Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends

#171

Post by newscracker » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 4:50 PM UTC

arthurofbabylon wrote: post #47

Most notable pieces I took from the article: 1) Facebook does not see third parties (such as BlackBerry) as “third parties.” 2) Facebook told Congress that it disabled third party access to user data, but in actuality did not. My own strong interjection: Facebook’s competitive advantage is its disregard for ethics. Somehow, Zuckerberg has been able to convince a lot of smart people to do unethical things and build un…

Talking about ethics, this is going to sound below the belt. If Facebook were to enter into a contract with the defense department like Google did (and terminated a renewal just a few days ago), I doubt if any Facebook employees would even think of creating a petition to management or of quitting their jobs over that. Somehow I feel the people that Facebook attracts as employees may be the ones who don't care much for others overall. That or they're so dedicated to work that they're completely oblivious about all the news in the last several years.

Re: Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends

#172

Post by zaroth » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 4:54 PM UTC

detaro wrote: post #169

zaroth wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which partners? In what form? For what purpose? Are we talking about cache data like Amazon Silk? Encrypted backups? It doesn’t help the discussion to conflate user agents with third party applications. But user agents do sometimes push our private data to their own servers — like Chrome’s Omnibar — and if and where that is happening, and how that data is used, absolutely should be disclosed by the device manufacture…

If the bit about "on their servers" didn't refer to device partners I would have expected Facebooks response[1] to the article to call that out as misleading, but it didn't. I hope too we'll see details somewhere to get a better judgement of how bad/not bad it is. [1] https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/06/why-we-disagree-with-th...

Thanks for the link!

I had not read Facebook’s response but it seems to me to perfectly describe what actually occurred with these APIs and highlights what NYT got wrong with this story.

Re: Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends

#173

Post by newscracker » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 4:55 PM UTC

product50 wrote: post #54

newscracker wrote: post #24

I for one do not expect Facebook to change much unless there's a big shakeup from the top, including removing Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and others. What they have shown repeatedly is contempt for their users in the guise of apologies and remediations that go nowhere. Since such a shakeup is unlikely to happen, the other thing that could happen is a breaking up of the company, which I'm guessing (this is not a…

At least try to understand what is going on before regurgitating all your confirmation biases against Facebook. These device APIs were a necessity before iOS and Android came along. How do you think you got FB experience on Blackberry before they had an app store? Pretty sad piece by NYTimes who are just trying to get views and probably have an agenda against FB (given how much FB is ravaging their business model). T…

The device APIs are not just "before iOS and Android came along". And they have remained and alive for a lot longer than they were supposed to be. That much is clear both from the NYTimes report (though it did lack clarity and could've been much better) and from Facebook's own response. Where is the statement that billions of devices (including older ones) out there don't have this access any longer?

Re: Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends

#174

Post by newscracker » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 4:56 PM UTC

johnchristopher wrote: post #52

newscracker wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any breakup, if it were to happen, would be likely to be triggered mainly by the EU, IMO. For all the complexities that EU regulations sometimes bring in, I see the EU as the only hope in such cases.

When has the EU ever break up a world class monopoly ?

Maybe this time is when? I don't know. But I personally don't have hopes on any other government or governments to take such an action.

Re: Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends

#175

Post by matchagaucho » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 4:58 PM UTC

The first 500M Facebook users were signing up for "the graph".

The NY Times piece even goes so far as to illustrate this in diagrams.

The graph was a phone book replacement... "white pages" for the Internet.

It was only when public discourse on FB pivoted to religion and politics; both very private and personal topics; that sentiment pivoted towards privacy... and removing themselves from discoverability on the graph.

Re: Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends

#176

Post by goblin89 » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 5:00 PM UTC

staplers wrote: post #159

goblin89 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook’s competitive advantage is its disregard for ethics. This appears to be a quality that occurs in some business owners. I know more than a single entrepreneur with similar disregard for things like data retention and PII. Their reluctance to address these issues when advised, I assume, would persist until they get burned. Taking a step back, at the root it appears simply that some people are better at focus…

similar to reprimanding someone on the spectrum for not saying hello Why hold anyone in the upper class accountable for their actions when we can just claim they all suffer from mental disorders and make excuses for them?

I might’ve been unclear, I do think we could push for more enforced accountability in these cases.

The parallel between narrow focus and mental disorder was meant to illustrate how attributing these outcomes to malice (which I sometimes see) is ineffective. If those actors play by the rules and are immune to ethics-based arguments, then maybe the rules are due to be updated.

Re: Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends

#177

Post by dang » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 5:02 PM UTC

cryptoz wrote: post #144

hackinthebochs wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you actually write this many words based on your disagreement of my usage of "literally"?

No, I wrote that comment because you are an abrasive member of the community who is writing direct insults to other members, calling them deranged, etc, and doing other things that are against the rules of the site. You are breaking the conversation here. You are distracting. You are lying. You are being abrasive and causing fights. You are calling people names and causing a big scene. You ignored my entire post, and…

Since this is a repeating pattern and asking you many times to stop doing it hasn't apparently worked, I've banned you until we get a commitment from you at hn@ycombinator.com that it won't happen again.

Re: Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends

#178

Post by dang » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 5:02 PM UTC

hackinthebochs wrote: post #141

cryptoz wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is literally no different than a web API or scraping facebook HTML, just more streamlined. I see you're using the new definition of literally, the one that means figuratively. In the same sentence you have said it is no different and then said it is vastly different. Your post makes no sense. Even if you were right that the data is 100% hash-compatible, SHA-1 it and get the same data as the API (you're wrong),…

Did you actually write this many words based on your disagreement of my usage of "literally"?

Here you've crossed into incivility, which is not ok. Please (re-)read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

Re: Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends

#179

Post by choward » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 5:07 PM UTC

paulie_a wrote: post #33

Shooooooooocking. This getting pathetic. Personally I am using Facebook less and less and attempting to block it as much as possible.

I think it's pathetic when people complain about something and continue to use it. That's why companies are allowed to get away with so much bs.

Re: Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends

#180

Post by mic47 » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 5:12 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #90

Facebook's old policy: Move fast and break things. Facebook's new policy: Move fast and deny everything. I'm only half-joking as I was surprised to see a Facebook rebuttal so quickly after an article like this. It seems a new strategy is in place, to not let these article fester. The problem is their response is devoid of actual content, or even actual rebuttals to the main points of the NYT article. Mainly that FB d…

> I was surprised to see a Facebook rebuttal so quickly after an article like this.

Article contains Facebook's response, so they most likely read it before it was published. As far as I can tell, they probably didn't like the way reported interpreted things so they prepared at least part of the response before, so they can react when it will be published.