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Facebook 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5M people's email contacts without consent

businessinsider.com

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Re: Facebook 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5M people's email contacts without consent

#81

Post by viraptor »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #70
hluska wrote: post #63

At some point, some government is going to have to step in and stop Facebook. Five years ago, I would not have believed that I would have supported government action. Now, I’m afraid for the future if there is no intervention.

I don't know if you've followed the news, but multiple governments have investigated, sued and fined Facebook. A quick Google indicates Facebook may end up paying 1.6 billion to the EU. The UK is doing an investigation too, with FB's impact on the Brexit referendum, as well as the whole Cambridge Analytica thing. If you're thinking Facebook is getting away with it, you're wrong. Of course, they're mainly getting fine…

> that isn't harsh enough punishment then I don't know what to do next,

Split the business into smaller, independent ones. We've seen this before. There's enough services hiding inside FB that treating them like a monopoly is not a terrible idea.

Re: Facebook 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5M people's email contacts without consent

#82

Post by hluska »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #70
hluska wrote: post #63

At some point, some government is going to have to step in and stop Facebook. Five years ago, I would not have believed that I would have supported government action. Now, I’m afraid for the future if there is no intervention.

I don't know if you've followed the news, but multiple governments have investigated, sued and fined Facebook. A quick Google indicates Facebook may end up paying 1.6 billion to the EU. The UK is doing an investigation too, with FB's impact on the Brexit referendum, as well as the whole Cambridge Analytica thing. If you're thinking Facebook is getting away with it, you're wrong. Of course, they're mainly getting fine…

Of course I’ve followed the news.

Facebook faces a small punishment or perhaps a public rebuke from some politician, someone from the company makes some lame statement about how they’re committed to do better, and then within two weeks another story comes out that demonstrates they don’t give a shit about their users.

Facebook has thumbed its nose at every single attempt to rein it in. The next steps are dangerous territory, but only for companies that behave in tremendously antisocial ways. It would be a net win for the rest of us.

Re: Facebook 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5M people's email contacts without consent

#83

Post by PedroBatista »

mikro2nd wrote: post #51

FB has said they'll be notifying the people whose contacts they "unintentionally" uploaded. How about notifying those contacts whose private details they illicitly obtained that their privacy has been compromised by Facebook - the innocents who signed up for FB and had their contact-list stolen (let's call it what it is) may or may not feel any moral obligation (more likely, don't even see the issue) to notify their…

It’s amazing what these companies can get away with without paying a single dime to anyone.

Re: Facebook 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5M people's email contacts without consent

#85

Post by hysan »

While they are deleting the imported contacts, that doesn’t undo any potential shadow profiles they generated, any training to their ML models that associate users (relationships), or any training to their advertising models. I believe Facebook doesn’t care about the contacts themselves. They wanted all of these collarary benefits that the general public will not be thinking about.

Re: Facebook 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5M people's email contacts without consent

#86

Post by noxToken »

zach43 wrote: post #65
jayawayjayyay wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article it sounds like there was a prompt for permission that got removed: > Facebook told Gizmodo via email that in May 2016 it made a revision to the registration process, which originally asked the affected users for permission to upload contact lists. That change removed the opt-in prompt, though the company did not realize the underlying functionality was still operating in some cases. It doesn't take a…

its such a coincidence that these accidents keep happening in ways that enable further data gathering...surely there isn't a larger problem with Facebook's attitude towards their users' private data or anything

I'm not excusing FB, but it still makes sense. Their whole business model is data collection on their users, graphing connections between these users, and brokering deals with advertisers about users on the platform. When something goes awry, you can bet that it will somehow affect one of those things.

Re: Facebook 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5M people's email contacts without consent

#87

Post by askmike »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #70
hluska wrote: post #63

At some point, some government is going to have to step in and stop Facebook. Five years ago, I would not have believed that I would have supported government action. Now, I’m afraid for the future if there is no intervention.

I don't know if you've followed the news, but multiple governments have investigated, sued and fined Facebook. A quick Google indicates Facebook may end up paying 1.6 billion to the EU. The UK is doing an investigation too, with FB's impact on the Brexit referendum, as well as the whole Cambridge Analytica thing. If you're thinking Facebook is getting away with it, you're wrong. Of course, they're mainly getting fine…

Well, not much is changing after these kind of fines.

> A quick Google indicates Facebook may end up paying 1.6 billion to the EU.

A slap on the wrist, Facebook had 8 billion in revenue Q1 2019. But first let's see if they actually end up paying that.

It's just like how banks change after receiving massive fines for their role in the crisis, money laundering, transacting to sanctioned countries (they don't really, aside from some minor internal processes to prevent the exact same thing from happening again).

Re: Facebook 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5M people's email contacts without consent

#88

Post by matz1 »

devnonymous wrote: post #77
swebs wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>few people seem to have ethics Or maybe their set of ethics simply differs from yours. It is very subjective after all

> It is very subjective after all Methinks that was what the OP was asking -- what is the tipping point ? Having differing ethics is fine but one can't just lean on that as a crutch when one has none.

What tipping point? Maybe the engineer themselves who recommends the practice. Everyone have ethics but might be differ than you. As long as the practice meet their goal, from their perspective it works.

Re: Facebook 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5M people's email contacts without consent

#89

Post by hluska »

swebs wrote: post #69
hluska wrote: post #63

At some point, some government is going to have to step in and stop Facebook. Five years ago, I would not have believed that I would have supported government action. Now, I’m afraid for the future if there is no intervention.

Have you read the Prism papers? Governments love this mass data collection since it makes their job so much easier.

Well yeah, I’m sure they do, but at what cost? The same data collection that government loves so much has been misused to throw elections and genuinely cast doubt upon the democratic process. Ultimately, creating this big giant drag nets has only empowered companies to demonstrate a complete lack of regard for humanity.

If that’s security, I no longer want to be secure.

Re: Facebook 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5M people's email contacts without consent

#90

Post by askmike »

swebs wrote: post #69
hluska wrote: post #63

At some point, some government is going to have to step in and stop Facebook. Five years ago, I would not have believed that I would have supported government action. Now, I’m afraid for the future if there is no intervention.

Have you read the Prism papers? Governments love this mass data collection since it makes their job so much easier.

It only makes the job of intelligence agencies easier, a tiny part of an government. And one that wouldn't play any role in intervening in a company like proposed.
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