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Facebook's seized files published by MPs

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#211

Post by nradov »

netcan wrote: post #86
paganel wrote: post #7

> Facebook used data provided by the Israeli analytics firm Onavo to determine which other mobile apps were being downloaded and used by the public. It then used this knowledge to decide which apps to acquire or otherwise treat as a threat > there was evidence that Facebook's refusal to share data with some apps caused them to fail Stuff like this should trigger the EU Commissioner for Competition to withdraw the aut…

I agree with the conclusion, but I don't think it should be done through the current antitrust framework. Your first point and most of the others others may or may not be illegal. If they are legal, what the MPs need to do is their jobs.. make laws. But, most are not directly related to company size and/or market share. Your second point does sound like a trust and I think you're right to link this to the WhatsApp sa…

ExxonMobil is a huge company. How much market power do they have over the price of crude oil? Not much, because it's a commodity.

Other factors matter far more than size.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#212

Post by fchollet »

notacoward wrote: post #159
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #3

Good for them, thank you! The sooner facebook is controlled and broken up into pieces, the better. They are a massive net negative on civilization. Do you work at Facebook? Shame on you.

Yes, I do work at Facebook. I'm not going to get into some protracted argument about whether that makes me a bad person, or already was, but I'd like to give you something to think about. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that we can neatly divide tech workers into good and bad. Likewise for companies. All categories are non-empty, and certain to remain so. What's the optimal assignment of workers to companies? Is…

If I were to divide large tech companies between "good" and "bad", the only one I would classify as "bad" is Facebook. Most are neutral-to-good. Facebook has a huge societal and human cost and has hardly any benefits to show for it (unlike, say, fossil energy companies, which are a threat to civilization but at least serve a useful role by fulfilling our energy needs).

Facebook is a democracy-threatening, attention-wasting, extractive institution, with a deeply unethical leadership. Most tech companies are neutral -- Amazon, Microsoft, Uber etc., I assume they're doing business for profit and not social good, but they do provide value and largely play by the rules. Some other companies I would classify as "good" as they provide considerable value to society as a by-product of doing business, like Apple and Google (disclaimer: I work for Google, and I am quite happy about that).

Facebook is the only large tech company I can think of that is just plain evil. There's no other like it. It's in a league of its own.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#213

Post by echelon »

interesthrow2 wrote: post #193
echelon wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're changing instances of whitelist and blacklist to "allowlist" and "blocklist" similar to the conversion of master and slave to "primary" and "replica". Edit: it's interesting that I'm being downvoted. What a weird world this is.

> We're changing instances of whitelist and blacklist to "allowlist" and "blocklist" similar to the conversion of master and slave to "primary" and "replica". Are you going to change the whole dictionary as well? blackout? blackhole? dark energy? dark matter? dark side of the moon? and what not? Might as well deem the whole english language offensive since its the language of slavers? Maybe you should focus on real p…

Changing these takes next to zero effort. "Blacklist" and "whitelist" are more confusing to new engineers than "allowlist" and "blocklist", since the latter terms speak for themselves.

Language changes over time. These are just words. I don't understand why we have to hold onto them like they're our precious children. If we can be more inclusive with the labels we choose, that's a good thing.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#214

Post by beart »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #199

It’s terrifying that people want to use the government to regulate a free website that nobody even has to use and which has not actually caused anyone harm. GDPR tyrants: get a life and stop using Facebook. Seriously.

> which has not actually caused anyone harm.

This is not a statement you can just throw out there.

For example

https://www.wired.com/story/how-facebooks-rise-fueled-chaos-...

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#215

Post by JumpCrisscross »

notacoward wrote: post #159
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #3

Good for them, thank you! The sooner facebook is controlled and broken up into pieces, the better. They are a massive net negative on civilization. Do you work at Facebook? Shame on you.

Yes, I do work at Facebook. I'm not going to get into some protracted argument about whether that makes me a bad person, or already was, but I'd like to give you something to think about. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that we can neatly divide tech workers into good and bad. Likewise for companies. All categories are non-empty, and certain to remain so. What's the optimal assignment of workers to companies? Is…

> you'll see that the Manichaean "entirely and immutably good or entirely and immutably bad" model just isn't very useful

Agreed. But these same arguments could be made by many terrible people throughout history. Associating with and assisting those who do bad things is bad behaviour.

Society is incentivised to restrict people who show a tendency towards assisting destructive behaviour. We aren’t at the point where everyone voluntarily at Facebook should be seen as dirty, but we’re closer to that Enron moment than many there would like to think.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#216

Post by r00fus »

breischl wrote: post #29
paganel wrote: post #7

> Facebook used data provided by the Israeli analytics firm Onavo to determine which other mobile apps were being downloaded and used by the public. It then used this knowledge to decide which apps to acquire or otherwise treat as a threat > there was evidence that Facebook's refusal to share data with some apps caused them to fail Stuff like this should trigger the EU Commissioner for Competition to withdraw the aut…

I have no particular love for FB or what they've done with data, but these I don't understand why either of those points is particularly controversial or even unusual. > Facebook used data provided by the Israeli analytics firm Onavo to determine which other mobile apps were being downloaded and used by the public. It then used this knowledge to decide which apps to acquire or otherwise treat as a threat Checking out…

Would you say Facebook has monopoly position in social networks?

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#217

Post by thecatspaw »

ddalex wrote: post #60
dwighttk wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

would you take that money?

yes, sure. I'm not a FB shareholder. I'll take the 100, and the GDPR them to make them forget that I ever took the money.

Except you couldnt GDPR them, as they are allowed to save data if its business critical, which I would argue "XYZ took the 100$" is

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#218

Post by how_many_times »

notacoward wrote: post #159
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #3

Good for them, thank you! The sooner facebook is controlled and broken up into pieces, the better. They are a massive net negative on civilization. Do you work at Facebook? Shame on you.

Yes, I do work at Facebook. I'm not going to get into some protracted argument about whether that makes me a bad person, or already was, but I'd like to give you something to think about. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that we can neatly divide tech workers into good and bad. Likewise for companies. All categories are non-empty, and certain to remain so. What's the optimal assignment of workers to companies? Is…

>> Is it never beneficial for a good person to work at a bad company, perhaps making it less bad?

That's an interesting thought. If carried to its logical conclusion, the 'good people' had many, many, many years to influence the direction of the company, and whatever little 'less bad' the 'good people' are doing is being completely negated by the 'more bad' that the not-so-good people are doing. So I think its fair to conclude the 'good people' are completely inept when it comes to their ability to effect any kind of meaningful change from inside of FB, and should probably leave en masse. After all, given such across-the-board ineptness, what's going to change tomorrow that couldn't have already been changed yesterday?

Facebook is going to face a massive recruitment problem from here on. To paraphrase Richard Hamming, "the only folks left there are the moral dregs".

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#219

Post by notahacker »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #161
notahacker wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody else has a comparable dataset on a comparable scale. Microsoft wasn't the only company supplying operating systems in the 1990s either.

Comparable dataset of what, exactly? Of Facebook's internal user data? Think about how much data Amazon has about all the suppliers and products they've sold over the last twenty years. Should they be forced to hand it over to anyone who wants it just because of the fact that its size and exclusivity makes it very valuable? What about the governments databases on everything under the sun? Should all of that be public…

Nobody is suggesting everyone has a right to Facebook or any other company's data (just like nobody seriously suggested MS shouldn't be able to impose any restrictions on OEM Windows installations). They're suggesting that if a company sets itself up as a provider of data and other platform services to encourage everyone else in the market to become dependent upon it then selectively pulls the plug on the most successful companies or forces them into deeper partnerships, it's definitely harming the ecosystem. And that if Facebook has done that, it might also have fallen foul of laws which are there to stop that sort of practice.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#220

Post by jahlove »

fosco wrote: post #65
Trill-I-Am wrote: post #2

Here is a direct link to the files themselves: https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/cultu...

holy smokes... >Michael LeBeau – ‘He guys, as you know all the growth team is planning on shipping a permissions update on Android at the end of this month. They are going to include the ‘read call log’ permission, which will trigger the Android permissions dialog on update, requiring users to accept the update. They will then provide an in app opt in NUX for a feature that lets you continuously upload your SMS and c…

> This is a pretty high risk thing to do from a PR perspective

What's "PR" here?

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