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Facebook has not been doing enough to comply with a 2020 privacy order: FTC

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Re: Facebook has not been doing enough to comply with a 2020 privacy order: FTC

#121

Post by usrusr »

ethbr0 wrote: post #43
pdimitar wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...Wait, so you thought there was ever a point when "good for Facebook" == "good for society"? IMO "bad for Facebook" ~= "good for society" has always been true. It's not a "sad place to be as community", they are a corp and their bait-and-switch was expected ever since they got created, at least from the people who don't idolize corporations that is. It was extremely obvious they'll position themselves as helpful, p…

I'd say Facebook was on-the-whole good when it was limited to .edu users. It had a purpose, it solved it better than previous options, and (critically!) it had a ceiling on total addressable userbase. Once it metastisized into "extract maximum revenue from maximum number of people," I think its soul was lost to greed.

Oh, even long after Facebook has turned sour as a company there have still been very good things running on top of Facebook as infrastructure for linking up disconnected local groups and individuals with shared interests.

But eventually they burnt so much goodwill trying to justify their stock valuation that at least were I am, all those informal groups have moved away from Facebook. Some managed to substitute the infrastructure quite well, some suffer quite noticeably. But none of them would consider going back. And openness to newcomers, discoverability, that has all suffered quite considerably.

Re: Facebook has not been doing enough to comply with a 2020 privacy order: FTC

#122

Post by zeroonetwothree »

josephg wrote: post #49
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #17

I don't know why my opinion is so out of the mainstream but I really think it's good that people's information is used vs not used... I think it's a great boon for ads to become more relevant instead of less relevant. Wasting time looking at ads that aren't for me sucks, it's much better if they could actually improve my life. Literally think making children have less relevant ads is doing them harm.

I visited a friend a couple of years ago. His son was about 3, and they put on a movie while he was eating dinner. The kid’s fork had food on it and it froze halfway to his mouth while he watched the movie. He held it there for half an hour or something, hovering in the air while his eyes were glued to the screen. Do you think kids are smart enough to understand advertising? Or resist the temptations they bring? Pers…

Why does it matter? It’s not like non advertising TV is going to be good for Little Jimmy either. In your example story it’s not even an ad!

I think parents have some responsibility to teach their children how to interact with the world. I’ve been teaching mine about the difference between ads and non-ad content. That will prepare them for life as adults. Childhood is actually a great time to learn about ads because your parents prevent you from wasting too much money on it.

Re: Facebook has not been doing enough to comply with a 2020 privacy order: FTC

#123

Post by eis »

wirthjason wrote: post #16

Since there is bound to be a lot of Facebook bashing I’ll point out that they occasionally do some good. In the case of software they can be good stewards of FOSS. I listened to this CoRecursive episode about the history of Zstandard compression algorithm and how FB allowed the author, Yann Collet, to fully open source it while other companies wanted to keep it proprietary. https://corecursive.com/data-compression-ya…

I guess even a psychopath might leave a tip at a restaurant. Things rarely are 100% bad but those nuances should also not distract from the big picture.

Re: Facebook has not been doing enough to comply with a 2020 privacy order: FTC

#125

Post by zeroonetwothree »

beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #31
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #17

I don't know why my opinion is so out of the mainstream but I really think it's good that people's information is used vs not used... I think it's a great boon for ads to become more relevant instead of less relevant. Wasting time looking at ads that aren't for me sucks, it's much better if they could actually improve my life. Literally think making children have less relevant ads is doing them harm.

You could make ads relevant the old fashioned way: asking people what they are interested in or actually doing consumer research, instead of simply using their data they "give up" with a freemium service to make ads more "relevant". I used quotes on 'relevant' because I have never, ever, felt that advertising has suddenly become wildly more relevant or successfully targeted with the advent of social media or google.…

Just as a tear I opened Facebook at looked at the ads (I usually skip them subconsciously). They are actually quite specific to me. For example there is one for a cooking gadget (I love cooking and trying new techniques), one for a children’s art kit (I might buy this), one for jigsaw puzzles (one of my hobbies), and one for productivity software (I might check it out).

That’s just the first four I saw and I’d say that’s actually phenomenal targeting. It’s some very niche things that apply to me quite well.

Re: Facebook has not been doing enough to comply with a 2020 privacy order: FTC

#126

Post by throwaway894345 »

coding123 wrote: post #96
jjulius wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How can a corporation be furious? After reading the article, they don't say anything about the company or people inside the company being furious. The closest thing I could find is that a Meta spokesperson said they plan to fight it vigorously and expect to win. To be fair, the spokesperson's tone, and the insistence that they'll be fighting, does make them sound pretty pissed off.

So how about, Facebook spokesperson furious...

It’s pretty subjective of a publication to speculate on the spokeperson’s emotional state, and projecting their assumption onto the entire corporation seems pretty silly to me. But I’m sure it sells more clicks…

Re: Facebook has not been doing enough to comply with a 2020 privacy order: FTC

#127

Post by zeroonetwothree »

c-fe wrote: post #23
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #17

I don't know why my opinion is so out of the mainstream but I really think it's good that people's information is used vs not used... I think it's a great boon for ads to become more relevant instead of less relevant. Wasting time looking at ads that aren't for me sucks, it's much better if they could actually improve my life. Literally think making children have less relevant ads is doing them harm.

Ads, targeted ones even more so, make you buy things you don’t need. If you need them, you would go out of your way to buy them without requiring an ad manipulating you.

That’s not necessarily true because you might not have known about them. Some ads can be informative and provide you with consumer surplus. For example I recently went to a concert based on an ad and it was a great time. I would have never heard about it normally.

Actually the most manipulative ads are “brand” ads for things like Coke or BMW. These have no significant difference to their competitors so their only strategy is to manipulate you into associating them with more positive emotions.

Re: Facebook has not been doing enough to comply with a 2020 privacy order: FTC

#128

Post by chmod775 »

ferminaut wrote: post #65

Facebook (and much of social media) is the modern day Philip Morris peddling addictive experiences...except the harm is way less obvious. Folks arent getting cancer, but they are wrecking their mental health. The difference is social media falls under the first amendment and is much harder to regulate. It's a borderline national security issue, too.

The content of social media is protected by the first amendment. Any specific business model isn't. You're not entitled to make money off of other people's speech... or data.

Re: Facebook has not been doing enough to comply with a 2020 privacy order: FTC

#129

Post by bombcar »

ryoshu wrote: post #81
medler wrote: post #55

It is insane to me that we allow any advertising to young children at all, whether online, on TV, or anywhere else. I think deliberately manipulating kids is heinous and I genuinely don’t understand why this isn’t the consensus opinion.

I really hated growing up with Transformers and He-Man and all of the other TV shows that were animated versions of toys I played with. Wait. I didn't hate that at all.

I noticed a Youtube ad on a kids video was literally a 44 minute Transformer cartoon. If you didn't hit skip, it would play for 44 minutes.

Not sure what I feel about it.

Re: Facebook has not been doing enough to comply with a 2020 privacy order: FTC

#130

Post by tristor »

medler wrote: post #55

It is insane to me that we allow any advertising to young children at all, whether online, on TV, or anywhere else. I think deliberately manipulating kids is heinous and I genuinely don’t understand why this isn’t the consensus opinion.

> I think deliberately manipulating kids is heinous

Agreed. It's also extremely lucrative, and far predates the Internet. Manipulating kids is one of the most lucrative things a business can do, because getting the kids to ask the parents to buy something is far far more effective than even a close friend suggesting they buy something.

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