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I never want to hear "fact check" or "fact checkers" ever again.
I know right, facts are those pesky things that keep us from being right when all we are doing is making up any old crap we feel like and then keep repeating it. Facts need to be outlawed. Now “ alternate facts” they rule. Until you get sued for libel
 
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In many large organizations there seems to be an indoctrination process where employees eventually succumb to the “us vs. them” mentality when dealing with the public. In some cases, this sense of indoctrination also extends to the families of the employees. This is especially noticeable with police departments. When there is a controversy with one police department, the wife of a police officer from a different city feels the need to jump in and say “Well, my husband is the perfect officer so the public should shut up and go away...” I suppose it’s good that at least some people in Facebook still have a conscience?
 
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Amid a barrage of public attacks on Apple from Facebook over privacy measures, Facebook employees have expressed their displeasure with the direction of the campaign in comments obtained by BuzzFeed News.

Apple-vs-Facebook-feature.jpg


Last week, Facebook launched a campaign in print newspapers explaining that it was "standing up to Apple for small businesses everywhere," and created a website encouraging people to "Speak Up for Small Businesses."

Facebook argues that Apple's privacy changes in iOS 14, which give users the option to opt-out of ad tracking, will harm small businesses that see increased sales from personalized ads. However, some Facebook employees are reportedly complaining about what they perceived to be a self-serving campaign.

BuzzFeed News obtained internal comments from one of Facebook's private message boards and audio of a presentation to Facebook workers, revealing that there is discontentment among employees about the angle used to attack Apple's privacy changes. One Facebook engineer, in response to an internal post about the campaign from Facebook's advertising chief Dan Levy, said:



Ahead of an internal meeting to explain the rationale of the campaign against Apple, Facebook employees asked and voted up several questions that focused on the consequences of the campaign on Facebook's public image. The most popular questions asked reportedly all expressed skepticism or concern:



In response, Facebook vice president of product marketing Graham Mudd said that the company has been "really clear" that Apple's changes do "have a financial impact on us," in addition to small businesses:



Following the presentation, many Facebook employees were apparently unconvinced. Some did not understand how Apple's changes would negatively affect small businesses, while one highlighted that Apple's privacy changes also prevent "malicious actors" from tracking people:



The same employee launched a scathing attack on Levy's post, accompanied by a popular meme with the text "Are we the baddies?"



Other critics suggested that Facebook incentivizes opting-in to ad tracking in a positive campaign rather than attacking the notion of a choice to opt-in or out. Levy responded to criticisms explaining that the campaign was simply "not about our business model."



Other comments from employees highlighted that the spirited defense of small businesses was hypocritical because Facebook has repeatedly disabled the ad accounts of small business advertisers by mistake and increasingly uses automated customer support, leading to a plethora of public complaints from small businesses:



Facebook spokesperson Ashley Zandy responded to BuzzFeed News, insisting that the stories of small businesses are Facebook's priority:



Following the launch of the campaign, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a non-profit organization that defends civil liberties in the digital world, called Facebook's criticisms of tracking-related privacy measures "laughable."

Article Link: Facebook Employees Criticize Campaign Against Apple in Leaked Comments
I just love how Apple profits from everyone including Facebook, yet the others are the bad guy. In the meantime Apple is squeeZing the developers and observing people’s data analytics. Kind of concerning my old CEO would say.
 
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I never want to hear "fact check" or "fact checkers" ever again.
Couldn’t agree with you more. It’s not their job to police anyone’s comment. In my opinion they have become the thought police especially the last year or so. They dictate what we think or say
 


Amid a barrage of public attacks on Apple from Facebook over privacy measures, Facebook employees have expressed their displeasure with the direction of the campaign in comments obtained by BuzzFeed News.

Apple-vs-Facebook-feature.jpg


Last week, Facebook launched a campaign in print newspapers explaining that it was "standing up to Apple for small businesses everywhere," and created a website encouraging people to "Speak Up for Small Businesses."

Facebook argues that Apple's privacy changes in iOS 14, which give users the option to opt-out of ad tracking, will harm small businesses that see increased sales from personalized ads. However, some Facebook employees are reportedly complaining about what they perceived to be a self-serving campaign.

BuzzFeed News obtained internal comments from one of Facebook's private message boards and audio of a presentation to Facebook workers, revealing that there is discontentment among employees about the angle used to attack Apple's privacy changes. One Facebook engineer, in response to an internal post about the campaign from Facebook's advertising chief Dan Levy, said:



Ahead of an internal meeting to explain the rationale of the campaign against Apple, Facebook employees asked and voted up several questions that focused on the consequences of the campaign on Facebook's public image. The most popular questions asked reportedly all expressed skepticism or concern:



In response, Facebook vice president of product marketing Graham Mudd said that the company has been "really clear" that Apple's changes do "have a financial impact on us," in addition to small businesses:



Following the presentation, many Facebook employees were apparently unconvinced. Some did not understand how Apple's changes would negatively affect small businesses, while one highlighted that Apple's privacy changes also prevent "malicious actors" from tracking people:



The same employee launched a scathing attack on Levy's post, accompanied by a popular meme with the text "Are we the baddies?"



Other critics suggested that Facebook incentivizes opting-in to ad tracking in a positive campaign rather than attacking the notion of a choice to opt-in or out. Levy responded to criticisms explaining that the campaign was simply "not about our business model."



Other comments from employees highlighted that the spirited defense of small businesses was hypocritical because Facebook has repeatedly disabled the ad accounts of small business advertisers by mistake and increasingly uses automated customer support, leading to a plethora of public complaints from small businesses:



Facebook spokesperson Ashley Zandy responded to BuzzFeed News, insisting that the stories of small businesses are Facebook's priority:



Following the launch of the campaign, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a non-profit organization that defends civil liberties in the digital world, called Facebook's criticisms of tracking-related privacy measures "laughable."

Article Link: Facebook Employees Criticize Campaign Against Apple in Leaked Comments
Facebook's own employees roasted their own company better than we ever could.

Also, I'm super against this idea that small businesses are more important than an individual having a choice over their privacy. In normal situations, heck yeah! Let's support small businesses! But am I going to root for a business that exploits data and privacy of others? Absolutely not. I hope they do fail if they need to do that to survive.
I can’t wait for this change to take effect so I can turn off the tracking. If Facebook hadn’t behaved this way I might not have cared. Now I say, break it up!
 
I have deleted my Facebook account long ago and honestly felt liberating. I have other ways to waste and pass the time on my iOS device but Facebook let the cat out of the bag with this one attacking Apple.
 
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What a load of bs. I'm a small business owner and I advertise on fb. It is very expensive. If they cared about me they would be offering major discounts for being a small business owner. The moment Apple announced this change I knew fb would be toast, and I'm so glad.
 
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"Since launching this effort we have heard from small businesses literally around the world who are worried about how these changes could hurt their businesses."

This is laughable. The number of small business around the world that would know about this change that hasn't even happened would be negligible, let alone taking time to reach out to FB to express concern. Yeah, right.

The only way FB would've heard concerns from small business is if FB sent emails to them with their garbage propaganda trying to scare them, and then got a reply back.
 
I hear you, but it is a mathematical impossibility to have bug-free software when a piece of software exceeds a certain level of complexity. And most software these days, let alone operating systems, exceed that threshold quite easily.

I work with devs. Very rarely you can get a straight answer out of them on their readiness. There is always stuff left to do before it is ready. And when that is done, there is other stuff. Only with very direct unambiguous questions on very specific criteria can you get a feel of where they really are. Often only after you force a yes/no answer. Line management should have/get this answer. How the line manager kicks this up the tree should reflect his confidence in his team as well as his ability to keep his team protected from unobtainable projections and deadlines. The line manager should never ever report up the answer upper management wants to hear. If they do, bad things happen. What upper management decides would hopefully align with reality, but also see @lazyrighteye post.
This is not what I am saying. There will always be bugs, but this CLEARLY was not ready and the devs spoke to the issues that DID show up. It wasn't just days saying "its not ready" when its been in discussion with leadership for months.

And there are certainly a lot of developers that write stuff that is ready for QA testing. QA signs off if it passes or not. I am a senior developer with over 15 years, I have never been in a situation where my code wasn't ready for QA testing. And when QA tests, I get put on something else to work on.

Developers just don't sit around and say "its not ready" every single update/release. This is clearly a step above the normal bugs that just happen from being human developers.
 
I love this: "That's Apple's marketing working and convincing you to scapegoat us so they can decide how the internet should work — even beyond their devices."

You're just being brainwashed by Apple! Don't believe your lying eyes! Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia!
 
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Facebook's own employees roasted their own company better than we ever could.

Also, I'm super against this idea that small businesses are more important than an individual having a choice over their privacy. In normal situations, heck yeah! Let's support small businesses! But am I going to root for a business that exploits data and privacy of others? Absolutely not. I hope they do fail if they need to do that to survive.

Very true. Worth noting, though, that Facebook is the one doing all the shady stuff; the small businesses just pay Facebook to utilize all their ill-begotten data. Still not great, but also not terrible.
 
I deleted my FB account years ago. I still do not understand why others have not done the same. The company has proven time and time again how crooked and rotten they are, and they will never change.

Apple is totally right in this, and I am grateful that they are doing this. People need to know what data Facebook is stealing from them.
 
I just can't accept an ad business model that targets and manipulates people the way Facebook and Google are doing. It is a "bad thing". Apple proved that it is possible to create a successful business by making end-users their main clients. Companies should be able to advertise online, but please, enough of this crazy dystopian tracking! Dan Levy is criticising Apple for trying to decide how "internet should work". Well, of course, Apple has a say about it, as any of us do. And I believe most of us say, internet shouldn't work the way Facebook wants it to work!
My problem with FB suggesting that Apple wants to decide how the internet works is that unlike FB, which will track you regardless of whether you are a client of theirs, Apple only has this feature on apps that run on an actual Apple device.
 
Wow, only 4 pages of posts so far.

So, in other news: Goliath lines up with Facebook to stand up for the little guy, Godzilla adopts a kitten, and Thanos volunteers at a soup kitchen.
 
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I'm old enough now to have witnessed the same small-business arguments put forth by the newspaper/print industry decades ago. Technology has changed but the arguments have not.
plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, mon amie. Except in them days ya' didn't get ahold every customers personal information, at not from newspapers. There were other businesses, P.I.s come to mind for that; and that's gonna' cost ya' mack!
 
Kicked FB 2 months ago. honestly....my attitude and positive outlook have soared as has my extra available time for real work and pleasure. I yearn for the day the company and it’s stinking head are both gone from our lives. This Levy guy really is a pos.
 
im totally cool with Big Tech companies attacking and smearing each other, after working together in lockstep for so many other agenda driven things.

Let the sparks fly.

--

Still- FB pretending to care about privacy and small business is one of the most absurd branding propositions
 
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Mmm... If these employees are against Facebook practices why are they working there in the first place? It makes no sense to me. The hate Facebook but love the money they make from working there, very hypocritical. If you hate your employer so much you leave. I have a feeling a lot of people talk trash about Facebook because hating Facebook is super trendy and cool right now. Kind of like how people hate apple.
 
I can speak to two facebook developers who are there for the money. FB pays well. That's not to say they don't also have the stance that individual privacy is important, they do, their paycheck just comes first. So for facebook execs to be surprised that these questions are coming up probably means they are out of touch with company culture.
And to say this will hurt "us" is a very fun use of the pronoun. It will hurt FB's bottom line sure, but prolly won't hit their engineers directly. FB can't afford their devs to take a hit or the devs will leave. Those two I mentioned above certainly would, either to a less shady company or an equally shady company that will pay them more.
 
How is Apple supposed to determine what the tracking is for? All they see is tracking. It could be for relevant ads, or it could be for political data mining (e.g., Cambridge Analytica), or maybe a venture capital firm fund buys the tracking data to analyze it for insights on which companies are popular enough to invest in. Relevant ads are just the tip of the tracking iceberg, and Apple has no way to determine what the data will ultimately be used for.

I think the way they have it phrased now is exactly broad enough and they shouldn't change it.
Exactly. Facebook is not even the biggest concern. There are many other trackers like Anomaly Six that we rarely hear about. Apple is taking the right approach to let users decide which trackers are trustworthy enough to be acceptable. If Nielsen pays me to track TV shows I watch, I may consider unblocking their tracker. If a tracker from an obscure company ask for permission, I will not allow tracking.
 
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I find it funny that facebook claims they are "standing up for small businesses" everywhere. I am a small business owner and if I want to market my businesses effectively on facebook, I have to pay money for it. A fair chunk too. The hypocrisy. Everytime I put a new post on one of my pages, Boost this and reach X number of potential customers for 250.00 bucks. How about giving the boosts etc for free for small business owners? that would be standing up for us!
This is more or less what I though when I first read FB's anecdotal suggestion that “without the use of their own data to personalize an ad, that business would spend $50 and may win only 2 sales.” Which is really pointing out that, if FB can no longer utilize dodgy data practices, then they can no longer offer the same returns on advertising dollars and their service is quantifiably less valuable—the advertising previously offered for $50 is no longer worth $50. So.... Reduce the price of acquiring those 2 sales on your platform. Problem solved.

Their complaint is a bit like saying that the inability to run fast without steroids is the fault of drug testing. Train harder, a**holes.
 
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