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Facebook has sent a cease-and-desist letter to researchers

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Re: Facebook has sent a cease-and-desist letter to researchers

#161

Post by chopin »

testrun wrote: post #92
input_sh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pre-Reagan, sure. Since then, none. There's zero interest in breaking up monopolies in the US from both Democrats and Republicans. Hell, today's AT&T has more market share than Bell Systems did before it was split up. EU, on the other hand, appears to be slowly progressing towards the goal of breaking up tech monopolies. Leaked plans would shake up the tech quite a bit: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/10/eu-vs-big…

Nice re-writing of history. Microsoft anti-trust was post Reagan. AT7T now is about 34% market share. The rest is between Verizon, Sprint etc. Not the same as what Bell had.

Microsoft has been broken up?

Re: Facebook has sent a cease-and-desist letter to researchers

#162

Post by Natanael_L »

warkdarrior wrote: post #126
Animats wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WSJ: "In a letter sent Oct. 16 to the researchers behind the NYU Ad Observatory, Facebook said the project violates provisions in its terms of service that prohibit bulk data collection from its site." That's the key point here. The researchers are not a party to Facebook's terms of service. The user installing the add-on may be, but that does not bind the add-on developer. (This is called "privity" in law; contract…

> The researchers are not a party to Facebook's terms of service. Unless the researchers have their own personal FB accounts. You know, like 3.1 billion other people.

Then they would only have ToS violation claim against those particular users. It's not legally straightforward that FB could demand that the tool can't be distributed. Any 3rd party that didn't agree to the ToS would not be bound by it, and can still redistribute it.

Re: Facebook has sent a cease-and-desist letter to researchers

#163

Post by beagle3 »

anchpop wrote: post #144
nulbyte wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot verify that Facebook will not change its product to malware in the future. That it to say, at some point, you trust the software publisher in the same way you trust the service operator.

It's fine for you to trust the software publisher, that doesn't mean facebook should, especially when they're legally liable for data breaches that could result from it

Wait a second. How does Facebook trust Firefox? Microsoft Edge? Safari? The other 20 extensions I have installed, three of which save a copy of every single page I visit?

They don’t. They don’t, at the least, care about anyone’s data - they just phrase it that way to sound legitimate because saying “we want no oversight whatsoever” sounds whiny, and it is. (And so does what they ARE claiming to anyone who understands the technical side).

Re: Facebook has sent a cease-and-desist letter to researchers

#164

Post by beagle3 »

mobileexpert wrote: post #43
MAGZine wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing Cambridge Analytica, who harvested data though means that were not transparent to users (and for malicious purpose), to NYU has explained what data and why, AND has the consent of its users, seems disingenuous at best.

The whole point is that a major problem with CA was the scaled friend’s data collection. The NYU app scraping modality could easily do the same thing which violates the present FB consent/sharing model of you control your data going to or not going to third party apps. FB has to fight as hard as possible against such apps. Remember Clearview AI? If we want FB to fight CA and Clearview they must fight here as well.

Suppose NYU sent a person to sit behind every NYU participant, and take a photo of their screen each time it changes - that would be exactly the same as NYU is doing (except more expensive); the participant knows that and gave their consent. It is within their rights to show their screen to anyone.

They are just doing it more economically then sending a person. This is entirely unlike CA, which effectively, sent a person to go through all participants available information as quickly as possible while they weren’t looking and store a copy of everything.

Re: Facebook has sent a cease-and-desist letter to researchers

#165

Post by beagle3 »

refulgentis wrote: post #71
strawberrypuree wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cambridge Analytica happened with an app hosted on Facebook . This is hosted on your browser. So it’s not exactly how Cambridge Analytica happened because the trust model is completely different.

The legal problem & consequences for Facebook werent because of users who opted in to CA collection, the problem was getting your friend's data, who did not consent.

The legal problems for Facebook was mainly because they were an active party to the collection process, which could not have happened without that active participation.

This collection can happen manually, within the users’ regular and fully authorized use, without facebooks involvement, and in fact without any ability for them to figure out that it happens.

That it happens through a browser extension (which they may or may not be technically able to detect) should not change legality or legitimacy.

Re: Facebook has sent a cease-and-desist letter to researchers

#166

Post by beagle3 »

bryan_w wrote: post #70
thesausageking wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weak take. All users of the NYU app have to explicitly sign up and grant the researchers access to their data. It has a very clear privacy policy: https://adobserver.org/privacy-policy/ And, unlike Facebook which sucks up an ever increasing amount of data on you, this project takes only basic demographic information (age group, gender, ethnicity) and what ads that you're shown. No personal data is retained by NYU.

The user signed up, but the app would have access to that user's friend's data who didn't sign up

It only has access to what the user is browsing; if a friend hasn’t posted in a year (and doesn’t appear on timeline) and user doesn’t go specifically to their page, then adobserver would be oblivious the the existence of that user (and of the friend relation).

This is entirely unlike an FB app like CA’s that had full unadulterated access to anything the user might browse.

Re: Facebook has sent a cease-and-desist letter to researchers

#167

Post by tupputuppu »

xg15 wrote: post #104
tupputuppu wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. So what exactly is the binding rule which Facebook should apply here? Rsearchers can get access to anyone's Facebook data if people enable it? What about the ones in chinese universities? Or just respected universities? Which universities is that? How do we decide? You're missing the point. There needs to be a black and white line, and whatever Facebook allows they're always being demonised, nobody gives them t…

> Rsearchers can get access to anyone's Facebook data if people enable it? Yes. Where is the problem?

This is ironic. Cambridge Analytica was a university with an IRB collecting personal data, then later sold to foe-profits.

Re: Facebook has sent a cease-and-desist letter to researchers

#168

Post by beagle3 »

adtac wrote: post #113
xg15 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic, why is it ok for Facebook to have that data? Why is it ok for Facebook to scrape my address book?

Not that I want to defend Facebook, but that person entered into an agreement laid out by Facebook's terms of service and privacy policy (lol), not the privacy policy set by this plugin.

Yes. So if anyone here is in violation, it would be the user installing the plugin.

But I don’t remember the TOS says “you promise not to let anyone see the ads we show you” (remember this isn’t the user data that’s being collected)

Re: Facebook has sent a cease-and-desist letter to researchers

#169

Post by beagle3 »

macspoofing wrote: post #78
tomcat27 wrote: post #15

The world would have been a very different place had Facebook or other big companies built the internet.

Facebook, and Twitter and Google were built by particular libertarian-types who were young and idealistic. They erred on the side of openness and really disliked regulating content. I don't mind them. The people who are taking over these companies, those people I'm afraid of because they are political and their first instinct is to push ideology and censorship.

Facebook always has the “dumb f*cks” mentality.

Google was benevolent (or at least seemed that way) until they had any competition, at which point they threw out the “don’t be evil” motto, but same guys (page, brin, Schmidt) were still at the helm.

Wasn’t following twitter closely, but Dorsey is still running it - same guy.

It’s the same guys, not some “nefarious guys taking over”.

Re: Facebook has sent a cease-and-desist letter to researchers

#170

Post by joopdevries »

jandrese wrote: post #6
ethanwillis wrote: post #2

It's well within their rights as a private company, right? We need to have a serious discussion about the power these FAANGs are exerting and we need to stop making excuses for them.

Is it within the rights of a company to dictate what software I have installed on my personal machine? If Facebook wants to ban every account using the software that is within their rights, but they don't get a say in what I have installed.

No it's not. However, they didn't send a cease-and-desist letter to the users that installed the plugin. They sent the letter to the researchers that built the plugin that uses the service Facebook offers in a way that is against Facebook's wishes. Therefore, technically, the letter is going to the correct party and for the right reasons.

Mind, I'm saying 'technically'. Ethically, I think Facebook (and other big social tech) should be researched more. In legal ways, this is how they should handle this.

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