They say they're going to delete it, but are they really though? How are they gonna prove it?
Facebook 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5M people's email contacts without consent
251–260 of 310 posts
Re: Facebook 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5M people's email contacts without consent
#252Can't someone file a class action lawsuit against Facebook? I mean, it's nice that they are deleting the information now, but they clearly did something wrong, and by basic standards, they should be punished. And the deleting the stolen information isn't punishment, and since they probably won't delete any new ad targeting information they gathered as a conclusion from the contacts, they are still profiting from it,…
There already is a $78B class action lawsuit against Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica scandal. $1000 per American whose information was harvested. It's hard to google for however.
Re: Facebook 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5M people's email contacts without consent
#253The age of “Facebook” and “accidentally” is (should be) long past.
Re: Facebook 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5M people's email contacts without consent
#254First they ask for email passwords. Then the new users assume Facebook won't comprehensively mine their emails. Then Facebook awkwardly gets caught uploading 1.5 million users' email contacts. It doesn't make sense for people to trust the service at all unless you assume one of two things: 1 - Despite all the outrage on hackernews, and the NWT stories, our neighbours down the street and family members still don't kno…
I try to be an advocate for privacy. I really do. But everyone just calls me paranoid, asks why I need to be worried about my government like I have something to hide, or just stares blankly at me because they can't be bothered to actually think about the words climbing through their ears.
I'm going mental over the explosion of televisions in the last half decade which identify and report any content you watch on the TV by default, in exchange for 100-150 off the television (which was fluff to begin with... it's not a direct trade of $100 for your data).
I've set up about a dozen of these now for people and they just stare blankly while I try to explain what "Auto Content Recognition" means... Hello 1984.
Re: Facebook 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5M people's email contacts without consent
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would never friend someone again who dropped me because of my employer
I wouldn't say I necessarily agree with doing this when it comes to Facebook, but is there really no circumstance in which you think it'd be justified to cut off contact with a friend because of where they work? For instance, if I had a friend whose job it was to design missiles that are used to bomb innocent people (Lockheed-Martin for instance) I would seriously reconsider my friendship with that person. Yes, it's…
On its face the statement is true. LM does design missiles, and some non-zero number of them have been used to kill innocent people.
I'm curious what part of the statement is important to you in making that decision though. Is it that LM is part of the military-industrial complex, full stop? That the weapons are used by the US military? That they are sold to and used by other governments? Would LM be acceptable if they created weapons that magically never harmed the innocent? What if they occasionally harmed the innocent but were always used by people with good intentions who were doing things you supported?
Never worked in that industry, just curious.
Re: Facebook 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5M people's email contacts without consent
#256Kinda off topic but I find it incredibly worrying the lack of privacy people have online when it comes to advertising. There is creepy retargeting and then there is retargeting to specific individuals.
Right now I can find just about anyone’s email, seed them with an ad pixel, show them hyperpersonalized landing pages and follow them online knowing exactly who they are, allowing me to tailor ads to individual level.
If that doesn’t creep you out, what would?
Re: Facebook 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5M people's email contacts without consent
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't say I necessarily agree with doing this when it comes to Facebook, but is there really no circumstance in which you think it'd be justified to cut off contact with a friend because of where they work? For instance, if I had a friend whose job it was to design missiles that are used to bomb innocent people (Lockheed-Martin for instance) I would seriously reconsider my friendship with that person. Yes, it's…
On its face the statement is true. LM does design missiles, and some non-zero number of them have been used to kill innocent people. I'm curious what part of the statement is important to you in making that decision though. Is it that LM is part of the military-industrial complex, full stop? That the weapons are used by the US military? That they are sold to and used by other governments? Would LM be acceptable if th…
I was using Lockheed-Martin as an example of a "clearly immoral" company, you could replace it with any other example you can think of and the point would be the same (that at some point you have to accept that ignoring your morals in order to get a paycheck means you don't really have those morals).
As for my personal view, it's fairly clear that Lockheed-Martin props up (through lobbying) and profits (through government contracts) from the US war machine -- which in turn has killed millions of innocent civilians. And then there's the contractors that Lockheed-Martin has provided to government agencies to further strengthen the surveillance tools of the NSA, CIA, FBI, and so on. So, I think Lockheed-Martin was a good example of a "clearly immoral" company.
EDIT: You changed your comment after I responded to it. I don't think the ethics of hypothetical magic missiles is a super useful conversation to have (changes in technology don't change our underlying ethics, they just change what ethical questions are being asked).
On the question about unintended consequences, obviously in wars you can't guarantee zero civilian casualties and innocent bloodshed is inevitable (though still unjustifiable). But the US is currently engaged in several illegal wars of aggression (which is a crime under international law) and clearly planning to engage in several more. Personally, I think the "unintended consequences are inevitable in war" defense isn't available to you if the war itself was illegal from the outset.
Re: Facebook 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5M people's email contacts without consent
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There’s got to be a monetary loss here. Our email contacts are valuable. Why? Nobody lost their contacts, so what’s the $ amount it cost them? Facebook claims they’re deleting them. If that’s true, then Facebook isn’t gaining from the contacts. If users don’t lose anything and if Facebook doesn’t gain anything, what is the monetary loss? > especially at 150m user scale Where’s that number coming from? The article t…
> Nobody lost their contacts, so what’s the $ amount it cost them? Opportunity cost? If Facebook has these contacts now, then their third parties have them, so those contacts are no longer as valuable, if valuable at all. > Where’s that number coming from? The article talks about 1.5 million users. My bad, added two orders of magnitude by accident. I knew something was off there. Thanks for the correction.
> Opportunity cost? If Facebook has these contacts now, then their third parties have them, so those contacts are no longer as valuable, if valuable at all.
We don't know that's true, I would be cautious about making assumptions. But, even if we assume it is, opportunity cost isn't equivalent to financial loss, so we can't say people lost money they weren't already making.
Anyway, I don't think email lists being sold has prevented email addresses from appearing in other lists. It's clear to me that nobody is tracking the value of my email address because marketers keep buying it over and over.
That said, from my point of view, I don't like the idea of selling my own email address or trying to extract money from it. I don't want that, and I don't agree with the idea of selling my privacy in order to battle my concerns about Facebook taking and/or selling my privacy. The selling of my privacy is the very thing I don't want to have happen.
Privacy is not a monetary value for me, it's something I value having, not something I value selling. I don't want it to be subject to capitalist thinking and market analysis.
Re: Facebook 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5M people's email contacts without consent
#259First they ask for email passwords. Then the new users assume Facebook won't comprehensively mine their emails. Then Facebook awkwardly gets caught uploading 1.5 million users' email contacts. It doesn't make sense for people to trust the service at all unless you assume one of two things: 1 - Despite all the outrage on hackernews, and the NWT stories, our neighbours down the street and family members still don't kno…
I try to be an advocate for privacy. I really do. But everyone just calls me paranoid, asks why I need to be worried about my government like I have something to hide, or just stares blankly at me because they can't be bothered to actually think about the words climbing through their ears. I'm going mental over the explosion of televisions in the last half decade which identify and report any content you watch on the…
I'm right there with you. Most people write it off as paranoia and give the tired "Doesn't matter if you have nothing to hide". I think the problem is the only reason we have to convince people to change is just principles. There is no existential reason right now to convince people to change their behavior. Sure it's scary having large entities vacuum up our data and spy on us but so far there are no real bad effects on the users being spied on that I know of.
Re: Facebook 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5M people's email contacts without consent
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey I’m 100% with you. I’m not defending Facebook, and it’s crazy they ask for passwords. But just because Facebook’s at fault doesn’t mean that it’s okay as a user to give out your password, nor does it mean that you lost any money when contacts are copied, right? The words “stealing” and “robbing” don’t really convey what happened here, even in the case Facebook isn’t telling the truth.
You are saying that the words 'rob' and 'steal' don't convey what has happened here, but this is only true in the colloquial sense. There is a good reason why many legal codes and laws start off with a exhaustively long list of definitions. Legal definitions often are different in very subtle ways that maybe aren't apparent at first glance. If you don't think that this is the proper framing, maybe consider a differen…
What made you think I was fixating on anything? I just agreed with you that Facebook's action is at least negligent and could be criminal. I guess I'm fine with the word stealing in the sense of information theft. Still, Facebook claims it was an accident and that the data is being deleted. It might have been intentional, but I'd wait to call it intentional until proven, even though they've done it intentionally in other cases. :)
All I'm really saying is, no matter what, don't give out your password. And if you do, don't pretend to be shocked when something bad happens.