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Facebook's PR feels broken

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Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#191

Post by zimpenfish »

Keverw wrote: post #105
inetknght wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The FTC enforces truth-in-advertising laws on ads across all mediums. Hahahahahahaha yeah sure they do.

Yeah. I thought I seen something before that Hollywood had some exemption, so movies could have paid placement without disclosing it. Like I think the Emoji movie could be an example, never watched it but remember seeing posts saying it was nothing but a big advertising. The first Jurassic World had a bunch of product placement too, people didn't like. Maybe it's mentioned in the credits somewhere though? I liked the…

> Maybe it's mentioned in the credits somewhere though?

There's a credit for a product placement researcher and a "thanks to Thermo Fisher for lab equipment" (plus a couple of others that don't stand out as companies you'd recognise) but there's no "Promotional Consideration from ..." section in the credits that I can see (Bluray version, 2:04:21 length)

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#192

Post by taurath »

humanrebar wrote: post #188
taurath wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But don't forget, money is speech, and corporations are people. All of which is absolutely not in the first amendment.

The right to freely associate + the right to speak + the right to printed speech = the right to collaborate on speech i.e., there is free speech for groups as well as individuals Saying there's right to free speech for groups unless someone gets paid is a little silly and hard to enforce. Hence our current situation. From another perspective, there is obviously "freedom of the press" but the Constitution does not say…

For the same reason groups and corporations don't have voting rights, they shouldn't be able to monopolize speech by drowning out all others.

Additionally, money is not speech. We disallow politicians directly giving people money to vote for them - why would we do that, since the politicians trade is in speech, he's simply delivering stump speech in the form of a $100 bill to his potential constituents.

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#194

Post by rohitb91 »

dannyr wrote: post #153
jyrkesh wrote: post #106

> I’m sure, internally, it’s looked at as the “mainstream media trying to get clicks... I interviewed with FB shortly after the Cambridge Analytica stuff came out (but long enough after that it was clear to everyone that FB had screwed up big time). When it was my turn to ask questions in one particular interview, I gave a standard fallback when I have nothing else: "[despite all the blahblah positives], having worke…

I shared a Lyft ride with a Facebook employee right after the CA controversy. I asked her what do employees think about it. She told me that people are really worried about how the controversy affected the stock price. (Facebook stock was down around that time.) I'm not sure how many employees worry about stock price than the supposed effect of the CA controversy but I was disappointed to hear that from a Facebook em…

Facebook et al are knowingly leading the social collapse of countries because of the same thing that led the bankers to knowingly lead the world economy to the brink of collapse.

Money

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#196

Post by alchemism »

ori_b wrote: post #169
manfredo wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I gather, Facebook did have a compliance program in place to ensure that data was only shared with those that met its usage policies. Aleksandr Kogan was working at the University of Cambridge at the time, so the claim that he was using this data for academic purposes would seem credible to Facebook. Here are a couple sources that state that Kogan told Facebook that the data was to be used for academic purp…

> From what I gather, Facebook did have a compliance program in place to ensure that data was only shared with those that met its usage policies. Aleksandr Kogan was working at the University of Cambridge at the time, so the claim that he was using this data for academic purposes would seem credible to Facebook As though simply working at a university is sufficient reason to trust someone.

Social engineering at its finest.

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#197

Post by Thorrez »

> You have someone like Antonia Woodford, rightly called out[2] for the absurdity of saying to combat misinformation you should require “advertisers use their real identities”. She has Yale, McKinsey and a rapid rise at Facebook, on her resume. This is the profile of someone who I imagine isn’t wanting to bunker down in a Trumpian hole of calling everything critical: “fake news”.

I don't understand. How is it "absurdity"? And the linked Gizmodo article doesn't seem to call it absurd either.

[2] https://gizmodo.com/teen-vogue-yanks-puff-piece-on-facebooks...

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#198

Post by ryandrake »

ganstyles wrote: post #114
jyrkesh wrote: post #106

> I’m sure, internally, it’s looked at as the “mainstream media trying to get clicks... I interviewed with FB shortly after the Cambridge Analytica stuff came out (but long enough after that it was clear to everyone that FB had screwed up big time). When it was my turn to ask questions in one particular interview, I gave a standard fallback when I have nothing else: "[despite all the blahblah positives], having worke…

I interviewed there this summer because the position/compensation offered was just too good to not consider seriously. Like, top 10% at FB kind of money, which is a lot. During the interview process, I asked many FB employees about their thoughts on FB in the news, the headlines, scandals, etc. All super smart and dedicated people, but anecdotally there was no hint of them thinking they had done anything wrong. They…

I know a few people who work there too. I can have an intelligent conversation/debate about almost anything with them, from tech stacks to software development methodology, but bring up privacy and Cambridge Analytica, and all of a sudden the wagons circle and it’s all “we’re so misunderstood,” and “the biased media is out to get us,” and “we do so much for user privacy and always just get shit on!” Its as if they all went through the same training and got the same talking points. Spooky!

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#199

Post by jariel »

jyrkesh wrote: post #106

> I’m sure, internally, it’s looked at as the “mainstream media trying to get clicks... I interviewed with FB shortly after the Cambridge Analytica stuff came out (but long enough after that it was clear to everyone that FB had screwed up big time). When it was my turn to ask questions in one particular interview, I gave a standard fallback when I have nothing else: "[despite all the blahblah positives], having worke…

How was Facebook an 'horrible actor' in the CA scandal exactly?

Facebook had relatively permission APIs. The entire world knew it. Journalists, developers, Big Cos.

Nobody was screaming that there was a problem. Though there were a few issues around privacy, there wasn't really any public dialog specifically around the nature of those APIs.

CA found a sneaky way to take advantage of somewhat open APIs.

As the world started to become somewhat more concerned, and FB saw some room for potential abuse - FB rightly tightened up the APIs a little. This was long before the CA scandal blew up.

Then it became public that CA was doing some sneaky things with the data. It's actually highly debatable if they did anything wrong within the context of the information available - or at least outside of industry norms -> what CA was doing with data from FB is what everyone is and was doing with data from similar sources.

FB called on CA to erase the data, and checked that they did. It turns out, CA lied and did not.

FB did the right thing every step of the way in the CA scandal. APIs of every kind err a little bit one way or the other over time and as issues surfaced, FB moved in the right direction without coaxing.

The media absolutely misrepresented the entire issue. They didn't really make it clear what happened, nor did they clarify what exactly FB did wrong, but most importantly, they misled the public with respect to a separate, secondary issue which was 'special API access'.

The 'scandal' is that there are tons of companies like CA using private data for all sorts of reasons, it's mostly not FB.

There are definitely privacy issues around FB, and I'm not fan of them, but those are a separate issue.

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#200

Post by jariel »

gfodor wrote: post #168
manfredo wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone who worked at Facebook for the better part of a decade responded that they felt the media coverage was unfair to Facebook. You were suprised by this response because from an outsider's perspective you felt that Facebook employees should be apologetic? What makes you more qualified to judge whether the public perception was accurate as compared to someone who actually worked there - an "FB vet" in your own wor…

The great irony to me is that Facebook does a lot of stuff people should be angry and scared about, but oddly enough the Cambridge Analytica situation, which broke this whole dam open, is not one of them, and is one where I think they are being treated unfairly. The reason it ends up being an issue is because of politics: it gives people an explanation and someone to blame for an election that did not play out accord…

This is exactly it.

CA is not actually that bad of a situation.

There are much greater privacy and freedom of expression concerns.

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