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Statement by FTC Regarding Reported Concerns about Facebook Privacy Practices

ftc.gov

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

#221

Post by CamperBob2 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #200
vkou wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, what I've described is a textbook example of blatant hypocrisy. Whataboutism is pointing at an unrelated problem, to divert attention from your problem. "But what about African Americans getting beaten!" to draw attention from bread lines and GULAGs - that sort of thing. This is an incredibly related problem. The two cannot be discussed in isolation. This is quite literally, one of the top countries for 'interfer…

> No, what I've described is a textbook example of blatant hypocrisy. Yes, the accusation you've launched is one of blatant hypocrisy; the use of such accusations against those raising an issue as distraction technique to draw attention away from the issue raised is exactly the definition of Whataboutism.

Even when the accusations are indisputably true and relevant?

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

#222

Post by soylentcola »

simias wrote: post #130
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…

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…

Additionally (at least for the IE example) there's another huge difference: those who wished to use an IE alternative could do so and continue to engage the same activities and access all the same content--with a few ActiveX exceptions--as they could before.

Most importantly, those who wished to make the switch from IE to Firefox or Chrome or Safari or Opera, etc. could do so without requiring any additional action by others. Again, outside of a few compatibility issues on a few sites, I could change the software I used without convincing webmasters or other users to do anything.

Same went for webmail. I could switch to Yahoo or Gmail or Hotmail or whatever I wanted without requiring me to convince every other relative, friend, and business contact to do the same.

With something like Facebook, you can't just use a different platform to interact with those same people in the same way unless you convince them all to migrate with you. If everyone you know only wants to use Facebook, then that's your option. You can't set up your profile on Diaspora or Google+ or whatever and expect to enjoy all the things you prefer about them because there's no shared protocol like there is with web browsing or email.

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

#223

Post by myth_buster »

random_rr wrote: post #135
myth_buster wrote: post #126

> [FTC] has an open non-public investigation into these practices Not familiar with open non-public legalese but it sounds like an oxymoron.

Open - the status of the case is "open", meaning it is under active investigation. Non-public - you already know this :)

Gotcha, thanks.

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

#224

Post by dragonwriter »

parthdesai wrote: post #220
dragonwriter wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a way, aren't you deflecting the argument No, I'm deflecting, if anything, a distraction from the argument, by not accepting the shift in subject matter.

By refusing to answer upon the clear hypocrisy pointed out in your argument, because you have no answer. :)

> By refusing to answer upon the clear hypocrisy pointed out in your argument

My only argument in this subthread was that the charge of Whataboutism was correctly made, and cannot be rebutted with a claim of pointing to hypocrisy, since Whataboutism is exactly the fallacy of pointing to hypocrisy to avoid the topic of debate.

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

#225

Post by sandov »

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.

I think it's a circular logic

People think voting with your wallet doesn't change a thing -> they keep buying from unethical companies -> nothing changes -> voting with your wallet doesn't change a thing.

The problem is that it's always the same small group of people who actually change their commercial choices based on companies' ethics. I've avoided Lenovo like the plague since superfish, but I know people who've bought lenovo laptops even knowing quite well about the superfish issue and understanding what firmware level malware means.

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

#226

Post by heisenbit »

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 the 1956 IBM consent degree way back. It changed the course of computer history as IBM had to watch now every step.

The FB consent degree was ignored and so far had little effect. I doubt it will continue to be ignored now as the following has changed:

- FB leveraged by Russian trolls and via data leakage affected the US Presidential elections. Puts the spotlight of politics on social media and FB in particular

- same for Brexit

- GDPR in Europe is a big thing with penalties

- US branches of government shifting left over the next 4 years in reaction to extremist right policies.

- Younger people get Mr. Robot. Older people die. Demographics have been shifting audience away from FB for some time.

These are trends that will not go away. They will affect every decision within FB and with it the growth trajectory.

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

#227

Post by dragonwriter »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #221
dragonwriter wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, what I've described is a textbook example of blatant hypocrisy. Yes, the accusation you've launched is one of blatant hypocrisy; the use of such accusations against those raising an issue as distraction technique to draw attention away from the issue raised is exactly the definition of Whataboutism.

Even when the accusations are indisputably true and relevant?

> Even when the accusations are indisputably true and relevant?

You can probably construct an argument where the hypocrisy of some speaker advancing the argument would itself actually be relevant to the argument being advanced [0], but that's almost never the case in any real discussion; instead Whataboutism (and then tu quoque fallacy more generally) has the same rhetorical purpose as guilt by association or as hominem; create a negative emotional charge attached to some group associated with an argument, and use that to get people to dismiss the argument without considering it's merits.

The accusations in the motivating instances for naming Whataboutism were often both indisputably true and the same type of wrong as the act they served to distract from.(which is as close to relevance as charges of hypocrisy get.) They were still fallacious, just as this one is, irrespective of its truth or.degree of analogy.

[0] e.g., if the argument specifically included as a key point that the speaker did not engage in hypocrisy.

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

#228

Post by losteric »

prolikewhoa wrote: post #175
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…

I wish the USA would stop calling people conspiracy theorists for critical thinking, especially as we see more what used to be 'conspiracy theories' actually come to fruition. It actually hinders critical thinking and is a bad path to go down.

America has three types of "conspiracy theorists"

* Logically consistent in niche fields that could be verified if more information was public (Room 641A); these should really just be called "theories"

* Harmless garbage ideas perpetuated by dumb people (flat earthers); these theories deserve open ridicule

* Propaganda created by intelligent people with the intent of causing harm (Uranium One); these should simply be illegal as libel

Those are important distinctions. Some conspiracy theories are straight up garbage, they do not deserve any modicum of respect... legitimate theories are in the minority.

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

#229

Post by philipwhiuk »

olympus wrote: post #169
gnode wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anybody know what the legal situation (in US or under the GDPR) is for data derived from inferences? E.g.: if he visits this nightclub he's gay, or if she goes to this clinic she's having an abortion. As the subject never told you, but rather you speculated it, it could be argued you don't know, and you don't have to record it in explicit terms. It also raises significant concerns about the accuracy, and whether…

It's not illegal to record whether you think someone is gay. It's probably immoral if you hand that data over to a country that will prosecute someone for being gay (Russia). I'm not aware of any US protections unless they came along with recently passed legislation, but the GDPR had some recourse for European citizens. They are now guaranteed a right to explanation and a right to correct the data. So if a person is…

(and then in the UK you sue for discrimination based on sexuality).

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

#230

Post by pferde »

eggpy wrote: post #84
mrtksn wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Please, no, not yet another open and federated social media platform that is in fact not much more than an endless feed of bots posting and reposting twitter posts and rss feeds. The internet can't take much more of those.

I wanted these platforms to succeed, I've had an account and tried using most of them - Diaspora, Friendica, Red Matrix, someothermatrixIdontrememberthenameof, Mastodon, identica/statusnet, ... They're all the same. (I'm sure I'm forgetting at least one or two, but they all blend together.)

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