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There is a good chapter in Chaos Monkeys regarding this and facebooks review of the code.

If you liked this article, I recommend his book, Chaos Monkeys, about his time at Facebook as an Ads product manager.

Seconding Chaos Monkeys (Martinez), best startup memoir I've read so far.

Chaos Monkeys by Antonio García Martínez is a good read. Good reminder that tech is not all sunshine and roses and that a lot of cloak and dagger goes behind the scenes in the valley.

I'm in the middle of Chaos Monkeys, and am enjoying the author's excellent prose, while walking through the sausage factory of startups. There's also some interesting YC insights, as the author's startup went through it.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Monkeys-Obscene-Fortune-Failure...

Read the book Chaos Monkeys. FB can join their data with credit card company data now, like experian. The best solution is to uh, delete facebook.

We're talking about a particular person and a particular book -- Chaos Monkeys -- and it was non-fiction, and a memoir. Fiction I would imagine would be given more leeway, but I guess we'll have to see when it comes up.

Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley by Antonio García Martínez

Read this recently. Thought it was pretty good.

> Source: my own experiences in the criminal justice system and Chaos Monkeys, by Antonio Garcia-Martinez (a Y Combinator alum!).

Makes me think even harder about the _real_ reason Apple canceled him.

Loved Chaos Monkeys as well - It's a fun read and very educational at the same time.

The work of Facebook's illicit media team has led to many, many prosecutions. They intentionally keep quiet about it because the reaction to a headline like "500-member Child Porn Ring busted on Facebook" isn't "Geez, I'm glad Facebook is keeping us safe," it's "Wow, maybe we shouldn't let our teenagers on Facebook" -- a reaction that significantly hurts their bottom line, and tips off the ChiPo folks besides.

Source: my own experiences in the criminal justice system and Chaos Monkeys, by Antonio Garcia-Martinez (a Y Combinator alum!).

So an obscure book "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley" is an accurate representation of "the" tech industry?

Next.

I'm choosing a specific sentence that has been highlighted as unacceptable and is meant to disgust. I'm sure there is much more to the book Chaos Monkeys than "SF women weak," yet he was fired for that comment within his book, with no care given to context.

Hence the question, why the double standard?

Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley Hardcover – https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Monkeys-Obscene-Fortune-Failure...

I also recommend Dragnet Nation.

https://www.amazon.com/Dragnet-Nation-Security-Relentless-Su...

I read Chaos Monkeys around the same time. It's not a deep dive on privacy but it gives you a great sense of FB's priorities, culture, and so on.

https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Monkeys-Obscene-Fortune-Failure...

One of the stories from Chaos Monkeys [0] is how the author was no the receiving end of a potential company-ending lawsuit. He talked to PG, who ultimately was the one to play hardball with the other firm. Angels and VCs are better at this than founders.

[0] https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062458193/chaos-monkeys

> "Facebook can't tell if it's me or someone else at the same coffee shop."

Eventually, they will tie your various devices to you.

These a chapter / section on this (and FB) in Chaos Monkeys.

https://www.antoniogarciamartinez.com/chaos-monkeys/

That book was published 2+ yrs ago. I can only assume the technology is more thorough and sophisticated now.

p.s. see also Dragnet Nation

http://juliaangwin.com/dragnet-nation-available-now/

Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley by Martin

Did you read Chaos Monkeys? What about Dragnet Nation? Both (of which are not new) peek behind the curtains you're concerned about. Both are recommended, and freightening. It's only going to get worse.

https://www.antoniogarciamartinez.com/chaos-monkeys/

http://juliaangwin.com/dragnet-nation-available-now/

Just started reading Chaos Monkeys. Thoroughly enjoying it so far (am up to Zuck's inner circle of desks). Guardianistas are a funny lot aren't they. They write as if people who can endure the push and shove of business long enough to try to improve things from the inside (unlike themselves) are going to be anti-business (like themselves).

I think if you read Chaos Monkeys and/or Dragnet Nation (and I'm sure, others) you'll realize the data privacy cat is out of the bag. It's likely such ISP data to be sold is already available via other channels.

Aside from that, the danger of the internet doesn't seem to be free speech, but free thought. The bar is much higher and deeper. Droves are being manipulated, nudged and misled. That's happening, nearly frictionless, now. Even Orwell would blush thinking, "My, I really underestimated what was going to happen."

Mind you a lack of NN isn't going to help. But with NN or without NN the root issue(s) aren't NN.

This is trying to be funny, but it's not that funny. For a bunch of different reasons. Unless you're an insider telling an inside joke, tech isn't funny, because there's too much to explain, and explanations kill jokes. For the same reason that Wallace Stegner said you can't right novels about Mormons (no one would get them), you can't really write satire about tech. So the author falls back on jokes about Roombahs. Ha! Also, tech workers are not so powerful that they deserve satire. A better attempt at making SV amusing is the book Chaos Monkeys. And a very good example of how to skewer an industry is American Psycho (book, not movie).

Have I defended the firing of the author of the book Chaos Monkeys? Is it permissible to believe that no one should be fired for what amounts to political views?

re: "The email address I use for Facebook was created only for Facebook. I have never given it out to anyone else, ever. The inbox for that account only contains emails from Facebook."

Per the book "Chaos Monkeys", as well as others sources I would presume since, that single signal is not a "unique key". There are plenty of other ways being used to tie you to your devices (plural! as in, you're a known / constant as you move from phone to laptop to tablet, and so on.)

Mind you, neither is new, but Dragnet Nation and Chaos Monkeys are both insightful, and if you take your privacy and liberty serious frightening.

https://www.antoniogarciamartinez.com/chaos-monkeys/

http://juliaangwin.com/dragnet-nation-available-now/

Of the two, CM is the written to be more entertaining.

The excerpt from Chaos Monkeys book about lockdown that happened in Facebook when MZ decided to take down G+:

In what was perceived as a kindly concession to the few employees with families, it was also announced that families were welcome to visit on weekends and eat in the cafés, allowing the children to at least see daddy (and yes, it was mostly daddy) on weekend afternoons.

Chaos Monkeys by Antonio Garcia Martinez tells the author's story as his company is acquired by Twitter and he goes to work for Facebook. It's an really entertaining read and he includes a bunch of asides on how the Silicon Valley M&A pipelines work (or at least his perspective on how they work).

https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Monkeys-Obscene-Fortune-Failure...

I read it exactly the opposite. A few years ago my wife was recommended Chaos Monkeys by somebody. It was stunning what he had willingly written down to share with the world. Every few minutes she'd explode in horror at the next even more outrageous thing in the text. Instead of being the expected book on silicon valley, it was fascinating because this person was so proud of being a tremendous asshole to everybody.

The book is not a satire. Not even a little. It is absolutely completely honest and the author is a complete jerk.

His daughter, Alexandra Wolfe, did write a book about SV called "Valley of the Gods":

https://www.amazon.com/Valley-Gods-Silicon-Story/dp/15011470...

I haven't read it, but I subscribe to author Ryan Holiday's reading list email newsletter and he had this to say when the book came out:

"A nice new read about the Silicon Valley written by Wall Street Journal reporter (and Tom Wolfe's daughter). It's more pleasant and less cynical than Chaos Monkeys but probably a little more naive too. I was interested in the fate of the various Thiel Fellows since I've met a few of them over the years and was a college dropout myself. Wolfe makes the point that dropping out or getting one of these fellowships has become just as much of a 'track' as the Ivy League these days. Anyway, some great sentences in this book. Not sure how it will stand up over time but was worth a couple hours of my time."

Is this the book? Chaos Monkeys, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28259132

Chaos Monkeys by Antonio Garcia Martinez[0] contains the chapters about funding of the Antonio's startup AdGrok.

[0]https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Monkeys-Obscene-Fortune-Failure...

I just read Chaos Monkeys (http://amzn.to/2nr5THJ) – a silicon valley insider tale with someone who worked at FB – and it points out that one of FB's cultural strengths was the ability and willingness to completely change their character in response to new conditions.

As it grows, I'm sure inertia will continue to slow it down, but that willingness for reinvention seems like quite a powerful property.

(Another current book – Antifragile (http://amzn.to/2nr15ST) – discusses systems that benefit from randomness and volatility. I wonder if the willingness for reinvention allows for a kind of anti-fragile generational selection to work: instead of waiting for selective forces to birth a different and new stronger generation, you transform yourself (or your company) to _become_ that new generation, allowing you to directly benefit from selective pressures. It's tough to do, psychologically and culturally, and the willingness to do so seems an extremely valuable quality to cultivate.)

Computer history is one of my favorite topics, so I've read a lot over the years. Here's my list:

>> Classic computer history:

- "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution", Steven Levy

- "The Innovators", Walter Isaacson

- "Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley", Adam Fisher [innovative format, tons of interesting tidbits after you get used to the style. Read only after the other two above]

- "The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story", Michael Lewis

- "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs", Alan Deutschman

- "Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made", Andy Hertzfeld

- "Masters of Doom", David Kushner

- "Idea Man", Paul Allen

- "Where Wizards Stay Up Late", Katie Hafner

>> Entertaining stories, but less historical value:

- "Ghost in the Wires", Kevin Mitnick

- "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley", Antonio Garcia Martinez

- "Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal", Nick Bilton

>> On my to-read queue:

- "How the Internet Happened", Brian McCullough [just started; very promising]

- "Troublemakers: Silicon Valley's Coming of Age", Leslie Berlin

- "Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of WWII", Liza Mundy

- "Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer", Paul Freiberger / Michael Swaine

>> Others worth mentioning (but just read a few chapters):

- "The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray", Charles Murray [about Cray Computers]

- "Racing the Beam" [about Atari]

- "Commodore: A Company on the Edge" [about Commodore]

>> Bonus:

- "Art of Atari", Tim Lapetino [great as a coffee table book, particularly if you grew up in the 80's :) ]

Being reassigned as opposed to fired is quite the privilege.

Everyone in the comments is viewing it as completely different than the Damore fiasco because this racist blog post was written in 2007, but are we forgetting that Antonio Martinez wrote Chaos Monkeys 5 years ago and was fired for it now? [1]

What's the difference between:

1) Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naïve despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit

2) If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing

I think it's absurd that the former is worth firing and the latter isn't. Google has a reputation to be a more 'progressive' company than Apple; is that just code for undertones of anti-semitism?

[1] https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/world/employee-fired-for-s...

think this book is a particularly interesting read, especially considering the U.S. election opera of 2016:

"Infomocracy" -by Malka Order.

+++ some other favorites:

When Breath Becomes Air. -by Paul Kalanithi.

Arkwright. -by Allen Steele.

The God's Eye View. -by Barry Eisler.

Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley. -by Antonio Garcia Martinez.

Ego Is the Enemy. -by Ryan Holiday.

Chaos Monkeys --By Martin

There's two in my list, both recent:

* "Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble" by Dan Lyons

* "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley" by Antonio Garcia Martinez

Haven't read either yet, and it's not about the early 2000s. But they've been getting a lot of press and some good reviews.

- Paypal Wars. I read this twice -- once back in 2006 or so, before I really knew who any of the people were (Thiel, Musk, etc.). And then once a few years ago.

- Chaos Monkeys -- about Facebook circa 2010, touches on YC a few years before that. Somewhat controversial, but a good book.

- Weaving the Web by Tim Berners-Lee -- talks about the story from CERN to MIT, etc.

Echoing some other posts:

- The Idea Factory

- The Dream Machine (probably the densest and most informative computer history book I've read)

- Masters of Doom

- The Supermen (about Seymour Cray) -- I didn't know anything about this side of the industry! Interesting.

This is not someone I would hire for a leadership position. Chaos Monkeys, autobiographical in nature, is by his own admission enough insight into his character and integrity to show he is unfit to lead a diverse group of employees.

If the position he was hired for was in fact that of a low level engineer conceivably who ever hired him did not think it would present too much of an issue? Just doesn't sound like a good cultural fit and I can understand the pushback from folks who would have to work with him as part of a team.

I have always considered my professional reputation to be something that took my entire career to cultivate, but can be tarnished inadvertently with one misstep. Probably why I haven't published a book of my personal escapades, and definitely why I don't tweet every thought that pops into my mind.

The amount of fraud in the statistics coming out of Silicon Valley companies is really shocking.

Just finished the book “Chaos Monkey” by a former PM at Facebook, and he goes into detail about how Facebook, and particularly Google with Google+, were padding their numbers by 30, sometimes 40%. If anyone wonders how the bottom will eventually fall out of some tech companies, it will be a real but not terrible decline in usage, that leads them to more scrutiny, that then reveals histories of fraud on a Wall Street level scale dating back over a decade.

Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062458191/

Some ideas:

Antonio García Martínez, author of Chaos Monkeys.

Bobby Goodlatte on Facebook's news feed algorithm and the election.

Peter Thiel on Trump and what's next, etc.

Justin Edmond on early Pinterest and diversity in Silicon Valley.

Dann Petty on Epicurrence and design culture in Silicon Valley.

Kim-Mai Culter on Initialized Capital and housing in the Bay Area.