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Facebook denies it collects call and SMS data from phones without permission

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Re: Facebook denies it collects call and SMS data from phones without permission

#171

Post by baalimago »

akuji1993 wrote: post #129
ponderatul wrote: post #66

I think we are talking differently about this permission concept. Legally yes, they had permission. But the fact that they used those dark ux patterns to request that permission should not be forgotten. Even though legally they are in the right, we as users should make this fact irrelevant and just abandon the platform. Let them be right, let them win the argument but lose the battle with the general public.

I'm still completely convinced that this whole scandal will not damage Facebook a bit, in the long term. Yeah, the stock is going to be a bit lower for some weeks, some people will leave, but the largest part of the Facebook users has not even realised the scandal in full scale. They're not going anywhere, they're going to continue as is, since there really is not alternative for Facebook right now and tbh they would…

Many look to Twitter as their new social media platform, that together with IG (which is owned by facebook sure, but it's "harder" to be political there, which it all comes down to in the end) and Snapchat as a messenger.

Google plus failed, so why wouldn't Facebook eventually do so also? The youth don't have Facebook, it's mostly the 20-40 year olds who do. This 20-40 generation follow the mainstream media news and most of them are capable of realizing the harm in not protecting ones own privacy. Also, the current theme of news regarding social media is that it's being seen as a threat to democracy due to the ease of massive manipulation through political propaganda. A huge attack! Threaten democracy and the people will hate it.

Re: Facebook denies it collects call and SMS data from phones without permission

#172

Post by krick »

Since here's yet another thread about Facebook, I'll ask somewhat unrelated question I already asked on HN, but never seen an answer: can somebody explain, why the scandal around Cambridge Analyica (and, "suddenly", a bunch of other rumors about FB) escalated just now, even though we knew about FB, Cambridge Analytica & Trump for about a year at least (well — I knew for a year, sure lots of people knew earlier)?

I suspect I know the answer, but I have faint hope that it's not true and somebody can provide a bit more "sane" explanation.

Re: Facebook denies it collects call and SMS data from phones without permission

#173

Post by pbalau »

krick wrote: post #172

Since here's yet another thread about Facebook, I'll ask somewhat unrelated question I already asked on HN, but never seen an answer: can somebody explain, why the scandal around Cambridge Analyica (and, "suddenly", a bunch of other rumors about FB) escalated just now, even though we knew about FB, Cambridge Analytica & Trump for about a year at least (well — I knew for a year, sure lots of people knew earlier)? I su…

Can't say I am 100% sure of it, but around 1 month ago Facebook switched the news feed algorithm from promoting posts from pages you like, to promoting posts from your friends.

Re: Facebook denies it collects call and SMS data from phones without permission

#175

Post by evgen »

HenryBemis wrote: post #168
adventured wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter. They have the money, people and time to throw at compliance. GDPR won't dent Facebook in the least. They'll bend where they have to, and no further. They'll pay occasional fines and that won't matter either. If you take it to an extreme and the only thing they can do is show non-personalized advertising and do zero tracking, they'll still print billions in profit in the EU market. That's what ownin…

"occasional fines"? Living in EU, and I am thrilled at the party we will have, when 1-2 million people/facebook users will send this letter to FB [1]. I strongly believe that this will hurt them financially (where it actually matters/hurts). I (try to) sinkhole every tracker, advertiser etc. on my PC and jailbroken iphone. I am sure that I don't block every one, but 90% is better than 0%. It may keep me busy, but whe…

The idea that a GDPR request will cause Facebook any significant financial harm is laughable. They already have a facility to enable you to download your data, expect a similar tool or portal to appear that will provide you with access to this data. No more, no less, and a couple of months work of a few engineers and interns.

Re: Facebook denies it collects call and SMS data from phones without permission

#176

Post by madez »

tlobes wrote: post #161
orbifold wrote: post #57

Ok, well this is just great. So Facebook has all my contacts from their aquisition of WhatsApp and even though I've never used any of their Apps or had an account with them, I'm pretty sure everyone I typically communicate with has the App and did not opt-out of this collection. So they get data on me for free that the police would need a court order to get. This kind of data retention has been highly controversial i…

Crazy thought. When a company with a ton of accumulated assets (data) craters, do the rules of bankruptcy and/or mitigating their losses to investors force them to just sell these assets outright? This may not happen in the next few decades with the likes of Facebook, but imagine what kind of data that much smaller companies have that will just be sold off to the highest bidder, possibly de-anonymized to increase it'…

That's impossible with the GDPR for privacy relevant data. That data cannot legally be an asset of a company because a company cannot own it. A company may be a data processor or data controller, but not a data owner for other peoples private data. They may choose to ask each individual if they agree to let another company use the data, but that's a different thing.

Re: Facebook denies it collects call and SMS data from phones without permission

#177

Post by pbalau »

groestl wrote: post #139
vanderZwan wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even though legally they are in the right Even that is dubious. Law is interpreted by judges for this exact reason: people pushing it to extremes.

What Facebook acquired from their users was "expressed consent", which is notoriously easy to get using dark UI patterns. But the technical community has been using "informed consent" in their definition of malware for a while now, and it is highly questionable if dark UI patterns and "informed consent" are compatible concepts. The legal system (at least in US and EU) needs to catch up to this, but it does. In the EU…

What the fuck is a "dark ui pattern"?

//edit: I googled it.

Re: Facebook denies it collects call and SMS data from phones without permission

#178

Post by p49k »

krick wrote: post #172

Since here's yet another thread about Facebook, I'll ask somewhat unrelated question I already asked on HN, but never seen an answer: can somebody explain, why the scandal around Cambridge Analyica (and, "suddenly", a bunch of other rumors about FB) escalated just now, even though we knew about FB, Cambridge Analytica & Trump for about a year at least (well — I knew for a year, sure lots of people knew earlier)? I su…

For me, it was because a year ago there was only one source for this info, and it was a somewhat dubious one (Vice). I assumed after the initial report that what CA did was more in line with Obama’s tactics, which were more benign and standard. It’s only recently become totally clear that the worst of the reports were true.

Re: Facebook denies it collects call and SMS data from phones without permission

#179

Post by krick »

reacharavindh wrote: post #61

So, this happened and we have confirmed about the dark patterns whether consented or not. What are good alternatives in this "Network effect" age? Facebook - I hardly use anymore. It exists undeleted because it serves as a kind of Social ID. I don't have the App installed anywhere, neither do I access it from my regular browser. The thing I'm struggling to get alternative for is WhatsApp. How could I talk to all my c…

+ Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram and Vider cannot be used w/o phone number (or, in some cases, even without a working phone), which makes them all not trustworthy.

I can only vote for Matrix/Riot once again.

Re: Facebook denies it collects call and SMS data from phones without permission

#180

Post by soziawa »

groestl wrote: post #139
vanderZwan wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even though legally they are in the right Even that is dubious. Law is interpreted by judges for this exact reason: people pushing it to extremes.

What Facebook acquired from their users was "expressed consent", which is notoriously easy to get using dark UI patterns. But the technical community has been using "informed consent" in their definition of malware for a while now, and it is highly questionable if dark UI patterns and "informed consent" are compatible concepts. The legal system (at least in US and EU) needs to catch up to this, but it does. In the EU…

> What Facebook acquired from their users was "expressed consent"

I'm not so sure about that, but that's what courts are for.

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