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by loceng 4693 days ago
Firstly, no idea how you can conclude he hacked an account. A bit strong of language there? Second, does reason not come into play here? You don't have to write a policy to compensate people for violating privacy - however if you have a human making decisions, and not just a drone following written orders, then the ability to make compromises exist. Just no one at Facebook wants to engage and be human it seems.
2 comments
saraid216 4693 days ago
> Firstly, no idea how you can conclude he hacked an account. A bit strong of language there?

This is like... the textbook definition of a hack.

> however if you have a human making decisions, and not just a drone following written orders, then the ability to make compromises exist. Just no one at Facebook wants to engage and be human it seems.

I love that this statement is downthread of a Facebook engineer's comment that states he considers the guidelines reasonable. It's as if you're just a drone following written orders without the ability to make compromises.

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lazyjones 4693 days ago
>> Firstly, no idea how you can conclude he hacked an account. A bit strong of language there?

>This is like... the textbook definition of a hack.

Perhaps of "hacking FB", but he didn't "hack an account".

I don't see what the problems are for FB here. They have a moral obligation to reward him for reporting this bug, especially since their ToS are apparently not available in Arabic. Claiming that he showed any sort of malicious/inappropriate behavior is a really bad tactic to save some money when they clearly handled this very badly from the start, while his intentions were obviously good.

All they are achieving by reacting this way (including the apologets) is that next time, such people will just sell their exploits on the blackhat market.

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Amadou 4693 days ago
I don't think has anything to do with saving money. It really seems like a case of trying to take human judgment out of the equation. Strict adherence to rules is easy for bean-counters to push but frequently problematic for dealing with real world situations because rules are never perfect.
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webvictim 4690 days ago
Facebook really doesn't need to save $10k by not paying this guy. It's about upholding the terms and not setting a precedent.

The blackhat market for Facebook exploits is not huge because the product is centrally controlled and can be patched at any time. It's not like 0-days for products with individual installations that aren't centrally controlled with forced updates - those are clearly valuable.

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loceng 4693 days ago
What incentive does the engineer have to look deeper, and more holistically at the situation? None, especially if he doesn't want to create friction within the company - he can just sit comfortably having followed written protocol. A human with compassion can make compromises, someone following orders can't.
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tingletech 4693 days ago
In as much as he posted on another account's timeline without permission, he "hacked" it in the "unauthorized access" sense of hacked.

re: reason; where does his reason come into play? It does not seem reasonable to post to M.Z.'s timeline, I'd guess he did that because he was P.O.ed at being dis'ed by the support people.

In the bureaucratic theory I am aware, if you have rules (policies, proceudres, standards etc.) you need to apply them consistently. Sometimes the rule will allow for discretion, sometimes not. I don't see room for discretion here.

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loceng 4693 days ago
I believe you're comprehending his actions wrongly. He stated before he'd be able to post even onto M.Z.'s timeline, to announce that this isn't a narrow scope issue, and that it was to gain attention. I see no malicious or angered. If of course M.Z. all of a sudden sees some guy, who isn't a friend, posting to his wall - you think he might actually look into it, right?

Yeah, rules that don't take into account reason are inhumane. Similarly why we don't just give everyone 10 years in prison because they committed a crime - you take into account all aspects - and not just apply "oh but he committed a crime, so this is the result."

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tingletech 4692 days ago
Rules that are not applied consistently are arbitary.

No one said anything about a crime. Denial of the bounty is not brutal.

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