"Should we all just leave Facebook? That may sound attractive but it is not a viable solution. In many countries, Facebook and its products simply are the internet."
_That_ is the problem.
Facebook’s Surveillance Machine
51–60 of 240 posts
Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine
#52Maybe i am misunderstanding something about this whole issue, but was there an exploit or a bug that allowed this to happen on Facebooks end? I guess my confusion is that whenever someone grants third party access to your facebook, you can query that users list of friends (which i have seen used for things like games and high scores, etc). But you didn't get the full friends profile, instead you got a small subset of…
I don’t think there was any exploit. My understanding is that a third-party app asked for access, and people gave consent, and CA mined data. I’m the last person you’d see defending FB, but this just seems like the same thing everyone has been doing on FB as a platform since FarmVille launched years ago?
A major part of Facebook's culpability here is that they knew for 2 years that tens of millions of their users were being profiled as part of a political propaganda war on their platform and their response was practically nothing.
Edit: FB also knew the data was collected under an academic license and was being processed, outside that license, for financial gain.
Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine
#53[deleted]
Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, sentiance is super creepy.
I was recruited to work there, since they are from my local neighborhood I know them some time already. They have a history of analyzing data with financial support from Samsung. They are a smart bunch, don't have bad intentions towards people. That being said, their goal is indeed ... Well not something I value personally. But they are all good guys that are eager to make an amazingly powerful product. I agree that…
> They are excited engineers.
It doesn't really matter how nice, smart, talented, excited, curious, or well-meaning a person is. Judge them by their actions. What they build and what it is used for.
If you could pass a message them, please tell them to get a grip and realize how insanely creepy what they are doing is, and they should probably not do it, even if it makes them a bunch of money.
Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the theinnovationenterprise.com article you linked to: > It is essentially an interface that sits on top of existing data sets and displays data to users for analysis, helping to identify connections otherwise impossible to find. Users do not have to use SQL queries or employ engineers to write strings in order to search petabytes of data. Instead, natural language is used to query data and results are returned…
If the task is "taking datasets and making them more searchable," it seems like that company gets the heat simply for making the task easier. Excel, SQL databases (or, heck, huge CSV files) don't get as much attention even though they could be used for the same purpose, even if very awkwardly.
You are right. But sometimes the data access technology does make a qualitative difference. That’s because a lot of our protection has always been a sort of “security by obscurity”. It wasn’t just the 4th amendment protecting you from unreasonable searches. The government was also restricted by their manpower, and by the fact that searching a house is easily visible and people would notice if you’re targeting everyone.
These restrictions don’t apply to digital eavesdropping, which is why it has become a major point of debate once the technology made it possible to do on a large scale.
Another example are license plate scanners: that data has always been there, and anyone could legally write down all the license plates they saw. But add image recognition and a database, and you’ve created a monster.
The tech community usually turns to technology to fight such technology: encryption for communication, Bitcoin to undermine (pun intended) what they see as the failings of the FED. BitTorrent for their qualms with copyright enforcement.
But laws and the court of public opinion are arguably our first line of defense. Underground printers didn’t stop the nazis or the Sowjets, and it’s not clear that technology has significantly moved power to the people in China, Turkey, or North Korea.
So we need better privacy laws. We need politicians to be scared before they use the services of Cambridge Analytica. And we need to convince our peers that they will have joined the dark side if they accept a job at Palantr. These sort of actions have the added benefit of respecting the processes of a civil society ruled by law, and not a techno-jungle where might is right.
Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine
#56In many cases, industry self-regulation can be a good solution to protecting customers from being wronged. PCI is a great example- there can be huge fines on merchants that don't meet strict regulations for handling customer financial transactions according to the strict standards set by PCI. What has become extremely clear from this situation is that we are far past the point of self-regulation being the answer for…
In addition: You need reasonably trustworthy entities if you want them to self-regulate and self-certify.
Facebook, with their behavior over the years, have lost any benefit of a doubt.
This may not be a popular opinion here, but given their behavior, their evasions and their lies it's time for the law to crack down on them; hard!
Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, sentiance is super creepy.
I was recruited to work there, since they are from my local neighborhood I know them some time already. They have a history of analyzing data with financial support from Samsung. They are a smart bunch, don't have bad intentions towards people. That being said, their goal is indeed ... Well not something I value personally. But they are all good guys that are eager to make an amazingly powerful product. I agree that…
>I don't want to see them look like a villain. They are excited engineers.
I suspect the idea that these two categories are mutually exclusive is at the root of most of the questionable applications of technology today.
Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine
#58I read "Dragnet Nation" shortly after it came out.
http://juliaangwin.com/dragnet-nation-available-now/
And a couple years later "Chaos Monkeys."
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/business/dealbook/revi...
Obviously there are others, as well as articles in between.
In terms of FB et al, we are the product. They know this. We know this. And the prevailing (USA) cultural wind is "Privacy? Who needs it?"
If there's a surprise, it's that its taken this long for this issue to get any significant attention. Let's see how long it lasts. If it lasts.
Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine
#59Maybe i am misunderstanding something about this whole issue, but was there an exploit or a bug that allowed this to happen on Facebooks end? I guess my confusion is that whenever someone grants third party access to your facebook, you can query that users list of friends (which i have seen used for things like games and high scores, etc). But you didn't get the full friends profile, instead you got a small subset of…
I don’t think there was any exploit. My understanding is that a third-party app asked for access, and people gave consent, and CA mined data. I’m the last person you’d see defending FB, but this just seems like the same thing everyone has been doing on FB as a platform since FarmVille launched years ago?
I believe that's correct. People gave concent to X but Y used the data. Perhaps that's a violation of FB's ToS for apps?
That said, (personal) data gets brokered all the time. And, btw, sometimes the buyers are gov agencies. Who needs surveillance when people willing hand it all over, often in public.
Perhaps not the public will finally begin to understand why the phone meta data "intrusion" was so bad.
Re: Facebook’s Surveillance Machine
#60I read "Dragnet Nation" shortly after it came out. http://juliaangwin.com/dragnet-nation-available-now/ And a couple years later "Chaos Monkeys." https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/business/dealbook/revi... Obviously there are others, as well as articles in between. In terms of FB et al, we are the product. They know this. We know this. And the prevailing (USA) cultural wind is "Privacy? Who needs it?" If there's…
Here in Germany online privacy is a social value, and Facebook is gonna have a even harder time from now on.
I don't see it happen in the rest of the world. I give this three months: when the news cycle will have died out, for Facebook it's gonna be business as usual.
Zuckerberg is in such a denial about the real mission of his creature, that I don't see how it will ever be able to steer the boat, even if he wanted to.
Does he ever lie in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, asking himself "what the fuck did I create"? Will he ever?