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FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook

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Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook

#191

Post by thfuran »

SwetDrems wrote: post #189
thfuran wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If I'm worried about Facebook's use of my data the answer is simple: stop using Facebook. Don't forget to stop using every website that embeds facebook buttons (or block the scripts). It's not exactly easy to prevent facebook from gathering information either.

Firefox's Facebook container extension and Privacy Badger extension makes this easy to do.

"Easy". The real problem is that most people don't even know it is necessary to do. Opting out of Facebook's data collection is easier than opting out of the credit agencies' but it is decidedly more involved than just not using their products.

Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook

#192

Post by sailingparrot »

repolfx wrote: post #174
sailingparrot wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think I agree with Facebook getting a bigger fone than Equifax. The issue is Equifax not being fined adequately. Let's maybe not use that as the bar?

Are you assuming here that Equifax could absorb any size of fine? Also, you seem to be OK with the idea that any company that gets hacked could be fined $5 billion. As being unhackable is an unachievable standard, that effectively means the FTC could bankrupt almost any company on a whim. That would be huge power in their hands and would not magically stop exploits from happening. I think there's a big question about…

I think you have a tendency of assuming a little bit too much about what others think based on 1 sentence.

> Are you assuming here that Equifax could absorb any size of fine?

Who said any size of fine would be appropriate? There is a lot of possible fine size between 500M$ and the max they could absorb.

> Also, you seem to be OK with the idea that any company that gets hacked could be fined $5 billion

Where did I say that? I am OK with facebook getting fined 5B$ in this context, that doesn't tell you anything about other hacks and other companies. I am also a little bit reluctant to call facebook's case a "hack".

> I think there's a big question about whether Equifax should have been fined at all. It would appear to either require mass inconsistency by regulators, or would put most US companies that rely on IT out of business.

You should maybe think outside of the tech bubble for one second? What you find apparently unthinkable is already in place in many other industries. Do you think there will be no repercussion for Boeing's crashes if it was caused by their carelessness? What do you think happen if an engineering company builds a bridge and it collapses because of a design mistake? Yet mistakes are human right?

Private data is something that should be protected. It is not as important as human lives, but it is very important. If you build a business around handling user's private data, but can't be bothered to properly protect them, then yes you should get fined heavily or even put out of business.

And just like in engineering there should be investigations into what happened to determine how much of it was pure carelessness and how much could not have been realistically prevented. In the case of Equifax, they didn't even bother applying security patches to their external facing software.

Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook

#193

Post by jacquesm »

Any anti-GDPR advocates want to chime in on all those huge fines that the EU was going to levy on every American company?

Props to the FTC for the size of the fine and the detailed explanation, not so good that the perps get to walk - again.

Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook

#194

Post by jacquesm »

mirimir wrote: post #133
slim wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's true only in us

But then GDPR is effective only in the EU. At some point, wouldn't it be simpler to have the same policies globally? Or is that too simpleminded?

Pity to see this downvoted. That's called 'harmonization'. It is one of the bits that makes copyright law such a powerful law because the Berne convention synchronized a whole pile of stuff in a very large chunk of the world. Similar activity tends to occur in neighboring countries with respect to tax law to avoid capital flight.

Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook

#195

Post by godelski »

gridlockd wrote: post #171
godelski wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that as if it already happening makes it okay. Libra is getting hounded because the flaws are visible, frankly because people are suspicious of Facebook now. But the credit agencies doing similar things that we consider unethical, but operating in the background and hidden, doesn't make it right. I remember my mother telling me as a child "just because someone else does something doesn't mean you should." I'm…

> You say that as if it already happening makes it okay. I'm not saying "it's okay". It is what it is. I'm saying we're applying a double standard. It's like complaining about lighting a match in the middle of a wildfire. > Because if the FTC cracks down on them then it sets a precedent to crack down on the credit agencies. That makes no sense me. They can crack down on Libra for any number of reasons. They're clearl…

> It's like complaining about lighting a match in the middle of a wildfire.

It's like complaining about lighting a match in a dry area while there is a fire somewhere in California.

FTFY

The analogy is bad because the match in the middle of the forest fire won't affect the fire. You're already engulfed in flames. What we're taking about is two different sectors. They are disjoint (unlike your analogy). But you can be in Oregon while it is dry and see that someone started a fire in California with a match and say to your friend "hey be careful with that match. That's how the fire started in California. We don't want that to happen here."

> That makes no sense me.

1) just because it doesn't make sense to you doesn't mean it's incorrect.

2) law works highly off of precedence. So one ruling affects new ones that come in. They keep try to be consistent.

3) just because people/laws are "okay" with something now doesn't mean it can't or won't change. In fact, I'd argue that's why new laws get made.

Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook

#196

Post by mirimir »

jacquesm wrote: post #194
mirimir wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then GDPR is effective only in the EU. At some point, wouldn't it be simpler to have the same policies globally? Or is that too simpleminded?

Pity to see this downvoted. That's called 'harmonization'. It is one of the bits that makes copyright law such a powerful law because the Berne convention synchronized a whole pile of stuff in a very large chunk of the world. Similar activity tends to occur in neighboring countries with respect to tax law to avoid capital flight.

I was thinking more of the arguably disproportionate impact that California auto-emission limits have had in the overall US market. As I understand it, it would cost too much to produce multiple state-specific versions. So the high-population state with the lowest limits effectively sets the US standard.

But maybe that doesn't apply as much to online stuff. Because marginal cost isn't so sensitive to volume.

Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook

#197

Post by bryan_w »

repolfx wrote: post #175
annadane wrote: post #63

I still find Facebook has one of the most toxic cultures of any company out there. All they've ever done during their history is betray user trust, but it's ok as long as they keep 'apologizing' and then doing nothing to fix it

That's a huge over-reaction. One reason Facebook came to dominate over older social networks was that they provided much, much better user privacy controls, they were better at keeping fake users off their networks and they kept the site more secure. Before Facebook social networks didn't have APIs and thus didn't have permissions - everything just scraped the (always public) profile pages. Moreover many of the thing…

Oh man, while I agree with you, I don't see your arguments landing well with this crowd

Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook

#198

Post by thesausageking »

tareqak wrote: post #188
thesausageking wrote: post #164

The head of the FTC voted against it and gave his reasoning here: https://twitter.com/chopraftc/status/1154010756079390720 One that stood out for me is complete immunity for for the execs for "known" and "unknown" violations: "Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and other executives get blanket immunity for their role in the violations. This is wrong and sets a terrible precedent. The law doesn’t give them a special ex…

Rohit Chopra is not the head of the FTC: he's one of the five FTC commissioners [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Trade_Commission#Curre...

You're right. Thanks. I misunderstood what "Commissioner" meant.

Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook

#199

Post by FireBeyond »

tschellenbach wrote: post #134
zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #70

Does it bother anyone else that Facebook is being fined $5 billion while Equifax, a company with a history of anti-consumer activity and privacy violations going back decades, the company that congress was forced to enact the Fair Credit Reporting Act to contain, and who gave away all the personal information for over a hundred million people through its own negligence, was fined a mere $650 million? Do you get the i…

Yes this is insane. Facebook didn't even have a security issue. They just allowed my friends to export the fact that I listen to the Goo Goo Dolls (crazy how the media spinned this). Also, I signed up for Facebook, Equifax on the other hand keeps data on me without my permission. They had a real data breach, and they lost important data, not just Facebook likes.

That's downplaying it a bit.

FB allowed the exporting of all sorts of data, from your relationship status, demographic and contact information, information on employers, interpersonal relationship graph to companies who used it to mine information on you without your explicit knowledge (you could refuse them access, but as soon as one of your friends allowed it, your refusal became moot).

Then it built a whole bunch of tooling and ecosystem around this industry. Then it made a lot of money from it.

Then it played dumb. "We didn't know", "We don't allow it, even though we built tools for no other purpose than to facilitate it", and so on.

A little more nefarious than "your friends can tell someone you listen to this band".

Re: FTC Imposes $5B Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook

#200

Post by almost_usual »

jiveturkey wrote: post #166
almost_usual wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The independent party for privacy review is a much bigger deal than the fine. This out of Mark Zuckerberg's control now, they will be audited constantly for any product changes they make. "As part of Facebook’s order-mandated privacy program, which covers WhatsApp and Instagram, Facebook must conduct a privacy review of every new or modified product, service, or practice before it is implemented, and document its dec…

At FB level, this is already a requirement for GDPR. The only difference is that it must be shared with an independent assessor rather than held strictly internally.

That seems like a pretty huge difference.
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