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Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

theguardian.com

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#81

Post by ilovetux »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #35
spacehome wrote: post #5

I was struck that on the surface it looked quite adversarial. Senators were trying to ask fairly pointed questions (despite any technical ignorance). But underneath the surface, the two parties here have fairly well aligned goals -- less freedom on the Internet. The senators want to show that they're doing something, and Facebook welcomes regulation in order to suffocate would-be competitors with it. I'm sure they're…

On an unrelated note: I always wonder how people nowadays identify the Internet with WWW. There are so many ways to use the Internet in a way not even remotely related to the current power struggles between greedy businesses and duped users, with incompetent governments meddling in from time to time.

I couldn't agree more, the world wide web is definitely just a piece of the internet. I remember the battles over chat protocols, the scourge of p2p protocols and even the move from email to webmail and back again.

The web has always been a bit contentious for instance the browser wars are still being fought in some way even today. The problem is that the web is where developers were able to build without concern over who the powers that be even were but now the web has been turned into a creepy surveillance machine.

Our current president even paid Cambridge Analytica to socially engineer all of us. Turns out the tricks that hackers used to employ have been appropriated for use by the web monopolies. I can't think of a way in which this turns into anything good for the average person.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#82

Post by extra88 »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #76
golergka wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people use it this way? Internet without people doesn't have much use. Internet with only geeks on is better, but still pretty limited.

I operate my own mail server. To send and receive email, I use the imap and smtp protocols. No need for the web there, unlike Gmail captives. There was this thing called "newsgroups", some day before my time. Wasn't the web. IRC is still a thing. So is XMPP. Isn't the web. I'm not sure what you mean by "internet without people". There are plenty of people outside of HTTP.

I use Gmail over IMAP and SMTP, only logging in through the web to change server-side mail filtering rules.

But yes, as much as I love the web, it's funny how people forget (or never realized) there are other protocols.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#84

Post by aninhumer »

sametmax wrote: post #36
5555624 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you signed up for Facebook, was there a screen that said, "Facebook will take all the information you provide, regardless of format or intent, and monetize it as much as possible, as well as share it with government agencies"? You knew this going in. Many people know this and don't have Facebook account. A lot of people did not know this and are just finding out -- that's where the "outrage" comes out. (A fourth…

Exactly. Facebook is a bad actor. It's good if we can do something about it. But Facebook is not the root of the problem. There will always be bad actors. The root of the problem is that people don't care. I told me friends and relative, again and again, about those issues. I answered any question. I did research, on MY time, to answer their concerns, for them who would not dare spending a second on it. I listened pa…

>So I have currently zero empathy for the "victims" of this leak. Quite the contrary, I feel a little angry. Because I have to leave in a world that could be much more beautiful if only people, sometimes, just sometimes, though about the consequences of their life instead of just going with the motion. And this affects much more than privacy. And it's unfair.

And the very fact that you insist on blaming the individuals for a collective problem is why problems like this are so hard to solve.

If so many people don't care about this issue, despite its importance, maybe you should stop blaming them and expecting them to magically start caring, and start thinking about how our society leads them to believe it's not an issue?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#85

Post by simias »

spacehome wrote: post #5

I was struck that on the surface it looked quite adversarial. Senators were trying to ask fairly pointed questions (despite any technical ignorance). But underneath the surface, the two parties here have fairly well aligned goals -- less freedom on the Internet. The senators want to show that they're doing something, and Facebook welcomes regulation in order to suffocate would-be competitors with it. I'm sure they're…

>Facebook welcomes regulation in order to suffocate would-be competitors with it

Sounds like a libertarian conspiracy theory to me, especially when we still don't know what these hypothetical regulations would look like. For instance if they make it easier to access your data, download and delete it they might somewhat weaken the lock-in effect of Facebook and level the playing field somewhat.

Beyond that and even if they make it slightly harder to build a social network in the future it doesn't mean that a reasonable amount of regulation is not worthwhile. If you want to start a bridge-building company you'll have to abide by a massive amount of rules, yet I'm not really sure I want to let the "completely free market" decide what a safe bridge looks like.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#86

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #78
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Internet is the infrastructure plus a set of protocols, with HTTP being just one of them. The protocols the most heavily used tend to be regulated (at least in the EU...), the rest - not so much. So each time I hear someone talking about "the death of the Internet" when they mean regulation related to the WWW, I feel at least we as "hackers" should remember this important distinction because sooner or later, once…

There's a flip side to this: in part thanks to this lack of regulation, anything outside the popular protocols tend to be blocked in an increasing number of network. I can see this becoming so bad that the only way to communicate freely would be to tunnel our stuff through TLS on port 443. (That is, doing what looks like HTTPS.)

That's true. Fortunately, if everything else fails, we should always be able to connect on 443 via stunnel for example, no matter what protocol we use. That's the price to pay for the net getting more complex and more abused.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#87

Post by lopmotr »

jschwartzi wrote: post #73
bigB wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have consented to your friend having your data in his phonebook...it has nothing to do with Facebook. Its like saying that if your money is in a bank, and that bank gets robbed then the theives are responsible for you getting your money back, not the bank. You as a third party have no recourse on Facebook, but you should against your friend who shared the phonebook with consent As for the grandma analogy, you ind…

The problem is that the world you're arguing for is one where I get all my friends to sign a contract before I give them my personal details. Nobody wants that, not even in exchange for whatever Facebook provides. It's a perverse expectation rooted in some kind of idea that all human exchange must be regulated by some contract. And thieves are indeed liable for returning money.

It doesn't have to be a contract, it can just be trust, of the same type that people use to tell friends their personal feelings or whatever. If you know someone's who's a gossip, they might be fun to talk to but you wouldn't tell them you cheated on your wife because you don't trust them in that way.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#88

Post by Consultant32452 »

listenallyall wrote: post #26
chiefalchemist wrote: post #9

These are the same elected officials that approved ISPs selling usage data? The same officials that were silent when Snowden released what he had? Etc. Do I trust MZ and FB? Yes, as much as I trust Uncle Sam. Hint: Not much. The sham is on us. Again.

+1. Zuckerberg should have pointed out exactly who voted for the renewal of the FISA surveillance program in Jan. "Look, if an American citizen is angry enough and chooses to never share any more data with Facebook, s/he has that right and the ability. With the NSA/CIA/FBI/TSA/Homeland Security/traffic cameras/license plate readers/stingrays, there is no opt-out. Period."

I would be shocked if the government was not a major customer of FB.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#89

Post by aninhumer »

5555624 wrote: post #10
lwansbrough wrote: post #7

I believe writers from the Guardian would sooner hand over control of the United States to the EU rather than try to understand why the US does things differently; but I think this question bears repeating: ethically, what has Facebook done wrong? Understanding the full context of this hearing is vital to your opinion on the matter. I'm nobody with an outsider's perspective, but to me Facebook has made very few error…

When you signed up for Facebook, was there a screen that said, "Facebook will take all the information you provide, regardless of format or intent, and monetize it as much as possible, as well as share it with government agencies"? You knew this going in. Many people know this and don't have Facebook account. A lot of people did not know this and are just finding out -- that's where the "outrage" comes out. (A fourth…

>Very few people ever read "Terms & Conditions" and that's a problem.

Many people seem to be blaming this on the individuals for not reading it, but I would argue that the problem here is a legal system that allows this kind of dark pattern to be considered consent.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#90

Post by simias »

Dowwie wrote: post #42

I have had enough of the latest anti-Facebook vitriole. A lot of people want to see someone, preferably Zuck, drawn and quartered, but I don't. He has accepted responsibility for mistakes and has agreed to do more to protect its users. I believe him. I also believe he has earned a chance to redeem himself, considering the value that Facebook has created for society at little to no cost to its users. Most of the Hacke…

I've never used Facebook but isn't its success mostly being "at the right place at the right time"? There were social networks before it and I'm not really sure what's so unique and revolutionary about Facebook. I think the main differentiating factor over something like MySpace was the use of real names and the more "adult" interface which lined up with the complete "mainstreamification" of the internet in the 2nd half of the 2000's.

As a thought experiment do you think that in an alternative universe where Zuckerberg doesn't exist there's no social networks? People started using Orkut, MySpace and friends then around 2008 decided "nah, this is silly" then went back to ICQ and sending emails?

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