Zuckerberg set up fraudulent scheme to 'weaponise' data, court case alleges
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Re: Zuckerberg set up fraudulent scheme to 'weaponise' data, court case alleges
#2In this particular article, "weaponise" doesn't mean private data as a weapon against the users (like Richard Stallman critiques of Facebook[1]). Instead, the journalists and the lawsuit are talking about desirable user data as a weapon against the API developers.
The article has interwoven 2 themes in a disjointed way and I had to read it several times to separate the components of the dispute.
The 1st theme is that the company Six4Three wrote an app to find photos of friends in bikinis using Facebook's platform API. Facebook later pulled the rug out from under them. In this sense, this is similar to other stories about platforms changing the terms/accessiblity of API usage (e.g. Facebook demoting Zynga games, or Twitter closing off 3rd-party clients, etc). If a platform entices programmers to use an API and then later restricts it (or kicks programmers off it), the claim is being made that it is "fraud". Facebook's counterclaim is that blocking programmers from using its API is exercising its editorial control and therefore "free speech".
The 2nd theme that's mentioned in passing is the Six4Three bikini API dispute as a forensic discovery into how the Cambridge Analytica abuse was deliberately engineered into the platform in 2011 and was approved by Facebook senior management. I think this is the more interesting angle that the Guardian writers should have focused more text on.
Re: Zuckerberg set up fraudulent scheme to 'weaponise' data, court case alleges
#3"Six4Three lodged its original case in 2015 shortly after Facebook removed developers’ access to friends’ data. The company said it had invested $250,000 in developing an app called Pikinis that filtered users’ friends photos to find any of them in swimwear. Its launch was met with controversy."
So basically this company tried to do something creepy and invasive with users' data, were stopped by Facebook, and now they're taking advantage of the fact that the press is pissed off at Facebook and will uncritically regurgitate any negative claim about them in headlines as leverage in their court case against them, likely in the expectation that it'll be cheaper for Facebook to settle than deal with the PR fallout.
Re: Zuckerberg set up fraudulent scheme to 'weaponise' data, court case alleges
#4"Six4Three lodged its original case in 2015 shortly after Facebook removed developers’ access to friends’ data. The company said it had invested $250,000 in developing an app called Pikinis that filtered users’ friends photos to find any of them in swimwear. Its launch was met with controversy." So basically this company tried to do something creepy and invasive with users' data, were stopped by Facebook, and now the…
Stop, you're making a comment that is not unequivocally anti-Facebook, therefore it is incorrect
Re: Zuckerberg set up fraudulent scheme to 'weaponise' data, court case alleges
#5"Six4Three lodged its original case in 2015 shortly after Facebook removed developers’ access to friends’ data. The company said it had invested $250,000 in developing an app called Pikinis that filtered users’ friends photos to find any of them in swimwear. Its launch was met with controversy." So basically this company tried to do something creepy and invasive with users' data, were stopped by Facebook, and now the…
250k?????
I bet their engineer to manager ratio was quite low.
Re: Zuckerberg set up fraudulent scheme to 'weaponise' data, court case alleges
#6"Six4Three lodged its original case in 2015 shortly after Facebook removed developers’ access to friends’ data. The company said it had invested $250,000 in developing an app called Pikinis that filtered users’ friends photos to find any of them in swimwear. Its launch was met with controversy." So basically this company tried to do something creepy and invasive with users' data, were stopped by Facebook, and now the…
250k????? I bet their engineer to manager ratio was quite low.
That's < 1 yrs worth of an SV engineer's rate (after overhead). Roughly half.
Re: Zuckerberg set up fraudulent scheme to 'weaponise' data, court case alleges
#7"Six4Three lodged its original case in 2015 shortly after Facebook removed developers’ access to friends’ data. The company said it had invested $250,000 in developing an app called Pikinis that filtered users’ friends photos to find any of them in swimwear. Its launch was met with controversy." So basically this company tried to do something creepy and invasive with users' data, were stopped by Facebook, and now the…
I don't care about Six4Three or their motives; I care about Facebook and privacy. It might be unfair to Facebook but from the little I know about their business practices, they hardly have clean hands or deserve much sympathy.
> $250,000
That doesn't sound like much for a years-long lawsuit against a major company with deep pockets; unless they are suing for far more, there won't be much, if any, net profit even if they win. I wonder what else is going on here. Was the Pikini app a test of Facebook's privacy policy and/or ML image recognition, to see how they would respond? To make a point? The description of it sounds tailor-made for controversy. Or did activists later pick up on the case and support or fund it?
Re: Zuckerberg set up fraudulent scheme to 'weaponise' data, court case alleges
#8In this particular article, "weaponise" doesn't mean private data as a weapon against the users (like Richard Stallman critiques of Facebook[1]). Instead, the journalists and the lawsuit are talking about desirable user data as a weapon against the API developers . The article has interwoven 2 themes in a disjointed way and I had to read it several times to separate the components of the dispute. The 1st theme is tha…
"Editorial control" as justification for selective access is interesting, and seems in tension with their need to remain considered a "platform" instead of a publication. (They aren't a platform; utility surplus from user participation doesn't flow to the users.)
> wrote an app to find photos of friends in bikinis [....] Facebook later pulled the rug out from under them
In this case, I think I'm just rooting for injuries.
Re: Zuckerberg set up fraudulent scheme to 'weaponise' data, court case alleges
#9In this particular article, "weaponise" doesn't mean private data as a weapon against the users (like Richard Stallman critiques of Facebook[1]). Instead, the journalists and the lawsuit are talking about desirable user data as a weapon against the API developers . The article has interwoven 2 themes in a disjointed way and I had to read it several times to separate the components of the dispute. The 1st theme is tha…
Yeah, that article was all over the place. The only thing I could get from a first reading was that Facebook did something wrong - just using the anti-facebook sentiment I guess
Re: Zuckerberg set up fraudulent scheme to 'weaponise' data, court case alleges
#10In this particular article, "weaponise" doesn't mean private data as a weapon against the users (like Richard Stallman critiques of Facebook[1]). Instead, the journalists and the lawsuit are talking about desirable user data as a weapon against the API developers . The article has interwoven 2 themes in a disjointed way and I had to read it several times to separate the components of the dispute. The 1st theme is tha…
Agree that the ability to access a user's friend's data (without said friend's permission) through the API, was a deliberate feature (not an abuse as it has been portraied) and is the interesting bit about this. Facebook deliberately abused user's privacy by deciding to monetize that feature. Only later decided to roll it back.