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Here is a direct link to the files themselves: https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/culture-media-and-sport/Note-by-Chair-and-selected-docume
by Trill-I-Am 8y ago
Here is a direct link to the files themselves:
https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/culture-media-and-sport/Note-by-Chair-and-selected-documents-ordered-from-Six4Three.pdf https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/cultu...
- tpush 8y agoReally interesting stuff in there. > Facebook email 24 January 2013 > Justin Osofsky – ‘Twitter launched Vine today which lets you shoot multiple short video segments to make one single, 6-second video. As part of their NUX, you can find friends via FB. Unless anyone raises objections, we will shut down their friends API access today. We’ve prepared reactive PR, and I will let Jana know our decision. > MZ – ‘Yup, go for it.’
- evilzuku 8y agoNothing says evil more than preparing reactive PR to bury your competitors. And the nonchalant way his response sends chills down my spine. These people will suffocate innovation just to win.
- gk1 8y ago> And the nonchalant way his response sends chills down my spine. CEOs of massive companies don't have time to write long and explanatory emails. They put people in charge that they trust, so they can just say one word or sentence and know that it'll get handled.
- gammateam 8y agoSometimes I write some half ass objection before green lighting it just in case the convo gets leaked idgaf though
- e40 8y ago> These people will suffocate innovation just to win. I don't like Zuck, but come on, you just described every CEO in America, that when they have a choice they will do this.
- untog 8y agoYes. Which is bad!
- e40 8y agoVery definitely this is bad. But it's not a surprise.
- PavlovsCat 8y agoNobody said it is.
- Mankrik 8y agoIt shouldn't have to come as a surprise in order to be against it, that's how we get complacent and accepting of this behavior.
- oska 8y agoI don't agree that Elon Musk is like this (quite the reverse) and I'm sure there are many other CEOs who aren't too. Let's not normalise sociopathology, even given its prevalence amongst business executives.
- Lio 8y agoI am definitely no fan of Zuck but on the subject of Elon Musk, this is the same guy who tried to use his high media profile to call an innocent man a pedophile just because he would follow Musk’s crazy plan.[1] So that another one off the “CEO billionaire but not a sociopath” list. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/15/elon-musk-british-diver-thai-cave-rescue-pedo-twitter https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/15/elon-musk...
- dreamdu5t 8y agoHyperbole. Facebook is a free website... A website. Burying competitors is a good thing. That’s the whole point. That’s literally the objective of every business in the entire economy.
- rchaud 8y agoCEOs and executives are the closest equivalent of royalty in the United States. Their media coverage is often hagiographic as a result. They are humanized and puffed up in the press to an extent that foreign press would never think to do about business leaders in their own countries. Inch upon inch of columns are dedicated to their morning habits, favourite TV shows and fashion choices, and other fluff content to make them "relatable" to the average joe/jane. This is especially magnified when it comes to SV execs because they wear hoodies and tshirts instead of bespoke suits. And that's what leads to reactions like "I can't believe he'd be so callous to users", as if the person in question is a hard working bootstrapper and not a billionaire looking to maximize market share and profit.
- makomk 8y agoAs the news coverage of the time pointed out, Facebook did this to Twitter a few months after Twitter themselves did the same thing to Instagram (which was already owned by Facebook at that point) and Tumblr: https://www.theverge.com/2013/1/24/3913082/facebook-has-apparently-blocked-vines-friend-finding-feature https://www.theverge.com/2013/1/24/3913082/facebook-has-appa... All of the big social networks were and still are like this.
- traek 8y ago> Nothing says evil more than preparing reactive PR to bury your competitors. Really?
- primax 8y agoThe holocaust? That's nothing! Check out these guys, they're preparing PR to say bad things about their new competitors.
- jamiegreen 8y agoWhat is NUX? I was googling and closest I could find was New User Experience, is that right?
- Operyl 8y agoNew User eXperience.
- jamiegreen 8y agoThanks
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- AlexandrB 8y agoWhat's really striking is how user-hostile this conversation is. Forget about whether the user wants to share their data or not - it's all about what Facebook wants to do. In this case, that's snuffing competition by denying access, in the case of Cambridge Analytica, it's sharing data for purposes of shady data "research".
- ryanwaggoner 8y agoIf you own a grocery store and there's a guy on the other side of town who is cheaper, the people who come to your store because it's more convenient would love for you to be forced to just give away half your space to your competitor. Doesn't mean it's "user hostile" to refuse to do so.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- oliveshell 8y agoI agree; of course that isn’t. But being forced to give away half your physical retail space is hardly the same thing as just letting them keep using an API that you provide explicitly for such use. Also, more broadly: one would have quite a hard time making the case that Facebook isn’t nakedly, gleefully, and rapaciously user-hostile.
- ryanwaggoner 8y agoI don't agree, but it's probably not worth making the case. Facebook has billions of users. I assume you think that they want to leave, but they "can't", or that they just don't know how hostile Facebook is towards them. I think a lot of people who hate Facebook just have a hard time believing that most people just don't care about the same things you do, or to the same degree. They're still on Facebook and Instagram and Whatsapp because they see the world differently from you.
- traek 8y ago> But being forced to give away half your physical retail space is hardly the same thing as just letting them keep using an API that you provide explicitly for such use. In this case, Facebook was deprecating the API and declined to provide special whitelist access to a competitor.
- joering2 8y agoIs that for real? I remember Mr. Zuckerberg said their mission is to connect the world together. Can you help me understand how you make world smaller place and connecting people by "shut down their friends API access" ?
- mulmen 8y agoConnect the world together on Facebook.
- raverbashing 8y agoIt's official, Mark Zuckerberg is the new Bill Gates. As in "we don't care about ethics"
- TAForObvReasons 8y agoThis was known for a very long time. The "Dumb fucks" comments were brought to the public attention many years ago. The problem is that Silicon Valley gave Facebook a pass on all of the ethical transgressions for years (most likely since they minted many millionaires and billionaires in the valley)
- Tempest1981 8y agoGave them a pass, yes, and also bought lots of FB stock, and shared in the spoils.
- Yhippa 8y agoI perceive the tech community to be okay with this as long as Facebook keeps giving us excellent open source tools.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- wlesieutre 8y agoI have a hard time feeling bad for Twitter getting API access pulled out from under them. How many times have they done that to products/services that depended on Twitter APIs?
- tlow 8y agoDid you read the entirety of this report? Can you share any more interesting quotes/bits? If you did read, would you suggest other HN users read it?
- bechrissed 8y agoNice thanks!
- fosco 8y agoholy smokes... >Michael LeBeau – ‘He guys, as you know all the growth team is planning on shipping a permissions update on Android at the end of this month. They are going to include the ‘read call log’ permission, which will trigger the Android permissions dialog on update, requiring users to accept the update. They will then provide an in app opt in NUX for a feature that lets you continuously upload your SMS and call log history to Facebook to be used for improving things like PYMK, coefficient calculation, feed ranking etc. This is a pretty high risk thing to do from a PR perspective but it appears that the growth team will charge ahead and do it.’ >Yul Kwon - ‘The Growth team is now exploring a path where we only request Read Call Log permission, and hold off on requesting any other permissions for now. ‘Based on their initial testing, it seems this would allow us to upgrade users without subjecting them to an Android permissions dialog at all. This is huge, doesn't this make google guilty as well? >‘It would still be a breaking change, so users would have to click to upgrade, but no permissions dialog screen. EDIT: formatting
- mikejb 8y ago> This is huge, doesn't this make google guilty as well? I'm not sure I follow. An app can request permissions, and the user can allow or deny them. I don't understand how this puts guilt on Google. Can you elaborate?
- fosco 8y agothis seems like a hole in their design, additional access is being granted without the user really knowing what is going on and they are deliberately keeping the user out of the loop. at least, that is how I am interpreting it, it seems that the functionality of their software is not functioning in the 'spirit' of what it is suppose to be doing.
- emiliobumachar 8y agoIn essence, Android permissions system have (had?) a vulnerability that Facebook exploited, and Google is responsible to a small extent as the maintainer of the vulnerable software.