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Nice article today about Morgan Beller, an engineer behind Facebook’s cryptocurrency Libra. It's great to see a techie behind the scenes get recognition. But I’m concerned to see many people say they trust Libra more because they trust Beller. [Thread] cnbc.com/2019/07/20/fac…
If you’re deciding whether to trust a company’s privacy promises, the motivations of individual employees are irrelevant. Instead, what matters is whether those promises align with the company’s business model.
It’s not just Facebook, of course—here’s a great thread about Google being evil despite the noble intentions of its engineers.
But back to Facebook, which has an especially atrocious track record.
When Facebook rolled out the Like button — which tracks your activities across the web even if you never engage with it — the company promised it wouldn’t use that data to target ads. Years later, once the button was everywhere, it reneged. technologyreview.com/s/541351/faceb…
And then there’s this ⬇
I’ve seen more than one idealistic privacy engineer join Facebook, convinced that — finally, *this* time — the company’s promises were real… and just six months later, spout the company’s doublespeak to justify why the latest horrorshow was not in fact a privacy violation.
Facebook also has a track record of rolling out grand projects that seem to be about helping the world’s poor, but are in fact sneaky attempts at extending the reach of its walled gardens mashable.com/2016/02/09/why…
I didn’t mean for my tweets to turn into a steady drumbeat of Facebook criticism, and I’m sorry if you're tired of it. But I think we’re at a critical moment in tech history and today's concentration of power is unprecedented — not just in tech but arguably in any industry.
