Leaked data reveals Israeli govt campaign to remove pro-Palestine posts on Meta

Just want to call out that the head of the trust and safety/integrity division, Guy Rosen, is an Israeli citizen with a strong pro-Israel bias. He’s also a person of questionable morals. From Wikipedia:

“ Guy Rosen and Roi Tiger founded Onavo in 2010. In October 2013, Onavo was acquired by Facebook, which used Onavo's analytics platform to monitor competitors. This influenced Facebook to make various business decisions, including its 2014 acquisition of WhatsApp. Since the acquisition, Onavo was frequently classified as being spyware, as the VPN was used to monetize application usage data collected within an allegedly privacy-focused environment.”

That Meta considered his questionable ethics a feature not a bug, and repeatedly promoted him, is very problematic.

I was there during the onavo scandal. It was straight up spyware. They would regularly show graphs of snapchat usage vs messenger vs whatsapp and the snapchat data was explicitly attributed to onovo logs.

It's a conspiracy theory. Plenty of Israeli citizens support Palestinian rights and are opposed to what their government is doing. The guilt by association leads to things like antisemitism and anti-Palestinian hate and all the rest.

In what way is this a conspiracy theory or guilt by association? I don't think it is. (Except maybe the statement that he's an Israel citizen, though I think in this context it's a legit statement to make.)

The parent post explicitly makes two separate statements - 1. that he's an Israeli citizen, and 2. that he has questionable morals. I don't necessarily agree with the second statement, but it's explicitly not saying he's immoral because he's Israeli (guilt by association).

On 2, a few additional quotes from Wikipedia might help (they admittedly don’t directly implicate Guy Rosen, though you’d have to be extremely charitable in assuming he wasn’t party to these decisions):

“ Onavo, which allowed the company to read network traffic on a device prior to its being encrypted, thereby giving the company the ability "to measure detailed in-app activity" and to collect analytics on Snapchat app usage from devices on which Onavo was installed.[12] It did this by creating "fake digital certificates to impersonate trusted Snapchat, YouTube, and Amazon analytics servers to redirect and decrypt secure traffic from those apps for Facebook’s strategic analysis."[13] The program, which was named "Project Ghostbusters" in reference to Snapchat's ghost-shaped logo, was later expanded to include Amazon and YouTube”

“ On January 29, 2019, TechCrunch published a report detailing "Project Atlas"—an internal market research program employed by Facebook since 2016. It invited users between the ages of 13 and 35 to install the Facebook Research app—allegedly a rebranded version of Onavo Protect—on their device, to collect data on their app usage, web browsing history, web search history, location history, personal messages, photos, videos, emails, and Amazon order history. Participants received up to $20 per-month to participate in the program, which was promoted to teenagers via targeted advertising on Instagram and Snapchat. Facebook Research is administered by third-party beta testing services, including Applause and BetaBound, and requires users to install a Facebook root certificate on their phone. On iOS, this is prohibited by Apple's Enterprise Developer License Agreement, as the methods used are intended solely for use by a company's employees (for use cases such as internal software specific to their environment, and internal pre-release versions of apps)”

There are in general a lot of different companies doing things which some segment of the population considers immoral. Around HN, things having to do with privacy-violations are often frowned upon by a large percentage of the population here.

I don't always agree with these assessments, and I even less agree that this means you can point to people at various positions in these companies and call them "immoral".

Some people will consistently hold the belief that anyone working at Facebook, or Google, or whatever, are immoral. Most will inconsistently hold that belief - if they're arguing against someone, they'll use this kind of reasoning, but not in general. I'm mostly against this line of thinking in general.

Look - In some corners of HN, having worked with or served in the US military in any capacity is enough to make someone immoral. In some corners, working at a gambling company in any capacity makes you immoral. In some corners, being a doctor in any way related to performing abortions is immoral. In others, taking part in the capitalist system in any way is immoral. I doubt you or anyone agrees with all of these positions - so I think the general rule is that just being associated with something that some portion of people think is immoral is simply not enough to consider someone immoral.

(There are of course things that almost everyone considers immoral, and being associated with them could be enough, though even that barometer is sometimes wrong.)

Yeah, there’s no objective and universal barometer for what is or isn’t immoral. I’m providing evidence (as opposed to pulling things out of thin air) for why it’s reasonable for many, or even most, people in the western world to find Guy Rosen immoral. It’s okay for individuals to not find this compelling.

> In what way is this a conspiracy theory or guilt by association? I don't think it is. (Except maybe the statement that he's an Israel citizen, though I think in this context it's a legit statement to make.)

Yes, the Israeli citizen comment. Obviously the comment is meant to criticize Rosen. Being an Israeli citizen is only a criticism by some conspiracy theory or guilt by association.

Currently the GGP comment says, "with a strong pro-Israel bias". I don't think it was there when I commented or I wouldn't have said what I said.

“ I don't think it was there when I commented” Yes, it was there.