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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

#81

Post by TomSwirly »

nine_k wrote: post #70
mschuster91 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like painkillers: when the society uses technology to forget that certain parts of it feel unhealthy and hurt The problem is, from an European perspective, the US concept of "free speech". Allowing hate (e.g. swastika flags), a putsch attempt or outright lies ("Big Steal") to be shown and supported publicly and not acting against it is only emboldening those who spread this kind of content. I won't deny that G…

Indeed, this is the problem with the European lack of notion of free speech :(

This is an offensive slur towards Europeans.

In no country in the world, not even the US, is all speech legal.

Moving from the US to Europe, I've found a much _wider_ range of speech here in practice, partly because money is NOT considered to be equivalent to speech here.

And the latitude of speech is quite great. The Netherlands has some of the strictest laws about hate speech in the world, and yet one of our politicians evaded punishment (a minor fine) because he said Moroccans were like dogs, not that they were dogs. (It was more complicated than that, but that was the basic idea.)

Get a grip.

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

#82

Post by dathinab »

Sebb767 wrote: post #19
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

They can't throw you in jail over it, but it's within their rights to stop sending you these bytes or kick you off their platform altogether. If they'd try to prevent you from scraping third-party sites it would be making laws; setting up ground rules with their ToS and enforcing them is absolutely fine.

> but it's within their rights to stop sending you these bytes or kick you off their platform altogether.

Actually no.

If a platform provides a generally available service they are (in many countries, idk. about the US) not allowed to arbitrary exclude some people they don't like without a legal valid reason.

And braking legally not valid/binding terms in a ToS is not a legal valid reason. Just because you write something in your ToS doesn't mean it has any legal relevant meaning, there are limits to what you can put in ToS. And limiting (properly done, privacy respecting) research is often not valid. (Through depends a lot on the country.)

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

#83

Post by tremon »

TomSwirly wrote: post #78
unglaublich wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but that's incompatible with their current existence.

If Facebook must break the law to continue to exist, then they should cease to exist.

Or buy the laws that legitimize their existence.

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

#84

Post by d110af5ccf »

mschuster91 wrote: post #68
nine_k wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you honestly want that entities like FB or Google would filter political speech? Would filter speech in general, weeding out what they'd find wrong? I'm fine with FB or twitter or whatnot adding their epistemic status banners, like "incorrect according to current scientific consensus". Doing more would, to my mind, produce seriously more harm than good. It's like painkillers: when the society uses technology to fo…

> It's like painkillers: when the society uses technology to forget that certain parts of it feel unhealthy and hurt The problem is, from an European perspective, the US concept of "free speech". Allowing hate (e.g. swastika flags), a putsch attempt or outright lies ("Big Steal") to be shown and supported publicly and not acting against it is only emboldening those who spread this kind of content. I won't deny that G…

> fell to the propaganda because no one nipped it in the bud while it was still possible

That's quite the assumption you're making.

Many were already against vaccines. Many others already distrusted the government to an extreme degree. Then suddenly vaccination became a matter of political allegiance as well.

I don't see how curtailing freedom of speech would have made things any better.

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

#85

Post by d110af5ccf »

mschuster91 wrote: post #80
nine_k wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a history of systematic racial, sexual identity and gender discrimination, police and judicial power abuse, voter suppression tactics Do you think the constitution needs a change to address that? The constitution already forbids racial discrimination and power abuse (else it won't be called abuse), etc. I think it's the legislature's job to make laws to address the current (and ever-changing) situation, and the exe…

> Do you think the constitution needs a change to address that? Yes, because only a constitutional amendment can set federal minimum standards that cannot be undermined by state or other, lower government. And given how state governments are already busy with trying to pass antidemocratic measures - not just the usual gerrymandering stuff, but giving legislatures the power to override Electoral College votes in case…

> this sort of opinion is not welcomed in society and you will get punished for it. And it is also a message to democratic people: democracy is worth fighting for, fighting against those that threaten its existence.

That sounds an awful lot like China's new security law. Only patriotic people can run for office - we need to send a clear message that non-patriotic opinions are "not welcomed in society and you will get punished for it". After all, "democracy is worth fighting for" just as you said.

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

#86

Post by Kye »

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…

People on probation have to be this careful. Why shouldn't companies on probation?

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

#87

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Sebb767 wrote: post #19
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

They can't throw you in jail over it, but it's within their rights to stop sending you these bytes or kick you off their platform altogether. If they'd try to prevent you from scraping third-party sites it would be making laws; setting up ground rules with their ToS and enforcing them is absolutely fine.

Imagine I am scraping Twitter - maybe I never accepted their TOS and don't even have an account.

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

#88

Post by ClumsyPilot »

throwwebmaster wrote: post #28
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 maki…

Hacking and other malicious behavious are actually illegal.

Either Crawling does not belong on that list, or google exects should be in jail.

Given that crawling is not malicious, what we are discussing now is 'someone is crawling my website in a way I dont like' which is a different gripe.

It mighthave some merit, but robots txt is not legally binding.

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

#89

Post by kibwen »

TomSwirly wrote: post #78
unglaublich wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but that's incompatible with their current existence.

If Facebook must break the law to continue to exist, then they should cease to exist.

Fascinating that this has been downvoted.

Society does not owe Facebook anything. Let them operate only via actions that are ethical and privacy-preserving, and if they cannot do so, then let Facebook die, and good riddance.

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

#90

Post by cirgue »

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'm no fan of Facebook but if they didn't stop the research they could be found guilty again for the exact same reason

The people that run Facebook are vain, greedy, and utterly uninterested in the public good, but they are not stupid and are almost certainly aware of the existence of telephones and email. They undoubtedly understood that banning a public interest research group is a fundamentally different activity than banning advertising firms or other commercial actors, and had they been interested in actually following the law here this would have involved communication with FTC about what they should do in this situation. It apparently didn’t.

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