HN Explorer

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smoldesu
Facebook has ~40,000 employees last I checked. That's... not really surprising, even if it's a coincidence.
xqcgrek2
It is actually astonishingly high, given the number of employees in aggregate those agencies employ and turnover in a given year.

I guarantee you a more pedestrian megacap tech company unrelated to information warfare (say, for instance, AMAT) will not have such a high number.

jacquesm
DHS alone would plausibly explain that number. Personally I think it is rather low, maybe they missed something?
hindsightbias
Professionals were 59.8 percent of the total workforce in 2020, with 88.4 million people working across a wide variety of occupations.

Agencies listed above currently employ ~250K (millions of former workers though). But lets be gracious and just count currents.

250K/88.4M = .0028

~40K FB x .0028 = 112

smoldesu
> given the number of employees in aggregate those agencies employ and turnover in a given year

The US Federal government is the single largest employer in the US.

jasonhansel
So they...hired people with relevant experience? How is this a scandal?
labrador
Like most of these try hard scandals, they fall apart if you apply even a small amount of critical thinking to them
cathdrlbizzare
It’s a conspiracy to watch me do laundry. I have evidence on a wall of random photos and newspaper clippings pinned together with yarn made from ugly sweaters’ red dryer lint.

I think there’s a subset of people who make up and believe sinister intentions for a litany of motivations.

It’s simpler than there being shitty situations large and small for no individual reason if there’s someone or something in particular to scapegoat.

thinkcontext
Given what we know about foreign intelligence attacks on social media companies is that surprising or alarming? For example, just recently a Twitter employee was convicted of providing confidential information to Saudi intelligence, probably to the same people that assassinated Jamal Khashoggi. And there are of course the influence networks.
raxxorraxor
Yes, I think that would be alarming. I believe foreign intelligence attacks are a conspiracy theory to what extend they are relevant.
thinkcontext
The effect is certainly debatable but all the social media sites report regularly report shutting down foreign networks.
jacquesm
Maybe the money is better? And DHS is such a wide scoop, that could mean anything, they employ close to a quarter of a million people.
strathmeyer
Is "government employees SHOULDN'T work in the private sector" somehow now a right-wing talking point?
pipeline_peak
Okay and?

Can we keep over opinionated conspiracy theories off this site…

yucky
Spies work for private data gathering companies. More news at 11.