Facebook runs the coward’s playbook to smear the whistleblower; The Verge, October 5, 2021

Elizabeth Lopatto, The Verge; Facebook runs the coward’s playbook to smear the whistleblower

 

"Facebook has chosen to respond to whistleblower Frances Haugen in the most cowardly way possible: by hiding Mark Zuckerberg, the man ultimately responsible for Facebook’s decisions, and beginning the process of trying to smear and discredit Haugen.

This is some Big Tobacco bullshit — precisely what sleazeball PR guru John Scanlon was hired to do when Jeffrey Wigand blew the whistle on tobacco company Brown and Williamson. Scanlon’s task was to change “the story of B&W to a narrative about Wigand’s personality.”

Of course, that strategy “backfired completely,” Vanity Fair reported in 2004. It probably won’t work here, either. One senator, Edward Markey of Massachusetts, has already called Haugen “a 21st-century American hero,” adding that “our nation owes you a huge debt of gratitude.”...

But the funniest part is the absence of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO and the only shareholder with the power to replace himself. Zuckerberg started Facebook as a Hot-or-Not clone — which almost certainly would negatively affect teen girls’ self-esteem. (At least he is consistent, I guess.) The decisions Haugen alleges, which put profits ahead of morals, have also enriched him more than anyone else. The buck stops, quite literally, with him. So where is he?"