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Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

theguardian.com

121–130 of 263 posts

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 individua…

I don't know that their belief is a cultural problem, or at least one that's changeable.

The book "The Design of Everyday Things" has this idea that users of things fall into one of two broad groups:

a) users that want fine control and expertise, and are willing to sacrifice simplicity to get it b) users that want simplicity, and are willing to sacrifice control to get it

I think that most issues of privacy and security boil down to the simple fact that most people are in group b (really, I think that's true of any issue you care to choose). They don't care, and they won't.

The cultural change that could make a difference is when the more secure, more privacy-positive options are also the easier and simpler choices.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#122
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some regulatory requirements are manageable by a large, established company but not a startup. For instance, requiring human review of user content is going to be tough in a high growth phase.

But that's exactly how it works in many other lines of businesses, e.g. in construction. Many small companies can't provide compliance with the required codes, so they're forced to work their way up the ladder slowly or create joint ventures. Sure, that way you probably can't become a billionaire in a few years, but also bridges fall down less often because of it, so in the end it's not necessarily a bad thing for th…

What makes you think large companies are more capable of developing reliable, secure software?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 individua…

Chalking everything up to “society” is a great way to never get anything solved.

Change starts with oneself. Connecting on an individual level, making changes on an individual level, understanding and valuing even minute consequences on the individual level - that’s what going to bring about permanent change. Not more groupthink.

We have brains and decision-making abilities for a reason. Yes, I understand society has a very influential role in how we go about our lives. But that is not some catch-all excuse for not taking any responsibility for our individual behaviors. There are two sides to the coin that both need to be addressed.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#124
Damn social logins. The biggest one is Spotify. They require you to make a whole new account instead of just unlinking your FB one, and then all of your playlists etc are gone.

I’m going to set aside a day to migrate all of my services, but it’s going to be a pain. Worth it.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#125
post #114
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NoScript doesn't stop the tracking. See the noscript tags in the html example of the post you replied to.

This is one of the reasons I really like uMatrix. In addition to giving really fine-grained controls over what you load (by type of asset, by domain given current domain), it gives you really great visibility into what a webpage is doing, and where it's sending data. I have mine set up to act like NoScript by default -- to block first-party JS. You end up noticing some surprising things. For example, yesterday I read…

Appropriately, the very site this article is sourced from, The Guardian, readily derided Facebook for its invasive tracking aspects. Another link on HN then pointed out that The Guardian themselves spread data out to 56 tracking services.

Que sera.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's exactly how it works in many other lines of businesses, e.g. in construction. Many small companies can't provide compliance with the required codes, so they're forced to work their way up the ladder slowly or create joint ventures. Sure, that way you probably can't become a billionaire in a few years, but also bridges fall down less often because of it, so in the end it's not necessarily a bad thing for th…

What makes you think large companies are more capable of developing reliable, secure software?

Huh? Isn't the point of this whole comment chain that large companies are able to comply with regulations that protect user safety that small companies might not be able to? In that case it's self evident why a large company is better able to protect user safety.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#127
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

The concept of regulatory or legislative capture actually a mainstream one; hardly deserves the conspiracy label. Further, the author's claim is well supported by ongoing legislative efforts as well as those efforts of the administrative agencies. There's a legitimate and level-headed reason to have concern. I'd call it skepticism or pessism at worst.

I'm not saying that regulatory capture doesn't happen, I'm saying that it doesn't necessarily happen every time a new piece of regulation is introduced. Saying that any hypothetical regulation introduced after this Facebook fiasco (and all the other data breaches of late) will benefit Facebook and hurt competitors is not exactly what I would call level-headed skepticism.

Doesn't mean that we shouldn't be very careful about what comes out of this whole discussion and maybe make our voices heard if we deem it unfair or ineffective but we're not there yet.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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