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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

#181

Post by Libturd »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #132
fortythirteen wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But... don't you remember how cool Obama was? He loved his blackberry!

advertiser of the year!!!

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

#182

Post by wmeredith »

joering2 wrote: post #142
simias wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> My guess is that if you manage to do all of that you'll just end up bought by Facebook anyway. Of course.. unfortunately you can't say no when some behemoth wants to buy you. /s

It's indeed a rare breed that can, especially when the checks come with nine zeros.

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

#183

Post by jon_richards »

trentnix wrote: post #121
fortythirteen wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

181437

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

#184

Post by wmeredith »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #173
xienze wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How about we fix this so that no future politicians can benefit from this kind of targeted advertising - both liberal and conservative? I’d be fine with it, but the first step is admitting that yes, Obama benefited from harvested social media data as well. No one wants to do that, this is all a Trump thing as far as the media, and therefore the general public, is concerned.

No but seriously why is the first step admitting that Obama benefitted? People are up in arms that their data was misused, why do you care whether they're politically motivated or not?

> No but seriously why is the first step admitting that Obama benefitted?

Because whataboutism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

What Obama did was unethical as far as I'm concerned, as is most modern marketing. (I will say one campaign was selling hope and progressive change while the other was fear mongering and spreading divisiveness. So I think there is a difference.) Having said that, I don't know that it matters. Granting these powers to people we happen to like doesn't mean they won't be abused by people we don't. Modern mass marketing is gross. It's the grand scale manipulation of people by exploiting individual human weakness/bias. I'd like to see some smart regulation around it, but I'm skeptical that will happen.

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

#185

Post by wmeredith »

gberger wrote: post #56
pmalynin wrote: post #2

And the ironic cherry on top is the line right under the report “Like the FTC on Facebook.” It this a farce?

I'm sure you know that, but that paragraph looks like a standard blurb that is pasted onto all press releases.

It does come off as farcical, but alas it is not. It's the reality of the situation and nicely illustrates the scale of the issue. Good or bad, Facebook is infrastructure and it's been paid for with privacy.

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

#186

Post by freejulian »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #132
fortythirteen wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But... don't you remember how cool Obama was? He loved his blackberry!

Obama...that was the president who authorized the FBI to infiltrate the Occupy Wallstreet movement and paint the protesters as rapists and weirdos, right? Democrats who think highly of him are no better than Republicans who think highly of Reagan.

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

#187

Post by lambda_lover »

baumy wrote: post #178
lambda_lover wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I definitely believe that the motivation behind this latest media surge is suspect, do you really think people aren't justified in being upset about Facebook's abuse? Maybe the outrage is simply because Facebook was new and people weren't aware of the dangers in 2008 and 2012? People don't have to be "damaged" by something to object to it. How do human rights abuses in third world countries "damage" you, exactl…

> This reeks of whataboutism to me. Why are you trying to imply that we shouldn't be concerned about privacy? I don't think I've seen a single person use the term "whataboutism" correctly since November 2016. People in this chain are simply pointing out that if somebody is angry at Cambridge Analytica, but not Obama's 2008/2012 campaigns, they do not actually care about data privacy. They just don't like Donald Trump…

Then we agree. I think that both CA and the Obama campaign's use of personal information on Facebook was a violation of data privacy expectations, and anybody who criticizes one but not the other is a hypocrite and not at all concerned about data privacy.

I was complaining that people are using Obama's data use to justify CA's data use. Obama did it and it was wrong. CA did it and it was still wrong.

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

#188

Post by dfee »

samlevine wrote: post #137

There are a number of ways of paying for a social network. Among them: - Ads - Subscriptions - Loss leader for another product - Microtransactions Facebook does ads. Subscriptions hurt network effects. Google+ ran into a brick wall of network effects. Nobody uses Flattr, and it's hard to imagine people paying a buck for video filters or other premium features. It'd be great to solve the problem without building anoth…

There is an interesting anthropological conversation in here: some segment of the population might be willing to pay for services that protect their privacy, but due to network effects, an integrated society will tend towards the lowest common “customer profile” denominator.

Hmm. Maybe that’s not right. Maybe the lowest quality content will be on the most common denominator platform - maybe that’s what we’re seeing. And maybe that’s why I’ve effectively left Facebook - the folks I want to share and connect with aren’t there.

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

#189

Post by wmeredith »

vuln wrote: post #117
habosa wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The regulatory costs of running a bank are much higher now than before the financial crisis. This means that the chance of an upstart challenging the big players has actually gone down, even though some of the regulation was meant to address concerns of "too big to fail".

Which is the Trump administration is trying to change that to give smaller regional banks a fighting chance. It's weird tat people are against this.

I agree. The tribalism in the current political climate of the US is really damaging on all sides. Trump has done more than a handful of good things and a lot of my friends/family don't want to hear it. Just like my Dad (Fox News watcher, Limbaugh fan, etc...) almost foams at the mouth when you mention Obama/Clinton; it's crazy. He's been conditioned. It reminds of the effects of the two minutes hate from 1984[0]. Too many citizens are completely disengaged from the political process and too many of those that are have bought into these cults of personality.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate

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

#190

Post by lumberjack »

herpderp3dtwerp wrote: post #111
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 can get all of this information from a phone number too. https://www.twilio.com/marketplace/add-ons/nextcaller-advanc... Give it a try with your phone number. It'll provide your address (current and former), income bracket, relatives, siblings, children, etc, etc. Guess what Facebook asks you to provide when initially setting up!?

The difference is that all of that is public information. The kind of tracking that Facebook and Google are doing is not explicitly public information. They infer secrets about your private life from little bits of "innocuous" data that you sweat away during your everyday activities.
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