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

arstechnica.com

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

#321

Post by jszymborski »

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…

When people bring up the philanthropic endeavours of FAANG, Oil & Gas, Tabacco companies and their ilk, it just reminds me of the mobster that gives a turkey at Christmas to the families whose businesses they've extorted and family members they've killed.

Also, to the point of OSS, let's not forget all the free bug fixes and labour they get from the community at large for having open-sourced their software.

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

#322

Post by AmericanChopper »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #313
anaganisk wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FB actively uses it, so it's a win win isn't it?

That is a complicated question. They get marketing and a few more eyes delivering bug fixes. However they also get to deal with contributions going not exactly in the direction they want and either have to argue against or take maintenance burden on themselves. Also they limit the changes they can do. An internal framework they can change as they like. They know all users. For different projects that works differentl…

But this way they get an “internal” framework that they get to exert a lot of influence over, with the added benefit of most of the labor market for those roles already being familiar with it. Building in house tooling adds a lot of cost to onboarding, but this way gets most of those benefits without having to accept that cost.

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

#323

Post by jszymborski »

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…

GP's preamble was that their comment was motivated by the desire to preempt "Facebook bashing".

I think it was made very clear int their own words that their intention was to defend Facebook in anticipation of comments critical of FB.

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

#324

Post by crakhamster01 »

themagician wrote: post #314
tppiotrowski wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree but they're Groups, Messenger and Marketplace offerings are best in the industry. It's what myself and most of my friends use it for now.

Funny. Groups is, by far, the worst offender in the entire Meta ecosystem. It's become THE TOOL for scammers. And because they can be private they can hide for much longer than they'd otherwise be able to. I actually feel confident in saying that Jan 6 would not have happened (the way it did) without Facebook Groups. It's a breeding ground for the worst of the worst to hang out in plain sight. If you want to prey on…

> Everything on Facebook is either a scam, scam adjacent, or some kind of grift.

> Groups is, by far, the worst offender in the entire Meta ecosystem

> It's a breeding ground for the worst of the worst to hang out in plain sight.

This is a lot to accuse without any evidence. Is there empirical data showing that these issues are as rampant as you claim? I have similar anecdata to the parent post - Groups/Marketplace/Messenger has been great for my family and friends, across a wide range of interests and use cases.

My take is that if you intentionally look for terrible things on the internet you'll be able to find it, and Facebook is no exception. It's non-sensical to think that organizing insurrections and losing your SSN is the de facto experience though.

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

#325

Post by taauji »

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…

Facebook is founded on 3 pillars of unethicalities.

1. Data Privacy - They will try to find every possible way to sell your data and not get noticed. An easy example of that is when fb started throwing fits when apple didnt let it track users activity across all apps by default. They tried to hide behind the fact that it would "severely" affect small businesses.

2. Depleting Mental Health - They will try to find every possible way to keep you engaged on the platform. That is often done by algorithmically promoting content that inspires extreme emotions in you. Emotions such as anger, jealousy, lust etc. Experiencing these emotions for an extended period of time EVERYDAY is not healthy for maintaining a good emotional balance.

3. Fake News - They will try to find every possible way to shrug off responsibility for spreading fake news. This affects politics by creating echo chambers, healthcare by preventing people from believing in the correct diagnostics and other areas.

I agree that nobody is stopping you from opening facebook, but facebook is like smoking. Everyone only wants to try it once, and then many fall into the downward spiral.

I was reading somewhere that how resisting facebook and all of facebook products everyday is not possible with the will power reserves that an average human has. This is because he is competing with psychologists and researchers employed by facebook who have been studying human behaviour for years.

I do not have any sources to back my claims. Social Media has personally affected me a lot so I keep reading about the phenomena out of curiosity. Here's one little article that breifly describes what I am talking about. https://medium.com/thrive-global/how-technology-hijacks-peop...

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

#326

Post by taauji »

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…

Not being forced is the wall behind which every un-ethical tech company hides.

- Nobody is forcing me to use youtube, but youtube has years of collection of important tutorials and educational material.

- Nobody is forcing me to use facebook (and its products) but fb has gathered users over the years that forces me to use the product in order to remain a part of the social sphere. Kids feeling left out in high-school because of not using instagram is an example.

- Nobody is forcing me to use Netflix, but if I want to watch the trendy movie that my friends are talking about, I do not have a choice.

If you see the pattern, tech companies by the virtue of their money have created a social effect where they might not "force" me to use their product but I have to use it if I wish to remain a part of the society.

It is difficult to swim upstream and the companies by the virtue of their deep pockets have shifted the flow that helps them make the most money.

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

#327

Post by taauji »

reaperducer wrote: post #249
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. You don't have to actually use Facebook in order to have your privacy violated by Facebook. This came out years ago in Congressional hearings. It's also why lots of people who never had Facebook accounts got privacy-violation money from Facebook — it created profiles of people in the backgrounds of photos.

Yes Ghost profiles is what people used to refer it to.

Browser fingerprinting is how they are able to track you across the internet despite having no connection with facebook.

One way to fix this to stop your PC from communicating with any facebook servers.

- Firefox provides an extension for this.

There must be other methods that I am not aware of but if anybody knows.

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

#328

Post by toastal »

afavour wrote: post #77
toastal wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And GitHub. That site is 50% social media trying to get you to engage and algorithms to suggest new Node.js projects for you.

I use GitHub every day for work and have run into exactly none of what you describe.

You’ve never encountered the explore tab, or the recommended projects sidebar, or read the news of users ‘star hacking’ to get more attention to their projects, or chosen one library over another because it had more ‘stars’, or seen the promotion of ‘fork me on GitHub’ banners, or seen examples of ‘link your GitHub account’ right next to ‘link your Twitter account’ as a means of self-promotion?

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

#329

Post by Shish2k »

wkat4242 wrote: post #56
jason-phillips wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practical terms, Mark is a target. You're not.

We all very much are. This is the entire business model of Google and Meta

There’s a difference between “targeted for advertising” and “targeted for a bullet”...

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

#330

Post by optymizer »

benatkin wrote: post #309
optymizer wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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

These are genuinely not interesting except PyTorch which thankfully is now a project of The Linux Foundation.

Ah, so it doesn't count as open source unless it's interesting for you.
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