Live data from Hacker News

Statement by FTC Regarding Reported Concerns about Facebook Privacy Practices

ftc.gov

71–80 of 285 posts

Re: Statement by FTC Regarding Reported Concerns about Facebook Privacy Practices

#71
post #3

Remember the delete Uber campaign, the Equifax breach, the WFC accounts, the Bank of America suits, the Intel chip vulnerability? The market doesn't. The market has a short memory, and FB is not going anywhere. However, there may be some welcomed changes in data abuse. With that said, I think the stock is a bargain today.

Everyone complaining about Facebook today is defiantly moving to Instagram and Whatsapp... joke’s on them that Facebook owns both.

The conspiracy theorist in me would say that Facebook is reaching the end of its lifecycle and the company has prepared itself in advance for the move to newer social media platforms, and that they’re not particularly concerned about people leaving Facebook.

Re: Statement by FTC Regarding Reported Concerns about Facebook Privacy Practices

#72
post #59
post #3

Remember the delete Uber campaign, the Equifax breach, the WFC accounts, the Bank of America suits, the Intel chip vulnerability? The market doesn't. The market has a short memory, and FB is not going anywhere. However, there may be some welcomed changes in data abuse. With that said, I think the stock is a bargain today.

How is the top comment here a weak version of, “come on in, the water is fine” when Facebook keeps dripping scandal? A lot of armchair investors and professionally apathetic people the last couple of days, and they’re all making the same claim, “nobody cares.” Meanwhile it’s still being drilled in the media, keeps hitting the front page here, dropped tens of billions, and so on. “Nobody cares” feels more like despera…

I'm not an "armchair investor". I'm a real investor. My money is where my mouth is. I am simply trying to rationally assess the outcome on users, and I don't think this will matter to the vast majority of them. Nobody cares.

Do I care? Sure I do. But will a tiny minority of tech users matter to the stock in the long term? Unlikely.

Re: Statement by FTC Regarding Reported Concerns about Facebook Privacy Practices

#73
post #48
post #3

Remember the delete Uber campaign, the Equifax breach, the WFC accounts, the Bank of America suits, the Intel chip vulnerability? The market doesn't. The market has a short memory, and FB is not going anywhere. However, there may be some welcomed changes in data abuse. With that said, I think the stock is a bargain today.

Remember when sexual assault and harassment were routine, and powerful men could do what they wanted with impunity? There was an awakening, the public mood changed, people were energized and emboldened to take action. What used to be an open secret is now taboo and many powerful men have been fired and disgraced. Remember the awakening about the unhealthy effects of sugary carbonated beverages? That wasn't a one-time…

My gut feeling on what's really going on here politicians on both sides of the aisle have realized that not only can they use Facebook against their opponent, their opponent can use Facebook against them, or someone else could use it against both of them.

I suspect where possible, politicians prefer to minimize the number of highly influential entities. That the public is also helped is just gravy.

Re: Statement by FTC Regarding Reported Concerns about Facebook Privacy Practices

#74
post #31
post #3

Remember the delete Uber campaign, the Equifax breach, the WFC accounts, the Bank of America suits, the Intel chip vulnerability? The market doesn't. The market has a short memory, and FB is not going anywhere. However, there may be some welcomed changes in data abuse. With that said, I think the stock is a bargain today.

Remember Digg? Unlike the companies you listed, FB is user-facing - just like Digg. If users happen to decide that a company is not "cool" anymore or dispase its public figure(Zuckerberg), it may actually go away. Remember IE(stands for Internet Explorer)? Using Firefox and later Chrome became a crusade and the almighty brand of the richest person in the world that holds the monopoly on computers platforms bled to de…

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/facebooks-stock-bounces-sl...

I mean, something like 80 percent of Fortune 500s from a generation ago are out of business.

So yeah, it seems plain Facebook will die "someday".

Doesn't appear to be any time soon, though.

Re: Statement by FTC Regarding Reported Concerns about Facebook Privacy Practices

#75
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I added IE to my example to illustrate that having all the money in the world may not save you when your brand becomes toxic. Some may say that FB users don't care but with IE it also was just geeks and devs, but it turned into a crusade and now everyone "knows" that the first thing you do after you have a fresh PC is to install Chrome.

The difference is, if devs don’t support your brower, your browsing experience suffers. Every developer on Earth could leave Facebook and it would not make the experience of using fb any worse. Facebook is not a software platform, it’s an ad platform. If anything fb would get better if we stopped targeting it.

I remember the process, it had nothing to do with the dev support. Actually, it was the other way around - IE had all the dev support and websites broke down on Firefox but people were fanatics. There were extensions that let you render the page in IE if it's not working on Firefox.

When the Chrome came along, Firefox already put a dent in IE market share and it already became socially unacceptable for techies to use IE but regular people still used IE so the devs were forced to make sure that everything works perfectly on IE too. For the masses, thanks to the developers, IE displayed the websites just fine up until the bitter end.

Friends didn't let friends use IE and it was killed.

Re: Statement by FTC Regarding Reported Concerns about Facebook Privacy Practices

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that is an apt analogy. Facebook users become so entrenched with their social network, pictures, etc. that it is much harder to delete than a bunch of interest categories.

I don't know. Once you get your photos off of Facebook I think you can leave really easily. You can still message all your important friends through sms or your chosen chat app. Snapchat exists as an alternative for casual photo sharing. Reddit or Twitter for posting news, memes or funny videos. I think people exaggerate the importance of Facebook. Young people can adapt to new technology quickly. I know I was able t…

Young people might be able to adapt to new technology quickly, but they also have some of the strongest social pressures to remain on the technology all their friends are at. The difference between being in the "cool" message group and someone having to message you separately is a much bigger hurdle for them to face than where all your photos go.

Re: Statement by FTC Regarding Reported Concerns about Facebook Privacy Practices

#77
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. Uber tried to fix things by a shake up (but I still don't use Uber). Equifax, I would force to pull my data if I could. Facebook, this kind of stuff is inherent in their business model. Our data is the only obvious thing they can turn into money.

> Equifax, I would force to pull my data if I could You could freeze your credit with Equifax, if you're not looking to take out new credit lines. It costs money, but I've heard it pretty much stops them from making money off your info. That's why the credit agencies are pushing things like "credit locks," which don't have legal mandates behind them meaning they can design the service to suit themselves.

Personally I would want them to not keep any records on me at all.

They are a financial stalker for others

Re: Statement by FTC Regarding Reported Concerns about Facebook Privacy Practices

#78
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I added IE to my example to illustrate that having all the money in the world may not save you when your brand becomes toxic. Some may say that FB users don't care but with IE it also was just geeks and devs, but it turned into a crusade and now everyone "knows" that the first thing you do after you have a fresh PC is to install Chrome.

The difference is, if devs don’t support your brower, your browsing experience suffers. Every developer on Earth could leave Facebook and it would not make the experience of using fb any worse. Facebook is not a software platform, it’s an ad platform. If anything fb would get better if we stopped targeting it.

This is fair. But if users flee from FB, or just start using it less, it does have an impact on advertising: it becomes less effective.

Re: Statement by FTC Regarding Reported Concerns about Facebook Privacy Practices

#79

>Foremost among these tools is enforcement action against companies that fail to honor their privacy promises This is the crux of the issue. The problem is that when Facebook asks for "location information", the consequences of this are not being conveyed to the user. The user might think, "ah they want my location for the weather recommendations and event suggestions in my neighbourhood". They do not realise how som…

Indeed. Collecting a "type of data" tells you almost nothing about what the company collecting it could do or is going to do with that data.

I think regulation around this idea may be most effective. Companies should have limits on what they can do with the data by default. If they want to use it for more, then they should not only offer a much greater degree of transparency but they should have to abide by much higher standards, too, similarly to how medical companies have to abide by much higher standards when collecting your information.

So if a company asks for location data just to use it for weather information, that could be obtained with a single click from the user. If the company intends to use that location data to allow advertisers to target you, then it should be made very clear to the user that this is what the purpose of collecting the data is. And they should need to do more than just click once on a button.

If the same company intends to give the data to electoral campaigns, then higher standards still should be imposed on that company.

The point is we need to start regulation the use of data, and not just what type of data can be collected.

Re: Statement by FTC Regarding Reported Concerns about Facebook Privacy Practices

#80
post #3

Remember the delete Uber campaign, the Equifax breach, the WFC accounts, the Bank of America suits, the Intel chip vulnerability? The market doesn't. The market has a short memory, and FB is not going anywhere. However, there may be some welcomed changes in data abuse. With that said, I think the stock is a bargain today.

Everyone complaining about Facebook today is defiantly moving to Instagram and Whatsapp... joke’s on them that Facebook owns both. The conspiracy theorist in me would say that Facebook is reaching the end of its lifecycle and the company has prepared itself in advance for the move to newer social media platforms, and that they’re not particularly concerned about people leaving Facebook.

Most likely the latter. Facebook is for "old people" according to younger family members. However, they're all over Facebook's other properties.
Post reply on HN