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Why We Disagree with The New York Times

• jacobsheehy 8y ago
  It reads like a long defensive argument, "how else did you expect us to make huge sums of money"? It is exactly as tone-deaf and legalese as you would expect. There is no new information here; Facebook says legal contracts actually protect your data so it can't go anywhere, "just trust us", etc. > These partners signed agreements that prevented people’s Facebook information from being used for any other purpose than to recreate Facebook-like experiences. That sentence does not make any sense. Signed agreements do not prevent your information from being used in other ways. That's insane, literally. > Contrary to claims by the New York Times, friends’ information, like photos, was only accessible on devices when people made a decision to share their information with those friends. In the past, Facebook Legal has stated that once a Facebook user has signed up, they consent to having psychological experiments performed on them with no further notice or direct consent. Facebook has acted on this and intentionally made hundreds of thousands of people fall into a depression, just to see if they could, and then they bragged about it. The sentence quoted above actually means "friends’ information, like photos, was only accessible [whenever and however we wanted to]" as Facebook considers those people to have already "made a decision to share their information with those friends" when they signed up.
  • TAForObvReasons 8y ago
    ... and thus begins a new series of regulations designed to pierce the plausible deniability of "terms of service". People complain about GDPR and other regulations, but they are created to close loopholes that were abused by companies like Facebook.
    • frockington 8y ago
      There's probably nothing FB wants more than to be regulated into a monopoly
      • jessaustin 8y ago
        So long as we don't have to log onto to FB to file our taxes or something, how much harm can the regulator really inflict on the general public? Assume it ends up being a regulator that's really talented at harming the general public, like FCC...
        • cjhopman 8y ago
          > how much harm can the regulator really inflict on the general public? They can make regulations on social networks that are infeasible to comply with for any company not making 10s of billions of dollars a year, effectively cementing facebook as the only legal social network. Whether you consider that a harm or not is up to you.
          • s73v3r_ 8y ago
            I think that's an insane stretch of what's really happening.
            • cjhopman 8y ago
              Sure. It was a reply to a (dismissive) question asking what's the worst a regulator could do... it wasn't necessarily meant to be a reflection of what's really happening.
              • jessaustin 8y ago
                The harm of (captured-)regulated monopolies is real, but we ought to save this argument for important targets like the Daughters Bell. I offered an admittedly far-fetched example of a possible harm from regulating FB, in the hopes that you could come up with a more plausible one. No such luck!
    • atomic77 8y ago
      It seems like we're seeing how scalable the mantra of "ask for forgiveness, not permission" really is. Not Facebook scale, apparently.
      • mcguire 8y ago
        Been fine so far.
    • JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > People complain about GDPR and other regulations, but they are created to close loopholes that were abused by companies like Facebook I complain about GDPR because it buttressed Facebook's position [1]. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-europes-new-privacy-rules-favor-google-and-facebook-1524536324 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-europes-new-privacy-rules-f...
  • _jal 8y ago
    > from being used for any other purpose than to recreate Facebook-like experiences > they consent to having psychological experiments performed on them with no further notice Sounds like the third parties delivered! The difference between Facebook and a casino is more about the physical limitations of their storefronts than business models.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  • patja 8y ago
    Similar to how they "prevented" apps from abusing their API through policy, while simultaneously doing nothing with their construction of the API to prevent apps from breaking the policy. Apps are prohibited from filling in content that (by policy) must come only from the user, but oh we're going to give you all the tools and capabilities required to march right on ahead and do what we agreed you wouldn't do. Then proceed to inconsistently and incompletely enforce policy only when complaints are registered.
    • JorgeGT 8y ago
      Regulations forbid us from letting you access the filing cabinet but I can tell you, all of us will be out having a beer between 6 and 8 PM. Oh, and the key is under the flowerpot. Wink wink.
      • albertgoeswoof 8y ago
        But that analogy is letting someone access the filing cabinet, and not taking reasonable precautions not to. Which would be a direct violation. Which may or may not be the case here.
        • musage 8y ago
          The claim is that it is the case here, as in > "prevented" apps from abusing their API through policy, while simultaneously doing nothing with their construction of the API to prevent apps from breaking the policy
      • DonHopkins 8y ago
        “But the terms of service were on display...” “On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.” “That’s the display department.” “With a flashlight.” “Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.” “So had the stairs.” “But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?” “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'.”
  • knodi 8y ago
    Sadly what FB is doing is using contracts to defer the blame in-case of legal action. Shitty but standard practice.
  • dominotw 8y ago
    > Signed agreements do not prevent your information from being used in other ways. Why is this, though? How is it different from any other legal agreements?
    • JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > How is it different from any other legal agreements? Suppose I tell you a secret. You promise only to share it with others who will keep it a secret. You share my secret with Bob. Bob promises he won't share my secret. Bob shares my secret. You broke your promise. You tried not to break it. But break it you did.
      • oprah2018 8y ago
        None of this changes the fact that I want Likes on my vacation photos, kid photos, and pics of my food, all of which are of better quality than yours.
        • oprah2018 8y ago
          This was a satire by the way
      • dominotw 8y ago
        > You broke your promise. Then you face the legal consequences for doing so. Thats what prevents people from breaking them in first place. Unless you are arguing that all legal contracts are useless because they can be broken. I am not asking about the logistics of leaking. Yes ofcourse its physically possible, I am asking why the consequences of breaking a contract don't matter in this specific case.
        • Slartie 8y ago
          Contracts are not "useless", but they are also not "preventing" someone from doing something just because they impose a penalty. If you want to see proof: visit a court! Contracts motivate you to adhere to some previously-agreed-upon behavior, and the degree to which they motivate you depends on how much the penalty actually penalizes you. In the case of large corporations, seemingly big penalties are often actually negligible in comparison, with the resulting motivation to adhere to the contract being negligible as well. That is one important reason why it is deliberately misleading to use the word "preventing" in the context in which Facebook uses it here. The other one is simply that it's factually wrong, even regardless of the size of the penalty.
  • _red 8y ago
    >Signed agreements do not prevent your information from being used in other ways. That's insane, literally. The real insanity is with the users. FB did the most obvious thing. The user-base somehow magically thought they were providing all those free services because they were nice guys. It was obvious to anyone since the beginning that FB was a clearinghouse for private data trading. How else could the model remotely work?
    • pas 8y ago
      You target audiences (segments), and FB gets ad revenue. The problem is that via apps you get the user info directly. And their friends' info too. That's how Tinder can show how many mutual friends you and the profile you're looking at have. That sounds nice, but as the data left FB's servers, there's no way that users can control what happens with it.
    • asciimo 8y ago
      Obvious to some. When consumers receive a valuable service or product for free, with no obvious strings attached, they consume it. I don't think most people would preoccupy themselves with the provider or manufacturer's business model. You are savvy, and that's good. But others deserve consideration and protection.
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      • CaptainZapp 8y ago
        It's rather simple: If something's too good to be true it's practically always neither good nor true.
    • untog 8y ago
      > It was obvious to anyone since the beginning that FB was a clearinghouse for private data trading. I tire of this argument that users should obviously know they are trading their personal information in return for access to a service. They don't know this. It's obvious in a conversation with any (even lightly) tech-illiterate person that nothing about how the modern internet economy works is obvious. Think back to the emergence of the web as a truly popular medium. There was no Google Analytics, no FB tracking buttons that follow you around on every web site you visit (that one is particularly egregious - FB users are tracked even when they aren't on facebook.com, and we expect users to just know this?), just advertisers buying a banner ad slot from the owner of a web site. Back then social networking was, what, AIM? That was free and they didn't harvest user info for it. The change has been gradual, and the idea that users should have kept up with every development that led us to where we are today is preposterous. When this has happened in the past the answer has been clear: knowledgable people come together to pass laws that benefit individual citizens who have neither the knowledge nor time to learn.
  • sideshowb 8y ago
    > Facebook has acted on this and intentionally made hundreds of thousands of people fall into a depression, just to see if they could, and then they bragged about it. That's interesting. Do you have a link to source?
    • jacobsheehy 8y ago
      I was banned from HN some time after I made that post (for something else) and should not be posting any more (sorry mods, I'll stop). This will be my final post. Here's a news article about it (probably). https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/02/facebook-sorry-secret-psychological-experiment-users https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/02/facebook-...
    • kmonsen 8y ago
      https://www.google.com/search?q=facebook+psychological+experiment https://www.google.com/search?q=facebook+psychological+exper...
    • fakescience 8y ago
      Likely referring to this article [1]. However, the claim that they made "hundreds of thousands of people fall into a depression" is pretty exaggerated - FB demonstrated it could influence the mood of users via changes to the algorithm, but the overall effect size was small (Cohen's d = 0.001). I am very critical of FB and this type of research, but don't know if anyone became depressed over the experiment. It's possible, but wasn't demonstrated. [1] http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full
      • RodgerTheGreat 8y ago
        Staging an experiment of this nature without informed consent of the participants is unethical, irrespective of whether the technique proved to be effective.
        • deleted 8y ago
          [deleted]
  • braindongle 8y ago
    > Facebook has acted on this and intentionally made hundreds of thousands of people fall into a depression, just to see if they could, and then they bragged about it. No, they did not. They adjusted the proportion of positive emotional expressions and negative emotional expressions in users' news feeds in order to test for an association between that proportion and emotional expressions in users' posts. There are serious problems with what they did, but "intentionally made hundreds of thousands of people fall into a depression" is late-Slashdot style trolling. http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/24/8788.full.pdf http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/24/8788.full.pdf
    • zzzeek 8y ago
      unethical science does not deserve to be wrapped in its journalistic language in an effort to detach it from the harm it caused, it deserves to be called out for what it actually is, in this case intentional psychological manipulation of people's moods without their knowledge or consent. One does not grasp the true harm caused by unethical experiments by reading only the documented (published or non-published) scientific results. Two extreme examples which I am by no means comparing to that of Facebook, but rather as canonical examples of unethical science, include the Tuskegee experiments and Nazi experimentation. Reading only the published results of these experiments does not convey the horrific harm that actually occurred. The same principle applies to referring towards Facebook's scientific data as an argument that these experiements were not unethical. The scientific results only serve to shroud and conceal the actual activity which occurred in the production of these results. (edited for clarity)
      • smallnamespace 8y ago
        How do you distinguish between unethical science and A/B testing, or even just 'We changed our product, then didn't like the results, and changed it back?'
        • zzzeek 8y ago
          I would assume a core tenet of ethics and deciding if something is unethical is if it has the potential to harm people. Inducing depression to indiscriminate masses is pretty high on the list. It's not valid to compare the emotional impact of Facebook on millions of its addicted users to something like the color of a box of laundry detergent.
  • oconnor663 8y ago
    > Signed agreements do not prevent your information from being used in other ways. That's insane, literally. Yes but just two sentences later in the post... > And our partnership and engineering teams approved the Facebook experiences these companies built. They're saying they inspected these apps. You jumped to "literally insane" so fast there.
    • PunchTornado 8y ago
      Nope, you know that once the data leaves your server it is out of your control. These companies could have fooled fb representatives quite easily if they wanted.
      • cjhopman 8y ago
        If you're not as up in arms about the access that web browsers have to user's facebook data, then I'll assume your response to this issue is just another instance of hn's fb derangement syndrome.
      • Pyxl101 8y ago
        This is not an accurate way to view the situation. Here's the situation. The user has purchased a device (such as a smart phone) from a device manufacturer (such as Apple). The device runs an operating system (iOS) and a whole boatload of software, including telecommunications equipment necessary to operate cellular radios, the higher level OS, then user-installed applications and such. If you don't trust the device manufacturer, then that's the ball game. If you assume that the device manufacturer is untrustworthy, then you should assume that it can steal the user's data just as easily from a web browser (when the user visits facebook.com) as it can from a native application. When the user decides to sign into Facebook (or any website or application) from their device - the manufacturer-supplied device - the user is trusting the manufacturer with their data. Whether the application is delivered through a web browser, or is a so-called 'native' app installed through an app store, doesn't substantially change the trust relationship between Facebook and the manufacturer. If you believe the manufacturer is doing nefarious things, then you should assume the manufacturer will install a spyware web browser that siphons data out of every web page that you visit. Partnering with the device manufacturer to allow them to distribute a Facebook-branded mobile app does not substantially grant them more trust than they would have already.
  • adrianmonk 8y ago
    > Signed agreements do not prevent your information from being used in other ways. Breach of contract opens you up to civil liability. Having this agreement creates disincentives that wouldn't otherwise exist. "Prevent" doesn't mean to make something physically impossible or remove the ability to choose. Police can prevent drunken driving by announcing they will have DUI checkpoints on New Year's Eve. It doesn't make it physically impossible to drink and drive, but if people choose not to because they want to avoid the consequences, some drunk driving has been prevented.
    • kolpa 8y ago
      Who is liable to whom when user A use a free service B based on an ambiguous agreement, and that service makes an ambiguous agreement with another service C, and C does something that is arguable a violation of one of those agreements? How much restitution am I entitled to for an ambiguous violation of an amorphous concept like privacy? And how much is Facebook entitled to from a partner who (might have) violated that agreement, causing non-measurable harm to me?
      • jethro_tell 8y ago
        That's pretty straight and forward, facebook has an obligation to hold up their end of the contract including the partners that license the data. If I have a contract with them, they should be liable for that, if they want to turn around and take it out of the 3rd party's hide with a breach of contract litigation they should do that but it's not the uses responsibility. It's very strange that you'd throw your hands up and say, 'well FACEBOOK didn't do it so you're out of luck.' Facebook did do it by not regulating there third party agreements.
      • sonnyblarney 8y ago
        I worked at an F50 corp that built a special FB app for our platform. I worked on the project itself. This is getting a little conspiratorial: contracts are very real, and though I didn't see ours and was not privy to any special user data we might have received, we are very careful about that kind of stuff and liability is a huge, huge deal. A contract stipulating that data has to be protected in a certain manner is a reasonable protection, depending on the sensitivity of the data.
  • gist 8y ago
    > how else did you expect us to make huge sums of money Your tone is as if to imply that nobody but the company benefits from making 'huge sums of money'. There are employees, vendors (selling goods and services), stockholders (retirees?), governments (taxes) and so on. Why the idea that earning money is somehow not the purpose of a company? It is at the core.
    • s73v3r_ 8y ago
      But none of us care if they make huge sums of money or not. I fail to see why I should accept them being shitty because "they created shareholder value."
  • pkghost 8y ago
    > That's insane, literally. Metaphor is literally dead.
• kerng 8y ago
  This is the same they said about Cambridge Analytica initially... but you can't just blindly trust others (in this case apparently 60 companies got priviliged access). If it's technically possible, then someone will do it. When your data is gone, its gone. How naive is Facebook really?
  • dreamcompiler 8y ago
    They're not naive at all. When it's not in your business interest to manipulate reality, you manipulate perception.
    • nemild 8y ago
      I think it's a more complex picture. I did my own deep dive after years of reflecting on this: Inside the Bubble at Facebook "Management will laud what employees do, show them selective facts that justify their views, and hire/promote those who behave similarly to them. Employees in isolated teams with training in a single function may not realize the broad, unintended effects of their company's work. They'll assume the best of their coworkers that they've developed friendships with from working in the trenches, without inquiring into the larger effects they're having." https://www.nemil.com/tdf/part1-employees.html https://www.nemil.com/tdf/part1-employees.html Would love feedback.
      • assblaster 8y ago
        Sounds like nuclear weapons research in Tennessee during World War 2: only inform employees enough so that they can carry on the work without jeopardizing the mission (building nukes vs building a platform which owns people's information).
        • dsfyu404ed 8y ago
          Telling people "just enough" was more of a security thing than a psychology thing. X vs the Manhattan project isn't really a good test for the ethic of working on X. You don't need to work hard to motivate people to start creating the atomic bomb when the Nazis are doing the same thing and a good chunk of your team fled the Nazis. You don't need to work hard to motivate people to keep working on an atomic bomb when the alternative is a few million people being killed in the invasion of a bunch of islands that the inhabitants have pledged to defend to the death and thus far made good on their promise. The Manhattan project is much less morally ambiguous than recent tech scandals (the words "recent" and "scandal" relative to the general population, people who follow tech have seen this stuff coming a mile away) because the cost of inaction in 1945 was so much higher than today. It's not like anyone was working hard to make Facebook IPO happen because they thought it would slightly reduce the chances of their relatives dying half way around the world.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• supercanuck 8y ago
  It seems they don't really disagree but are simply saying, its not as bad as you think. Is there anything factually incorrect in the New York Times reporting?
  • makomk 8y ago
    It's one of those articles that's technically true-ish so long as you redefine words to mean something very different from what people would expect them to, but is written in a way designed to misinform basically everyone who reads it. For example, when they say "Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends", they mean Facebook let them write software that could be run by their users and give those users access to information their friends had shared. There's nothing technically untrue about this, but it gives a false impression about what information Facebook made available to who. It makes it sound like Facebook gave a big fat chunk of user data to device makers as a bribe to include Facebook on their devices, when in reality we're talking about giving their software the access it needs in order to actually provide access to Facebook in the first place. I've seen a lot of very confused comments here and on Twitter as a result.
    • supercanuck 8y ago
      I think the point is, data goes into those companies and in some cases gets stored on their servers and from there, who knows what happens. Facebook makes it sounds like the user is in control.
    • pishpash 8y ago
      > It makes it sound like Facebook gave a big fat chunk of user data to device makers as a bribe to include Facebook on their devices, when in reality we're talking about giving their software the access it needs in order to actually provide access to Facebook in the first place. These two things are not mutually exclusive. They effectively did both, even if the intention is unclear. You must have forgotten how bundled apps on OEM Windows worked.
• davidw 8y ago
  The fact that you can't read messages (without switching to 'desktop mode') on their mobile web app is such horse shit. Yuck.
  • hackerman12345 8y ago
    That's what the Messenger app is used for.
    • parthdesai 8y ago
      Right, the Messenger app that significantly slows down my phone and decreases it's battery life.
    • andrew_ 8y ago
      Yes, it's a tactic to get you to install that app so they can mine your calls, texts, and contacts.
    • jonknee 8y ago
      Yes, that's part of the horse shit.
    • saudioger 8y ago
      Well no... there's nothing technically stopping them from supporting messages on mobile. This is what they do on mobile: * Lie to you about how many messages you have * Ask you to install an app to see those messages * Upon installing the app, give them permission to mine your data
  • newscracker 8y ago
    Either that or you can go to the basic version at mbasic.facebook.com for an even poorer (though somewhat better in some senses, like having messages integrated) experience.
    • kreddor 8y ago
      Well, it definitely beats having to navigate the desktop version on mobile. Thanks for the link!
• zajd 8y ago
  "Because we're paid to" - FB PR team
• djhworld 8y ago
  > All these partnerships were built on a common interest — the desire for people to be able to use Facebook whatever their device or operating system. Facebooks best interest, not 'common interest'
  • mkirklions 8y ago
    Building on FB is completely different than data-mining FB.
  • methodover 8y ago
    No, the user's interest. Users were logging into these devices, presumably. They wanted to access their Facebook account on them, Facebook and the device manufacturer figured out how to do it. It sounds like everything is working as intended, there.
• newscracker 8y ago
  Security related issues need some time to investigate and to produce a proper report. This post seems like a knee jerk reaction. Actually, while this sounds like more PR fluff in a poor attempt to stem more scrutiny, I'm confident that there will be more reports from other sources providing a stronger case against Facebook's claim on this topic. This post makes it clear that Facebook is clueless if there are any weaknesses or breaches (despite shutting down 22 partnerships).
• bobbyi_settv 8y ago
  I didn't read/ watch the testimony before Congress. Did they flatly claim that "we no longer share private information with third parties"? Because if so, this post seems to confirm that that was a lie, even they give (arguably) good justifications here for why they share private information with some third parties.
• Rjevski 8y ago
  Oh I am so sad, Facebook is “victim” of lies and poor reporting, let me get my tiny violin. Facebook lies every possible time, it’s built into their perverse business model. Even if the article was actually wrong, it’s only fair that they get a taste of their own medicine every once in a while.
• AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
  "We Disagree": the last refuge of a company's defense when they have absolutely nothing else to counter or rebuke their opponent's argument.
• chiefalchemist 8y ago
  Perhaps Zuck isn't as bright as we all think? This reply is far too tech-heavy, and jargon-littered to be taken seriously as a reply to something as mainstream as the NYT. Their PR problems aren't rooted in SV, yet that's who this is targeted to. It doesn't make (good brand) sense.
  • JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > Their PR problems aren't rooted in SV Silicon Valley is the last place I'm consistently hearing full-throated defenses of Facebook. It makes sense to keep one's base in order.
    • chiefalchemist 8y ago
      That might be sure. But it's still not their bigger / biggest PR problem.
      • JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        > * it's still not their bigger / biggest PR problem* It's the only one that could matter to them. Congress flopped when Zuckerberg testified. They are clearly no present threat. And we haven't seen a wave of action from states' attorneys general. We have no evidence users are decamping. And by extension, the advertisers are staying. The only weak point is in (a) recruitment and (b) political support from the tech community. The first can be solved with money. Fortunately, Facebook has pots of that stuff. The second relies on keeping the armies of defenders, who call every Congressional office on their own accord on a strikingly-regular basis, working. For an example of what happens when one loses their base, look at Uber. It went from teflon to pariah virtually overnight.
        • chiefalchemist 8y ago
          > We have no evidence users are decamping. Last I saw (on HN) was teens usage is down. As for Congress...do you trust them not to loop around again? The fact that FB believes SV is all they have to focus on is what created this mess in the first place, yes? Nuff said.
• seanalltogether 8y ago
  The limited responses so far in this thread only reinforce many companies decisions to pull support for public apis. How many years have developers been complaining that twitter and facebook have been restricting access to apis for 3rd parties, but now all of a sudden they're evil for ever offering apis to begin with?
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • vorpalhex 8y ago
    There's nothing wrong with offering a public API. There's everything wrong with offering a secret, non-public API where you give a third party I didn't consent to full access to all of my data. See how that's a bit different? One of them is offering public information (say, stock quotes), publicly. One of them is offering private information (my sexual orientation and date of birth) to tons of third parties I didn't consent to having that information shared with.
    • esrauch 8y ago
      Surely it is only giving blackberry the information if you type in your login credentials on a blackberry right? I don't see how the situation is actually different now: if you run the official Facebook app on your Galaxh phone then Samsung could scrape and exfiltrate the data anytime it wants. It is Samsung's fault if they do it not Facebook's.
      • jakelazaroff 8y ago
        According to the New York Times article [1] the third parties were able to obtain information about you if a friend signs in on their phone, no consent from you required: > Facebook’s view that the device makers are not outsiders lets the partners go even further, The Times found: They can obtain data about a user’s Facebook friends, even those who have denied Facebook permission to share information with any third parties. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/03/technology/facebook-device-partners-users-friends-data.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/03/technology/fa...
• billysielu 8y ago
  Funny they don't like fake news when it's about them.
  • zakk 8y ago
    It seems to me that the NYT allegations are not exactly fake news...
• saudioger 8y ago
  Their argument here is basically like being accused of murder and using "since murder is illegal, we did not murder someone" as a defense.
• dbg31415 8y ago
  In every situation, people from Facebook would probably be better off if they didn’t talk. This article is really just skeezy. Reads like “we were just doing all the stuff you accused us of, but it’s ok because we are huge creeps too.” It’s so cringe-worthy.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • mkirklions 8y ago
    FBs reputation reminds me of AOL....
• blueprint 8y ago
  > It’s hard to remember now but back then there were no app stores. Bunch of nonsense. Of course there were.
  • mike00632 8y ago
    What they should have said was, "Remember when our official app was garbage and you needed to rely on 3rd party apps to have a passable mobile FB experience?"
  • coding123 8y ago
    Yep - I recall that the first iOS version that pre-integrated FB I recall specifically writing an email to a friend of mine that worked at Apple to blast Apple for including it - when there was a perfectly viable option for them to use the app-store. They didn't reply to that email, but we remained friends. That was about 8 years ago.
• miracle2k 8y ago
  The New York Times should be ashamed of itself. Facebook let companies like Apple integrate with their platform. To do so, these companies sent the same sequence of bytes from your mobile phone to the Facebook server, as the Facebook app does, or as any person can do. I can write my own Facebook app today, and there is nothing that Facebook can do about it, except sue me. THAT IS A GOOD THING. LITERALLY FIVE MINUTES AGO THE COMMUNITY WAS FIGHTING IN THE COURTS FOR PACKAGES SENT OVER THE INTERNET TO NOT BE CRIMINALIZED. Remember the whole thing about violating the terms of services of a company which forbids scraping making you a criminal hacker? The only thing Facebook said to Apple is: Let's make a deal, we will not sue you, you put our logo into your phone, also we promise not to break your app. No data was given to anyone! This is literally my iPhone/Samsung/Blackberry running an app that gives ME access to MY Facebook data. It doesn't even go to Blackberry's server! The nerve of people to pretend as if the data ON MY PHONE is someone in the hands of a third party, as if my phone really belongs to the manufacturer. Again, we used to be fighting for the idea that these devices should belong be unlocked, should be under our control. Now you guys pretend that data my phone downloads from Facebook is somehow a violation because I decided to use an app that someone else wrote. There is no possible universe in which that is bad. Think about the ramifications of these new ethics that people suggest here.
  • detaro 8y ago
    The NYT article says that Facebook told them that some partners stored that data on their servers. I note that this Facebook rebuttal does not refute that point in regard to the device partners. (Which could be a possible confusion or misleading quote in the NYT article, conflating all partners with the device integration partners, so I'd like it to be clarified somehow)
    • miracle2k 8y ago
      Sure. I still think that is fair enough, in particular since there are actual contracts involved here. However, as you say, it is not clear at all. If that is the problem, the New York Times should write an article about that, not 5000 words of all kinds of insinuations, with the goal, it would seem, to generate the maximum amount of confusion, least amount of education, and thus the most amount of outrage.
• stealthefocus 8y ago
  The one thing I really miss since leaving fb in March, are the groups. Things like playing in local sports pickup games are easier because everyone has fb so the groups were more active. I now use my wife's account for this, but I really wish another option had some traction, then I could leave fb forever.
  • mkirklions 8y ago
    I dont think there is anything wrong with using FB for things you want. I dont scroll anymore. I check it for events and messages. Thats it. Do that 1-2 times a month, all my facebook needs are met.
    • oprah2018 8y ago
      I don't even read anyone else's posts. I just post pictures of my amazing life. I use it like a diary. Or a time-series multimedia database.
    • 456hdsaq234g 8y ago
      Yes, but by having a facebook account, all their needs (your entire life) are met too. 1-2 times a month to read random junk from your friends for a lifetime of surveillance capitalism. Good trade off, no?
  • mlthoughts2018 8y ago
    Even if a feature like this adds limited value, it's good to think about whether you can just live without it completely in order to leave Facebook. For example, consider how the groups feature was abused to prey on people seeking addiction support -- and how even in the midst of such abuse, Facebook lauded some of the organizations in attempts to improve its reputation by highlighting what good it can do. < https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/21/17370066/facebook-addiction-support-groups-rehab-patient-brokering https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/21/17370066/facebook-addicti... > Basically every feature of Facebook that adds a tiny bit of value to a random person's life is actually just some deeply engineered data-harvesting dark pattern that opens up huge other groups to targeted harm. I see a lot of comments of the spirit, "I would leave Facebook except ..." with some reason like it's the only way to see family photos, it's the only way to participate in online groups, etc. Just delete it and leave. Share photos some other way. Find groups some other way. The population-scale downsides are just so serious and severe in the case of Facebook that people shouldn't be making the choice to stay on the platform anymore based on narrow-scope, small scale upsides that it offers for them in limited settings. The huge, up-front, unlimited scale harms it facilitates are reaching a point where they need to be a daily civic concern for everybody.
• arthurofbabylon 8y ago
  In this FB response, they seem not to disagree with any of what the NYTimes had to say. This is called justification, not disagreement.
• AzzieElbab 8y ago
  Your real data has already been mishandled by anyone from banks to healthcare providers to governments. This mass hysteria about FB is just silly nuisance constantly getting blown out of proportions by turf wars between FB and traditional media Oh and this particular case FB is calling the nyt fake news
  • theyinwhy 8y ago
    With all that inside knowledge you probably should blow the whistle.
    • AzzieElbab 8y ago
      whistle whistle
• zaroth 8y ago
  Facebook’s response seems perfectly reasonable to me. - Obviously in order to integrate FB functionality into a Mobile OS UI requires an API to render the data being displayed. - If your phone has a home screen widget which shows friend data, obviously that friend data came from a Facebook API call. - If you type your Facebook username and password into a settings dialog in order to enable that home screen widget to function, that’s pretty obviously consenting to enable the functionality. - There once was a day when we demanded our social media platforms to provide these “open access” APIs to specifically allow for accessing our own social feeds on our own devices. We trust our user agents to render our private information on our devices. Sometimes we even trust our user agents to leverage network services to improve the on-device performance (i.e. Amazon Silk) If and when user agents exfiltrate our personal data off device for data mining purposes (i.e. Chrome Omnibar) it should be disclosed and opt-in. It sounds like Facebook provided an API to device manufacturers to allow them to deeply integrate social features on device. This has historically been considered a Good Thing. It sounds like they put together a legal agreement that required these device manufacturers to take due care in implementing these features to protect user data. Also seems like historically this is what we would call a Good Thing. When you enter your username and password in order to view your Facebook feed — that’s called a “user agent” and that’s something appreciably different than a third party quiz app sucking in friend feed data. However, Chrome Omnibar aside, user agents are not expected to exfiltrate data in any way, and if that occurred, that would indeed be a story I’d like to read, and my ire in that case most certainly wouldn’t be directed against Facebook.
  • kmonsen 8y ago
    Device manufacturers can also of course trivially bypass any way facebook tries to hide this data from them as well if they really want to. They control the OS and it's implementation, nothing can be hidden if they really badly want to get it.
    • bastawhiz 8y ago
      Your phone manufacturer can also theoretically just watch your phone's display output over VNC if they had that kind of control over your device. If you believe your device's manufacturer is deliberately working to actively steal data from third party apps on your phone, perhaps you should consider a different phone.
• spankalee 8y ago
  I'm no huge Facebook fan - hardly use it these days, but... These apps are just alternative Facebook clients. Don't we _want_ a system where you can use different clients to access your own data? If the problem is not trusting the client, well, that'll be a problem for any such system, even some utopian fully open, distributed and federated social network - until you build an open source client yourself.
  • gengkev 8y ago
    I think the problem is Facebook's lack of transparency here. As a user, suppose I have some information that I've marked as "not available to third-party apps". Then I might be surprised to find out that Blackberry's servers have access to that data via a secret API, even if it is to implement a "Facebook experience".
    • cjhopman 8y ago
      Would you also be surprised to find out that Mozilla (Firefox), Google (Chrome), Samsung (Android Browser), Microsoft, etc. all have access to that data?
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  • pmontra 8y ago
    It seems that FB gave to those clients an API to access more data than the user allowed. The Blackberry used by the Times got data about the friends of the journalist even if those friends didn't consent to that. One thing is allowing the official FB client to see those data (FB has those data anyway), another thing is to let third parties see them and possibly store them on their servers and not only on our devices. This is different from email and email clients. First, the expectations are different: if I send you an email I expect that you can forward it to your friends or anybody else unless I explicitly ask you not to. Second, local clients don't send mail to their authors, same for address books. Third, we know that Google and others can see most of our mails anyway, because most people use only webmail and messages are stored on the servers of those companies. Finally, FB didn't tell us about this API and what it can do. It's this secrecy that's hurting them IMHO. Sure, I concede that they couldn't foresee the current climate around their company when they made the choice not to advertise it, or we wouldn't be in this situation now. But we're here also because of chain of bad choices from their side. My suggestion for a social network of the future is to have a single API, used also by the official client. The servers must not trust any client, which is the usual thing we do in web development, and give all them the same level of access. It's up to the user to decide if they want to use the official client or one of any third party.
• mlb_hn 8y ago
  Facebook's making the distinction between allowing a device to offer Facebook-like services (which require Facebook functionality) and third-party apps that suck up all your friend data. On the one hand, Facebook's got a point, that if you want to be able to use Facebook on a device without going through the Facebook app or the website the device needs to be able to authenticate onto some sort of API. On the other hand, the NYT article makes the claim that the makers of the devices got access to the Facebook data, writing "Facebook acknowledged that some partners did store users’ data — including friends’ data — on their own servers". However, Facebook never followed up on that in their article, just pointing out that if you are logged into Facebook on a BlackBerry that the BlackBerry can make the same requests you could if you were logged into Facebook through the web browser. The question that matters which neither side addresses well is how much of that data makes it to device maker servers (for a while, the NYT homepage was claiming 'dozens' but they removed that and it doesn't appear to be substantiated in the article). There are related worries with the device having access to the Facebook data itself, but at that point you need to start worrying about malicious activity by device makers in general. E.g. will my phone start sending my web history back to its maker as well? my bank account numbers?
  • arcbyte 8y ago
    The fact that "data made it to device maker servers" is a stupid, meaningless point. Of course it hit their servers. And it should hit their servers. It's idiots who don't know what they're writing about causing hysteria among idiot's who don't know what they're reading in order to sell advertising dollars. And the whole time they're pointing at facebook as the corrupt ones.
    • mlb_hn 8y ago
      I'm not sure it's meaningless. It seems to me that there is a distinction between [device manufacturer X is building their own copy of Facebook's graph by acquiring friend data] vs [device manufacturer X allows a user to login to Facebook and access friend data on their device without having to use the web browser].
      • 8y ago
• ptero 8y ago
  > These partners signed agreements that prevented people’s Facebook information from being used for any other purpose than to recreate Facebook-like experiences. That is a big door and a pretty open use case. I am not buying into "and this is actually good for the users" story. To me, FB must clearly choose how to handle this: (A) "we made a mistake, sorry; we will fix it" or (B) "this is working as designed; if you do not like it, go away". They could probably justify either case both internally and externally (better ethics vs better revenue), but trying to stand in the middle as they have often done in the past will likely backfire. Buy more popcorn. My 2c.
• bluesign 8y ago
  NYT says: ‘Some device makers could retrieve personal information even from users’ friends who believed they had barred any sharing, The New York Times found.’ FB says: ‘Contrary to claims by the New York Times, friends’ information, like photos, was only accessible on devices when people made a decision to share their information with those friends.’ This is the only disagreement as I can see.
  • mlthoughts2018 8y ago
    It seems like a huge issue though. And we need to know in what precise way did Facebook enforce this with third-parties and verify compliance. If they just put it as a line in a comtract, but left the ability to circumvent this open in the device integrated API, and then never did due diligence compliance checks, then Facebook’s defense is entirely disingenuous and it’s reasonable to view them as culpable.
  • romwell 8y ago
    Well, this is a huge difference. If FB is correct here, then the whole thing is a non-issue. Some API giving access to the data otherwise available through a web browser is a good thing. On the other hand, if an API provides access to information that isn't accessible through a web browser (and doesn't show in the official FB app), then it's reasonable to loudly complain.
    • rando444 8y ago
      NYT said relationship status, religion, political leaning and upcoming events, among other data were shared. FB saying "we didn't share photos" is trying to say "well, we didn't give away everything"
• captainmuon 8y ago
  Incredible, they are using the current controversy to represent their locking down of the API in a good light. Facebook didn't restrict their API because they were privacy-conscious. They restricted it so you could not build experiences they did not want: - You cannot sync your address book contacts with facebook in order to get profile pictures (you used to be able to do this) - You cannot write an alternative Facebook client (with a better timeline, no ads, ...) - You cannot write a complete bridge to another social network (e.g. implement Federation) - You cannot build a P2P (serverless) application over Facebook. E.g. a chat, or something to send a file to a friend on Facebook, or to initiate a TeamViewer-like session. All of these are either explicity forbidden by policy, or have been closed by specific changed to their API. To be honest, I don't care too much that people were able to scrape data I put up voluntarily. The German Facebook clone was called StudiVZ - Student's Directory. This sounds a lot like a telephone book, and that was the mindset and expectation I had when signing up to Facebook. Create and curate a profile for friends and friends-of-friends to see, and I didn't care much if others saw anything, because it was irrelevant to them. I mostly cared about meeting people - being found, and finding other people. In this light, I'm more concerned about data freedom than data protection. While the latter is important of course, it's unfortunate that the former is always forgotten.
• jbeckham 8y ago
  I had a Windows phone that used these API's. When Windows Phone 7 came out, Facebook didn't create the Facebook App for that OS, Microsoft did. It looked like what you expected Facebook to have built and it worked like the Facebook App that other platforms had. The whole purpose of the API agreement with Microsoft was to guarantee that the Facebook App they wrote would still work years down the road. Microsoft did not have access to my data. They were allowed to write an app that allowed ME to access my data. The NY Times article makes it sound like Microsoft was allowed access to my data. They were not. They were allowed to create an app that had access to an API so I could access my data from the Windows Phone device.
  • detaro 8y ago
    The NYT article says that Facebook told them that some partners stored that data on their servers. Do you have a good citation that this does not refer to these device integrations, given you so strongly claim it doesn't? (It's very well possible that it's a misleading quote by the NYT, or a misunderstanding, but I don't see a clear answer in any of what we know) That's from my perspective the critical point here.
    • jbeckham 8y ago
      No I do not. I do know that the Windows Phone version communicated directly with Facebook due to network traces I had done back then. It did not use an intermediary. I could see some devices using an intermediary, especially for under powered and "dumb" phones where they may have made a simplified web app that would be usable on their platforms where as the actual Facebook web app would not have been. Think flip phones that had Facebook integration. I don't know if that happened or not, but the way this article reads is very misleading and several of the vendors that they listed did not actually have access to the data.
    • d4l3k 8y ago
      It sounded like a number of devices provided contact syncing with Facebook as well as the ability to backup your contacts and data to the device manufacturer servers. Now, they might have been storing other data that they shouldn't have, but backing up synced FB contacts by itself seems pretty tame. I personally setup FB to do contact syncing with my Google contacts so I could get the FB profile pictures for all of my contacts. Does that count as Google improperly using FB user data? I don't think so.
• textmode 8y ago
  The author does not provide a link to the NYT article to which this is a response. Maybe it was just an oversight. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/03/technology/facebook-device-partners-users-friends-data.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/03/technology/fa...
• md224 8y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression is that this all comes down to one basic question: Does a Facebook-approved "mobile experience" count as an official FB app or a third-party app? It seems to me that the FB post is trying to frame it as the former, and everyone who's upset is trying to frame it as the latter. Is that what this entire disagreement is about? Because if it is, maybe it would help if we just focused on that question.
  • pishpash 8y ago
    Did you consent to anything that Facebook approves when you consented to using Facebook? Did you consent to the transitive property? How does Facebook approving of some obvious third party make the third party not a third party? Approval and third party status are orthogonal.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
• mathinpens 8y ago
  writing this was a mistake. this is clearly a deceptive pr spin fluff that is entirely non-responsive to the specific concerns raised in the new york times article.
• bbzealot 8y ago
  A bit off-topic, but it bugs me how the picture in the article shows a Blackberry Bold running the BB10 OS, which never supported such device. I wonder why they showed a (probably) photoshopped device instead of a real one.
• phlo 8y ago
  In this specific instance, the Times article might be overblown. They specifically mention that they were able to use BlackBerry Hub with a reporter's account to query Facebook data. The article never states whether BB Hub connects to Facebook directly, or whether it receives data from a BlackBerry-operated service. The latter case is clearly user-hostile. If BlackBerry (the company) can read user data and Facebook claims not to allow 3rd-party access, then that is bad, and it should be treated as a breach of the user's trust. The former case is more complex. As a user, I care a great deal that I can access Facebook using my choice of browser, whether that's Chrome, Firefox or Edge. I shouldn't be limited to the top three either. Some users may prefer a browser that works with their screen readers, others may prefer the built-in browser in their smart TV, and others yet might prefer a unified messaging app, like BB Hub. The distinction between what happens locally or in the cloud is often unclear, and it's not getting any better. Chrome on Android wants to accelerate mobile connections by routing them through a compressing proxy. I can get an extra-secure version of chrome from authentic8 to protect against malware, with the caveat that it runs in their datacenter. I feel that the tech industry in general, and Facebook in particular are struggling to tell users what happens with their data. Sometimes it's because things actually are complicated, and sometimes just to hide obvious overreach. The obvious blowback: complaints, strict regulation and mistrust. As the people who build and run systems, we should strive to do better. Regain the trust lost by past mistakes, and get back to the point where one could realistically apply hanlon's razor to reports of user surveillance.
• mcguire 8y ago
  "Contrary to claims by the New York Times, friends’ information, like photos, was only accessible on devices when people made a decision to share their information with those friends." Hasn't FB had a history of assuming the decision was positive if the user didn't opt out, through a difficult procedure?
• fixermark 8y ago
  It is, of course, useful to remember that "These partners signed agreements that prevented people’s Facebook information from being used for any other purpose" was ostensibly the back-stop against the mass-harvesting undertaken by Cambridge Analytica, also.
• paradroid 8y ago
  People don't read terms of service. In using your phone who knows what you agreed to let your phone company do with your FB data.
• albertgoeswoof 8y ago
  I unexpectedly agree with FB here. If NYT are correct then we can kiss goodbye to APIs that are used by any services that are not explicitly written and signed by the service provider. In the extreme that means you won't be able to log in to facebook on the web, only via a facebook app, because there's no guarantee that a 3rd party web browser isn't stealing data. That goes for any and every service dealing with personal data, and we pretty much lose the open web. I want to protect user's data as much as anyone, but if a user deliberately installs a 3rd party app and enters their credentials into it, then they are consenting to that having access to their data under that app's privacy policy/terms. This should be obvious to all users, especially where GDPR advice has been implemented.
  • alangpierce 8y ago
    > In the extreme that means you won't be able to log in to facebook on the web, only via a facebook app Taking that even further, if you really want to avoid the need to trust anyone, you'd need to run an operating system created by Facebook running on hardware created by Facebook. Otherwise, the OS and hardware vendors of course have access to your personal data. I guess it's all a spectrum, and certain hardware/software vendors you just need to trust (or at least assign blame to them, not Facebook, if they maliciously steal your data).
  • MAGZine 8y ago
    > That goes for any and every service dealing with personal data, and we pretty much lose the open web. Some might argue that centralized walled-gardens like Facebook are actually a risk to "the open web," rather than contributors by allowing access to some data via an API.
• amaccuish 8y ago
  I wouldn't be worried about BlackBerry, it's Samsung. I will never use their phones again with their fingers over every part of the Android pie.
• criley2 8y ago
  Crazy that everyone in here is defending Facebook. - How on earth does Facebook justify giving direct API access to information that users have, in every setting possible, marked as private? - How on earth does Facebook justify offering deep API access on users who have literally disabled API access to their data? It's ridiculous, and it's more ridiculous that users here are conflating "basic API access with a sane permissions system to give you control" with "deep API access with no privacy controls whatsoever that openly defy existing privacy controls". It's not acceptable, and frankly, this is EXACTLY why government regulation of data online isn't a possibility, it's an inevitability. Because when the penalty for ignoring the user's selection of "DO NOT MAKE MY DATA AVAILABLE OVER THE API" and "DO NOT MAKE MY DATA AVAILABLE TO FRIENDS OF MY FRIENDS" etc is now billions of dollars in damages and potentially criminal charges for executives, magically, these violations will stop occuring. Until then, everything in this document is either a lie or sufficiently legalese'd that it's worthless, just like the lies that they told to Congress, just like Zuckerberg's lies to E.U. as well. I cannot wait until it is a crime to share private user data against their will. We live in a wild west and the past 10-15 years are proving just how much sheer damage we have caused in society by not criminalizing disrespect of digital privacy.
  • prepend 8y ago
    “How on earth does Facebook justify offering deep API access on users who have literally disabled API access to their data?” Here how it seems really non-crazy to me as a programmer. Let’s say I make phone with a Linux OS. I want to make an app to let users check Facebook on my weird OS. I ask Facebook, they say no. I then build an app to call their API and let users do stuff. All my app does is call the API and show it to the user. In order for the app to function it has to use private data. But the data are not retained or analyzed, just used to operate the app. This is how all 3rd party apps work. The APIs were not for the general public, but only to trusted third parties. The alternative is that only Facebook can build and show apps. So this is pretty much how APIs have worked forever and why you only install apps and log into apps you trust. It would be like complaining that Adobe Reader can read private files from your laptop via Windows/Mac APIs. Of course it can, this is good. It’s bad of Adobe were to misuse the data.
• PunchTornado 8y ago
  > These partners signed agreements that prevented people’s Facebook information from being used for any other purpose than to recreate Facebook-like experiences. hahahaha lolololol
• whytaka 8y ago
  So will Facebook take legal action against these companies who violated their service agreement?
• niuzeta 8y ago
  This is the article that this article responds on: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/03/technology/facebook-device-partners-users-friends-data.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/03/technology/fa...
  • julien_c 8y ago
    This should be the top comment.
• bo1024 8y ago
  This is a really interesting moment and is worth some introspection. On one hand, Facebook is clearly correct: If FB makes an API, and a user gives an application (written by a third party and run on a fourth party's device) their username and password, then FB cannot be blamed for the application using the username, password, and API to retrieve private data. Indeed, that's the point. On the other hand, appearances make it look like Facebook is hiding some things: why is this not a public API? What trust are you putting in these third parties, what are you giving them that not everyone would be trusted with? But most of all, people are waking up to the vulnerability of their private data. They are realizing that some things they've been taking for granted for years are dangerously insecure. So we have users, such as reporters, suddenly realizing that their device has access to all the data you view on it. Any third party app you give your FB uname/pwd to has access to everything on your Facebook, and the only limitation is whatever their terms of service are. (So does any software that app runs on top of.) Coming to this realization, we see backlash not always correctly directed. It would make at least as much sense to call out those third parties rather than FB, and ask them to prove they do nothing nefarious with this trust. Is it too optimistic to hope this will stir mainstream interest in free and open source software?
• agentPrefect 8y ago
  As a non-user of Facebook, I completely take their side with all of this. 1) If people don't want to read the fine print, whose fault is that? 2) How have we gotten to a point where we are abdicating our choice voluntary, and then acting begrudgingly toward the new owners when they misuse it? I must apologize for my cynicism here, but we've been going around this mountain for a very long time now (circa 2013 IINM?). I'm getting tired of hearing how people are feeling violated due to their own actions.
• duxup 8y ago
  >These partners signed agreements that prevented people’s Facebook information from being used for any other purpose than to recreate Facebook-like experiences. Two people you don't know made a deal about how to use your information without telling you. There is no reason to think they are going to keep that deal, no reason to think anyone is actually checking up on your information, and no reason to think either of them cares... and no way to know if anyone actually keeps the deal... and probabbly no recourse even if you did know someone broke the deal.
• GuardianCaveman 8y ago
  It seems like a lot of Facebook employees are commenting on this thread. I wonder if they have tools to influence the public argument similar to the Russians.
• diogenescynic 8y ago
  Who in their right mind would trust Facebook over the New York Times? Try again Facebook. I’m kind of glad they are doing this, I think it will speed up their decline in the end.
• Jaruzel 8y ago
  > This took a lot of time — and Facebook was not able to get to everyone. Spoken like the true Anti-Privacy Overlords they are. :(
• golemiprague 8y ago
  The whole thing is just another part of the media war against Trump. We wouldn't hear a word about it if it wasn't for Trump win, they would even celebrate the "smart" way Clinton used social media to win the election. I think the wild west of the tech world had ended. Not it is just corporations and their representatives making more and more laws, regulations and limits to prevent small companies and innovators from even trying to compete. Instead of new products created by "straight white males" you will see more and more HR and legal women harping about all kind of laws and regulations.
• vqng 8y ago
  lol where are these people back then when Facebook released the APIs? I bet even if they were asked to give consent, they would not be able to foresee what's happening today.
• mushro_Om 8y ago
  I feel the response is similar to Apple's antenna-gate. Using competitors along to prove their point. Could have communicated better. Good that they took steps couple of months ago to close their legacy APIs. That's the only key takeaway from the post.
• blockchain-help 8y ago
  https://www.blockchainhelp.pro https://www.blockchainhelp.pro
• oculusthrift 8y ago
  Imagine if this same thing happened with Microsoft and imagike people’s reactions.
• arh68 8y ago
  A lot of people are missing the point, debating whether this was reasonable or not. Mark got away with telling Congress ~"we don't share with third parties" and now they're saying Blackberry's not a third party. If it's all okay, why didn't Mark come clean? and tell his Congressmen? He had a chance to explain this arguably-harmless behavior, but he chose to sidestep it. Why? Did he not understand the question? It's fine that this data-sharing is maybe reasonable. It's not fine that Mark withheld this from Senators. This is exactly what they were asking about, and given the chance to explain, he chooses silence. He gets to avoid the public debate while the techies argue amongst themselves.
  • Sacho 8y ago
    It seems like Mark would always have to answer 'yes' to that question, since accessing Facebook via the web means you share your data with Google(Chrome), Mozilla(Firefox), Microsoft(IE), etc.. (Also any OS/kernel manufacturers who get access to your data through your usage of the OS or TCP/IP stack). Facebook is sharing your data with Blackberry in the same manner. I don't even see a consent difference, since you need to explicitly consent to sharing your data by entering your Facebook user/password into the Blackberry UI app. Similar to how you write your user and password into Chrome, thus "sharing your data" with Google. It also doesn't seem like there's any evidence that the UI apps were intended to secretly collect and store data(Was "The Hub" an unknown feature?) I don't believe the evidence presented here invalidates Mark's answer. His answer would have been meaningless if he had taken the definition of "third party" put forward in the NYT.
• ddtaylor 8y ago
  I don't have high expectations for a company that says they take privacy seriously while constantly invading it and playing dumb.
• k-way 8y ago
  Fair enough