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Zuckerberg Has No Way Out of Facebook's Quagmire

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Re: Zuckerberg Has No Way Out of Facebook's Quagmire

#131

Post by astronautjones »

roenxi wrote: post #95
astronautjones wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, CA was willfully stoking hate in its audience with hateful propaganda, and the Obama campaign literally did not do that. There is no equivalency

You've piqued my interest with this comment because, read literally, you seem to be against hate. Hating isn't illegal, immoral or even necessarily a bad idea. Hate can be justified. Hate is dangerous in politics as is any strong emotion . Trying to hold a country together demands compromise, which in turn requires moderation. Facebook is empowering mass surveillance and propaganda, and encourages outrage and knee-je…

also, CA did this [1], which is quite illegal and immoral:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/21/cambridge-an...

Re: Zuckerberg Has No Way Out of Facebook's Quagmire

#132

Post by Alex3917 »

apengwin wrote: post #129
jonmc12 wrote: post #128

> dreams.. "..we're closing the main Facebook app and web site.." I think a better dream would be if FB open-sourced an advertisement-free Facebook, and provided $1B in grants to build permutations of the UI that all sync data.

Why would they have any incentive to do that?

> Why would they have any incentive to do that?

They could just use a token to align incentives

Re: Zuckerberg Has No Way Out of Facebook's Quagmire

#135

Post by Khaine »

jayess wrote: post #91
astronautjones wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, CA was willfully stoking hate in its audience with hateful propaganda, and the Obama campaign literally did not do that. There is no equivalency

So the exploitation of massive amounts of personal data from unwilling participants is ok as long as you agree with the person doing it?

Sadly, that seems to be the case.

Cambridge Analytica did far worse than Obama's team. They lied about the purpose of the app to steal social graph data. But fundamentally, the abuse of social graph information is the same. They may have gone to different ends (getting people to vote for obama, vs getting people to not vote for clinton), but they are fundamentally the same types of activity.

You can't tell it was appropriate for Obama's social media team to steal the social graph and use that to target people (who did not approve their information being obtained).

Re: Zuckerberg Has No Way Out of Facebook's Quagmire

#136

Post by mc32 »

sverige wrote: post #11
rectang wrote: post #5

It's fascinating that widespread outrage over privacy finally materializes when data is used for hated political causes. Commerce, law enforcement not so much... but "Trump" or "Obama" and suddenly people care.

The Facebook outrage is interesting since it is tied to Trump. When Obama did it, no one cared. For example, there's a video of Jim Messina, Obama's 2012 campaign manager, talking about how they obtained the entire Facebook social graph and used it to target voters. [1] I don't remember any "delete Facebook" campaigns back then. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZmcyHpG31A

Sometimes people who scrutinize things fail to see it from the working class's perspective (the "poorly educated" be they white or black, or something else.) I think there are quite a few people on HN who never hung out with poor people or never paid attention to how they may think, in some situations.

If their "horse" wins, whatever the means, they're glad it wins. Case in point is O.J. Everyone knew he got away with a crime, but despite that, people were happy to see him stick it to the man. If Obama won on FB data, people who voted for him, on balance, would not care. People who voted for Trump, on balance, would not care, if he won on the back of FB data --we don't know the actual degree of the usage, but for argument's sake, let's pretend it was material.

Even "highly educated" people are susceptible to this bias.

Re: Zuckerberg Has No Way Out of Facebook's Quagmire

#137

Post by [deleted] »

xienze wrote: post #39
sverige wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Facebook outrage is interesting since it is tied to Trump. When Obama did it, no one cared. For example, there's a video of Jim Messina, Obama's 2012 campaign manager, talking about how they obtained the entire Facebook social graph and used it to target voters. [1] I don't remember any "delete Facebook" campaigns back then. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZmcyHpG31A

Even better is this Time article which is non-stop fawning over the brilliance of the Obama campaign using an app to suck down information in your friends list: http://swampland.time.com/2012/11/20/friended-how-the-obama-... 2012: getting information about all of your friends by simply using an app? How cool is that? Haha bet you Republican dinosaurs had thought of that, huh? 2018: getting information about all of yo…

[deleted]

Re: Zuckerberg Has No Way Out of Facebook's Quagmire

#138

Post by jrs235 »

SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #79
nemothekid wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm struggling to understand why people keep bringing up the Obama comparison. At the start of the 2016 elections everyone , Sanders, Clinton, Jeb!, Trump were doing what Obama did in 2012. The outrage isn't soley in the fact that the CA campaign used FB data. 1. CA obtained the data illicitly and tried to cover up the fact they had used it, and downplay how many users they had reached. 2. CA used the data to intenti…

Folks bring up the Obama comparison... because... well... its a pretty comparable situation. I'm not so charitable towards the public. I wouldn't place any bets that the striking wave of outrage directed at Facebook right now isn't strictly related to the outcome . In this case, that outcome is Trump in the White-house. Not that that isn't a good reason to be outraged - but I don't think its a very principled reason.

Pre-2016 Trump campaign, data was used to reach people and encourage voting.

2016 Trump campaign, data was used to stir up FUD and/or discourage voting.

Re: Zuckerberg Has No Way Out of Facebook's Quagmire

#139

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #59
colordrops wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think most of the outraged public understand the nuanced differences between the two? The reason the public is outraged is because of an engineered campaign by Trump's enemies.

They aren't nuanced differences, at all. And a substantial majority of the public can be counted as "Trump's enemies" (whatever that paranoid label may mean) probably because they understand how different 2016 was than any other campaign in the US, ever.

[deleted]

Re: Zuckerberg Has No Way Out of Facebook's Quagmire

#140

Post by colordrops »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #73
colordrops wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commerce and law enforcement don't have opposing forces with huge political propaganda/PR machines behind them. Trump is opposed by the Democrats, and Obama is opposed by the Republicans. Both parties are public sentiment manipulation machines.

What a vapid post. It's X vs Y, and everything is relative to that? Here's an exercise for you. Identify federal law enforcement agencies, and see what public statements and actions they've taken on this. There is not partisan symmetry, but I won't give the answer away.

Apparently you have a reading comprehension problem. My point is precisely what you said, which is that there is not partisan symmetry with law enforcement agencies.
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