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

Post by hluska » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 1:07 PM UTC

astura wrote: post #113

viraptor wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What, exactly, does Facebook have a monopoly on? It's not social media, chat, photo sharing, events, ads, or news.

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 1:08 PM UTC

Illniyar wrote: post #23

brianpgordon wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently Facebook is claiming that the functionality came from a separate "import contacts" feature that used to exist. But I agree; the idea that the import logic could have slipped into the login process accidentally is ludicrous. Or at least it indicates an outrageous lack of care on Facebook's part.

That's not exactly true, it depends on the architecture in use. For instance if using a Publish/Subscribe model, you could have had a service that listens to your email being connected, and since the only reason to connect your email was to upload contacts, it would upload contacts automatically. Later when login with email was added, the same event was sent but whomever added the event didn't know it would case the…

Post by hluska » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 1:12 PM UTC

codedokode wrote: post #114

hluska wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The same data collection that government loves so much has been misused to throw elections If this is done in favor of the current government, then they probably won't mind.

Post by dmitryminkovsky » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 1:12 PM UTC

matt4077 wrote: post #127

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s got to be a monetary loss here. If there isn’t precedent for calculating that loss, such precedent should be established. Our email contacts are valuable, especially at 150m user scale. We could have all banded together and sold them, had Facebook not stolen them. These users should be compensated.

“150m user scale” is an expression speaking to Facebook’s gain , not to any users’ loss. What’s needed is serious privacy legislation, not creative reinterpretation.

Post by corodra » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 1:15 PM UTC

iamrobschiavone wrote: post #94

smt88 wrote: post #42

Saying "unintentionally" here is like saying you unintentionally stole someone's TV when they gave you their key to walk their dog. It takes extra work to upload those contacts, which means several managers and developers decided to do it and then spent time implementing it. For the FB employees reading this: what is your tipping point? Would you say no to that assignment?

A common practice is to keep developers unaware of the real objective of their work (like Uber, in another comment on HN, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13786384 ): - developer A is tasked to create the prompt to ask for username and password of the email account - developer B is tasked to call some API to upload contacts from email account - developer C is tasked to bind two functionalities. Now replace develo…