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Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#101

Post by briandear »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #52
dnomad wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty obvious considering how shallow and frequent the reporting is that this isn't traditional media criticism. There are real issues with Facebook that are not new but they have nothing to do with "creepy patents" or Facebook giving data to Chinese phone makers. (Who, you know, make the phone. ) The NYT subjects no other corporation to this sort of scrutiny. In fact it's difficult to the recall any an…

I think you may be correct about the NYT and FB. I personally assume that all news outlets are biased one way or another. And I do not believe there's a news outlet anywhere which is totally fair, unbiased and objective. It seems reasonable to guess that the NYT's leadership believes FB is extremely influential in US politics and that it is imperative that FB avoid facilitating another 2016-style presidential campaig…

Interestingly, The NY Times is also extremely influential in US politics, so it does seem that reducing Facebook’s influence has a benefit to The NY Times. Anyone have any data on the tracking that The NY Times website uses? Just curious if there is any hypocrisy or conflicts of interest. Most news orgs seem to aggressively track.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#102

Post by beagle3 »

IncRnd wrote: post #84
hellllllllooo wrote: post #4

It's crazy how the large companies file so many patents for any idea their employees can think of. We used to have a lawyer come to our desks once a month and they would try patent any idea you could come up with even off the top of your head. Not sure how small companies can compete when larger companies can buy up all the IP in a space without having to do any work. The smaller companies I've worked for have to be…

I have several patents I created and assigned to my company. The main reason is to allow the company to work in those ways without restriction. For example, without a patent granting rights to do operation XYZ, then a competitor may say that the company is doing something forbidden and needs to stop. We can look at all the claims for stolen IP with the various self-driving car companies to see examples. This is a for…

Patents are strictly an offensive measure: They only allow you to sue/stop someone else from using them. They do NOT give you approval to do something.

Some people mention "defensive" patents; They are only defensive in the sense that "the best defence is an offence" - that if someone attacks you, you have something to attack them back with. But that's not actually useful against entities that aren't practicing, such as Intellectual Ventures.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#103

Post by yuuuuy »

whatshisface wrote: post #55
734786710934 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your employment history isn't private information. It's sold by data brokers to companies for recruiting.

But who sells it to the data brokers?

Payroll companies (ADP etc)

Background check companies that do employment reference verification checks for employers

All three credit reporting companies have employment history products. So for example if your rental application includes your current and/or past employers, those will end up permanently with the credit reporting agency.

Plus others. Basically anyone that gets your employment info will sell it since as far as I'm aware it is not protected in the same way your credit history is.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#104

Post by userbinator »

bfaviero wrote: post #41
acobster wrote: post #35

> Nevertheless, the mobile device continuously takes location and acceleration sensor readings (e.g., once every 5 minutes) and sends the location and acceleration data to server 112. What is "server 112"? Is this some internet-ism I don't know about?

It’s a reference to a diagram/figure in the patent

Unfortunate that they didn't have enough numbered things to use 641A...

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#105

Post by sincerely »

lgregg wrote: post #70
ve55 wrote: post #17

Stop finding excuses to stay on Facebook. Be strong and do what is right. You can convince your friends to use other things if they are truly your friends.

I don't really get facebook outside of being able to see vaguely what is going on with family. I call, text, and email my actual friends if we're not in person.

a lot of subcultures pretty much exist through facebook now. i deleted about a year before all this shit went down but had to reactivate recently because there’s really no other way to be aware of whats going on in the electronic music scene, especially for parties in illegal venues that cant be traditionally advertised

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#106

Post by kodablah »

bunkydoo wrote: post #98

Wow, this is a new revelation. Couldn't have guessed that, what a story mark.

Feeds a growing fervor to enable views. We can arc the anti-FB storylines and realize these cycles of generated angst are self-perpetuating.

I always knew of FB's issues, but what this whole pitchfork-building exercise has shown me is how the outlets people always defend for accuracy maintain a narrative by story choice alone. In their quest for views, they've fucked up the signal-to-noise ratio.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#107

Post by maym86 »

itronitron wrote: post #88
hellllllllooo wrote: post #4

It's crazy how the large companies file so many patents for any idea their employees can think of. We used to have a lawyer come to our desks once a month and they would try patent any idea you could come up with even off the top of your head. Not sure how small companies can compete when larger companies can buy up all the IP in a space without having to do any work. The smaller companies I've worked for have to be…

The beauty of this approach is that patents expire after ~15-20 years so it is basically just guaranteeing that everything will be free and clear soon.

For technology that is obselete in 5 years.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#108

Post by toomuchtodo »

pritchardgelman wrote: post #86
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m becoming more of the opinion that all intellectual property law is immoral on the grounds that it creates artificial barriers to prosperity for individuals who don’t receive the benefits of the patents. I work hard on personal projects (robots) that I think would be useful to others and I share them all CC0 or BSD licensed. I think it would be useful for economists to consider the way patents exacerbate inequalit…

>intellectual property law is immoral on the grounds that it creates artificial barriers to prosperity for individuals who don’t receive the benefits of the patents It is also a wealth transfer from the poor to the wealthy: the justice system protecting IP capital is financed by taxpayers, the hard majority of which hold no patents.

Consider that the majority of federal tax revenues are generated by top income earners. It’s more of a wealth transfer between different groups of the wealthy.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/10/06/a-closer-loo...

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#109

Post by kodablah »

bogomipz wrote: post #74
dnomad wrote: post #5

Yet another New York Times hit piece against Facebook. It makes you wonder what a private corporation is supposed to do. In just this year: 1) The New York Times has published an endless stream editorials calling for Facebook to be destroyed [1], insisting Facebook is a thread to national security [2] and declaring Facebook a threat to the republic [3]. 2) These editorials are joined by "reporting" insinuating that F…

>"Yet another New York Times hit piece against Facebook." The very first word on this page is "Opinion", making it very clear that this piece is in no way reflects the editorial polices of The New York Times. Opinion pieces by their very nature make no claims of objectivity. The "Ed-Op" section has long been a mainstay of daily news organizations in the US. In your list of citations you've mixed both objective journa…

Policies of an outlet can be determined by volume and slant, even op-eds. Opinion pieces help drive a narrative that regular stories do as well. It's not like, to view NYT's ads, you knew the article you were visiting. They're next to each other in search engine results. This isn't on a site named nytimesopinion.com.

The sheer volume of articles now, regardless of whether you tell people they are in different forms, are there to drive views and, when categorized by topics, build the momentum to view more on all sides of the paper. This is not the print days of old. They are using all sections to obtain eyes and calling most of them news. Pretending what are basically blogs with official seals as what used to be print pieces ignores the sheer volume and collective value they have nowadays. The noise is much too large to compare to the past.

> Facebook has been a regular part of the news cycle precisely because it is so central to an ongoing dialog regarding privacy, regulatory regimes and the power of a single corporate entity.

Disagree. The news cycle is driving the dialog at this point, not responding to it. It's clear in the vast number of sustanceless articles. The disturbing part is that you accept your pitchfork, bow, and parrot these views while telling others what they have to learn before they can be critical.

Re: Facebook’s patents show a commitment to collecting personal information

#110

Post by kodablah »

kerng wrote: post #11
dnomad wrote: post #5

Yet another New York Times hit piece against Facebook. It makes you wonder what a private corporation is supposed to do. In just this year: 1) The New York Times has published an endless stream editorials calling for Facebook to be destroyed [1], insisting Facebook is a thread to national security [2] and declaring Facebook a threat to the republic [3]. 2) These editorials are joined by "reporting" insinuating that F…

Arguably a good thing to have the press shine light on these things. No? And by no means are the stories about Zuckerberg's haircut, the majority gives insights to the masses and create great discussions.

Actually, sometimes no, or at least aggregate. The volume being used to drive clicks makes it real hard to see the forest for the trees. Even on HN, one can rarely distinguish serious FB news from these dumb opinion pieces.
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