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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

#211

Post by StanislavPetrov »

braindongle wrote: post #194
zzzeek wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I disagree. If you Google for primary literature related to Tuskegee, you will find, front-and-center, publications describing the ethical disaster that it was. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2609060/ https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3372911/brandt_r... One does indeed grasp the horror. And, where did the Nazis publish, again? We certainly need people to responsibly interpret peer-reviewed li…

>If you Google for primary literature related to Tuskegee, you will find, front-and-center, publications describing the ethical disaster that it was.

Your citations were published ~50 years after the Tuskegee exeripments. A proper analogy would be to compare your citations to the ethical condemntations of Facebook made 50 years from now.

>And, where did the Nazis publish, again?

The Nazis published in all of the front-and-center, mainstream publications after they were brought to the United States under Operation Paperclip (among other operations).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#212

Post by zzzeek »

braindongle wrote: post #194
zzzeek wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I disagree. If you Google for primary literature related to Tuskegee, you will find, front-and-center, publications describing the ethical disaster that it was. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2609060/ https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3372911/brandt_r... One does indeed grasp the horror. And, where did the Nazis publish, again? We certainly need people to responsibly interpret peer-reviewed li…

> And, where did the Nazis publish, again?

I can't answer that as it is generally agreed that this data should not be readily available, however Nazi experimentation was cited for decades, and much has been written over the ethics of this: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-ethics-of-using-medi...

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#214

Post by davegauer »

adrianmonk wrote: post #181
zaroth wrote: post #50

Facebook’s response seems perfectly reasonable to me. - Obviously in order to integrate FB functionality into a Mobile OS UI requires an API to render the data being displayed. - If your phone has a home screen widget which shows friend data, obviously that friend data came from a Facebook API call. - If you type your Facebook username and password into a settings dialog in order to enable that home screen widget to…

> There once was a day when we demanded our social media platforms to provide these “open access” APIs And we still demand them for other types of apps. If I have a Mac or iPhone, I can connect the Apple-supplied Mail app to Gmail with IMAP or POP or whatever it uses. If I have Windows with Outlook, I can connect it to whatever mail server too. And this software gets access to all the content of my emails, which is p…

It occurs to me that in addition to the usual list of permissions for apps, perhaps we should also be presented with a whitelist of domains the app is allowed to communicate with.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#215

Post by mlb_hn »

arcbyte wrote: post #126
mlb_hn wrote: post #64

Facebook's making the distinction between allowing a device to offer Facebook-like services (which require Facebook functionality) and third-party apps that suck up all your friend data. On the one hand, Facebook's got a point, that if you want to be able to use Facebook on a device without going through the Facebook app or the website the device needs to be able to authenticate onto some sort of API. On the other ha…

The fact that "data made it to device maker servers" is a stupid, meaningless point. Of course it hit their servers. And it should hit their servers. It's idiots who don't know what they're writing about causing hysteria among idiot's who don't know what they're reading in order to sell advertising dollars. And the whole time they're pointing at facebook as the corrupt ones.

I'm not sure it's meaningless. It seems to me that there is a distinction between [device manufacturer X is building their own copy of Facebook's graph by acquiring friend data] vs [device manufacturer X allows a user to login to Facebook and access friend data on their device without having to use the web browser].

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#216

Post by olkid »

untog wrote: post #174
vasilipupkin wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Actually, I do(almost always). But, that leads to it's own set of issues. My banking session timed out before I finished reading it. Another service I've been using for over 10 years just added new legal that I don't agree to... now what? That service has a network effect... so, I have to leave? drat! Truth is, most online services ask for more than I am willing to concede. That is an issue.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#217

Post by cjhopman »

criley2 wrote: post #207
cjhopman wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

If a friend of one of my friends, who I am not connected with, can acces my private data despite my settings being clearly limited, with API access disabled, "friends of my friends" settings disabled, as was reported is possible, then yes that is ridiculous. However your reply completely fails to grasp the problem, like so many others. It's not the fact that I type in a user/password and get my data, it's that, I typ…

> your reply completely fails to grasp the problem, like so many others.

That's because you're just making up a problem that doesn't exist. The replies are all talking about what is actually happening, not your fantasy world. As the article states: " friends’ information, like photos, was only accessible on devices when people made a decision to share their information with those friends".

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#218

Post by spankalee »

criley2 wrote: post #207
cjhopman wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

If a friend of one of my friends, who I am not connected with, can acces my private data despite my settings being clearly limited, with API access disabled, "friends of my friends" settings disabled, as was reported is possible, then yes that is ridiculous. However your reply completely fails to grasp the problem, like so many others. It's not the fact that I type in a user/password and get my data, it's that, I typ…

I find it equally ridiculous that Hotmail can access my private emails that I send to a Hotmail user. Which is to say not at all.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#219

Post by jethro_tell »

jacobush wrote: post #192
smallnamespace wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?'

Medical trials are also just A/B testing. waves hands

true, but most of them have opt in. . .. Like people know they are in the test even if they don't know if they are the control or not.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#220

Post by TulliusCicero »

zzzeek wrote: post #190
smallnamespace wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?'

I would assume a core tenet of ethics and deciding if something is unethical is if it has the potential to harm people. Inducing depression to indiscriminate masses is pretty high on the list. It's not valid to compare the emotional impact of Facebook on millions of its addicted users to something like the color of a box of laundry detergent.

Selling cake has the potential to harm people, a moral framework needs a bit more subtlety than that to be sensible.
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