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Mark Zuckerberg on NYT story: "To suggest we weren't interested in knowing the truth or wanted to hide what we knew or wanted to prevent investigations is simply untrue."

 Facebook says it will take a couple of questions on the article but wants to focus on (looks at notes) its transparency report.
Good luck with that folks.
Now Mark Zuckerberg is running through all the tactics it's deploying to clean up the platform (you know like they should have years ago).
What every Facebook user should be reading in the meantime
https://t.co/ohyhUSyxTL
Mark Zuckerberg is vaguely denying allegations in the story and moves quickly to stressing solutions so people will stop talking about the problems. This is the Facebook playbook. Is the company misreading the room this time?
Facebook board statement on Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg: "To suggest that they knew about Russian interference and either tried to ignore it or prevent investigations into what had happened is grossly unfair."
This announcement that Facebook executives are discussing was planned for a long time. But the timing, coming a day after the NYT bombshell, is not coincidental.
https://t.co/dGsHGR99oB
https://t.co/aTsrWblscg
This is the note from Mark Zuckerberg: A Blueprint for Content Governance and Enforcement https://t.co/EtZu9sAHTT
ABC News: Mark, is anyone going to lose their job over this? If not, please explain.
Zuckerberg: Blah blah. I generally don't talk about specific cases of that in public. Blah blah.
Mark Zuckerberg: I have tremendous respect for George Soros even though we disagree. As soon as I learned about this in the NYT, I talked to our team and we are no longer working with this firm.
Wired: Why did you think opposition research was a winning strategy?
Zuckerberg: I learned about this yesterday. In general, I think you're right. This might be normal in Washington but it's not the kind of thing we want Facebook associated with.
Cheap seats: How does the CEO not know this? And why isn't the executive who clearly did know on this call?
Recode: Did you consider taking Facebook offline in Myanmar to prevent violence?
Facebook: ... We are bringing the world closer together.
Mark Zuckerberg: We have considered taking the service down when we were worried about a privacy or security issue. But he does not address Myanmar.
WSJ: Have you fired anyone?
Zuckerberg: We have made personnel changes. Hey, we just hired a new global policy and comms chief. Let's focus on that.
Lots of long pauses as executives confer on how to respond to media questions.
Asked whether he would step down as board chairman, Mark Zuckerberg says no.
"I am quite focused on finding ways to get more independence into our systems in other ways."
Bloomberg: After revelations in NYT article, how are things going to change in Facebook's relationships with critics, lawmakers and media?
Zuckerberg: Transparency is one of the bigger areas where we have to continue to do more.
The buck stops with Mark Zuckerberg, true. But no excuse for Sheryl Sandberg not being on this call if Facebook has found this new religion called transparency.
Also, if you are CEO of a major company and you learn really bad stuff about your company by reading it in the newspaper, you have a serious problem.
So, who did know on your team about Definers?
Zuckerberg: "I think someone on our comms team must have hired them."
Comms team, meet the bus that just ran you over.
Pressed again on who's responsible and who will get fired, Zuckerberg gets his back up: I feel like I have answered this question a bunch of times. I am not going to get into personnel decisions on this call.
Mark Zuckerberg just extended the call to answer more questions from the media.
https://t.co/Vp6KKvHGJ5
We are now one hour into this press call.
Finally someone asks directly about Sheryl Sandberg.
Zuckerberg: Sheryl learned about this at the same time that I did. Overall Sheryl is doing great work for the company. She has been a very important partner to me and will continue to be.
Facebook board: Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are doing great.
Mark Zuckerberg: I have no idea what's happening inside my own company and neither does Sheryl.
Why do you believe you are the right person to lead Facebook?
Zuckerberg: We are doing the right things to fix the issues. I am fully committed to getting this right.
Asked about the review of lobbyists and whether Sheryl Sandberg will oversee it in light of the allegations in the NYT article, Mark Zuckerberg says new global policy and comms chief Nick Clegg will oversee the review and he reports to Sandberg.
Zuckerberg says the reality is he is not going to know every single thing going on. He also says he has confidence in his team who does know these things. 🤷‍♀️
Facebook has now ended the press call.
Thanks for spending the last hour and 22 minutes with me.
--30--

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In that spirit, here's some quick Things Many People Find Too Obvious To Have Told You Already.

Your idea is not valuable, at all. All value is in the execution. You think you are an exception; you are not. You should not insist on an NDA to talk about it; nobody serious will engage in contract review over an idea, and this will mark you as clueless.

Technologists tend to severely underestimate the difficulty and expense of creating software, especially at companies which do not have fully staffed industry leading engineering teams ("because software is so easy there, amirite guys?")

Charge more. Charge more still. Go on.

The press is a lossy and biased compression of events in the actual world, and is singularly consumed with its own rituals, status games, and incentives. The news necessarily fails to capture almost everything which happened yesterday. What it says is important usually isn't.

Companies find it incredibly hard to reliably staff positions with hard-working generalists who operate autonomously and have high risk tolerances. This is not the modal employee, including at places which are justifiably proud of the skill/diligence/etc of their employees.
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I’ve been flooded with Snapchat Spotlight questions after posting I’ve qualified for a payout 4 times. Here are the answers to the most common questions I’ve gotten in my DMs. These answers are my own experience and may differ from others .

Q: How will I know if I am getting paid?
A: You will get a message from Team Snapchat that looks like the below message 2-3 weeks after the snap has gone live. At this point it important that you verify your email address.


Q: How long after I’ve been notified I qualify, will I know for how much?
A: my experience is that usually 7-10 days after you get the qualifying message, you get a message with the amount, it will look like this. This message will include a unique access code for HyperWallet.


Q: How do I set up my HyperWallet?
A: Around three weeks after you get the payment amount you will get an email to your verified email from Snapchat Pay. It will look like this and will require you to fill out some tax forms, takes like 10 min.


Q: How long does it take to actually get the money in my account?
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Robin Berjon
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Recently, the @CNIL issued a decision regarding the GDPR compliance of an unknown French adtech company named "Vectaury". It may seem like small fry, but the decision has potential wide-ranging impacts for Google, the IAB framework, and today's adtech. It's thread time! 👇

It's all in French, but if you're up for it you can read:
• Their blog post (lacks the most interesting details): https://t.co/PHkDcOT1hy
• Their high-level legal decision: https://t.co/hwpiEvjodt
• The full notification: https://t.co/QQB7rfynha

I've read it so you needn't!

Vectaury was collecting geolocation data in order to create profiles (eg. people who often go to this or that type of shop) so as to power ad targeting. They operate through embedded SDKs and ad bidding, making them invisible to users.

The @CNIL notes that profiling based off of geolocation presents particular risks since it reveals people's movements and habits. As risky, the processing requires consent — this will be the heart of their assessment.

Interesting point: they justify the decision in part because of how many people COULD be targeted in this way (rather than how many have — though they note that too). Because it's on a phone, and many have phones, it is considered large-scale processing no matter what.
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Tobie Langel
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Elastic didn't really relicense ElasticSearch. It forked it.

🧵 A thread.

1/18

There's a lot of talk in the open source community about the cost of forking.

2/18

- "Forking is best avoided."

- "Forking is a last resort option."

- "Forking is like a nuclear weapons. It's a defensive threat."

3/18

Forking is seen as impractical and extremely expensive.

And that's a Really Good Thing(tm).

It's a forcing function for figuring out solutions that are broadly acceptable across the community.

4/18

The thing is, the cost of forking is mostly a function of three things:

1⃣ the size of the community that you can bring along with you,
2⃣ whether you need to rename your fork (who owns the trademark), and
3⃣ how much infrastructure you need to rebuild.

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Donald @87 \U0001f418
Donald @87 🐘
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@RubinReport Your commentary on the dangers of silicon valley coming under the spell of wokeness and cancel culture is spot on. I know this to be true because in Bitcoin we have already lived through a similar culture war against crypto anarchists.

We experienced firsthand the tactics such groups use to eliminate ¨wrongspreak¨ from public debate. And as you rightly recognize, this exact thing is currently happening in society as a whole. And not surprisingly often by the exact same people.

For example, Jack Dorsey, investor in and honored by the BTC cult, is the same person responsible for the twitter bans of many people, including a lifelong ban for the former president of USA. BTC ideology and such policies may seem incompatible with each other, but it is not.

As we stood up against social engineering and the destruction of language in Bitcoin we have been demonitized and deplatformed. Evidence: Just read the whitepaper and see how BTC, what they tell you is Bitcoin, doesn´t even come close to it.

So, just like you, we have been busy building our own alternative platforms based on new incentive structures and the Own Your Data philosophy.

For example have a look at this excellent presentation on @twetchapp
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