[jaidhyani]

I used to work for Meta. I quit largely because of intense frustrations with the company. Meta has made a lot of mistakes, overlooked a lot of harms, and made a lot of short-sighted, selfish choices. Many things about the world are worse than they could be because of choices Meta has made.

So that when I say that they really do have a zero tolerance policy for anyone using their internal systems to violate user privacy, it's not because I'm eager to defend them. It's just true (at least, it was when I was there). There are internal systems dedicated to making sure you have access to what you need to do your job, and absolutely nothing else. All content you interact with through internal tools is monitored and logged. If you get caught trying to use whatever access your job gives you for anything other than doing your job, security immediately escorts you out of the building. This is drilled into new hires early and often. For everything Meta gets wrong, they really do take this seriously.

[malfist]

These contractors were hired to view this data. Your defense of Meta here doesn't make sense. Meta fired them for speaking out about the data Meta collects, not because they saw the data they were hired to look at.

[nradov]

Meta didn't fire individual independent contractors, they terminated a contract with a vendor. It's possible they did so because some of the vendor's employees spoke out but we don't know the real reason.

(I do think these smart glasses are super creepy and I'm not defending Meta's data collection practices.)

[malfist]

This is some real weird defense going on here.

> but we don't know the real reason.

We know the course of events. We have brains and can reason. You really expect Meta to come out and say "Yep, we fired them because they whistleblowed"

> I'm not defending Meta's data collection practices

No but you certainly seem to be over here quibbling about epistemology in the defense of Meta

[causal]

The problem is that your comment and the one you're responding to can both be true: Just because the rules are heavily enforced does not mean the right rules are in place, starting with the fact that Meta is collecting this data to begin with.

[thaumasiotes]

> starting with the fact that Meta is collecting this data to begin with.

But that can't be the problem. They're collecting the data that users send them. To avoid collecting it despite the expressed wishes of the user, they'd need to be able to recognize it as untouchable.

And recognizing the data is the exact problem that this African firm was hired to help with. What do you want Meta to do?

[magicalist]

> To avoid collecting it despite the expressed wishes of the user, they'd need to be able to recognize it as untouchable.

> And recognizing the data is the exact problem that this African firm was hired to help with. What do you want Meta to do?

This is written as if logically exhaustive, but it misses the very obvious alternative that none of these videos should have been reviewed by a human at all (aka no reason to "recognize it as untouchable"; they're all untouchable).

If you want to get stricter and talk about collecting at all, Meta already has that solution too, by leaving the video in the user's camera roll. Let the user manually add the video to the Meta AI app or whatever if they want to share it with others there.

[thaumasiotes]

> This is written as if logically exhaustive, but it misses the very obvious alternative that none of these videos should have been reviewed by a human at all (aka no reason to "recognize it as untouchable"; they're all untouchable).

No, taking that approach would mean that when someone sends you data that you aren't supposed to collect, you collect it anyway. This is the opposite of what was suggested above.

[magicalist]

> No, taking that approach would mean that when someone sends you data that you aren't supposed to collect, you collect it anyway. This is the opposite of what was suggested above.

That was in reference to the original story, that human annotation is happening on videos that no one knew were getting reviewed. If you want to talk about not collecting at all, well:

> If you want to get stricter and talk about collecting at all, Meta already has that solution too, by leaving the video in the user's camera roll. Let the user manually add the video to the Meta AI app or whatever if they want to share it with others there.

[DrewADesign]

Ok, let’s see that consent form and how explicitly it states that random call center people will possibly look at anything you record. I’ll bet you a crisp $50 it was a form designed to be as click-through-worthy as possible, being sure to not trigger the “wait, should I do this?” reflex in users, and also not loudly disclosing that you could still use the device without agreeing, if you even can, while still technically “””disclosing””” this information. The tech world has turned consent into a fucking joke.

[thaumasiotes]

I can't say anything about the consent form. The privacy policy for the glasses is here: https://www.meta.com/legal/ray-ban-stories/facebook-view-pri...

It incorporates by reference the general Facebook privacy policy. The relevant subsection is here: https://www.facebook.com/privacy/policy?subpage=4.subpage.12...

Facebook reserves the right to share any information they have about you with their contractors, for purposes including but not limited to:

- investigating suspicious activity

- improving the functionality of their products

- providing technical infrastructure services

- analyzing how their products are used

- conducting research

[DrewADesign]

Right. The whole point is that click-through consent forms get users’ ”clear“ ”consent” legally, but not morally. They’re deliberately opaque about the implications (ask 10 users if they consider recording a video on a device voluntarily ‘sharing’ it with anybody and I’ll bet 9 will say no,) are pretty inscrutable to regular people, are designed to not raise suspicions like a social engineering attack, often mean not being able to use the product they just bought if they don’t consent, (which is manipulative as hell when you’re talking about inessential functionality like telemetry,) and extremely consequential. The only evidence you need for that is how pissed off people get when they find out what these companies actually do with that consent.

[advisedwang]

There's no allegation that these workers abused their access. The allegation is that their routine work reviewing footage included private content. The revelation is that USERS are using meta glasses non-consensually.

[rkagerer]

Many things about the world are worse than they could be because of choices Meta has made.

If Facebook were designed with a different set of incentives that prioritized the user, fostered positive engagement, and better respected individual's privacy and data sovereignty - setting a better standard for the whole industry - I feel there wouldn't be all this fuss today about banning social media accounts.

[bilekas]

It's likely they wouldn't be as profitable too though, and their mandate to shareholders is to make number go up.

[red_admiral]

Indeed, on this one point, Meta has higher standards than the NSA used to - Snowden mentioned that employees tracked their current wives/girlfriends so often it unofficially got the codename LOVEINT.

Same for "Meta reads your E2E whatsapp messages". Meta does many things, is probably massively net negative for civilisation, but it doesn't do that.

[magicalist]

It's kind of weird to have a subthread about "Meta doesn't do these other unrelated things" in a thread about a thing Meta is doing.

They don't boil live kittens either, I believe. Doesn't seem relevant though.

[cozzyd]

Anecdotal of course, but I heard that this wasn't at all the case circa 2006 and that (then) FB employees would routinely read private messages and such. Obviously it wasn't a big company yet and probably didn't have those policies yet... (clearly the policies are there for a reason...)

[bombcar]

That’s my recollection too - there were some high profile cases and so institutional safeguards were established. They very well may be at the forefront of it - however, it’s a side issue to what’s being discussed.

[thunderfork]

As someone who worked for a contractor which had Meta as a client, I disagree.

All advertiser support agents were given super-read on all profiles & pages, and I never once observed a CSR being questioned on their use of this access in any way.

[bombcar]

It’s often the case that employees are much more locked down than contractors, simply because the company is more liable for employee actions.

[keybored]

> I used to work for Meta. I quit largely because of intense frustrations with the company. Meta has made a lot of mistakes, overlooked a lot of harms, and made a lot of short-sighted, selfish choices. Many things about the world are worse than they could be because of choices Meta has made.

When did FaceBook make the world not-worse?

[iJohnDoe]

@jaidhyani I hate to burst your bubble, but there are major privacy violations here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47226756

[iJohnDoe]

@jaidhyani I hate to burst your bubble, but there are major privacy violations here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47225130

[gorbachev]

Except when Zuck decides it's profitable to violate the rules.

The man is without any redeeming qualities.

[deaux]

You're still on the koolaid, as many replies here accurately point out. Saying it's not because you're eager to defend them is lying to yourself, because you're smart enough to think of most of these replies yourself. Primarily the fact that these are contractors whose entire job is to watch smart glasses footage and the point your bringing up - even if we believe it at face value - is completely irrelevant to this post.

If you truly want to atone for your sins, you have a long way to go. I don't blame you for having worked there, I've worked at places that are only a little better than Meta (which is hard considering Meta is at the absolute bottom of the entire ladder, including Peter Thiel companies, thanks to Meta's sheer scale of carnage). But its time to completely come to terms with the reality, rather than stopping halfway to try and feel better about your resume.

[2ndorderthought]

Yea but no. Meta is a defense contractor that hires out to 3rd parties exactly to do this. so you guys don't get to do that, but a lot of other people are. I hope that helped you sleep at night while you were there. But yea, it all gets bought and sold at the end of the day.

The irony is meta wants to implement verification to protect kids. Meanwhile it's doing everything it can to exploit them most at every single level for profit and for the love of the game. Billions of dollars, the world's most advanced computers all dedicated for it