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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

#351

Post by ryanwaggoner »

zimpenfish wrote: post #332
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seizing documents for a valid inquiry is one thing. But does that follow that publishing them is OK too? From the outside, it looks like these politicians are frustrated that a foreign CEO ignored their demand to appear before them (because he has no legal obligation to do so), and have decided to retaliate by releasing embarrassing private internal documents obtained during an investigation in the hopes that Faceboo…

> I get that people hate Facebook, but does that justify any level of bad behavior as long as it harms them? Personally, given the level of harm Facebook has helped to inflict on the world these last 2-3 years, yeah, I reckon I'm perfectly happy with people inflicting harm on the corporation, probably even to the point of ruination.

Seems like a pretty dangerous road to go down, personally.

Looking at some of our politicians in the US, I don't really want them to have unfettered power to misuse the law and their elected position to destroy any person or organization who raises their ire. Even if I don't like that person or organization and want to see them destroyed.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#352

Post by samstave »

rchaud wrote: post #300
noarchy wrote: post #243

I think Facebook is terrible. So I don't use it. I have a choice. These same MPs would likely howl in fury if their secret communications were stolen and published by an entity like Wikileaks (for example). Be careful what you wish for. Of course the difference here is that one is "legal".

Let them howl. When they've been involved in shady stuff that's against the public interest, I will have no sympathy for them, just as I don't when FB is the "victim". I am glad they didn't decide to sit on it because of any fears about "I don't want this happening to me, so I won't snitch". By the way, these emails were not obtained via hacking/phishing, so the Wikileaks comparison doesn't make any sense.

How many of these MPs show up in Panama/Paradise Papers?

This was a valid question. When talking about them getting and publishing the FB files etc.. and asking if they would want their dirty laundry aired - asking if they show up in those releases is both relevant and obvious.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#353

Post by chrisseaton »

undecisive wrote: post #246
chrisseaton wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an invitation from a select committee to give evidence has the same sort of weight as a court summons to give evidence It doesn't! As you say yourself, one is a summons, the other is nothing more than an invitation to attend.

To summon = To request to appear; send for. Surely the only difference - from a UK perspective - is that one is a court, appointed (mumble mumble) by the Queen, and the other is the government, appointed (mumble mumble) by the Queen. So yes, if you've been summoned by the Queen's representatives to appear, and you refuse, that's a pretty big snub. Of course, with a court summons, there are well defined consequences -…

> I don't know what the consequences would be legally speaking if you were based in the UK and refused a select committee summons - I doubt it's a particularly common occurrence.

This is the problem - nobody knows what the consequence would be, so there really isn’t one.

The response to ‘you must attend’, ‘or what?’ is ‘or we’re not sure - please just attend’.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#354

Post by PavlovsCat »

koko775 wrote: post #325
PavlovsCat wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This needs to be a conclusion, not a premise. What makes you think it's a premise and not a conclusion? > Ideally, we would list the good/bad it does and assign weights to these points to determine if it is net harmful. I have 11 years of data points and experiences about FB, I'm not going to enumerate all of them whenever there is another. I'll just say "typically fucking Facebook". At this point, I don't even fee…

> At this point, I don't even feel obligated to remember it all -- I can trust myself enough. We do that with "evil" people in our lives, too. We don't remember every dirty detail. We remember that there were a bunch of things, and that overall, we had it at some point. I save the conclusion and the checksums and that's enough. > If you think I'm operating on a premise, instead of having come to a conclusion, how is…

> Also consider that you have seen eleven years of data points and experiences from the point of view of a small subset of users; there could perhaps be an equivalent cache of positive datapoints which tend to be significantly less interesting to report on.

You know what a thief can be like? 99.99% of the time, they don't steal. They sleep, they brush their teeth, they do all sorts of stuff, and every 2 weeks they take all the savings from an elderly woman.

How often you do need to see someone doing that to consider them a thief? Would you really care about any positive stories after seeing what you saw?

> That's what the conclusion/premise separation is about.

You can't speak for that other person. Let them respond for themselves.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#355

Post by shawnz »

interesthrow2 wrote: post #341
shawnz wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you're strawmanning me into being responsible for every act of suppression by a person who claimed to be acting for social justice. I am not deeming anything any which way. I am just saying that there are obvious conceivable negative interpretations of the terms "whitelist" and "blacklist" that don't exist with the terms "allowlist" and "blocklist". And the work required to change the language that y…

> I don't know why you're strawmanning me into being responsible for every act of suppression by a person who claimed to be acting for social justice You are the one claiming "no harm done". I proved you wrong. Otherwise I would have absolutely no interest in that issue.

You gave some examples of how social justice overreach can be used as a guise to suppress people. Which is not really what I asked. I asked what the harm would be of you adopting the more sensitive language in your own usage. I didn't ask what the harm would be of you becoming a crusader against anything that could be perceived in a racial way.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#356

Post by trasz »

kodablah wrote: post #186
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…

I don't work at FB and wouldn't (nor do I even have an account), but even I can recognize that to many the benefits of FB outweigh the negatives. In a tech-centric board such as this one coupled with media/government-driven narratives to the contrary, it can appear to be obvious that there are way more negatives than positives, the world would be better w/out FB, and you should quit. But in a non-tech-environment the…

>I don't work at FB and wouldn't (nor do I even have an account)

Sure you have, you just have the ability to log in. ;-)

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#357

Post by detaro »

zeeed wrote: post #271
mpweiher wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> this is their users' data > No, it's not - short of a change in law it is Facebook's data. Er, actually it is. Under GDPR, and under previous data protection rules that lacked meaningful enforcement, users own their data. Companies at most get to "borrow" and/or keep it safe for them. Alas, this fundamental fact seems to not have quite made it everywhere yet.. https://digitalguardian.com/blog/tackling-gdpr-challen…

Does anyone have an explanation as to why parent is downvoted? Is the information they presented incorrect?

Possible reason: It is actually intentionally avoided to use the concept of "ownership", since those advocating for "data ownership" generally mean things like "if people own their data, that means they can give it to companies and then that company can do what it wants with the data, since it is its property", which is more or less the opposite of what the goal of this privacy regulation is. The term is used sometimes in more general material, but it is problematic framing. People have rights to their data and how it is used, but they don't derive from ownership.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#359

Post by PavlovsCat »

patejam wrote: post #330
PavlovsCat wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that seems crazy even for lawyerese.. I mean, if I have an "all you can eat" restaurant, do I sell food, or do I just sell access to food? What about a buffet where a person can fill their plate once, but can pick among many things?

Not really. It's like buying a space on the wall to advertise inside the all you can eat restaurant. The restaurant isn't telling you who goes into the restaurant. They're just selling you access to those people through that ad. ----- The other problem, the Cambridge Analytica problem, is a bit different. It's like saying that the restaurant requires you to tell them your name and other personal information in order…

I think "giving information about friends" is kind of a stretch. Facebook has that information. Clicking something so Facebook does something with it isn't quite the same as, say, entering all that info into a text field. Maybe it is legally, but morally, from a commen sense perspective, FB gives the info out. Allowing API access is giving info. We all know how servers work. You can't "take" something, it always gets sent.

Re: Facebook's seized files published by MPs

#360

Post by e40 »

untog wrote: post #319
e40 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These people will suffocate innovation just to win. I don't like Zuck, but come on, you just described every CEO in America, that when they have a choice they will do this.

Yes. Which is bad!

Very definitely this is bad. But it's not a surprise.
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