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Facebook Network Breach Impacts Up to 50M Users

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook Network Breach Impacts Up to 50M Users

#301

Post by emodendroket »

carapace wrote: post #297
chronid wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is working at Google, Amazon and probably 90% of the big corps of the world in many sectors - from oil to finance to pharmaceutical to telecommunications and so on. And we can include the government. If you're a subcontrator or sold in body rental (modern IT slavery) you're also in the same position as an employee, so you're enabling their evils. Also, if one of those companies is a client of your company you're a…

> So is working at Google, Amazon and... ...oil to finance to pharmaceutical to telecommunications Yes. Most of the large and powerful organizations have severe moral problems, almost all of them due to violations of a simple rule: $ "Love of money is the root of all evil." We all have choices. We all make decisions. I would go even further and say that people who ride Uber or buy from Amazon are moral cretins.

Ethical consumption is a dead end. You can't even buy slavery-free clothing or food reliably.

Re: Facebook Network Breach Impacts Up to 50M Users

#302

Post by chronid »

carapace wrote: post #297
chronid wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is working at Google, Amazon and probably 90% of the big corps of the world in many sectors - from oil to finance to pharmaceutical to telecommunications and so on. And we can include the government. If you're a subcontrator or sold in body rental (modern IT slavery) you're also in the same position as an employee, so you're enabling their evils. Also, if one of those companies is a client of your company you're a…

> So is working at Google, Amazon and... ...oil to finance to pharmaceutical to telecommunications Yes. Most of the large and powerful organizations have severe moral problems, almost all of them due to violations of a simple rule: $ "Love of money is the root of all evil." We all have choices. We all make decisions. I would go even further and say that people who ride Uber or buy from Amazon are moral cretins.

And so are people that have a phone built in china, abusing people enough they have to build nets to prevent them from suiciding. And so are people that use SIMs from carriers known to have an army of H1B slaves on their payroll through the usual suspects (infosys)? And so are the companies using hardware and routers sold by companies using the same methods (hello Cisco?) I can go on literally forever, just choose a random industry sector.

Yes, it's an horrible world. I know, I'm saying that it is, I agree completely. What's the alternative? We blame people that work in other companies and claim we are honest and pure? Do we say that since there are X layers between us and them then we're fine? :)

Re: Facebook Network Breach Impacts Up to 50M Users

#303

Post by millzlane »

gouggoug wrote: post #79

From Facebook's announcement: "After they have logged back in, people will get a notification at the top of their News Feed explaining what happened." I personally did not get any explanation as to why I had to log back in. It did surprise me to be logged out this morning and was wondering why.

Nor did I, and I knew right away when it happened. Either my account was compromised or Facebook was.

Re: Facebook Network Breach Impacts Up to 50M Users

#304

Post by furgooswft13 »

pdeuchler wrote: post #127

Said this yesterday in the other Facebook thread, and I'll say it again. Working for Facebook is a morally bankrupt position. If you are an engineer you have plenty of job opportunities available to you and there is no excuse for you to continue contributing your labor and time to a wholly malignant organization. At a certain point one has to ask how we as an industry will start dealing with those who continue to tak…

Sheesh, why stop there. Let's shame American taxpayers because the government's done some pretty nasty stuff over the years. Just pack up and move to one of those other countries that are all sunshine and puppy dogs.

What that's too much? Moving jobs is sooooo much easier, what with changing your healthcare, benefits, probably taking a paycut, losing all the friends and acquaintances you've made, no problem man.

And we all know Facebook is the only Pure Evil company in the valley. You could get a job at Google and work on censoring search results for the Chinese government. I hear MSFT is in good graces these days with hacker types, unless you don't like the idea of supporting the Military Industrial Complex, and certainly they would never become as anti-competitive as they were in the 90s if they found themselves in a monopolistic position again. Or you could always work for any number of startups that sell hype, bullshit, and vaporware to get VCs to part with their money.

Really if you don't quit your Facebook job and #delete your account you're really no better than Mark Hitlerberg at this point. And you can't hide, we'll find you, and "deal" with you (I hear Twitter mobs are good for shaming these days).

Full disclosure: The company I work for does some small contracting work for Facebook, so I guess I'm on the list.

Re: Facebook Network Breach Impacts Up to 50M Users

#305

Post by joelx »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #291
chronid wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is working at Google, Amazon and probably 90% of the big corps of the world in many sectors - from oil to finance to pharmaceutical to telecommunications and so on. And we can include the government. If you're a subcontrator or sold in body rental (modern IT slavery) you're also in the same position as an employee, so you're enabling their evils. Also, if one of those companies is a client of your company you're a…

I'm sure "but it pays well" is the rationale used to self-justify many morally dubious through to outright immoral and illegal acts. Doesn't improve the validity of the position though.

Nation states (China and Russia) are backing a massive PR campaign against tools that they can't control... Hence these major attacks lately and all the hate for Facebook and Google. In reality, those tech companies are enormously more ethical than Baidu or Alibaba or almost any mainstream alternatives... And compared to companies oil, gun, drug, tobacco, alcohol and most others, Facebook and Google are saints.

Re: Facebook Network Breach Impacts Up to 50M Users

#306

Post by ethbro »

zepto wrote: post #292
brunoTbear wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of my favorite and most ethical friends work everyday at FB to protect against these kinds of attacks and others. You're making an incredibly global statement about an organization where a more tailored statement would carry your water a lot better.

Ethical people can take part in an unethical project until they realize what they are doing. The parent poster is calling on them to do just this with regard to Facebook. There is nothing wrong with that call, and it doesn’t impugn your friends unless they ultimately fail to re-evaluate the company.

I think treating Facebook as a singular project is the bigger fallacy.

What about those who argued for React to move to a more reasonable license? What about those who pushed for open sourcing code and hardware in the first place?

Companies at the 25k+ employee size are complex, often internally-disagreeing enterprises. Code may be pure, but resource allocation (programmer time) is political.

Of the recent Facebook news (e.g. shadow profile and 2FA phone numbers being used for ad targeting)... "we had bugs in our code" is by far the least ethically problematic.

Re: Facebook Network Breach Impacts Up to 50M Users

#307

Post by borkt »

subcosmos wrote: post #255
pdeuchler wrote: post #127

Said this yesterday in the other Facebook thread, and I'll say it again. Working for Facebook is a morally bankrupt position. If you are an engineer you have plenty of job opportunities available to you and there is no excuse for you to continue contributing your labor and time to a wholly malignant organization. At a certain point one has to ask how we as an industry will start dealing with those who continue to tak…

I've got several infosec friends at Facebook right now, all new hires, trying to preserve our democracy from attacks. I don't consider them morally bankrupt at all.

Are they spying on private communications to identify terrorists? Please don't tell me you are calling this rudimentary Russian propaganda an attack. The ads were aimed at the lowest common denominator of America, and those that were already going to vote for trump I am sure. The reality is Trump won because enough of our citizens felt left behind and wanted to try something other than the status quo.

And unfortunately Hillary Clinton did it to Putin first, probably using similar methods.

http://time.com/4422723/putin-russia-hillary-clinton/

Re: Facebook Network Breach Impacts Up to 50M Users

#308

Post by Kalium »

wolf550e wrote: post #293
Kalium wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're absolutely, completely, 100% correct. Facebook holds an immense trove of private information that in the wrong hands could be leveraged to inflict unimaginable pain and suffering. With that said, is it perhaps possible that some people might view this as subtly distinct from power plants, hospitals, roads, and ISPs? Those are what are generally considered "critical infrastructure".

If you also add the ability to micro-target voters at scale using everything facebook knows about them using secret ads and niche content that only those voters will see and no one knows need debunking, and thus changing the government, then it is very much like the power plants. I understand the point that you don't need facebook the way you need the ability to feed the people in the cities (and thus need roads and…

In the sense that it allows for power, you're completely correct!

In the sense that it's an immediate need for the continued basic functioning of the state, it's possible that there may be some distinctions that could be drawn. Some might opine that these are the distinctions that matter for the designation of what is and isn't critical infrastructure.

Re: Facebook Network Breach Impacts Up to 50M Users

#309

Post by subcosmos »

borkt wrote: post #307
subcosmos wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got several infosec friends at Facebook right now, all new hires, trying to preserve our democracy from attacks. I don't consider them morally bankrupt at all.

Are they spying on private communications to identify terrorists? Please don't tell me you are calling this rudimentary Russian propaganda an attack. The ads were aimed at the lowest common denominator of America, and those that were already going to vote for trump I am sure. The reality is Trump won because enough of our citizens felt left behind and wanted to try something other than the status quo. And unfortunate…

underestimation can be a grave mistake in these matters

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

Re: Facebook Network Breach Impacts Up to 50M Users

#310

Post by chronid »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #291
chronid wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is working at Google, Amazon and probably 90% of the big corps of the world in many sectors - from oil to finance to pharmaceutical to telecommunications and so on. And we can include the government. If you're a subcontrator or sold in body rental (modern IT slavery) you're also in the same position as an employee, so you're enabling their evils. Also, if one of those companies is a client of your company you're a…

I'm sure "but it pays well" is the rationale used to self-justify many morally dubious through to outright immoral and illegal acts. Doesn't improve the validity of the position though.

It's not an issue of paying well or not - it's that all alternatives are also evil and pay a lot worse (so you're worse off, you may work more and have a shittier commute and so on).

I'm pretty sure we'll end up discussing the various shades of moral bankruptcy soon enough though.

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