Meta accessed women's health data from Flo app without consent, says court • Hacker News Board

Re: Meta accessed women's health data from Flo app without consent, says court

#231

Post by const_cast » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 8:42 PM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #208

jlarocco wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't work like that, though. Companies don't get to do whatever they want just because they didn't put any safegaurds in place to prevent illegally using the data they collected. The correct answer is to look at the data and verify it's legal to use. I might be sympathetic of a tiny startup who has increased costs, but it's a cost of doing business just like anything else. And Facebook has more than enough reso…

> The correct answer is to look at the data and verify it's legal to use. So repeal Section 230 and require every site to manually evaluate all content uploaded for legality before doing anything with it? If it’s not reasonable to ask sites to do that, it’s not reasonable to ask FB to do the same for data you send them. Your position seems to vary based on how big/sympathetic the company in question is, which is not…

Not before doing anything with it, just before processing it for specific business use cases like targeting.

Running a forumn is fine, and I don't care if someone inputs a fake SSN on a forumn post.

I DO care if someone inputs a fake SSN on a financial form I provided, and it is actually my responsibility to prevent that. That's what KYC is and more.

Re: Meta accessed women's health data from Flo app without consent, says court

#232

Post by const_cast » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 9:06 PM UTC

maccard wrote: post #174

xnorswap wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your argument that it's fine to just collect so much information that you can't possibly responsibly handle it all? In my opinion, that isn't something that should be allowed or encouraged.

I’m not the OP but no, I think their point is if you tell people that this data will be used for X, and not to send sensitive data that way and they do it anyway you can’t really be responsible for it - the entity who sent you the data and ignored your terms should be

Or you can both be partially responsible, with most of the responsibility on those who sent it.

Re: Meta accessed women's health data from Flo app without consent, says court

#233

Post by const_cast » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 9:08 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #122

Espressosaurus wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they shouldn’t be punished because they were negligent? Is that your argument?

I think their argument is that FB has a pipeline that processes whatever data you give it and the idea that a human being made the conscious decision to use this data is almost certainly not what happened. "This data processing pipeline processed the data we put in the pipeline" is not necessarily negligence unless you just hate Facebook and couldn't possibly imagine any scenario where they're not all mustache-twirli…

A human was involved somewhere, maybe they made the pipeline.

You can't, or shouldn't, outsource responsibility to computers. You can give them tasks. But if computers fail the tasks you give them, that's your responsibility. Because code doesn't have a conscious or an understanding of morality.

Re: Meta accessed women's health data from Flo app without consent, says court

#234

Post by const_cast » Fri, Aug 15, 2025, 9:09 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #127

qwertylicious wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, sorry, no, I have to disagree. We're seeing this broad trend in tech where we just want to shrug and say "gee wiz, the machine did it all on its own, who could've guessed that would happen, it's not really our fault, right?" LLMs sharing dangerous false information, ATS systems disqualifying women at higher rates than men, black people getting falsely flagged by facial recognition systems. The list goes on and…

What does the system look like where a human being individually verifies every pieces of data fed into an advertising system? Even taking the human out of the loop, how do you verify the "legality" of one piece of data vs. another coming from the same publisher? None of your example have anything to do with the thing we're talking about, and are just meant to inflame emotional opinions rather than engender rational d…

> What does the system look like where a human being individually verifies every pieces of data fed into an advertising system?

Probably what it looked like 20 years ago.

Also, relaredly, if there's no moral or ethical way to conduct your business model, that doesn't mean that you're off the hook.

The correct outcome is your business model burns to the ground. That's why I don't run a hitman business, even though it would be lucrative.

If mass scale automated targeted advertising cannot be done ethically, then it cannot be done at all. It shouldn't exist.

Re: Meta accessed women's health data from Flo app without consent, says court

#235

Post by maccard » Sat, Aug 16, 2025, 2:49 PM UTC

PunchTornado wrote: post #201

maccard wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you have an agreement with Disney that says “if you send us a movie we will show it”, and Disney send you the wrong thing it’s Disney’s fault, not yours. Which is what happened here.

I don't think comparisons are useful here. We are dealing with an evil corporation which we all know and it has been proven many times that it broke the law and every time gets away with it. who are you protecting?

I disagree. Just because someone does something to someone you don’t like that doesn’t mean they deserve it.

Re: Meta accessed women's health data from Flo app without consent, says court

#236

Post by hobs » Mon, Aug 18, 2025, 9:31 PM UTC

lazide wrote: post #62

hobs wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the only way. The oppressed do not need to become the oppressor, its just the simplest rut for the wheel to turn in.

Sure, they can stay the oppressed? Using the entropic model you seem to indicate (which I also favor), us vs them seems to be the lowest energy state. It’s certainly possible to not be there at any given time, but seems to require a specific and somewhat unique set of circumstances, which are not the most energetically stable.

I think post malthusian trap its very possible to have enough resources for everyone and thus no reason to be an oppressor; from a cultural context you have books like the pedagogy of the oppressed which aims to educate one out of the goal of becoming the oppressor.