Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 335 posts

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

#261

Post by JohnFen »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #108
AraceliHarker wrote: post #24

Mark Zuckerberg himself seems to understand the importance of privacy very well, taping over the microphone and camera on his MacBook Pro, keeping his trash can from being scavenged by others, and FB spending heavily to protect his security, so why does he have the exact opposite attitude towards others?

He isn’t forcing you to use Facebook. If you go into a store and they have a security camera that records you is that also violating your privacy? Not saying everything FB does is ok but I think we are going too crazy with the government intervention. I don’t exactly see that FB was committing deliberate fraud based on this latest report (but a lot is redacted). It seems more like there were just some bugs? As a dev…

> He isn’t forcing you to use Facebook.

Unless you are constantly on guard and take defensive measures, Facebook spies on you even if you don't use it. So he is forcing you to contribute to Facebook.

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

#262

Post by JohnFen »

ferminaut wrote: post #254
JohnFen wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (think Worldcoin but not done by a private entity) The problem with what Worldcoin was doing wasn't that they were a private entity.

yeah -- the concept of world ID if it worked is actually pretty interesting. I just dont trust Sam Altman/crypto/private industry to do it safely.

I can't think of any entity that I'd trust to do it safely. I'm far from convinced that it's even possible to do it safely.

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

#263

Post by a13o »

fiveeveralone wrote: post #156
a13o wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children become addicted to Snapchat streaks and their peers in school shun them socially based on whether they have big streaks with popular kids or not. It's like Lord of the Flies mixed with an episode of Black Mirror. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/lets-talk-tween/2017...

Is the social pressure for kids to be popular somehow new or?

Do you rephrase my comment reductively because you're okay with corporations monetizing children via addictive dark patterns, in defiance of recommendations from child psychologists? or

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

#264

Post by munificent »

Waterluvian wrote: post #33
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 wonder if it kind of sucks to recognize that your job in FOSS is just a token gesture. Does FB really care about React’s contribution to the community? Or is it just happy to pay a few salaries to look good?

It may be a token gesture to the company itself and at company scale, but still a meaningful act at the scale of the person whose job it is and the community they serve.

If you love making an open source thing, and you love its users, at some level it doesn't really matter why Meta pays your paycheck. They're still paying your paycheck while you get to do something you love.

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

#265

Post by AndrewKemendo »

RangerScience wrote: post #257
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m earnestly curious, what do you think is the root of your reaction or desire or instinct to defend Meta?

Not GP - While I think your question is polite and otherwise undeserving of a downvote, I don’t think it’s a fair question. I don’t read GP as defending Meta, and I think there’s substantial problems that arise if pointing out good things equates to defending associated bad things. IMHO it’s the strict inverse of disallowing pointing out the bad things within otherwise good things (afaik, a main component of toxic po…

I’m not sure I follow the last point but you are of course correct that the question itself is based on the premise that Meta is under scrutiny and the social “state” for lack of a better term (think state and transition) is “on public trial.”

So in that sense, yes it’s a loaded question, however I think it’s a valid contextual assumption given the context of the article and comments.

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

#266

Post by SllX »

justapassenger wrote: post #91

Not to defend Facebook, but this headline is misleading. FTC proposes banning Facebook from launching any new products, which is a huge deal. Also from monetizing youth data, which is likely not a serious revenue stream. It’s clickbait to claim it’s the youth part that made company furious, no matter what you think about Facebook.

Par for the course for Ars Technica.

Also: it is curious that the FTC is acting this way now considering it just got a whole lot easier to take them to an Article III court under Axon vs FTC et al.

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

#267

Post by radicaldreamer »

curiousllama wrote: post #8

What I'm most interested in is the redacted bits of the Order to Show Cause [1] The scale of the remediation (no new launches) doesn't really match the scale of the accusation in the press release (Messenger kids once had a bug where kids could circumvent parental controls if the parents didn't pay attention). The Order to Show Cause includes a comprehensive, in-depth review of FB's privacy programs - and it's almost…

Likely ads targeting. Twitter had a bug where they would track you around the web even if you opted out... this was obvious for years because you'd immediately start seeing ads for specific drugs if you searched for a medical condition in a separate browser etc.

Instead of actually fixing the issues, they removed the ability to opt-out of personalization (lol)

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

#268

Post by bink »

JohnFen wrote: post #237
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s a plausible argument. But shouldn’t we regulate the whole industry then instead of going after a single company? Also there are clearly some benefits from social media so I wouldn’t want to get rid of all of it. For example messaging doesn’t seem so bad in terms of harm vs value. Or things like Facebook Groups that are more like discussion forums (even HN itself falls under this!)

> But shouldn’t we regulate the whole industry then instead of going after a single company? Yes. The only problem I have with the government going after TikTok is that they should be going after the entire industry.

I keep waiting for someone to scream this out in one of the committee hearings. Going after one company and attempting to ban them from the country is pretty clearly Constitutionally dubious. But passing strict data privacy laws isn't. They must know this.

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

#269

Post by jonathankoren »

optymizer wrote: post #248
snarf21 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All things in life is grey. But I think we should ask about is the MAIN thing they do net good or net bad. Most philanthropist spend their lives amassing massive fortunes built on exploitation and then leave a (large?) percentage of their ill gotten gains for good. As an extreme example, we shouldn't absolve a serial killer just because they volunteer for Meals on Wheels each week. Facebook has revenue greater than t…

"Some crap for free". Come on now. Give credit where credit is due if you're going to talk about balanced scales. React PyTorch Flow React Native Folly RocksDB llama HHVM Relay Fresco zstd Buck Sapling Redex JSX infer

Everything run and controlled by exactly one major company. Not so much open source, as faux-pen source.

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

#270

Post by govg »

Lord_Baltimore wrote: post #256
p0pcult wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't be allowed to opt others in, especially those under the age of legally informed consent, to brainwashing.

Yeah, I don't think you should be able to opt children into atheistic teaching.

Atheism isn't a belief system predicated on the existence of supernatural forces for whom we have no evidence. Wouldn't call it brainwashing.
Post reply on HN