long-term game, even if what he is optimizing for is Facebook's success, not purely ethics.

It's clear he and Facebook is getting a lot of flak for this choice, so he has to think it will pay off long-term for it to be worth it.

Zuck. Pathologically lies and moves the goalposts. But employees are essentially powerless in this.

Individually, yes, except if they actually find his actions sufficiently disagreeable, they could quit.

Zuck once crapped on us oldsters a bit, but I suspect older employees, who tend to know the difference between their business and the company's business, are looking a bit more appealing these days.

I recently got a job lead from a FB recruiter.. the very first question was about my age. Really put me off.

I felt some of that last time I interviewed there. There was one guy who seemed to think that because I was older than him, I should also be smarter than him. Or something. Odd bar to set.

Anyway, I'm thanking my lucky stars these days that they turned me down.

Facebook is sufficiently influential that any Facebook business tends to become our business.

Zuck good job, well done. Let's vow to protect free speech everywhere.

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