My surprise is not that Facebook did this, but that developers within Facebook built this privacy violating ecosystem without question or publicly voiced concern.
You guys sold your family and friends out for RSUs.
As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening for Tech Giants
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Re: As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening for Tech Giants
#72“Among the revelations was that Facebook obtained data from multiple partners for a controversial friend-suggestion tool called “People You May Know.” The feature, introduced in 2008, continues even though some Facebook users have objected to it, unsettled by its knowledge of their real-world relationships. Gizmodo and other news outlets have reported cases of the tool’s recommending friend connections between patien…
I’m always puzzled by the need people have to try to dispel the notion that Facebook listens to ambient audio or conversations. They are the bad guys. They didn’t need to steal Android phone logs either, but they did.
I don't understand why we're not allowed to be skeptical of accusations once the masses have decided that a company is evil. Aren't you at least curious about what they actually did and how they made decisions?
It's quite possible that, even at a company that has done some bad things, other things have a more innocent explanation.
Re: As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening for Tech Giants
#73Question for the most of the people who read this who will still use fb/instagram/messenger all day, or even at all: is there something so bad that fb could do that would get you to stop? If so, what is it? Where is your red line? Or absent an alternative with fb's network effects, will you keep using their products regardless of the unseen costs you rack up?
Start charging money.
That would be a good thing?
In all seriousness, if companies actually had to pay for your data, suddenly their business models would flip and you would find that we would go from being the products to being the customers.
Re: As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening for Tech Giants
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m always puzzled by the need people have to try to dispel the notion that Facebook listens to ambient audio or conversations. They are the bad guys. They didn’t need to steal Android phone logs either, but they did.
I don't understand why we're not allowed to be skeptical of accusations once the masses have decided that a company is evil. Aren't you at least curious about what they actually did and how they made decisions? It's quite possible that, even at a company that has done some bad things, other things have a more innocent explanation.
I am, but they don't seem to be exactly keen to tell us that. They seem more interested in bunkering down and writing pre-made apologies for each thing the media discovers.
Re: As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening for Tech Giants
#75How much more until we all start using end to end encryption?
I don’t mean server to client. I mean clients have the keys and only the clients.
Why are we relying on third parties to pretty please enforce access control?
Re: As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening for Tech Giants
#76Question for the most of the people who read this who will still use fb/instagram/messenger all day, or even at all: is there something so bad that fb could do that would get you to stop? If so, what is it? Where is your red line? Or absent an alternative with fb's network effects, will you keep using their products regardless of the unseen costs you rack up?
>will you keep using their products regardless of the unseen costs you rack up?
Honest answer: my purchasing/social network data is worth extremely little to me, so I don't care who has it. And I don't have a problem with advertising; I prefer to allocate responsibility to individuals for their own decisions, so if somebody is influenced by an advertisement, if anybody is to be faulted then it's themselves, not the advertisement/advertiser.
Re: As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening for Tech Giants
#77Question for the most of the people who read this who will still use fb/instagram/messenger all day, or even at all: is there something so bad that fb could do that would get you to stop? If so, what is it? Where is your red line? Or absent an alternative with fb's network effects, will you keep using their products regardless of the unseen costs you rack up?
I can't think of any concrete red-line that Facebook could cross. I've never been a techno-utopian, and the Snowden leaks were the catalyst that drove me to learn programming.
I recall being in my early teens, when I went to create my (first) Facebook account. I mentioned it to my dad. He explicitly told me that whatever I did on Facebook would go to their servers, that whatever reached their servers was theirs, and that they would do whatever they wanted with that data regardless of whether you agreed to it or not. The whole reason I gave up and made an account was because my friends had already given the app their contact list, and the service already had my phone number.
From day one I've treated online services like amoral, dangerous animals, and so far nothing these organizations have done has especially shocked me, though I have been impressed or surprised on occasion. My mantra is generally 'if I or the NSA could imagine it, private industry will attempt it'.
I still get a lot of value out of my Facebook account. Facebook pages are a gateway to niche interest groups, social trends, and the political fringes that would otherwise be inaccessible to outsiders. Seeing the ads Facebook puts in my feed helps me to calibrate my mental model of how I'm being observed, who's sharing data with who, and how online services perceive me (I typically use ad-block, and only occasionally close it to check my ads).
If I want to contact someone I've only met in passing, keep up with family and political bubbles, or do a bit of background investigation, Facebook's there for me.
Accessing the service requires a bit of a faustian bargain. But by the time I joined, the country had already made it on my behalf, so I opted to reap the benefits of that bargain rather than just being social collateral.
Facebook could scare me off the way Google Search did - by sanitizing its content feed to the degree Google's sanitized its search. But I'd still use Messenger, and any other useful service they come up with.
But otherwise it'd have to become obsolete in the same way as MySpace.
Re: As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening for Tech Giants
#78> The social network allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages. > The social network permitted Amazon to obtain users’ names and contact information through their friends, and it let Yahoo view streams of friends’ posts as recently as this summer,…
I guess this sort of defeats the purpose of switching from Google search to Bing over privacy concerns.
Re: As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening for Tech Giants
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m sure Zuck will offer a heartfelt apology.
10 DO heartfelt_apology GOTO 10
Zuckerberg isn't a robot - he's entitled, overconfident, and underappreciative of the depth or complexity of the world beyond his experience or the impact of his actions upon it. Further, he shows no hesitation in imposing his will on others despite those shortcomings, and is entrenched in his perspective and tactics rather than open to learning. More briefly - he's a jerk.
Re: As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening for Tech Giants
#80A basic principle of PR is that you should trickle out good news, and get all the bad news out in one dump. Because when bad news trickles out, and the public reads a fresh bit of bad news every day, it does more damage. One wonders at Facebook's very passive strategy here. They're not controlling the narrative at all, and we're reading a fresh bit of bad news almost every day.
I don't think many of the employees at various levels understand the "bad news" part of this. Therefore, they can't plan appropriately.
I don't think it is intentional but rather a function of most employees being in a weird corporate "filter bubble" with extra strong cool-aid being served on the daily.