After Whistle-Blower Goes Public, Facebook Tries Calming Employees

>> “She didn’t know how basic stacks worked,”

> Is it clear that the engineer is talking about the stack data structure vs. the tech stack?

Yes, given the way the quote is phrased, it's a stretch beyond reason to interpret "basic stacks" as "tech stack." Furthermore, their comment would have still been clueless even if they were referring to "tech stacks." There's a lot of wrongness there to unpack, but one element is the assumption that low-level technical implementation knowledge is a requirement for a valid higher level understanding. That's as foolish as "disqualifying" biologists because they haven't passed a course in quantum mechanics. Whether this thing was built on the LAMP stack, something with Java, or some bespoke thing is completely irrelevant to understanding the effect it has on people and society, which is the only thing at issue here.

Short answer: yes.

> They have every interest to see Facebook, which increasingly acts as a gatekeeper to traditional new sites, to look and be as bad as possible.

Long answer: that line of thinking is at the root of a lot of conspiracy theorizing, and it's got all kinds of flaws. For instance: you assume "they have every interest to see Facebook...look bad," but what about their other interests? You don't seem to have considered those.

[citation needed]. No, I don't want to hear an indirect rant about the financial interests of the NYT, nor do I care about some over-used quote from Upton Sinclair. It doesn't have to be a full-blown peer-reviewed citation, but just something, anything other than some unsupported, bordering-on-conspiracy theory.

Because my response otherwise is: "no, they don't. They have every interest in being the "paper of record", and maintaining a reputation that will quickly be lost should the NYT be found telling whoppers to hurt what might be viewed as a competitor." There's a reason I subscribe to the NYT and not the NY Post.

To those that downvote you I would really hear your reason. My favorite high quality newspaper (non US) was transparent with that fact that direct collaboration is necessary for successful economic prospects. The paper said it can only promise to report objectively on Facebook, the dependence wasn't even disputed. I don't know exactly, but I would think it was at least 6-8 years ago.

But I would argue that newspapers today try to establish themselves as authoritative sources. I think the problem Mrs Haugen tries to identify is far less dangerous than the proposed solution of a government institution consisting of former social media employees. That is ripe for special interest corruption. That is worse than some angry and angsty teenagers and even less democratic.