Leaked Facebook employee thread about now-deleted Boz memo had ~3,000 comments, with dozens criticizing leakers, others empathizing with users
Yesterday afternoon, BuzzFeed published … Alex Kantrowitz / BuzzFeed : Sen. Ed Markey Says “Congress Must Act” When Facebook Fails To Maintain Safety On Its Platform Sam Levin / The Guardian : Internal posts show Facebook workers condemning leakers and fearing ‘spies’ BuzzFeed : Leaked 2016 memo from Facebook VP Andrew Bosworth says “all the work we do in growth is justified”, even if Facebook enables terrorism; Zuck says he disagreed Rex Crum / Mercury News : Zuckerberg on Facebook executive's memo: 'We've never believed the ends justify the means' Dominik Bosnjak / AndroidHeadlines.com : “Maybe Someone Dies” But Facebook Must Keep Growing: Leaked Memo Avi Selk / Washington Post : ‘Maybe someone dies’: Facebook VP justified bullying, terrorism as costs of network's ‘growth’ Maya Kosoff / Vanity Fair : Why the Leaked Facebook Memo Is So Dangerous for Zuckerberg Tweets: Ceren / @cerephic : Anyone who's met me and had half a conversation understands pretty damn quickly why my tenure at FB lasted 3 contentious month, and ended with a “culture mismatch” commentary. No regrets. ;) http://twitter.com/... Gina Bianchini / @ginab : “The natural state of the world is not connected. It is not unified. It is fragmented by borders, languages, and increasingly by different products.” Um, as I think is now demonstrated, this is a feature, not a bug. http://www.theverge.com/... Harry Shearer / @theharryshearer : I'm sure FB advertisers are reassured by this sentence buried in an internal memo. “(connecting people) is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned,” http://www.buzzfeed.com/... Ed Markey / @senmarkey : Death from bullying cannot be the cost of doing business. Terrorist attacks cannot be the cost of doing business. It is @facebook's moral obligation to maintain the integrity and safety of their platform. When they fail to do so, Congress must act. http://www.buzzfeed.com/... Matt Mittenthal / @mattmittenthal : “Another theory floated by multiple employees is that Facebook has been targeted by spies or state-level actors hoping to embarrass the company” refreshingly consistent with some of Facebook's most popular viral content! http://www.theverge.com/... Antonio García Martínez / @antoniogm : Worth noting that the leaker avoided the context around it, which surely included a dozen comments calling Boz an idiot for even thinking this, with hundreds of likes for each such comment. That ‘memo’ is really one side of what was surely a heated and polarized debate. Antonio García Martínez / @antoniogm : For starters, this was not a ‘memo’, in the sense of a top-down mandate or statement of principles. I never saw anything resembling a memo at Facebook. This was a FB post posted in one of the company (or team-wide) groups where much of Facebook product thinking happens. Antonio García Martínez / @antoniogm : While certainly some people's opinions mattered more than others, the company was far more democratic than most companies that size, and any employee could say any damn thing in these groups with zero fear of retribution (let alone firing). Boz's post was in that genre. Antonio García Martínez / @antoniogm : Have some favorite FB group where some provocateur posts some outrageous claim, and everyone dogpiles in, either supporting or shooting it down viciously? It's not too simplistic to say that that's how Facebook is run internally, but with senior management as the group admins. Tero Kuittinen / @teroterotero : Boz seems to think the only way to debate bad ideas is to write about them as if they are good. This is bizarre; he could have simply written his infamous memo in a way that reflects a glimmer of self-awareness. Casey Newton / @caseynewton : Employees are calling on Facebook to hire for integrity and step up its war on leakers http://www.theverge.com/... http://twitter.com/... Will Oremus / @willoremus : Ironically, this dismissal of Facebook's concern over leaks relies on the very same logic Mark Zuckerberg once used to dismiss Facebook users' privacy concerns. https://twitter.com/... Ray Ozzie / @rozzie : In early 90's, in prep for an internal Lotus wargaming offsite, I wrote a “fake memo” from billg to his troops, laying out strategy/actions to blunt Notes momentum. Someone thought it was real. It leaked. Provocative memos are essential mgmt tools, but you need to be careful. @mikeisaac : hearkens back to a pre-IPO google, where the company was so open internally they'd freely share sensitive information regularly at TGIF meetingsthen @markoff broke the story of their internal revenue #'s, a huge scoopfolks from then say it changed everything Tom Dotan / @cityofthetown : So the fact that Facebook employees are now worried that the private things they post on Facebook could get into the hands of people they didn't intend to is an interesting turn of events. http://www.theverge.com/... Kurt Wagner / @kurtwagner8 : A big part of why @boztank's memo matters is that it will reinforce a belief held by many outside the tech industry that tech companies don't actually care about you as much as they care about growth/revenue. That may not be true but that's how this lands https://www.recode.net/... @mikeisaac : as an employee of a place with leaks, i find it more fruitful to explore why they're happening and resolve it rather than witch hunt your leakersas a reporter, please continue your infighting and finger pointing http://twitter.com/... Veronica de Souza / @heyveronica : Facebook employees on leakers: “This is so disappointing, wonder if there is a way to hire for integrity.” http://twitter.com/... Toby Shapshak / @shapshak : Reading these Facebook staff comments reminds me of a cult: “Keep in mind that leakers could be intentionally placed bad actors, not just employees making a one-off bad decision” + “Imagine that some percentage of leakers are spies for governments.” Wow. http://www.theverge.com/... Nicholas Thompson / @nxthompson : Blame the leakers? Blame the product? Blame the FSB? http://www.theverge.com/... Brendan the / @bronyphysicist : There's an exchange from “Yes Minister” that sums up this sort of corrupt mentality: “It's a tiny mistake. The sort that anybody could make.” “A tiny mistake? £75,000? Give me an example of a big mistake!” “Letting people find out about it.” http://twitter.com/... Michael Zelenko / @mvzelenks : absolutely fascinating reading. the degree of naivety and denial inside facebook is incredible http://twitter.com/... Sarah Frier / @sarahfrier : I think it's worth explaining something from the journalist side. Most scoops don't come from “leaks.” Our jobs would be easier if they did. They come from relationships, the right questions, trust... and from people who want to push their companies to be better. Sarah Frier / @sarahfrier : This reaction shows how important it is that we protect the internal people who want to share context about how their companies make decisions, as we work to help the public understand. Talk to me on encrypted messaging. Reach out via DM or email, and then move somewhere safer.