Ted Cruz clearly showing that he's a partisan hack. Didn't give a crap about users' privacy or the issues at hand, he had to make it about 'liberal Silicon Valley' and 'conservative persecution'. What a joke.
Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress
111–120 of 487 posts
Re: Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress
#112Mark Zuckerberg does not believe he has a monopoly. He believes there is an alternative to Facebook in the way that different car manufacturers have different competitors. Surely he can't mean this, right?
>Mark Zuckerberg does not believe he has a monopoly.
I tend to agree with him. Facebook just happens to be the most popular Internet social network, right now, but there is nothing that makes it a monopoly.
Anyone could replace it, there is nothing actively stopping them from doing so.
I'm sure for decades the Ford Motor Company was thought of as a Monopoly... and then they went bankrupt, and that's just one company that comes to mind right now.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress
#113Re: Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're misunderstanding the intent: obviously they are aware of that. Hearings commonly involve asking basic questions
I know that was probably the intent, but the senator sounded genuinely confused. It didn't sound like a deposition-style question.
Agreed. I’ve been involved in a few of these regulator type of questioning and they all speak the same way. It has the effect of making the (obvious) answer seem criminal. People in real life don’t talk that way because it can come across as rude.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress
#115Ted Cruz clearly showing that he's a partisan hack. Didn't give a crap about users' privacy or the issues at hand, he had to make it about 'liberal Silicon Valley' and 'conservative persecution'. What a joke.
I believe others had been covering privacy pretty well. When it comes to 20k people manually policing content - it is probably good that the group be neutral.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress
#116I guess I'm still confused about this matter. As I understand it, nothing was exploited. A company used intrinsic capabilities of the system to do a job. Are we just raising the question of whether this is an appropriate business model? I suppose that's a good discussion to have. I'm just a bit miffed that we're effectively holding another obscenities hearing while the only thing going on with the Equifax debacle is…
The way Cambridge Analytica's got its data was a little nefarious...as I understand it, they obtained data through ways Facebook discouraged (but still enabled). Whether you consider that an 'exploit' or not is subjective. It's certainly not an 'exploit' in the more common infosec sense. But the real issue here is that Facebook was complicit in electing Donald Trump. It's political.
>But the real issue here is that Facebook was complicit in electing Donald Trump. It's political.
This bit is really terrifying to me. I don't support Trump, but the idea that we're going to make it even harder for "unapproved" political candidates should make everyone's skin crawl.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
He failed to answer a simple question of who can their users migrate over to when they are not happy. Wonder if that will come back to hurt him.
It probably will come back to haunt him. I just feel all sorts of other issues are being blamed on Facebook. Humans can be horrible, there was a genocide in Rwanda. Facebook wasn't needed (not sure it was around back then). If we going to blame Facebook we might as well blame the Mobile phones for enabling us to have Facebook. I feel they should stick to the privacy issues which are true issues.
>Humans can be horrible, there was a genocide in Rwanda. Facebook wasn't needed
Sure, but that doesn't mean we don't evaluate new issues as they crop up. If FB is unwittingly aiding in a genocide then it's reasonable to ask questions. People killed other people before nuclear bombs were invented, but they changed the playing field and allowed for far more destruction than was previously possible.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're misunderstanding the intent: obviously they are aware of that. Hearings commonly involve asking basic questions
I know that was probably the intent, but the senator sounded genuinely confused. It didn't sound like a deposition-style question.
I see so many lawyers adopt this same tone. Something about crafting a narrative or something - maybe to get the interviewee to be a little more open than they normally would because they underestimate the knowledge of their interviewer, or just to make the interviewee make the mistake of thinking the interviewer is generally ignorant/stupid.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress
#119I wonder if MZ have targeted adds on his own facebook account. There seems to be some special rules for him (and probably other 'higher ups' in the facebook hierarchy), thinking primarily about: http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-to-let-users-unsend-....
Re: Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress
#120The point about "not selling data to advertisers" and how Facebook is so totally different was so cringy. Just one follow-up question was needed: if I take out 100 ads microtargeting users, what happens then?
He is right. Even if you did the most microtargeting possible, Facebook is still not selling that user's data, the advertiser gets no data whatsoever on the individual that sees or clicks on the ad.
The most you could glean is if you targeted an ad to one person, then that person clicked on the ad, you know that that one person clicked on the ad. You don't learn anything else about that person.