[nickfromseattle]

I was talking to I believe an FB engineer and this must have been 10+ years ago at this point, he said,

- FB found restricting access was difficult because engineers do sometimes bump into incidental user data while doing their job

- And engineers, being sufficiently motivated, can find a way around security measures

- So instead of reducing productivity with ineffective security measures, FB logs all access to private user info, and a separate team will request a reason, and if you don't have a 100% legitimate work related reason to be viewing it, you're terminated immediately

- And it does occasionally happen

- And best practice if you might incidentally see private user data is to do it on an FB profile of a dev friend also working at FB

[busterarm]

Not only was this true at the time but it was kind of an open secret that some of the data scientists were stalking people and using "I'm a data scientist, I need unfiltered access to the production data" as a cover.

[busterarm]

This was afterall the same time where sketchy dudes working at IG were doing the whole "I can verify you on Instagram" thing to hook up with girls.

[xp84]

That’s so wild. Not to downplay the dudes’ grossness which is at 100%, but also imagine the shallowness of someone who would trade sex for a blue checkmark that signify arbitrarily-granted clout on social media.

I miss when “influencer” wasn’t anybody’s career goal.