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Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
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Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#92What'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…
As a matter of fact, this is news and surprising for most users of Facebook even if it's not for you. By saying that no one should be surprised, are you not taking the same condescending attitude that you're pointing out in Zuckerberg?
Well, I was with you right up until the gratuitous equivalence to Zuckerberg.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#93Can we not let this become framed as a "breach"? No systems were compromised. Nothing of Facebook's was accessed that wasn't supposed to be accessed. This was data intentionally exposed by Facebook , just exfiltrated and given to an entity whom Facebook hadn't authorized. This is simply the extent to which we've permitted these Internet giants to collect information about us. It's business as usual. Edit: To clarify,…
Sounds like a breach to me.
The only difference is that instead of the baddies having to sneak in carefully at night to nick stuff, Facebook said 'welcome, come on in, help yourself – here's a sack'.
The end result – millions of people having their personal data used against them without their knowledge or consent - is the same.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me guess. It’s a globalist media conspiracy to take down Trump?
Not at all. Just media's desperate hunger for any story that paints Trump in a bad light. The recent video evidence on Cambridge Analytica shows that they were at least shady in their operations. But their approach to targeting voters and scraping Facebook userdata would have been described as brilliant data wizzardry if it were done for the other side.
You can perform brilliant data wizardry without deceiving people. Micro-targeting has been around since the 60s. There is a huge gulf between finding people receptive to an ad whose content you publicly endorse and creating astroturf sites and fake news content to manipulate people's world view.
I keep seeing comments which equating cheating and cleverness. If I win a chess game by moving making illegal moves this is not a sign of my brilliance. If you can't distinguish brilliant play from cheating, perhaps you don't understand the game.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#95Can we not let this become framed as a "breach"? No systems were compromised. Nothing of Facebook's was accessed that wasn't supposed to be accessed. This was data intentionally exposed by Facebook , just exfiltrated and given to an entity whom Facebook hadn't authorized. This is simply the extent to which we've permitted these Internet giants to collect information about us. It's business as usual. Edit: To clarify,…
The real point is that companies like facebook and equifax have such large caches of personal data and have no legal obligation to protect it. This is a point most people outside of tech don't understand. You might not even be a user of facebook but these companies still have data on you that is highly personal and invasive. An academic who has done some great work on this is Evgeny Morozov. Highly recommend his book…
The point of my comment is that we should not compare Facebook to Equifax. The latter may have been lax in protecting that data, but the millions of records exposed last year were taken without their consent. Facebook is literally inviting anyone who can sign up for a developer account to harvest their — sorry, our — data at scale.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 mean this is HN not Reddit, so I expect most people to know the context of that comment by now (on this site) and his apology and explanation of it. On Reddit the normal person can be forgiven for not knowing the full context of quote, but this quote has come up on HN many times over many years.
can you help me out here? what is the context/explanation?
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a matter of fact, this is news and surprising for most users of Facebook even if it's not for you. By saying that no one should be surprised, are you not taking the same condescending attitude that you're pointing out in Zuckerberg?
This is not news. (2010)[ http://www.zdnet.com/article/fbi-feds-collect-facebook-socia... ] (2010)[ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/418971/facebook-personal-... ] (2012)[ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/opinion/sunday/facebook-is... ] (2011)[ https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne... ] (2011)[ https://techcrunch.com/2011/11/01/researchers-flood-facebook... ] (2012)[money.cnn.com/2012/03/22/…
There can be no consent for the usage of your data, as it is impossible to grasp in what ways the data will be used exactly, what deep learning algorithms will learn from it and what impact it will have on your life and society as a whole.
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and surprising for most users of Facebook Yeah, but let's be honest, they're dumb fu * * s.
I mean on average the readership of HN are vastly more likely to be aware and care about their data and identity privacy than the average facebook user. so in this sense you're not wrong.
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Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#99What'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…
As someone who considered himself reasonably well-informed about the privacy implications of Facebook, the "friend permission" was still news to me. That Facebook would share my profile data with a third party because some Facebook contact of mine "allowed" it, is utterly horrific. It is also a clear and massive breach of EU data privacy laws. (Which unfortunately seem difficult to enforce against international companies at the moment; the GPDR can't come soon enough!)
In any case, if this should have been known by everyone already, I guess Facebook has no reason to panic if it's all over the news now. Just a bit of publicity for them, right?
Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, it is extremely naive to think that Facebook does not use all the data they get about you. Then again, most people are very naive about this kind of everyday technology.
Most people are extremely nontechnical and are inadvertently ignorant rather than naive. People that don’t have jobs working with data, who are not technical or mathematical, aren’t going to know.
Are people not taught about "stranger danger" as kids anymore? Why do they just trust that someone won't abuse the information that they hand over?