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Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica situation

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Re: Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica situation

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then make "no requests for users email" part of the terms of using the API?

Sure, and maybe they'll put it right next to the "you're not allowed to save any data" clause.

One is fairly trivial to prove compared to the other.

Re: Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica situation

#252

Anyone else remember Beacon? This was how FB has always designed to work from the beginning. They've just been toying with the PR ways to say it to make people accept it without thinking. The election woke people up. I found this from 2011 when they shut it down as a "mistake." ( https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2011/11/our-commitment-to-the-f... ). Unfortunately, it looks like they removed the launch release - but it wo…

What's the tl;dr: on Beacon?

>Beacon formed part of Facebook's advertisement system that sent data from external websites to Facebook, for the purpose of allowing targeted advertisements and allowing users to share their activities with their friends. Beacon would report to Facebook on its members' activities on third-party sites that also participate with Beacon. These activities would be published to users' News Feed. This would occur even when users were not connected to Facebook and would happen without the knowledge of the Facebook user. One of the main concerns was that Beacon did not give the user the option to block the information from being sent to Facebook.

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

Re: Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica situation

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's in Facebook's benefit for advertisers to gather all that data, because the only way they can actually use it to make money is by advertising to the users on Facebook. I find it incredibly hard to believe that this thought never crossed anybody's mind.

Have you ever looked at FB's ad platform? You don't download everyone's data and target the campaign yourself. You target, "18-25 males in these zip codes who like the yankees". I don't see how you go from that platform (hosted and controlled by facebook) to something else.

At least at one point, you could. See the example of the person who pranked his roommate through very specifically targeted facebook ads. [1]

It's even mentioned in that article how to get around the fix they put in so you couldn't target a group of less than 20 people.

I'm not sure if this particular method still works, but let's take a step back and think before we make claims about what is and is not possible in a complex system with lots features and knobs to twiddle. Whether this was an emergent feature from other features of the system or a specifically desired and designed behavior, at least at one point Facebook allowed very fine grained targeting.

1: http://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-...

Re: Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica situation

#255
As a way to discourage Facebook and other companies from doing this in future, a fine per person per data item shared must be imposed. Since the data that's leaked is more or less permanent, all the people affected should get a recurring, life-long annual payment for each personal leaked data item.

Re: Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica situation

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then make "no requests for users email" part of the terms of using the API?

Sure, and maybe they'll put it right next to the "you're not allowed to save any data" clause.

One is much easier to inspect and verify than the other.

There's really no way to check if someone has made a copy of data if you've given them that data.

It's not that hard to check if an application prompts a user for an email address.

Re: Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica situation

#257

The issue here is not some developer gaining a temporary snapshot of a few million records, it is that Facebook _itself_ is doing and productizing real-time psychological profiling on billions of people.

This was revealed years ago. Facebook was literally running experiments on people on the site, without their consent, to see how they reacted when their feed was made either more negative or more positive. Most people seemed to not care when this was revealed which is, in my opinion, just an indication of the level of addiction people have to the service.

You can find a plenty of hits searching for 'facebook run psychological experiment on users.' Here [1] is one of a plethora of sources discussing it.

[1] - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/10932534/Fac...

Re: Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica situation

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then make "no requests for users email" part of the terms of using the API?

But there are many legitimate use cases of sharing email addresses. Just scratching the surface, * someone used Facebook Connect to login to NYTimes Web site, curious about their Food & Recipes newsletter, wants to sign up * someone logging into e-commerce shop through Facebook Connect, making a purchase and then deciding that yes, they would like to track and manage their order on the retailer's Web site, and they w…

Which is fine. But most apps that I remember of this type (back when I used Facebook apps) would ask you for it on landing. Nothing ever has to be black-and-white.

Re: Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica situation

#260
post #39

The trusting developers not to sell any data but putting zero safeguards in place to prevent this and extremely punitive repercussions despite being repeatedly told by the public, media, and even high level employees tells me Facebook can't plead ignorance to this and they not only knew this was happening, but they probably intended for it to happen. They knew it was illegal but put all the incentives for companies n…

> They knew it was illegal but put all the incentives for companies not to follow the rules. Offtopic but i cant help it. You get what you measure. Which is why economies that only measure profit optimize for nothing but profit. When a nationstate says "It's illegal to do X" but has mandatory accounting practices that do not measure X but only measure profit, we should not be surprised that companies like Facebook do…

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