Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Sued by Investors Over Voter-Profile Harvesting

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 172 posts

Re: Facebook Sued by Investors Over Voter-Profile Harvesting

#111

Post by underwater »

beedogs wrote: post #31

I'll truly never understand the people who defend Facebook to the death on here.

For some perspective: I’m ex-Facebook. I wouldn’t claim that Facebook are completely benign, but I think they’re getting a raw deal in this situation.

The argument that they shared too much information with third parties is a fair one. I don’t know if it was caused by naivety or apathy. But they never hid what they were doing from users. And, unlike some are claiming, they definitely didn’t sell that information.

It was Cambridge Analytica who chose to “weaponise” (their word) that data. The engineer who acted as a whistleblower is currently playing the victim but chose to participate in a morally bankrupt project.

Re: Facebook Sued by Investors Over Voter-Profile Harvesting

#112

Post by throwaway84742 »

rtpg wrote: post #102
downandout wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the issue is that the data was sold to third parties Afaik, there has been no allegation that Facebook sold this data. Rather, someone created an innocuous looking quiz app that then used its access tokens to gather data on people through the Facebook Graph API. The app was called "thisisyourdigitallife". who ultimately affected the election with it. I've seen zero evidence that any of the psychobabble being touted b…

This is more of an aside, but given that Clinton lost by so little, _very many things_ caused her to lose. Because of such a small margin, for almost any X: "X had little effect" and "X caused Clinton to lose" can be simultaneously true. If you lose by only one vote, then every vote caused you to lose. (Of course if you're running a campaign, going after things that are bigger issues is more useful, but when we're ta…

She did lose by quite a bit, though. 74 electoral votes out of 538. And that’s after rigging the primaries and spending twice as much as Trump did. Not even 1.2 billion could make this albatross fly.

Re: Facebook Sued by Investors Over Voter-Profile Harvesting

#113

Post by madeofpalk »

vuln wrote: post #56
734786710934 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gets to the debate around if you can consent when giving up information about your friends. For example, is it OK for someone to give a company access to their phone's address book when the people in it haven't consented themselves?

Reminds me of Facebook and LinkedIn shadow profiles.

(which have been deemed illegal in some countries)

Re: Facebook Sued by Investors Over Voter-Profile Harvesting

#114

Post by nothrabannosir »

will4274 wrote: post #97
mancerayder wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great. So far so good. Where was the part where I agreed they could harvest my profile information because a friend filled out a quiz/questionnaire/etc.?

There is a setting to globally disable and enable all apps. If you disable it, no apps can see you, even if your friends use the app. Facebook actually has tons of settings - discoverability is a big problem

And they change all the time, often resetting defaults. And without notice. Playing “respect my privacy” whack a mole with a billion dollar company grows old quickly.

Re: Facebook Sued by Investors Over Voter-Profile Harvesting

#115

Post by oldcynic »

downandout wrote: post #40
oldcynic wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me where I'm wrong but did it not used to be the case that facebook apps could access almost as much info about your friends as they could about you? So where is the consent? Fred gives consent to run a personality quiz and its associated data gathering - Fred's 180 friends didn't.

That consent is contained in the TOS that you and all of your friends agreed to when you signed up for Facebook. Further, the access to friend data has always been more limited than you imply here, and more recently, it’s become so limited that using apps for data collection about friends is almost a pointless endeavor.

> access to friend data has always been more limited than you imply here, and more recently, it’s become so limited that using apps for data collection about friends is almost a pointless endeavor.

Not sure what was limited, but you were able to get name, age, location, gender, photo, categories set (the profile stuff that I don't think many use any more), and other info. That seems more than enough to start building a profile on someone that you have no relationship with. Particularly if you're able to collect in quantity and join the dots.

> more recently, it’s become so limited that using apps for data collection about friends is almost a pointless endeavor.

I was aware it had changed some, but not when or how much. You seem to agree that it used to be useful for data gathering on friends.

That's less than ideal when most of us have connections to teen, and elderly, relatives who might be insufficiently suspicious of a fun questionnaire. To over-generalise a little neither group is renowned for tech awareness.

Re: Facebook Sued by Investors Over Voter-Profile Harvesting

#116

Post by IshKebab »

kaeawc wrote: post #80
downandout wrote: post #24

"...defendants made false or misleading statements and failed to disclose that Facebook violated its own data privacy policies by allowing third parties access to personal data of millions of Facebook users without their consent..." The "without their consent" part is BS, as is this lawsuit. When you use Facebook platform apps, you have to consent to the disclosure of your information to the developer, and have to ag…

I am a developer of an app that makes use of Facebook friend permissions and have seen the various API changes they have made since 2014. Applications using Facebook Graph 2.+ (which is the only option since Spring 2015 or so) who access friend data may only access data of friends who have also given consent to your app. So if A and C log into a Facebook app, and A is friends with B and C, the app can only be aware t…

They haven't got around that, it's just that this data "breach" happened before 2015 when the old API was removed.

Re: Facebook Sued by Investors Over Voter-Profile Harvesting

#117

Post by downandout »

Xylakant wrote: post #107
JimmyAustin wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From https://www.facebook.com/terms.php , item 2.3 When you use an application, the application may ask for your permission to access your content and information as well as content and information that others have shared with you. We require applications to respect your privacy, and your agreement with that application will control how the application can use, store, and transfer that content and information. (To le…

The whole point is that you cannot meaningfully consent to give out information about your friend since they’d have to consent to that. Even acknowledging they exist and are your friends is already information. To make matters worse, the v1 API would happily hand out information about your friends, such as their likes without _their_ consent. Not your privacy is breached - theirs is. And there’s no way user A can mea…

It was yours to share because it was shared with you.

Re: Facebook Sued by Investors Over Voter-Profile Harvesting

#118

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

The media discusses voter-profile harvesting mostly in a past context of Brexit and US elections. These countries are politically stable. A far more dangerous picture paints itself in emerging and poor economies.

For example FB recently announced it would roll out job-posts[1] for low-income workers.

In poor parts of Europe like Croatia, Serbia, BiH & Balkans (where I chose to live and work as a foreigner), many people use Facebook to find work and network w/ colleagues. In these locations facebook is the Internet. Often you usually accept a friend request before you are able to discuss a job.

FB job market will lock in users from those regions even further. These economies don't stand a chance and are already bled dry thanks to facebook & Co not paying their taxes. These locations already suffering a huge braindrain of local talent.

Their local society / governments are becoming increasingly corrupt[2] because and honest work opportunities are so scarce some people (like nurses or occupational therapists helping the elderly and disabled) even work for free[3] (I know several people who have the choice of working for free or not be able to graduate).

So many people just leave to the North where they find themselves in slave-labor like conditions in Germany[4]. (sorry for switching focus to Germany for a second I'm trying to show some causality). It's not limited to healthcare. Literally any industry has setups where shady middle-man benefit from Germanys "Arbeitnehmerüberlassungsgesetz" (yes that's a word) which is Germany's outsourcing law (a law criticized for creating a dual class workforce) and they are making a killing thanks to the many loopholes present to exploit foreigners/minorities.

When facebook rolls out it's job postings for low-skilled and low-paid jobs it's targeting the most vulnerable minorities in politically volatile regions.

One takeaway from the facebook/CA election meddling is that because majority of people in Balkans are already depending on facebook, it's even easier to spread disinformation and rig elections. And it's giving powers to local crime gangs which usually influence 100% of the electorate[5]. Ask yourself what data harvesting means in these regions, who benefits and what effects this might have 3-5 years from now.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/28/facebook-job-posts/

[2] https://euobserver.com/political/136664

[3] http://www.etf.europa.eu/pubmgmt.nsf/%28getAttachment%29/760...

[4] http://www.dw.com/en/foreign-nurses-exploited-by-unfair-priv...

[5] https://www.amazon.com/McMafia-Journey-Through-Criminal-Unde...

Re: Facebook Sued by Investors Over Voter-Profile Harvesting

#119

Post by gambiting »

downandout wrote: post #49
vkou wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were to ask 30 Facebook users whether or not Fred taking a stupid personality quiz leaked all their info, 29 of them would say no. This is why we need informed consent for data collection.

The point is that Facebook disclosed to you that this might happen. Failing to read the TOS is not the same as not having been informed. If you fail to read your mortgage contract but sign it anyway, you’ll still lose your house if you don’t live up to the terms. And for the record, the friend data that Facebook makes available to apps is far from “all” of it, especially nowadays

In EU all sorts of EULAs are invalid almost by definition and have proven time and time again that they don't stand up in court. Terms of any contract have to be reasonable - if your mortgage has a clause that says "the bank can terminate your mortgage for displaying flower pots on the north side of the building" that would 100% not stand up in court. Yes, you agreed to it, but it's not a reasonable clause.
Post reply on HN