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Facebook says new bug allowed apps access to private photos of up to 6.8M users

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Facebook says new bug allowed apps access to private photos of up to 6.8M users

#211

Post by TallGuyShort »

bosie wrote: post #208
bad_user wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? How has " consumer software gone too far in the other direction "? Does it ... kill people? Does it enforce bad policies like the healthcare industry did for the past couple of decades, causing an epidemic of obesity, diabetes and heart disease, which are the top causes of death? Yeah, regulation there definitely helped /s

> Does it ... kill people? Facebook asked users to upload nude photos. what if those get leaked and users commit suicide because of it? Would you (partially) blame facebook for their death? > Does it enforce bad policies like the healthcare industry did for the past couple of decades, causing an epidemic of obesity, diabetes and heart disease, which are the top causes of death? Genuine question but what policies are…

>> Facebook asked users to upload nude photos

I missed that one. By now even lay people should know that's a recipe for disaster.

Re: Facebook says new bug allowed apps access to private photos of up to 6.8M users

#212

Post by 794CD01 »

bad_user wrote: post #201
794CD01 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Fine everyone into the ground. Doesn't look like there is any other way to make people take security seriously. I'm not a fan of the overregulation of industries like aviation, but consumer software has gone too far in the other direction and is long overdue for an adjustment.

Really? How has " consumer software gone too far in the other direction "? Does it ... kill people? Does it enforce bad policies like the healthcare industry did for the past couple of decades, causing an epidemic of obesity, diabetes and heart disease, which are the top causes of death? Yeah, regulation there definitely helped /s

Others sufficiently cover the actual killing. I would only add that wasting peoples' time and/or money at scale is just as bad. Waste 30 seconds for each of 100 million people and that's an above average human lifetime.

BTW, how do you think anti-vaccination, healthy at any size, and minor attracted people ideas became popular? I specify those only because they are particularly heinous, but if you want official policy, just look at literally any election, though the 2016 US presidential election and the brexit referendum are the standouts in terms of memes.

Re: Facebook says new bug allowed apps access to private photos of up to 6.8M users

#213

Post by bad_user »

bosie wrote: post #208
bad_user wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? How has " consumer software gone too far in the other direction "? Does it ... kill people? Does it enforce bad policies like the healthcare industry did for the past couple of decades, causing an epidemic of obesity, diabetes and heart disease, which are the top causes of death? Yeah, regulation there definitely helped /s

> Does it ... kill people? Facebook asked users to upload nude photos. what if those get leaked and users commit suicide because of it? Would you (partially) blame facebook for their death? > Does it enforce bad policies like the healthcare industry did for the past couple of decades, causing an epidemic of obesity, diabetes and heart disease, which are the top causes of death? Genuine question but what policies are…

> "Would you (partially) blame facebook for their death?"

No, because doing nude pictures of yourself and then distributing them, no matter where, is just stupid. Parents should educate their kids to know better, or seek counseling if that mistake was made.

You're also talking of a hypothetical situation. When planes crash, people die, guaranteed. And yearly there are more than 100 plane crashes.

> "Genuine question but what policies are the reasons for the epidemic of the three death causes you just mentioned?"

The recommendation for a diet high in sugar, high in wheat and other grains, high in vegetable oils / polyunsaturated fats (e.g. Omega-6), low in saturated fat, low in dietary cholesterol, low in salt.

Children were fed in schools, diets were set in hospitals, foods where preferred in supermarkets according to these guidelines. That's not a debate I want to get into though.

Re: Facebook says new bug allowed apps access to private photos of up to 6.8M users

#214

Post by kaybe »

794CD01 wrote: post #183
bad_user wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going to play the devil’s advocate. If you fine Facebook, you have to fine the small companies too, and even individual developers developing OSS, since the law should apply to everyone equally. Of course the fines have to be proportional to the number of affected users. So would you like a fine for your bugs? And note that contrary to other professions, software development doesn’t have generally agreed recipes for…

Absolutely. Fine everyone into the ground. Doesn't look like there is any other way to make people take security seriously. I'm not a fan of the overregulation of industries like aviation, but consumer software has gone too far in the other direction and is long overdue for an adjustment.

Maybe what is said about the aviation industry regulation - it is written in blood [0] - will be true about the software industry regulation as well.

[0] As in: Every rule was included because someone (nearly) died because of it not being there before.

Re: Facebook says new bug allowed apps access to private photos of up to 6.8M users

#215

Post by bad_user »

794CD01 wrote: post #212
bad_user wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? How has " consumer software gone too far in the other direction "? Does it ... kill people? Does it enforce bad policies like the healthcare industry did for the past couple of decades, causing an epidemic of obesity, diabetes and heart disease, which are the top causes of death? Yeah, regulation there definitely helped /s

Others sufficiently cover the actual killing. I would only add that wasting peoples' time and/or money at scale is just as bad. Waste 30 seconds for each of 100 million people and that's an above average human lifetime. BTW, how do you think anti-vaccination, healthy at any size, and minor attracted people ideas became popular? I specify those only because they are particularly heinous, but if you want official polic…

> "Others sufficiently cover the actual killing"

I haven't seen any response yet. Does Facebook kill people, yes or no, it's a simple answer.

> "wasting peoples' time and/or money at scale is just as bad"

What?

> "how do you think anti-vaccination, healthy at any size, and minor attracted people ideas became popular?"

In that regard all Facebook does is giving people the tools to exercise their freedom of speech, possibly with an algorithm for that feed whose effects they couldn't predict, because it was built to maximize profits, not sanity ... and that will never be illegal ;-)

I understand some of the arguments that Facebook encouraged fake news, however speaking as somebody that was born in communism, I can tell you that fake news isn't new, it happened before WW I, it happened before WW II, it happened at the east of the Iron Curtain (at least) during the Cold War, and it happened just as well afterwards.

In my country distributing news via Facebook isn't even that popular, yet fake news is flourishing ... on TV. People are always looking for a scapegoat, for an easy answer, for an easy fix. It's only natural, but it doesn't make it right.

No, I don't think Facebook is to blame for fake news, even if it might have contributed. Facebook can't be responsible for the poor education that people are given.

Re: Facebook says new bug allowed apps access to private photos of up to 6.8M users

#216

Post by fhrow4484 »

bad_user wrote: post #170
ucarion wrote: post #156

Facebook is a global database of political dissidents, queer persons, apostates, and other categories of people whose physical safety is put in peril when their personal lives are leaked. Facebook surely must be heavily fined and regulated for their misbehavior, because to fail to keep Facebook data safe is to put lives at risk.

Going to play the devil’s advocate. If you fine Facebook, you have to fine the small companies too, and even individual developers developing OSS, since the law should apply to everyone equally. Of course the fines have to be proportional to the number of affected users. So would you like a fine for your bugs? And note that contrary to other professions, software development doesn’t have generally agreed recipes for…

> If you fine Facebook, you have to fine the small companies too, and even individual developers developing OSS, since the law should apply to everyone equally.

I would agree regarding small companies, but I wouldn't put oss developers in the same boat, fining the entity that provides a service makes more sense. It doesn't matter if that service relies on OSS or not.

It's the company providing the service to the consumer who is responsible to vet the final product.

A OSS developer has no idea if her/his code is going to be used by a gaming app or by NASA for mission critical stuff and shouldn't be made responsible if a bug in the oss project caused a rocket failure.

Similarly a construction company providing wood (and that company isn't making any false claims about the level of quality): it should not be the company's fault if someone decides to use that wood for a bridge where concrete is needed. The bridge builder is responsible of picking a good material.

Re: Facebook says new bug allowed apps access to private photos of up to 6.8M users

#217

Post by sifoobar »

bad_user wrote: post #201
794CD01 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Fine everyone into the ground. Doesn't look like there is any other way to make people take security seriously. I'm not a fan of the overregulation of industries like aviation, but consumer software has gone too far in the other direction and is long overdue for an adjustment.

Really? How has " consumer software gone too far in the other direction "? Does it ... kill people? Does it enforce bad policies like the healthcare industry did for the past couple of decades, causing an epidemic of obesity, diabetes and heart disease, which are the top causes of death? Yeah, regulation there definitely helped /s

There have been several cases of bullying people to commit suicide where it's not obvious how the same thing could have been accomplished without without the leverage Facebook provides.

I'm grateful I didn't have to live through this as a teenager, it's a shark pool.

So how long do we keep pretending that allowing this to go on is a viable way forward?

Re: Facebook says new bug allowed apps access to private photos of up to 6.8M users

#218

Post by TaylorAlexander »

ucarion wrote: post #156

Facebook is a global database of political dissidents, queer persons, apostates, and other categories of people whose physical safety is put in peril when their personal lives are leaked. Facebook surely must be heavily fined and regulated for their misbehavior, because to fail to keep Facebook data safe is to put lives at risk.

I don’t get it. If we agree it sucks, why not just stop using it? Why do you want to use something made by people who don’t care about you?

Re: Facebook says new bug allowed apps access to private photos of up to 6.8M users

#219

Post by sifoobar »

bob_theslob646 wrote: post #118

How come Google never has had a breach? Do they do a better job with security? Is Facebook more of a target than Google?

Does it matter? I have a hard time thinking of a worse company to entrust with personal information. The reach of Google makes Facebook look like a joke. At least when it's leaking they're not making more money.

Re: Facebook says new bug allowed apps access to private photos of up to 6.8M users

#220

Post by drb91 »

bad_user wrote: post #206
drb91 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being fined for a contribution to an OSS project would be terrible, wouldn’t it? Not if your contribution causes harm. A fine would be a more than welcome addition to consumer protections.

In other words you'd rather have companies like Facebook develop critical software, because that's exactly what would happen, because only companies with big pockets would be able to afford it, is that right? Funny, because community-driven open source is the only hope for replacing Facebook with something that is privacy oriented.

I think you have responsibility for your creations. I do not believe that people build things because it is risk free.

However, there needs to be SOME distinction beyond intent, which is often impossible to discern.

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