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Why We Disagree with The New York Times

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Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#51

Post by mkirklions »

stealthefocus wrote: post #37

The one thing I really miss since leaving fb in March, are the groups. Things like playing in local sports pickup games are easier because everyone has fb so the groups were more active. I now use my wife's account for this, but I really wish another option had some traction, then I could leave fb forever.

I dont think there is anything wrong with using FB for things you want.

I dont scroll anymore. I check it for events and messages.

Thats it.

Do that 1-2 times a month, all my facebook needs are met.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#52

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

stealthefocus wrote: post #37

The one thing I really miss since leaving fb in March, are the groups. Things like playing in local sports pickup games are easier because everyone has fb so the groups were more active. I now use my wife's account for this, but I really wish another option had some traction, then I could leave fb forever.

Even if a feature like this adds limited value, it's good to think about whether you can just live without it completely in order to leave Facebook.

For example, consider how the groups feature was abused to prey on people seeking addiction support -- and how even in the midst of such abuse, Facebook lauded some of the organizations in attempts to improve its reputation by highlighting what good it can do.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/21/17370066/facebook-addicti... >

Basically every feature of Facebook that adds a tiny bit of value to a random person's life is actually just some deeply engineered data-harvesting dark pattern that opens up huge other groups to targeted harm.

I see a lot of comments of the spirit, "I would leave Facebook except ..." with some reason like it's the only way to see family photos, it's the only way to participate in online groups, etc.

Just delete it and leave. Share photos some other way. Find groups some other way. The population-scale downsides are just so serious and severe in the case of Facebook that people shouldn't be making the choice to stay on the platform anymore based on narrow-scope, small scale upsides that it offers for them in limited settings.

The huge, up-front, unlimited scale harms it facilitates are reaching a point where they need to be a daily civic concern for everybody.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#54

Post by makomk »

supercanuck wrote: post #5

It seems they don't really disagree but are simply saying, its not as bad as you think. Is there anything factually incorrect in the New York Times reporting?

It's one of those articles that's technically true-ish so long as you redefine words to mean something very different from what people would expect them to, but is written in a way designed to misinform basically everyone who reads it.

For example, when they say "Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends", they mean Facebook let them write software that could be run by their users and give those users access to information their friends had shared. There's nothing technically untrue about this, but it gives a false impression about what information Facebook made available to who. It makes it sound like Facebook gave a big fat chunk of user data to device makers as a bribe to include Facebook on their devices, when in reality we're talking about giving their software the access it needs in order to actually provide access to Facebook in the first place.

I've seen a lot of very confused comments here and on Twitter as a result.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#55

Post by mkirklions »

djhworld wrote: post #10

> All these partnerships were built on a common interest — the desire for people to be able to use Facebook whatever their device or operating system. Facebooks best interest, not 'common interest'

Building on FB is completely different than data-mining FB.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#56

Post by [deleted] »

dbg31415 wrote: post #32

In every situation, people from Facebook would probably be better off if they didn’t talk. This article is really just skeezy. Reads like “we were just doing all the stuff you accused us of, but it’s ok because we are huge creeps too.” It’s so cringe-worthy.

[deleted]

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#57

Post by _red »

jacobsheehy wrote: post #2

It reads like a long defensive argument, "how else did you expect us to make huge sums of money"? It is exactly as tone-deaf and legalese as you would expect. There is no new information here; Facebook says legal contracts actually protect your data so it can't go anywhere, "just trust us", etc. > These partners signed agreements that prevented people’s Facebook information from being used for any other purpose than…

>Signed agreements do not prevent your information from being used in other ways. That's insane, literally.

The real insanity is with the users. FB did the most obvious thing. The user-base somehow magically thought they were providing all those free services because they were nice guys.

It was obvious to anyone since the beginning that FB was a clearinghouse for private data trading. How else could the model remotely work?

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#58

Post by mkirklions »

dbg31415 wrote: post #32

In every situation, people from Facebook would probably be better off if they didn’t talk. This article is really just skeezy. Reads like “we were just doing all the stuff you accused us of, but it’s ok because we are huge creeps too.” It’s so cringe-worthy.

FBs reputation reminds me of AOL....

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#59

Post by jakelazaroff »

esrauch wrote: post #43
vorpalhex wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with offering a public API. There's everything wrong with offering a secret, non-public API where you give a third party I didn't consent to full access to all of my data. See how that's a bit different? One of them is offering public information (say, stock quotes), publicly. One of them is offering private information (my sexual orientation and date of birth) to tons of third parties I didn't…

Surely it is only giving blackberry the information if you type in your login credentials on a blackberry right? I don't see how the situation is actually different now: if you run the official Facebook app on your Galaxh phone then Samsung could scrape and exfiltrate the data anytime it wants. It is Samsung's fault if they do it not Facebook's.

According to the New York Times article [1] the third parties were able to obtain information about you if a friend signs in on their phone, no consent from you required:

> Facebook’s view that the device makers are not outsiders lets the partners go even further, The Times found: They can obtain data about a user’s Facebook friends, even those who have denied Facebook permission to share information with any third parties.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/03/technology/fa...

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#60

Post by spankalee »

I'm no huge Facebook fan - hardly use it these days, but...

These apps are just alternative Facebook clients. Don't we _want_ a system where you can use different clients to access your own data?

If the problem is not trusting the client, well, that'll be a problem for any such system, even some utopian fully open, distributed and federated social network - until you build an open source client yourself.

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