Facebook Emails Could Show Zuckerberg Knew of Questionable Privacy Practices

My objections are thus:

1) Facebook uses any info I put into their platform to create a centralized, indexed, searchable, public database of people. This is dangerous for a lot of reasons, but notably in the vagaries of Facebook’s privacy settings (which seem to get reset every so often).

2) Facebook allows advertisers to target using a huge number of selection criteria. This allows advertisers to target some very specific — and vulnerable — groups in a way that is creepy at best. See also how the GOP was easily able to target specific racial cohorts in tight districts to spread FUD — the same tactics also work outside of politics when trying to sell things.

3) Machine learning outside of Facebook’s control makes it trivial to connect social media accounts to other activity the user may perform on the Internet — and thus connect that semi-anonymous online content to their real world relationships (e.g. the database of porn actresses linked to their Facebook profiles)

This collection of user data is Facebook’s entire business. The whole corporate bureaucracy is set up to protect this database and its data collection activities. You can’t have Facebook without it. So in a word, a lot of people object to Facebook’s entire business model — it’s just most people weren’t aware what that model asked them to give up until recently.

Otherwise reasonable people can be convinced to do unreasonable things by companies with an agenda, that’s not the question. Facebook has done a great job convincing people to irrationally give the company all their data.

The question is do you combat that with education or with regulation? Personally I think the government’s track record with this kind of regulation is terrible, with the possible exception of cigarettes. In the US marijuana is still a schedule one drug right up there with opioids, which makes zero sense when you look at the risk profile of each drug.

Public education is extremely difficult, for example the Just Say No campaign fell mostly flat, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Cigarette usage is down these days due to both increased regulations and increased public awareness of the risks.

Not using Facebook isn't a meaningful way to opt-out. The better analogy is not soft drinks, but asbestos or CFCs. All that private information amassed, just waiting to fall into the wrong hands.

>But the way this happens is pretty benign:

That would definitely be how FB describes it...

But the reality is FB had previously been investigated by the FTC for privacy violations and practices, in order to avoid enforcement action, the entered into a settlement agreement with the FTC agreeing not to engage in certain practices, develop new privacy standards and practice and allow 3rd parties to audit their privacy practices regularly...

FB violates that settlment agreement, including but not limited to, scraping email contacts from its users which allowed them to not only get that initial data they were not entitled to but more importantly to them to obtain secondary email address they could link to single users and even emails of non-users to create shadow profiles and buildout their social network through other email contacts. For example I’m not a FB user, you are, they inviolation logged into your email and scaled your contacts, identifying me, and then they build my shadow profile and build my profile from every other user who had me in their contacts.

Probably not benign.

Not one, but a handful, in no particular order.

Mozilla

Apple

Posteo.de (and similar email providers)

Signal app (though the app quality is very poor)

Matrix.org

SpiderOak

DuckDuckGo