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U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut down ad research

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut down ad research

#21

Post by titzer »

Teever wrote: post #20
savant_penguin wrote: post #7

“The FTC received no notice that Facebook would be publicly invoking our consent decree to justify terminating academic research earlier this week.” Of course they didn't. After you are fined 5b it's no surprise you go full on defensive. What's the alternative? Asking the ftc every single time what they should do? I'm no fan of Facebook but if they didn't stop the research they could be found guilty again for the exa…

> Of course they didn't. After you are fined 5b it's no surprise you go full on defensive. What's the alternative? Well I've never really been sanctioned by the law for anything significant, but I would imagine that if I was sanctioned by the law for something afterwards I would be mindful of that fact and try to avoid being sanctioned again? But there's a big difference between me and Facebook and that's that I don'…

You don't have a trillion dollar valuation to retroactively justify when you're pulling revenues more befitting a valuation 100x lower.

Re: U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut down ad research

#22

Post by jdminhbg »

apazzolini wrote: post #10
throwwebmaster wrote: post #5

Don’t most websites prohibit someone from scraping and harvesting the data on them? Most recently, I can think of Yelp, Amazon, and GitHub prohibiting this, as well as the Aaron Swartz case.

Up until June 14th of this year, the ruling was that scraping is legal from the HiQ vs LinkedIn lawsuit[0]. While finding that link for you, I learned that since that date, the Supreme Court vacated the decision back to the lower courts in light of a new decision of theirs.[1] Now I don't think it's clear one way or the other just yet. Any lawyers here with an opinion on how this is going to go? I haven't found any a…

Scraping is legal, but that doesn't mean the site has to make it easy or possible for you. You can scrape my site, but I can also IP ban scrapers.

Re: U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut down ad research

#23

Post by jszymborski »

Sebb767 wrote: post #17
savant_penguin wrote: post #7

“The FTC received no notice that Facebook would be publicly invoking our consent decree to justify terminating academic research earlier this week.” Of course they didn't. After you are fined 5b it's no surprise you go full on defensive. What's the alternative? Asking the ftc every single time what they should do? I'm no fan of Facebook but if they didn't stop the research they could be found guilty again for the exa…

I agree. I'm anything but a fan of Facebook, but in this case they seem to be in an f'ed if you do, f'ed if you don't -type of situation.

I mean, they can both let the ad observer programme go on and stop the shady advertising practices.

Re: U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut down ad research

#24

Post by jszymborski »

titzer wrote: post #21
Teever wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course they didn't. After you are fined 5b it's no surprise you go full on defensive. What's the alternative? Well I've never really been sanctioned by the law for anything significant, but I would imagine that if I was sanctioned by the law for something afterwards I would be mindful of that fact and try to avoid being sanctioned again? But there's a big difference between me and Facebook and that's that I don'…

You don't have a trillion dollar valuation to retroactively justify when you're pulling revenues more befitting a valuation 100x lower.

I feel like this is a weird justification for breaking the law...

Re: U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut down ad research

#25

Post by ivalm »

titzer wrote: post #21
Teever wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course they didn't. After you are fined 5b it's no surprise you go full on defensive. What's the alternative? Well I've never really been sanctioned by the law for anything significant, but I would imagine that if I was sanctioned by the law for something afterwards I would be mindful of that fact and try to avoid being sanctioned again? But there's a big difference between me and Facebook and that's that I don'…

You don't have a trillion dollar valuation to retroactively justify when you're pulling revenues more befitting a valuation 100x lower.

In 2020 they had $29B net income on $89B revenue. Their forward pe is 29. While they are definitely priced for continued growth, it is really wrong to say that their finances befit a “100x lower” valuation.

Re: U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut down ad research

#26

Post by jhayward »

savant_penguin wrote: post #7

“The FTC received no notice that Facebook would be publicly invoking our consent decree to justify terminating academic research earlier this week.” Of course they didn't. After you are fined 5b it's no surprise you go full on defensive. What's the alternative? Asking the ftc every single time what they should do? I'm no fan of Facebook but if they didn't stop the research they could be found guilty again for the exa…

Yes, companies subject to a consent degree frequently pre-clear actions with the FTC.

Re: U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut down ad research

#27

Post by tablespoon »

savant_penguin wrote: post #7

“The FTC received no notice that Facebook would be publicly invoking our consent decree to justify terminating academic research earlier this week.” Of course they didn't. After you are fined 5b it's no surprise you go full on defensive. What's the alternative? Asking the ftc every single time what they should do? I'm no fan of Facebook but if they didn't stop the research they could be found guilty again for the exa…

> Of course they didn't. After you are fined 5b it's no surprise you go full on defensive.

I'm not willing to cut Facebook so much slack here. They very much do not want any independent public oversight of their advertising operations (e.g. they want to release self-congratulatory reports with numbers that lack denominators, and they don't want anyone to be able to call them on the BS). I think any invocation of the consent decree is likely just a smokescreen for what they really want to do.

Re: U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut down ad research

#28

Post by throwwebmaster »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #16
throwwebmaster wrote: post #5

Don’t most websites prohibit someone from scraping and harvesting the data on them? Most recently, I can think of Yelp, Amazon, and GitHub prohibiting this, as well as the Aaron Swartz case.

"most websites prohibit someone from scraping" This weired mindset where corporations make law shouws up again. The websites have no power to prohibit anything. If they make bytes avaliable, we may do with them as we please so long as its legal.

It’s within anyone’s rights as website maintainers to block malicious IP addresses that scrape or otherwise within their discretion.

Nobody is legally forcing websites to allow access to everyone, and accordingly, nobody is altering the law by blocking access to people (crawlers, hackers, spammers, malcontents, or anybody really) that they feel are not welcome. So exercising one’s existing rights isn’t an act of making or altering laws.

I suggest reading up on what robots.txt is to further understand this.

Re: U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut down ad research

#30

Post by babesh »

asteroidbelt wrote: post #8
arthurofbabylon wrote: post #2

Do billionaires not need friends? I don't see how anyone with an iota of intelligence or morality could accept Zuck's wretched impact on humanity.

Many (like me) believe Facebook is net good for the world. I’m able to stay connected with friends (many of whom live very far), like know what’s going on in their lives and share my world.

They banned me when I was doing nothing except for posting pictures of food and setting my profile text to “useless idiot”. No recourse.

About a week later they told me it was all a big mistake. It was the final push that got me to cancel my account.

Also, good luck trying to get a dump of your content. That kept failing for me. They really don’t want you to leave. So many dark patterns.

Most tech organizations are completely amoral. They will extract everything they can.

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