Honestly more curious about how does the FTC verifies the submitted report to be an accurate representation of what the company is actually executing?
FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services
231–240 of 290 posts
Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services
#232Here is the actual order (PDF warning): https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/reports/6b-orders... I would encourage everyone to read it. My personal take is that this is a ridiculous amount of homework to do in 45 days, and is essentially the FTC asking for not only these companies' "secret sauce" but also their confidential bookkeeping. I would be astounded if none of them challenged this order. For example, r…
I also strongly encourage people to read the dissent at https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements... . Of particular interest is that the reason why only 9 companies were targeted is that if they had targeted 10 or more, they would have have a mandatory review under the paperwork reduction act. A review that would have almost certainly said they couldn't ask for most of what they asked for in the w…
Surely there is no way that the 10th largest social media platform would abuse their market position!
/s
Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Q10 is at least a little bit secret sauce. I wonder what's really the limit in Q10a. For example companies will have huge recommendation models built, likely very automated without manually assigned labels. If they never ask for "“yes,” “no” for whether the natural Person is of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin", but one of the automated recommendation dimensions is close to 1:1 match for that question, would the…
It’s wild to me that regulators have (for all intents and purposes) caught up with tech. Noone is claiming the internet is a series of tubes. But tech’s swing towards AI-weighted vector graphs seems to be out of the regulator’s view. It’s almost like they are back at square one again.
I think both assertions are wrong: Regulators still have no real conception of how any of this technology works, and you can watch the congressional hearings with Facebook for evidence that mostly they didn't really have a clue what to do once they had him in the room, or how exactly Facebook even makes money.
The court system only confirmed your rights to use webcrawlers within the last year, and webcrawlers have been around since the start of Google.
And as for the series of tubes guy, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. He clearly still didn't have a good grasp on the subject, but I don't think he was being literal.
Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services
#234Here is the actual order (PDF warning): https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/reports/6b-orders... I would encourage everyone to read it. My personal take is that this is a ridiculous amount of homework to do in 45 days, and is essentially the FTC asking for not only these companies' "secret sauce" but also their confidential bookkeeping. I would be astounded if none of them challenged this order. For example, r…
Revealing all R&D is too much, but I don't think in general that it's too little time to answer. They would of course know the answers to questions like the one you cited. Otherwise, from the PDF: 1-6 mostly seem fine. Q7 is secret sauce Q8 doesn't really seem relevant to how personal data is used Q10 is at least a little bit secret sauce. Q11 I'm not sure what the relevance of this is Q12 and most of Q13 is secret s…
Who ever cares about the other questions?
Q12 is insane - ALL business strategy (short and long term), research AND development, marketing AND sales, AND any plans to create OR cancel any existing products, as well as all presentations to any executives!
That is insane! Why doesn't the FTC stop beating around the bush and just ask to be bribed, because there is no valid reason the FTC has to ask for any of that. It's clearly just an attempt to get inside information to do trades.
Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services
#235> Commissioner Noah Phillips, who voted against the study, issued a separate dissent.
> The orders are "an undisciplined foray into a wide variety of topics, some only tangentially related to the stated focus of this investigation," Phillips said, arguing that the probe was a waste of FTC resources and would not provide the public with valuable information or address issues of consumer privacy.
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements...
Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services
#236Here is the actual order (PDF warning): https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/reports/6b-orders... I would encourage everyone to read it. My personal take is that this is a ridiculous amount of homework to do in 45 days, and is essentially the FTC asking for not only these companies' "secret sauce" but also their confidential bookkeeping. I would be astounded if none of them challenged this order. For example, r…
> It is not clear the FTC has this kind of authority to essentially demand "what are your trade secrets and future business plans?"
They do seem to have the legal authority to make life very difficult for and potentially restrict entire actions of these companies. I imagine that if you refused to answer, and that your right to do so was likely to be upheld, that they'd just do what they were going to do before they asked the questions.
Picture this like a chance to talk your way out of trouble. Saying the minimum probably won't be enough.
Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services
#237From the dissenting opinion by Commissioner Noah Joshua Phillips: > These are different companies, some of which have strikingly different business models. And the orders omit other companies engaged in business practices similar to recipients, for example, Apple, Gab, GroupMe, LinkedIn, Parler, Rumble, and Tumblr, not to mention other firms the data practices of which have drawn significant government concern, like…
> The only plausible benefit to drawing the lines the Commission has is targeting a number of high profile companies It's almost as though the majority of the Commission recognizes that its resources are limited, and that going on a wild goose chase investigating a bunch of smaller social media companies would simply ensure that nothing would be accomplished. Apple isn't even a social media company. I have no idea wh…
> social media sites targeting the alt-right
Parler's front page makes no mention of this. Pls source.
Or, do you just mean that they take the people who get kicked off of twitter? Because then, yeah - if you kick people off one place they'll tend to be found somewhere else.
Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's not collecting personal/demographic information Sure is! On my iCloud account, Apple has my address, my location, the location of all of my devices, my Apple Card is tied directly to purchases, and much more! Did you know iMessage specifically even used to be linked directly to Facebook's evil social graph? > it's not trying to increase user engagement (addictiveness) Citation? I would bet a large amount of mo…
iMessage is a pure messaging service - there are no recommendations, no feed, no following friends, no status updates, no likes, no profiles, no stories, and no connection to Facebook at all. Most importantly, no advertising since they actually make money off the products, which means no incentive for gaming engagement metrics. They want you to have a good time and sell you another device next year, not glue your eye…
Well, if they did Apple could respond with a few short pages (targeting: none, ads: none, etc.) of info compared to the terabytes the social companies would need.
Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple Message is a message service. Its features include a way to personalize messages. It's not collecting personal/demographic information, it's not trying to increase user engagement (addictiveness), it's not serving ads. So, it clearly is outside the scope of the information that the FTC is trying to gather.
iMessage is E2EE (according to Apple). But Apple can still see who's messaging who. With that you get an intimate social graph. Similar to what the NSA has on US citizens via phone records. Apple also says they don't sell your personal info to advertisers. But they can still use that data however they like, and there's nothing stopping them from selling that data at some point in the future.
Why would they want to sell it. They could license access to it for recurring revenue, like other Big Tech companies.
The most important control that customers should seek is not control over the sale/transfer of data, it is control over how the data may be used, by anyone. For example, if the data comes with terms that say it cannot be used for advertising purposes, then what are the chances anyone can sell it to advertisers.
The "We do not/will not sell your data" line is a deliberate red herring, of no more value than "We take security very seriously".
(Great comment, BTW.)
Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
Somehow if my teenaged kids spent as much time in LinkedIn networking business relationships as they did in Snapchat I wouldn't quite mind as much. Regardless, I think you've missed the part where the FTC said what they were gathering information on, e.g. "how[social media] practices affect children and teens."
I think you've missed the part where the FTC said what they were gathering information on, e.g. "how[social media] practices affect children and teens." I didn't miss that part. That's why I said that I don't trust people who say they are "thinking of the children". If you trust their intentions, well, we can peaceably agree to disagree.
That sounds wrong. Many of my best friends live every day thinking of their children and their future. I welcome congress acting like this.
I don't trust laws justified with only a soundbite though, whatever the soundbite is.