Why We Disagree with The New York Times • Hacker News Board

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#171

Post by cjhopman » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 6:54 PM UTC

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.

If you sign in to facebook in Opera mini, opera will store your facebook data on their servers. How much does that upset you?

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#172

Post by cjhopman » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 6:56 PM UTC

gengkev wrote: post #161

spankalee wrote: post #60

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.

I think the problem is Facebook's lack of transparency here. As a user, suppose I have some information that I've marked as "not available to third-party apps". Then I might be surprised to find out that Blackberry's servers have access to that data via a secret API, even if it is to implement a "Facebook experience".

Would you also be surprised to find out that Mozilla (Firefox), Google (Chrome), Samsung (Android Browser), Microsoft, etc. all have access to that data?

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#173

Post by bo1024 » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 6:57 PM UTC

This is a really interesting moment and is worth some introspection.

On one hand, Facebook is clearly correct: If FB makes an API, and a user gives an application (written by a third party and run on a fourth party's device) their username and password, then FB cannot be blamed for the application using the username, password, and API to retrieve private data. Indeed, that's the point.

On the other hand, appearances make it look like Facebook is hiding some things: why is this not a public API? What trust are you putting in these third parties, what are you giving them that not everyone would be trusted with?

But most of all, people are waking up to the vulnerability of their private data. They are realizing that some things they've been taking for granted for years are dangerously insecure. So we have users, such as reporters, suddenly realizing that their device has access to all the data you view on it. Any third party app you give your FB uname/pwd to has access to everything on your Facebook, and the only limitation is whatever their terms of service are. (So does any software that app runs on top of.) Coming to this realization, we see backlash not always correctly directed. It would make at least as much sense to call out those third parties rather than FB, and ask them to prove they do nothing nefarious with this trust.

Is it too optimistic to hope this will stir mainstream interest in free and open source software?

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#174

Post by untog » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 6:59 PM UTC

vasilipupkin wrote: post #163

acjohnson55 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's absurdly unrealistic to expect people to do in-depth due diligence on all of the services they use. Modern society requires us to trust innumerable service providers and their dependencies to enable so much of the convenience we take for granted. What little knowledge we do have about abuse comes from the accountability of these companies to regulators like the FTC and FCC. Realistically, I think we have…

I disagree completely, honestly. If you are signing up for a service like Facebook and they are asking you to click a bunch of boxes, it's not unrealistic to expect you to a) either understand what you are clicking on or b) just refuse to click on it what is unrealistic is to expect society to babysit you every single time a moderately complex choice is presented to you.

But surely all the evidence suggests that it is unrealistic, given that reality shows us over and over that people don't read these boxes before checking?

Do you read the entirety of every twenty page EULA before using a new app?

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#175

Post by cjhopman » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 6:59 PM UTC

criley2 wrote: post #155

Crazy that everyone in here is defending Facebook. - How on earth does Facebook justify giving direct API access to information that users have, in every setting possible, marked as private? - How on earth does Facebook justify offering deep API access on users who have literally disabled API access to their data? It's ridiculous, and it's more ridiculous that users here are conflating "basic API access with a sane p…

You do realize that facebook will share user's private information with any random web browser that the user enters her credentials in, right? Is that "ridiculous"?

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#176

Post by adrianmonk » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 7:03 PM UTC

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.

Breach of contract opens you up to civil liability. Having this agreement creates disincentives that wouldn't otherwise exist.

"Prevent" doesn't mean to make something physically impossible or remove the ability to choose. Police can prevent drunken driving by announcing they will have DUI checkpoints on New Year's Eve. It doesn't make it physically impossible to drink and drive, but if people choose not to because they want to avoid the consequences, some drunk driving has been prevented.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#177

Post by zzzeek » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 7:04 PM UTC

braindongle wrote: post #149

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. No, they did not. They adjusted the proportion of positive emotional expressions and negative emotional expressions in users' news feeds in order to test for an association between that proportion and emotional expressions in users' posts. There are ser…

unethical science does not deserve to be wrapped in its journalistic language in an effort to detach it from the harm it caused, it deserves to be called out for what it actually is, in this case intentional psychological manipulation of people's moods without their knowledge or consent.

One does not grasp the true harm caused by unethical experiments by reading only the documented (published or non-published) scientific results. Two extreme examples which I am by no means comparing to that of Facebook, but rather as canonical examples of unethical science, include the Tuskegee experiments and Nazi experimentation. Reading only the published results of these experiments does not convey the horrific harm that actually occurred. The same principle applies to referring towards Facebook's scientific data as an argument that these experiements were not unethical. The scientific results only serve to shroud and conceal the actual activity which occurred in the production of these results.

(edited for clarity)

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#178

Post by smallnamespace » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 7:06 PM UTC

zzzeek wrote: post #177

braindongle wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. No, they did not. They adjusted the proportion of positive emotional expressions and negative emotional expressions in users' news feeds in order to test for an association between that proportion and emotional expressions in users' posts. There are ser…

unethical science does not deserve to be wrapped in its journalistic language in an effort to detach it from the harm it caused, it deserves to be called out for what it actually is, in this case intentional psychological manipulation of people's moods without their knowledge or consent. One does not grasp the true harm caused by unethical experiments by reading only the documented (published or non-published) scient…

How do you distinguish between unethical science and A/B testing, or even just 'We changed our product, then didn't like the results, and changed it back?'

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#179

Post by agentPrefect » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 7:07 PM UTC

As a non-user of Facebook, I completely take their side with all of this.

1) If people don't want to read the fine print, whose fault is that? 2) How have we gotten to a point where we are abdicating our choice voluntary, and then acting begrudgingly toward the new owners when they misuse it?

I must apologize for my cynicism here, but we've been going around this mountain for a very long time now (circa 2013 IINM?). I'm getting tired of hearing how people are feeling violated due to their own actions.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#180

Post by naravara » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 7:08 PM UTC

reitanqild wrote: post #160

naravara wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After all of this came out, FB use didn't really go down. It's both too early and hard to say that for sure. I would suspect it's had an impact on FB's long term trend line, especially with younger people. Anecdotally, much of my social network has significantly decreased their Facebook use if status updates are anything to go by. They may be on the site as much as before, but they're not really engaging with it as…

> But I've noticed even with my cousins abroad they've mostly transitioned fully to WhatsApp. I've managed to get my friends and family over to other channel so we are now almost 100% Facebook free except for a few log in with Facebook and the occasional Instagram (also declining I think). (Disclaimer: I trust WhatsApps crypto since a number of cryptographers have audited it but I still do not want them to have my me…

I've been trying to do the same. Most of the communication has moved to WhatsApp and the "here's what's going on in my life" blasts have moved to Twitter and Instagram. It seems like people have reverted back to using plain old email (or Evite) for event invitations (thank God for the former ehhh on the latter).

The big impediment left has been Facebook's function as a social space to share photos with all and sundry. If not for it being the place to post photos of kids, weddings, vacations, etc. I don't think people would be spending much time on it. Seeing pictures of their nephews, nieces, kids, and grandkids on there is definitely what keeps the old people plugged in.

There really isn't another service that fills the niche either. Instagram is geared towards individual photos rather than albums or chronicles of events. Flickr kind of did, but it's basically dead now and its narrow focus on photography alone wound up gearing it towards pro or hobbyist photographers and didn't get much buy in from everyday users.

Facebook also seems to be something of a default space to host a bulletin board or community forum. Next-door has been trying to muscle in on that territory but it's been plagued by problems with racist usage patterns. Those would probably go away if it was more common, but it's created some real issues with optics. Also, I have no idea what their security practices are like so who knows if it's an improvement.