101–110 of 122 posts
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$5B is pennies to FB
No it isn't. People make arbitrary statements like this all the time when talking about big numbers and they often do not make sense. $5B is ~1/6 of their net income and a bit more than 5% of their revenue. That is a large number. It's not a death sentence, but it is a big hit.
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No it isn't. People make arbitrary statements like this all the time when talking about big numbers and they often do not make sense. $5B is ~1/6 of their net income and a bit more than 5% of their revenue. That is a large number. It's not a death sentence, but it is a big hit.
Metaphorical pennies. I don't see how a 1 time charge of 1/6 of one year's net income is that big of a charge. Make it a whole year of profit and now you're talking.
“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…
Let me see if I understand. Facebook does X, which the Government decides causes Y amount of harm to society. The Government compels Facebook to fund independent research to verify this claim. Independent research finds that Facebook does cause some amount of harm to society. Government uses that evidence to compel Facebook to act in ways that might reduce that harm. Facebook agrees and decides to implement controls…
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The word "researchers" is doing a lot of work in your comment. What's being researched is important and the FTC makes the distinction in their statement, "good-faith research in the public interest".
A bit of an odd one for me. Is the FTC in the business of deciding what research is "good faith" and "in the "public interest"? Could a company rely on such designation from them in the future when making decisions?
Also, more formally: CA's research was violating privacy laws because it was gathering personal data from Facebook's users without their consent.
This is not the case here. Individual users had to explicitly install a particular browser extension to participate in the research.
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Metaphorical pennies. I don't see how a 1 time charge of 1/6 of one year's net income is that big of a charge. Make it a whole year of profit and now you're talking.
$5B is more than the purchase price of Oculus and multiple years of VR content investment.
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$5B is more than the purchase price of Oculus and multiple years of VR content investment.
The price of these acquisitions isn't relevant to the amount of "pain" this fine does or does not inflict on FB.
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“Prohibit” is an interesting word that in the world of public web publishing of data is actually pretty meaningless. Certainly companies take measures to prevent bulk scraping when they can detect it and have legal remedies if copyrighted or owned material is republished. But simply telling me I am prohibited to hold on to a copy of your site’s data is pretty meaningless when my browser caches your page and you want…
By accessing the data on a website, you are forming a contract with that website and are subject to the website’s terms and conditions. As a website owner, beyond that, there is no need to tell someone they cannot access your site if you simply block them from accessing your servers instead using a multitude of techniques. Where does caching come into play at all here? You cannot cache content to begin with if the se…
If you don’t want me to have a copy of it for any reason, don’t let me have it at all.
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By accessing the data on a website, you are forming a contract with that website and are subject to the website’s terms and conditions. As a website owner, beyond that, there is no need to tell someone they cannot access your site if you simply block them from accessing your servers instead using a multitude of techniques. Where does caching come into play at all here? You cannot cache content to begin with if the se…
I'm pretty sure that first paragraph is false. Until I explicitly agree to a contract, or "terms and conditions", I am not bound by anything. If a site I navigate to embeds content from another website I am not immediately bound by the terms and conditions of that neclsred site, to think otherwise would invite madness. Not to mention the fact that terms and conditions are not contracts. I don't think they carry the s…
Judge: “what defendant? There is no one here.”
Plaintiff: “Oh he was anonymous, so I am not sure who it was…”
Judge: “Hmm interesting, so you seem to think an implicit contract exists that you want to enforce with no documentation at all with a party you can’t name, because you are not sure who it is?”
Plaintiff: “Exactly.”
Judge: “Feel free to come back when you aren’t going to waste the court’s time”
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A bit of an odd one for me. Is the FTC in the business of deciding what research is "good faith" and "in the "public interest"? Could a company rely on such designation from them in the future when making decisions?
Oh come on, the difference in this case is pretty obvious for anyone not working in advertising. Also, more formally: CA's research was violating privacy laws because it was gathering personal data from Facebook's users without their consent. This is not the case here. Individual users had to explicitly install a particular browser extension to participate in the research.
It actually gathered data from fb users with explicit consent (a login with FB dialog along with a permissions dialog box). The app then scraped the public information of that user's friend's list.
If you replace "friends list" with "ads list", it seems to have pretty strong similarities to what's happening here.
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Oh come on, the difference in this case is pretty obvious for anyone not working in advertising. Also, more formally: CA's research was violating privacy laws because it was gathering personal data from Facebook's users without their consent. This is not the case here. Individual users had to explicitly install a particular browser extension to participate in the research.
> CA's research was violating privacy laws because it was gathering personal data from Facebook's users without their consent. It actually gathered data from fb users with explicit consent (a login with FB dialog along with a permissions dialog box). The app then scraped the public information of that user's friend's list. If you replace "friends list" with "ads list", it seems to have pretty strong similarities to w…