19 ms·

Testimony of Mark Zuckerberg – Hearing Before US House of Representatives [pdf]

327 points by uptown 9y ago

cheez 9y ago
Chrome web store should be locking things down as well. But that's a bit more difficult.
quantumwoke 9y ago
It's good to see Zuckerberg taking swift and decisive action to try and plug the leaks related to Cambridge Analytica. I think that it is sorely needed, and it is probably too late for many on the Facebook platform. However, what's more interesting to me is the disturbing details about the spread of political advertising on Facebook. It seems that elections were much more heavily data mined and influenced than before. A nation state level attack on elections seems plausible and highly achievable, and was done not just in the US but France, Germany and elsewhere. I will be closely following whether the radical transparency measures proposed will have much impact given the upcoming elections in much more corruption prone countries such as India.
- dfsegoat 9y ago
  I am not an infosec expert, merely an end-user: From my perspective, I would not call this action "swift and decisive", quite honestly: If he were making quick and decisive actions in the interest of privacy, then he would apply the GDPR features to every user.
  - gabipurcaru 9y ago
    https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/04/zuckerberg-gdpr/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/04/zuckerberg-gdpr/
    - dfsegoat 9y ago
      Thanks - was not aware that he had replied. This concerns me though, because I think that FB has shown us, that any wiggle room they have - they will take it: "Facebook says that some laws elsewhere in the world conflict with GDPR’s new laws for Europe so they can’t be extended everywhere, and that the interface for some of these tools may vary" But in all fairness: I am running into this very same issue RE: GDPR in light of some other compliance laws from the EU and US.
- ForHackernews 9y ago
  You can't plug a data leak. It's too late. The data is out there in the wild and will be forever: https://slate.com/technology/2018/04/facebook-cant-clean-up-its-data-spill.html https://slate.com/technology/2018/04/facebook-cant-clean-up-...
  - m-p-3 9y ago
    Sure, but there's no reason to let the ship sink if it's not submerged already.
  - atwebb 9y ago
    It does become less relevant, moreso when the existence of the data itself is a major story.
    - ForHackernews 9y ago
      I guess it depends what use somebody can make of the data itself. Presumably human psychology doesn't change very much, so you could still use it to train and validate models years or decades later.
      - rhizome 9y ago
        Not to mention using it to support a status quo that prevents the information from aging so quickly, maintaining its relevance. News about rocks will remain popular if the spear is never invented.
- throwaway2048 9y ago
  swift in response to public reaction maybe, they were aware of these issues years ago, they only started acting on them when they got air time. That is in no way a responsible stance.
sorenn111 9y ago
I am fascinated to watch his testimony. Regardless of what is submitted, it will be highly interesting to see him deliver these words and stand up to questioning.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  This written testimony is offered in addition to his in person testimony, he won't repeat it. That way Congress has both the information "for the record" and the opportunity to grandstand.
corrigible 9y ago
"From now on, every advertiser who wants to run political or issue ads will need to be authorized. To get authorized, advertisers will need to confirm their identity and location. Any advertiser who doesn’t pass will be prohibited from running political or issue ads. We will also label them and advertisers will have to show you who paid for them. We’re starting this in the U.S. and expanding to the rest of the world in the coming months." Interesting!
- nugi 9y ago
  Another gatekeeper in the political arena. Just what we don't need. This is not a good outcome.
  - atwebb 9y ago
    It could keep out some honest actors but transparency in funding is important.
    - gt_ 9y ago
      The sane and obvious solution is to cap campaign spending. Anything else, willful or not, is either corruption or mere oligarchy.
    - smsm42 9y ago
      No it is not. You don't have the right to invade privacy of groups of people no more than I have the right to invade your privacy and inspect your bank accounts. Maybe you're Russian troll? Maybe you are paid by Putin? Would like to make your bank accounts public for everybody to ensure it is not the case? Probably not. Then why should other people who make political statements?
  - corrigible 9y ago
    This is something that should have been a day-1 feature, IMHO
  - gdulli 9y ago
    We've now seen what happens without gatekeepers and there's no way we can call that "better."
vthallam 9y ago
>We also learned about a disinformation campaign run by the Internet Research Agency (IRA) — a Russian agency that has repeatedly acted deceptively and tried to manipulate people in the US, Europe, and Russia. We found about 470 accounts and pages linked to the IRA, which generated around 80,000 Facebook posts over about a two-year period. Our best estimate is that approximately 126 million people may have been served content from a Facebook Page associated with the IRA at some point during that period. On Instagram, where our data on reach is not as complete, we found about 120,000 pieces of content, and estimate that an additional 20 million people were likely served it. This part seems to be rather interesting. The number of people who viewed the content created by IRA in general is appalling.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  Does view mean seeing in your feed or actually clicking an outbound link?
- dfxm12 9y ago
  Is this appalling? What's appalling to me is the number of people who can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality. I'm sure governments are going to come down hard on Zuck for "allowing disinformation to be spread", but won't give a second thought about cutting education budgets. It's hard for politicians to make it illegal to lie or to run a platform where people might lie. People are always going to lie and try to deceive others. It would be more effective for these politicians to actually educate their constituents. This is just one of many benefits of having educated citizenry...
  - vthallam 9y ago
    Educating people definitely helps. But even the most educated one's could give into impulse and get triggered to false propaganda.
  - wmeredith 9y ago
    > I'm sure governments are going to come down hard on Zuck for "allowing disinformation to be spread", but won't give a second thought about cutting education budgets. Prevention is always cheaper than treatment, but much harder to get people to understand the value of because the threat isn't in front of them.
fortythirteen 9y ago
> "Facebook is an idealistic and optimistic company. For most of our existence, we focused on all the good that connecting people can bring." - Mark Zuckerberg 2018 > "They trust me — dumb fucks." - Mark Zuckerberg 2010 Interesting placement of "most"
- ihuman 9y ago
  That second quote is from 2004, although it wasn't reported until 2010
  - cheez 9y ago
    Plus, he was a kid.
- bart42_0 9y ago
  and FB zucks, always did and always will
jasode 9y ago
>But it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. That goes for [...] data privacy. We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I was going through some old news archives about Facebook and their privacy policies. I came across the dire EFF warning in December 2009 [1]: >"The issue of privacy when it comes to Facebook apps such as those innocent-seeming quizzes has been well-publicized by our friends at the ACLU and was a major concern for the Canadian Privacy Commissioner, which concluded that app developers had far too much freedom to suck up users' personal data, including the data of Facebook users who don't use apps at all. Facebook previously offered a solution to users who didn't want their info being shared with app developers over the Facebook Platform every time a one of their friends added an app: users could select a privacy option telling Facebook to "not share any information about me through the Facebook API."" Well, it turns out EFF was correct and accurately predicted the unethical scenario of Cambridge Analytica siphoning data from Facebook users who didn't even take their quiz. The bullet points of "fixes" that MZ outlined don't really address the fundamental problem. Facebook's "data privacy" problem is not fixable if they have to ultimately run valuable ads against that data. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/facebooks-new-privacy-changes-good-bad-and-ugly https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/facebooks-new-privacy-...
- iooi 9y ago
  Hopefully the EFF is getting a big surge in donations from this latest outcry over privacy. You can donate here: https://supporters.eff.org/donate https://supporters.eff.org/donate
  - jakebasile 9y ago
    Worth noting that some payroll systems allow you to set up automatic donations to charities like the EFF. I know Gusto did. edit: looks like some payroll systems may take a cut. Be wary, or set up recurring donation directly.
    - EpiphanyMachine 9y ago
llbowers 9y ago
Surprised at Zuckerberg/Facebook's response to all this. The cynical part of me says it's only due to the negative PR all this has generated but I hope this works out for better privacy for all those who continue to use Facebook. I wonder if other tech companies will be called on to testify, Dorsey, Page, et. al.
fortythirteen 9y ago
> "It’s not enough to just connect people, we have to make sure those connections are positive. It’s not enough to just give people a voice, we have to make sure people aren’t using it to hurt people or spread misinformation." And be sure to report your fellow citizens for reeducation when they spread "negativity" and "misinformed opinions".
bo1024 9y ago
Interesting. He really puts Facebook into the role of policing its users (and advertisers). He describes taking down thousands of fake accounts, investigating whether certain pages have connections with IRA and taking them down if so. This will probably sound reassuring to legislators, but it pretty much permanently accepts the burden of responsibility for misinformation on the site. It sounds likely to force Facebook into a costly permanent arms race against every malicious political actor in the world. I wonder how regular users will get caught in the crossfire. Not that I feel bad for FB here -- they make tons of money because they have the most captive attention of any entity in the world. Attention is valuable because it allows platforms to influence people's behavior toward certain actions. Advertisers are not the only ones who realize this, and FB has to take responsibility for all forms of influence on its site, not just commercial ads.
- btilly 9y ago
  Actually under section 310, he doesn't bear liability for failures. However SESTA and FOSTA have eroded that for "sex trafficking". I expect more exceptions to sneak in.
frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
Seems weak, I hope some of the representatives have read Tim Wu. For example when Zuck says: >My top priority has always been our social mission of connecting people, building community and bringing the world closer together. Advertisers and developers will never take priority over that as long as I’m running Facebook. This is either misleading or a lie. Facebook is a corporation, what Zuckerberg wants to do as an individual isn't even relevant, what's relevant is what the corporation "wants" to do to increase profit. So far that has been pursuing connecting people and building communities and then taking that information and selling it to developers and advertisers. The phrasing places community and monetization in competition but Facebook's model isn't of competition between those it's model is a monetization of community. So the testimony never speaks to the fundamental problem of having advertisers as any level of priority here. Also to say that Cambridge Analytica abused the system sidesteps the issue of whether it was in Facebook's interest to allow this data to be collected and then misused. Cambridge Analytica purchased data which made Facebook the most attractive advertising platform for them because of the targeting they could do. That is good for Facebook's bottom line. They also don't address the total amount of information that may be out there, floating through advertisers outside of Facebook's control right now. Despite new restrictions how much about me is already out there? That's what I want to know. Overall, it's basically what I expected but I really hope there are a few representatives who can set aside the specifics of this one incident and attack the wider notion of Facebook's purpose.
- jaibot 9y ago
  > Facebook is a corporation, what Zuckerberg wants to do as an individual isn't even relevant Zuck is a majority shareholder, so what he wants to do as an individual can actually be fairly significant here.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
    Fair. Perhaps the most salient criticism is that Zuckerberg's top priority is connecting people because his company is designed to use those connections in order to sell lots of advertising.
fortythirteen 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. Anyone who was in a FB sales meeting when OpenGraph was launched knows this is a very calculated understatement. I've heard them explicitly sell the information of an entire user's friends list to anyone willing to pay.
- ebikelaw 9y ago
  This is really the key thing to understand why FB is so much more evil than the other companies it is often lumped together with. They don't just use your data to target ads. They will literally just sell your data to anyone who waves a dollar under their noses.
- manjushri 9y ago
  >I've heard them explicitly sell the information of an entire user's friends list to anyone willing to pay. So does FB actually sell data to third parties? I've seen many on here say that is not the case.
- squeaky-clean 9y ago
  > I've heard them explicitly sell the information of an entire user's friends list to anyone willing to pay. Source? If this were true and they'd do it for anyone willing to pay, where can I give them money for user's personal data?
  - methodover 9y ago
    There is no source, because it's bullshit. FB has never sold access to their API. Access to the friend's data permission, like all other permissions, was free.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
"What We Are Doing" under the "Cambridge Analytica" section is crap, i.e. lightweight or hypothetical (e.g. "we’re in the process of investigating every app that had access to a large amount of information before we locked down our platform in 2014"). By contrast, the same section under "Russian Election Interference" is well thought out. There's some hand-wavy stuff (e.g. "in the U.S. Senate Alabama special election last year, we deployed new AI tools that proactively detected and removed fake accounts from Macedonia trying to spread misinformation"). But requiring "every advertiser who wants to run political or issue ads...confirm their identity and location" and mandating the ads "show...who paid for them" is meaningful. That they're "starting this in the U.S. and expanding to the rest of the world in the coming months" is more encouraging. I'm also genuinely optimistic about their "tool that lets anyone see all of the ads a page is running" and "searchable archive of past political ads." With Cambridge Analytica, a core component of Facebook's advertising business model is threatened. Hence the inaction. With Russia, Facebook and political advertisers' interests are aligned. Hence, action.
- matchagaucho 9y ago
  Validation of genuine political identity is a logical next step. One that will require an Army of human curation (not an AI problem). However, I wonder about the reliability of "PO Box" as proxy to political identity. Or how FB is going to stop Mom-and-Pop retail pages from advertising false political messages ("2-for-1 sale! All proceeds go towards stopping the Trump-ordered seal beatings in Antartica!")
  - abakker 9y ago
    Or, just how much political speech is really influenced by belief? There are many people that genuinely believe stuff which is factually inaccurate (homeopathy, e.g.). If they post about the FDA being run by "big pharma" what do you do?
    - shkkmo 9y ago
      While belief in homeopathy is clearly factually inaccurate, I'm pretty sure the claim `FDA is run by "big pharma"` is at least partly accurate due to regulatory capture.
sandov 9y ago
As shitty as Facebook is as a service, I don't think they should have any legal obligation to 'protect' users from their own neglect. I don't use facebook, because I think a free-software based & decentralized social network would be the right way to do social networking, but if the rest of the people want to give away their info, fine by me. If someone I know wants to give my info to fb, it's fine too, but he/she loses part of my trust. I value the freedom to do whatever you want with the data you have more than the convenience of the government protecting whatever data I foolishly gave away to someone.
- platz 9y ago
  You make it sound like the users aren't even on the Facebook site. Remember that the 'users' are using a Facebook service, a consumer product provided by Facebook. They are responsible for what the product is, and does, regardless of what the users think.
  - throwafk81 9y ago
    No, in this case they are not.
  - sixothree 9y ago
    Do we need to keep reminding people that even if you never created an account, you have a facebook user associated with your real life identity.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > I don't think they should have any legal obligation to 'protect' users They do have legal obligations if they're going to sell political ads.
- EnFinlay 9y ago
  This sounds awfully close to the "why would I care about surveillance, I'm not doing anything wrong" argument. The reason it's important for Facebook to be legally required to protect user data is because you have no choice in being part of that data. You, as an individual, can do quite a bit, but you can't prevent people from sharing their contact books, pictures, and location. With the ubiquity of Facebook, everyone has some sort of footprint on the site. If the data is valuable and worthy of protection, and you have no ability to provide that protection, then it is reasonable for protection to be required from the layer that is removing the individual's agency.
nerdponx 9y ago
Did the EFF comment at all on the Obama campaign use of social media data?
- johnpowell 9y ago
  It is possible for two things to be wrong at the same time.
- DanielBMarkham 9y ago
  I'm not sure of the relevance of your comment. It sounds like you're trying to take a total privacy/anonymity clusterfuck and turn it into some weird kind of Reps-vs-Dems crap. The EFF, libertarians, and other privacy advocates have been warning about this utter disaster for many years. Everybody laughed about it. In fact, they all laughed at anybody who was brave enough to bring it up. There are domestic political concerns here. It wasn't until both major political parties in the U.S. got good and stepped on that anybody seemed to really take the matter seriously. It remains to be seen if any of this concern will still be around 2 weeks from now. My money says there will be a lot of heat and smoke, but no fire. At the end of the day, some Congressperson will come up with yet another Orwellian-named bill, probably the "Privacy Overarching Overall Personhood" bill, that will promise to fix everything and regulate social media. Through regulatory capture FB will bitch and moan to make appropriate gestures of servitude, then things will continue on just like they have been. Facebook isn't going anywhere. (And the problem isn't going away anytime soon.)
  - zaksoup 9y ago
    I don't think the comment you're responding to was made in good faith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
    - DanielBMarkham 9y ago
      Maybe so. I try to assume positive intent. Many times I end up looking like somebody who can't take a joke, but it's extremely difficult to sort out nuance by reading a brief sentence or two.
bitmadness 9y ago
I'm confused - did he read all that as his opening remarks? Seems pretty wrong, but it's written that way...
nothis 9y ago
What exactly is this, and why is it dated 2 days from now?
- TranceMan 9y ago
  Good catch - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43698739 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43698739 Edit - Explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16795723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16795723
leviathan 9y ago
Why is the date set in the future? April 11?
- throwaway2048 9y ago
  This is the notes he will be presenting.
  - warent 9y ago
    This really confused me, thanks for the clarification
- rhizome 9y ago
  That's when he actually testifies.
  - leviathan 9y ago
    Oh I thought these are minutes of something that actually happened.
    - tomschlick 9y ago
      Usually people submit their written testimony to the committee members ahead of time so members can study/fact check the information and respond with appropriate questions.
shamino 9y ago
Before anyone says Facebook's testimony is just fluff, we're a business that relies on Facebook's API to monitor activity, and we've been severely impacted. We no longer can get data as before - it's having a large effect on our business. So we definitely feel that action is being taken.
- lostlogin 9y ago
  Would you be able to explain what you used to do and have access to and what has changed? It would be interesting to hear an advertisers view.
- gaius 9y ago
  We no longer can get data as before - it's having a large effect on our business What sort of honest business depends on the Facebook API?
  - themgt 9y ago
    We were scraping data for a client for public events like music shows, business special days/etc, and that's been severely shut down and apparently on hold to approve any new apps. Again this is just getting like the date/location/ticket URL for a public page FB event that presumably businesses want people to know about - no private data about attendees/humans at all.
    - gaius 9y ago
      That seems like a legitimate use case. (it was a genuine question!)
- musage 9y ago
  > Before anyone says Facebook's testimony is just fluff Your reply addresses those (imaginary) people who might say that "FB changed nothing at all". Action being taken doesn't mean that Mark Zuckerberg's testimony isn't full of it.
_o_ 9y ago
Zuckerberg will tell to the whole world they are sorry and they will do everything in their power that CA will not happen again and people will forget. But the issue is not in CA abusing the access. The issue is they are having the data. And they can and they are abusing them in same manner as CA did. CA is just a good example how much power you have with the information the FB has. And they have more. FB is public enemy #1 on global scale and they should be shot down. They're corrupting the whole society and this has to stop wherever you like them or not.
stirner 9y ago
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks
- sctb 9y ago
  Please, enough with this. The tedium is overwhelming.
thedrake 9y ago
Here is the personality insight from IBM Watson on the text https://www.dropbox.com/s/j4ftupd4jd612ma/Screen%20Shot%202018-04-09%20at%202.18.00%20PM.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/j4ftupd4jd612ma/Screen%20Shot%2020... (using https://personality-insights-demo.ng.bluemix.net/ https://personality-insights-demo.ng.bluemix.net/)
- rspeer 9y ago
  It saddens me that IBM is setting the expectations so low for natural language processing that they're basically reducing it to a Myers-Briggs test.
notananthem 9y ago
All this says is they don't have control over their network and they're just bleeding out data everywhere. The primary takeaway especially with regard to the election tampering is that this (Facebook) is a huge, free, open tool to abuse and control elections.
Mc_Big_G 9y ago
"This is me telling you what you want to hear, but I don't mean a word of it and I will continue to get away with whatever I can until I get caught at which time I will tell you what you want to hear again."
- cycrutchfield 9y ago
  “Dumb fucks”
wiz21c 9y ago
I stopped reading at that paragraph. That Zuckerberg is seriously out of its league. >> It’s not enough to just connect people, we have to make sure those connections are positive. Does he really think he can define what "positive" means with a platform hosting hundred of millions of communications ? There is no positive, there's human nature. Regulating that by FB itself won't work but worse, it will be a tyranny. The gated wall of FB will mean gated psychology, sociology, etc. FB could be great if it was run by people who think about people, not shareholders...
godgod 9y ago
LORE is not to be trusted.
joshuaheard 9y ago
I am not greatly concerned with Facebook's privacy policy. People voluntarily give up their personal information in order to use this free service. I am more concerned about his identification of "fake news" and "hate speech" as issues without any clarification. These are both subjective descriptions with the potential for damaging abuse, which we are already seeing with the banning of Diamonds and Silk from Facebook. In my opinion, Facebook, Google, and other social media platforms should be required to be content neutral and its users given first amendment protection (with its concomitant limits). This would require federal legislation.
- tripplethrendo 9y ago
  I get a chill down my spine any time someone uses the phrase "hate speech". Who gets to decide what qualifies? The first amendment must be protected at all costs.
  - ThrustVectoring 9y ago
    There's no good stopping point. Britain recently convicted a comedian for putting up a youtube video where he trained a dog to raise his paw (like a Nazi salute) when he said "gas the Jews". Poor taste? Yes. Crime? Shouldn't be one.
  - 80386 9y ago
    Whoever's exploiting the network effects decides what qualifies, and the First Amendment doesn't apply to them. It's heartening that OStatus (GNU Social, Mastodon, Pleroma, etc.) are getting some uptake, but existing federated networks are even more poorly equipped to compete with Facebook than with Twitter and Tumblr. The nice thing about Facebook is its privacy settings -- I can, say, post about going to Pride and make sure no one in my family sees it. The problem is, Facebook could set up its rules so that campaign messaging for candidates they dislike just happens to violate them, and campaign messaging for candidates they like just happens not to. There's a lot of potential for abuse of power here. It seems like a lot of people aren't worried about that, because they figure the targets of the current uses of this power really need to be suppressed. But there's no reason this power can't be directed elsewhere. I bet there are people who thought it was OK to fire us for being gay who are now pretty mad that people can be fired for donating to Prop 8.
VikingCoder 9y ago
I do this often: 1) Go to pcpartpicker, pick Storage, sort by Price/GB: https://pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#sort=ppgb&page=1 https://pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#sort=... 3TB (for $57.50) 2) Go to Google, look up number of people in the United States: https://www.google.com/search?q=us+population https://www.google.com/search?q=us+population 325.7 million 3) Divide You can store 9.2 kilobytes for every single person in the United States, for just $57.50. 9.2 kilobytes is actually a pretty decent amount of data. For comparison, this is Chapter 40 of Pride and Prejudice, at 9kb: http://www.kellynch.com/e-texts/Pride%20and%20Prejudice/Pride%20and%20Prejudice,%20Chapter%2039.txt http://www.kellynch.com/e-texts/Pride%20and%20Prejudice/Prid... The complete works of Shakespeare fit into 5 MB. To store the equivalent of the complete works of Shakespeare for every person in the US would cost: $31,222.50. Heck, I know small businesses that could afford that, let alone the mega-corp media conglomerates. How much data does Verizon store about me? Comcast? Target? Visa?
- askafriend 9y ago
  This line of thinking is extremely reductionist to the point of uselessness. Anyone who's built products at scale can tell you this. There are thousands of things you aren't thinking of.
  - uryga 9y ago
    Why is it useless?
    - askafriend 9y ago
      Say you buy those drives. What's the cost to implement GDPR? What about storing high definition photos? What does availability across regions look like? What does latency look like? What does backup look like? Do you see where I'm going with this?
      - lainga 9y ago
        Say I am an unhinged individual with $120 and I buy that one (1) drive. >What's the cost to implement GDPR?: I laugh and continue to compile a list of where all crossbow enthusiasts with type-O blood have been in the past 6 months. >What about storing high definition photos?: Facebook can handle that. All I want to do is store a 9KB index file on every US citizen, because I believe I am a vampiric J. Edgar Hoover. >What does availability across regions look like?: The drive sits in my mom's basement as I continue to scrape crossbowforums.org against the Red Cross donors list. >What does latency look like?: I guess however well a 50-centimeter SATA cable does. >What does backup look like?: I buy two drives at once for $115 and get free shipping on the second one.
AzzieElbab 9y ago
Your credit data had been stolen, your health data had been stolen, your government records every word you say online, your "smart" fridge is ddosing wikipedia, you worry about being unreachable by silly spam that may or may not effect your voting for one of the two equally horrible politicians
perseusprime11 9y ago
Did anyone look at the pictures of him at the hearing? I am now certain zuckerberg sent a robot instead of him. You can tell by the lifeless emotiona.

327 points by uptown 9y ago

Chrome web store should be locking things down as well. But that's a bit more difficult.

It's good to see Zuckerberg taking swift and decisive action to try and plug the leaks related to Cambridge Analytica. I think that it is sorely needed, and it is probably too late for many on the Facebook platform. However, what's more interesting to me is the disturbing details about the spread of political advertising on Facebook. It seems that elections were much more heavily data mined and influenced than before. A nation state level attack on elections seems plausible and highly achievable, and was done not just in the US but France, Germany and elsewhere. I will be closely following whether the radical transparency measures proposed will have much impact given the upcoming elections in much more corruption prone countries such as India.

dfsegoat 9y ago
I am not an infosec expert, merely an end-user: From my perspective, I would not call this action "swift and decisive", quite honestly: If he were making quick and decisive actions in the interest of privacy, then he would apply the GDPR features to every user.
- gabipurcaru 9y ago
  https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/04/zuckerberg-gdpr/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/04/zuckerberg-gdpr/
  - dfsegoat 9y ago
    Thanks - was not aware that he had replied. This concerns me though, because I think that FB has shown us, that any wiggle room they have - they will take it: "Facebook says that some laws elsewhere in the world conflict with GDPR’s new laws for Europe so they can’t be extended everywhere, and that the interface for some of these tools may vary" But in all fairness: I am running into this very same issue RE: GDPR in light of some other compliance laws from the EU and US.
ForHackernews 9y ago
You can't plug a data leak. It's too late. The data is out there in the wild and will be forever: https://slate.com/technology/2018/04/facebook-cant-clean-up-its-data-spill.html https://slate.com/technology/2018/04/facebook-cant-clean-up-...
- m-p-3 9y ago
  Sure, but there's no reason to let the ship sink if it's not submerged already.
- atwebb 9y ago
  It does become less relevant, moreso when the existence of the data itself is a major story.
  - ForHackernews 9y ago
    I guess it depends what use somebody can make of the data itself. Presumably human psychology doesn't change very much, so you could still use it to train and validate models years or decades later.
    - rhizome 9y ago
      Not to mention using it to support a status quo that prevents the information from aging so quickly, maintaining its relevance. News about rocks will remain popular if the spear is never invented.
throwaway2048 9y ago
swift in response to public reaction maybe, they were aware of these issues years ago, they only started acting on them when they got air time. That is in no way a responsible stance.

sorenn111 9y ago

I am fascinated to watch his testimony. Regardless of what is submitted, it will be highly interesting to see him deliver these words and stand up to questioning.

maxerickson 9y ago
This written testimony is offered in addition to his in person testimony, he won't repeat it. That way Congress has both the information "for the record" and the opportunity to grandstand.

corrigible 9y ago

"From now on, every advertiser who wants to run political or issue ads will need to be authorized. To get authorized, advertisers will need to confirm their identity and location. Any advertiser who doesn’t pass will be prohibited from running political or issue ads. We will also label them and advertisers will have to show you who paid for them. We’re starting this in the U.S. and expanding to the rest of the world in the coming months." Interesting!

nugi 9y ago
Another gatekeeper in the political arena. Just what we don't need. This is not a good outcome.
- atwebb 9y ago
  It could keep out some honest actors but transparency in funding is important.
  - gt_ 9y ago
    The sane and obvious solution is to cap campaign spending. Anything else, willful or not, is either corruption or mere oligarchy.
  - smsm42 9y ago
    No it is not. You don't have the right to invade privacy of groups of people no more than I have the right to invade your privacy and inspect your bank accounts. Maybe you're Russian troll? Maybe you are paid by Putin? Would like to make your bank accounts public for everybody to ensure it is not the case? Probably not. Then why should other people who make political statements?
- corrigible 9y ago
  This is something that should have been a day-1 feature, IMHO
- gdulli 9y ago
  We've now seen what happens without gatekeepers and there's no way we can call that "better."

vthallam 9y ago

>We also learned about a disinformation campaign run by the Internet Research Agency (IRA) — a Russian agency that has repeatedly acted deceptively and tried to manipulate people in the US, Europe, and Russia. We found about 470 accounts and pages linked to the IRA, which generated around 80,000 Facebook posts over about a two-year period. Our best estimate is that approximately 126 million people may have been served content from a Facebook Page associated with the IRA at some point during that period. On Instagram, where our data on reach is not as complete, we found about 120,000 pieces of content, and estimate that an additional 20 million people were likely served it. This part seems to be rather interesting. The number of people who viewed the content created by IRA in general is appalling.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago
Does view mean seeing in your feed or actually clicking an outbound link?
dfxm12 9y ago
Is this appalling? What's appalling to me is the number of people who can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality. I'm sure governments are going to come down hard on Zuck for "allowing disinformation to be spread", but won't give a second thought about cutting education budgets. It's hard for politicians to make it illegal to lie or to run a platform where people might lie. People are always going to lie and try to deceive others. It would be more effective for these politicians to actually educate their constituents. This is just one of many benefits of having educated citizenry...
- vthallam 9y ago
  Educating people definitely helps. But even the most educated one's could give into impulse and get triggered to false propaganda.
- wmeredith 9y ago
  > I'm sure governments are going to come down hard on Zuck for "allowing disinformation to be spread", but won't give a second thought about cutting education budgets. Prevention is always cheaper than treatment, but much harder to get people to understand the value of because the threat isn't in front of them.

fortythirteen 9y ago

> "Facebook is an idealistic and optimistic company. For most of our existence, we focused on all the good that connecting people can bring." - Mark Zuckerberg 2018 > "They trust me — dumb fucks." - Mark Zuckerberg 2010 Interesting placement of "most"

ihuman 9y ago
That second quote is from 2004, although it wasn't reported until 2010
- cheez 9y ago
  Plus, he was a kid.
bart42_0 9y ago
and FB zucks, always did and always will

jasode 9y ago

>But it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. That goes for [...] data privacy. We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I was going through some old news archives about Facebook and their privacy policies. I came across the dire EFF warning in December 2009 [1]: >"The issue of privacy when it comes to Facebook apps such as those innocent-seeming quizzes has been well-publicized by our friends at the ACLU and was a major concern for the Canadian Privacy Commissioner, which concluded that app developers had far too much freedom to suck up users' personal data, including the data of Facebook users who don't use apps at all. Facebook previously offered a solution to users who didn't want their info being shared with app developers over the Facebook Platform every time a one of their friends added an app: users could select a privacy option telling Facebook to "not share any information about me through the Facebook API."" Well, it turns out EFF was correct and accurately predicted the unethical scenario of Cambridge Analytica siphoning data from Facebook users who didn't even take their quiz. The bullet points of "fixes" that MZ outlined don't really address the fundamental problem. Facebook's "data privacy" problem is not fixable if they have to ultimately run valuable ads against that data. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/facebooks-new-privacy-changes-good-bad-and-ugly https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/facebooks-new-privacy-...

iooi 9y ago
Hopefully the EFF is getting a big surge in donations from this latest outcry over privacy. You can donate here: https://supporters.eff.org/donate https://supporters.eff.org/donate
- jakebasile 9y ago
  Worth noting that some payroll systems allow you to set up automatic donations to charities like the EFF. I know Gusto did. edit: looks like some payroll systems may take a cut. Be wary, or set up recurring donation directly.
  - EpiphanyMachine 9y ago

llbowers 9y ago

Surprised at Zuckerberg/Facebook's response to all this. The cynical part of me says it's only due to the negative PR all this has generated but I hope this works out for better privacy for all those who continue to use Facebook. I wonder if other tech companies will be called on to testify, Dorsey, Page, et. al.

fortythirteen 9y ago

> "It’s not enough to just connect people, we have to make sure those connections are positive. It’s not enough to just give people a voice, we have to make sure people aren’t using it to hurt people or spread misinformation." And be sure to report your fellow citizens for reeducation when they spread "negativity" and "misinformed opinions".

bo1024 9y ago

Interesting. He really puts Facebook into the role of policing its users (and advertisers). He describes taking down thousands of fake accounts, investigating whether certain pages have connections with IRA and taking them down if so. This will probably sound reassuring to legislators, but it pretty much permanently accepts the burden of responsibility for misinformation on the site. It sounds likely to force Facebook into a costly permanent arms race against every malicious political actor in the world. I wonder how regular users will get caught in the crossfire. Not that I feel bad for FB here -- they make tons of money because they have the most captive attention of any entity in the world. Attention is valuable because it allows platforms to influence people's behavior toward certain actions. Advertisers are not the only ones who realize this, and FB has to take responsibility for all forms of influence on its site, not just commercial ads.

btilly 9y ago
Actually under section 310, he doesn't bear liability for failures. However SESTA and FOSTA have eroded that for "sex trafficking". I expect more exceptions to sneak in.

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago

Seems weak, I hope some of the representatives have read Tim Wu. For example when Zuck says: >My top priority has always been our social mission of connecting people, building community and bringing the world closer together. Advertisers and developers will never take priority over that as long as I’m running Facebook. This is either misleading or a lie. Facebook is a corporation, what Zuckerberg wants to do as an individual isn't even relevant, what's relevant is what the corporation "wants" to do to increase profit. So far that has been pursuing connecting people and building communities and then taking that information and selling it to developers and advertisers. The phrasing places community and monetization in competition but Facebook's model isn't of competition between those it's model is a monetization of community. So the testimony never speaks to the fundamental problem of having advertisers as any level of priority here. Also to say that Cambridge Analytica abused the system sidesteps the issue of whether it was in Facebook's interest to allow this data to be collected and then misused. Cambridge Analytica purchased data which made Facebook the most attractive advertising platform for them because of the targeting they could do. That is good for Facebook's bottom line. They also don't address the total amount of information that may be out there, floating through advertisers outside of Facebook's control right now. Despite new restrictions how much about me is already out there? That's what I want to know. Overall, it's basically what I expected but I really hope there are a few representatives who can set aside the specifics of this one incident and attack the wider notion of Facebook's purpose.

jaibot 9y ago
> Facebook is a corporation, what Zuckerberg wants to do as an individual isn't even relevant Zuck is a majority shareholder, so what he wants to do as an individual can actually be fairly significant here.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  Fair. Perhaps the most salient criticism is that Zuckerberg's top priority is connecting people because his company is designed to use those connections in order to sell lots of advertising.

fortythirteen 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. Anyone who was in a FB sales meeting when OpenGraph was launched knows this is a very calculated understatement. I've heard them explicitly sell the information of an entire user's friends list to anyone willing to pay.

ebikelaw 9y ago
This is really the key thing to understand why FB is so much more evil than the other companies it is often lumped together with. They don't just use your data to target ads. They will literally just sell your data to anyone who waves a dollar under their noses.
manjushri 9y ago
>I've heard them explicitly sell the information of an entire user's friends list to anyone willing to pay. So does FB actually sell data to third parties? I've seen many on here say that is not the case.
squeaky-clean 9y ago
> I've heard them explicitly sell the information of an entire user's friends list to anyone willing to pay. Source? If this were true and they'd do it for anyone willing to pay, where can I give them money for user's personal data?
- methodover 9y ago
  There is no source, because it's bullshit. FB has never sold access to their API. Access to the friend's data permission, like all other permissions, was free.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

"What We Are Doing" under the "Cambridge Analytica" section is crap, i.e. lightweight or hypothetical (e.g. "we’re in the process of investigating every app that had access to a large amount of information before we locked down our platform in 2014"). By contrast, the same section under "Russian Election Interference" is well thought out. There's some hand-wavy stuff (e.g. "in the U.S. Senate Alabama special election last year, we deployed new AI tools that proactively detected and removed fake accounts from Macedonia trying to spread misinformation"). But requiring "every advertiser who wants to run political or issue ads...confirm their identity and location" and mandating the ads "show...who paid for them" is meaningful. That they're "starting this in the U.S. and expanding to the rest of the world in the coming months" is more encouraging. I'm also genuinely optimistic about their "tool that lets anyone see all of the ads a page is running" and "searchable archive of past political ads." With Cambridge Analytica, a core component of Facebook's advertising business model is threatened. Hence the inaction. With Russia, Facebook and political advertisers' interests are aligned. Hence, action.

matchagaucho 9y ago
Validation of genuine political identity is a logical next step. One that will require an Army of human curation (not an AI problem). However, I wonder about the reliability of "PO Box" as proxy to political identity. Or how FB is going to stop Mom-and-Pop retail pages from advertising false political messages ("2-for-1 sale! All proceeds go towards stopping the Trump-ordered seal beatings in Antartica!")
- abakker 9y ago
  Or, just how much political speech is really influenced by belief? There are many people that genuinely believe stuff which is factually inaccurate (homeopathy, e.g.). If they post about the FDA being run by "big pharma" what do you do?
  - shkkmo 9y ago
    While belief in homeopathy is clearly factually inaccurate, I'm pretty sure the claim `FDA is run by "big pharma"` is at least partly accurate due to regulatory capture.

sandov 9y ago

As shitty as Facebook is as a service, I don't think they should have any legal obligation to 'protect' users from their own neglect. I don't use facebook, because I think a free-software based & decentralized social network would be the right way to do social networking, but if the rest of the people want to give away their info, fine by me. If someone I know wants to give my info to fb, it's fine too, but he/she loses part of my trust. I value the freedom to do whatever you want with the data you have more than the convenience of the government protecting whatever data I foolishly gave away to someone.

platz 9y ago
You make it sound like the users aren't even on the Facebook site. Remember that the 'users' are using a Facebook service, a consumer product provided by Facebook. They are responsible for what the product is, and does, regardless of what the users think.
- throwafk81 9y ago
  No, in this case they are not.
- sixothree 9y ago
  Do we need to keep reminding people that even if you never created an account, you have a facebook user associated with your real life identity.
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> I don't think they should have any legal obligation to 'protect' users They do have legal obligations if they're going to sell political ads.
EnFinlay 9y ago
This sounds awfully close to the "why would I care about surveillance, I'm not doing anything wrong" argument. The reason it's important for Facebook to be legally required to protect user data is because you have no choice in being part of that data. You, as an individual, can do quite a bit, but you can't prevent people from sharing their contact books, pictures, and location. With the ubiquity of Facebook, everyone has some sort of footprint on the site. If the data is valuable and worthy of protection, and you have no ability to provide that protection, then it is reasonable for protection to be required from the layer that is removing the individual's agency.

nerdponx 9y ago

Did the EFF comment at all on the Obama campaign use of social media data?

johnpowell 9y ago
It is possible for two things to be wrong at the same time.
DanielBMarkham 9y ago
I'm not sure of the relevance of your comment. It sounds like you're trying to take a total privacy/anonymity clusterfuck and turn it into some weird kind of Reps-vs-Dems crap. The EFF, libertarians, and other privacy advocates have been warning about this utter disaster for many years. Everybody laughed about it. In fact, they all laughed at anybody who was brave enough to bring it up. There are domestic political concerns here. It wasn't until both major political parties in the U.S. got good and stepped on that anybody seemed to really take the matter seriously. It remains to be seen if any of this concern will still be around 2 weeks from now. My money says there will be a lot of heat and smoke, but no fire. At the end of the day, some Congressperson will come up with yet another Orwellian-named bill, probably the "Privacy Overarching Overall Personhood" bill, that will promise to fix everything and regulate social media. Through regulatory capture FB will bitch and moan to make appropriate gestures of servitude, then things will continue on just like they have been. Facebook isn't going anywhere. (And the problem isn't going away anytime soon.)
- zaksoup 9y ago
  I don't think the comment you're responding to was made in good faith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
  - DanielBMarkham 9y ago
    Maybe so. I try to assume positive intent. Many times I end up looking like somebody who can't take a joke, but it's extremely difficult to sort out nuance by reading a brief sentence or two.

bitmadness 9y ago

I'm confused - did he read all that as his opening remarks? Seems pretty wrong, but it's written that way...

nothis 9y ago

What exactly is this, and why is it dated 2 days from now?

TranceMan 9y ago
Good catch - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43698739 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43698739 Edit - Explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16795723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16795723

leviathan 9y ago

Why is the date set in the future? April 11?

throwaway2048 9y ago
This is the notes he will be presenting.
- warent 9y ago
  This really confused me, thanks for the clarification
rhizome 9y ago
That's when he actually testifies.
- leviathan 9y ago
  Oh I thought these are minutes of something that actually happened.
  - tomschlick 9y ago
    Usually people submit their written testimony to the committee members ahead of time so members can study/fact check the information and respond with appropriate questions.

shamino 9y ago

Before anyone says Facebook's testimony is just fluff, we're a business that relies on Facebook's API to monitor activity, and we've been severely impacted. We no longer can get data as before - it's having a large effect on our business. So we definitely feel that action is being taken.

lostlogin 9y ago
Would you be able to explain what you used to do and have access to and what has changed? It would be interesting to hear an advertisers view.
gaius 9y ago
We no longer can get data as before - it's having a large effect on our business What sort of honest business depends on the Facebook API?
- themgt 9y ago
  We were scraping data for a client for public events like music shows, business special days/etc, and that's been severely shut down and apparently on hold to approve any new apps. Again this is just getting like the date/location/ticket URL for a public page FB event that presumably businesses want people to know about - no private data about attendees/humans at all.
  - gaius 9y ago
    That seems like a legitimate use case. (it was a genuine question!)
musage 9y ago
> Before anyone says Facebook's testimony is just fluff Your reply addresses those (imaginary) people who might say that "FB changed nothing at all". Action being taken doesn't mean that Mark Zuckerberg's testimony isn't full of it.

_o_ 9y ago

Zuckerberg will tell to the whole world they are sorry and they will do everything in their power that CA will not happen again and people will forget. But the issue is not in CA abusing the access. The issue is they are having the data. And they can and they are abusing them in same manner as CA did. CA is just a good example how much power you have with the information the FB has. And they have more. FB is public enemy #1 on global scale and they should be shot down. They're corrupting the whole society and this has to stop wherever you like them or not.

stirner 9y ago

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks

sctb 9y ago
Please, enough with this. The tedium is overwhelming.

thedrake 9y ago

Here is the personality insight from IBM Watson on the text https://www.dropbox.com/s/j4ftupd4jd612ma/Screen%20Shot%202018-04-09%20at%202.18.00%20PM.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/j4ftupd4jd612ma/Screen%20Shot%2020... (using https://personality-insights-demo.ng.bluemix.net/ https://personality-insights-demo.ng.bluemix.net/)

rspeer 9y ago
It saddens me that IBM is setting the expectations so low for natural language processing that they're basically reducing it to a Myers-Briggs test.

notananthem 9y ago

All this says is they don't have control over their network and they're just bleeding out data everywhere. The primary takeaway especially with regard to the election tampering is that this (Facebook) is a huge, free, open tool to abuse and control elections.

Mc_Big_G 9y ago

"This is me telling you what you want to hear, but I don't mean a word of it and I will continue to get away with whatever I can until I get caught at which time I will tell you what you want to hear again."

cycrutchfield 9y ago
“Dumb fucks”

wiz21c 9y ago

I stopped reading at that paragraph. That Zuckerberg is seriously out of its league. >> It’s not enough to just connect people, we have to make sure those connections are positive. Does he really think he can define what "positive" means with a platform hosting hundred of millions of communications ? There is no positive, there's human nature. Regulating that by FB itself won't work but worse, it will be a tyranny. The gated wall of FB will mean gated psychology, sociology, etc. FB could be great if it was run by people who think about people, not shareholders...

godgod 9y ago

LORE is not to be trusted.

joshuaheard 9y ago

I am not greatly concerned with Facebook's privacy policy. People voluntarily give up their personal information in order to use this free service. I am more concerned about his identification of "fake news" and "hate speech" as issues without any clarification. These are both subjective descriptions with the potential for damaging abuse, which we are already seeing with the banning of Diamonds and Silk from Facebook. In my opinion, Facebook, Google, and other social media platforms should be required to be content neutral and its users given first amendment protection (with its concomitant limits). This would require federal legislation.

tripplethrendo 9y ago
I get a chill down my spine any time someone uses the phrase "hate speech". Who gets to decide what qualifies? The first amendment must be protected at all costs.
- ThrustVectoring 9y ago
  There's no good stopping point. Britain recently convicted a comedian for putting up a youtube video where he trained a dog to raise his paw (like a Nazi salute) when he said "gas the Jews". Poor taste? Yes. Crime? Shouldn't be one.
- 80386 9y ago
  Whoever's exploiting the network effects decides what qualifies, and the First Amendment doesn't apply to them. It's heartening that OStatus (GNU Social, Mastodon, Pleroma, etc.) are getting some uptake, but existing federated networks are even more poorly equipped to compete with Facebook than with Twitter and Tumblr. The nice thing about Facebook is its privacy settings -- I can, say, post about going to Pride and make sure no one in my family sees it. The problem is, Facebook could set up its rules so that campaign messaging for candidates they dislike just happens to violate them, and campaign messaging for candidates they like just happens not to. There's a lot of potential for abuse of power here. It seems like a lot of people aren't worried about that, because they figure the targets of the current uses of this power really need to be suppressed. But there's no reason this power can't be directed elsewhere. I bet there are people who thought it was OK to fire us for being gay who are now pretty mad that people can be fired for donating to Prop 8.

VikingCoder 9y ago

I do this often: 1) Go to pcpartpicker, pick Storage, sort by Price/GB: https://pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#sort=ppgb&page=1 https://pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#sort=... 3TB (for $57.50) 2) Go to Google, look up number of people in the United States: https://www.google.com/search?q=us+population https://www.google.com/search?q=us+population 325.7 million 3) Divide You can store 9.2 kilobytes for every single person in the United States, for just $57.50. 9.2 kilobytes is actually a pretty decent amount of data. For comparison, this is Chapter 40 of Pride and Prejudice, at 9kb: http://www.kellynch.com/e-texts/Pride%20and%20Prejudice/Pride%20and%20Prejudice,%20Chapter%2039.txt http://www.kellynch.com/e-texts/Pride%20and%20Prejudice/Prid... The complete works of Shakespeare fit into 5 MB. To store the equivalent of the complete works of Shakespeare for every person in the US would cost: $31,222.50. Heck, I know small businesses that could afford that, let alone the mega-corp media conglomerates. How much data does Verizon store about me? Comcast? Target? Visa?

askafriend 9y ago
This line of thinking is extremely reductionist to the point of uselessness. Anyone who's built products at scale can tell you this. There are thousands of things you aren't thinking of.
- uryga 9y ago
  Why is it useless?
  - askafriend 9y ago
    Say you buy those drives. What's the cost to implement GDPR? What about storing high definition photos? What does availability across regions look like? What does latency look like? What does backup look like? Do you see where I'm going with this?
    - lainga 9y ago
      Say I am an unhinged individual with $120 and I buy that one (1) drive. >What's the cost to implement GDPR?: I laugh and continue to compile a list of where all crossbow enthusiasts with type-O blood have been in the past 6 months. >What about storing high definition photos?: Facebook can handle that. All I want to do is store a 9KB index file on every US citizen, because I believe I am a vampiric J. Edgar Hoover. >What does availability across regions look like?: The drive sits in my mom's basement as I continue to scrape crossbowforums.org against the Red Cross donors list. >What does latency look like?: I guess however well a 50-centimeter SATA cable does. >What does backup look like?: I buy two drives at once for $115 and get free shipping on the second one.

AzzieElbab 9y ago

Your credit data had been stolen, your health data had been stolen, your government records every word you say online, your "smart" fridge is ddosing wikipedia, you worry about being unreachable by silly spam that may or may not effect your voting for one of the two equally horrible politicians

perseusprime11 9y ago

Did anyone look at the pictures of him at the hearing? I am now certain zuckerberg sent a robot instead of him. You can tell by the lifeless emotiona.