4 ms·

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.

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.