What is the real harm of not rescinding this guy's internship? Seems punitive and petty. It's not like anyone actually believes that FB cares about privacy. Whatever reputation or brand damage there was done a long time ago by FB's repeated violations of user privacy, which is just the natural state of things given their advertising-based business model.
FB could have turned this around and scored a marketing coup: "look we're hiring the hacker who exposed a security flaw, he'll be patching up the hole he found this summer - because at FB we're committed to user privacy and saving baby harp seals!"
But then again, is this really a big surprise? Just another data point in the growing contradiction between what SV is and what SV wants to be.
> But most people hope that individual Facebook employees have limited strictly audited access to user data.
Any reason to think this is at all the case?
I recall Google getting into trouble over this in the past [1]. I can definitely see data scientists and other employees at FB taking a peek... if anything just finding out who looked at your profile/photos/etc would be pretty tempting.
At this point, FB is just too valuable as a source of intel. I just assume that the US Govt (and others) has direct and easy access. Use at your own risk.
FB could have turned this around and scored a marketing coup: "look we're hiring the hacker who exposed a security flaw, he'll be patching up the hole he found this summer - because at FB we're committed to user privacy and saving baby harp seals!"
But then again, is this really a big surprise? Just another data point in the growing contradiction between what SV is and what SV wants to be.