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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

#151

Post by mrlala »

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…

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

What??? I watched most of it, and while Zuckerberg agreed that legislation in some areas are needed, he was quite clear that most times that he does not think legislation is the answer. He said that they would internally implement things.

Multiple senators kept trying to get direct yes/no if he would support such regulation and he would say "I look forward to my team discussing that with you" when they wanted hard "yes" that he would champion regulation.

So I don't understand your post at all...

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#152

Post by dosycorp »

Mark is more like an Emperor come to visit affiliated crowns than a servant being questioned by his masters.

Maybe the Senate’s deference in part is motivated by their belief he may run and win in a few years and they hope to win favor from a man they may end up working for.

Secondly perhaps it is motivated by them not wanting to appear too knowledgeable nor too much of a threat to Mark, to put him at ease, lest they otherwise provoke his wrath.

Third I think their attitude is certainly motivated by the awareness, from those in governments, just how powerful internet giants, particularly FB, are. I believe in no small ways have these companies upended the conventional relationships of individuals, and corporate individuals, to the state. They command vast resources, such as people and intelligence ( and automated processes pertaining to them, i.e, algorithms or bureaucracy, pick your favorite term ), traditionally the purview only of state entities.

I’m quite sure that many in government consider these companies are direct threats to the future of their model of governance. But they also feel they must handle them very delicately. Because they do not want to risk a premature confrontation they are unprepared for.

But if any person alive today was going to mount some sort of the future coup against conventional government, spearheaded by the new tech elite, then Mark is a perfect candidate. He is a student of history and demonstratedly strategically effective.

In this light, perhaps the biggest takeaway of a public questioning such as this is how much of a theatrical side show and possibly a distraction it is from the new reality these powerful groups find themselves contesting.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#153

Post by notacoward »

Yes, the hearing was a sham, but not quite in the way the OP thinks. To quote Hannibal Lecter, in turn quoting Marcus Aurelius:

> Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do, this man you seek?

What do senators do? Primarily, they get themselves elected. They see that Facebook might have a role in that. They're trying to figure out if it can help them, or help their opponents, or if they can turn it from one to the other. Secondarily, while there's so much negative sentiment about Facebook (I'll write about journalists' role and agenda in fanning those flames another time), they want to be seen as asking hard questions. They don't want to be asking hard questions until they know where the advantage to themselves might be, but they want to seem that way. Anything else is just window dressing.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#154

Post by Zarel »

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.

But what's the real answer?

Imagine my friend writes down my phone number in his iPhone's contacts list, and then installs an app – let's say some random game. The game asks for permission to access contact info, which my friend grants because he's careless. The game steals contact info and does various nefarious things with it.

In this analogy, Facebook is Apple, and Cambridge Analytica's app is the phone game. I don't think there's a good solution to this problem, except to make it harder for third-party apps to access contact information, which both Facebook and Apple have been doing.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#155

Post by dishanr »

throwaway413 wrote: post #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.

You can ask the Spotify customer service to migrate your data from the old account to the new one. I did and they transferred all my content.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#156

Post by mrlala »

michaelt wrote: post #55
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…

I consented to sharing my data with the 3rd party, which was essentially a license for that party to own that data. Imagine you're not a facebook user. When Facebook sucks up your name and phone number and e-mail address out of your buddy's phonebook, along with all the messages and calls between you, have you consented? What about when you get a 'shadow profile' based on tracking buttons and pixels on other websites…

>When Facebook sucks up your name and phone number and e-mail address

Oh no NOT MY NAME PHONE NUMBER AND EMAIL!!! How dare they find such PRIVATE AND SENSITIVE INFORMATION!!

Christ, there are probably hundreds of data firms that have this basic info on most everyone in their target group.

There are levels of privacy, and freaking out because your friend shares his contact list is about the lowest one I can think of.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#158

Post by statictype »

jacquesm wrote: post #113
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 never was part of 'the free internet', in fact it is a force strongly against the free internet.

I think that was his point. Facebook's ascension corrodes the Free Internet

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#159

Post by extra88 »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #126
smaddox wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Organization size doesn't really correlate to software reliability or security. But that's not where the problems with Facebook and online privacy generally are. Any org of any size can follow rules like not sharing user information with third parties (though eliminating business models dependent upon that could be limiting).

Smaller organizations would have a much harder time complying with legal changes that significantly erode the Safe Harbor provisions of the DMCA that make platforms not responsible for the actions of their users.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was a sham

#160

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

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…

it was a sham because asking hard questions would require them to admit FB being an important asset for US own intelligence operations.

If they drill too deep they'd need to face very uncomfortable questions about other platforms too, e.g Palantir (Thiel was right there lurking ;)). Facebook is the Internet in many countries (making them less resilient and even more prone to meddling than the US). And so looking at it from the IC perspective FB is too big to fail:

- Remember Palantir worked with CA on the Facebook data it acquired: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16690721

- Remember how confident in May 2016 Thiel was of a Trump presidency and when he openly started endorsing Trump? Was he operating with more knowledge than available to the general public: http://fortune.com/2016/05/10/peter-thiel-trump-delegate/

- His $1.25 million donation in October 2016 seems even more interesting now: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/technology/peter-thiel-do...

- Leaked Palantir Doc Reveals Uses, Specific Functions And Key Clients https://techcrunch.com/2015/01/11/leaked-palantir-doc-reveal...

- This is who runs PRISM: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/is-this-who-runs-prism

Oh and Palantir enables Immigration Agents to Access Information From the CIA: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13895827

Also more uncomfortable questions: https://twitter.com/RidT/status/983789426340921349

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