Tag: facebook

Careless People: The Book Meta Doesn’t Want You to Read

careless people

Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams could almost be one of Christopher Buckley’s Beltway satires. Like Thank You for Smoking or The White House Mess, the first-person protagonist takes the reader on a journey from dream job to absurd nightmare—each chapter an ironic critique of the powerful characters depicted. Except Wynn-Williams is real, and so are the truly awful people and events she describes. “…like watching a bunch of fourteen-year-olds who’ve been given superpowers and an ungodly amount of money, as they jet around the world to figure out what power has bought and brought them,” she writes in the prologue.

The subtitle, A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism aptly describes this memoir, which begins with Wynn-Williams’s story of surviving a shark attack at the age of 13 in her native New Zealand and ends with her being escorted by security from the shark-infested headquarters at Facebook twenty-five years later. Hired in 2011 as the Manager of Global Public Policy, Wynn-Williams conveys her initial enthusiasm as a true believer in the power of Facebook to be a force for good and, on that basis, how she pitched the idea of a policy role for herself at a time when the leadership did not yet grasp why the company would need to build relationships with state leaders.

Initially, Wynn-Williams’s expertise as a former New Zealand diplomat reads like a satirical counterpoint to the fumbles of tech-nerds who don’t understand state craft. An early chapter, for instance, describes the visit of German delegates to Facebook’s Washington office and their bewilderment upon seeing the open-plan office with all the facades stripped away to expose the ducts and bare fixtures to “symbolize” the company’s nascent status. “‘You dismantled the furnishings of a proper office to make it look like this? Like it is under construction?’ one of the officials inquired, incredulous,” Wynn-Williams writes.

This image of the deadpan German thinking he is meeting with unserious people would be funny if not for the very real and deadly events that are indeed foreshadowed. As the narrative unfolds like a thriller, the protagonist discovers unbounded arrogance, callousness, hypocrisy—and ultimately—dangerous and criminal conduct among her superiors. The faux feminism of Sheryl Sandberg and lechery of Joel Kaplan become subplots about elite executives whose worst crime against humanity, so far, is arguably Facebook’s role in fostering rampant hate-speech which fueled the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar between October 2016 and January 2017.

As discussed in an earlier post, Senators Hawley et al., motivated in part by Wynn-Williams’s testimony and accounts in the book, have stated an intent to investigate Facebook’s misconduct designed to appease the Chinese Communist Party. But to me, the most compelling part of the memoir is the glimpse into Mark Zuckerberg’s character, especially as a putative oligarch in context to the Trump-led assault on the constitutional order of the United States.

Wynn-Williams’s portrait of Zuckerberg, an avatar of Big Tech leaders, combines the patriarchal vanity of John Galt with the innocent savagery of Jack Meridew—a boy billionaire, who plays board games that his staff let him win, but who ultimately embraces the destructive power he controls. Specifically, the chapters describing Zuckerberg’s psychological process upon learning that Facebook was catalytic to the 2016 election of Donald Trump can be described as denial, anger, pride, and corruption.

During a flight on the private jet to Lima for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, Elliot Schrage, VP of global communications, marketing, and public policy, explains to Zuckerberg how, “A Trump operative named Brad Parscale ran the operation together with embedded Facebook staff, and he basically invented a new way for a political campaign to shitpost its way to the White House, targeting voters with misinformation, inflammatory posts, and fundraising messages,” Wynn-Williams writes.

Initially, Zuckerberg clings to the belief that his platform is a neutral conduit for free speech and “connecting people,” but he then becomes angry at the irrefutable evidence presented by Shrage. Then, at the APEC summit, Zuckerberg’s incipient sense of his own power, and test of his character, is described by Wynn-Williams as he is buffeted between foreign leaders kissing his ass one minute and President Obama in a side meeting lecturing him about the dangers of misinformation on Facebook.

Rather than introspection, Zuckerberg responds like a petulant comic book villain—so offended by the criticism of the U.S. President that he decides to use the power of his technology for his own run at the office. “After all, not only does Mark now have Trump’s playbook, he owns the tools and sets the rules,” Wynn-Williams writes. “And he has something no one else has, the ability to control the algorithm with zero transparency or oversight.”

Again, the image of the staff reacting to Zuckerberg’s announcement that he wants to hold events in swing states like Iowa, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania et al. would make great satire but for the fact that, as Wynn-Williams puts it, “He could run for president and not ask anyone for a dime.”

Of course, the real point is not the prospect of President Zuckerberg—at least not yet—but rather Wynn-Williams’s courageous exposure of the mindset behind the allegedly “greatest tool for democracy ever invented.” And she does so at tremendous personal risk–threatened by Meta, which tried to stop publication of the book, tried to stop her testifying before Congress this month, and threatens to sue her for $50,000 per negative comment about the company.

In many ways, Careless People reveals what many of us already knew about Meta and the other social media giants—at least since 2017:  that they are not designed or operated according to principles that ever justified the populist rhetoric of “democratization.” That was a lie more than a decade ago, and the lie is exponential in the battle over development and application of artificial intelligence. Wynn-Williams sums it up well with her thoughts about the travesty in Myanmar:

“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what unfolded next in Myanmar, and Facebook’s complicity. It wasn’t because of some grander vision or any malevolence toward Muslims in the country. Nor lack of money. My conclusion:  It was just that Joel, Elliot, Sheryl, and Mark didn’t give a fuck.”

The End of Fact-Checking at Facebook is Ideologically Consistent

fact-checking

The announcement that Meta will stop fact-checking material on its platforms is neither surprising nor, at this point, relevant. Mark Zuckerberg’s absurd announcement that the company is “getting back to core principles,” or whatever bullshit way he said it, is no more appalling today than that same rhetoric has been for decades. None of this conduct is news or purely about sucking up to Trump (though that is certainly a factor). Cyberlibertarian ideology, which is much older than Zuckerberg, has long relied on a rhetorical tactic by which Big Tech sells the public the idea that its business purposes enhance or support democratic principles while pursuing an agenda that is exclusively anti-democratic. And the public has a long history of falling for this shell game.

It is accurate but incomplete to say that when X or Facebook mothballs internal accountability this is motivated by profit. To be sure, Big Tech’s PR and lobbying assault on the very idea of regulation, whether by government or its own policies, is partly driven by the financial value of frictionless platforms. Thus, the tedious reiteration that we must “Save the internet!” from Policy X or Regulation Y, usually paired with alleged defenses of the speech right, have long masked the truth that allowing conspiracy theories, lies, hate speech, harassment, foreign propaganda, and material harmful to children is profitable. And like the NRA’s playbook, these harms are repackaged as the price we pay for a “free and open internet.”

So, yes, that message is motivated by money, but it is about more than money. Zuckerberg, in describing the decision to stop fact-checking as a move back to “core principles,” is merely fulfilling his destiny as a young cyberlibertarian, heir to a bizarre philosophy that is authoritarian at its core. Hence, the complaint that Meta does not care whether it harms democracy misses the trick that harm to democracy is the goal and not a byproduct. That harm will level up (though not to its zenith) on January 20th, when a felon will retake the Oath of Office he already violated while millions of citizens participate in an ersatz America brought to you by Silicon Valley’s new and improved democracy of the screen.

In nearly every article on this subject since 2012, I have tried to present variations on the theme that whatever policy matter may be the issue of the moment, Big Tech’s underlying opposition is not limited to the proposal itself but to the idea that government should even function as the instrument of democracy. No surprise that David Golumbia articulates this sleight of hand so clearly when he writes, “We seem to be talking about copyright, freedom of speech, or the ‘democratization’ of information or some technology. But if we listen closely, we hear a different conversation that questions our right and ability to govern ourselves.” That’s it in a bombshell. And although other industries (e.g., tobacco and fossil fuel) have adopted this same rhetoric, no industry has ever had so much power to control the message—let alone to argue that the messenger itself is the messiah of liberty.

While the traditional libertarian views democratic institutions as obstacles to liberty, the cyberlibertarian advocates digital technology as the workaround which obviates the need for those institutions. This, as stated many times, is the premise under which Big Tech’s anti-copyright agenda was sold to the public as a “right of access and speech” stifled by government’s authority to write copyright law. The access/speech narrative, which appeals in different forms to both right and left sensibilities, disguised the fact that Silicon Valley both objects to copyright enforcement as a business interest, but also to the principle that Congress should protect creators’ rights as an ideological matter.

Cyberliberatarianism, which guides (I would say infects) the minds of far too many tech leaders and tech industry evangelists, scorns the mechanisms of government as an inefficient and clunky way to run a society. And the profoundly unqualified Elon Musk, as the putative new head of “national efficiency,” is a manifestation of this same magical thinking. But who bought the bullshit? Who believed that digital technology can and should operate as the alternative to a functional representative government? Everyone. Left, right and center.

Yes, there are some prominent voices we can blame for carrying the cyberlibertarian flag, and these include the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, Public Knowledge, Senator Wyden, Niskanen Center, Techdirt, Mike Masnick, Daphne Keller, Eric Goldman, Computer and Communications Industry Association, Cory Doctorow, Ed Snowden, Jonathan Band, Julian Assange, American Library Association, Brewster Kahle, John Perry Barlow, Eric Schmidt, the Cato Institute, and, at least in this context, the American Civil Liberties Union, to name a few representatives familiar to both liberals and conservatives.

Those parties, and far too many academics anointed with Silicon Valley oil, have all preached the cyberlibertarian gospel by advocating conveniently vague notions like “innovation” (appealing to conservatives) and “digital rights” (appealing to liberals). The former is a catch-all for the talking point that “regulation stifles innovation,” a thesis which never bothers to define either term. One need only watch the squabbles over AI to see this history repeating itself, with Big Tech arguing the deterministic importance of AI against any kind of statutory checks that might, for instance, bar the use of AI to exacerbate false information about real persons.

As for “digital rights,” if one wonders what distinguishes these rights from traditional civil rights, it’s a good question elided by the rhetoric of those who invented the term. That said, “digital rights” consistently include a presumed right to free and unfettered access to everything; a presumed right to remain anonymous under all circumstances; and the maximalist view that all material posted online, no matter how harmful, should be treated as protected speech. That these “rights” contradict the administration of civil rights everywhere other than cyberspace is an inconvenient truth that remains un-addressed.

In combination, these cyberlibertarian “core principles” add up to zero accountability for digital tech corporations promoting the illusion that their products foster greater accountability from the real enemy of liberty—democratic government. This is how I believe the ordinary imperfections of government became so much fuel for galloping conspiracy theories and preposterous narratives that rage across the web like a California wildfire. But if we vote as if the government is the enemy, then eventually it will be. And in this light, Meta’s announcement that it will shit-can accountability is not a pivot to the right, but a continuation of a long goose-step toward the far right that has been baked into that industry’s ideology for generations.

Assuming we will not all simultaneously cancel Facebook in protest, perhaps we can at least stop doing Big Tech’s bidding every time a policy proposal is made that the industry opposes. Whether the issue is Section 230 reform, artificial intelligence, countering mass piracy, image-based sexual abuse, child safety, etc., it might at least help if we reject any messaging promoted under that tiresome and disingenuous headline that we risk “losing the internet as we know it.” Facebook’s latest announcement is just another example that we can afford to take exactly that risk.

Hacked Off at Facebook

Well, it finally happened. After criticizing the worst effects of social media for over 10 years, I was finally hacked, locked out of my Facebook account, and (I assume) will be unable to restore any of the material or connections going back to 2007. I’m sharing the details in this post because what I now believe to be a phishing-style attack had the appearance of Meta erroneously booting me for failure to comply with community standards. And frankly, Meta is so useless from a support standpoint that it hardly matters.

Whether Facebook moderators are in error, or the account was targeted by a hacker, there is no clear process for the average user to remedy either issue—just a Kafka-designed carousel of unhelpful articles and FAQs. And of course, beyond Facebook’s garden wall, one finds more scammers with offers to “help” because if you recently fell prey to a hacker, you’re bleeding in shark-infested waters.

Hacker or Facebook Moderators?

I say the attack was phishing-like because the initial communication did not come through email. Those are common enough and usually easy to spot. The email with the slightly blurry logo and wrong URL that claims to be your bank or insurance company or some other party with a message, invoice, or payment for you is trying to get you to click a link and download malware. As I say, these are easy enough to recognize and delete. But in this case, the communication came from within the Meta/Facebook environment—and not just as a DM in the Chat app.

Initially, I received messages from “Meta Business” in the Meta Business section of the platform. These were directed to me as the administrator of the Illusion of More page and not to me personally. I was told that IOM had been reported for (get this!) a copyright violation. As I do not engage in copyright violations, I responded to say that an error had been made, believing that I was writing to Meta since I was clearly on the Meta Business page and not some bogus URL. Unsurprisingly, there was no response, and a few days later, I was told in the same thread that my business page had been disabled. But the IOM page was not disabled, and I did not know what to make of the messages, especially when communication with Meta is not an option.

A few days later, I received a message directed to me personally, again within the Facebook platform, stating that an attempted login had occurred from an unusual location. I took the recommendation to change my password, and I do not believe I clicked on anything outside the Facebook universe such that I might provide the new password to a hacker. Nevertheless, several hours later, my personal account was disabled, and the relevant email and phone number were newly associated with an account called “Meta Copyright Infringement.”

I created a new personal account and did a search for “Meta Copyright Infringement” as People and found that many accounts have suffered this same fate. Some appear to still have pages intact, while others are blank:

Attacks of this nature have been reported since at least the start of 2023, but the articles I found all describe phishing via email, which is usually the vector. But unless I was truly distracted, all communication I received was within the Meta environment, and if hackers are spoofing Meta from within Meta, this implies a new and sophisticated campaign to acquire login credentials.

As for the rationale of the hacker(s), it is hard to say. In my case, as a copyright advocate, I can be a target for an anti-copyright hacker who just wants to mess with me. But so far, nothing inappropriate seems to have appeared on Facebook in my name. In fact, that account appears to have been deleted altogether. On the other hand, this just happened, so we’ll see. In the meantime, I no longer have control of two business pages, including Illusion of More on Facebook, because I was the sole administrator.

As mentioned above, this apparent hack is barely distinguishable from Meta disabling my account for an alleged violation of community standards, and the company offers zero remedies to address either issue. I mean, yeah, there’s a Help Center, but it makes the average DMV look like a hotel concierge. Meta provides a “review form” for disabled accounts, but this “form” only asks the customer to input a name, email, and a copy of ID to prove identity. But, of course, if the email entered is associated with a disabled account, you get a message saying that the account doesn’t exist, which indicates a hack, so…

Follow the instructions for recovering an account you think was hacked, and Meta will help you identify the account associated with the email…

Assuming that’s what FB thinks my account is now, I reluctantly click This is My Account, and…

And you can guess where that link “here” leads. Yup. Right back onto the carousel playing the calliope from Hell mocking you for getting on the ride in the first place.

I don’t know. Maybe I missed a clue somewhere in the attack, but the most compelling detail here is that it looked a lot like communication from Meta and within Meta. In fact, if Meta were to contact me at some point and confirm that they did kick me off for an alleged copyright violation, I would not be very surprised—except that it would still be an error. But apparently, this is what support looks like for a platform hosting three-billion people:  when we can’t quite tell the difference between a cyber-attack and half-assed moderation insulated from its users by layers of bullshit.