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Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica situation

• bowmessage 9y ago
  "... we immediately banned Kogan's app from our platform, and demanded that Kogan and Cambridge Analytica formally certify that they had deleted all improperly acquired data. They provided these certifications." How is it at all possible to certify that data has been deleted and no copies were taken..?
  • ProAm 9y ago
    He "trusts them" [1] [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims...
    • isoprophlex 9y ago
      Like we should trust him.
      • archerface 9y ago
        On that note, saw this on Reddit this morning: https://www.reddit.com/r/quotes/comments/8605g9/people_just_submitted_it_i_dont_know_why_they/ https://www.reddit.com/r/quotes/comments/8605g9/people_just_...
    • dang 9y ago
      Please don't; that just leads to the same discussion over and over, which makes it off topic for HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16616988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16616988). There's tons of substance to be discussed here without reaching for the global hash table (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9722096 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9722096). Fortunately the community has mostly been doing that, but let's not spoil it.
      • ProAm 9y ago
        @dang - Normally I agree with you, but I do feel in this instance, especially in regards to him trusting (or once trusting) a third party with his data that the quote is appropriate. It wasn't a troll comment to any HN'er but more of an observation of the pot calling the kettle black. Zuckerberg is absolutely 'trusting' that CA has deleted the data that they gained from FB. While it may be often brought up on HN, its one of Zuckerberg more profound quotes (especially in regards to privacy of information) and speaks to how he sees the world, the difference now is he's on the other side of the coin and we are getting to watch him deal with it.
        • dang 9y ago
          You've made a better case for it than I'd imagined! But is it necessary? IMO the damage of internet shame-memeing is larger than the local benefit. The point isn't to defend Zuckerberg, btw; it's to defend the quality of this community. If we're to realize our dreams of doing marginally better than internet median, we need people to check their worst instincts here.
  • philippnagel 9y ago
    "formally". Technically you cannot.
  • threebody 9y ago
    The definition of certify here is to "attest or confirm in a formal statement." So, Cambridge Analytica could be sued if they lied in such a statement.
    • chubasco 9y ago
      This may be possible, however it is going to be interesting to see how Facebook gets standing to sue CA. From what I understood from Zuckerberg's statement, the agreement was between Facebook and Kogan. If CA got the data from Kogan, it seems like Facebook wouldn't have standing to go after CA directly. I haven't seen the specific agreements made by each party in this case, so I can't say for sure, but traditionally I think Facebook could only go after Kogan, who then may be able to go after CA depending on the specifics of their agreement.
      • tantalor 9y ago
        > Facebook wouldn't have standing to go after CA directly Seems to be plain copyright infringement... FB licensed the data to Kogan, not CA, hence CA violates FB's copyright on the data.
  • dragonwriter 9y ago
    > How is it at all possible to certify that data has been deleted and no copies were taken..? By, e.g., signing a paper which says that. You probably meant how can you know that, which is a different issue than how can you certify it, and which amounts to a question of degree of internal accountability and control of data access. Certification is about assuming responsibility for the truth of the thing certified, which doesn't actually require knowing it (though obviously knowing it to a reasonable degree of certainty makes it more comfortable to certify it.)
  • product50 9y ago
    Fwiw, Cambridge Analytica still maintains that they don't have any copy of FB data and are open to do a forensic test by a FB appointed team.
    • wavefunction 9y ago
      Given their CEO's bragging about extortion, blackmail and prostitution/pandering I'd give their assurances almost no value at all.
      • product50 9y ago
        Hopefully the tests will prove that clearly.
    • anonnel 9y ago
      A “forensic test” to check that they didn’t copy and hang on to some data in 2013 ... well I’m reassured.
      • product50 9y ago
        Do you have a better idea? Be productive with your comments vs. just being a hater.
        • anonnel 9y ago
          They are well aware there is no way to assure they haven’t copied data 5 years ago. Pointing that out with rightful indigence is not “being a hater”. (which isn’t a trope that belongs in reasonable conversation)
          • product50 9y ago
            Unless you have some sort of background in this area, I don't know why I should trust you. Your argument is - yeah sure, this is a bogus exercise, and then you are expecting people to fall in line with you. That is not how you build trust or win debates. I am hopeful they will find something useful.
  • bluetwo 9y ago
    It's called "manufactured credibility" and it's about as worthless as the paper it is written on.
    • xkjkls 9y ago
      It's as credible as any other legal agreement we have in our society.
      • bluetwo 9y ago
        Not exactly true. Many things that are important are audited or inspected, not simply signed off on.
        • xkjkls 9y ago
          True, but audits aren't necessarily guarantees of anything either, and also rely on a certain amount of trust and disclosure that those being auditing aren't actively trying to game the audit.
          • bluetwo 9y ago
            It's how society monitors things it cares about.
      • netsharc 9y ago
        "Yes I am over 18".
  • itp 9y ago
    This feels strange to those of us from technical spheres, but much of the world works without formal verification of facts. There are in theory severe penalties, both implicit and explicit, that ostensibly act as deterrent to bad actors. This is usually only noteworthy when it fails, but by and large it works. The friction involved if we did not generally accept someone's (signed, notarized, appropriately formalized) word as bond would cause our world to grind to a halt.
    • dragonwriter 9y ago
      > This feels strange to those of us from technical spheres, but much of the world works without formal verification of facts. Including many technical spheres, and particularly including the vast majority of the software world; formal verification exists in software, of course, but is most notable in not being used for most of it. Yet, even without that, there's usually a release process that includes the moral equivalent of a certification—without formal verification or certain knowledge—that the software does what it is supposed to.
    • lisper 9y ago
      This predisposition to believe our fellow humans is actually hard-coded into our genes. This is one of the reasons it's so easy to spread fake news. The ability to lie to someone without direct consequences to yourself (because, for example, you are thousands of miles away) was not part of our ancestral environment, but it is part of our contemporary one, and some of us are exploiting this newly created ecological niche.
      • TangoTrotFox 9y ago
        I'm going to have request a source here, because this doesn't make much sense. We've spent very nearly all of our evolutionary time pillaging, raping, and murdering each other - not exactly singing kumbaya. There's tribal instinctual stuff that would include 'in-group' trust, but that's something far and away from trusting a person because they're a person as you're implying. 'Fake news' takes advantage of something much more simple. People believe what they want to believe. In other words the people led on by fake news tend to already want to believe what the news is about. When we see something that confirms our biases, many of us don't question it. And this is made even worse since people tend to work as apologists for fake news from sources they like, so instead of being able to discuss the issue of fake news - it ends up dividing people into splits on the 'fake' topic at hand, which in contemporary times is most often political.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • vermontdevil 9y ago
    Even if CA deleted their data, what about all the other data that has been taken out as per this [1]? All our data associated with FB unique id is out there. My understanding this has stopped in 2015 but for sure? Hopefully the data that is out there becomes less relevant over time. [1] https://medium.com/@jamesallworth/what-the-f-was-facebook-thinking-a1c49dbf29c2 https://medium.com/@jamesallworth/what-the-f-was-facebook-th...
    • shostack 9y ago
      And just wait till it is joined up with the Equifax data and the Spectrum Health data. Fun times ahead for sure!
  • oh_sigh 9y ago
    Along those lines, how is it possible for Facebook to demand that CA deleted the data, when CA is a third party and never had any kind of agreement with facebook(at least, relating to the information Kogan shared)? If someone leaks facebook data to a journalist, can FB demand that they delete it as well?
    • nuclear_eclipse 9y ago
      Anyone can "demand" anything they want; many times it's up to the recipient to decide whether or not they comply with said demands.
    • astrange 9y ago
      CA is a major customer of Facebook whose work has no free press implications. They can ask them to do whatever they want.
  • jd20 9y ago
    I think it's the very fact that they cannot truly verify, which is why Facebook is so willing to go through the motions. In reality, they know many developers will not comply, but they can claim they did everything humanly possible before a grand jury. It costs Facebook nothing to ask developers to sign a contract written on virtual paper, yet can be used as a defense to cover their butt further down the line.
• minimaxir 9y ago
  On the FB developer side: > Second, we will restrict developers' data access even further to prevent other kinds of abuse. For example, we will remove developers' access to your data if you haven't used their app in 3 months. Won't this behavior break a ton of apps?
  • munk-a 9y ago
    I'm surprisingly okay with that.
  • exotree 9y ago
    I am sure they ran the numbers and found that the likelihood of you returning to an app after three months of not logging into it is incredibly low.
  • jasonmp85 9y ago
    > Won't this behavior break a ton of apps? Would they really be moving fast and breaking things if it didn't?
    • namarie 9y ago
      It's only moving fast when they're breaking someone else's business model, not their own one.
      • netsharc 9y ago
        Well they broke democracy. I guess props for Zuckerberg, his fuck-up could end civilisation...
  • mehrdadn 9y ago
    >> Second, we will restrict developers' data access even further to prevent other kinds of abuse. For example, we will remove developers' access to your data if you haven't used their app in 3 months. The problem was data that was secretly kept, right? How would removing access change anything? Or am I misunderstanding what happened?
• ddavis 9y ago
  The 2007 and 2013 paragraphs are pretty scary. Your friend takes a personality quiz from a random app developer and then that developer gets access to _your_ personal data. Obviously Zuckerberg doesn't go into detail about what kind of data that was, but if they needed to rein that in in 2014... I imagine it was potentially pretty personal.
  • bluetwo 9y ago
    I created an app so I could grant myself access to the API with it. It was an embarrassing amount of data on all your friends.
    • rock_hard 9y ago
      Like what?
      • bluetwo 9y ago
        It was years ago before they started locking down the data. I put together a web page I was going to post to show people what info they were releasing, but I felt I would get lynched by friends for posting it all. Basically everything you see on yourself, plus pages you visit and like, groups you belong to, your picture, your friend list, as well as their friends, so it was really three steps out and included things not available through FB normally. It was totally predictable this data would get collected and abused.
        • rock_hard 9y ago
          I generally don’t see the problem of a user being able to share information about himself with apps she wants to use. That’s a fair product to build and provides lots of great value! Now can it be abused...of course it can, a rouge app developer could try to use this data for whatever, or sell it. That’s a problem. I think FB did a great job over the years though to improve UX for users to make it more clear what is happening and what information is being shared. Back in the day you could for example get a users friend list for example (only public profile information though)...I think they did the right thing in limiting that to only users who also use the app. It’s what makes apps like Spotify great...the fact that I can easily find my friends on it. I think there is tradeoff in anything we build. And 2B people believe it’s a good tradeoff! And don’t tell me that users are stupid and don’t know...because then I am gonna flag you as stupid first :) We also don’t sue Ford or the state that owns the streets for any accident that happens...that be nuts! We ask drivers and pedestrians to be responsible and that works for the most part. Of course there is the occasional deadly accident...but we accept that risk for the benefits of mobility.
• 908087 9y ago
  For those of us who refuse to visit Facebook to read Zuckerberg's non-apology: https://archive.fo/C0XJe https://archive.fo/C0XJe
• jasonmp85 9y ago
  Heh. I couldn't read it when logged in, then I remember I have Zuck blocked.
  • choward 9y ago
    But you still have a Facebook account, so Zuck wins.
    • tardo99 9y ago
      This is spot on. I would get rid of it as the only thing I really use it for is social logins, but there's the other issue of wanting access to the Facebook Developer stuff. I guess I could just make an account only for that?
  • Slansitartop 9y ago
    > I have Zuck blocked. I thought Facebook forbid you from doing that. Same with his wife.
• inetknght 9y ago
  Is there an aggregator somewhere for those of us who're curious but have already blackholed facebook and aren't so curious as to remove the blackhole?
• uptown 9y ago
  Full Text: I want to share an update on the Cambridge Analytica situation -- including the steps we've already taken and our next steps to address this important issue. We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you. I've been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn't happen again. The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago. But we also made mistakes, there's more to do, and we need to step up and do it. Here's a timeline of the events: In 2007, we launched the Facebook Platform with the vision that more apps should be social. Your calendar should be able to show your friends' birthdays, your maps should show where your friends live, and your address book should show their pictures. To do this, we enabled people to log into apps and share who their friends were and some information about them. In 2013, a Cambridge University researcher named Aleksandr Kogan created a personality quiz app. It was installed by around 300,000 people who shared their data as well as some of their friends' data. Given the way our platform worked at the time this meant Kogan was able to access tens of millions of their friends' data. In 2014, to prevent abusive apps, we announced that we were changing the entire platform to dramatically limit the data apps could access. Most importantly, apps like Kogan's could no longer ask for data about a person's friends unless their friends had also authorized the app. We also required developers to get approval from us before they could request any sensitive data from people. These actions would prevent any app like Kogan's from being able to access so much data today. In 2015, we learned from journalists at The Guardian that Kogan had shared data from his app with Cambridge Analytica. It is against our policies for developers to share data without people's consent, so we immediately banned Kogan's app from our platform, and demanded that Kogan and Cambridge Analytica formally certify that they had deleted all improperly acquired data. They provided these certifications. Last week, we learned from The Guardian, The New York Times and Channel 4 that Cambridge Analytica may not have deleted the data as they had certified. We immediately banned them from using any of our services. Cambridge Analytica claims they have already deleted the data and has agreed to a forensic audit by a firm we hired to confirm this. We're also working with regulators as they investigate what happened. This was a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. But it was also a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it. We need to fix that. In this case, we already took the most important steps a few years ago in 2014 to prevent bad actors from accessing people's information in this way. But there's more we need to do and I'll outline those steps here: First, we will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform to dramatically reduce data access in 2014, and we will conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity. We will ban any developer from our platform that does not agree to a thorough audit. And if we find developers that misused personally identifiable information, we will ban them and tell everyone affected by those apps. That includes people whose data Kogan misused here as well. Second, we will restrict developers' data access even further to prevent other kinds of abuse. For example, we will remove developers' access to your data if you haven't used their app in 3 months. We will reduce the data you give an app when you sign in -- to only your name, profile photo, and email address. We'll require developers to not only get approval but also sign a contract in order to ask anyone for access to their posts or other private data. And we'll have more changes to share in the next few days. Third, we want to make sure you understand which apps you've allowed to access your data. In the next month, we will show everyone a tool at the top of your News Feed with the apps you've used and an easy way to revoke those apps' permissions to your data. We already have a tool to do this in your privacy settings, and now we will put this tool at the top of your News Feed to make sure everyone sees it. Beyond the steps we had already taken in 2014, I believe these are the next steps we must take to continue to secure our platform. I started Facebook, and at the end of the day I'm responsible for what happens on our platform. I'm serious about doing what it takes to protect our community. While this specific issue involving Cambridge Analytica should no longer happen with new apps today, that doesn't change what happened in the past. We will learn from this experience to secure our platform further and make our community safer for everyone going forward. I want to thank all of you who continue to believe in our mission and work to build this community together. I know it takes longer to fix all these issues than we'd like, but I promise you we'll work through this and build a better service over the long term.
• relics443 9y ago
  I haven't used Facebook in a while, so maybe things have changed, but don't they show you a permissions page where you agree to give the developer access to your information?
  • minimaxir 9y ago
    Yes, and it always has been the case. The issue here is the scope of data requested, and what that data is being used for.
  • jasonellis 9y ago
    Yes, but the problem is that Facebook's API also allowed lax access to your friend data, so people who had not consented to the collection of their data through this app ended up with their data harvested as well. Also, there are various ethical issues with the users consenting to provide data under the guise of academics and then the data being turned over to commercial and political interests.
• Yhippa 9y ago
  I wonder, when these APIs were initially opened up that giving consumers kitchen sink access was a good idea. Even if a developer gets decertified does it matter? The "bad actors" have already run off with the data. This seems like it it will make life harder for legitimate app develpers, maybe rightfully so.
• joelrunyon 9y ago
  Anyone else remember Beacon? This was how FB has always designed to work from the beginning. They've just been toying with the PR ways to say it to make people accept it without thinking. The election woke people up. I found this from 2011 when they shut it down as a "mistake." (https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2011/11/our-commitment-to-the-facebook-community/ https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2011/11/our-commitment-to-the-f...). Unfortunately, it looks like they removed the launch release - but it would be interesting to see how it was presented in light of the recent news. They're not a product company, they're a distraction company.
  • dfxm12 9y ago
    This was how FB has always designed to work from the beginning Not exactly. In all fairness, as Zuck points out, this is a key part of the story, and in theory, why this is different: In 2015, we learned from journalists at The Guardian that Kogan had shared data from his app with Cambridge Analytica. It is against our policies for developers to share data without people's consent. This raises the question of what Facebook was doing (if anything) to prevent this sort of action, but the fact that they just took CA at their word that they deleted this ill-gotten data (of course they didn't), it makes me think they did very little. I think this is just as concerning as any other part of this story. Even if people are knowingly willing to hand over data to Facebook (or the devs of some app) in exchange to use a service, they wouldn't think that it's a free for all and anyone can mine the data for whatever they want.
    • humanrebar 9y ago
      > It is against our policies for developers to share data without people's consent. Not to mention that it's arguable that "consent" was really given for facebook to share the data in the first place. I'd be interested to see some polling results asking if facebook users knew what facebook was up to and whether they feel OK with it.
      • pishpash 9y ago
        These fake consent (EULA, signup clauses) need to be shot down once and for all. Consent needs to be visible, granular, and explicit.
• nafey 9y ago
  I think Zuckerberg should have taken this opportunity to more substantially address the larger discussion around data privacy and Facebook. The outrage surrounding the CA revelations are based on a larger trend of continuous privacy abuse by FB.
• leroy_masochist 9y ago
  > First, we will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform to dramatically reduce data access in 2014, and we will conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity. We will ban any developer from our platform that does not agree to a thorough audit. Isn't there a bit of moral hazard here - as in, Facebook potentially getting material business advantages from reading other people's repos? Are they going to put up a Chinese Wall between the audit team and the product team?
• nekopa 9y ago
  "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission." Seems to be the go to business model nowadays...
• hvass 9y ago
  Is it clear exactly what 'data' was actually obtained by CA on those millions of people? (I am referring specifically to the millions, not the original subset of 200,000 or so). Is it all public and friends-visible activity? Or it is basics such as name, email, profile photo, etc.? I cannot find so far addressed in the coverage exactly what kind of information CA have had on a per-person basis. If someone can share coverage that outlines this I would be very grateful.
  • rock_hard 9y ago
    If I remember correctly, back in the day when the API still existed it would only give access to your friends public information
    • hvass 9y ago
      Yes, sorry, I should have been more specific. But what 'exactly' do they know. Does CA know that each person liked EXAMPLE POST ID #12379 on DATE XX/XX/XXXX and that you also like BRAND1, BRAND2, and that you also posted STATUS UPDATE1 on DATE .... What exactly do they have?
      • cmac2992 9y ago
        Here's a screenshot of the old api docs. https://photos.app.goo.gl/x6WQmxyX0JIL26d62 https://photos.app.goo.gl/x6WQmxyX0JIL26d62 If I'm remembering correctly the API would return all of the things you mentioned if that info was shared to your friends
        • rock_hard 9y ago
          I don’t think it would let you see which posts a user liked only the pages they liked
    • pyjammas 9y ago
      If by public information you mean 'information a friend has shared with you', then yes. I would not exactly call that public, though.
• natural219 9y ago
  > In 2007, we launched the Facebook Platform with the vision that more apps should be social. Your calendar should be able to show your friends' birthdays, your maps should show where your friends live, and your address book should show their pictures. To do this, we enabled people to log into apps and share who their friends were and some information about them. Why do we not even have this?! These features sound fantastic -- where the hell are they? The most comical part of the situation with centralized social networks is that we give up our personal & friends' data to advertising monoliths, and we don't even reap any of the benefits from it in terms of improved user experience. Facebook doesn't give you the best calendar, the best maps, and the best address book. It gives you the Facebook calendar, the Facebook maps, and the Facebook address book. For any of this to actually work from a user's end (never-mind the creepy privacy stuff), Facebook has to design the best-in-class experience for each of these product categories, which they of course have not done because that is an impossible thing to ask. No one company is actually going to monopolize the social data market, yet every player in the field is trying (and assuming they eventually will) do so. It's maddening. Society will eventually wake up and realize we need a large-scale replacement to W3C focused on standardizing access to the social graph, which should be a public utility like roads. That's all there is to it. Until we figure that out, we're going to be having the same conversation every decade, nothing will change, and we'll keep begging Daddy Zuck to pwetty pwetty pwease fix all of our issues out of the kindness of his heart. Keep doing that, if you want.
  • bluetwo 9y ago
    It would be nice to think some government would take up the issue and do it well. I think it's more likely that someone will build a craigslist version (lowest tech possible, limited financial upside, widely useable) of Facebook that people will flock to.
  • contextfree 9y ago
    I remember Windows Phone 7/8 used to do a lot of that (integrate the built-in apps with Facebook data). It worked fairly well for a time, at least if you didn't have a huge number of FB friends.
• radicaldreamer 9y ago
  If they're serious about this, and I'm leaning toward they aren't really serious about it, this will affect a lot of startups, specifically in advertising, but probably a lot of mobile apps as well: “First, we will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform to dramatically reduce data access in 2014, and we will conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity. We will ban any developer from our platform that does not agree to a thorough audit. And if we find developers that misused personally identifiable information, we will ban them and tell everyone affected by those apps.“ Might be a too little, too late attempt at self regulation since they've apparently known about this cambridge analytica situation since before the election and since then there have been facebook employees embedded with CA to help them target ads. MSNBC is already playing this as: 1) starts with a denial 2) admits wrongdoing 3) claims behavior will change 4) changes are not carried out and we're in the same place a year down the road. They’re also pointing out that Zuck is fine meeting with Xi Jinping, meeting with Medvedev but refuses to appear before the US Congress and sends the company counsel instead.
  • __jal 9y ago
    > but refuses to appear before the US Congress and sends the company counsel instead. This strikes me as especially interesting. I mean, I'd personally theoretically have my reservations about this congress over and above the average congress, but FaceMark refusing strikes me as a deeply telling datum about how he's thinking about this.
    • harryh 9y ago
      Basically no CEOs ever want to testify in front of a congressional committee. There is only downside to such a situation for the company. There is zero upside. This is not a deeply telling datum. It is a boring an standard one.
      • kaennar 9y ago
        While that may be true for regulations/ethics related appearances, this is not true for things such as funding. For example both Elon Musk and Bruno have gone before congress multiple times to discuss private space programs/ contracts and to justify their cases. Admittedly Elon did send Gwynne Shotwell several times but she is still the COO of the company. More accurately there is risk in talking to the US congress when the topic sounds more like an inquisition than when congress is asking for opinions. The matter then is why is it a risk for Facebook to discuss the CA issue? Are they worried about a witch hunt or a public ethics execution?
• jeffdavis 9y ago
  He didn't mention the Obama campaign at all. Isn't that relevant as it happened substantially earlier?
  • gedaxiang 9y ago
    Of course not - Democrats can do no wrong in Silicon Valley. But seriously, there has been a pretty big lack of mentions of the Obama campaign in the coverage of this story. Maybe the story wouldn't have been a story if it weren't tied to Trump 2016.
• mehrdadn 9y ago
  While Facebook is busy caring about our privacy, can I meanwhile leave this here: https://imgur.com/a/RCldJ https://imgur.com/a/RCldJ
• propman 9y ago
  The trusting developers not to sell any data but putting zero safeguards in place to prevent this and extremely punitive repercussions despite being repeatedly told by the public, media, and even high level employees tells me Facebook can't plead ignorance to this and they not only knew this was happening, but they probably intended for it to happen. They knew it was illegal but put all the incentives for companies not to follow the rules. That's the only hole in his statement. As for the rest of it, it's progress. It seems like a lot of good changes, but Analytically Facebook execs probabaly summarized that this is the least they had to do to stave off regulations or monopoly anti trust from congress. Any less, regulations would still be placed on them so it's brilliant strategy to do this and frame it in a way that Facebook is concerned about all the damage and we voluntarily do this for you instead of the truth which was we knew about this forever and only are doing it because of threat of regulations. Overall, an optimal outcome for all parties currently, except for society as a whole down the line
  • taurath 9y ago
    Yeah it’s like “oh gosh, they violated our terms of service by pulling 50 million users info! We must send them a sternly worded email with a checkbox to confirm they they won’t do it again!”. It’s inconceivable that there aren’t larger exfiltrations of user data that have taken place - how would they even know?
    • chrishas35 9y ago
      I feel like they really doubled down on that by naming Kogan.... "see, it was just one bad developer"
    • netsharc 9y ago
      I'm guessing teenaged Mark always left a porn site saying "aw shucks, I'm not 18 yet, it tells me here I can't enter.".
  • prostoalex 9y ago
    What kind of safeguards would you introduce? At the very start of Facebook platform the API would anonymize the user's email address, the app would get an app-specific hash, e.g. abcdefg-app123456@facebook.net It was a working email address with Facebook handling the forwarding. This proved futile as the very first thing that apps then did was to ask users for their real email address.
• tanilama 9y ago
  How is auditor going to help in this case? If that company like hide it somewhere secrete and have it encrypted?
• buf 9y ago
  when you said “move fast and break things” i thought you meant “the unit tests” not “western civilization”
• omw192168 9y ago
  Lol data audit. This guy is full of it and always has been. If you upload data to Facebook, you deserve Russian malware.
• bluetwo 9y ago
  Piss poor.
• raarts 9y ago
  Seems incredibly naive for a company who's core business is data, to grant apps full access to all of friend's data. Did nobody realize that was a bad idea?
  • aylmao 9y ago
    I think ambition beat them. The idea was a two-way data exchange; if you use the facebook platform to build apps with user's data, a. it might be in your interest to help keep the data updated. Say, if your app depends on an accurate home address, you'll ask the user to update it. b. you might generate more data or content. Say, to publicize your app you might ask the user to post on facebook. Moreover, it's always advantageous to have other developers depend and build on your platform. It makes your platform richer by adding functionality you may not have the resources to develop, and gives you leverage (ie, Apple and Google's mobile OSes). If I recall correctly it wasn't "full access to all of friend's data", but similar access to what you had on the user? I thought it was very exciting. I could think of a ton of potential apps, and got to use it at a hackathon once before they limited the access. Back then I thought it was a bummer, but the move made a lot of sense.
  • exclusiv 9y ago
    Most of this applied years ago when the API was more open. I built a lot of apps on their platform for big brands. They were all chasing likes and building FB apps. Their third party app platform really helped with user growth and engagement over the years but now it's come back to bite them. So it was both a good idea and a bad idea.
• adrr 9y ago
  In 2015 Facebook knew CA had the data and yet didn't audit the company till two days. I'd hate to be attorney representing FB in the FTC hearings.
• I_am_tiberius 9y ago
  The main problem is that users can't control their data. FB should: - Allow its users to delete their accounts as if they never existed - Show users which person and or service has accessed their data (also FB internally) - Use backend permission management instead of frontend permission management
  • toss1 9y ago
    How about additionally, 1) providing an "Advanced Feed" providing each user a log of every data field exfiltrated, date/time/who/IP addr,/ etc. 2) requiring every single advert and it's targeting parameters, that runs on the system to be made available in a fully searchable advert pool for anyone to search. This would allow people to see what is being targeted, journalists to figure out what targeting is happening (much of the Cambridge Analytica nonsense happened under the radar for a long time), and regulators to uncover scams. Mere transparency. they could probably figure out a way that this will make them more money if they actually looked at it (e.g., support an ecosystem of people studying the data and figuring out what works better, to better utilize the platform).
    • WorldMaker 9y ago
      Plus, a lot of the "news feed" articles started as re-shares of microtargetted ads. There absolutely should have been more transparency on virally reshared things that started as microtargetted ads.
      • dragonwriter 9y ago
        Literally everything on Facebook is microtargeted ads. Engagement, including resharing, is just part of the targeting algorithm.
        • WorldMaker 9y ago
          Which seems all the more reason to demand transparency in "cui bono"/"who benefits?" for micro-targeting, especially paid micro-targeting.
• gwicks56 9y ago
  1000 word statement. Number of times the word "advertising" was mentioned: 0 Facebook continues to pretend it's business model is unicorns and kittens, not selling user data for money.
  • nabla9 9y ago
    It was standard crisis management PR sermon. "learn from this experience", "doesn't change what happened in the past. ", "responsibility", "going forward", "together". You find this same boilerplate from athletes who beat their wife, do drugs, or kill people.
    • busterarm 9y ago
      ...and go on to continue to beat their wife, do drugs...
    • jd20 9y ago
      I had a very hard time imagining Zuckerberg actually writing these words, it just felt too carefully crafted and full of standard PR tropes. The CNN interview should be interesting, then we can hear the actual words from his mouth.
      • Steko 9y ago
        The words he's been rehearsing in hours of mock interviews with the same PR hacks, for the last couple days.
        • avoutthere 9y ago
          I imagine he'll be answering questions provided to CNN by the Facebook PR team.
          • Steko 9y ago
            No need to create the paper trail, the "hard hitting"-looking questions any tv news outlet is going to ask are incredibly predictable.
• beedrillzzzzz 9y ago
  The issue here is not some developer gaining a temporary snapshot of a few million records, it is that Facebook _itself_ is doing and productizing real-time psychological profiling on billions of people.
  • TangoTrotFox 9y ago
    This was revealed years ago. Facebook was literally running experiments on people on the site, without their consent, to see how they reacted when their feed was made either more negative or more positive. Most people seemed to not care when this was revealed which is, in my opinion, just an indication of the level of addiction people have to the service. You can find a plenty of hits searching for 'facebook run psychological experiment on users.' Here [1] is one of a plethora of sources discussing it. [1] - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/10932534/Facebook-conducted-secret-psychology-experiment-on-users-emotions.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/10932534/Fac...
    • isostatic 9y ago
      > which is, in my opinion, just an indication of the level of addiction people have to the service I don't think that's it. I think the problem is that what was revealed was far too abstract for most people to fundamentally grasp.
• omarforgotpwd 9y ago
  I don't agree with people who think these scandals will be the end of Facebook. Instead, Facebook will become more entrenched as it develops advanced features to handle national security issues, allow users more sophisticated control over their data, etc. I like that Zuckerburg explicitly takes personal responsibility for everything that happens on his platform in this post.
  • __jal 9y ago
    FB will be fully integrated as part of the surveillance state soon enough. > that Zuckerburg explicitly takes personal responsibility for everything that happens on his platform Sorry, but bullshit. He may say that, but I'll believe it when he publishes the agreement he signed that makes him personally liable for lawsuits.
    • jd20 9y ago
      Seriously, every CEO is held responsible for the actions of the company he runs. He's just restating the obvious here.
      • __jal 9y ago
        I realize you're not the poster I was responding to, but one has to pick one. Either this is a nullop statement, or it is an encouraging, commendable thing to say. I agree with you, BTW.
• patrickg_zill 9y ago
  How many shares did Zuckerberg sell just a few days before all this became known? (Yes, I know that such sales are announced publicly and planned in advance).
  • dredmorbius 9y ago
    Fewer than 3% of his announced and ongoing sales plan over the past 3 months. The timeline for that is 18 months It's a large amount relative to other ongoing insider sales, across all US stockss, but not a deviation from ongoing activities. Though by September, concerns over privacy and propaganda were well established.
• foobaw 9y ago
  Excited to see what he has to say on CNN. I really hope someone knowledgeable in the actual technical aspects will be present to ask questions.
• jey 9y ago
  Wait, so FB Login won't even give us public profile data anymore? Then that reduces FB Login to nearly just a competitor surveillance tool for Facebook.
• bhauer 9y ago
  Meta: Zuckerberg's statement is, unsurprisingly, hosted at "facebook.com" and uses JavaScript to render. My browser is configured to not execute JavaScript from facebook.com because that site has a reputation for undermining privacy. Therefore, I cannot read the statement that I assume at least has some tangential relationship to the way facebook.com handles privacy. Alas.
  • __jal 9y ago
    Heh. I didn't even try because my machines blackhole their address space. A decision that looks better every day.
  • gingericha 9y ago
    Not sure if acceptable here, but here it is: "I want to share an update on the Cambridge Analytica situation -- including the steps we've already taken and our next steps to address this important issue. We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you. I've been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn't happen again. The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago. But we also made mistakes, there's more to do, and we need to step up and do it. Here's a timeline of the events: In 2007, we launched the Facebook Platform with the vision that more apps should be social. Your calendar should be able to show your friends' birthdays, your maps should show where your friends live, and your address book should show their pictures. To do this, we enabled people to log into apps and share who their friends were and some information about them. In 2013, a Cambridge University researcher named Aleksandr Kogan created a personality quiz app. It was installed by around 300,000 people who shared their data as well as some of their friends' data. Given the way our platform worked at the time this meant Kogan was able to access tens of millions of their friends' data. In 2014, to prevent abusive apps, we announced that we were changing the entire platform to dramatically limit the data apps could access. Most importantly, apps like Kogan's could no longer ask for data about a person's friends unless their friends had also authorized the app. We also required developers to get approval from us before they could request any sensitive data from people. These actions would prevent any app like Kogan's from being able to access so much data today. In 2015, we learned from journalists at The Guardian that Kogan had shared data from his app with Cambridge Analytica. It is against our policies for developers to share data without people's consent, so we immediately banned Kogan's app from our platform, and demanded that Kogan and Cambridge Analytica formally certify that they had deleted all improperly acquired data. They provided these certifications. Last week, we learned from The Guardian, The New York Times and Channel 4 that Cambridge Analytica may not have deleted the data as they had certified. We immediately banned them from using any of our services. Cambridge Analytica claims they have already deleted the data and has agreed to a forensic audit by a firm we hired to confirm this. We're also working with regulators as they investigate what happened. This was a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. But it was also a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it. We need to fix that. In this case, we already took the most important steps a few years ago in 2014 to prevent bad actors from accessing people's information in this way. But there's more we need to do and I'll outline those steps here: First, we will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform to dramatically reduce data access in 2014, and we will conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity. We will ban any developer from our platform that does not agree to a thorough audit. And if we find developers that misused personally identifiable information, we will ban them and tell everyone affected by those apps. That includes people whose data Kogan misused here as well. Second, we will restrict developers' data access even further to prevent other kinds of abuse. For example, we will remove developers' access to your data if you haven't used their app in 3 months. We will reduce the data you give an app when you sign in -- to only your name, profile photo, and email address. We'll require developers to not only get approval but also sign a contract in order to ask anyone for access to their posts or other private data. And we'll have more changes to share in the next few days. Third, we want to make sure you understand which apps you've allowed to access your data. In the next month, we will show everyone a tool at the top of your News Feed with the apps you've used and an easy way to revoke those apps' permissions to your data. We already have a tool to do this in your privacy settings, and now we will put this tool at the top of your News Feed to make sure everyone sees it. Beyond the steps we had already taken in 2014, I believe these are the next steps we must take to continue to secure our platform. I started Facebook, and at the end of the day I'm responsible for what happens on our platform. I'm serious about doing what it takes to protect our community. While this specific issue involving Cambridge Analytica should no longer happen with new apps today, that doesn't change what happened in the past. We will learn from this experience to secure our platform further and make our community safer for everyone going forward. I want to thank all of you who continue to believe in our mission and work to build this community together. I know it takes longer to fix all these issues than we'd like, but I promise you we'll work through this and build a better service over the long term."
• jeffdavis 9y ago
  2010: Zuckerberg says privacy is no longer a "social norm" 2018: Oops https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/6966628/Facebooks-Mark-Zuckerberg-says-privacy-is-no-longer-a-social-norm.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/6966628/Face...
  • astro_robot 9y ago
    He honestly isn't wrong. People use Google and Facebook everyday for free in exchange for their privacy and they are ok with that. You can ask most people and they'll say they didn't really care about Snowden's leaks. They are happy to use free software and to be under government supervision (I don't care about the inefficacy of it). Privacy really is a social norm of the past.
    • leggomylibro 9y ago
      I understand your intention and don't mean to criticize, but please consider avoiding the term 'free software' when referring to businesses like Facebook and Google. https://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software https://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software
      • Diederich 9y ago
        The parent said: 'use free software' How does that in conflict with your FSF link?
        • leggomylibro 9y ago
          The parent says, 'They are happy to use free software and to be under government supervision.' In that context, 'free software' is referring to the previously-mentioned services (Google and Facebook), which do not cost money but are antithetical to the term as it is used by organizations like the FSF.
          • Diederich 9y ago
• pkamb 9y ago
  > your maps should show where your friends live Strange to see that bullet point, specifically, as an advertised facebook feature in 2018. I absolutely would not want my facebook friends to know my address, and that's without any specific threat to me such as a domestic abuse situation.
• deskamess 9y ago
  Once the toothpaste (data) is out of the tube (FB data center) its hard to put back (manage). An option would be to remove or hash (different nonce for every share of data) identifying information and add noise to the various metrics gathered. That way, the results of an analysis cannot be used to target individuals. Short of some breakthrough in homomorphic encryption sharing data for analysis is problematic. Penalties can be enforced but the data is out at that point.
• faramarz 9y ago
  Will do, should do, going to do. Lots of promises not a single action. Since Friday, or earlier of knowing about the incident, they could have conducted the audit and closed any lose ends and used this opportunity to say we have already done x and y. Instead, it's just announcements. Not good enough.
  • 908087 9y ago
    The benefit of making promises instead of taking action, is that people generally forget about promises if you let enough time elapse.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• thotaway 9y ago
  Let’s not waste a perfectly good crisis. Ask Zuckerberg to reveal all of the psychological test data he has, which shows the mental health effects of spending too much time on Facebook. Ask for a list of all employees whose parents and spouses are judges and politicians. Ask for a data dump of the actual data points used to make suggestions in Suggested Friends. Ask for the data Facebook buys about you from Datalogix and others. You will be met with silence. This man is a crook. And far worse than the world knows.
• plusbryan 9y ago
  "I started Facebook, and at the end of the day I'm responsible for what happens on our platform." Regardless of my feelings about how this was handled, I appreciate the level of leadership accountability demonstrated in this statement. I wish that more founders, CEOs, and politicians facing difficult circumstances would adopt this perspective. Even if you didn't personally code/negotiate/write it - you made managerial decisions (hiring, culture, review process, etc) that induced it.
  • SirLJ 9y ago
    is he resigning or something? how "responsible" he actually is?
    • plusbryan 9y ago
      That is true. Words must be followed by actions to mean anything. I suppose I've gotten so jaded recently about people in power throwing their underlings under the bus (eg VW) that even statements that acknowledge the correct position of accountability seem miraculous. We'll see if he makes good on that perspective.
  • ABCLAW 9y ago
    I don't. Because months earlier, he was making public comments that it was a 'crazy idea' that his company could have influenced elections shortly after his chief information security officer was pushing against him and Sheryl Sandberg to investigate and disclose russian activity on the platform. Additionally, his company was actively advertising election related products. This man isn't owning responsibility; he's trying to defuse a PR bomb of his own creation.
• dvt 9y ago
  > First, we will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform to dramatically reduce data access in 2014, and we will conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity. > Second, we will restrict developers' data access even further to prevent other kinds of abuse. > Third, we want to make sure you understand which apps you've allowed to access your data. In the next month, we will show everyone a tool at the top of your News Feed with the apps you've used and an easy way to revoke those apps' permissions to your data. All of these points don't address what actually happened. It's not like CA had a feed of FB's user data. It was harvested. And saved. And data, like diamonds, is forever. The problem is that FB simply has too much information about us. The #deleteFacebook moment is a wake-up call not so much for FB's tone-deaf execs, but moreso for the masses that (probably until now) never realized how much data FB has on every single one of us.
• staunch 9y ago
  Facebook and Google provide very basic internet services that really should be provided by open systems. But through luck and timing they managed to establish monopolies. They abuse their position to extract hundreds of billions of dollars by selling their user's limited time on earth to advertisers for peanuts per user. Feel pity for Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page that they have such fundamentally corrupt businesses and are apparently incapable of fixing them. And applaud Apple for having created a business so well aligned with its users. It's very difficult to find examples of Apple failing to do the right thing and very easy for the other two, as in this example. Startups should reject the rent-seeking Facebook/Google monopoly model and embrace the Apple innovation and direct-to-users model.
• jorblumesea 9y ago
  > Last week, we learned from The Guardian, The New York Times and Channel 4 that Cambridge Analytica may not have deleted the data as they had certified. ...so instead of looking into it at all, or vetting our partners, we relied on media to tell us?
• 100007550075761 9y ago
  fuck
• axihack 9y ago
  With partial data of 50 million CA was able to do such a social damage, what about FB and others sitting on billions of full users psychological profiles and playing irresponsible saying trut us?
• andrewstellman 9y ago
  > I'm serious about doing what it takes to protect our community. While this specific issue involving Cambridge Analytica should no longer happen with new apps today, that doesn't change what happened in the past. We will learn from this experience to secure our platform further and make our community safer for everyone going forward. It's good that Facebook took steps to secure the platform against third parties crawling the graph and scraping millions of users' personal details, which is what Cambridge Analytica reportedly did, and which was not a violation of their policy at the time. Kudos. So the consensus seems to be that what Cambridge Analytica did in the Brexit vote and the 2016 US Election was wrong. Now they won't be able to do the same thing via Facebook. But what's keeping Facebook themselves from doing the same thing that Cambridge Analytica did in future elections?
  • chubasco 9y ago
    Great point. We already know from the 2012 election and from the 2015 Podesta e-mails that Facebook doesn't exactly have a great record of political neutrality.
  • WorldMaker 9y ago
    I'm also not convinced that it wasn't Facebook that did most of the work for CA. It was to Facebook's short term profit motive to provide the best micro-targeting ad tools to potential ad buyers. It's still in the realm of possibility that CA did get rid of all illicit data sources such as Kogan's dataset in 2015 and still had enough tools in that FB's ad sales platform team were more than happy to build for them for the easy short term profits.
• d--b 9y ago
  "We need to fix this" is not an apology. "Sorry we fucked up" would have been more acceptable. These SV firms are like kids, always pushing further until people shout. I seriously hope this harms them beyond repair.
• kristianc 9y ago
  The great irony here is that Facebook dragged someone through the courts when they tried to ask for their personal archive, but is somehow now presenting the exfiltration of 50m people's data as no big deal.
• snambi 9y ago
  This is just eyewash. The real business of facebook is selling and using user data for their profits.
• confounded 9y ago
  Copy pasta for people that don't want to go on that bloody website?
  • outlog 9y ago
    yeah, is there a non facebook.com link?
    • spookyuser 9y ago
      https://web.archive.org/web/20180321193752/https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104712037900071 https://web.archive.org/web/20180321193752/https://www.faceb... Here you go.
  • dredmorbius 9y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16641637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16641637
• kchoudhu 9y ago
  This statement indicates that Facebook is for a while going to be turning to regulatory engineering. Engineers hate this kind of stuff. Expect an outflux of talent from the company in the next year or so.
• kristianc 9y ago
  TLDR: We aren't going to change our business model of systematically harvesting your data, but we will at least make it slightly more difficult for other people to do so.
• WheelsAtLarge 9y ago
  "We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you," so Zuck says. "Protect" is the keyword. He means protect while letting Facebook be profitable. Facebook's business will not let him do that without losing a large chunk of its profits. I expect a lot of talk but little effect on how they sell their data. The problem is that "free to user" = "sell my data". The model fundamentally works against the everyday user. The only fix is for people to guard their data. It's your data! Facebook is not your friend so don't act as if it is.
• packeted 9y ago
  Why does Facebook need to give up any of this information to developers in the first place? Presumably these apps are part of the reason Facebook has the engagement it has? Or part of the reason for the user growth it has seen in the past? Perhaps this will prompt Facebook to start cutting out third party developers and build more home grown social apps, leveraging the data it already has on what eye balls engage with. Maybe they'll only grant API access to large companies, eg. TripAdvisor, who they can hold accountable and would be worth investing the time to audit. Perhaps they will start their own internal Cambridge Analytica where no data sharing is even necessary, assuming they haven't already.
  • underwater 9y ago
    That’s answered in the post. It was a vision of socially enabled third party apps that never eventuated. They cut they feature when it turned out that no one really needed the data for legitimate reasons.
• jondubois 9y ago
  It seems that everyone just hates Facebook and we're collectively trying to nit pick any missteps that they make. I think that the whole issue is not surprising at all. Definitely not newsworthy. I'm pretty sure that everyone and everyone's mum knew that Facebook was doing stuff like this. What changed is that now we all distrust and dislike Facebook at some deep level... So we respond strongly to even the most mundane criticisms against it. I think that what's happening is that Facebook is so good with analytics that they are always able to churn out a perfectly optimized statement in response to any situation... But it doesn't change the fact that everyone is eagerly awaiting the next scandal.
  • Slansitartop 9y ago
    > I'm pretty sure that everyone and everyone's mum knew that Facebook was doing stuff like this. "Everyone" knew Facebook was gathering tons of data on its users and everyone else, but we didn't understand many of the implications until now. People assumed it was just useful for banner-ad type stuff. There are probably even more implications of this data collection that we have still yet to discover.
    • jayess 9y ago
      That's BS. The Obama campaign bragged about using Facebook data and was praised for it.
      • Slansitartop 9y ago
        No it isn't. I only learned of the political implications of FB data during this election cycle. It's gotten a lot more headlines, and the stories have been much more explicit about the implications. So we've proved "everyone" didn't understand the full implications until now.
• elorant 9y ago
  If he have two shits about users' rights all he could do was sue CA. And he could extend that policy to any developer that went the same path. Warning perpetrators that all that will happen to them in case of misconduct is to get banned is irrelevant, they could simply reapply with a fake ID, new company and whatnot.
• mindfulplay 9y ago
  I was going to read this but then I realized this was posted on facebook.com.
• jackconnor 9y ago
  "The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago" What an asshole, if this were true this wouldn't have happened. I liked Zuck until today, now I think he's a lying sack of crap, which probably means he'll make a great politician.
  • B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
    > now I think "They trust me -- dumb fucks" right at the start was not enough warning?
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• jfroma 9y ago
  It seems to me that they are planning to restrict what an application can see about users, but what about what an user can take from her friends. Can a bad actor like Kogan harvest private information by using fake profiles or even some famous people with lot of friends? It seems to me that the problem is much worse than it seems, like a fundamental flaw in this particular social network, if everything becomes an island how users are going to network?
• mgazzer 9y ago
  I don't feel like this post does enough to talk about how the online marketing tools were used for the sole purpose of persuading people's opinions.
  • nugi 9y ago
    Thats their marketing arm that explains it to those who buy their services. You are not the customer. They already have you.
• wokawoka 9y ago
  you people use facebook still? ....bunch of losers.
• wickedlogic 9y ago
  Deletion (or confirmed re-deletion) of the data is irrelevant at this point, it is the models created from that data, and their use, which will now persist in usefulness to Analytica. Armed with these models, and future refined/iterated versions, they likely will capture the data more directly from users in the future. Once the genie is out, it doesn't readily go back in.
• thegayngler 9y ago
  Sorry I'm a fan of FB. I use many of the tools they've provided to the open source world. I know this won't be a popular opinion but I'd welcome some regulation and bureaucracy for technology firms. This way there wouldn't be this weird gray/imaginary line situation going on that we have right now. I think Congress should probably outsource the regulation and bureaucracy similar to how the SEC works...but maybe not tied to the POTUS and instead creating a structure outside the purview of the POTUS.
• tapatio 9y ago
  "should not happen again"
• mgazzer 9y ago
  "Whoopies, we gave out your information out to some really shadies companies. Sorry, our bad, won't happen again. Like, really, it isn't our fault what those people did with the data." Facebook, you provided them with that data, you fuckers!
• username223 9y ago
  Better than I expected, but still pretty standard damage-control boilerplate. Also, his "timeline" is definitely not the whole story. I'll be curious to see how it squares with that of Sandy Parakilas[1]. In particular, what was the real reason they shut down the friends-of-friends permissions? Parakilas' take was that they didn't care until they realized people could use it to build competitors: “They were worried that the large app developers were building their own social graphs, meaning they could see all the connections between these people,” he said. “They were worried that they were going to build their own social networks.” [1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/20/facebook-data-cambridge-analytica-sandy-parakilas https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/20/facebook-data-c...
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• 0majors 9y ago
  Zuckerberg's comments are clear and seemingly accurate as far as the publicly available information goes. The only problem is, they do nothing to address the real elephant question in the room. That question is - what is the state of political campaigns powered by the extremely detailed personal data Facebook holds? Democracy only works when everyone gets an equal vote. What are the consequences when special interest groups, including from abroad, can pay to use the official Facebook APIs and craft targeted messages to shape the public opinion? We have seen the consequences of this approach. Trump won by the smallest margin. Brexit was nudged with 100% false and misleading statements (300m for NHS, showing refugees from Syria etc.) Should we be OK with this much power available on tap? The real questions Zuckerberg needs to answer are: what political campaigns are being run? Who is being targeted with political messages? What are the budgets like? Most importantly, who is ultimately paying for shaping the political opinions in our democracies? This is a question that strikes at the heart of our society. Facebook is not going anywhere. Google is not going anywhere. People will continue to put all their personal data in cloud services without thinking about any Privacy policies whatsoever. We should have an open debate about how much digital opinion shaping is acceptable before we have built a tool that sells the democratic decision making to the highest bidder. There is a reason why political spending is so carefully controlled in Europe. Facebook needs to own up and come clean on the state of political advertising taking place on their platform.
  • SirensOfTitan 9y ago
    > Democracy only works when everyone gets an equal vote. What are the consequences when special interest groups, including from abroad, can pay to use the official Facebook APIs and craft targeted messages to shape the public opinion? Democracy only works with an educated population. Regulating data might act as a short to medium term buffer against this issue; however, as we learn more about how our psychology works, the more often we'll be manipulated. Combined with the interesting argument that being politically uninformed could be rational: > If the odds that your vote will be decisive are minuscule—Brennan writes that “you are more likely to win Powerball a few times in a row”—then learning about politics isn’t worth even a few minutes of your time. [1] ... we have an interesting problem on our hands. I personally believe that the long term solution is within education, but instead of teaching people "what to think," we ought to be teaching people "how to think". People typically learn naively about how to think: both how to emotionally cope with struggling and with parsing and understanding information. At the minimum I think schools ought to be teaching kids strategies for both arenas. I personally really enjoy two approaches around "how to think.": 1. The now out of print "How to Develop Your Thinking Ability," is a super old, easy read loosely based on Korzybski's controversial "Science and Sanity." It taught me how to approach my perception as gambles (i.e. to avoid universal judgment). The principles, all often obvious, as I recall, are roughly: a. Up to a point e.g. that person is annoying, up to a point. b. To me. That movie is awesome to me. c. As far as I know. Warren Buffet is 92 as far as I know. d. Indexing by time: I like John at this point in time. e. Indexing by place: I like John when we're at the club, but not when we're at the office. f. Indexing by subindex: Instead of: Guy_1, Guy_2, Guy_3 are all scum, therefore all men are scum, we use indices to avoid generalization. 2. The Happiness Trap: enumerates Acceptance and committance therapy. ACT roughly uses a variety of defusing techniques, mindfulness, and values oriented behavior to help a person handle their thoughts in constructive manners. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/07/the-case-against-democracy https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/07/the-case-again...
• tardo99 9y ago
  I don't actually think the data sharing piece is the most important concern highlighted in recent days. To me, it's Facebook's pernicious effect on those who become addicted to the service and can't stop generating and consuming mindless status updates and photos all day. The introvert in me wants to say that's a good outcome in that Facebook serves as a honeypot for certain types of personalities which I tend not to like very much. But speaking more broadly, it makes me worry for society.
• lisp_me_away 9y ago
  The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago. suicide fuel
  • jackconnor 9y ago
    Seeing that quote in the second paragraph got me so pissed
• ENOTTY 9y ago
  Here's a press release from Facebook's press office released concurrently with Zuckerberg's statement: https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/03/cracking-down-on-platform-abuse/ https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/03/cracking-down-on-platfo...
• victor106 9y ago
  This is such a well crafted statement not from Zuck's heart but from a PR team that has been working over time. Shame on you FB and Zuck you Suck. If they are so honest or like to be honest going forward why can't they make it easy to see all my pics and posts that are public? Why can't they make it easy to see who can see what I posted? Which app or user is using my data. They have billions of dollars and can't implement simple features? Its just a game they are playing and they will go back to their old ways in no time when no ones watching or under a different name. I was reading FB fanboy Robert Scoble's post and it pathetic. You almost feel like he's being paid by FB. He used to be a well respected tech journalist. I have deleted my FB account and I am so done with this company.
  • joering2 9y ago
    Scoble was a fanboy of Rackspace until they stopped paying him and since then he doesn't have a single good thing to say about them. Further there been plenty of sexual harassment claims under his name. I doubt that he worries too much that he will catch some more dirt for praising Facebook these days.
  • EGreg 9y ago
    A better question is, why aren't you using a decentralized, open-source alternative to Facebook today?
    • weego 9y ago
      Because they are all awful, no one uses them, and they are ui clones with no features built by people that think the word decentralised is actually a selling point to the general public rather than having a single innovative thought about what social means and then using decentralisation as a tech solution.
    • QML 9y ago
      Because none of my friends use them.
  • krelian 9y ago
    >why can't they make it easy to see all my pics and posts that are public? Not a FB power user by any means but at least on desktop that's pretty easy to know >Why can't they make it easy to see who can see what I posted? Doesn't each post have icon showing who can see it?
• plusbryan 9y ago
  "It was installed by around 300,000 people who shared their data as well as some of their friends' data... this meant Kogan was able to access tens of millions of their friends' data." I wonder why the Facebook of pre-2014 thought that this was an acceptable level of data sharing to developers? Did they trust that all platform developers would forever have good intentions? Or perhaps they felt the data being collected was harmless in perpetuity (i.e. did not anticipate the political ramifications of the CA abuse)? Or that their legal team could effectively enforce their TOS to prevent abuse? In hindsight, the pre-2014 policy seems ridiculously careless - but I'd love to understand why they didn't anticipate a breach of this magnitude at the time (or if they did, why they dismissed the concern).
  • dalbasal 9y ago
    At a guess, I think they didn't really realize how serious this data is at scale. After all this was (I think, anyone know the actual details?) fairly mundane data. Name, age, last check-in date, pages you like, public figures you follow, posts you liked, friends, stuff you're interested in. MySpace/LinkedIn/etc made this stuff public, on FB it was mostly semi-private. The reason this whole thing became a scandal is because data is powerful at scale. To quote The Guardian's original article: "(Cambridge Analytica) used them (data) to build a powerful software program to predict and influence choices at the ballot box." Facebook now have a $50bn business based on using exactly this kind of data "to predict and influence choices" people make. That's why their ad system works now, and didn't just a few years ago. They got very good at using large quantities of otherwise mundane data to guess who will click an ad and sign up to a cookie subscription or who needs a mortgage. This is the same thing. If you know who's a maker and what seminar's they'll like, you know whos a Tory and what conspiracy meme they like. FB now know how powerful that is, but I'm not sure they did then. Still... this sounds only semi-tangentially related to privacy. It is technically user data, but IDK if individual users were violated that much, at least relative to other breaches. It's not like the icloud breech, or Ashley Madison. Generally not data that people are horrified to find someone knows. I think the meat of this issue is "power got into the wrong hands." At least that's what The Guardian was concerned with. User privacy is just the only violation. Power is the problem. On that note, is FB the "right hands?." Incidentally, all this is interesting in the context of Zuck running for office, or even just being involved in a politics. Whatever Cambridge Analytica could do, Zuck could day a lot more. On top of that, he heads the biggest and most influential news/media company that ever existed. He should probably be banned from political involvement.
• etiam 9y ago
  Standard operating procedure for Facebook. Let violations go on unless and until seriously threatened by PR damage or legal action. Deny knowledge, claim "mistakes were made", claim "We're so sorry. We will make sure it can't happen again", repeat. Data exfiltrations of roughly this kind has been going on at least since 2009. Handled according to the formula above. I just posted links to two writeups from back then: http://theharmonyguy.com/oldsite/2009/05/28/about-that-verification/ http://theharmonyguy.com/oldsite/2009/05/28/about-that-verif... https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2009/06/09/how-privacy-fails-the-facebook-applications-debacle/ https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2009/06/09/how-privacy-f...
  • etiam 9y ago
    By the way: confounded's comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16641777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16641777 over in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16640437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16640437 ("Big Other: Surveillance Capitalism and Prospects of an Information Civilization") is well worth reading and keeping in mind in this context.
• djsumdog 9y ago
  I remember when the 2014 chance occurred. It meant my little script stopped working: https://penguindreams.org/blog/discoverying-friend-list-changes-on-facebook-with-python/ https://penguindreams.org/blog/discoverying-friend-list-chan...
• ENOTTY 9y ago
  I have to wonder if Facebook was even competently exploiting people's data for money. It sounds like they essentially gave away nearly all of their users' profiles for free to any app developer who could get a user to sign up. Facebook didn't even charge app developers for access to the Platform. This would allow app developers to create a copy of the data and re-sell that. And Facebook wouldn't see a dime. If their crown jewel is people's data, why would Facebook give away a copy of their crown jewels?
  • mmcwilliams 9y ago
    This assumes that the profiles are the most valuable data they have, which I tend to doubt. It seems like the real money is in the interactions between users, the engagement with the feed (what gets eyeballs) and the third-party sources like their tracking pixels and referrer data.
• fareesh 9y ago
  > First, we will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform to dramatically reduce data access in 2014, and we will conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity. We will ban any developer from our platform that does not agree to a thorough audit. I remember the old days of the graph API - there was a whole lot you could do with someone's account, and it was common for users, especially non technical users to blindly hit accept on the permissions screens. If I'm not mistaken, you could even make a developer account without a verified phone number at the time. I don't think banning some of those apps is any kind of consolation really. The API sat like that for years. Anyone with nefarious motives already took what they wanted and ran. What repercussions will they face? The will be banned from Facebook? The apps are probably long gone. There was a time when Facebook apps were at their peak, that fad died off. The data is probably sitting in a database somewhere today. If I'm not mistaken, Facebook Games could still grab the friend list permission until quite recently. Also what authority does Facebook have to do any kind of audit? How would that audit even work? If someone copies all the data to an external drive and locks it up, what will the audit reveal? "Yep there's no data here, pinky swear!" The basic premise of Facebook is flawed. If your private thoughts or photos are posted on a platform where you don't control the data, the data is never safe. A good product that serves the user faithfully and takes this into account is probably closer to a decentralized product - maybe something like Mastodon (I haven't looked into it in much detail). Facebook has already acquired the users - if they can figure out a way to make money and switch to a decentralized model at the same time, they can solve this once and for all. They would arguably even gain users who would now have a reason to trust their service.
• pjmorris 9y ago
  "What all these data breaches are teaching us is that data is a toxic asset and saving it is dangerous." - Bruce Schneier [0] [0] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_toxic.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_tox...
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• EGreg 9y ago
  Ironic that all the #deletefacebook posts are on Twitter. What is the real alternative to centralized social networks?
  • richev 9y ago
    Real alternative? How about good old-fashioned email?
    • EGreg 9y ago
      How about decentralized social networks?
  • thrillgore 9y ago
    Email.
  • dredmorbius 9y ago
    Zipf's law is a beast.
• Mankhool 9y ago
  >“We also made mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it,” I, for one, am tired of hearing tech companies say that they are sorry - believing that this makes whatever the issue is, immediately a thing of the past so that they can start again from day zero with regard to whatever they failed at. A company the size of FB must police the usage of their data if they want to be able to promise security of it. That this wasn't being done is a mistake of unforgivable magnitude.
• sp527 9y ago
  ZUCK: yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard ZUCK: just ask ZUCK: i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns FRIEND: what!? how'd you manage that one? ZUCK: people just submitted it ZUCK: i don't know why ZUCK: they "trust me" ZUCK: dumb f*cks
• makecheck 9y ago
  Since you can’t “unshare” data, a solution for the breach is only meaningful if it helps to make the improperly-shared data useless. And there isn’t really any way for Facebook to do that since so many of the details they insist on collecting aren’t things that people can change. And even if Facebook could rein in all this data, they can’t undo side effects of having that data, like elections swayed or relationships ruined. We all need a way to have the equivalent of frequently-rotated encryption keys in our online discourse. If I revoke privileges for some entity, everything they have on me should become useless to them.
• dillondoyle 9y ago
  So what happens if FB learns that CA doesn't have the actual raw social graph data, but CA still uses and sells modeled data and insights built on the original graph data? Does FB have the contractual power to stop CA from using works built or derived from this data? I have Google scholar alerts for Kogan and Kosinski; Kogan especially has a lot of citations and continues to work. I would bet that Kogan will never let his work die, even if his OCEAN model ends up being experimentally proved ineffective (my personal opinion = actions are far more valuable than modeled emotions).
• taurath 9y ago
  Re: His first "fix": > First, we will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform to dramatically reduce data access in 2014, and we will conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity. We will ban any developer from our platform that does not agree to a thorough audit. And if we find developers that misused personally identifiable information, we will ban them and tell everyone affected by those apps. That includes people whose data Kogan misused here as well. What happens if they find that 50 different organizations had access to and may have saved as much data as CA? If they admit that, that would be the end of Facebook. This basically precludes Facebook from being open and honest here - even if its only this one bad actor, that the incentives for FB are not to be open would cause any reasonable person to question their efforts.
  • xkjkls 9y ago
    It's almost certain that they do, and almost certain they'll never be able to validate that this data won't go to any actors that you would not like to have access to your information. For anything on your Facebook prior to 2015, the cat has already jumped out of the bag.
  • jd20 9y ago
    If they knew about CA obtaining this data in 2015 and sat on it then, no telling what information they may be sitting on now. Most companies, when they learn of a data breach, they take measures to notify their affected users (whether contacting them directly, or publicizing it). Instead, FB's saying, "Here's a tool at the top of your feed, you can check the safety of our data yourself". (And fat lot of good that'll do people who don't even use FB.) This lets them continue to do business as usual, putting the onus on users to safeguard their privacy, while they can stick their heads in the sand.
  • lambda_lover 9y ago
    > What happens if they find that 50 different organizations had access to and may have saved as much data as CA? Isn't this more than guaranteed? Literally any crappy quiz app or game had access to all of this data when they launch Facebook Platform. And I'm betting Kogan's app was far from the most popular on Facebook at the time -- the potential for hundreds of thousands of data harvesters to have exploited this is way too high. I disagree that it's "the end of Facebook", though... in general, users just don't seem to care that much about this sort of thing. I can say for certain that my parents don't understand what this means or why this is bad (they had trouble understanding what was so bad about the Equifax leak as well), so your lowest common denominator user is never going to budge, even after something like this. I'm just hoping that my more technically-inclined friends start to lean away from Facebook's collection of data aggregators.
• yorby 9y ago
  Block apps from requesting any data that isn't absolutely required for the apps functionalities and it would stop a lot of abuses... but of course they don't want to do that
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• rwhitman 9y ago
  Circa 2009 I was hired to build a Facebook graph app that did just this, only for dating profiles. Thankfully it was acquired and buried by the shady sociopaths who hired me to build it, before it ever saw the light of day. However, there were many, many apps that also did the same. A number of dating apps, companies like Zynga, business networks like BranchOut etc. They were just inhaling data wholesale, especially Likes which were fully exposed to all friends in your graph. I could totally see how you could use that data circa 2014 to build psych profiles and resell it for sophisticated targeting years later. There is an enormous risk of companies who rose and fell during the Zynga era to have resold or improperly disposed of FB profile data during their final liquidation. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
• alexandercrohde 9y ago
  I think Zuckerberg just doesn't get it (or is playing dumb). The point is this - I don't and will never trust facebook as a company. There is no way to salvage that. Once you've established yourself as untrustworthy you can't talk your way out of it, because there in no reason to believe your excuses and trust there aren't omissions. Consider the microphone accusation (and the legalese they used in their oddly specific denials), Zuckerberg's wish to run for president, the incredibly extensive profiles they construct on their users ("Is the kind of person to look at their phone in akward situations") without justifying it to the users, and now this. It's way too late for people like me. I've deleted my facebook.
  • astrange 9y ago
    > Once you've established yourself as untrustworthy you can't talk your way out of it Can't you? I mean clearly this is a common opinion, it's the basis of the American belief that all crimes should result in 30 year prison sentences. But I don't see why you should think this way.
• jimnotgym 9y ago
  "I'm sorry, it's all in the past. I promise I wont do it again." Is Zuck still at school? "I'm sorry for running a business model that made me squillions" just doesn't cut it with me.
• pow_pp_-1_v 9y ago
  As a way to discourage Facebook and other companies from doing this in future, a fine per person per data item shared must be imposed. Since the data that's leaked is more or less permanent, all the people affected should get a recurring, life-long annual payment for each personal leaked data item.
• notananthem 9y ago
  Such a weak response. Facebook is an older Uber, ridden with idiotic allowances for illegal narcissistic behavior that bites them in the ass.
• krelian 9y ago
  For all those criticizing the statement as just PR speak, what would say if you were Zuck?
• maxpert 9y ago
  So you knew that breach happened in 2015, they might have already handed off data to someone else, and you didn't bother telling people? Quoting: "In 2015, we learned from journalists at The Guardian that Kogan had shared data from his app with Cambridge Analytica. It is against our policies for developers to share data without people's consent, so we immediately banned Kogan's app from our platform, and demanded that Kogan and Cambridge Analytica formally certify that they had deleted all improperly acquired data. They provided these certifications." What does banning or disabling app means? If you were responsible enough and you cared about user data you should have made it public right there and then! This is no excuse!
• reaperducer 9y ago
  Too late. Deleted Facebook last night. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 763 times, shame on me.
• throwaway84742 9y ago
  Would be cool to get something concrete out of this, eg a guarantee, at least, that people who do not use FB at all or are currently logged out are not tracked. Because right now whether you are logged in or not, you are tracked by dozens of different companies, including FB and Google. This non-consensual tracking is creepy AF, and the only reason it exists is because 90% of users are not aware of it, or its ramifications.
• tomovo 9y ago
  Absolutely hilarious. Just opening the page on my phone, I get 90% crap, 10% content (see https://imgur.com/a/sh3Xl https://imgur.com/a/sh3Xl). Memorable quotes: "We have responsibility to protect your data" "We will investigate" "..we announced that we were changing.." "I started Facebook"
• simonhughes22 9y ago
  If he wants to know what the general public thinks or has to say, he should do a Reddit AMA. That would be the best response IMO.
  • IAmEveryone 9y ago
    Reddit AMA are terrible. They make it far to easy to choose the answers you want to answer.
  • tcpabc123 9y ago
    have you ever looked at the demographics of reddit? hardly represents the general public in the US, let alone the world.
• NickSharp 9y ago
  This is interesting: > We will reduce the data you give an app when you sign in -- to only your name, profile photo, and email address. What about localization info such as language? Are all apps switching to 100% US English? Are they supposed to guess a users language from their name and email? My guess (and this is just a guess) is that the users preferred language is already considered “public” on the graph so perhaps apps don’t need special permission to access it. If that’s the case, this statement is doing a bit of misdirection by calling out name and profile photo, instead of saying “we will only give your email address plus other information we deem public”
• anonytrary 9y ago
  > First, we will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform to dramatically reduce data access in 2014, and we will conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity. I am skeptical of Facebook's ability "guarantee" that a third party developer has not cached any data. I would equate this to finding all N needles in a haystack of size M where M >> N; it's just not a feasible task to complete. Even if you find N-1 needles, the last needle can be used as a sort of "mold" to reproduce all N-1 needles. My "golden rule" for the internet is: Once you give up information, assume it's everywhere and impossible to rescind. I believe this statement will be eaten up by the press, and Facebook will continue to carry on its operations as if nothing happened. The stock will probably recover, and we'll go back to square one. Give it a few weeks. The true demise of Facebook requires several things to happen simultaneously; a resonance of perfect conditions, so to speak. You've probably heard that Einstein and Newton discovered their theories because "they were decently smart men in the right place at the right time". A similar effect is also true here. If we want to see Facebook's demise, the world must have a suitable alternative in place, one which already has a critical mass. Until then, Facebook has a monopoly on attention and they will keep it as long as they are producing enough positive externality.
• astro_robot 9y ago
  I just don't get it. I don't get the enormous backlash over this. Users give away their data to a company, the company sells that data to advertisers (or sells ads and targets the ads according to data), and the users can continue using the service they enjoy for free. This was the contract you agreed to when you clicked the sign up button. I don't get why people are mad at Zuckerberg and not themselves! People act like a company is supposed offer their services for free. The free services is the business model of the internet. You want to use Google Docs for free, fine they'll collect data on what you make. You want to play games for free, fine they'll display ads to you. You want to catch up with old friends, fine they'll collect data on your interests. No one is forcing Facebook users to use Facebook. You know they're collecting data on you. If you don't want them to, then don't use their "platform."
  • golemiprague 9y ago
    It is because of Trump, this company somehow related to the Trump campaign and since he won people try to somehow make it as if he won illegally by fake news or Russia or whatever. All those things existed before the election and everybody knows about it but nobody cared, now suddenly they care. I once developed an app for a new startup which required every permission including access to text messages, everything. Not because we needed this info, just because we were too lazy to figure out what permissions we actually need so we asked for everything. We had 3 million users within a year and we could see people bank accounts and passwords and whatnot. We actually started to remove those permissions just because we felt bad for our users and we didn't really need all this info. So my point is, this is not new or interesting, if Hillary would have won you would not hear a pip about the subject.
  • headsoup 9y ago
    You make it sound like it's just a little check box that either means data everywhere or not. There's a lot more to it than that.
  • sixothree 9y ago
    Should I remind you that even if you don't click the sign up button that you have a facebook account?
• codedokode 9y ago
  What is the problem? 50 millions people voluntarily published information about them on the Internet and now they have complaints about someone using it? Don't use Facebook them. And Facebook is not that bad. You can use Facebook with a fake name and without a phone number. But for example in Russia social network sites require a phone number to register. They have much more to leak.
• CodeSheikh 9y ago
  Basically all I see is a blame game on CA and that researcher. For the sake of brevity, when someone is hosting a REST API web server at Facebook, did not they notice a large number of requests coming from a certain app id (3rd party dev) for a certain type of data (user, his data, his friends, their data and so on)? At that point you knew what exact users were compromised, 5 or 50 million. And then CA came back to your platform and bombarded those same users (or subset of those users) with their propaganda ads etc. Point being, there were data foot prints left when they pulled the data for those specific users and their were data foot prints left when they came back for those users. Facebook is not Techcrunch that you don't care much about the nature of traffic coming in b'coz it is a blog. Facebook is where people literally share their every day life activities. I am assuming that there should be some smart self-governing systems in place at FB platform that would raise flags when such type inward/outward traffic gets generated.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• kripy 9y ago
  One thing I would like to see is a revoke all apps button. Why does this have to happen on an app by app basis? Easy enough to do this via their API.
• avyfain 9y ago
  For those of you who don't want to visit Facebook's website to read this, here's the full text: https://pastebin.com/SspXumGF https://pastebin.com/SspXumGF
• mudil 9y ago
  The whole operating model of the company based on invasion of privacy. Blatant invasion of privacy and data collection by Google and FB is a national security issue. No entity should be allowed to snoop on free citizens more than KGB has ever dreamed about. Orwellian!
• Ajedi32 9y ago
  So, that's it? A third-party app that users explicitly granted access to their data misused that data and Facebook banned them? How is that a scandal? If we discovered today that 6 years ago there was some malware on the Google Play Store that stole a bunch of user data and sold it (but the malware itself is long gone, having been removed from the Play Store 4 years ago), would there be a similar level of rage directed at Google?
• Khaine 9y ago
  This statement doesn't go far enough. Its clear that Cambridge Analytica mislead those of the purpose of the app that it asked to download it. It then used this data to improve advertising target ting during the election. Facebook needs to come clean with whose data has been abused, and by whom. This scandal is bigger than Cambridge Analytica. It also covers what the Obama team did in 2012 and 2008, and probably a whole host of others that we don't yet know about. We have a right to know. It appears to be that facebook may be in breach of many legal obligations that are present throughout the world (i.e. Australian Privacy Act, GDPR, etc).
• la_fayette 9y ago
  don't use centralized services like these... using facebook is like watching free-tv with adds.
• vm 9y ago
  No mention of the word "sorry"
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• submeta 9y ago
  Bye bye Facebook. I'm gone. Finally made it. Fear of missing out was keeping me from doing it. And for what? I was fearing to miss out on what? Being disconnected from whom? From people that I haven't met in years.
• j-walker 9y ago
  > In 2015, [...], so we immediately banned Kogan's app from our platform, > Last week, [...] We immediately banned them from using any of our services. Can someone explain how they banned them twice, or what the differences are between FB's "platform" and their "services" ??
• joering2 9y ago
  I can't access Facebook page, because I followed yesterday's HN post on adding list of FB domains to my hosts list :) But from reading HNers comments, it doesn't seem I missed anything.
  • dredmorbius 9y ago
    archive.is or the Internet Archive will show the content.
• bluishgreen 9y ago
  "We will reduce the data you give an app when you sign in -- to only your name, profile photo, and email address" -- Profile photos can be used to infer age, gender and ethnicity. So the above statement should be "...name, email address, age, ethnicity, gender and countless other things future ML systems can infer from profile pics."
• truesy 9y ago
  I worked at a company that had viral apps during the same timeframe mentioned in Zuckerberg's response. Our company pulled data of friends of friends. The amount of data people gave us was staggering. A few years later the data was much more restricted, much harder to get, and much clearer to the user what was going on. It's easy to point to Fb and say they are evil, but it really seems to me like it's the 3rd parties that are causing most of the issues, and Fb has been pretty decent at locking it down in the last number of years. Keeping in mind that they were the first who had social data in such large amounts where there was no prior example.
  • philipodonnell 9y ago
    You're letting them off too easy. The FTC consent decree was in 2011 and this happened in 2013. They settled with the FTC and paid no fines by agreeing not to give users data away without express consent and then let the api continue doing exactly that until 2014. Maybe in 2010 your comment would apply, but when this happened they knew very well they weren't supposed to be doing this.
• dclowd9901 9y ago
  "Second, we will restrict developers' data access even further to prevent other kinds of abuse. For example, we will remove developers' access to your data if you haven't used their app in 3 months. We will reduce the data you give an app when you sign in -- to only your name, profile photo, and email address. We'll require developers to not only get approval but also sign a contract in order to ask anyone for access to their posts or other private data. And we'll have more changes to share in the next few days." Nah. They need to not offer any identifiable information to 3rd parties. Email is fine. Yes, I know can figure out ways to identify an individual by their email, but there's nothing more closely tied to one's identity than their name and face.
• foolinaround 9y ago
  I would like to also hear an explanation of how the Obama campaign apparently grabbed data in 2012. - how was this episode discovered? what was FB's initial reaction and can it be justified? - are the allegations true? including the one that FB employees collaborated on it. Silence on it only deepens suspicions. - was this done in a similar way (3rd party dev, etc)? If not, how was it done? - who were the actors in that episode? What was the actions taken then? - what about the pedigree of those who rightly raised the issue in the 'Cambridge Analytica' episode? Did they not have the information for the 2012 episode? How did they find this out?
• EugeneOZ 9y ago
  It was so pathetic response like he is talking to naive idiots. I can't imagine who from professionals will believe it.
• paulie_a 9y ago
  Eventually working at Facebook is going to be something you downplay on your resume.
• IronWolve 9y ago
  Didnt both the GOP and DNC suck down user data in 2010-2012? Way before the rule changes.
• Gaelan 9y ago
  IMO, what CA did was more of a phishing attack than anything. People voluntarily gave the "personality quiz" access to their data, and that was abused. The reaction to the data being given to CA wasn't big enough, but beyond that I'm not sure I see what Facebook did wrong.
  • thebokehwokeh2 9y ago
    I think where facebook messed up is, by default (because it's the only thing that makes them valuable), set entire user permissions as public.
• Mahn 9y ago
  Does no one realize that this a bed that we have made ourselves? That the sea of data that the large five swim in is product of the modern deal that society has with tech, which no one forced us to make? Why is everyone happy to blame Facebook for what is fundamentally modern society's fault? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
  • quadrangle 9y ago
    Everyone realizes that, and it's irrelevant. You know, all the Trump voters who were swayed by propaganda campaigns actually voted for Trump. All the depressed kids who get convinced to buy some product by crafty advertising actually go and buy the product. > No one forced us A totally useless sentiment. People weren't generated all this data with benefit of hindsight and understanding. Effectively ZERO users EVER read the terms-of-service even, let alone understand the ramifications of giving up all this personal data. It's hard enough to get people to save enough buffer to get through predictable crises that come up. Get them to be thoughtful and responsible in the face of a system designed to hide every aspect of concern and hesitation?? Facebook is one of several actors here, but it's complete nonsense to suggest that they are just a normal, innocent player in a internet world where people just do things a certain way because of culture. Facebook actively designed things for certain results. It's not like Facebook is solely to blame, but the situation is NOTHING like you describe. Facebook wasn't just a neutral tool like email protocol and people just used it.
• austincheney 9y ago
  Commentary on Zuckerberg's dominant body language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F9JfZDJKCQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F9JfZDJKCQ This likely explains many of his motives.
• philg_jr 9y ago
  I don't understand why HN now finds this super interesting, but when it was reported more than a year ago, it was a lot of hand-waving and "no proof that it actually worked" over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13542735 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13542735
  • 18pfsmt 9y ago
    Perhaps on the first subthread that is the case, but reading through the entire thing paints an entirely different picture. Especially if you focus on comments from more frequent HN participants.
• jameslk 9y ago
  Scraping likes and friend lists is still very easy to do today on Facebook. All of that is pretty out there in the open as long as you have a Facebook account. They can limit their API, but that's really not very consequential with bots and the lax privacy settings most have. But I guess all of this "sounds good".
• krick 9y ago
  I know that it's unreasonable to hope that Facebook will die because of such minor nuisance, but I still hate how soothing it sounds. Anyways, what really makes me wonder is that it's such a huge scandal right now, every newspaper does updates twice a day, society is "alert", Facebook loses 60B in capitalization over night. It's a big deal! And yet it seems there's nothing new here, nothing we didn't know a year ago. In fact, I remember hearing about Cambridge Analytica, Facebook and USA presidential elections/brexit voting a year ago from Jordan Peterson, and psychology professors aren't typically the ones to hear tech-related news first. So what gives? Why now?
• manigandham 9y ago
  There seem to be two very different issues: 1) Data acquisition. 2) Using such fine-grained psychographic data to politically influence voters at massive scale. Cambridge Analytica was clearly outside the lines for #1, but they clearly are not the only organization that does such precise campaigns to influence people. I think #2 is much more important as data is not just available from facebook (although it's an easy source) and working in adtech, this is basically the pitch for all the modern advertising companies that use psychographic and intent targeting. It really goes back to the wider ad industry having very little oversight while selling mass influence to anyone with a credit card... perhaps we should solve that first.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• tuxguy 9y ago
  No mention of the fact that fb knew that Kogan sold users’ fb data to CA, and fb intentionally didn’t inform its users about it until the Guardian’s investigative report blew up in the press
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• rsuelzer 9y ago
  I am glad he said this. I developed an app that would scan your friends to see where they worked and if there was an on going union organizing campaign at their workplace, users could then message their friends with information on how to got involved. It was clear in the TOS that the information could not be stored except to enhance the application, which in my case involved caching. They obviously realized this feature was being abused and turned it off and thus broke my app. People are making a huge deal all of the sudden out of a feature that was hardly a secret for the last 7 years. Edit: this feature was also heavily used by the Obama campaign in 2012 and I would venture to guess was designed at their request.
• a1040182 9y ago
  In 2014,"apps like Kogan's could no longer ask for data about a person's friends unless their friends had also authorized the app.", so what's matters with 2016(Brexit)&2017(Trump elected)? Do they know Trump will become nominee back in 2014?
• bg4 9y ago
  Zuck's already said we're "dumb fucks" for trusting him. Believe people when they tell you who they are.
• nnain 9y ago
  I want to 'react' to so many comments on that post. But then again I don't know how the data from my reactions would be used. Oh, the irony.
• powerapple 9y ago
  Sharing public available data is fine. When you are on Facebook, you want to connect, and you want others to find you. That's the purpose of Facebook. I am sorry Trump's elected. Trashing Facebook is not going to replace your president.
• codingWithGit 9y ago
  Why are people surprised by this? Did everyone forget about these early IMs between zuck and a friend: Zuckerberg: Yea so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard, just ask. ‘i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns Friend: what!? how’d you manage that one? Zuckerberg: people just submitted it. i don’t know why. they “trust me”. dumb f*s. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5518753/Cambridge-Analytica-firm-heart-Facebook-scandal.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5518753/Cambr...
• brylie 9y ago
  This is a good opportunity to join and/or recommend friends to join decentralized networks, like Mastadon: https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/ https://instances.social/ https://instances.social/
• darepublic 9y ago
  I cannot fathom why so many people in this thread are desiring of regulations on the Internet.
• shabirgilkar 9y ago
  Hey! please ask Zack not to fool us, as we knew what you more than us knew.
• tpkj 9y ago
  Mark Zuckerberg Plays Along with the Scapegoating of Facebook https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/mark-zuckerberg-plays-along-with-the-scapegoating-of-facebook/ https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/mark-zuckerberg-plays-...