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> A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
Has anyone ever seen Facebbok as idealistic? As far as I can tell, they've always been basically Amazon (the borg that will win at all costs) but a little more trivial, cool and Web2.0, they were never the "don't be evil" Google, the idealistic Twitter, I can't think of many less ideal driven companies.
Facebook beat MySpace IMO because it tricked people into using real names. It had the best network effect because of its real name policy (you could easily find people you knew), but it didn't tell you about it, it just posted your name from the sign-up page, which was kind of a dark pattern at the time.
Facebook also had a tool that would let you give them your username and password for other sites, and would scrape contacts for you. But don't try scraping your own contacts out of Facebook, that's wrong.
Remember the apps, like zombie games? Facebook was not kind to 3rd party devs.
Facebook has always been ruthless and other than a bit of open source (PyTorch and React are nice, I guess) as far as I can tell it's never really had any mission other than getting big.
The idealism is the current corporate story - "enabling communication" etc. - but you're right that there was no idealism to start with. Zuckerberg set up The Facebook so undergrads at Harvard could rate how hot girls were, scraping their images from unprotected university servers.
This is a great podcast centred around the film about it - The Social Network - but it delves really interestingly into the story and motivations of the early years: https://www.ppfideas.com/episodes/the-great-political-films%...
The main conclusion is that Zuckerberg is a pure, amoral opportunist, which is why Facebook has been so successful through an era of "ask for forgiveness, not permission".
> Facebook also had a tool that would let you give them your username and password for other sites, and would scrape contacts for you.
I remember FB recommending me a contact, I thought "Why does that distinctive name sound familar?". I looked through my e-mails and I had sent a few emails back and forth with the person because of an eBay transaction.
I know I never told FB to scrape my email account, but I'm guessing this person did. And it's certainly not even the address book, but the email addresses from people's inboxes (and why not the names from the "From" field as well. If I was tasked with this I'd even suggest scraping any signature fields).
Hey, at least it bought Zuck a $900K watch.
I'll bite. When I worked there I didn't see the management as idealistic, but the news media vis a vis the employee base had a lot of power. Many times I saw fiery journalism create direct confrontations between Zuck and ordinary employees about things like the company's moderation reaction to the shocking "napalm girl" wartime photo. Back then employees often won, creating shifts on company policy that felt like would not have happened otherwise. At some point it seems that the company decided that it wanted its people to have less of that kind of power though, presumably because it created a liberal company and Zuck seems to see the idea of Facebook as a liberal entity as a serious threat to his company
> Facebook beat MySpace IMO because it tricked people into using real names
No, FB was a much better product, it was far more connected, any way easier to talk and make friends online. It also was a lot more reliable.
> Facebook was not kind to 3rd party devs.
Indeed, they were not kind, mainly because they realised, way too late, that the API they had designed gave third parties way too much access to the "social graph". (see Cambridge analytica, although actually its much more smoke and mirrors than you might imagine)
They needed to cut down that access because 1) they'd been told to 2) they realised that people could extract that data for free, thus denting their analytics advantage that made advertising so lucrative.
It was also born by the guy - Zuck and arguably in a similar spirit - who initially created a hot or not webpage to rank female college classmates by "fuckability". No clue how any of this would come as a surprise if you know his history.
Brian Cantrill talks about how social media was born crocked [1] while referring to the eerily similar friendster backstory.
> and other than a bit of open source (PyTorch and React are nice, I guess) as far as I can tell it's never really had any mission other than getting big.
I sometimes wonder what motivations these orgs have in contributing to open source.
My cynical side refuses to believe that the reasons are altruistic (although I'm sure there are altruistic individuals in those orgs!).
I think that the decisions to contribute to open source are calculated business decisions made to benefit the organization by:
* Getting outside contributions to the software that's widely used inside an organization
* Getting more people familiar with the software so that when they're hired they are already up to speed
* Attracting talent
* Improving PR
* Undermining competition (Llama?)
Regardless of the reasons, I think that there's a huge net benefit to society from large companies open-sourcing their software. I just don't think that's an argument to view these companies more favorably.
> other than a bit of open source (PyTorch and React are nice, I guess)
Not to detract from your main point but I think this misses a lot of contributions, eg Cassandra, Hive, Presto, GraphQL, the plethora of publications coming out of FAIR (fundamental AI research) and of course the Llama family of models which have enabled quite a few developments themselves
"Has anyone ever seen Facebook as idealistic?"
The title refers to a memoir, an autobiographical account of a time period in the author's life.
The word "idealism" refers to the author's idealism, not Facebook's. This is stated in the first sentence of the first chapter.
Idealism routinely causes people to see Facebook as something other than what the facts show.
Amazon? FB was always a lot more evil.
Amazon just build the best logistics network on the planet and leverages this for their monopoly.
FB pushed fake news and everyting else without consideration as long as it grabs your attention which they then sell.
Good to have more people expose the greedy, dictatorial, detrimental shitshow that is single individuals having an outsized control over important technology. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Noone should be as big as Zuck, Musk, Altman, Bezos...
I had one moment of eyebrow-raising while reading the article. On the risk of blaming someone who was mind controlled into caring too much about ultimately unimportant, spiritually toxic shit:
> Wynn-Williams’ critiques aren’t limited to Zuckerberg. She describes the working culture under Sandberg as so intense that Wynn-Williams felt pressured to send her talking points while in labor, her feet in stirrups.
My thinking is... can you put this 100% on Sandberg? I mean, I get that the culture is bad, but there's two in this game. Maybe... turn off your phone for a day when you're giving birth?!
She said Wynn-Williams’ allegations about Kaplan are false, and in a Thursday statement, she called the book “defamatory” and alleged that Wynn-Williams had skipped “the industry’s standard fact-checking process.
(emph, mine)
This, coming from a Meta spokesperson, is rather rich.
The author says Meta employees told her to let Zuckerberg win at board games because he does not like to lose. SBF recently told Tucker Carslon from prison he was surprised when inmates with no high school education beat him at chess. Zuckerberg and Bankman-Fried might make great cellmates.
A dupe of my comment from another post on this (relating to the US arbiter ruling that she may not promote the book https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43351949)
People may be interested in the interview with Wynn-Williams (the whistleblower) on the News Agents podcast: https://www.globalplayer.com/podcasts/episodes/7DrpKCA/ (it's a UK news/political podcast very popular in the UK). From what they said at the beginning I think this is her first big podcast interview about the book/her claims. I wonder if she chose a UK podcast because of the US arbiter ruling.
The fact that Meta is aggressively trying to suppress the book just reinforces the point. If it were all "misleading and unfounded," they wouldn't need to fight this hard to bury it.
> she called the book “defamatory” and alleged that Wynn-Williams had skipped “the industry’s standard fact-checking process.”
Why don't we let the community decide, instead of these bureaucratic, free speech-chilling "fact checkers"? If it's good enough for your employer, it should be good enough for you.
https://www.npr.org/2025/01/07/nx-s1-5251151/meta-fact-check...
Don't worry Zuckerberg is a free speech crusader. She can post all her criticism directly on Facebook and it won't be removed, whether it is true or not.
Oh Facebook is taking her to court to block her speech? Hmmm..
Hahahahahaha, sore over losing in Ticket to Ride and Catan. Those aren’t even “serious” games.
Recent and related:
Meta is trying to stop a former employee from promoting her book about Facebook - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43349473 - March 2025 (104 comments)
Can anyone answer this question, assuming its answerable:
if they signed a mutual non-disparagement agreement, and they are currently using that agreement to stop a publication, if meta goes and breaks that agreement, doesn't that nullify the contract?
This triggers my cautionary nerve a bit. I think it is important to recognize that she wants to sell a book.
I am not saying she isn't doing this because she has a cause. I am also not saying she is lying or anything.
But if you sell a book you can't deny that there might be a conflict of interest. Potentially she paints things more extreme than they really were.
With the way current corporations - both public and private - are setup, those in ‘power’ seems to be shielded - for various reasons - and the victims are ultimately punished (one way or another). We need something similar to a #MeToo movement to weed out the cancer and bring justice to victims.
What are some solutions? Consumers boycotting products, shareholders voting out bad apples, government / legal oversight? Any more ideas?
All else aside Zuck was basically a kid when the whole Facebook rocket ship ride took off. Nobody is their best self all day every day. Personally I always thought he came over as kind of an asshole but you have to keep hit pieces like these in the right frame. The shortest accurate answer to what's Zuck like is "I never met him" the rest is just clicks and hot air.
One section of this article seems intellectually dishonest.
“Over one dinner, Zuckerberg said Andrew Jackson — known for his populist appeal and his inhumane relocation of Native Americans — was America’s best president and “it’s not even close,” according to Wynn-Williams. ”
There are many reasons someone could have a person be a favorite president. It’s unfair to bring up the worst thing a president did in response to someone saying that this president or that president is their favorite.
For example I have liberal friends who say FDR is their favorite president. It would be unfair to say then “FDR known for throwing Japanese people in internment camps was the favorite president of Joe Smith!”
I have friends who say Obama was their favorite president. Imagine someone saying “Obama who killed thousands through drone attacks was the favorite president of Jane Smith!”
Anyway when it comes to Andrew Jackson specifically I had a libertarian friend in high school who was a big fan of him because he helped eliminate the Bank of the United States. I was in high school taking AP US History around the time Ron Paul was running for president so I believe my libertarian friend was connecting Ron Paul’s opposition to the Federal Reserve with Andrew Jackson’s anti Bank of US policies.
I don’t know why Zuckerberg likes Andrew Jackson so much. I wish the article had said it.
The irony of Meta trying to stop her from promoting the book is that it's... promoting her book. Any press is good press etc.
This book prob wouldn't have even blipped my radar were it not for all of these stories about how they're trying to stop it.
Two comments downplaying the grossness of the conduct of executives and one reply trying to discredit another whistleblower saying similar things.
For me, that's a worrying level of apathy towards and / or normalisation of what should be totally unacceptable behaviour.
This is the kind of attitude that gets Trump a second term even after his first.
you don't become a global ceo without being an absolute killer and not having non-questionable morals. I can make up different stuff about how a ceo can be amoral, and those would still apply to zuck / {{ whoelse }}
book meant to be sold at airports for bored people. non-story.
What's up, old baits like "ZUCKERBERG TRIED TO STOP THIS BOOK" don't work anymore?
On a different note; it's funny how otherwise reasonable people (on HN but also in general) become stereotypical gossiping girls whenever there's expose on %famous_person% or a cheap ideological position to have fun with. Woah, corporate America sure rewards the fucked-up people! We do, indeed, live in a society. Chirp chirp
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks.
We still haven't found out how to use the internet to socialize, without resorting to giving power to a central entity.
If there is something out there that can do this, profitably, then we can kiss these mega social giants good bye.
I heard about the Blue Sky protocol, but it still feels primitive.
Aut Zuck, aut nihil.
What's a surprise, a guy who has stolen startup from Winklevoss brothers and had to settle the case in the court has a "brutal image". Who would've expected that!
Not really surprised. It's good to have more people talking about how these people act out of the public eye. But all of this makes me a little less optimistic, and just reminds me that powerful people are rarely held accountable for all the messed up stuff they do.
1. I hate these "click-and-hold" "bot" "detectors" that takes 6, 7 seconds or longer to complete.
2. Making me do it three times in a row is just obnoxious.
My conception of world conquering ambition comes mostly from popular media so trying to imagine Zuckerberg trying to become the world's stenographer through a platform that is 90% boomer-bait AI slop is a bit disorienting.
Is anyone surprised by this?
I bought the book specifically as a result of Facebook's attempts to silence the author and have been enjoying the read so far. While there's nothing "surprising" about the stories it recounts of Facebook's leadership (as many pessimists and contrarians have mentioned each time it's brought up here), it's nonetheless interesting to read intimate details of specific instances where--much as in these discussions--sociopathic and abusive behavior is normalized and goes unchecked, even by those who eventually become victims of it themselves.
I hope that over time we're able undo some of the damage caused by these bad stewards of power, but it's disheartening to see how many just care to be on the right side of the whip.
After all what Meta did? Who could have thought.
And yet people love to upload photos of their children on pedobook.
I'm more shocked there really weren't any shocking revelation. It's pretty much what everyone expected.
- Zuckerberg wants people to like him.. okay..
- Weird personal details about lingerie budgets.. an insinuation about Sandberg having some homosexual relationship.. eye roll
- The Myanmar stuff we already knew about. It's bad. It seems negligent, but not like Zuckerburg wants to drown babies (all the FANG don't want to hire moderators and want to solve everything with machines)
- They tried to work with the chinese government to get in to China. okay
I was expecting stuff like top VPs look at people's private messages willy nilly, or Zuckerberg makes sure supportive political condidates win in third world countries. Things that actually matter.
How boring.
> Has anyone ever seen Facebbok as idealistic?
In my experience they were react coders