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Mozilla Raises Concerns Over Facebook’s Lack of Transparency

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla Raises Concerns Over Facebook’s Lack of Transparency

#31

Post by yyyymmddhhmmss »

RandallBrown wrote: post #29
wil421 wrote: post #27

Elections were the breaking point for me on Facebook. I didn’t post much myself but my family and friends do. After seeing the amount of blatantly false information being passed by both political sides I finally had enough. This was 2016, after what I’ve learned last year I really what to delete my account instead of having it deactivated.

Are you saying that Facebook should decide which news is false or that you're just done with using social media to find news in general?

The Corporate Authoritarian Solution terrifies me so much.

American society is still in toddler years in terms of political consciousness, but the worst damage happened in the years before the internet, not after. 2016 was a madhouse because that was us coming out of denial, thanks to the internet.

Re: Mozilla Raises Concerns Over Facebook’s Lack of Transparency

#33

Post by wil421 »

RandallBrown wrote: post #29
wil421 wrote: post #27

Elections were the breaking point for me on Facebook. I didn’t post much myself but my family and friends do. After seeing the amount of blatantly false information being passed by both political sides I finally had enough. This was 2016, after what I’ve learned last year I really what to delete my account instead of having it deactivated.

Are you saying that Facebook should decide which news is false or that you're just done with using social media to find news in general?

Facebook isn’t a news platform to me and that was never my use case. I’m tired of both the political ads and the political crap people share as “truth”.

If you consider HN or Reddit as social media, then I guess I’m not done with news and social media. I like link aggregator sites over sites were I share my personal photos/comments with news mixed in.

Re: Mozilla Raises Concerns Over Facebook’s Lack of Transparency

#34

Post by DavidHm »

RandallBrown wrote: post #29
wil421 wrote: post #27

Elections were the breaking point for me on Facebook. I didn’t post much myself but my family and friends do. After seeing the amount of blatantly false information being passed by both political sides I finally had enough. This was 2016, after what I’ve learned last year I really what to delete my account instead of having it deactivated.

Are you saying that Facebook should decide which news is false or that you're just done with using social media to find news in general?

I find myself somewhat unimpressed by arguments like "Facebook / Google" should not be deciding what is false.

They already are - or rather, they are deciding what is visible and prominent, and what isn't. When you share a post, Facebook's algorithm determine what visible it has for each of your friends - whether it's on top of their feed, lower, or completely invisible.

At this point it seems more and more likely (though probably not proven) that those algorithms are skewed to promote content that gets high chances of engagement - and that means content that provokes outrage or rage is more likely to be visible than a long-form, balanced conversations.

So in short - Facebook is not (and should not) be the arbiter of truth. But surely it's not unreasonable to ask that they don't actively promote incivility and (literally, uncontroversially) blatantly fake news?

Re: Mozilla Raises Concerns Over Facebook’s Lack of Transparency

#35

Post by bad_user »

wtmt wrote: post #19

This was Facebook's statement to Propublica [1]: > “We regularly improve the ways we prevent unauthorized access by third parties like web browser plugins to keep people’s information safe,” Facebook spokesperson Beth Gautier said. “This was a routine update and applied to ad blocking and ad scraping plugins, which can expose people’s information to bad actors in ways they did not expect.” Seriously, after all the sc…

I understand the privacy concerns, the problem being that Facebook's ads targeting has no transparency, which is very problematic for issues of public interest.

For elections for example I'd like to be able to see what parties or what politicians are paying for Facebook ads, what demographics are they targeting and with what ads.

If Facebook exposed this data, it wouldn't be a privacy issue.

Re: Mozilla Raises Concerns Over Facebook’s Lack of Transparency

#36

Post by freehunter »

jopsen wrote: post #24
xfitm3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla is trying to find a way to sustain itself outside of Google. I don't fault them for that. They need money just like any other company.

Mozilla is a non-profit, not like any other company! That said I strongly support their work... Disclaimer: I used to work at Mozilla.

Non-profits still need money to pay their bills...

Re: Mozilla Raises Concerns Over Facebook’s Lack of Transparency

#37

Post by dalbasal »

Political advertising is something that FB should have tackled closer to the stem.

First, they should have considered banning it entirely. I'm sure they had such conversations around (eg) tobacco, arms, alcohol, medicines and such. FB are far from immune to the fiduciary imperative, but they are very profitable. They were in a position to turn away potentially problem-making revenue. In hindsight, IMO, that would have been the better choice.

If they are going to do political advertising, they should be channeling & (internally) regulating it differently. Separate rules. ID your advertisers, and enforce local election rules by jurisdiction, like election day ad bans. Report on (or verify) spending, if local laws require it. Similar systems exist for licensed/regulated markets like financial services. You can't just start advertising savings accounts.

Without doubt, transparency should be part of the special rules for political ads.

On the bigger questions, to me, GDPR-like regulation is not the answer. Some parts, like reporting on breaches, are good. Other parts, like the emphasis on creating agreements between users and websites, are (IMO!) wrong. These things are contracts. The mental bandwidth required to understand a cookie policy and make informed is far too great.

Transparency is, potentially, an alternative.

Re: Mozilla Raises Concerns Over Facebook’s Lack of Transparency

#38

Post by ahartmetz »

bad_user wrote: post #35
wtmt wrote: post #19

This was Facebook's statement to Propublica [1]: > “We regularly improve the ways we prevent unauthorized access by third parties like web browser plugins to keep people’s information safe,” Facebook spokesperson Beth Gautier said. “This was a routine update and applied to ad blocking and ad scraping plugins, which can expose people’s information to bad actors in ways they did not expect.” Seriously, after all the sc…

I understand the privacy concerns, the problem being that Facebook's ads targeting has no transparency, which is very problematic for issues of public interest. For elections for example I'd like to be able to see what parties or what politicians are paying for Facebook ads, what demographics are they targeting and with what ads. If Facebook exposed this data, it wouldn't be a privacy issue.

They can't do this for reasons of privacy of advertisers. /s

Re: Mozilla Raises Concerns Over Facebook’s Lack of Transparency

#39

Post by moosey »

DavidHm wrote: post #34
RandallBrown wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that Facebook should decide which news is false or that you're just done with using social media to find news in general?

I find myself somewhat unimpressed by arguments like "Facebook / Google" should not be deciding what is false. They already are - or rather, they are deciding what is visible and prominent, and what isn't. When you share a post, Facebook's algorithm determine what visible it has for each of your friends - whether it's on top of their feed, lower, or completely invisible. At this point it seems more and more likely (t…

I imagine that, at some point, any specialized management of a 'social feed' will be considered human experimentation that generally leaves the people consuming it to be worse off mentally and emotionally. We already know that Facebook has done what are considered experiments against the wellbeing of users, but there is no real gap between that and trying to adjust the behavior of users in order to keep them on the site. Once that adjustment has been made, then a closed-source curated social feed becomes illegal, as it should be, IMO.

I think that the only way to manage a social feed is for it to be really dumb: blocks, maybe best friends, etc. Of course, once you do that you've basically returned to email.

Re: Mozilla Raises Concerns Over Facebook’s Lack of Transparency

#40

Post by lclarkmichalek »

bad_user wrote: post #35
wtmt wrote: post #19

This was Facebook's statement to Propublica [1]: > “We regularly improve the ways we prevent unauthorized access by third parties like web browser plugins to keep people’s information safe,” Facebook spokesperson Beth Gautier said. “This was a routine update and applied to ad blocking and ad scraping plugins, which can expose people’s information to bad actors in ways they did not expect.” Seriously, after all the sc…

I understand the privacy concerns, the problem being that Facebook's ads targeting has no transparency, which is very problematic for issues of public interest. For elections for example I'd like to be able to see what parties or what politicians are paying for Facebook ads, what demographics are they targeting and with what ads. If Facebook exposed this data, it wouldn't be a privacy issue.

Some of what you want might be available here: https://www.facebook.com/ads/archive/ (https://www.facebook.com/business/help/2405092116183307).

(work for fb)

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