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Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

theguardian.com

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Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

#211

Post by freeone3000 »

DFHippie wrote: post #94
1337biz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What is cheating, in reality? What are these rules you endorse? What makes a hypothetical not cheating but a hypothetical presented as fact cheating?

Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

#212

Post by notreallyauser »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #125
mattkevan wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Breach" specifically implies that defenses were penetrated. But as you said, Facebook is not trying to protect our data. This is far worse than if the data were taken from them unwillingly, because it vastly increases the number of entities with unfettered access to it.

No it doesn't. Not in the dictionary. Not even in any definition of "data breach" I've found published.

Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

#213

Post by chongli »

juliangoldsmith wrote: post #170
chapill wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another educated rumor: As soon as Al Franken suggests regulating Facebook under Net Neutrality, pictures surface that destroy his political career.

What exactly would Net Neutrality do to Facebook?

Stop them from making zero-rating deals with ISPs.

Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

#214

Post by harryf »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #198
CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your reaction is “they should have known” you are in a Silicon Valley thought bubble. (I was until recently, too.) What you find “horrifying” is that bubble’s edges fraying. What if your reaction isn't "they should have known" but rather "they should have listened when I told them this!"?

> What if your reaction isn't "they should have known" but rather "they should have listened when I told them this!"? Then you, like me, are still figuring out how to message privacy as a priority to non-technical folks. Maybe it’s an issue of timing. My “delete Facebook from your phone and log out, by default, on your desktop” pitch was more productive yesterday than ever before.

Last Week Tonight did this bit brilliantly when they interviewed Edward Snowden - https://youtu.be/XEVlyP4_11M?t=1437 - in essence we need to get dramatically better at telling this story so everyone understands.

Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

#215

Post by freeone3000 »

mannykannot wrote: post #59

All the self-serving memes are out on parade here: "This not news", "what did you expect?", "anyone paying attention should have known", "it is the new normal", "it could not be any other way", "everyone benefits"... Actually, as of posting, the "Apple/Google/Microsoft are just as bad" version has not yet put in an appearance.

One could argue that Apple and Microsoft are not as bad, because Apple and Microsoft sell products, not advertisements.

Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

#216

Post by bogomipz »

>"Academic research from 2010, based on an analysis of 1,800 Facebooks apps, concluded that around 11% of third-party developers requested data belonging to friends of users.

If those figures were extrapolated, tens of thousands of apps, if not more, were likely to have systematically culled “private and personally identifiable” data belonging to hundreds of millions of users, Parakilas said."

So it's quite possible that there are more than a few third parties holders of FB user data who have now been alerted to the potential profitability of their old "research data."

Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

#217

Post by purple-again »

jimmy1 wrote: post #129
Angostura wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be sad if you were correct, but you're not https://www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=yemen+civil+war

I would be optimistic if most Americans actually read the BBC ( or read, for that matter). I would venture to say most however, do not. For example, a popular right wing propaganda news source that most Americans watch has had a handful of articles this year, and skimpy coverage on air.

Do you find it hard to believe that an organization based in the UK, and citizens of that union, are more interested in whats going in Yemen than an organization based in the US, and of course the citizens of that union.

I know whats happening in Yemen, I've read the facts, and now I don't care anymore. I don't want to see it in the news everyday because it wasn't relevant to me when I read about it and it has practically zero chance of every being relevant to me.

What Trump said about xxx person at yyy place is varying degrees of relevant to my life, all of those degrees more so than Yemen.

If Fox had a large Middle Eastern demographic that it's advertisers cared about, you would see Yemen Nightly at 7:30 without question.

Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

#218

Post by SCHiM »

deltron3030 wrote: post #155
tmalsburg2 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that not everything is perfect in Germany with respect to data protection. Not even close. However, our data protection laws are uncontroversially stronger than elsewhere (specifically compared to the US), and I'm almost certain that the courts will find that Facebook violated them.

Maybe, but what sucks about Germany and the EU is the arbitrary nature of many laws, enabling them to selectively punish those who don't play their game. By not being able to define clear boundaries, you give them the power to rule over who can succeed and who not. Data is what fuels businesses in the end.

AFAIK the law in the US is much more arbitrary in the sense that a lot of it is case law. Until such a case has been before a jury, and jurisprudence has been established it's basically a coin toss.

The thing that may feel arbitrary is simply the fact the laws in Europe actually enforce privacy, whereas a company, and people, form the US expect that these laws are teethless.

Re: Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

#219

Post by barrkel »

malikNF wrote: post #3

What'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…

It's like the diesel scandal, IMO. Everybody in the industry knows what's going on, but that doesn't mean the industry's Overton window isn't liable to be reset with severe repercussions once the general public gets looped in.
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