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

Meta accessed women's health data from Flo app without consent, says court

malwarebytes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 236 posts

Re: Meta accessed women's health data from Flo app without consent, says court

#151

Post by ryandrake »

decisionsmatter wrote: post #144
qwertylicious wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let's consider the possibilities: #1. Facebook did everything they could to evaluate Flo as a company and the data they were receiving, but they simply had no way to tell that the data was illegally acquired and privacy-invading. #2. Facebook had inadequate mechanisms for evaluating their partners, and that while they could have caught this problem they failed to do so, and therefore Facebook was negligent. #3. Fa…

No one is arguing that FB has not engaged in egregious and illegal behavior in the past. What pc86 and I are trying to explain is that in this instance, based on the details of the court docs, Facebook did not make a conscious decision to process this data. It just did. Because this data, combined with the billion+ data points that Facebook receives every single second, was sent to Facebook with the label that it was…

If FB is going to use the data, then it should have the responsibility to check whether they can legally use it. Having their supplier say "It's not sensitive health data, bro, and if it is, it's consented. Trust us" should not be enough.

To use an extreme example, if someone posts CSAM through Facebook and says "It's not CSAM, trust me bro" and Facebook publishes it, then both the poster and Facebook have done wrong and should be in trouble.

Re: Meta accessed women's health data from Flo app without consent, says court

#152

Post by Dylan16807 »

bell-cot wrote: post #73
Dylan16807 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All they need to do is impose a three digit fine per affected user and Facebook will immediately feel intense pressure.

Who's this "they" you speak of, and why would they bother doing that?

The court. Because it's their job.

I'm not using "fine" very literally. Damages paid to the victims.

Re: Meta accessed women's health data from Flo app without consent, says court

#153

Post by Dylan16807 »

codegladiator wrote: post #29
Dylan16807 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All they need to do is impose a three digit fine per affected user and Facebook will immediately feel intense pressure.

three digit ? the only thing these folks understand is exponential growth per affected user.

Yes, three digit. That would be 15 to 150 billion dollars, and Facebook would understand that amount.

Re: Meta accessed women's health data from Flo app without consent, says court

#154

Post by gpm »

gruez wrote: post #72

As much as I don't like facebook as a company, I think the jury reached the wrong decision here. If you read the complaint[1], "eavesdropped on and/or recorded their conversations by using an electronic device" basically amounted to "flo using facebook's sdk and sending custom events to it" (page 12, point 49). I agree that flo should be raked over the coals for sending this information to facebook in the first place…

At the time of [1 (your footnote)] the only defendant listed in the matter was Flo, not Facebook, per the cover page of [1], so it is unsurprising that that complaint does not include allegations against Facebook.

The amended complaint, [3], includes the allegations against Facebook as at that time Facebook was added as a defendant to the case.

Amongst other things the amended complaint points out that Facebook's behavior lasted for years (into 2021) after it was publicly disclosed that this was happening (2019), and then even after Flo was forced to cease the practice by the FTC, and congressional investigations were launched (2021) it refused to review and destroy the data that had previously been improperly collected.

I'd also be surprised if discovery didn't provide further proof that Facebook was aware of the sort of data they were gathering here...

[3] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.37...

Re: Meta accessed women's health data from Flo app without consent, says court

#155

Post by 12_throw_away »

oxqbldpxo wrote: post #138

Oh boy, what's Mark up to these days.

Thanks for asking! Also on the front page today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44898934

From that article:

   “It is acceptable to engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual,” according to Meta’s “GenAI: Content Risk Standards. [...] The document seen by Reuters, which exceeds 200 pages, provides examples of “acceptable” chatbot dialogue during romantic role play with a minor. They include: “I take your hand, guiding you to the bed” and “our bodies entwined, I cherish every moment, every touch, every kiss.”

Re: Meta accessed women's health data from Flo app without consent, says court

#156

Post by ivanmontillam »

Chris2048 wrote: post #104
ivanmontillam wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment started very useful, then it became spam. Great way to lose goodwill.

Is posting a self-made alternative to meta not consistent with the rest of the post, even actively promoting the vibe?

A Show HN post would have been more appropriate; this seemed to me opportunistic at best.

Re: Meta accessed women's health data from Flo app without consent, says court

#157

Post by hedgehog »

gruez wrote: post #115
bluGill wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say you have a responsibility to ensure you are getting legal data. you don't buy stolen things. That is meta has a reponsibility to ensure that they are not partnering with crooks. Flo gets the largest blame but meta needs to show they did their part to ensure this didn't happen. (I would not call terms of use enough unless they can show they make you understand it)

>Flo gets the largest blame but meta needs to show they did their part to ensure this didn't happen. (I would not call terms of use enough unless they can show they make you understand it) Court documents says that they blocked access as soon as they were aware of it. They also "built out its systems to detect and filter out “potentially health-related terms.”". Are you expecting more, like some sort of KYC/audit reg…

Facebook chose to pool the data they received from customers and allow its use by others, so they are also responsible for the outcomes. If it's too hard to provide strong assurance that errors like Flo's won't result in adverse outcomes for the public, perhaps they should have designed a system that didn't work that way.

Re: Meta accessed women's health data from Flo app without consent, says court

#158

Post by Capricorn2481 »

decisionsmatter wrote: post #144
qwertylicious wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let's consider the possibilities: #1. Facebook did everything they could to evaluate Flo as a company and the data they were receiving, but they simply had no way to tell that the data was illegally acquired and privacy-invading. #2. Facebook had inadequate mechanisms for evaluating their partners, and that while they could have caught this problem they failed to do so, and therefore Facebook was negligent. #3. Fa…

No one is arguing that FB has not engaged in egregious and illegal behavior in the past. What pc86 and I are trying to explain is that in this instance, based on the details of the court docs, Facebook did not make a conscious decision to process this data. It just did. Because this data, combined with the billion+ data points that Facebook receives every single second, was sent to Facebook with the label that it was…

> Facebook did not make a conscious decision to process this data. It just did.

What everyone else is saying is what they did is illegal, and they did it automatically, which is worse. What you're describing was, in fact, built to do that. They are advertising to people based on the honor system of whoever submits the data pinky promising it was consensual. That's absurd.

Re: Meta accessed women's health data from Flo app without consent, says court

#159

Post by shkkmo »

decisionsmatter wrote: post #144
qwertylicious wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let's consider the possibilities: #1. Facebook did everything they could to evaluate Flo as a company and the data they were receiving, but they simply had no way to tell that the data was illegally acquired and privacy-invading. #2. Facebook had inadequate mechanisms for evaluating their partners, and that while they could have caught this problem they failed to do so, and therefore Facebook was negligent. #3. Fa…

No one is arguing that FB has not engaged in egregious and illegal behavior in the past. What pc86 and I are trying to explain is that in this instance, based on the details of the court docs, Facebook did not make a conscious decision to process this data. It just did. Because this data, combined with the billion+ data points that Facebook receives every single second, was sent to Facebook with the label that it was…

>Facebook did not make a conscious decision to process this data.

Yes, it did. When Facebook built the system and allowed external entities to feed it unvetted information without human oversight, that was a choice to process this data.

> without any attempt to prevent it is a flawed argument, as there are many controls, many disclosures, and (I'm sure) many internal teams and systems designed exactly for the purpose of determining whether the data they receive is has the appropriate consents

This seems like a giant assumption to make without evidence. Given the past bad behavior from Meta, they do not deserve this benefit of the doubt.

If those systems exist, they clearly failed to actually work. However, the court documents indicate that Facebook didn't build out systems to check if stuff is health data until afterwards.

Re: Meta accessed women's health data from Flo app without consent, says court

#160

Post by qwertylicious »

changoplatanero wrote: post #145
qwertylicious wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let's consider the possibilities: #1. Facebook did everything they could to evaluate Flo as a company and the data they were receiving, but they simply had no way to tell that the data was illegally acquired and privacy-invading. #2. Facebook had inadequate mechanisms for evaluating their partners, and that while they could have caught this problem they failed to do so, and therefore Facebook was negligent. #3. Fa…

"doing everything they could" is quite the high standard. Personally, I would only hold them to the standard of making a reasonable effort.

Yup, fair. I tried to acknowledge that in my paragraph about KYC in a follow-up edit to one of my earlier comments, but I agree, the language I've been using has been intentionally quite strong, and sometimes misleadingly so (I tend to communicate using strong contrasts between opposites as a way to ensure clarity in my arguments, but reality inevitably lands somewhere in the middle).
Post reply on HN