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Facebook's PR feels broken

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Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#171

Post by starfallg »

manfredo wrote: post #162
starfallg wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having a hard time believing that this is a legitimate opinion and not conjured up by Facebook PR. Facebook is the one that collected the data. It is their responsibility to ensure that who they give your data to is who they are, and that they are doing what they should be doing to your data. The should have a comprehensive compliance program for third parties with access to user data and have the necessary enfor…

From what I gather, Facebook did have a compliance program in place to ensure that data was only shared with those that met its usage policies. Aleksandr Kogan was working at the University of Cambridge at the time, so the claim that he was using this data for academic purposes would seem credible to Facebook. Here are a couple sources that state that Kogan told Facebook that the data was to be used for academic purp…

>But it seems to me that the primary culprit here is Kogan, who lied to Facebook about the use of the collected data, rather than Facebook whose fault was being too trusting of academics.

And what did FB do as due diligence? Very little. When FB discovered the breach, what did they do as a response and to mitigate the effects to the affected users? How did they recover damages and/or enforce specific performance of contract terms to not only remove the data in question but all of the products that resulted in the processing of the data? Again very little.

When banks gave out mortgages like how FB gave out user data, the result was massive financial crisis. And now with FB, we got (more) idiocracy.

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#172

Post by starfallg »

freepor wrote: post #167
starfallg wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having a hard time believing that this is a legitimate opinion and not conjured up by Facebook PR. Facebook is the one that collected the data. It is their responsibility to ensure that who they give your data to is who they are, and that they are doing what they should be doing to your data. The should have a comprehensive compliance program for third parties with access to user data and have the necessary enfor…

Sure, like a bank has the duty to protect your safe deposit box, but CA defrauded Facebook the way a bank can be robbed.

In which case, the bank should be held responsible for your loss. And they should have adequate security in place to prevent it from happening in the first place, or refrain from that line of business. These are all costs that FB has skirted.

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#173

Post by millstone »

notafraudster wrote: post #145
hogFeast wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comment talking about bias, only mentions Fox News. Welcome to hell (imo, this is what you get when you don't teach people how to argue and feed them too many Disney films). No, the press shouldn't be regulated. Yes, bias is normal. No, Fox News doesn't "swing public opinion" (they reflect views that already exist, and pander to them). Life is difficult, you have to think for yourself.

You seem to be arguing two different things: first, Fox News does not influence public opinion; second, that it shouldn't matter if they do because adults should think for themselves. The second is fundamentally a subject view of the world, so you are neither right nor wrong. I disagree with you strongly. We should be concerned about things that harm the our civic health even if we ourselves to blame for them. I thin…

What a thoughtful and well articulated reply (sincerely). I hope some day one of my stupid opinions gets this treatment.

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#174

Post by bhl »

tempsy wrote: post #138

i don't think FB ever had great PR. The Social Network was largely a negative portrayal of Zuck and FB. I remember when FB bought Instagram there was a lot of initial backlash. Most of the positive stuff around Facebook was mainly due to the huge upward movements in it's stock price post IPO that solidified Zuckerberg and Sandberg as business geniuses. Would argue that their individual profiles became much more posit…

Ben Mezrich, author of the Accidental Billionaires which was later adapted into the Social Network, has a differing opinion: like Liars Poker and Wall Street, the movie made Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg more well known and popular than before.

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#175

Post by taurath »

methodin wrote: post #170
taurath wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But don't forget, money is speech, and corporations are people. All of which is absolutely not in the first amendment.

Why is it that free speech extends to organizations? I'm all for free speech but outside of individuals and nonprofits I'm struggling to think of good reason it should extend to corporate entities.

I can’t for the life of me figure it out.

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#176

Post by komali2 »

protastus wrote: post #136
komali2 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oil so useful that modern society would collapse without it. I don't like the taste of this, I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly why, but it's something like: We depend on oil, because we depend on oil. I can say I "need" my phone but I bet I'd be just like anybody else in the 60s if I didn't have my phone. I "need" the BART but only because I live in a city that exists in its current state because of the e…

Feel free to replace oil with whatever dominant energy source you'd prefer, for your timeline of choice. I think the core argument still holds. To elaborate: my problem with the Facebook Oil Company analogy is the magnitude mismatch in the utility axis. Facebook's operating niche describes very specific solutions for social interaction, in a space saturated with stronger and very enjoyable alternatives, some as old a…

Ah, fair, I completely agree.

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#177

Post by rumanator »

freepor wrote: post #167
starfallg wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having a hard time believing that this is a legitimate opinion and not conjured up by Facebook PR. Facebook is the one that collected the data. It is their responsibility to ensure that who they give your data to is who they are, and that they are doing what they should be doing to your data. The should have a comprehensive compliance program for third parties with access to user data and have the necessary enfor…

Sure, like a bank has the duty to protect your safe deposit box, but CA defrauded Facebook the way a bank can be robbed.

> Sure, like a bank has the duty to protect your safe deposit box, but CA defrauded Facebook the way a bank can be robbed.

Choosing to give away your property to third parties is not comparable to being robbed. Facebook collected the data on unsuspecting users and proceeded to willingly give away the data. Thus Facebook is responsible for what comes out of it. There is no way around it, and it boggles the mind how this fact is brushed aside.

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#178

Post by rumanator »

farisjarrah wrote: post #20
drewrv wrote: post #15

It still amazes me that the line of reasoning they publicly went with, around their decision not to fact check political advertisements, is that no one company should have that amount of power. The logical conclusion of their own argument is that Facebook should be broken up.

While I agree Facebook is doing a bad job with regards to political advertising, I am actually really glad facebook isnt stepping in and deciding whats truthful or not. Does anyone really think that we should give Facebook any power over our political system or give them the power to be the gatekeepers of what political ads we see? I think facebook should do what twitter did and just totally get out of the political…

> Does anyone really think that we should give Facebook any power over our political system or give them the power to be the gatekeepers of what political ads we see?

They already have that power, and one of the problems posed by Facebook is that they leverage that power to disseminate false information devised to undermine democracies by unscrupulous totalitarian regimes.

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#179

Post by javagram »

methodin wrote: post #170
taurath wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But don't forget, money is speech, and corporations are people. All of which is absolutely not in the first amendment.

Why is it that free speech extends to organizations? I'm all for free speech but outside of individuals and nonprofits I'm struggling to think of good reason it should extend to corporate entities.

Nonprofits are corporate entities too.

The Citizens United case, the most recent Supreme Court case striking down restrictions on political speech, was about a nonprofit organization opposed to Hillary Clinton. The government tried to shut down their “documentary” film about Hillary.

Re: Facebook's PR feels broken

#180

Post by nemild »

manfredo wrote: post #133
jyrkesh wrote: post #106

> I’m sure, internally, it’s looked at as the “mainstream media trying to get clicks... I interviewed with FB shortly after the Cambridge Analytica stuff came out (but long enough after that it was clear to everyone that FB had screwed up big time). When it was my turn to ask questions in one particular interview, I gave a standard fallback when I have nothing else: "[despite all the blahblah positives], having worke…

Someone who worked at Facebook for the better part of a decade responded that they felt the media coverage was unfair to Facebook. You were suprised by this response because from an outsider's perspective you felt that Facebook employees should be apologetic? What makes you more qualified to judge whether the public perception was accurate as compared to someone who actually worked there - an "FB vet" in your own wor…

A common argument (that you also make) is that if you're on the inside, you obviously know better than those on the outside. There's a lot of reasons to believe that isn't true.

First, you may not have the right training (e.g., media studies, media economics, privacy). Second, you favor your coworkers because they are your friends. Third, the positive news and justified criticism of external critics is widely shared internally, but the points that are appropriately critical are much less shared. A single flawed external article can lead to defensiveness, making it that much easier to dismiss tens of other appropriate articles.

More poetically, it's like the Three Blind Men and elephant. The conviction of the blind men is so great, but their closeness leads to a misplaced confidence that they know the answer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant

I call this effect the "truth distortion field," and liken it to the Facebook friend filter bubble:

https://www.nemil.com/tdf/part1-employees.html

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