Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook documents show plans to sell access to user data discussed for years

nbcnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 120 posts

Re: Facebook documents show plans to sell access to user data discussed for years

#71

Post by sonnyblarney »

There is a world of difference between literally selling user data to whoever for money, and providing API access so that users of other platforms can chose to share their own data with that platform.

The journalists lately are doing us all a huge disservice by conflating the two.

I haven't seen any evidence at all that FB was selling user data.

I've posted here a couple times on this issue, having been personally involved on the other side of the table in one of these 'deals' - and it was only ever a matter of getting our app integrated into FB so that our users could access their own data. We didn't use any of the data, though some 3rd parties would then have access to that data and do whatever with it, but only with it with the permission of the users.

The article doesn't provide specifics, but from what I can gather, this really is about 'special API access', and shouldn't be frame as 'FB sharing user data'. This is simply unfair to FB however we might think of them because it misrepresents the issue.

In short: FB has publicly available APIs which 3rd parties can use to allow their users to do some integration. Some of those APIs provide quite a bit of access, and so there's reasonable discussion about 'who' they should give access to. It's also perfectly reasonable that FB wanted to sell access to such APIs, or to have some kind of reciprocity.

VISA, Mastercard and AMEX are out there selling your data (on the aggregate, down to the zip code) to whoever wants to buy it, which is far worse and in many cases may theoretically compromise your identity.

FB has a lot to answer for, surely, but the information needs to be more clearly communicated. Sometimes, I'm not even sure if the journalists understand what is going on.

Re: Facebook documents show plans to sell access to user data discussed for years

#72

Post by neves »

threeseed wrote: post #18
neves wrote: post #17

Please read this. This isn't just another routine news that Zuck lied and Facebook is evil. They had access to more than 4.000 previously unreleased documents. Democracy is at stake. Facebook and its subsidiaries are destroying our societies. The problem is global. Not because it is happening in a far away country you shouldn't care. You can already see the increase in Amazon deforestation due to Bolsonaro election i…

You can't blame Facebook for the rise of right wing leaders. It's been happening in US, Italy, Israel, Poland, Hungary, Phillipines and now Brazil and the trend will continue whilst those leaders offer strength, populism and can point to immigrants as the cause of society's problems.

No, I can blame. They could have stopped to spread of fake news, but as the article says, it's not their best interest.

Re: Facebook documents show plans to sell access to user data discussed for years

#73

Post by danans »

chillacy wrote: post #55
danans wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the left has plenty of negative messages too. The rich are too rich and don't have to pay taxes, the poor are too poor, racism never completely went away, the corporate world is unfair to women, and so on. Those are hardly negative, and to equate their tone with far right rhetoric is textbook false equivalency. They are if anything just positions that one may or may not agree with about the just distribution of…

If you believe that there’s no far left then either you haven’t been looking very hard or your own notion of center is very different than mine.

I never said there is no far left. They definitely exist, and I even disagree with some of their policy positions.

I said that the far left doesn't use ethnic nationalist rhetoric. That acknowledges their existence.

Re: Facebook documents show plans to sell access to user data discussed for years

#74

Post by neves »

save_ferris wrote: post #22
threeseed wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't blame Facebook for the rise of right wing leaders. It's been happening in US, Italy, Israel, Poland, Hungary, Phillipines and now Brazil and the trend will continue whilst those leaders offer strength, populism and can point to immigrants as the cause of society's problems.

> You can't blame Facebook for the rise of right wing leaders Facebook absolutely bears some culpability in this, but they're not the only reason that this is happening. Facebook cannot successfully control the hateful toxicity of their platform, which is now global. All along the way, Facebook has lied, concealed, and deflected as much blame and responsibility as they could. This is unacceptable. Facebook launched i…

It's impressive how a lot of reasonable and negative comments about Facebook are always downvoted here. Probably it isn't a coordinated PR tactic, just where have a lot of Facebookers here.

Re: Facebook documents show plans to sell access to user data discussed for years

#75

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

dwb wrote: post #69
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole business model of Facebook is to collect personal data and sell it for profit. It should surprise no one that they are doing that. Furthermore, it shouldn't surprise Americans that there are zero regulations protecting their non-health related data. Free stuff on the internet doesn't run on fairy dust.

Something doesn't have to be surprising for people to legitimately protest against it. The existence of Facebook isn't a result of some democratic consensus, it's some dude's get-rich scheme that's happened to have popped off.

The consensus was set by electing politicians who don't work for the common good. Facebook is nothing new. Our privacy has been systematically degraded by the data broker industry which has existed since before ARPANET. Congress protects that industry and Facebook reaps those benefits.

Re: Facebook documents show plans to sell access to user data discussed for years

#76

Post by Balgair »

lifehacked wrote: post #65

They should arrest Zuckerberger, I'd like to see RICO applied within the ranks of a single corporation, epic trial.

I'll let Popehat handle this one: https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/14/lawsplainer-its-not-rico-...

Re: Facebook documents show plans to sell access to user data discussed for years

#78

Post by dmlittle »

y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #41
mariushn wrote: post #29

How many of the commenters here still use WhatsApp? Did you try switching you & friends to Signal?

I use it. Yes I've tried. They don't want to switch :/

Wire has a much better experience than Signal but then it's yet another switch... :/

Re: Facebook documents show plans to sell access to user data discussed for years

#79

Post by drak0n1c »

danans wrote: post #73
chillacy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe that there’s no far left then either you haven’t been looking very hard or your own notion of center is very different than mine.

I never said there is no far left. They definitely exist, and I even disagree with some of their policy positions. I said that the far left doesn't use ethnic nationalist rhetoric. That acknowledges their existence.

The far-left routinely castigates "white people", blames unrelated individuals alive today collectively as the sole villain of history, and does not allow people to participate in discussions and debates based on the color of their skin. They say that race needs to be the main factor when restructuring the country with mass property redistribution. Isn't that inflammatory ethno-nationalist rhetoric?

Re: Facebook documents show plans to sell access to user data discussed for years

#80

Post by seattle_spring »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #30

>Facebook gave Amazon extended access to user data because it was... partnering with the social network on the launch of its Fire smartphone. So is this yet another case of the media being incapable of distinguishing between transferring of data to third parties and displaying data on devices as an agent of the user, i.e. for the purpose of providing an integrated facebook experience? Until the media shows itself to…

Users of HN also have a major problem understanding this distinction.
Post reply on HN