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Facebook Expects to Be Fined Up to $5B by FTC Over Privacy Issues

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook Expects to Be Fined Up to $5B by FTC Over Privacy Issues

#301

Post by _cs2017_ »

bastawhiz wrote: post #225
wavefunction wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making money off "mistakes" that keep happening, darn it!

Storing plain text passwords doesn't make them money, but it negatively affects users, should those passwords be compromised. Though FB didn't prosper from the mistake, users potentially feel a cost, so the outcome is the same. Criminal negligence might not benefit the bad actor, but it's still a crime either way.

Yes that's a good point.

It's a bit like Exxon Valdez: they don't profit from spilling oil in the ocean, but they should still be penalized for cutting corners on safety.

Re: Facebook Expects to Be Fined Up to $5B by FTC Over Privacy Issues

#302

Post by golergka »

wnevets wrote: post #38
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #23

Seems like they should add another 0 to the fine after the recent hat trick: 1) Prompting users to give Facebook their email passwords.[0] 2) Using that email access to "inadvertently" upload the information of their email contacts.[1] 3) Storing said passwords and others in plaintext. [2] It's pretty impressive that a company could do something so brazenly malevolent and be confident that they will escape with no mo…

> 3) Storing said passwords and others in plaintext. [2] in logs.

The first thing I did after setting up Jenkins for our small dev shop was to find and install and test a plugin that removes all kinds of credentials from the logs. And I'm just a developer, and I never claimed nor think that I have any devops or administration qualifications - just common sense.

If Facebook devops engineers, who are probably among the best trained and highest paid on the planet, lack the same common sense for their users passwords... I can't even come up with an ending to this sentence that would properly express my emotions right now.

Re: Facebook Expects to Be Fined Up to $5B by FTC Over Privacy Issues

#303

Post by ionised »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #244
cycrutchfield wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Can we quit it with posting this quote every time something negative on Facebook comes up. It’s practically a meme now and, quite honestly, it’s getting annoying.

The only people who find this annoying seem to be Facebook employees, shareholders or people with vested interests in being allowed to go about the kind of cavalier data collection that Facebook does.

On the contrary, I think we need to keep repeating it. Everything I know about Zuckerberg, everything he says, the lies he tells, his actions and the actions of his company...they all lead me to one conclusion; that that particular quote is the deepest insight we have into the mind of Mark Zuckerberg, and we should never forget it.

Re: Facebook Expects to Be Fined Up to $5B by FTC Over Privacy Issues

#304

Post by drb91 »

stubish wrote: post #289
drb91 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by increasing their market cap $20 billion Is this actually meaningful to any company that isn't IPOing or releasing new shares? I am not pro-facebook by any means but it's not clear this means much aside from how much their investors like them, again of questionable value as the majority of votes are privately held by Zuckerberg.

Increase the value of shares and options and owned by the very people who made the mistake? Yes, increasing an individual's net worth doesn't exactly discourage future mistakes.

Unless Zuckerberg is immediately about to sell I don’t see how this incentivizes any behavior at the company. It’s a trailing indicator of performance, not a leading one, and seems to reflect public opinion more than anything.

Re: Facebook Expects to Be Fined Up to $5B by FTC Over Privacy Issues

#305

Post by ionised »

lucasmullens wrote: post #25
busymom0 wrote: post #12

This is pocket change for them. Reminds me of how they fine oil companies $50,000 and another $450,000 for violations. When they are making billions off of violating user privacy and will continue to keep using that user data for future business, this fine is nothing to them. It's like I manipulatively steal $10 from a million people and only lose a few bucks. They still profited.

$5,000,000,000 reminds you of $50,000? A fine of 1% of Facebook's value seems a bit more than pocket change.

1% of anything's value is pocket change. It's not about how much money it is to you or me, but how much money it is to Facebook.

And it's not a lot.

Re: Facebook Expects to Be Fined Up to $5B by FTC Over Privacy Issues

#306

Post by GoblinSlayer »

minimaxir wrote: post #2

> Every insider I've spoken to said any FTC fine on Facebook under $10 billion would be seen as a massive win, showing firm won't face serious consequences for privacy violations. Wall St. seems to agree in response to news of $3-$5b settlement [$FB up 4% after hours] https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1121148735818358784

Who do you think owns Wall St., hello?

Re: Facebook Expects to Be Fined Up to $5B by FTC Over Privacy Issues

#307

Post by sarcasmOrTears »

scotchmi_st wrote: post #185
beatgammit wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There definitely is a difference between someone accidentally tracking dog poo into your house vs someone doing it intentionally; in the first case, you all them to clean it up, and in the second case you break the friendship and/or seek criminal prosection. Likewise for big companies. If a company is acting badly, you need to figure out if it was intentional. In both cases you seek damages, but your approach to maki…

> There definitely is a difference between someone accidentally tracking dog poo into your house vs someone doing it intentionally; in the first case, you all them to clean it up, and in the second case you break the friendship and/or seek criminal prosection. But the point is that this assumes you're able to tell the difference between the two cases- intent is often a really hard thing to prove. And often discussion…

It's hard to prove but for some strange reason they always have the resources when it's time to come after the little guy and they don't when it's the big guy and it's also more obvious

Re: Facebook Expects to Be Fined Up to $5B by FTC Over Privacy Issues

#308

Post by mpweiher »

slg wrote: post #139
tkxxx7 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook isn't actively trying to harm their customers, they simply don't care about them. That is amoral not evil. Don't bend yourself out of shape. Actively, happily ignoring the evil you have caused and continue to cause is evil.

That isn't evil. You wouldn't call a hurricane or a fire evil. You wouldn't call a person who kills someone in a no fault car accident evil. Evil isn't about results. It is about intent and motive. You can call Facebook a number of things from amoral to negligent or even criminal, but once you start talking about evilness you have to start judging their intentions and motives.

Hurricanes and fire aren't "actively, happily ignoring the evil"...

Unless you're an animist, I guess.

Re: Facebook Expects to Be Fined Up to $5B by FTC Over Privacy Issues

#309

Post by marmaduke »

pdonis wrote: post #235
scotchmi_st wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to contradict your overall sentiment, but people often focus on intention with these issues. I think that's wrong. Like, if someone treads dog poo into my house on their shoes, it doesn't really matter if they did it by mistake, or spent ages walking around town trying to find some dog poo to step in before coming to my house; the effect is that there is now dog poo on my carpet. We need to be more dispassionate…

> if someone treads dog poo into my house on their shoes, it doesn't really matter if they did it by mistake, or spent ages walking around town trying to find some dog poo to step in before coming to my house; the effect is that there is now dog poo on my carpet Yes, but if someone treads dog poo into your house every day for a year, their repeated claims that it was a mistake every time are not going to carry as muc…

> a repeated pattern of getting dog poo all over the place

a woeful understatement, in my opinion; more like bulldozing manure into you and your neighbor's house.

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