In the March 2022 hearing, Zarashaw and Steven Elia, a software engineering manager, described Facebook as a data-processing apparatus so complex that it defies understanding from within. The hearing amounted to two high-ranking engineers at one of the most powerful and resource-flush engineering outfits in history describing their product as an unknowable machine.
“We do not have an adequate level of control and explainability over how our systems use data, and thus we can’t confidently make controlled policy changes or external commitments such as ‘we will not use X data for Y purpose,’” the 2021 document read.
The fundamental problem, according to the engineers in the hearing, is that Facebook’s sprawl has made it impossible to know what it consists of anymore; the company never bothered to cultivate institutional knowledge of how each of these component systems works, what they do, or who’s using them. There is no documentation of what happens to your data once it’s uploaded, because that’s just never been something the company does, the two explained. “It is rare for there to exist artifacts and diagrams on how those systems are then used and what data actually flows through them,” explained Zarashaw.
It boggles my mind that in almost 2024 people are still using garbage like facebook to communicate, it might worked back in 2007 but these days with all the available better options? Crazy.
This problem is not exclusive to Meta. It's the product of "big ball of mud" design. It relates to Dunbar's Number and the limitation of mental models.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 20.7 ms ] thread“We do not have an adequate level of control and explainability over how our systems use data, and thus we can’t confidently make controlled policy changes or external commitments such as ‘we will not use X data for Y purpose,’” the 2021 document read.
The fundamental problem, according to the engineers in the hearing, is that Facebook’s sprawl has made it impossible to know what it consists of anymore; the company never bothered to cultivate institutional knowledge of how each of these component systems works, what they do, or who’s using them. There is no documentation of what happens to your data once it’s uploaded, because that’s just never been something the company does, the two explained. “It is rare for there to exist artifacts and diagrams on how those systems are then used and what data actually flows through them,” explained Zarashaw.