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Facebook's Email-Harvesting Practice Is Under Investigation in N.Y.

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Re: Facebook's Email-Harvesting Practice Is Under Investigation in N.Y.

#11
post #6

This is probably the third investigation against FB this week. How do we still continue trusting it with our personal data? I have been equally stupid in sharing freely on FB/Instagram, not anymore.

After years of less frequent use, I finally quit after the 2016 election. I'm so much better off without it, you can do it too!

Re: Facebook's Email-Harvesting Practice Is Under Investigation in N.Y.

#13

I'm glad the attorney general is getting involved. We need to start charging Facebook execs for these flagrant privacy violations. They're being fined 3 billion dollars for legal expenses relating to an FTC inquiry… and their stock price went up by 8% [1]. The market just does not care; it's time regulators and law enforcement started to. [1] https://www.barrons.com/articles/facebook-stock-is-up-becaus...

Not just execs, I hope. The engineers who wrote the code and managers who told them to do it should also face justice.

Re: Facebook's Email-Harvesting Practice Is Under Investigation in N.Y.

#15

I'm glad the attorney general is getting involved. We need to start charging Facebook execs for these flagrant privacy violations. They're being fined 3 billion dollars for legal expenses relating to an FTC inquiry… and their stock price went up by 8% [1]. The market just does not care; it's time regulators and law enforcement started to. [1] https://www.barrons.com/articles/facebook-stock-is-up-becaus...

Not just execs, I hope. The engineers who wrote the code and managers who told them to do it should also face justice.

I agree, but with conditions. PEs have ethical responsibilities. If the engineers are licensed, yup, they absolutely have a moral and legal responsibility to refuse to sign off on illegal work. In most states though, software engineers are not professionally licensed, certified, or ethically trained. Often they are referred to using demeaning terms such as "coders", which are equated as "bricklayers" by thought leaders such as Steve McConnell and others. Thus it would not necessarily be reasonable to hold them to a responsibility refuse to follow illegal orders they were given as mindless "bricklayers" and "coders" etc, which is the most common paradigm of software engineers. Unintelligent implementors who are simply typing things up on command with a surfeit of semicolons can not be held to any sort of professional responsibility. But PEs absolutely can and must.

Re: Facebook's Email-Harvesting Practice Is Under Investigation in N.Y.

#16
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market cares. It had already priced in a fine, possibly one larger than 3B. The reduction in uncertainty -- knowing the magnitude of the fine -- also positively affects the stock price. If the fine were cancelled tomorrow, you can be sure that, all else equal, Facebook's market cap would jump by 3B. The fines need to be bigger.

They need to increase the fine substantially for each repeated violation. After a few violations its going to be hard to justify a $50B fine to investors.

No, they need to adjust the first-time penalties for deterrence. $50B at a minimum, because it has to hurt their stock price when they do these things. Or hey, how about a year of revenue.

Re: Facebook's Email-Harvesting Practice Is Under Investigation in N.Y.

#17
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market cares. It had already priced in a fine, possibly one larger than 3B. The reduction in uncertainty -- knowing the magnitude of the fine -- also positively affects the stock price. If the fine were cancelled tomorrow, you can be sure that, all else equal, Facebook's market cap would jump by 3B. The fines need to be bigger.

They need to increase the fine substantially for each repeated violation. After a few violations its going to be hard to justify a $50B fine to investors.

The fines also needs to be fair, not fixed cost. I think the EU has got the percentage-of-revenue approach right. A million dollar fine for a small company can be death-sentence while for a big player it is lose change, that is not fair.

Re: Facebook's Email-Harvesting Practice Is Under Investigation in N.Y.

#18

So this relates to their practice of ransacking all your email contacts without your consent, engaging in data theft as they upload them and analyze them for subsequent actions. And of course Linked In is also notorious for engaging in this criminal vile privacy raping practice. I remember maybe 8 years ago it was here on HN that a company was found to be doing this and it was shocking to some. But an executive of th…

you were probably thinking about when Path got caught doing it .

Re: Facebook's Email-Harvesting Practice Is Under Investigation in N.Y.

#19

I'm glad the attorney general is getting involved. We need to start charging Facebook execs for these flagrant privacy violations. They're being fined 3 billion dollars for legal expenses relating to an FTC inquiry… and their stock price went up by 8% [1]. The market just does not care; it's time regulators and law enforcement started to. [1] https://www.barrons.com/articles/facebook-stock-is-up-becaus...

What laws have they broken? Without laws to break there isn't much justification for punishment.

Re: Facebook's Email-Harvesting Practice Is Under Investigation in N.Y.

#20

I'm glad the attorney general is getting involved. We need to start charging Facebook execs for these flagrant privacy violations. They're being fined 3 billion dollars for legal expenses relating to an FTC inquiry… and their stock price went up by 8% [1]. The market just does not care; it's time regulators and law enforcement started to. [1] https://www.barrons.com/articles/facebook-stock-is-up-becaus...

Not just execs, I hope. The engineers who wrote the code and managers who told them to do it should also face justice.

That would require all developers to become lawyers so they can make sure everything they are being asked to do is legal.
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