Linked List: March 20, 2018

Tuesday, 20 March 2018

MG Siegler:

And beyond the stupidity and potential danger, I find myself increasingly annoyed simply because it’s certainly not helping to paint our increasingly embattled industry in any better a light. Reading these headlines, you’d think Facebook, and by extension, the tech sector in the Bay Area is the worst place in the world, full of jokers and jerks.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of jokers and jerks. But there are also plenty of brilliant, hard-working people. We can quibble about whether there are more or less than in other industries and other places, but that’s not the point. The point is that I now believe Facebook doesn’t just have an image problem, as I’m sure many around the company would want you to believe — “the press is out to get us!” Facebook has a self-awareness problem.

To put it more bluntly: it seems like Facebook has lost the plot. And given their scale, this is more than a little terrifying.

I don’t think they ever had the plot. They got away with their utter disregard for the privacy of their users from the get-go — literally from the time when Facebook’s entire userbase consisted of 4,000 gullible students at Harvard. It’s just taken a long time for public opinion to recognize and react to their institutional sociopathy. Facebook thought no one cared, but what was really going on is that no one (well, very few) realized the extent of what was going on.

WhatsApp Co-Founder Brian Acton on Twitter: ‘It Is Time. #Deletefacebook’ ★

Context: Facebook bought WhatsApp for $16 billion in 2014.

But let’s call a spade a spade. Acton’s outrage now is some of the most hypocritical bullshit I’ve ever heard. Facebook implemented the policy he’s objecting to in 2010, four years before he personally pocketed $6.5 billion of Facebook’s money. Acton knew exactly what kind of company Facebook was when he sold WhatsApp to them.

‘Ashamed’ Fox News Commentator Quits the ‘Propaganda Machine’ ★

Retired United States Army lieutenant colonel Ralph Peters, announcing his resignation as a contributor to Fox News:

Over my decade with Fox, I long was proud of the association. Now I am ashamed.

In my view, Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration. When prime-time hosts — who have never served our country in any capacity — dismiss facts and empirical reality to launch profoundly dishonest assaults on the FBI, the Justice Department, the courts, the intelligence community (in which I served) and, not least, a model public servant and genuine war hero such as Robert Mueller — all the while scaremongering with lurid warnings of “deep-state” machinations — I cannot be part of the same organization, even at a remove. To me, Fox News is now wittingly harming our system of government for profit.

I love this kicker at the end, regarding Peters’s history as a commentator:

Peters was briefly suspended in 2015 for calling President Obama a “total pussy” while on the Fox Business Network.

Harper’s Index: April 2018 ★

From the latest edition of Harper’s Index:

Percentage of Americans who are concerned that Amazon is forcing brick-and-mortar stores out of business : 64

Who have a favorable impression of the company : 71

Amount by which Jeff Bezos’s net worth increased the day after the launch of Amazon Go, a cashierless store : $2,800,000,000

Rank of cashier among the most common US jobs : 2

IBM Watson Services for Core ML ★

Interesting partnership. Would love to find out more about how useful this is in practice.

Zuckerberg and Sandberg AWOL From Facebook’s Data Leak Damage Control Session ★

Spencer Ackerman, reporting for The Daily Beast:

Facebook employees on Tuesday got the opportunity for an internal briefing and question-and-answer session about Facebook’s role with the Trump-aligned data firm Cambridge Analytica. It was the first the company held to brief and reassure employees after, ahead of damaging news reports, Facebook abruptly suspended Cambridge Analytica. The Q&A session was first reported by The Verge.

But Zuckerberg himself wasn’t there, The Daily Beast has learned. Instead, the session was conducted by a Facebook attorney, Paul Grewal, according to a source familiar with the meeting. That was the same approach the company used on Capitol Hill this past fall, when it sent its top attorney, Colin Stretch, to brief Congress about the prevalence of Russian propaganda, to include paid ads and inauthentic accounts, on its platform.

Nor, The Daily Beast has learned, did chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg attend the internal town hall.

Not exactly profiles in courage. If I worked at Facebook I’d be pissed that both of them weren’t there, let alone neither of them.