Facebook Is Going After Its Critics in the Name of Privacy

Background: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24874602

If you're alluding to the "war is peace, freedom is slavery" forumulation then I don't think it quite fits.

Censorship and privacy aren't opposites and I would probably argue they are largely independent or even orthogonal.

I think you’re missing the context of this conversation. From a comment in a previous Han post about this

> The research participants are voluntarily sharing their ads with NYU. Facebook is objecting.

For once, can we have articles (or even opinion pieces) which try to explain the context and position of both sides rather than pieces such as these. These kind of writings do nothing to change the mind of anyone. For someone who hates FB and its practices, they reinforce the already held belief. And for those, who are skeptical of such media articles, they would be put off by the language used. And make no mistake, its not about putting arguments from all sides, they picked a side and decided they are right, while the other side is wrong.

> Ad Observer is a browser plug-in that Facebook users voluntarily install. The plug-in scrapes (makes a copy of) every ad that a user sees and sends it to Ad Observatory, a public database of Facebook ads that scholars and accountability journalists mine to analyze what's really happening on the platform.

I agree with the sentiment, but this clearly mentions that the plugin scrapes data and sends to NYU servers. I may be wrong, but arent we taking NYU on their word that they are scraping only the ad data and nothing else? People agree to share their data voluntarily, but they are taking this add in at the face value. It may not be scraping, but can scrape. If Facebook allows third parties to scrape data (who can incentivize users any which way) where does it stop?

The question I had was, both - the independent ad analysis and the user privacy - seem important. So, what is the way both can exist? Maybe FB sharing the data by themselves? But, isnt that close to how Cambridge Analytica happened? These are grey areas, we should be debating and discussing in detail about them, not writing snide pieces with one side as the aggressor and another as victim.

They also voluntarily shared it with the personality quiz, which were then obtained by CA.

much as I dislike facebook on this one, I think they actually have a point.