3 ms·

After reading facebooks response I am once again disappointed by the art of journalism we have to deal with these days :( Turns out NYT either doesn’t understa

After reading facebooks response I am once again disappointed by the art of journalism we have to deal with these days :( Turns out NYT either doesn’t understand the technical details or doesn’t want to https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/12/facebooks-partners/ https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/12/facebooks-partners/

pookieinc 8y ago
While I'm also disappointed by many news organizations / journalists these days, NYT is not one of them. In fact, they are one of the few newspapers that are keeping larger entities in check and doing their job by reporting them. I've been continually impressed by NYT, specifically, for its care in ensuring the highest level of integrity. Mistakes do happen and as far as I know, they've been pretty good about apologizing for them. If it weren't for this linked article (much of which I learned a significant amount and was news to me), we wouldn't have had such a response from Facebook with further clarification on this topic. For example, did I know they were also passing my private messages to other entities? No. I also don't blame myself because they could've made it a lot more obvious that I was sharing such personal content with other third parties. Journalists have a tough job, but they should be commended when bringing to light articles like this.
- porpoisely 8y ago
  For me, the nytimes and the big media companies are the biggest disappointments. Smaller and local media companies tend to be far more reliable and trustworthy than large corporations. And integrity isn't a word I'd associate with the nytimes or any major corporation for that matter. They are greedy self-serving entities with their own agenda, like every business. I do believe corporations like the NYTimes and facebook have accrued too much power and are corrupt and a destructive force in the country and the world. I think we need more competition in the traditional media and social media space. For all the talk about monopolies in tech, we talk too little about the monopolies in news and media along with every other industry from agriculture to banking. Also, Facebook is a symptom of a national ( or international ) economic system that applies to pretty much every major industry today. Too much consolidation and too little respect for privacy. Facebook is providing what every industry ( including the news industry ) wants. Information and data. And every industry is invading their own customers' privacy and selling data. Credit card and banks sell your data. The NYTimes sells your data ( after all they sell ads too ).
  - IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
    (A) The NYTimes cannot “sell your data” as Facebook does, because it just does not have that data. (B) if you are alluding to their ads, then the local media you praise is just as guilty, and so is any other site financed by ads. They all just include whatever JS snippet the ad platforms give them. (C) The rest of your comment is just repeated assertions that you don’t like the Times. It’s hard to take advise on newspapers seriously, when they come from someone who apparently has not read enough to pick up on the proper handling of spacing around parentheses. (D) Are you making any claim that the story here contains (specific) inaccuracies? Are you accusing the Times of any specific facts being wholesale fabrications? Can you point to any instance of the Times publishing fabricated information? And please don’t use an example that’s old enough to drive, was discovered and disclosed by the Times itself, and resulted in career-ending firings of the reporter responsible.
- freshfunk 8y ago
  I was a big fan of the NYT. I’ve always considered them a trustworthy source of news. However, their coverage of Facebook since the election has showed me how much bias there is in the media as well as how much an entity can serve their own agenda. Unfortunately the truth behind these integrations are beyond what your average person can understand. Your average person doesn’t understand how OAuth and user consent / permissioning works. And so media can prey on the ignorance of people to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt. NYTimes comes off just as bad as Fox News. I bet you none of the authors have ever implemented 3rd party auth. I doubt any engineers were consulted. Instead they quote so called “media experts” that are just professors at universities who again know nothing about the technical integration and how it works. I’ve seen some people who understand how OAuth works but these are clearly engineers. NYTimes could’ve used the opportunity to explain how people gave consent but instead chooses a different narrative in order to 1) get page views; 2) attack an arguably competitor in the media space and 3) blame FB for getting Trump elected.
matt4077 8y ago
I actually stumbled upon the following in their report: “Internal documents obtained by The Times show that Facebook shared data with more than 150 companies — most of them tech businesses, but also automakers, media organizations (including The Times) and others.“ I think it takes an awful lot of motivated reasoning not to hold an organisation in the highest regard that freely works against its own interest, in the pursuit of its mission.
- a3n 8y ago
  When NYT asks me to "please disable your ad blocker," I always mentally raise a finger to them and read on. I think that finger just got a permanent hard on.
a_bonobo 8y ago
Not sure what you're talking about, Facebook explicitly confirms what NYT writes??? >Did partners get access to messages? >Yes. But people had to explicitly sign in to Facebook first to use a partner’s messaging feature. Take Spotify for example. After signing in to your Facebook account in Spotify’s desktop app, you could then send and receive messages without ever leaving the app. Our API provided partners with access to the person’s messages in order to power this type of feature. Facebook is trying to spin it in a positive way ('you had to sign up first!!'), but nowhere did you agree that Spotify could read all of your messages.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
  If we carefully parse this, and suspend any usual assumption of good faith, this actually seems much worse: > But people had to explicitly sign in to Facebook first to use a partner’s messaging feature. This does not say you had to "explicitly sign in first for Spotify to get access". It says you had to sign in to use the feature enabled by Spotify already having access. > After signing in to your Facebook account in Spotify’s desktop app, you could then send and receive messages without ever leaving the app. This says exactly the same, only using the Spotify example. It again dodges the question when data sharing started. I hold the idea of assuming good faith in the highest regard. But a statement as important as this must have gone through several layers of lawyers with the finest combs available, right? To then so artfully miss answering the actual question... It would be quite a coincidence. If indeed it is deliberate, OP of this thread falling for this artfully crafted admission of guilt should actually command some respect for the craftsmanship of their PR people, in a certain, ethically-challenged light. Although people ignorantly finding fault with everything the Times does may just be an easy mark for PR wordsmiths. Edit: After perusing OP rock_hard’s history, I will have to once again break “assumption of good faith”, sorry. Almost literally all their posts are defending Facebook, or making accusations against Apple, Google, or the New York Times. I’ve often seen responsible disclosures of self-interest by, among others, people working at Google here. This is the first time I’ve seen a pattern this suggestive of the opposite.
  - makomk 8y ago
    The usual way these partnerships worked is that Facebook allowed partners to ask users to grant them more account access than ordinary Facebook apps were allowed - in the form of special partner-only Facebook app permissions that could only be obtained by approved apps. That is, it didn't bypass the normal need to request permission from the user, it just allowed them to request extra permissions. There's no reason to believe that the Spotify integration is any different. Even those leaked emails just talked about adding more permissions that companies could request.
dannyr 8y ago
Also note that Facebook didn't even mention Yandex (Russian Search Engine). This is spin by Facebook. Remember in their last scandal, they denied using The Definers at first then weeks later admitted it.

pookieinc 8y ago

While I'm also disappointed by many news organizations / journalists these days, NYT is not one of them. In fact, they are one of the few newspapers that are keeping larger entities in check and doing their job by reporting them. I've been continually impressed by NYT, specifically, for its care in ensuring the highest level of integrity. Mistakes do happen and as far as I know, they've been pretty good about apologizing for them. If it weren't for this linked article (much of which I learned a significant amount and was news to me), we wouldn't have had such a response from Facebook with further clarification on this topic. For example, did I know they were also passing my private messages to other entities? No. I also don't blame myself because they could've made it a lot more obvious that I was sharing such personal content with other third parties. Journalists have a tough job, but they should be commended when bringing to light articles like this.

porpoisely 8y ago
For me, the nytimes and the big media companies are the biggest disappointments. Smaller and local media companies tend to be far more reliable and trustworthy than large corporations. And integrity isn't a word I'd associate with the nytimes or any major corporation for that matter. They are greedy self-serving entities with their own agenda, like every business. I do believe corporations like the NYTimes and facebook have accrued too much power and are corrupt and a destructive force in the country and the world. I think we need more competition in the traditional media and social media space. For all the talk about monopolies in tech, we talk too little about the monopolies in news and media along with every other industry from agriculture to banking. Also, Facebook is a symptom of a national ( or international ) economic system that applies to pretty much every major industry today. Too much consolidation and too little respect for privacy. Facebook is providing what every industry ( including the news industry ) wants. Information and data. And every industry is invading their own customers' privacy and selling data. Credit card and banks sell your data. The NYTimes sells your data ( after all they sell ads too ).
- IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
  (A) The NYTimes cannot “sell your data” as Facebook does, because it just does not have that data. (B) if you are alluding to their ads, then the local media you praise is just as guilty, and so is any other site financed by ads. They all just include whatever JS snippet the ad platforms give them. (C) The rest of your comment is just repeated assertions that you don’t like the Times. It’s hard to take advise on newspapers seriously, when they come from someone who apparently has not read enough to pick up on the proper handling of spacing around parentheses. (D) Are you making any claim that the story here contains (specific) inaccuracies? Are you accusing the Times of any specific facts being wholesale fabrications? Can you point to any instance of the Times publishing fabricated information? And please don’t use an example that’s old enough to drive, was discovered and disclosed by the Times itself, and resulted in career-ending firings of the reporter responsible.
freshfunk 8y ago
I was a big fan of the NYT. I’ve always considered them a trustworthy source of news. However, their coverage of Facebook since the election has showed me how much bias there is in the media as well as how much an entity can serve their own agenda. Unfortunately the truth behind these integrations are beyond what your average person can understand. Your average person doesn’t understand how OAuth and user consent / permissioning works. And so media can prey on the ignorance of people to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt. NYTimes comes off just as bad as Fox News. I bet you none of the authors have ever implemented 3rd party auth. I doubt any engineers were consulted. Instead they quote so called “media experts” that are just professors at universities who again know nothing about the technical integration and how it works. I’ve seen some people who understand how OAuth works but these are clearly engineers. NYTimes could’ve used the opportunity to explain how people gave consent but instead chooses a different narrative in order to 1) get page views; 2) attack an arguably competitor in the media space and 3) blame FB for getting Trump elected.

matt4077 8y ago

I actually stumbled upon the following in their report: “Internal documents obtained by The Times show that Facebook shared data with more than 150 companies — most of them tech businesses, but also automakers, media organizations (including The Times) and others.“ I think it takes an awful lot of motivated reasoning not to hold an organisation in the highest regard that freely works against its own interest, in the pursuit of its mission.

a3n 8y ago
When NYT asks me to "please disable your ad blocker," I always mentally raise a finger to them and read on. I think that finger just got a permanent hard on.

a_bonobo 8y ago

Not sure what you're talking about, Facebook explicitly confirms what NYT writes??? >Did partners get access to messages? >Yes. But people had to explicitly sign in to Facebook first to use a partner’s messaging feature. Take Spotify for example. After signing in to your Facebook account in Spotify’s desktop app, you could then send and receive messages without ever leaving the app. Our API provided partners with access to the person’s messages in order to power this type of feature. Facebook is trying to spin it in a positive way ('you had to sign up first!!'), but nowhere did you agree that Spotify could read all of your messages.

IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
If we carefully parse this, and suspend any usual assumption of good faith, this actually seems much worse: > But people had to explicitly sign in to Facebook first to use a partner’s messaging feature. This does not say you had to "explicitly sign in first for Spotify to get access". It says you had to sign in to use the feature enabled by Spotify already having access. > After signing in to your Facebook account in Spotify’s desktop app, you could then send and receive messages without ever leaving the app. This says exactly the same, only using the Spotify example. It again dodges the question when data sharing started. I hold the idea of assuming good faith in the highest regard. But a statement as important as this must have gone through several layers of lawyers with the finest combs available, right? To then so artfully miss answering the actual question... It would be quite a coincidence. If indeed it is deliberate, OP of this thread falling for this artfully crafted admission of guilt should actually command some respect for the craftsmanship of their PR people, in a certain, ethically-challenged light. Although people ignorantly finding fault with everything the Times does may just be an easy mark for PR wordsmiths. Edit: After perusing OP rock_hard’s history, I will have to once again break “assumption of good faith”, sorry. Almost literally all their posts are defending Facebook, or making accusations against Apple, Google, or the New York Times. I’ve often seen responsible disclosures of self-interest by, among others, people working at Google here. This is the first time I’ve seen a pattern this suggestive of the opposite.
- makomk 8y ago
  The usual way these partnerships worked is that Facebook allowed partners to ask users to grant them more account access than ordinary Facebook apps were allowed - in the form of special partner-only Facebook app permissions that could only be obtained by approved apps. That is, it didn't bypass the normal need to request permission from the user, it just allowed them to request extra permissions. There's no reason to believe that the Spotify integration is any different. Even those leaked emails just talked about adding more permissions that companies could request.

dannyr 8y ago

Also note that Facebook didn't even mention Yandex (Russian Search Engine). This is spin by Facebook. Remember in their last scandal, they denied using The Definers at first then weeks later admitted it.