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

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#321

Post by candiodari » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 4:55 AM UTC

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…

Yeah the problem that keeps, and keeps and keeps coming back is that cloud based software gives too much control to the software authors.

Because that's where the ground of your argument sits: because of server-side "rendering" the data must be sent to the servers of the software author, in this case Huawei but doubtless many others, instead of to the device that actually displays the information.

... and that's exactly why everybody's doing cloud based software. Because it allows them to abuse this. And once they've got the customer by the ... they ask money for that.

Cloud based software is how the author of a todo-list app can hold users' data hostage more effectively, more detrimetentally to the customer than Microsoft's monopoly that was blown up in the cause of justice.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#322

Post by dominotw » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 12:20 PM UTC

JackCh wrote: post #314

dominotw wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was not asking why an agreement is not able to physically get between the person and his computer and tie his hands from data being used in other ways. Why would i possibly ask such a question :D I was asking why consequences of breach of agreement is not a strong enough deterrent in this case .

The contention of the comment to which you originally responded was with the use of the word "prevent." If they had used a word like "disincentives" there wouldn't be an issue. I thought that was clear from that comment.

I don't see what the contention is. My lease agreement "prevents" me from putting nails in the walls to hang pictures. I "prevents" me because the fines are not something I'd like to pay, it would be a "disincentive" if the fine was only 10$.

What is your definition of "prevent", like physically stop from doing it?

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#323

Post by naravara » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 4:01 PM UTC

intended wrote: post #318

naravara wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To ding me for using the term announced is to find issue in semantics. Not pure semantics. It is important to focus on what you're actually talking about when you say "the beginning." Facebook has evolved over time, both in its service as well as its business model. So when you talk about "the beginning" it's important to know the beginning of what? >DIGG was never at the same scale or range - and from what I know i…

It’s irrelevant whether they had a functional business model or not - the issues with this system were known. And Facebook isn’t the only threat in the world. It was obviously privacy invasive and the harm type any of those systems could do was obvious. They didn’t have a business model when they started out - but that’s only because they had the runway to ignore it. Otherwise there was an obvious way they were going…

>Otherwise there was an obvious way they were going to make money and that was Ads. Powered by data harvested about you.

Google has the same model, but takes data privacy more seriously than Facebook does. It's disingenuous to conflate any data harvesting with the most unscrupulous and casino-inspired iterations of it.

Arguably, the micro-targeting model of advertising Facebook goes after is more faddish than effective anyway. Google uses the data analytics as much to build more salable products as it does to serve advertising, so the volume of collection serves some kind of function. But facebook's actual business need for most of its data is dubious at best.

>Facebook was going to use your personal information to make money for itself. It was going to be harmful to you.

It's not really the use of personal information that's the harm though. It's the addiction mechanisms they leverage to make you keep giving them personal information and the lack of protections or responsibility they put around it. It's not at all "obvious" that it's going to be harmful to anyone, and arguably it's not even harmful to anyone individually so much as harmful to society and the body politic generally. You can't have those problems at "smaller scales" because those problems don't exist at small scales, they're an emergent property of scale itself.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#324

Post by intended » Fri, Jun 08, 2018, 3:40 AM UTC

naravara wrote: post #323

intended wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s irrelevant whether they had a functional business model or not - the issues with this system were known. And Facebook isn’t the only threat in the world. It was obviously privacy invasive and the harm type any of those systems could do was obvious. They didn’t have a business model when they started out - but that’s only because they had the runway to ignore it. Otherwise there was an obvious way they were going…

>Otherwise there was an obvious way they were going to make money and that was Ads. Powered by data harvested about you. Google has the same model, but takes data privacy more seriously than Facebook does. It's disingenuous to conflate any data harvesting with the most unscrupulous and casino-inspired iterations of it. Arguably, the micro-targeting model of advertising Facebook goes after is more faddish than effecti…

Google in its current state. And only because their current iterations of social networks have failed.

Further google does far too much as it is. I don’t want my emails parsed to figure out what ads to present, or my uploaded files.

The addiction mechanisms are a separate class of harm, and I recognize them from when games, far more than social media. They came much later, and were not part of business models back when Facebook etc. were created.

The misuse of personal data to harm people and privacy is a known idea. For example, they were warned about back in the day by people such as Huxley or Orwell.

Either way, this is an odd conversation.

These harms were clear and known.

If you are saying You didn’t see it, then that’s fine many others didn’t see it or believe it.

If you are saying I couldn’t see it, well I have long ago acted on what I saw and believed and oppose Facebook and other similarly privacy invading systems. I’m not happy with the old British surveillance state from the 90s - and I’m neither British nor American.

If you are saying the specific detailed break down of the harm to be caused was not known- sure. I cannot tell you which incident will finally trigger X event but I can predict that you won’t have autonomous cars, (since I see people driving in the wrong lane in the opposite direction of traffic very often where I live)

And a final point - the addiction mechanisms are just being cross pollinated from other systems, just like AB testing and other research helps ensure people stay on web pages.

Your deeper problem is that advertising, once a tool, has now become and end in and of itself.

Re: Why We Disagree with The New York Times

#325

Post by oprah2018 » Tue, Jun 12, 2018, 6:07 PM UTC

oprah2018 wrote: post #67

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is it different from any other legal agreements? Suppose I tell you a secret. You promise only to share it with others who will keep it a secret. You share my secret with Bob. Bob promises he won't share my secret. Bob shares my secret. You broke your promise. You tried not to break it. But break it you did.

None of this changes the fact that I want Likes on my vacation photos, kid photos, and pics of my food, all of which are of better quality than yours.

This was a satire by the way