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The so-called "data breach" was always in reality a by-product of an open platform that hundreds of thousands of developers could easily build apps on top. You

The so-called "data breach" was always in reality a by-product of an open platform that hundreds of thousands of developers could easily build apps on top. You may err on the side of "more reviews" or "less powerful API", but in the end, those ideals are in tension. The more open the platform, the more open to this kind of "breach". People who believe in the idea in this kind of platform having an API should have long ago spoken up in Facebooks defense. This is exactly what I was afraid would happen, and I expect worse to come from this "platform review". Given the kind of media coverage here, Facebook seems to have more to lose than to gain from letting random Hacker News kids build on their platform. And if so, they won't in the future.

ericflo 9y ago
This is buying into the idea that security and openness are at odds. Bitcoin is extremely secure, and also open to all. The way forward is people owning all their data encrypted, and revealing zero knowledge proofs about that data to services that want access.
- ot 9y ago
  > Bitcoin is extremely secure, and also open to all. And it has zero privacy: everybody can see everybody's transactions.
  - ericflo 9y ago
    That's because privacy was not a goal of that particular system. Pseudo-anonymity was the goal. (That's unrelated to my point about security and openness though.)
    - nl 9y ago
      It seems pretty related in this case, since the kind of security that is being discussed here is around access to private data (and I'd note that it was you that used the word security here, not the OP who made the more correct contrast between openness and powerfulness). One could equally make the point that Facebook is secure because no one has hacked their servers, and that it is open because it is free to join. That's a pointless thing to say though. But in any case: yes, there is an inherent tension between privacy and openness.
      - ericflo 9y ago
        I should have used Monero as an example instead of Bitcoin, but I thought less people would have heard of it. Privacy can also be achieved with these primitives.
        nl 9y ago
        That's still not the point though. How do I openly share social information with some people without sharing it with everyone? These principles are in conflict. I did some work way back when FB got popular on the idea of using probabilistic data structures (ie, Bloom filters) to store contact lists, which could then be shared so that (in theory) only people who knew the same people would also know that they knew them. I built a FB app proving this could work technically. But there are clear security issues with it - it gives a veneer of apparent privacy but doesn't stand up to attacks. This is what everyone is talking about and the point you seem to be missing: you can't have this both ways. There is a conflict between privacy and openness. Since you seem fixated on the crypto-payment thing: Monero mostly solves anonymous payments, but then what? Say I want to buy a pair of shoes with it - how do I stop someone knowing where to deliver it? Any attempt at solving this runs into the same problem: you have to tell someone the same thing you are trying to keep secret, and if that person is the attacker then the system falls to pieces.
        ericflo 9y ago
        We've accepted trusted computing as a society, many phones have a secure element now, and I think this can migrate down to that level. That's the real trade-off: we reclaim ownership of our data with knowledge of where it goes and who's using it for what, but that means a full embrace of DRM (something our community has typically been against.)
        nl 9y ago
        I'll take that as implicit acknowledgement that the OP's point was correct (DRM of course being the complete opposite of "open"). I agree that could work though.
- fiddlerwoaroof 9y ago
  The Facebook API is, now at least, a capabilities based system where you ask the user for permission to access various bits of information. The major problem these days is that people don’t read through the authorization dialogs because they want to see which Star Wars character they are.
  - ericflo 9y ago
    To my knowledge, you're not able to reveal just your first name, or just a proof that you're a FB verified user. And once you grant access, it's forever. We may be at a global maximum for user permissions, but I doubt it. The problem is we can't try anything new - since it's all stored in FB's servers, we have to wait for them to build new granular capabilities.
    - ethbro 9y ago
      The truth is that Facebook engineering & UX has been either incompetent (incredibly unlikely given the caliber of people they have) or willfully / inadvertently avoiding clearly communicating to users what permissions apps need. The thought that they can't "do better" than dialogs / strings identifying each permission is laughable. It's not rocket science.
- munificent 9y ago
  > The way forward is people owning all their data encrypted, and revealing zero knowledge proofs about that data to services that want access. Who has a financial incentive to build and maintain that system?
  - ericflo 9y ago
    Cryptocurrency projects.
- alexbeloi 9y ago
  You're using "open" in different contexts, one applying to a platform (e.g. blockchain or facebook app api) and another in regards to access control. As platforms, blockchain is more open than facebook and for access control it's less open. GP was referring to security being at odds with openness in the sense of access control.
- matheusmoreira 9y ago
  >open to all That's in direct opposition to security. When you grant people you don't even know much less trust access to your system, all bets are off. There's just no way to predict what is going to happen. You've lost the fundamental protection afforded by trust. Today, computers are expected to be able to talk to and serve hundreds of thousands of random users. What if one of them has access to a 0day? They could own the machine. The world would be a lot more secure if servers dropped all incoming packets by default and talked to trusted users only. Bitcoin is open to everyone and that's great, but it doesn't change the fact people managed to sneak a bunch of illegal pictures into its blockchain.
hinkley 9y ago
It’s the same problem Microsoft had. If your success hinges on unfettered access then you can’t hand wring and deflect criticism when bad things come of it. In other words: if you power and prestige comes from getting others to do the work for you, then whose fault is it when they misbehave? It’s your fault.
IBM 9y ago
Apple got this right from the beginning despite years of criticism about the "walled garden". They took arrows for years: all the "open always wins" from the FOSS types, all the press coverage of some app developer crying about App Store rejections or onerous rules. They didn't get it wrong because they know who butters their bread: customers. Developers are rightly prioritized last. Fun to give this Paul Graham essay a read again [1]. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/apple.html http://www.paulgraham.com/apple.html
- headsoup 9y ago
  You're comparing Apples to oranges (I'm sorry) Apple doesn't have a social network. They also don't rely on advertising and 3rd party data brokering. It's easy for Apple to be the 'good guys' here when they have physical products as their profit generators. FOSS would have worked better in the Facebook case too as people and developers would know/discover a) where their data is and b) what risks it faces
  - thinkloop 9y ago
    I swear there is some kind of downvote bot on HN - reasonable posts are often down-voted grey within the first few minutes (like this one's parent), and then eventually climb up to a reasonable place, when, what feels like, the humans have had time to see it - has this been noticed or discussed before? I'd be curious to know if some accounts are serial downvoters, especially as soon as comments go up - does HN look for that kind of stuff? Of course part of the answer is that new comments have no votes so a quick downvote will make them grey, but there are frequent strange cases. One thing for sure is that a lot of people downvote based on disagreement rather than a comment's quality - which in my opinion is not right (and I think against the intent of a downvote), but that's a different issue.
    - grzm 9y ago
      Similar behavior appears to happen with quality of comments. Initial comments on a story are often insubstantial, knee-jerk low-quality comments. With time, things generally get better. From what I gather (but I don't have any comments at hand), the mods do pay attention to voting behavior, both to detect up-voting rings and to penalize those abusing downvotes. Their usual recommendation, when coming across a comment you think is unfairly downvoted, is to silently apply a corrective upvote.
ktta 9y ago
Ben Thompson talks about this towards the end https://stratechery.com/2018/the-facebook-brand/ https://stratechery.com/2018/the-facebook-brand/
fuscy 9y ago
There’s no helping if as an user, you give the keys to the house to the robbers. More specifically, everything posted publicly is public. It doesn’t matter how much the data is obfuscated by lack of API, it can always be mined. Any changes made in response, right now will be shortsighted. If an actor wants that data, he will get it, especially if it can sway elections.

ericflo 9y ago

This is buying into the idea that security and openness are at odds. Bitcoin is extremely secure, and also open to all. The way forward is people owning all their data encrypted, and revealing zero knowledge proofs about that data to services that want access.

ot 9y ago
> Bitcoin is extremely secure, and also open to all. And it has zero privacy: everybody can see everybody's transactions.
- ericflo 9y ago
  That's because privacy was not a goal of that particular system. Pseudo-anonymity was the goal. (That's unrelated to my point about security and openness though.)
  - nl 9y ago
    It seems pretty related in this case, since the kind of security that is being discussed here is around access to private data (and I'd note that it was you that used the word security here, not the OP who made the more correct contrast between openness and powerfulness). One could equally make the point that Facebook is secure because no one has hacked their servers, and that it is open because it is free to join. That's a pointless thing to say though. But in any case: yes, there is an inherent tension between privacy and openness.
    - ericflo 9y ago
      I should have used Monero as an example instead of Bitcoin, but I thought less people would have heard of it. Privacy can also be achieved with these primitives.
      - nl 9y ago
        That's still not the point though. How do I openly share social information with some people without sharing it with everyone? These principles are in conflict. I did some work way back when FB got popular on the idea of using probabilistic data structures (ie, Bloom filters) to store contact lists, which could then be shared so that (in theory) only people who knew the same people would also know that they knew them. I built a FB app proving this could work technically. But there are clear security issues with it - it gives a veneer of apparent privacy but doesn't stand up to attacks. This is what everyone is talking about and the point you seem to be missing: you can't have this both ways. There is a conflict between privacy and openness. Since you seem fixated on the crypto-payment thing: Monero mostly solves anonymous payments, but then what? Say I want to buy a pair of shoes with it - how do I stop someone knowing where to deliver it? Any attempt at solving this runs into the same problem: you have to tell someone the same thing you are trying to keep secret, and if that person is the attacker then the system falls to pieces.
        ericflo 9y ago
        We've accepted trusted computing as a society, many phones have a secure element now, and I think this can migrate down to that level. That's the real trade-off: we reclaim ownership of our data with knowledge of where it goes and who's using it for what, but that means a full embrace of DRM (something our community has typically been against.)
        nl 9y ago
        I'll take that as implicit acknowledgement that the OP's point was correct (DRM of course being the complete opposite of "open"). I agree that could work though.
fiddlerwoaroof 9y ago
The Facebook API is, now at least, a capabilities based system where you ask the user for permission to access various bits of information. The major problem these days is that people don’t read through the authorization dialogs because they want to see which Star Wars character they are.
- ericflo 9y ago
  To my knowledge, you're not able to reveal just your first name, or just a proof that you're a FB verified user. And once you grant access, it's forever. We may be at a global maximum for user permissions, but I doubt it. The problem is we can't try anything new - since it's all stored in FB's servers, we have to wait for them to build new granular capabilities.
  - ethbro 9y ago
    The truth is that Facebook engineering & UX has been either incompetent (incredibly unlikely given the caliber of people they have) or willfully / inadvertently avoiding clearly communicating to users what permissions apps need. The thought that they can't "do better" than dialogs / strings identifying each permission is laughable. It's not rocket science.
munificent 9y ago
> The way forward is people owning all their data encrypted, and revealing zero knowledge proofs about that data to services that want access. Who has a financial incentive to build and maintain that system?
- ericflo 9y ago
  Cryptocurrency projects.
alexbeloi 9y ago
You're using "open" in different contexts, one applying to a platform (e.g. blockchain or facebook app api) and another in regards to access control. As platforms, blockchain is more open than facebook and for access control it's less open. GP was referring to security being at odds with openness in the sense of access control.
matheusmoreira 9y ago
>open to all That's in direct opposition to security. When you grant people you don't even know much less trust access to your system, all bets are off. There's just no way to predict what is going to happen. You've lost the fundamental protection afforded by trust. Today, computers are expected to be able to talk to and serve hundreds of thousands of random users. What if one of them has access to a 0day? They could own the machine. The world would be a lot more secure if servers dropped all incoming packets by default and talked to trusted users only. Bitcoin is open to everyone and that's great, but it doesn't change the fact people managed to sneak a bunch of illegal pictures into its blockchain.

hinkley 9y ago

It’s the same problem Microsoft had. If your success hinges on unfettered access then you can’t hand wring and deflect criticism when bad things come of it. In other words: if you power and prestige comes from getting others to do the work for you, then whose fault is it when they misbehave? It’s your fault.

IBM 9y ago

Apple got this right from the beginning despite years of criticism about the "walled garden". They took arrows for years: all the "open always wins" from the FOSS types, all the press coverage of some app developer crying about App Store rejections or onerous rules. They didn't get it wrong because they know who butters their bread: customers. Developers are rightly prioritized last. Fun to give this Paul Graham essay a read again [1]. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/apple.html http://www.paulgraham.com/apple.html

headsoup 9y ago
You're comparing Apples to oranges (I'm sorry) Apple doesn't have a social network. They also don't rely on advertising and 3rd party data brokering. It's easy for Apple to be the 'good guys' here when they have physical products as their profit generators. FOSS would have worked better in the Facebook case too as people and developers would know/discover a) where their data is and b) what risks it faces
- thinkloop 9y ago
  I swear there is some kind of downvote bot on HN - reasonable posts are often down-voted grey within the first few minutes (like this one's parent), and then eventually climb up to a reasonable place, when, what feels like, the humans have had time to see it - has this been noticed or discussed before? I'd be curious to know if some accounts are serial downvoters, especially as soon as comments go up - does HN look for that kind of stuff? Of course part of the answer is that new comments have no votes so a quick downvote will make them grey, but there are frequent strange cases. One thing for sure is that a lot of people downvote based on disagreement rather than a comment's quality - which in my opinion is not right (and I think against the intent of a downvote), but that's a different issue.
  - grzm 9y ago
    Similar behavior appears to happen with quality of comments. Initial comments on a story are often insubstantial, knee-jerk low-quality comments. With time, things generally get better. From what I gather (but I don't have any comments at hand), the mods do pay attention to voting behavior, both to detect up-voting rings and to penalize those abusing downvotes. Their usual recommendation, when coming across a comment you think is unfairly downvoted, is to silently apply a corrective upvote.

ktta 9y ago

Ben Thompson talks about this towards the end https://stratechery.com/2018/the-facebook-brand/ https://stratechery.com/2018/the-facebook-brand/

fuscy 9y ago

There’s no helping if as an user, you give the keys to the house to the robbers. More specifically, everything posted publicly is public. It doesn’t matter how much the data is obfuscated by lack of API, it can always be mined. Any changes made in response, right now will be shortsighted. If an actor wants that data, he will get it, especially if it can sway elections.