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U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut down ad research

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut down ad research

#51

Post by logifail »

tablespoon wrote: post #27
savant_penguin wrote: post #7

“The FTC received no notice that Facebook would be publicly invoking our consent decree to justify terminating academic research earlier this week.” Of course they didn't. After you are fined 5b it's no surprise you go full on defensive. What's the alternative? Asking the ftc every single time what they should do? I'm no fan of Facebook but if they didn't stop the research they could be found guilty again for the exa…

> Of course they didn't. After you are fined 5b it's no surprise you go full on defensive. I'm not willing to cut Facebook so much slack here. They very much do not want any independent public oversight of their advertising operations (e.g. they want to release self-congratulatory reports with numbers that lack denominators, and they don't want anyone to be able to call them on the BS). I think any invocation of the…

> They very much do not want any independent public oversight of their advertising operations [..]

This view isn't exactly _uncommon_ for such a large company that dominates their market.

If you remove the word "advertising" it might apply to pretty much _any_ company...

Re: U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut down ad research

#52

Post by AlphaSite »

warkdarrior wrote: post #38
hulitu wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook fined 5B ? Do you have any source ?

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2019/07/ftc-i...

I think the most expensive part of this whole thing is probably this:

> Facebook must conduct a privacy review of every new or modified product, service, or practice before it is implemented, and document its decisions about user privacy.

Re: U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut down ad research

#53

Post by nine_k »

saltedonion wrote: post #46

With so many whistle blowers it is now clear that FB does not want to eradicate any political party’s misinformation campaigns. They know they are much better off going with the flow, become a valuable tool for the powerful and gain market access and dominate. In a way, I feel the American government also wants FB to do the same as it advances the US centric world order. If there is a global monopoly. American wants…

Do you honestly want that entities like FB or Google would filter political speech? Would filter speech in general, weeding out what they'd find wrong?

I'm fine with FB or twitter or whatnot adding their epistemic status banners, like "incorrect according to current scientific consensus". Doing more would, to my mind, produce seriously more harm than good.

It's like painkillers: when the society uses technology to forget that certain parts of it feel unhealthy and hurt, it may lead to much, much worse development of the diseases and far more painful consequences than being open and honest with itself, even when it feels extremely embarrassing.

Re: U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut down ad research

#54

Post by mtgx »

unglaublich wrote: post #47
jszymborski wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, they can both let the ad observer programme go on and stop the shady advertising practices.

Yes, but that's incompatible with their current existence.

There's no mandate for FB to exist.

Re: U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut down ad research

#55

Post by ummonk »

pm90 wrote: post #49
ummonk wrote: post #34

So Facebook has a comprehensive access control system in the internal APIs. As part of the FTC consent decree, Facebook has been doing sweeps of all data types and having the owners of those data types tighten up the access control rules on those data types - particularly, product teams have to remove access control checks that aren’t fine grained enough. I’m guessing one such change broke the ads research tool.

Why didn’t they fix it rather than revoke access permanently?

Maybe they were unable to get privacy approval for this access, maybe it was too much work to do so, maybe they didn't realize it would break the tool and this is just an unexpected regression.

(I don't work there anymore, so I'm just speculating - but I do have experience with the continuous waves of privacy work that every product team would be assigned)

Re: U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut down ad research

#56

Post by kodah »

nine_k wrote: post #53
saltedonion wrote: post #46

With so many whistle blowers it is now clear that FB does not want to eradicate any political party’s misinformation campaigns. They know they are much better off going with the flow, become a valuable tool for the powerful and gain market access and dominate. In a way, I feel the American government also wants FB to do the same as it advances the US centric world order. If there is a global monopoly. American wants…

Do you honestly want that entities like FB or Google would filter political speech? Would filter speech in general, weeding out what they'd find wrong? I'm fine with FB or twitter or whatnot adding their epistemic status banners, like "incorrect according to current scientific consensus". Doing more would, to my mind, produce seriously more harm than good. It's like painkillers: when the society uses technology to fo…

As much as I disagree with large companies who are conduit for every day communication regulating said communication, it does feel like society is a little less off it's rocker lately. It's too premature to tell, but you could be correct.

Re: U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut down ad research

#57

Post by jacquesm »

savant_penguin wrote: post #7

“The FTC received no notice that Facebook would be publicly invoking our consent decree to justify terminating academic research earlier this week.” Of course they didn't. After you are fined 5b it's no surprise you go full on defensive. What's the alternative? Asking the ftc every single time what they should do? I'm no fan of Facebook but if they didn't stop the research they could be found guilty again for the exa…

> What's the alternative? Asking the ftc every single time what they should do?

Exactly.

Re: U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut down ad research

#58

Post by nielsbot »

chillacy wrote: post #48
saltedonion wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you’re downvoted. But sadly this is true. Fb knows it is financially better off to pay the fine than change their operations. It just goes to show how capitalistic the US really is and how tolerant this country is towards unprecedented market power. No way it will fly in the EU. And that is why there is no FB in the EU.

The $5B fine comes with a lot of enforced changes to the company's operations: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2019/07/ftc-i... Though it does tend to have fewer regulations than the EU, the claim that this settlement has resulted in no operational changes does not appear to be true.

I read the linked PR--I am curious to see if these restrictions really protect consumers. My cynical side imagines these restrictions were written with input from FB and that they will find ways around them. But I'm cautiously hopeful.

Re: U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut down ad research

#59

Post by bryan_w »

* Gets $5 billion fine for sharing data with "researchers" *

FTC: "Now FB, don't you go sharing data with researchers again. You are responsible for preventing scraping of user data"

FB: * consents *

* Proceeds to not share data with researchers *

FTC: * Shocked pikichu face *

Re: U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut down ad research

#60

Post by bencollier49 »

Sebb767 wrote: post #17
savant_penguin wrote: post #7

“The FTC received no notice that Facebook would be publicly invoking our consent decree to justify terminating academic research earlier this week.” Of course they didn't. After you are fined 5b it's no surprise you go full on defensive. What's the alternative? Asking the ftc every single time what they should do? I'm no fan of Facebook but if they didn't stop the research they could be found guilty again for the exa…

I agree. I'm anything but a fan of Facebook, but in this case they seem to be in an f'ed if you do, f'ed if you don't -type of situation.

Good! Perhaps that implies that their business model was never actually going to work with consumer protection oversight.
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