I made a Facebook web scraper which opens 20 headless browsers. You provide a list of unlimited usernames & proxies (you can buy them at https://buyaccs.com/en/). It will scrape every ounce of public information available. I acquired a few million users worth. The data is too easy to get.
Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
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Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#32The cool thing? This "whistleblower" already spoke publicly with an op-ed on the NYT months ago. Again, this is just the top of the newscycle. Let's see what happens in three months from now. My guess: Facebook revenue will go up. This is a PR shitshow, and a great piece of advertising for Facebook's ad department. A lot of marketers right now are thinking "wait, we could do that with all that Facebook data we have?!…
GDPR can't come too soon. That would definitely put an end to these shady practices, as the penalties of several individual infractions would endanger any company.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#33What's utterly horrifying about this whole thing is how the media is acting as if this is some sort of surprise. Like what did you think was happening at a company collecting data about billions of people? Especially at a company that has a CEO who is famous for calling its own users dumb fu * * s? A company that experimented on at risk teens. Like come on. --edit--- Or lordy, didn't expect this comment to blow up th…
Everybody knew about the data leaking for 'quizzes and games' since 2009 http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/technology/facebook-breaches-can...
WikiLeaks also covered this earlier in their spyfiles warning. People don't care that a political opinion survey being spammed around by their friends is actually harvesting their details in a campaign dossier to manipulate them directly later.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#34Oh man this is bad. >the platform operations manager at Facebook responsible for policing data breaches [...] warned senior executives at the company that its lax approach to data protection risked a major breach >One Facebook executive advised him against looking too deeply at how the data was being used, warning him: “Do you really want to see what you’ll find?” >They felt that it was better not to know. I found th…
Lol, "this is bad"? This is normal. I can give you an entire list of F500 companies I've worked at that have the same mindset. I've sat in meetings with F100 CIOs where they were given the same warning and shrugged it off. I've been asked before to turn off security monitoring systems because executives prefer to not know about vulnerabilities rather than know about them and not be able to fix them.
The only thing shocking and horrifying about this whole thing is how naive the American public must be to find any of this shocking and horrifying.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#35We knew it facebook was going to be the next friendster+AOL+myspace but I never suspected it would disintegrate to these levels. Expect employees to start jumping ship left and right.
I suppose stock option values will plummet, but I guess most get stock grants now.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#36What's utterly horrifying about this whole thing is how the media is acting as if this is some sort of surprise. Like what did you think was happening at a company collecting data about billions of people? Especially at a company that has a CEO who is famous for calling its own users dumb fu * * s? A company that experimented on at risk teens. Like come on. --edit--- Or lordy, didn't expect this comment to blow up th…
Just so the quote [2004] isn't out of context: Zuckerberg: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Friend]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuckerberg: People just submitted it. Zuckerberg: I don't know why. Zuckerberg: They "trust me" Zuckerberg: Dumb fucks
I'm sure you can do a better job at illustrating your point than ressucitating a +10y old quote from Zuck, 19 at the time.
Teenagers and college students say a lot of condescending, dumb, immature stuff in group discussions. It's not news and no evidence at all.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#37Of course, nothing is going to change since everyone has known this for years, and still use FB.
In the upcoming weeks users will be more 'careful' but since they have 'nothing to hide' it's 'Okay' to use FB in a 'responsible' way.
'Everyone' is shocked but no one feels threatened individually, so the circus and clown show can continue.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#38Can someone do an ELI5? I have no idea what's going on...
EDIT: I guess not.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#39What's utterly horrifying about this whole thing is how the media is acting as if this is some sort of surprise. Like what did you think was happening at a company collecting data about billions of people? Especially at a company that has a CEO who is famous for calling its own users dumb fu * * s? A company that experimented on at risk teens. Like come on. --edit--- Or lordy, didn't expect this comment to blow up th…
What did you think was happening at a company collecting data about billions of people?
I'd expect it to use it for advertising targeting. The privacy settings I've put on there exclude other uses.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#40What's utterly horrifying about this whole thing is how the media is acting as if this is some sort of surprise. Like what did you think was happening at a company collecting data about billions of people? Especially at a company that has a CEO who is famous for calling its own users dumb fu * * s? A company that experimented on at risk teens. Like come on. --edit--- Or lordy, didn't expect this comment to blow up th…
Fascinating to watch - it shows how much power media has to put a topic on the global agenda if it fits into their preferred narrative.
Facebook's current problem is that they've now created a lot of enemies and they're running short on friends. This isn't quite as bad as it sounds, because creating enemies when you reach this scale is inevitable, so the mere fact that Facebook isn't everybody bestest bud ever is not intrinsically a problem. However, one of the fundamental ways to defend yourself when you reach this scale is to act with a certain amount of ethics and decorum. Ethics are not just about being good to other people, because all sensible formulations of ethics have reciprocity in them, so if you are good to other people, even your enemies will, if begrudgingly, cut you some slack.
Facebook has reached this size but has not prepared itself for it, and what's happening is that they took a bit of a stumble, and absolutely nobody is rushing in to defend them because they've burned all bridges. The media hates them for the economics of taking over the media industry and their ad revenue, and making them dependent on them. Conservatives have a pretty solid case that they are being censored by the platform systematically, even if it isn't true they feel it is true, so no friends there. It's pretty obvious that Facebook can expect no help from the Republicans in general. The Democrats may not hate Facebook, but there's no positive reason to burn very much political capital on helping them. (After all, they didn't deliver this time, did they?) And increasingly, the chickens are coming home to roost with their customer base, as fears about surveillance, power, and abuse of power are now going from vague fears to metastaticized, realized issues with Facebook that appear to affect it down to its very core.
It's not just the media narrative, though that's true enough... everybody is now at best neutral towards Facebook, and they're accruing enemies fast, not least of which is an ever-increasing portion of their own customer base(s).
How will they get out of this one? It's possible this will just die down this time. But these forces aren't going anywhere, and if it isn't already too late for Facebook to change course on this, the clock is definitely reaching midnight fast.