61–70 of 224 posts
The phonebook hypothesis seems most plausible to me (especially considering that WhatsApp is owned by facebook). All those apps gaining access to a phonebook is a privacy disaster.
I recommend that we all add the office number of a health care professional we don't need to our phone book. It will muddy the water just a little bit.
Also the contacts of lots of recruiters.
The phonebook hypothesis seems most plausible to me (especially considering that WhatsApp is owned by facebook). All those apps gaining access to a phonebook is a privacy disaster.
I absolutely detest Facebook for: 1. Sharing my mobile number via the Facebook app without my explicit consent or knowledge 2. Using my Whatsapp contact list to recommend people I might know And now, I've recently started getting all sorts of arbitrary notifications even though I've stated several times I don't want to be notified of anything. The only reason I still have a facebook account is so that I don't have to…
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Granted, that's Schmidt, rather than Zuckerberg. The attitude seems to be the same, though.
By the way anyone has a link to the full transcript/video? I can only find the cut version (and iirc there was something else between the trusted friend question and the quote, but all videos online have a cut/voiceover in between which is kinda suspicious). (I seem to remember the "it" in the quote meant putting information online / publicly available, no the "something" that you don't want anyone to know)
Schmidt has a way of saying reasonable things using the most offensive and misinterpreted language ever.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would like to have more constructive suggestions to offer, too. It's not a simple problem, though, and it will not be quickly solved. Threatening Facebook employees (doxing people is a threat) does not seem likely to make anything better.
Your aversion to threatening employees reminds me a bit of the old "just following orders" canard. Developers are not sweatshop workers beholden to the company store. They have a plethora of employment options. If they willingly choose to work for such a company, the case could be made that they have made themselves legitimate targets for having made this choice.
I might also counsel a certain restraint in your rhetoric, such that you fight shy of hyperbole such as likening Facebook to the NSDAP; ideally that would be your lookout and no one else's, but since we're arguing at least nominally on the same side of the issue, your statements reflect somewhat on mine, and I would prefer they not do so negatively.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure what you see that helping.
It's a moral hazard¹, or possibly an externality; the people writing the algorithms that violate people's privacy are not themselves the victims. Normally in a market system you want to keep the chain between cause and damage short enough to be comprehensible for the people causing it; otherwise, there's no good way to make them avoid it. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see so many potential ways of aggregating this kind of information in massively privacy intrusive ways on a day to day basis. And it's terrifying how many of them are just stopped by my lack of willingness to sacrifice my morals over it. Because I know very well how easy it is for people to think "oh, well, but that one little thing isn't so bad, when faced with bills to pay, or a raging boss. Many of which really…
If employees are having trouble saying "no" to unsafe, unethical, or unlawful projects, then a professional association or union is needed. A professional association can create duty requirements external to a company; it's easier to say no to your boss is have the excuse that "as a member of $ORG, I have follow $ETHICS_RULE". Alternatively a union can put pressure companies to never ask for certain things or to meet…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would like to have more constructive suggestions to offer, too. It's not a simple problem, though, and it will not be quickly solved. Threatening Facebook employees (doxing people is a threat) does not seem likely to make anything better.
Your aversion to threatening employees reminds me a bit of the old "just following orders" canard. Developers are not sweatshop workers beholden to the company store. They have a plethora of employment options. If they willingly choose to work for such a company, the case could be made that they have made themselves legitimate targets for having made this choice.
It's not that. It's that in this very short life we have, it's not only not helpful (in the longer run) to pursue actions which knowingly hurt people for the sake of some perceived greater good (unless absolutely necessary) -- it leads one down a very dark path.
My solution? I'd prefer to educate people about the simple fact that most of these social media sites just don't do very much to improve our lives, are a huge soul-suck and time sink generally, and basically not worth the gargantuan amounts of time and emotional energy we invest in them.
So that eventually FB, WhatsApp and all the others will hopefully just die of starvation without a single shot fired (or employee being threatened or doxxed).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So basically don't install Facebook or Whatsapp try to use the Facebook website if you can or better yet don't use Facebook at all on your phone if you value your privacy. I've been doing this for years now, and you know what? I don't miss it at all. I use the Facebook website from my computer, and that's A-OK.
I don't use Facebook at all and don't miss it.
It would be really great if the choice not to use Facebook did not often entail serious negative consequences. For one thing, I'd be a lot less annoying on the subject. Unfortunately, that happy state of affairs does not appear to obtain in either case.
TLDR#1: The investigation still didn't reveal exactly how this happened. TLDR#2: The recommendation to "prevent" these issues on the individuals side is, "Lisa’s medical community has started recommending that patients concerned about privacy not log into Facebook or other social media accounts at medical offices, or even leave their phones in their cars during appointments. " This is about as practical as recommendi…
Or just disable location access for the Facebook app.