Comment by matthewdgreen
10 hours ago
I’m only part of the way through the book, so have nothing to spoil here. But it’s entertaining. And shocking. The author will relate a scene that’s so absurd that you think “ah, this can’t be true, this is made up for dramatic effect, nobody would act like that” and then you Google it and you realize the absurd thing is totally true and was fully documented at the time. All the author is adding is a perspective from the inside.
I understand why Facebook people might have wanted the book to go away. That their attempt to do so comically backfired and resulted in entirely the opposite effect, well, that’s also pretty much what you’d expect from this crew after reading the book.
It's called the Streisand Effect. :)
It's kind of amazing that people still hit this, really. Like, if you're Facebook's lawyers, how are you not telling them "don't talk about this; anything you say or do will only promote it further"? The lawyers must _know_.
Competing incentives.
Lawyers get paid to “do something”. To wealthy people, a lawyer saying “let’s actually not do anything” seems like a “what am I paying you for then” moment.
After reading the article, it seems plausible that they were advised against this and, well... didn’t care.
(Perhaps it’s more accurate to say they did not think it would manifest but that’s not a fun play on words.)
From the lawyer's point of view I guess you're making a risk judgement, presumably they thought the chance of getting a successful court order outweighed the potential increase in press of they happened to fail.
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It's right there in the URL, along with #ZDGAF
For a company that supposedly runs on data and strategy, they're shockingly bad at anticipating how people will react when they try to bury criticism
What is the thing? (you can rot13 it for spoilers)
It's hardly just one single thing. The book is full of absurd scenes all the way through.
Please tell me exactly when it gets interesting, Im listening to it and completely uninterested in the author’s “job pitch”
> completely uninterested in the author’s “job pitch”
It's central to the arc of the narrative though. She begins with the idealistic possibilities for Facebook; and now, in a real-life epilogue, is concluding by pulling back the curtain on how horrible these people are. And by extension this company.
The book has great stories. You could skip the job pitch part and jump straight to once she joins Facebook, that's fine too.