Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends

#231

Post by wu-ikkyu » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 9:28 PM UTC

Iv wrote: post #40

wu-ikkyu wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I have more contempt for the lawmakers in front of him, who actually enabled Facebook to become such a monster by either facilitating or simply not understanding what it was doing. Does your contempt extend to the billions of non-technical minded users who also did not understand what FB was doing?

Not really. The notion that the non-technical should understand EULAS dozens of pages long is a total fiction (that is legally binding in the US but not so much in saner countries). On thousands of issues that can put several things I hold dear at risk, I just trust elected officials to do the right call. It is THEIR job to understand these issues and take the correct stance. I mean, this is literally what they are p…

>It is THEIR job to understand these issues and take the correct stance. I mean, this is literally what they are paid for.

Perhaps they are paid more by their donors to pass laws written by corporate lawyers

Re: Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends

#232

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 9:44 PM UTC

greglindahl wrote: post #63

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This disregard for ethics has allowed Facebook to “grow at all costs." There's a great phrase for this: "move fast and break things". When you believe it is ok to break small rules and norms, it becomes easier to break larger norms and ethics and rules. This philosophy took SV by storm, but at its core it's always been about disregarding things like laws and ethics, and now we are seeing the world that created.

You might think that that's a great phrase for it, but many other people don't interpret "move fast and break things" to mean what you think it means. I'm all for criticizing things that have gone wrong, but you're using an overly-broad brush.

The phase fundamentally captures an essense of what Umberto Eco and Rober Paxton observed of early 20th century political movements emerging in Italy and Germany.

I'd recognised this similarity some time back.

http://w3.salemstate.edu/~cmauriello/pdfEuropean/Paxton_Five...

Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes.... No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. ...disagreement is treason.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/

Re: Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends

#233

Post by quadrangle » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

ummm32 wrote: post #209

quadrangle wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To give benefit-of-the-doubt, I think they believe their own propaganda. Facebook folks actually believed that (e.g. among many) pushing people to reveal all aspects of their life equally to everyone was in society's best interest. And I once met a Facebook employee who actually was a staunch EFF supporter… But overall, I dunno… you're probably right.

That moral opinions equals the one of Peter Thiel about the good in mass surveillance: based on his opinion that after 9/11, powerful western entities were on the side of really harsh intrusive countermeasures (and the restriction of current liberties quite probably), that could probably, fundamentally change the western societies as they existed at that moment. The alternative to that way of doing things was to allo…

I hope it's clear in my comment that I'm neither apologizing for Facebook nor sympathizing with Thiel and his crap etc. I think assuming-good-faith and looking for charitable explanations is a good practice, even if I actually don't believe people actually deserve the charity.