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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

#251

Post by aembleton »

jahlove wrote: post #220
fosco wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Public Relations

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#252

Post by IanPBann »

jahlove wrote: post #220
fosco wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Public Relations - how they are perceived by the public. This was seen as a risky move because it had the potential (which Facebook realised and decided to press ahead with anyway) to anger a lot of people.

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

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#253

Post by rchaud »

evilzuku wrote: post #33
tpush wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really interesting stuff in there. > Facebook email 24 January 2013 > Justin Osofsky – ‘Twitter launched Vine today which lets you shoot multiple short video segments to make one single, 6-second video. As part of their NUX, you can find friends via FB. Unless anyone raises objections, we will shut down their friends API access today. We’ve prepared reactive PR, and I will let Jana know our decision. > MZ – ‘Yup, go…

Nothing says evil more than preparing reactive PR to bury your competitors. And the nonchalant way his response sends chills down my spine. These people will suffocate innovation just to win.

CEOs and executives are the closest equivalent of royalty in the United States. Their media coverage is often hagiographic as a result. They are humanized and puffed up in the press to an extent that foreign press would never think to do about business leaders in their own countries.

Inch upon inch of columns are dedicated to their morning habits, favourite TV shows and fashion choices, and other fluff content to make them "relatable" to the average joe/jane. This is especially magnified when it comes to SV execs because they wear hoodies and tshirts instead of bespoke suits.

And that's what leads to reactions like "I can't believe he'd be so callous to users", as if the person in question is a hard working bootstrapper and not a billionaire looking to maximize market share and profit.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#254

Post by danarmak »

spunker540 wrote: post #222
tynpeddler wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the first point seems pretty routine, but the second one is a problem. Look at Microsoft in the late 90's. They changed their system API's and refused to publish the changes for the express purpose of killing netscape. That was later deemed to be illegal. Facebook using their market dominance to kill other apps seems to be very similar.

I think they were mostly using their market dominance to kill apps that decided to live on the Facebook platform in the first place. If you build an app that relies solely on Facebook login and access to Facebook data as key parts of your business model then are you really a competitor?

Well, if you build an app that runs on Windows like Netscape did, are you really a competitor of Microsoft? Turns out, you might be, if Microsoft want to make their own app. Similarly, Facebook might want to introduce or change native functionality, or monetize their platform, in a way that competes with your app.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#255

Post by Steltek »

fchollet wrote: post #212
notacoward wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-w…

I would easily throw Uber into the evil category. "Contractor" loophole to evade minimum wage (min. wage being already pretty pathetic), Greyball, and a general culture of knowingly ignoring laws cultivated by it's founder.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#256

Post by mistursinistur »

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…

This misses the point of completely. This shaming is not about how good or bad you are.

Some people have determined that Facebook is an organization that's producing bad results. Socially shaming employees, removing the status they might have hoped to acquire and spiking attrition are tools being deployed to change Facebook's behavior and the behavior of Facebook's competitors.

You might claim is that this strategy can't positively affect Facebook's incentives, operations, or effects. But nobody should be distracted by navel-gazing or fancy philosophizing.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#257

Post by dkersten »

thecatspaw wrote: post #234
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we'd have to go through all sorts of books and documents on mechanics and electronics to whiteout (Doh! doing it again!!!) reference to those terms.

whiteout is an interesting one though, I personally would have written blackout

It’s whiteout because of tipp-ex/white-out/liquid paper style products.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#258

Post by spunker540 »

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.

I believe 99.99...% of interactions on Facebook are positive. They are friends and family keeping in touch, posting life updates, organizing events, hobby/support communities etc.

Most ads are normal ads from legitimate businesses including a lot of small and local businesses who find it very valuable for reaching their customers and growing their business.

The recent rhetoric and news coverage acts as if Facebook is entirely full of fake news and echo chambers and political manipulation when the truth is while that stuff is happening it's a minuscule percentage of the billions of posts per day.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#259

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

pmart123 wrote: post #66
isostatic wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see anything shocking or surprising here, that said I'm glad I don't have shares in facebook Here's one finding > Facebook used Onavo to conduct global surveys of the usage of mobile apps by customers, > and apparently without their knowledge. They used this data to assess not just how many > people had downloaded apps, but how often they used them. This knowledge helped them to > decide which companies to ac…

Hmm, looking at this with a glance, I am surprised the coverage around Onavo hasn't been bigger. If I am following this correctly, it would be similar to Google creating a Firefox extension to enable "extra privacy," but secretly pumping the data back to Google? Or if Windows Defender sent all your web usage data and keystrokes to Microsoft? I'm not sure how this doesn't fit the definition of Spyware?

Google got all of this data first-party, as search logs are very informative about which websites/services are popular.

I'm sure that things like that factored into the decision to buy YouTube, for example.

Onavo was a company that tried to sell VPN access to reduce data costs, found out that didn't make money and pivoted to selling reports to publishers and advertisers.

Then FB bought them, and treated them like an internal survey organisation. It's a shame really, Onavo could have been the Neilsen of the mobile age, in another timeline.

But yeah, people use data (especially private data) to make decisions about their business and others. News at 11.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#260

Post by mtgx »

johnnyfaehell wrote: post #178
manfredo wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's remember this is not Facebook's data, this is their users' data. No, it's not - short of a change in law it is Facebook's data. Facebook collected, maintained , and analyzed the data. It's their data, the fact that their users allowed Facebook to collect it does not change that fact. GDPR allows users to view the data Facebook collected about them. If users want manually request their data from Facebook and p…

> If users want manually request their data from Facebook and provide it to competing apps they can. Actually, for a lot of it they can't. The GDPR downloads are incomplete and are missing lots of data like many other GDPR downloads. And in some cases these aren't competing, they just aren't making Facebook money so Facebook denies them access and tells them what they need to do to add Facebook to process so they can…

And the downloads for people outside GDPR's reach (like Americans) are even more incomplete.

Facebook continues to play a game of "how much can we mislead them to get our way".

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