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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

#231

Post by parthdesai »

dragonwriter wrote: post #224
parthdesai wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And you aptly ignored the context of the argument.

Person i replied to clearly uses whataboutism in negative manner and dismisses valid points of use of extended unauthorized data by OFA (Obama for America).

"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"

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

#232

Post by prolikewhoa »

losteric wrote: post #228
prolikewhoa wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Can you elaborate on Uranium One being 'libel'? As far as I know from reading the Wiki, this went to a Congressional Investigation.

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

#233

Post by hodder »

bogomipz wrote: post #206
hodder wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point I'm making is that advertisers and users aren't going anywhere.

But unless you have some clairvoyant powers you don't actually know that. The fallout from this is still forthcoming.

True. I do not. It is pure conjecture, backed historical examples I provided. Could this be different? Absolutely.

I could flip your comment though. Unless you have some clairvoyant powers you don't actually know that "Fallout from this is forthcoming". There may be no further negative fallout from this.

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

#234

Post by downandout »

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…

The user does not know that Facebook it going to tip off the insurance provider about the user's unhealthy eating habits or his chronic medical condition. Or maybe tip off his bank that he has substantial wealth elsewhere.

Are you aware of any instance in which this has actually happened? AFAIK Facebook has not been selling location data to anyone, and this would be a direct violation of their privacy policy.

Further, if I worked for an insurance company or bank, I’d have customers install my mobile app that has lots of convenience features, and have that app request location permissions so that I could get GPS data directly from their mobile device. Then I’d use that location data, that I obtained directly and in accordance with all applicable privacy policies, in all of the scary ways you mention and then some.

Going to Facebook is not the most efficient way to violate the privacy of most individuals. Most people will happily trade their privacy for a small discount or to be able to save a few seconds interacting with a service they use. This is where any legislation in this area should focus - not on punishing a specific company because the “wrong” candidate happened to win an election.

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

#235

Post by [deleted] »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #97
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…

The consequences of using a store loyalty card are not known to the general public either. Yet all transactional information is sold off to third party data brokers and aggregated into profiles where they keep track of you in minute detail. It isn't exactly fair that Facebook is going to be punished while the rest of the industry hides behind its fine print.

[deleted]

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

#236

Post by jstarfish »

waylandsmithers wrote: post #94
cookiecaper wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Remember Digg? Unlike the companies you listed, FB is user-facing - just like Digg. Digg was abandoned because it broke itself. The codebase that all those users knew and depended on was completely trashed (the original author hangs out here sometimes), the site dropped a number of its key functions, and the user experience was redesigned to maximize Digg's ability to show ads, no matter how obnoxious that got, wit…

> The right types of questions to ask are along the lines of whether we're sure competitors have sufficient ground to catch up to massive incumbents and keep them honest (and in this case specifically, whether certain misrepresentations or violations occurred that should be made to materially affect market standing through government intervention). I don't see how there could ever be any viable competition. Facebook…

> I don't see how there could ever be any viable competition. Facebook already has many of the top engineering minds in the world who are pushing the edge of what computers are capable of, not to mention the largest database and neural network of human behavior ever created.

How is any of that necessary?

I don't give a shit about their bleeding-edge neural network or army of PhDs. I just want to send my mom pictures of my kids and maybe send an occasional party invitation to some friends. What does Skynet contribute to this workflow?

I would argue that all that technical bloat only made the Facebook experience worse. Facebook itself had humble beginnings. All a competitor needs is a LAMP or MEAN stack, an experience worth migrating to, and enough ethical sense to not treat its userbase like a science experiment.

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

#237

Post by CamperBob2 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #227
CamperBob2 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 homi…

So, in your opinion, moral authority isn't a thing?

You can cry "whataboutism" all you want when confronted with examples like these ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... ), but don't be surprised or dismayed when no one listens.

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

#238

Post by rdruxn »

shopkins wrote: post #219
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.

This argument is disingenuous, and not really more than a projected opinion. Not everyone is this tribal, and people are allowed to be angry when they see the manifest implications of surveillance capitalism without being partisans.

I don't think it's disingenuous of the media. I just think it exposes their ignorance and inability to imagine the negative consequences of such data analysis. It took something bad, i.e. Trump winning, for them to wake up to the dangers that they cared about.

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

#239

Post by verylittlemeat »

shopkins wrote: post #219
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.

This argument is disingenuous, and not really more than a projected opinion. Not everyone is this tribal, and people are allowed to be angry when they see the manifest implications of surveillance capitalism without being partisans.

History is being written right now and people are rightly seeing a case of selective memory by the media.

Most people agree that social media surveillance is bad. The majority of the HN comments that bring up Obama 2008/2012 are not trying to justify the CA/Facebook incident, rather they're pointing out a hypocritical double-standard.

I want the surveillance to stop and the record to be set straight. We're dangerously close to public sentiment solidifying around the idea that the CA/Facebook incident was unprecedented and arguably stole an election in 2016. I don't think the truth supports that at all and am trying to use comments like this to keep such false narratives out of textbooks 10 years from now.

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

#240

Post by reaperducer »

deepGem wrote: post #217
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…

Isn't this primarily on Android ? Am quite certain no app can monitor your location in the background on iOS. Regardless What pisses me off is FB not providing evidence to the contrary, that they don't harvest data in the bqckground. Not providing this evidence makes it quite clear that they do harvest this data. The issue isn't about permissions. 'Sir, may I come inside your house, is fine, but ransacking the house…

If Facebook does a background news feed update on your iPhone and notices that your iPhone wifi is on the same IP address as another phone (Android or otherwise) with location enabled, then it can record a correlation.

There's probably even better ways of doing it.

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