[throwaway2474]

Serious question, for those with more experience than me “in the game” running big successful companies: are dirty tactics like this (and worse) par for the course and generally expected, and it’s sort of understood that the outsiders/general public are shielded from it? Or is it actually shocking?

It often seems like there’s two “worlds” operating at the same time. In one, there’s outrage and indignation at this sort of thing. In the other, that public outrage is just another item in the chess game, to be weaponised against your competitors as appropriate. But maybe that’s too pessimistic of a view, and not all industries are like this? I’m genuinely curious.

[taylodl]

Many commenters here have pointed out this is the norm. I'll also point out that most companies fail, and many of the ones that don't fail are despised by their customers/users. What can we say of the companies that succeed and aren't despised? They typically don't do shit like this.

The other problem with thinking "this is what everybody does" is there's the unstated "so keep your mouth shut and just go along with it" that's really unhealthy for us all. If you work for Facebook and you think this is the norm then you're not going to be inclined to question this behavior and if you really think it's universal then you may not even be inclined to leave. Thus the problem perpetuates itself.

If you ever find yourself working for one of this hell hole companies then leave. Don't buy into the false narrative that this is normal, it's the same everywhere, keep your mouth shut and don't rock the boat. You'll come to realize the money doesn't make up for what's been done to your mental health and the quality of your life.

[tyleo]

Wholeheartedly agree. This is not the norm at a couple multi-billion dollar companies where I've worked and I would leave if it were. If you are doing this you are making the world a worse place. Do not do this. Do not accept this. Find purpose in the world and strive to add to it rather than take away.

[relaxing]

How do you know?

[wutbrodo]

> The other problem with thinking "this is what everybody does" is there's the unstated "so keep your mouth shut and just go along with it" that's really unhealthy for us all.

I agree with you that most people have status quo bias making up the majority of their moral compass. But I disagree with your defense of isolated demands for ethical behavior, which are dangerous and counterproductive.

First off, they cheapen principle by making it a conditional bludgeon, used to attack only unpopular entities. Participating in the lie that FB is doing something uncommonly nefarious implicitly shields every other actor that (eg) HN doesn't feel such obsessive hate for.

Secondly, it provides a scapegoat so people can ignore the difficult work of actually addressing systemic rot. If this is a widely-used tactic, and we agree that it's harmful, then perhaps there's a structural issue to be addressed. You can't even have this conversation if everyone thinks it's just something uniquely evil that FB did.

This was my problem with the way my social milieu handled Trump. I think the guy was a dangerous lunatic, but my friends/family's tendency to immediately assign all of the world's ills solely to him (kids in cages! 100s of ks of covid deaths!) gave them an excuse to ignore the systemic rot underlying society's actual problems (borders inherently rob people of their humanity, and our public health agencies have severe cultural issues).

It's not "defending the bad guy" to say that turning them into the literal Devil, solely responsible for all evil, is harmfully letting others off the hook.

[vkou]

> If you work for Facebook and you think this is the norm then you're not going to be inclined to question this behavior

If Facebook is anything like the typical SV mega-corp, the rank and file questions this kind of behaviour. A lot.

But as the saying goes, a dog barks, the wind carries it away.

The politicians at the head of the firm don't care about what their workers think about political matters. [1]

[1] And would like everyone who isn't them to stop being political. #nopolitics, and all that jazz. We're just trying to do work here, not get involved in an unsanctioned-from-corporate culture war...

[alphabetting]

What is "unhealthy" about telling public TikTok is a danger?

[kwertyoowiyop]

If Facebook wants to say that, they should say it themselves, not hide behind a fake grassroots campaign. That is “unhealthy.”

[prewett]

"Inauthentic", even

[thinkyfish]

Facebook has no motivation to make true accusations against TikTok. There may be legitimate criticisms that can be made, but facebook doesn't have a reason to care, and being tasked with making those criticisms in an environment where anything that sticks is rewarded, regardless of the truth, will have their honesty and truthfulness compromised, and will be encouraged to view that as normal, compromising their wisdom.

[disgruntledphd2]

I spent five years at Facebook, and it was probably the best place I've ever worked.

The people were fantastic (except a the ex G and Amazon folks who were a lot less fun to work with), the problems were fun and the culture and tools were phenomenal.

Granted, I don't agree with what they're doing in this article, but if you think they're the only big tech company that does this, I have a bunch of bridges to sell you ;)

Generally, large, publicly traded companies tend to behave like psychopaths, but personally I think FB held out a lot longer than most.

[Woberto]

Can I ask what kind of problems you enjoyed working on there?

[disgruntledphd2]

Honestly, fixing ads related data science problems gave me a lot of satisfaction. I fully admit to being a weirdo, though.

[PragmaticPulp]

> are dirty tactics like this (and worse) par for the course

The details make all the difference.

Apple goes on stage and posts misleading graphs about their competition multiple times per year. The latest event showed the M1 Ultra matching an RTX 3090 in performance, yet that’s nowhere close to true in anyone’s testing and the graph was deliberately misleading in dishonest ways (3090 curve was truncated before it reached peak performance).

The difference is that most people here really like Apple hardware, so they get a free pass. Most people here really dislike Facebook, so this seems like a mortal sin for a company to promote negative misleading ideas about their competitor.

Everyone markets against their competitors to some degree, even if it’s just a comparison chart on a marketing page somewhere. I’d need to see more evidence that Facebook was deliberately lying to really be concerned about this. It seems the authors are relying heavily on anti-Facebook anger to fuel this story.

[lozenge]

When Apple lies about performance on a stage... It's clearly from Apple and people treat it accordingly. Nobody relied on that information or even believed it.

When Facebook pays a marketing agency to get anti tiktok headlines into local news, the reader has no idea who was involved and is left with negative impressions of tiktok that stay with them long after they forgot the details of the story (if they even read that far).

[thewileyone]

> When Apple lies about performance on a stage... It's clearly from Apple and people treat it accordingly. Nobody relied on that information or even believed it.

This is exactly the point here. If Apple paid a company to post messages under various "fake" personas that the 3090RTX under performs compared to their CPU, they would be behaving like Facebook.

[f38zf5vdt]

Does this make Putin an ideal politician, since we know that anything that comes out of his mouth is likely a falsehood? That someone or something compulsively lies doesn't feel like a redeeming value.

[sgjohnson]

Putin doesn’t care what the foreign audience thinks, whatever he says is almost certainly intended for his domestic audience.

[tyrfing]

The one difference is that most of big tech these days doesn't actually have any competition, and will collude in ways like wage fixing in any areas they do. As such, it's not too surprising to see they don't care about competitors - they don't have any.

[uncomputation]

> The difference is that most people here really like Apple hardware, so they get a free pass

I think it’s pretty clear the difference isn’t Apple vs Facebook (e.g. CSAM blowback) but boasting about yourself versus hiring someone to attack a competitor.

An analogous comparison would be if Facebook said their algorithms benefited mental health more than competitors, or if Apple paid to have an op-ed in a newspaper talking about how Intel’s GPU’s might explode or something. The difference is that Apple’s slide was Apple’s slide and any bias was clear. Facebook went through backdoors and PR firms to sway local journalists and congressmen in an actually dark game of chess.

> I’d need to see more evidence that Facebook was deliberately lying to really be concerned about this

That’s the whole point. Facebook wasn’t lying, Targeted Victory was. Take your pick of the evidence:

Firm director’s email:

> get the message out that while Meta is the current punching bag, TikTok is the real threat especially as a foreign owned app

> Campaign operatives were also encouraged to use TikTok’s prominence as a way to deflect from Meta’s own privacy and antitrust concerns.

> rumors of the “devious licks” challenge initially spread on Facebook, not TikTok.

> Targeted Victory worked to spread rumors of the “Slap a Teacher TikTok challenge” in local news… In reality, no such challenge existed on TikTok. Again, the rumor started on Facebook

> In addition to planting local news stories, the firm has helped place op-eds targeting TikTok around the country, especially in key congressional districts.

If that feels like a wall of text, it’s because it is, chock full of specific evidence Targeted Victory was manipulating congressmen and newspapers to report in a way benefitting them, all because they know that the TikTok algorithm is leagues superior and more user curated than their own outrage-bate dumpster fire.

The authors aren’t relying on “anti-Facebook anger” anymore than it’s Facebook’s bed and now they need to lie in it after years of turning the web into a partisan surveillance state. This was a targeted campaign of disinformation ranging far further than one slide on a keynote.

[lern_too_spel]

Apple lies themselves. They don't pay the news to lie for them, though they do sanction reporters who report inconvenient truths. Facebook has a history of paying for smear campaigns.

https://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/facebook...

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-13374048

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/update-facebooks-smear...

[alphabetting]

This is par for the course. Done by majority of big corps and nothing wrong with it imo. Stating TikTok is a danger isn't a stretch. The hyperventilating in this piece is hyped up by republican and FB angles but almost every big company is doing comms like this.

[_3u10]

Some have even bought the entire newspaper to make sure it stays on message.

[raiyu]

This is definitely not the norm for many large companies and really shows the emotional context of the leadership. If they feel attacked, or threatened, often they will resort to the same behavior in reverse.

Similarly, this seems to affect consumer companies a bit more often than B2B companies, but that isn't to say that they are immune.

Certainly not surprising to hear this about Facebook given it's history.

[gunfighthacksaw]

Ya the startup I work at did some crazy shit in the founder days or so I’ve heard from the seniors. Competitive intelligence they called it.

We have had malicious litigation too and now I’m ramping up on security (cybersecurity or corposec as I call it, not network) because knowing our competitors I think it’s not a case of if there is a hostile op against us, but when.

[kache_]

I prefer the moral clarity of playing "dirty" (but legally) compared to pretending to be nice but doing shady shit like conspiring to depress SWE salaries in emails with strict retention policies

[lupire]

Yes. In a competitive environment with no law/enforcement, anyone who doesn't cheat loses to someone who does. This is the state of nature, law of the jungle.

[specialist]

The game is broken when honest players have to cheat to be competitive.

[fairity]

On average, these sorts of undermining tactics are uncommon because most companies have limited resources that are better spent on improving their own product or service.

That said, for the subset of companies that operate in fiercely competitive markets with well-funded players, this sort of activity is common.

In my prior company, where 2 competitors & us had raised 9 figures in venture capital, we found multiple instances of such undermining attacks going on from 1 of the competitors. Although we never engaged in such activities, it was clear to me that we were at a slight disadvantage due to our lack of willingness. Imo, such activities require sociopathic leadership, and unfortunately, that sort of personality is overrepresented in the c-suite.

[f38zf5vdt]

There are some optimists here.

- Pharmaceutical companies trash generics and lobby both directly to doctors and governments

- The sugar and food industry has had a significant role in informing consumers that their obesity was their fault and not the fault of their products

- The oil industry has had a significant role in informing consumers that climate change was their fault and not the fault of their products

- Fruit/vegetable companies I don't even want to get into (look up Chiquita/United Fruit Company)

- Anything to do with any major retailer/distributor and unions

They aren't "dirty" tactics so much as "profit maximizing tactics" and they are inherent to capitalist mega-corps.

[akyu]

This kind of thing is entirely normal.

[_3u10]

Given that the paper in question is owned by Bezos…