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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

#121

Post by trentnix »

fortythirteen wrote: post #88
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 les…

Google can probably determine EXACTLY how many nickels you’d have and here you are stuck just guessing.

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

#122

Post by Lionsion »

kbenson wrote: post #92
lambda_lover wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pa…

I think you're under the impression that facebook's job is to be good at showing you what you want and being useful. I'm pretty sure they think their job is to balance being just useful enough that you don't quit while maximizing revenue from you, which might entail being pretty crappy to use overall.

> I think you're under the impression that facebook's job is to be good at showing you what you want and being useful. I'm pretty sure they think their job is to balance being just useful enough that you don't quit while maximizing revenue from you, which might entail being pretty crappy to use overall.

This is just a minor quibble to lambda_lover's point, which still stands. Facebook may understand it's job is to shove as many ads in its users' faces as they will tolerate, but that's not why users use its app. It's users view its job as being useful to them, and being bad at that makes makes FB vulnerable to competitors or even just general dissatisfaction.

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

#123

Post by thewarrior »

bitumen wrote: post #59
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.

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…

Their userbase is largely unaffected. There was an article stating that their app store rank has even gone up. They add millions of users a month. So any losses can be absorbed over time if this dies down.

Its quite possible that the stock is oversold at this point.

Its not wishing/spinning. At this point it does look quite plausible.

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

#124

Post by faramarz »

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…

you could build a simple app that illustrates your points.

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

#125

Post by proofbygazing »

fogzen wrote: post #119

How were any of you damaged by Facebook ads, exactly? Why the outrage now and not before, when Obama (and everyone else) used targeted advertising? This whole outrage over privacy is disingenuous. It’s painfully obvious the outrage is about Donald Trump being elected president, not personal information used to target ads.

I think it's awkward how obvious this is, and how comfortable the media is with that being the case. From Wired's article a week ago:

> The crisis was familiar in a way: Facebook has burned its fingers on issues of data privacy frequently in its 14 year history. But this time it was different. The data leakage hadn’t helped Unilever sell mayonnaise. It appeared to have helped Donald Trump sell a political vision of division and antipathy.

So a guy you didn't like got elected and now this is a problem. The same journalists could barely keep it in their pants when Obama was squeezing every mile he could out of data in 2008 and 2012.

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

#127

Post by LifeLiverTransp »

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…

How about a diffrent form of punnishment for privacy violating companys?

Just insert NN generated Noise into there databases. Instant devaluation of there most treasured asset. That has to hurt.

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

#128

Post by Xixi »

philipodonnell wrote: post #100
jakelazaroff wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Companies and products sometimes fail" doesn't really address the claim "the market doesn't seem to punish gross misconduct or negligence." Re: GP's examples, Uber is a "user-facing" company, and the Wells Fargo and Bank of America scandals involved consumer services. Also, it's not like companies are incapable of making conscientious decisions with regard to other companies with which they do business.

For public companies in the US, they are mostly incapable of making decisions like this as if can be shown to negativity effect enterprise value they can be sued by shareholders that do not have the same moral issues.

I read these kind of comments all the time, yet I'm still to see one actual court case showing that this is true. Are you really sure that this is true?

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

#129

Post by Lionsion »

darpa_escapee wrote: post #80
liberte82 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

However, all those were acquisitions. I think Facebook's doomed if it's ever prevented from buying rival social networks. I think trend cycles can throw a wrench in network effects, and Facebook's too established to really innovate in this category.

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

#130

Post by simias »

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…

Digg and IE "died" because there was a real practical incentive to move towards alternatives. This Facebook thing is mostly ideological at the core, in terms of day-to-day user experience it's no better or worse than it was a month ago. Digg also never was more than a small speck of dust compared to Facebook, even at the apex of its popularity. Facebook's huge network effect is hard to overcome.

If you want Facebook to die you have to come up with an alternative with improved usability to convince people to switch over. Now you have do that with the added handicap of "do no evil" (so less money from targeted advertising etc...) while fighting to gain market share against some of the biggest companies in the world. My guess is that if you manage to do all of that you'll just end up bought by Facebook anyway.

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