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Statement by FTC Regarding Reported Concerns about Facebook Privacy Practices

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

#81

Post by eggpy »

mrtksn wrote: post #31
hodder wrote: 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…

I was totally ready to call you out and that the rebranding of IE to Edge resulted in no change in adoption and Microsoft wins by default but apparently I am totally incorrect. Chrome is _by far_ dominating the browser game[0]. And while I'd rather FF take that spot, dethroning Microsoft makes my nerd heart pretty happy.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/m...

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

#82

Post by [deleted] »

DataWorker wrote: post #5
hodder wrote: 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.

Was with you up to that last sentence. On what do you base your valuation exactly?

[deleted]

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

#83

Post by mtgx »

hodder wrote: 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.

The market remembers Uber. Why do you think every single little negative they do turns into a "scandal" and why everyone pounds them in the media?

Uber will likely go into bankruptcy soon, if everyone remains very vigilant about their failed self-driving car project. Because without it, Uber is done. The self-driving car project was the last thing the investors hoped would save the company. And it won't.

People also remember Equifax. There is just little they could do, because they don't directly deal with Equifax. It's their banks or credit card companies that do. Plus, Congress almost immediately saved Equifax from lawsuits, and people haven't yet had an opportunity to "respond" to that. They will this fall.

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

#84

Post by eggpy »

mrtksn wrote: post #50
sjg007 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they’ll go to Instagram?

What happens if people start talking about how much they hate Zuckerberg and start looking for alternatives and the cool kids start suggesting each other some other social network that's technically good enough but never took off because didn't benefit from the network effect? Then anything he touches becomes toxic. Zuckerberg isn't even divisive like Trump, he may have issue finding people to rally with him against…

So you're saying it's time to start plugging Mastodon[0]? Because I'm in!

[0] https://mastodon.social/about

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

#85

Post by r00fus »

lumberjack wrote: post #68

>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…

And who knows if the analysis that is derivable from this private data leads to a bunch of false-positives (that are conveniently not known by the person affected)?

You could be "doing nothing wrong" and still get screwed by right people thinking the wrong things about your data.

1984 or Brazil - it doesn't matter they're both dystopias that revolve around totalitarian constructs - neither of them work without this kind of comprehensive information.

[edit: clarity]

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

#86

Post by ChrisSD »

FussyZeus wrote: post #47
mrtksn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If users happen to decide that a company is not "cool" anymore or dispase its public figure(Zuckerberg), it may actually go away. This is already sort of happening anyway with the "my parents are on Facebook now" problem. That I think is a much bigger threat to Facebook's future than any regulations that are coming.

If Facebook started almost 15 years ago and targeted university students then it's a fair bet that many of its users became the parents.

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

#87

Post by bogomipz »

hodder wrote: 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.

>"The market has a short memory, and FB is not going anywhere."

Maybe FB isn't going anywhere but if users and advertisers do you can be sure the market will reflect that.

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

#88

Post by fortythirteen »

lumberjack wrote: post #68

>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…

If I had a nickel for every time someone called me paranoid or a conspiracy theorist for mentioning this before last week, I'd have a ton of nickels.

I should feel better now that people of aware of the nefariousness of this type of data collection, but I feel worse. The general public is being fed this as "Russia" and "Trump", and not getting the real, horrifying, surveillance state truth of what's going on.

I'm less worried that the Trump campaign used CA (and that the Clinton campaign used CTR), than I am by Obama saying "it's just metadata".

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

#89

Post by lambda_lover »

binocarlos wrote: post #67
mrtksn wrote: 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.

Perhaps part of that was that IE was really bad at it's job and as users were told about Chrome and Firefox and they tried it and it was much faster - they switched because IE was not nearly as good. Facebook is pretty good at it's job - despite questionable practices. If Facebook started to suck from a user perspective (a bit like MySpace did) - users would move to another thing in a shot.

I would disagree with the claim that Facebook is "pretty good at its job" -- the News Feed is completely full of ads and "suggested content", notifications have become complete noise at this point, and even Messenger has ads in it now, and makes it difficult to get to your actual list of online friends.

In 2011, Facebook was good at its job, with a chronological news feed, meaningful notifications, and a messenger paradigm that worked much like AIM in the early 2000s -- you could see who was online, away, go invisible, etc. In 2018, Facebook has lost all of those positives, and with it a lot of user engagement, all for the sake of cramming the maximum number of ads down the users throats. And I'm not even getting into the nasty dark UX patterns, like hiding the ability to delete your profile (seriously, there isn't a link to do this anywhere on the site -- you need to search Google for it and they change the link all the time to break external guides) and showing random pictures of "friends who will miss you if you leave!" when you try to delete your account. I don't think your average user would mind leaving Facebook much if there was any actual alternative.

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

#90

Post by [deleted] »

panarky wrote: post #48
hodder wrote: 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…

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