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Facebook’s disingenuous explanations call for more questions and even less trust

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Re: Facebook’s disingenuous explanations call for more questions and even less trust

#41

Post by manjushri »

woodandsteel wrote: post #28

The question is how to solve this problem. I don't think governmental regulations will do it, through they may help. That's because data collection and sharing is Facebook's whole business model, and ditto thousands of other companies, large and small. So they will all just figure out ways of skirting around the law and continuing what they have been doing. The only solution that could work is a new financial model t…

Before we start talking about solutions we should defind the problem.

How would you define the problem at a high level?

Re: Facebook’s disingenuous explanations call for more questions and even less trust

#42

Post by manjushri »

Yetanfou wrote: post #34
aylmao wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Zuckerberg et al are dissembling and attempting what appears to be an incompetently-executed public cover-up I agree that execs probably took too long to make a statement, but out of curiosity, do you have any thoughts on what execs should've done instead, or are you of the opinion that there's really nothing they could've done differently?

Really? It is not so much what they should have done but what they should not have done: they should not have made the decisions which led to their companies ending up in this quagmire. They should have behaved ethically, something which is sure to have been mentioned - even if only in passing - at the Ivy League schools they attended.

>They should have behaved ethically, something which is sure to have been mentioned - even if only in passing - at the Ivy League schools they attended

FB was founded on ethics violations.

Re: Facebook’s disingenuous explanations call for more questions and even less trust

#43

Post by delecti »

meri_dian wrote: post #24

Can someone explain to me what the problem is with data availability? As other comments have noted, most people don't care. How would you make someone who doesn't care, care?

Your question brings to mind the (possibly apocryphal) story about (IIRC) Target, who through the use of a customer's purchase history deduced that she was pregnant before she had informed her family. They sent targeted mailers to her house, leaving her father wondering why she was getting advertising for diapers and the like.

I think the general public would care more if they got a better sense of what having a large volume of their seemingly innocuous data lets companies figure out about them.

Re: Facebook’s disingenuous explanations call for more questions and even less trust

#44

Post by obmelvin »

aylmao wrote: post #6
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure about 'surprise' That this was possible and happening was well known in Silicon Valley. What has changed is (a) Cambridge Analytica and the 2016 election made the issue relatable and (b) Zuckerberg et al are dissembling and attempting what appears to be an incompetently-executed public cover-up.

> Zuckerberg et al are dissembling and attempting what appears to be an incompetently-executed public cover-up I agree that execs probably took too long to make a statement, but out of curiosity, do you have any thoughts on what execs should've done instead, or are you of the opinion that there's really nothing they could've done differently?

They could have made a genuine effort to ensure the data was actually deleted. The idea that a legal certification would be enough from a company that conducted itself in such a manner is laughable.

Re: Facebook’s disingenuous explanations call for more questions and even less trust

#45

Post by manjushri »

matte_black wrote: post #9
bmarquez wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. This is all over HN and Reddit, but when I try to introduce my friends to Signal (or encryption in general), they shrug and say they have nothing to hide. Hate to say it, but the general public needs Kim Kardashian or some tastemaker to make privacy and security "cool".

But privacy and security are not "cool", and never will be. People like transparency, people are drawn to dangerous things. Hiding shit behind closed doors or being super paranoid is not cool, and will not get you fans. The only security most people need is herd security. As long as your data can blend into a mass of other people's data to the point where you're just an anonymous face in the crowd, there's no harm. S…

>But privacy and security are not "cool", and never will be.

Ever heard of James Bond? He was kind of cool, private, and secure.

Re: Facebook’s disingenuous explanations call for more questions and even less trust

#46

Post by JumpCrisscross »

downandout wrote: post #19
mehrdadn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The outrage is over the illegal data sharing and how that was made possible, which happened in only one of those two cases.

Neither case was illegal, but Obama’s was far more invasive. What makes it so much worse is that Obama accessed 4x as many profiles as Kogan did, and they did it with Facebook’s blessings. This enabled them to keep the data current, while Trump’s dataset was both far smaller and years older than Obama’s by the time it was used. Sadly, there are still no apologies for the gross invasion of privacy that Zuckerberg auth…

> Neither case was illegal

Cambridge Analytica probably broke U.S. election laws [1]. The Obama campaign didn’t. This recurring false equivalence is disengenuois.

[1] https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/exclusive-cambridge-anal...

Re: Facebook’s disingenuous explanations call for more questions and even less trust

#47

Post by Angostura »

bmarquez wrote: post #8
prolikewhoa wrote: post #4

"Facebook thinks we're idiots" To be honest, about this issue of privacy and security, most of the world really doesn't care. The people who do care are not a majority and not even a significant statistic. Providing an apology is enough for most people, since they don't understand the depth and scope of the problem at hand. Shareholders know this. Mark will receive a slap on the wrist, and business will continue as u…

Yes. This is all over HN and Reddit, but when I try to introduce my friends to Signal (or encryption in general), they shrug and say they have nothing to hide. Hate to say it, but the general public needs Kim Kardashian or some tastemaker to make privacy and security "cool".

I explained to a friend that since WhatsApp demanded full access to all contact details it, and by extension Facebook now knew his full postal address, which bank he used, where he worked, the identity of his boss, his therapist and his parent's address and possibly birthdays. He looked a bit thoughtful, at least. Its not the encryption, its the meta data.

Re: Facebook’s disingenuous explanations call for more questions and even less trust

#49

Post by downandout »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #46
downandout wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither case was illegal, but Obama’s was far more invasive. What makes it so much worse is that Obama accessed 4x as many profiles as Kogan did, and they did it with Facebook’s blessings. This enabled them to keep the data current, while Trump’s dataset was both far smaller and years older than Obama’s by the time it was used. Sadly, there are still no apologies for the gross invasion of privacy that Zuckerberg auth…

> Neither case was illegal Cambridge Analytica probably broke U.S. election laws [1]. The Obama campaign didn’t. This recurring false equivalence is disengenuois. [1] https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/exclusive-cambridge-anal...

No finding has been made that they violated anything, nor is there anything suggesting that they "probably" violated anything. The article you linked to says that a radical left-wing group called Common Cause filed a complaint with the FEC saying that in their opinion, a violation has been committed. It means absolutely nothing at this point.

This wasn't an action instigated by the FEC because a professional decided that there is probable cause to believe that something happened. This is more akin to a neighbor who was angry at not being invited to a party weeks earlier calling the police and filing a false noise complaint.

Finally, the equivalence is that Obama used the data outside of the Facebook developer TOS at the time, which stated that the data acquired through the API was supposed to only be used for the operation of their apps. By all accounts, including celebratory news articles sourced directly from campaign staffers, they used that data in violation of the developer TOS for campaign strategy and ad targeting purposes - with great effect. ~199 million people that did not authorize Obama to have their data had it handed to him anyway, for the express purpose of defeating a candidate that about half of them wanted to be President. I'm not sure how that's not far worse than the CA situation.

Re: Facebook’s disingenuous explanations call for more questions and even less trust

#50

Post by BookmarkSaver »

meri_dian wrote: post #24

Can someone explain to me what the problem is with data availability? As other comments have noted, most people don't care. How would you make someone who doesn't care, care?

Well a decent part of the most recent furor is that it affects people the do care. The Cambridge Analytica data was scraped from customers that had enabled it, but extended into their own friend networks, including those that had not chosen to make their data accessible.

I am sorta of the opinion that nothing on FB should be considered private, but even with that noted, and the fact that I don't particularly care what personal FB info on me is scraped, I'm a bit annoyed that any random friend could expose data that I have marked as private by allowing some random BS app to access to their own account. According to FB, this was solved years ago (but the data already scraped from the previous state was never successfully recalled), but I hardly trust them to give a shit about this or other issues popping up in the future, barring another mass outrage.

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