A quick thought about Facebook’s ‘hacker’ culture

In making my way through my Safari reader list (where I tuck things away for later reading, and often forget about them or lol at myself for even saving a thing), I came across a piece about how Yahoo destroyed Flickr.

It’s from 2012, recently surfaced by Gizmodo in the wake of Verizon buying what’s left of Yahoo. It’s a really good read, and Matt Honan a fantastic writer, but one passage about the culture of companies struck me:

The founders’ influence on a company’s culture is enormous, and Yang and Filo cared about business, not products or innovation. They didn’t foster a culture of computer scientists, like Google’s founders did, or cultivate hackers like Facebook.

Honan makes a good point, but it’s as false-positive in 2016 as it was in 2012. Facebook’s ‘hacker’ culture was almost always bullshit.

As its purest level, a ‘hacker culture’ exists to spurn new features or find fault with a service as an open project that all can learn from. When presented with a discovered exploit, a company typically pays a hacker for their work, then publishes the results (Facebook often doesn’t; I know five who’ve found fault, been paid and not had the results published).

It’s also positive for an indie hacker; find an exploit, get some cash — and probably boost your street cred.

Facebook’s own existed/exists almost purely to find new talent. It purposefully stomps on the work of independent developers, and anyone who ‘hacks’ Facebook is met with swift and punitive correction.

I’ve written a few times about how nefarious Facebook is, and while it balances itself with cutesy shit like digital facepaint for the Olympics — its underbelly is dark.

We assume that Facebook’s genesis as a dorm-room project makes it relatable to hackers and open to that culture, but it’s just not. Stories of its own hackathons are entertaining, but the aftermath is less glowing. If you’re not hired and swallowed by an NDA — you’re paid off for finding a fault in the service and choked by one.

And most companies operate this way, but we don’t look those as having a strong ‘hacker culture’ — they’re just looking out for number one. Facebook does too, but often takes it just a step further — and ‘hacker culture’ is not stripping hackers of their nature.

It’s actually the complete opposite.