Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg
251 comments
·March 14, 2025wisty
frereubu
The idealism is the current corporate story - "enabling communication" etc. - but you're right that there was no idealism to start with. Zuckerberg set up The Facebook so undergrads at Harvard could rate how hot girls were, scraping their images from unprotected university servers.
This is a great podcast centred around the film about it - The Social Network - but it delves really interestingly into the story and motivations of the early years: https://www.ppfideas.com/episodes/the-great-political-films%...
The main conclusion is that Zuckerberg is a pure, amoral opportunist, which is why Facebook has been so successful through an era of "ask for forgiveness, not permission".
soraminazuki
This is the first time I heard about anyone buying into any sort of "idealism" of Facebook. Isn't Zuckerberg famous for calling Facebook users "dumb f***s" back in the early days for willingly handing over all sorts of information?
frereubu
I wasn't saying anyone bought into it, just that it's the story Facebook now tells about itself.
tasuki
[flagged]
netsharc
> Facebook also had a tool that would let you give them your username and password for other sites, and would scrape contacts for you.
I remember FB recommending me a contact, I thought "Why does that distinctive name sound familar?". I looked through my e-mails and I had sent a few emails back and forth with the person because of an eBay transaction.
I know I never told FB to scrape my email account, but I'm guessing this person did. And it's certainly not even the address book, but the email addresses from people's inboxes (and why not the names from the "From" field as well. If I was tasked with this I'd even suggest scraping any signature fields).
Hey, at least it bought Zuck a $900K watch.
psadauskas
Several years ago (~2016), I was working on writing a facebook integration for the company I was working for at the time. I'd deleted my personal facebook account years before that, so I created a new facebook profile to test with. I faked all the information (My actual first name, but the company I worked at for last name, used my company email, made up a birthdate, etc.) I was using a different computer than I'd ever logged in to facebook before, and I was on the company network.
On the first page after signing up, it wanted me to "Add some Friends", and suggested a bunch of people I knew. Including my cousin with a different last name, and who lived several states away.
I've always been fairly privacy conscious, always using an adblocker, but that was downright creepy.
alterom
Facebook is routinely suggesting me contacts that I have met and interacted with offline, the only link to them being an entry in my phone book.
Which, I'm guessing, I allowed Messenger to have access to at some point.
Other than that, it's inference from GPS/location data, which Meta, as far as I know, didn't deny doing.
natebc
Could also be coming from the other side of that contact interaction.
Cwizard
Were you ever connected to the same Wifi network? You can probably use that for tracking too.
dspillett
I don't think that they'd go as far as scanning mailboxes, the return on the effort doesn't seem worth it. More likely the person you were connected to added you to an address book (or perhaps their mailer added you automatically) as someone they have dealt with before. Some anti-spam measures use a source address existing in a connected addressbook as a whitelisting clue.
daralthus
To be fair, it's more likely they just looked you up on FB.
conartist6
I'll bite. When I worked there I didn't see the management as idealistic, but the news media vis a vis the employee base had a lot of power. Many times I saw fiery journalism create direct confrontations between Zuck and ordinary employees about things like the company's moderation reaction to the shocking "napalm girl" wartime photo. Back then employees often won, creating shifts on company policy that felt like would not have happened otherwise. At some point it seems that the company decided that it wanted its people to have less of that kind of power though, presumably because it created a liberal company and Zuck seems to see the idea of Facebook as a liberal entity as a serious threat to his company
KaiserPro
> Facebook beat MySpace IMO because it tricked people into using real names
No, FB was a much better product, it was far more connected, any way easier to talk and make friends online. It also was a lot more reliable.
> Facebook was not kind to 3rd party devs.
Indeed, they were not kind, mainly because they realised, way too late, that the API they had designed gave third parties way too much access to the "social graph". (see Cambridge analytica, although actually its much more smoke and mirrors than you might imagine)
They needed to cut down that access because 1) they'd been told to 2) they realised that people could extract that data for free, thus denting their analytics advantage that made advertising so lucrative.
firefax
>FB was a much better product
FB used to have granular privacy controls and no "feed" -- you wrote on someone's wall, they wrote on yours, and people had to actively click on your profile to see the messages rather than have them thrust front and center.
FB abandoned that commitment to privacy and has suffered as a result.
sidewndr46
How has Facebook suffered? Most of their losses seem to be self imposed, stuff like the "metaverse"
jkukul
> and other than a bit of open source (PyTorch and React are nice, I guess) as far as I can tell it's never really had any mission other than getting big.
I sometimes wonder what motivations these orgs have in contributing to open source.
My cynical side refuses to believe that the reasons are altruistic (although I'm sure there are altruistic individuals in those orgs!).
I think that the decisions to contribute to open source are calculated business decisions made to benefit the organization by:
* Getting outside contributions to the software that's widely used inside an organization
* Getting more people familiar with the software so that when they're hired they are already up to speed
* Attracting talent
* Improving PR
* Undermining competition (Llama?)
Regardless of the reasons, I think that there's a huge net benefit to society from large companies open-sourcing their software. I just don't think that's an argument to view these companies more favorably.
Voultapher
It was also born by the guy - Zuck and arguably in a similar spirit - who initially created a hot or not webpage to rank female college classmates by "fuckability". No clue how any of this would come as a surprise if you know his history.
Brian Cantrill talks about how social media was born crocked [1] while referring to the eerily similar friendster backstory.
Climatebamb
Amazon? FB was always a lot more evil.
Amazon just build the best logistics network on the planet and leverages this for their monopoly.
FB pushed fake news and everyting else without consideration as long as it grabs your attention which they then sell.
rajman187
> other than a bit of open source (PyTorch and React are nice, I guess)
Not to detract from your main point but I think this misses a lot of contributions, eg Cassandra, Hive, Presto, GraphQL, the plethora of publications coming out of FAIR (fundamental AI research) and of course the Llama family of models which have enabled quite a few developments themselves
mschuster91
At least with GraphQL I think the world would be better off if it had never seen the light of day. It's a steaming pile of hyper complex dung.
And for the other projects, their paths are littered with the dead bodies of engineers who had been ordered to chase down one of Facebook's hype technologies just because "Facebook does it so we can follow their best example".
jeswin
> At least with GraphQL I think the world would be better off if it had never seen the light of day. It's a steaming pile of hyper complex dung.
Of course not. GraphQL has vastly simplified our backend development, and has also resulted in better coordination between backend and frontend teams. There are so many things which GraphQL gets right - TYPES and schemas, traversing entity relationships, selectively querying fields, builtin API explorer etc. We use REST only for super trivial projects.
__loam
I think React and GraphQL are pretty impressive in terms of how shitty they've made the developer experience at so many companies. GraphQL especially seems to attract the kind of people who love to misuse technologies built for massive orgs in companies with fewer than 100 employees.
pcthrowaway
> GraphQL especially seems to attract the kind of people who love to misuse technologies built for massive orgs in companies with fewer than 100 employees.
This is almost exactly how I feel about Kubernetes
signatoremo
This is the classic example of the quote:
There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses
chillingeffect
That explains some of the experiences ive seen at small companies! From my pov it was "design-by-resume." People wanted to play w tech for their next job, with less concern for what the business needed.
ajb
There's actually a well-known effect in standards, that large orgs want to overcomplicate them, as having implemented a bunch of overcomplicated standards becomes part of their moat against competitors. This is definitely done deliberately; the most blatant example is Office Open XML but it's true of others too. They know that they have the staff to waste effort on it, and others don't.
I'm not sure anyone is thinking 'lets open source our most dumb ideas to hobble potential competition' - but they would do it if they thought of it.
isoprophlex
Good to have more people expose the greedy, dictatorial, detrimental shitshow that is single individuals having an outsized control over important technology. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Noone should be as big as Zuck, Musk, Altman, Bezos...
I had one moment of eyebrow-raising while reading the article. On the risk of blaming someone who was mind controlled into caring too much about ultimately unimportant, spiritually toxic shit:
> Wynn-Williams’ critiques aren’t limited to Zuckerberg. She describes the working culture under Sandberg as so intense that Wynn-Williams felt pressured to send her talking points while in labor, her feet in stirrups.
My thinking is... can you put this 100% on Sandberg? I mean, I get that the culture is bad, but there's two in this game. Maybe... turn off your phone for a day when you're giving birth?!
kelnos
> My thinking is... can you put this 100% on Sandberg? I mean, I get that the culture is bad, but there's two in this game. Maybe... turn off your phone for a day when you're giving birth?!
Sure, but you can look at this in one of two ways. One is the way you seem to be angling for, where we have an employee who is so disturbingly eager to please that she continues to do work at absurd times when no one should ever expect to be working. The other way is of an employee who has seen how her boss treats employees, and believes that her position, career, and livelihood would be in jeopardy if she wasn't working even in situations where no one should be expected to be working.
I think the second take is more likely. And even if we think it's bizarre that someone could get to the point where they believe that kind of devotion to their job is necessary, it's still alarming and raises red flags that a company culture could cause someone to get to the point that they'd feel that way.
theK
I am inclined to agree with you but I do have a bit of nuance to add. Pretty sure this is not going to be a popular opinion but I think the second POV you present is apt but dependant on hierarchy level as well as each individual's drive to succeed.
From my understanding that incident happened while she was in a directorial position, not some IC level. At that level one has to constantly actively balance private life and work, no one will do it for you. I am all for supporting employees on all levels (and sure her superior could and should have done some things differently) but if your aspirations and perseverance get you to the point where you are flirting with the C suite, you should also be aware the you own your decisions now.
zelphirkalt
On the other hand, if you are that far in, that you are "flirting with the C suite", it is almost impossible not to have knowledge about you having joined a data gobbling sect/mafia, that will eat you up alive, if you upset them. So while she should have been aware that she makes her own decisions, she might also have been aware of what happens, if she does.
firefax
>flirting with the C suite
It sounds like one of the issues was that the C-Suite flirted with her
>Wynn-Williams also writes that Kaplan, as her boss, made inappropriate comments to her, including repeatedly asking where she was bleeding from after childbirth. She writes that, shortly after he called her sultry in front of other co-workers, Kaplan ground into her on a dance floor. She triggered an investigation into Kaplan and writes that she was “almost immediately” retaliated against with a cut in duties before eventually being fired. Wynn-Williams describes the investigation as a “farce.”
rurp
It seems pretty extreme to say that her livelihood was in jeopardy given that her salary was probably an order of magnitude more than an average worker. She likely put up with that and other toxic behavior because she was highly ambitious and wanted to keep making immense amounts of money.
This doesn't excuse Sandberg at all, I'm sure she would be a horrifically bad person to work for. But when I read that section I immediately thought of highly ambitious people I've worked with who I could see on either side of that encounter. Such people often are highly materially successful, although most of them don't seem very happy about it.
stef25
If you have a job at Facebook today, you can get an impressive job somewhere else tomorrow. Nobody should be that connected.
blitzar
If Sandberg was a man it would not have happened.
Woman-on-Woman violence in the workplace has to stop, instead of trying to constantly take each other down they need to be better allies to other women.
Especially true for those that aspire to be role models for successful women and write books about how to "Lean In".
lynx97
I am sorry, but this attitude is sexist. My allies are those I can relate to, those which I can cooperate with. I don't pick my allies based on gender, and nor should you. And you shouldn't coerce anyone into forming alliances based on gender. It is the person that matters, not their gender or race or whatever other random attribute.
milesrout
It isn't violence. Stop this stupid hyperbole. Violence is a real term. Don't water it down.
spoonjim
I agree for something like a McDonalds employee or even entry level software engineer but this is a senior managerial role at Facebook. Nobody needs to do this job. Unless your spending is out of control you do not need this income. So if it comes with unreasonable demands, I don’t really care. There are problems worth caring about and this ain’t one of them.
pastage
What the leadership does will be mirrored down to the grunt. I have never lead a multi billion dollars corporation but from my view if your team can discard someone easily, they can also bear not having that person around for two weeks. Or a year.
Honestly I feel that father and mothers getting back from a years parental leave usually comes back with better focus.
zelphirkalt
In an alternative version of reality, she would be so distracted, that she failed to give birth and the child died as a consequence of her being completely absorbed in a toxic work culture. That alternative version of reality would be completely believable, and probably many would not be more surprised than now reading this news. This tells us all we need to know about FB.
raverbashing
> The other way is of an employee who has seen how her boss treats employees, and believes that her position, career, and livelihood would be in jeopardy if she wasn't working even in situations where no one should be expected to be working.
Honestly, they need to grow a pair
This kind of pressure (might) have worked for me if I was just out of university and such. But with experience you get to learn your boundaries
You're a top-level executive and you're afraid of being let go by such a silly thing? They can't wait 2 or 3 days for "top level bullet points"? Seems like they depend on you more than you depend on them
amval
Big companies tend to develop cult dynamics. This is not an exaggeration, but a consequence of how humans tend to operate in large amounts. And I'd wager that in the case of Silicon Valley tech companies, this is also something that they embrace and nurture. I don't think this is a controversial take at all, and rather obvious.
She was probably not "afraid of being let go" (fired), but had convinced herself that it was of the utmost importance to have this level of committment. The book probably reads similar to those books of someone who leaves their church or cult.
linotype
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. These cowards are ruining workplaces everywhere by having no backbone and subjecting their subordinates to the whims of psychopathic leaders.
Edit: it’s OK Meta employees. The best time to quit was years ago, the second best time is today.
wodenokoto
> My thinking is... can you put this 100% on Sandberg? I mean, I get that the culture is bad, but there's two in this game. Maybe... turn off your phone for a day when you're giving birth?!
Kind of reminds me of this Simpsons joke: "Marge, it takes two to lie. One to lie, and one to listen."
blitzar
It's Facebook though - I can not think of a lower stakes workplace.
Should the photo grid be 3 wide or 5 wide... Thank god ChatGPT can now pump out the mindless talking points for them.
poincaredisk
It's Facebook - a website that is a large part of life to over 3 billion users. A website that can influence elections in major countries, that sometimes shows fake ads and is responsible for (roughly) millions of frauds caused by them, that incited genocides in African countries.
I don't think the stakes are that low.
avgd
> website that can influence elections in major countries,
I think this sort of power transferred to twitter, with most of the users who haven't left facebook being boomers who keep reposting AI slop over and over and over.
The rare times I look at my facebook account, all I see is the older members of my family spamming AI garbage like shrimp jesus, "look at this nice dog sculpture I made out of wood" (that I didn't actually make), videos of random nonsense like dogs taking care of toddlers and behaving like humans etc.
FB has become AI slop no man's land.
I don't even understand how facebook continues to operate at this point.
jocaal
None of the people you mentioned's companies sell products your life depends on. If you don't like them, don't use or buy their products. I'm of the opinion that AWS, facebook and tesla cars are genuine trash. I don't know why people use that stuff.
TeMPOraL
Because your opinion is wrong. Problems with social media notwithstanding, just because you don't like the person who's running/ruining/most associated with the brand, doesn't make the product itself bad.
Most people don't give two fraks about who Bezos or Musk or Zuckerberg are, and they definitely don't think of them when using products and services from the companies you mentioned.
jocaal
I didn't say the products are trash because of who is at the helm of the companies. They are just bad compared to alternatives. Period.
close04
> just because you don't like the person who's running/ruining/most associated with the brand, doesn't make the product itself bad.
And just because that product does something you need doesn't mean it's not trash. GP didn't say "all cloud, all social media, all cars". Heck, literal trash is not all trash, people throw away a lot of good stuff.
Many people thought Tesla cars are diamond studded trash since Musk was still an idol. And it was pretty objective, great motor/battery surrounded by bargain bin components.
kubb
> just because you don't like the person...
Do we need that person to keep having the product though?
> Most people don't give two fraks...
They sure don't. These products and services are more like a... public good, used by and available to everyone.
But if it's a common good then should it be managed like a dictatorship?
The people using them don't have an equivalent alternative, and the companies have moats on a scale never seen before. Is that an issue?
Zuck is selling his customers wholesale, and squandering the resulting cash on asinine, unthinkably dumb projects like Metaverse. Maybe he should have just stayed with the initial product?
Maybe these public platforms would better serve the people using them without the person running/ruining/most associated with the brand?
HenryBemis
> Because your opinion is wrong.
I was having a strong argument/discussion yesterday with a friend who is a communist. A real "I want hammer and sickle" kinda guy. He owns two homes, works for big-pharma, his wife works for big-logistic, scuba-diving vacations across the planet, very 'communist' way of life.
His opinions (just as the parent-commenter) are not 'wrong'. His/her/our/their (not pronouns, just groups of people) are different to ours. They got a different vision of this world (which of course it costs them nothing - until Communism settles and they are beheaded for having two homes, SP500 investments, and going scuba-diving across the planet!!)
> Most people don't give two fraks
"What are you talking about dude?? I got all these Gmail, and OneDrive, and Webex stuff for free!! It's like modern day communism!!" /s
CorrectHorseBat
That's a very naive take, not using their products doesn't stop them from negatively impacting society. Look at what Musk is doing over the whole world (and the other two aren't much better, just not as obvious about it). It's not about being fair or jealous or whatever, a single individual having so much wealth and thus power is simply not healthy for society.
z3t4
The problem is these companies buy competitors or bribe hardware/platforms in order to get market monopoly. So often it's impossible to find alternative products.
whatever1
You cannot avoid FB. They literally stalk you everywhere and sell your info to advertisers. You are their product whether you like it or not.
linotype
It’s easy to delete your account though. They may still track you, but you’re not feeding the attention machine.
cess11
Have you tried figuring it out? It's not magic or miracle, there are reasons why they're profitable and if it's not obvious you might get surprised and learn something if you try to study it.
One reason is that they are extremely manipulative and strategically exploit people with power over other people's money, notably taxes and what labour generates.
jocaal
They are super profitable because of the naivety of their customers and for that you can't blame the companies themselves.
goodpoint
Boycotts might work occasionally but they are often not enough.
KaiserPro
> My thinking is... can you put this 100% on Sandberg? I mean, I get that the culture is bad, but there's two in this game. Maybe... turn off your phone for a day when you're giving birth?!
Do you want your job still?
sure you can take "holiday", but if you don't please your capricious master, you'll not have a job to come back to.
I can well believe that Sandberg is someone who lacks empathy of her immediate underlings, the mission comes first after all.
frereubu
These kinds of amoral corporate hierarchies will by their nature promote people who give themselves over entirely to the business. It's not that everyone who works there turns into that kind of corporate drone, it just weeds out the people who value more of a work/life balance. If someone is willing to send talking point while they're in labour, a company with the corporate culture of Facebook isn't going to stop them, they're going to be rewarded.
PaulRobinson
Blaming victims for the abuse they suffer is a common theme in modern society.
The fact she felt she could not turn her phone off without there being consequences is the core point here.
DontchaKnowit
At a certain point ones unwillingness to accept consequences is capitulation pure and simple and it is what allows people to continue to behave shittily. Takes 2 to tango.
touwer
Don't foget the less visible guys (yes, it's a gender issue ;) like Thiel, Andreeeesssssen etc
CaptainZapp
She said Wynn-Williams’ allegations about Kaplan are false, and in a Thursday statement, she called the book “defamatory” and alleged that Wynn-Williams had skipped “the industry’s standard fact-checking process.
(emph, mine)
This, coming from a Meta spokesperson, is rather rich.
dep_b
It was fact checked: in Texas
aoanevdus
I’m curious what would be considered the industry standard for fact checking in tech. Does Google Search, Apple App Store, TikTok, Snapchat, Amazon store, etc. apply fact-checking to the content posted by users/sellers?
Or more abstractly, is fact-checking the responsibility of authors and content editors, or of platforms and infrastructure that spread the content?
greg_V
I mean if you're publishing a book, especially a tell-all one, you'd go and talk to sources familiar with the matter who can independently verify whether the statements are true or not to shield you against defamation lawsuits.
Publishing anything dodgy about the biggest tech executives on the planet without that would lead your company getting nuked from orbit
blitzar
Wikipedia is the gold standard. Good enough is asking Grok.
pcthrowaway
A Youtuber I follow got in an argument a couple of days ago with someone who kept claiming the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 was primarily voluntary (not by force or a response to threats to their safety). The Youtuber kept asking him for sources (providing his own to the contrary), and the contrarian kept, I shit you not, asking Grok and then citing Grok as his source.
We are fucked.
null
kubb
My goodness, the audacity.
heresie-dabord
> skipped “the industry’s standard fact-checking process."
And the industry in question has compromised its host culture. What is Truth now?
This billionaire corporate sociopath suggested "Facebook remake the news ecosystem with the company at its center."
How is the corporate propaganda business working out socially and politically? I see the stock valuations — perhaps they are a measure of what has been lost in stability and community.
> "I’ve seen him face so many choices and lose touch with whatever fundamental human decency"
Including the rush to dismantle fact-checking in his corporation's product, which has become THE news source for millions of citizens.
1vuio0pswjnm7
The author says Meta employees told her to let Zuckerberg win at board games because he does not like to lose. SBF recently told Tucker Carslon from prison he was surprised when inmates with no high school education beat him at chess. Zuckerberg and Bankman-Fried might make great cellmates.
gchadwick
A dupe of my comment from another post on this (relating to the US arbiter ruling that she may not promote the book https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43351949)
People may be interested in the interview with Wynn-Williams (the whistleblower) on the News Agents podcast: https://www.globalplayer.com/podcasts/episodes/7DrpKCA/ (it's a UK news/political podcast very popular in the UK). From what they said at the beginning I think this is her first big podcast interview about the book/her claims. I wonder if she chose a UK podcast because of the US arbiter ruling.
lelandfe
She also did an interview with BI "hours before an arbitrator ruled in Meta's favor" https://www.businessinsider.com/former-meta-executive-sarah-...
null
MarceliusK
The fact that Meta is aggressively trying to suppress the book just reinforces the point. If it were all "misleading and unfounded," they wouldn't need to fight this hard to bury it.
2muchcoffeeman
That’s not true. Just look at the current climate. If I repeat lies often enough, people will repeat the same lies and start to believe.
MarceliusK
That's a fair point, repetition can make falsehoods stick. But if the book were full of outright lies, Meta could challenge it with clear evidence rather than legal pressure
__loam
Or actually sue.
luma
They repeatedly claim (in the article) that the allegations are "old news". That isn't a denial.
rchaud
> she called the book “defamatory” and alleged that Wynn-Williams had skipped “the industry’s standard fact-checking process.”
Why don't we let the community decide, instead of these bureaucratic, free speech-chilling "fact checkers"? If it's good enough for your employer, it should be good enough for you.
https://www.npr.org/2025/01/07/nx-s1-5251151/meta-fact-check...
paxys
Don't worry Zuckerberg is a free speech crusader. She can post all her criticism directly on Facebook and it won't be removed, whether it is true or not.
Oh Facebook is taking her to court to block her speech? Hmmm..
dang
Recent and related:
Meta is trying to stop a former employee from promoting her book about Facebook - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43349473 - March 2025 (104 comments)
2muchcoffeeman
Hahahahahaha, sore over losing in Ticket to Ride and Catan. Those aren’t even “serious” games.
KingMob
In addition to it all, Zuck's taste in board games is basic.
Though he's still ahead of Elon, who was busted for boosting his Path of Exile 2 account.
bboozzoo
> In addition to it all, Zuck's taste in board games is basic.
FWIW, Ticket to Ride and Catan are decent, worth playing, euro games. That's miles better than Monopoly or Risk which the casual folk immediately think of in the context of board games.
hnthrow90348765
I want Elon to play EVE Online, it'll be a shitshow for him
xnyan
I only play serious and important board games.
2muchcoffeeman
You don’t throw a tantrum over a board game. Because they are just games. The outcome doesn’t matter. Even worse when it’s a simple game that’s barely competitive.
KaiserPro
Can anyone answer this question, assuming its answerable:
if they signed a mutual non-disparagement agreement, and they are currently using that agreement to stop a publication, if meta goes and breaks that agreement, doesn't that nullify the contract?
soupfordummies
The irony of Meta trying to stop her from promoting the book is that it's... promoting her book. Any press is good press etc.
This book prob wouldn't have even blipped my radar were it not for all of these stories about how they're trying to stop it.
> A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
Has anyone ever seen Facebbok as idealistic? As far as I can tell, they've always been basically Amazon (the borg that will win at all costs) but a little more trivial, cool and Web2.0, they were never the "don't be evil" Google, the idealistic Twitter, I can't think of many less ideal driven companies.
Facebook beat MySpace IMO because it tricked people into using real names. It had the best network effect because of its real name policy (you could easily find people you knew), but it didn't tell you about it, it just posted your name from the sign-up page, which was kind of a dark pattern at the time.
Facebook also had a tool that would let you give them your username and password for other sites, and would scrape contacts for you. But don't try scraping your own contacts out of Facebook, that's wrong.
Remember the apps, like zombie games? Facebook was not kind to 3rd party devs.
Facebook has always been ruthless and other than a bit of open source (PyTorch and React are nice, I guess) as far as I can tell it's never really had any mission other than getting big.