It seems to me like these sorts of P.R. blunders are common among most major big co's with regards to overzealous privacy protections. I don't find this particularly newsworthy myself. I think the only reason it grabs headlines is because Facebook is built on sharing and people seem to be more attracted to the irony rather than the substance.
Nice one Facebook. I don't know if you knew this or not, but news conferences are meant as a channel to share information, not ask journalists to say nothing. I think I'm going to share a link on facebook, but I don't want anyone who sees it to pass it on.
The flipside of living in the information age is that people will try to control information, which is tough, and makes them look bad (and anachronistic) when they fail. Information is a weapon to them, and can only harm. Not only that, but today's PR and legal people (not the most internet-savvy by and large) were trained on the basis of press releases and other controlled-source information dissemination techniques.
This error points to who FB wants to be (old-school bureaucracy where stupidity is swept under the rug), rather than what it has the potential to be (e.g. open). This is how they dig in for the long haul, by making themselves look as clueless as the big boys, rather than as smart as the little guys.
Read the article please - quote:
“Facebook asked me to pass this on to you. They require it of all visitors to their facilities. It only applies to things that you might accidentally stumble upon while you are there and covers nothing discussed during our news conference. Please either bring a signed copy or be ready to sign upon arrival.”
Which makes sense, imo, given the open work environment at Facebook.
Title is a little misleading. Sounds like an overzealous legal team wanted to have them sign an NDA to cover things the press conference wasn't about. (IE if they accidently had access to internal confidential information)
Granted, still agree it's a bad move. If you can't trust the security of your facility, then don't have the press conference there.
The title is very misleading. It asked them to NDA for things they see about facebook, if they stumble upon their code/IP, etc, and does not cover what's discussed at news conference, the journalists are free to discuss about the conference.
I think the buried lede here is that FB is cracking down on some clickjack-y crimes. I have to wonder if this is the first salvo from their recent partnership with the FTC.
