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Yeah, as much as I dislike Facebook, at this point I'm kind of concerned about how much bad press is coming out about one company. Most other tech companies (e

Yeah, as much as I dislike Facebook, at this point I'm kind of concerned about how much bad press is coming out about one company. Most other tech companies (especially the ones still in the "hustling" phase) are just as bad as FB if not worse. It's starting to feel like a coordinated smear campaign, even if all of it is accurate.

baq 8y ago
yeah, google and amazon and dare I say it apple have access to a similar amount of data about their users. Apple is the one I trust with privacy the most, but how are you going to prove that they aren't selling my profile...?
- saagarjha 8y ago
  The only way to know this is by not providing companies with your data in the first place. Unfortunately auditing this is kind of difficult to do today with most operating systems being closed-source and hard to inspect, but it’s still possible to do general checks on what they are sending out.
  - hardwaresofton 8y ago
    I wonder if it'll ever be possible to reverse the paradigm -- when Facebook needs some of my data, they ask me (or some proxy Iv'e set up) for my data and use it with a lease. All the EULA legalese that companies use to enforce their will could be turned in the opposite direction and we'd found out it's real worth -- I can dictate how FB uses the data they pull from my server just like they try, to the extent that anyone can tell someone else what to do with data instead of having near zero power as people who live in non-GDPR regions do now. I mean I don't think this kind of scheme would actually work but I can still dream.
amelius 8y ago
> It's starting to feel like a coordinated smear campaign, even if all of it is accurate. I don't get it. If it's all accurate then what is the problem exactly? That all the anger is directed at FB? They are the largest social media company, and in the good times I have never heard them say "but other social media companies deserve some love too". Running a business is not supposed to be easy.
- sanxiyn 8y ago
  > I don't get it. If it's all accurate then what is the problem exactly? Selective reporting is a huge problem. You can distort almost any topic by selectively reporting only truthful things.
  - hardwaresofton 8y ago
    Yup. In addition to this, for every extremist/unsavory group that gathers on FB there are probably a bunch more wholesome (or at least unsavory) groups that have a chance to congregate for almost free (minus the cost of some privacy). Facebook is accelerating volunteer orgs, philanthropies, and all sorts of other organizations that do good, but that doesn't necessarily get reported on, an even when it does the cynical. Again, I'm not defending Facebook, but it's pretty peculiar -- they just seem to have been in hot water every day for the last few months. Maybe it's a vicious PR cycle where regular media outlets are now being incentivized to report on FB's negative press because that's what's getting clicks.... because negative press is being produced. [EDIT] wanted to add that this is part of how people get sucked into conspiracy theories... No one has time to verify and fact-check every single fact, and editors/media outlets are doing it less and less these days. A few lies mixed in with a bunch of facts are sometimes really hard to find but can have lasting impacts on your world view/view of some subject. Of course, sometimes conspiracy theories, outlandish-seeming claims, and smear jobs are sometimes true and justified.
  - amelius 8y ago
    True, but it happens in a company's good times as well as bad times. Emphasizing this distortion only now would introduce a bias.
  - gaius 8y ago
    You can distort almost any topic by selectively reporting only truthful thing You mean like, determining what users see on their timelines?
ceejayoz 8y ago
Bad news naturally tends to snowball. Scrutiny results in further scrutiny, insiders decide to leak or whistleblow, other media organizations start taking a look, etc. "Others are just as bad" may be true, but they largely (barring Google/Amazon/etc.) don't have the power Facebook does.
mtgx 8y ago
I agree that this type of headline would've been written like: "Facebook Gives People A Voice in France" - or something along those lines, a few years ago, if the Arab Spring is anything to go by. The writer's perspective very much matters in this type of articles. It's especially obvious in politics (although many people still don't notice it, and think they are just being served "the facts"). That said, I'll hardly spill a tear over people "over-criticizing" Facebook. If there's one company that's worthy of waves and waves of criticism, Facebook certainly qualifies for that role. It certainly deserves it more than Tesla, which, with the exception of the criticism of the reckless promotion and implementation of Autopilot, I think the criticism of Tesla lately has been largely off-base and undeserved. But for some reason, people seem to assume that both good news and bad news should be delivered evenly throughout the year, or something. Like they get surprised when there's a lot of bad news/negative press continuing for many months about something (whether it's Tesla, Facebook, or cryptocurrencies), but forget the same has been true about the good news about those things in the past, too. The good and bad news are almost never evenly distributed over a period of time. They are far more likely to come in bursts of either positive or negative stories. Not long ago, I remember reading on this very site comments dismissing the idea that Facebook will suffer over the Cambridge Analytica. I said then that Facebook will likely not see an immediate effect, but will likely see it over the long term, when it starts declining, the Cambridge Analytica will be one of the reasons for that decline. All of these negative news stories you see now are connected to the Cambridge Analytica story, which seems to have opened a kind of "Pandora's box" for Facebook. It's all downhill from here for Facebook. Some people just haven't realized it yet.

baq 8y ago

yeah, google and amazon and dare I say it apple have access to a similar amount of data about their users. Apple is the one I trust with privacy the most, but how are you going to prove that they aren't selling my profile...?

saagarjha 8y ago
The only way to know this is by not providing companies with your data in the first place. Unfortunately auditing this is kind of difficult to do today with most operating systems being closed-source and hard to inspect, but it’s still possible to do general checks on what they are sending out.
- hardwaresofton 8y ago
  I wonder if it'll ever be possible to reverse the paradigm -- when Facebook needs some of my data, they ask me (or some proxy Iv'e set up) for my data and use it with a lease. All the EULA legalese that companies use to enforce their will could be turned in the opposite direction and we'd found out it's real worth -- I can dictate how FB uses the data they pull from my server just like they try, to the extent that anyone can tell someone else what to do with data instead of having near zero power as people who live in non-GDPR regions do now. I mean I don't think this kind of scheme would actually work but I can still dream.

amelius 8y ago

> It's starting to feel like a coordinated smear campaign, even if all of it is accurate. I don't get it. If it's all accurate then what is the problem exactly? That all the anger is directed at FB? They are the largest social media company, and in the good times I have never heard them say "but other social media companies deserve some love too". Running a business is not supposed to be easy.

sanxiyn 8y ago
> I don't get it. If it's all accurate then what is the problem exactly? Selective reporting is a huge problem. You can distort almost any topic by selectively reporting only truthful things.
- hardwaresofton 8y ago
  Yup. In addition to this, for every extremist/unsavory group that gathers on FB there are probably a bunch more wholesome (or at least unsavory) groups that have a chance to congregate for almost free (minus the cost of some privacy). Facebook is accelerating volunteer orgs, philanthropies, and all sorts of other organizations that do good, but that doesn't necessarily get reported on, an even when it does the cynical. Again, I'm not defending Facebook, but it's pretty peculiar -- they just seem to have been in hot water every day for the last few months. Maybe it's a vicious PR cycle where regular media outlets are now being incentivized to report on FB's negative press because that's what's getting clicks.... because negative press is being produced. [EDIT] wanted to add that this is part of how people get sucked into conspiracy theories... No one has time to verify and fact-check every single fact, and editors/media outlets are doing it less and less these days. A few lies mixed in with a bunch of facts are sometimes really hard to find but can have lasting impacts on your world view/view of some subject. Of course, sometimes conspiracy theories, outlandish-seeming claims, and smear jobs are sometimes true and justified.
- amelius 8y ago
  True, but it happens in a company's good times as well as bad times. Emphasizing this distortion only now would introduce a bias.
- gaius 8y ago
  You can distort almost any topic by selectively reporting only truthful thing You mean like, determining what users see on their timelines?

ceejayoz 8y ago

Bad news naturally tends to snowball. Scrutiny results in further scrutiny, insiders decide to leak or whistleblow, other media organizations start taking a look, etc. "Others are just as bad" may be true, but they largely (barring Google/Amazon/etc.) don't have the power Facebook does.

mtgx 8y ago

I agree that this type of headline would've been written like: "Facebook Gives People A Voice in France" - or something along those lines, a few years ago, if the Arab Spring is anything to go by. The writer's perspective very much matters in this type of articles. It's especially obvious in politics (although many people still don't notice it, and think they are just being served "the facts"). That said, I'll hardly spill a tear over people "over-criticizing" Facebook. If there's one company that's worthy of waves and waves of criticism, Facebook certainly qualifies for that role. It certainly deserves it more than Tesla, which, with the exception of the criticism of the reckless promotion and implementation of Autopilot, I think the criticism of Tesla lately has been largely off-base and undeserved. But for some reason, people seem to assume that both good news and bad news should be delivered evenly throughout the year, or something. Like they get surprised when there's a lot of bad news/negative press continuing for many months about something (whether it's Tesla, Facebook, or cryptocurrencies), but forget the same has been true about the good news about those things in the past, too. The good and bad news are almost never evenly distributed over a period of time. They are far more likely to come in bursts of either positive or negative stories. Not long ago, I remember reading on this very site comments dismissing the idea that Facebook will suffer over the Cambridge Analytica. I said then that Facebook will likely not see an immediate effect, but will likely see it over the long term, when it starts declining, the Cambridge Analytica will be one of the reasons for that decline. All of these negative news stories you see now are connected to the Cambridge Analytica story, which seems to have opened a kind of "Pandora's box" for Facebook. It's all downhill from here for Facebook. Some people just haven't realized it yet.