Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why We Disagree with The New York Times

newsroom.fb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 325 posts

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#101

Post by JumpCrisscross »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #68
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their PR problems aren't rooted in SV Silicon Valley is the last place I'm consistently hearing full-throated defenses of Facebook. It makes sense to keep one's base in order.

That might be sure. But it's still not their bigger / biggest PR problem.

> * it's still not their bigger / biggest PR problem*

It's the only one that could matter to them. Congress flopped when Zuckerberg testified. They are clearly no present threat. And we haven't seen a wave of action from states' attorneys general. We have no evidence users are decamping. And by extension, the advertisers are staying.

The only weak point is in (a) recruitment and (b) political support from the tech community. The first can be solved with money. Fortunately, Facebook has pots of that stuff. The second relies on keeping the armies of defenders, who call every Congressional office on their own accord on a strikingly-regular basis, working.

For an example of what happens when one loses their base, look at Uber. It went from teflon to pariah virtually overnight.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#102

Post by mathinpens »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #18

Perhaps Zuck isn't as bright as we all think? This reply is far too tech-heavy, and jargon-littered to be taken seriously as a reply to something as mainstream as the NYT. Their PR problems aren't rooted in SV, yet that's who this is targeted to. It doesn't make (good brand) sense.

the only jargon in this is API?

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#103

Post by [deleted] »

asciimo wrote: post #100
_red wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 remotel…

Obvious to some. When consumers receive a valuable service or product for free, with no obvious strings attached, they consume it. I don't think most people would preoccupy themselves with the provider or manufacturer's business model. You are savvy, and that's good. But others deserve consideration and protection.

[deleted]

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#104

Post by d4l3k »

detaro wrote: post #86
jbeckham wrote: post #82

I had a Windows phone that used these API's. When Windows Phone 7 came out, Facebook didn't create the Facebook App for that OS, Microsoft did. It looked like what you expected Facebook to have built and it worked like the Facebook App that other platforms had. The whole purpose of the API agreement with Microsoft was to guarantee that the Facebook App they wrote would still work years down the road. Microsoft did no…

The NYT article says that Facebook told them that some partners stored that data on their servers. Do you have a good citation that this does not refer to these device integrations, given you so strongly claim it doesn't? (It's very well possible that it's a misleading quote by the NYT, or a misunderstanding, but I don't see a clear answer in any of what we know) That's from my perspective the critical point here.

It sounded like a number of devices provided contact syncing with Facebook as well as the ability to backup your contacts and data to the device manufacturer servers. Now, they might have been storing other data that they shouldn't have, but backing up synced FB contacts by itself seems pretty tame.

I personally setup FB to do contact syncing with my Google contacts so I could get the FB profile pictures for all of my contacts. Does that count as Google improperly using FB user data? I don't think so.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#105

Post by untog »

_red wrote: post #57
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 remotel…

> It was obvious to anyone since the beginning that FB was a clearinghouse for private data trading.

I tire of this argument that users should obviously know they are trading their personal information in return for access to a service. They don't know this. It's obvious in a conversation with any (even lightly) tech-illiterate person that nothing about how the modern internet economy works is obvious.

Think back to the emergence of the web as a truly popular medium. There was no Google Analytics, no FB tracking buttons that follow you around on every web site you visit (that one is particularly egregious - FB users are tracked even when they aren't on facebook.com, and we expect users to just know this?), just advertisers buying a banner ad slot from the owner of a web site. Back then social networking was, what, AIM? That was free and they didn't harvest user info for it. The change has been gradual, and the idea that users should have kept up with every development that led us to where we are today is preposterous.

When this has happened in the past the answer has been clear: knowledgable people come together to pass laws that benefit individual citizens who have neither the knowledge nor time to learn.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#106

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

bluesign wrote: post #73

NYT says: ‘Some device makers could retrieve personal information even from users’ friends who believed they had barred any sharing, The New York Times found.’ FB says: ‘Contrary to claims by the New York Times, friends’ information, like photos, was only accessible on devices when people made a decision to share their information with those friends.’ This is the only disagreement as I can see.

It seems like a huge issue though. And we need to know in what precise way did Facebook enforce this with third-parties and verify compliance. If they just put it as a line in a comtract, but left the ability to circumvent this open in the device integrated API, and then never did due diligence compliance checks, then Facebook’s defense is entirely disingenuous and it’s reasonable to view them as culpable.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#107

Post by sideshowb »

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…

> Facebook has acted on this and intentionally made hundreds of thousands of people fall into a depression, just to see if they could, and then they bragged about it.

That's interesting. Do you have a link to source?

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#108

Post by dominotw »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #95
dominotw wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You broke your promise. Then you face the legal consequences for doing so. Thats what prevents people from breaking them in first place. Unless you are arguing that all legal contracts are useless because they can be broken. I am not asking about the logistics of leaking. Yes ofcourse its physically possible, I am asking why the consequences of breaking a contract don't matter in this specific case.

> I am asking why the consequences of breaking a contract don't matter in this specific case Technically speaking, no contract was broken. When users signed up for Facebook, they clicked a button pursuant to which Facebook indemnified itself from everything under the sun. (It is unclear how enforceable those terms are. EULAs, for example, aren't very enforceable in the U.S. [1].) Facebook did agree not to do these th…

> Technically speaking, no contract was broken. When users signed up for Facebook, they clicked a button pursuant to which Facebook indemnified itself from everything under the sun.

I am referring to this

> These partners signed agreements

not users.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#109

Post by vasilipupkin »

untog wrote: post #105
_red wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 remotel…

> It was obvious to anyone since the beginning that FB was a clearinghouse for private data trading. I tire of this argument that users should obviously know they are trading their personal information in return for access to a service. They don't know this. It's obvious in a conversation with any (even lightly) tech-illiterate person that nothing about how the modern internet economy works is obvious. Think back to…

Sure, but do we just absolve people of all individual responsibility to think even a little bit and make educated choices? I think there is more evidence that people just don't really care about this issue. After all of this came out, FB use didn't really go down.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#110

Post by dominotw »

derefr wrote: post #90
dominotw wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> signing a contract does not prevent these companies from violating the terms of the contract. So whats the point of any legal agreement then?

Punishment after-the-fact to statistically disincentivize behaviours we want to disincentivize. It doesn’t prevent the thing from happening ever, it just makes it so that when it does, inevitably, happen, the system pushes back against the offender. This makes rational actors less likely to do things they could be sued for. But 1. not all actors in a market are rational; and 2. sometimes it’s rational to be “evil” if…

> Facebook gave an assurance that our data would never cross paths with a bad actor.

Don't downvote for asking me this, asking in good faith. Where did they give that assurance?

Post reply on HN