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The way I see it, it's kinda like a bank, yeah sure my bank has enormous control over me, and can on a whim ruin me with my financial, purchase info and control
by vivekd 10y ago
The way I see it, it's kinda like a bank, yeah sure my bank has enormous control over me, and can on a whim ruin me with my financial, purchase info and control over my assets. But they have a very, very strong incentive not to do so, because doing so would cause them to lose lots and lots of money.
Similarly facebook could abuse our information, but they stand to lose a lot if they do. Either way, this is the future and there really isn't much we can do about it. Businesses are going to track us, and save going off grid and living in the woods, I don't think there's any real escape.
- beagle3 10y agoThe bank is regulated. Facebook isn't.
- vivekd 10y agoTrue, but is it regulations that keep the bank from stealing your money and using your financial transactions against you - or is it the prospect of losing billions through loss of customer trust. I would guess it's the later because banking regulations are fairly toothless and bank lobbies are extremely strong.
- beagle3 10y agoI would say both. The MERS[0] registry could not be set up because the banks thought it is sort-of-gray legally, and they would be able to work it. Then, it turned out that it is actually against black letter law, so we had the robosigning scandal, which they somehow managed to weather unscathed. Banks have foreclosed on wrong houses etc, and didn't suffer (enough) for it from either the hand of the law or the hands of customers, so they don't care (enough) to make sure they're doing it properly. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage_Electronic_Registration_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage_Electronic_Registrati...
- jwhitlark 10y agoI believe you're mistaken. Look into the "wildcat banking" era in the US for numerous examples of banks stealing or defrauding customers when there were no federal regulations on banks.
- xorfish 10y agoYea, I would be much more worried about smaller companies that gets more information about you than Facebook or google. Like a lot of "free" browser plugins. There was a talk at 33c3 about just that(Build your own NSA).
- CaptSpify 10y agoWhat if FB gets hacked, and lose your data? Or a government requires them to hand it over? It doesn't have to be malicious. Additionally, what if they were going under and wanted to sell your data to help compensate for that. Do you really think they'd put your privacy above their profit?