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With trust destroyed, Facebook is haunted by old data deals
- hendzen 8y agoThrough this scandal and others, society will learn just how harmful the dual-share class structures that allow founders to reap the economic benefits of public markets while shirking the oversight aspects and keeping all control are.
- chollida1 8y agoI consider this a good lesson never compromising yoru morals. Once you do it, it can always come back and bite you in the ass. I mean most of these deals happened 5+ years ago. And FB's stock is paying the price for it now. So message to employees: There are employee's who have received their entire 4 year grant fully vested now who weren't around when any of this happened. What your employer does, even if its not related to you, even if you weren't around for it, can still bite you in the ass. They are paying the price in terms of the lowered share price and may have had nothing to do with any of this. As another example banks are still paying fines related to 2008 that affect the current year's bonus pool. The thing that bothers me the most about this is that rank and file Facebook employees wrote code to allow all of these companies access to users chat messages, personal data, etc. and they never said no.
- fipple 8y agoLOL, those bank fines are like 2% of earnings.
- jseliger 8y agoThis reads like another part of the media crisis narrative: https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebook-crisis-or-media-narrative-about-facebook-crisis/ https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebo... that users don't care about (in a measurable way).
- danso 8y agoThe crisis is a manufactured "narrative" when the COO is reported to have yelled "You threw us under the bus!" in reaction to the CSO making an embarrassing disclosure to the board? And when FB is under ongoing investigation by the US/UK/EU governments?
- tines 8y agoI guess for 1.5 billion daily active users “trust destroyed” doesn’t mean what it used to.
- dplgk 8y agoThe threat is not as immediate or obvious as what's covered on the evening news so people aren't scared of it....yet.
- seibelj 8y agoI guarantee you when the first millennial takes a real shot at becoming president, someone at FB and other data companies will leak all of their private messages since they were teenagers. So much of our data is out there and it’s never going away.
- sharkweek 8y agoMy hope is that by that point we have all grown enough as a society to be able to look past the little mistakes we all make as humans. I do worry that FB/google etc could use that type of stuff as blackmail to get the policies they want enacted though.
- lkrubner 8y agoKompromat has been a normal part of the Russian political culture going back to negative rumors against Kerensky in 1917, and yet Russian society has not adapted a lenient attitude about it. Rather, the opposite happens, the public develops the attitude that everyone is corrupt and the right way to fight this is to make a severe example of anyone who gets caught.
- mattmaroon 8y agoWe elected the "grab 'em by the pussy" guy. We're clearly not Russia.
- danans 8y agoThat guy's voters had a much lower standard for decency for him than they had for other candidates. Some even rationalized that with religious explanations. The question is whether the standards for personal conduct have been permanently lowered for future candidates or whether that was a one time thing.
- ams6110 8y agoI think that validates sharkweek's theory, above. We have all said things, made crude and even cruel jokes, that we'd be embarrassed about if they became public. But I think we are starting to understand that it's pretty common and with cameras everywhere and social media it's much more likely that you'll be "outed" for something you said or did or would rather keep private. I don't know if a society that doesn't shame people for that sort of stuff will be better. Shame is a powerful way that societies regulate undesired behavior. But I do think it's happening.
- misiti3780 8y agoI wonder if Zuckerberg's job is in jeopardy at this point? I didn't think Uber was going to be able to shed their CEO, but after months negative articles about Uber, Travis lost his job, and I believe he controlled the voting shares also. Seems like FB is going through the same thing now (except there have been no sexual harassment complaints) Can any lawyers or investors comment on what it would take for Mark to lose his job as CEO? How much value has to be shaved off facebook shares before investors loss all confidence ?
- ahmedalsudani 8y agoHe casts the majority of the shareholder votes.
- vxNsr 8y agoSo did Travis, the way the shareholders and board got around that was by threatening expensive and public lawsuits. If you take a lot of money from rich people you're never gonna be above their power.
- belenos46 8y agoPretty sure Travis didn't. IIRC he had the single largest bloc of voting rights (~18%), but that can still be overruled. ~58% (Zuckerberg's share percentage) can't be ousted no matter how the other voting shares vote.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- anticensor 8y agoHe could be sued out of excess (exceeding his proportion of shares) voting rights by beneficiary action. This is a public company, remember your fiduciary and beneficiary rights.
- rco8786 8y ago
- annadane 8y agoI am seriously starting to suspect an astroturfing campaign against Facebook. I'm not saying they do nothing wrong. But the recent laser focus has been incredible.
- wingkongex 8y agoThey have made it all too easy.
- annadane 8y agoBut that's the problem. It shouldn't be about the fact they made it easy. The truth exists irrespective of that
- empath75 8y agoI think they made a lot of enemies with their behavior during the election and afterwards. Deservedly so, imo.
- cubano 8y agoI am glad someone brought this up... The idea that Facebook's "Russian meme/adverts" situation had anything to do with Trump winning is laughable beyond any reasonable measure. He won because Clinton was perhaps the worst candidate in the history of US Presidential elections, not because some Russian trolls wrote some silly crap on FB. But I agree with your premise...FB is just being used as a big fat scapegoat so the real culprits that engineered Clinton's loss don't lose their cushy political positions.
- ardy42 8y ago>> I think they made a lot of enemies with their behavior during the election and afterwards. Deservedly so, imo. > He won because Clinton was perhaps the worst candidate in the history of US Presidential elections, not because some Russian trolls wrote some silly crap on FB. Both of these things are true. Nothing about Clinton's weakness excuses Facebook's shameful and evasive behavior when it was discovered that they were ground-zero for a foreign propaganda campaign.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- pdimitar 8y agoI very much like to believe the "trust in Facebook is destroyed" message but... (1) On every meetup I attend people are genuinely extremely surprised when I share with them even 1-2 of the screwups Facebook did. They are ENTIRELY clueless. And we're talking tech-savvy business founders and CEOs -- and often times CTOs and CFOs. (2) Most don't care. They write it off as "I am not important enough to be spied on" or just directly admit "Facebook is integrated too much in my life and work and I can't replace it" and that's the end of the discussion. Many even say "they have only a part of my data, they can't have it all, right?" -- and have no idea about how well the tracking industry does cross-referencing of seemingly unrelated data sets. I don't think Facebook is going away anytime soon in any measurable way or form. Sure they might struggle monetizing their mountain of data and analytics, and sure the stock market circus might not be on their side right now but I can't see them actually losing a significant chunk of users in the next 5 years.
- JumpCrisscross 8y agoFacebook is a quasi-monopoly. Its threat comes from regulators, not consumers nor advertisers. (You saw something similar with Uber, by the way. When they lost their Teflon coating, prosecutors and municipal regulators got bold while their grassroots supporters melted away.)
- pdimitar 8y agoTrue. But I'd argue Uber is largely replaceable -- you still have public transport and taxis while Facebook has no alternative and most people are too inert to even think of replacing it... We can all see how the media grows bolder and reports quite negatively on Facebook but I wonder if that even makes any difference.
- EGreg 8y agoFacebook has no alternative because it takes years to build something halfway decent. A social network today must work across all devices seamlessly, integrating with realtime notifications, user accounts and addressbooks across devices and that’s just for a start. At https://Qbix.com https://Qbix.com we have spent our own money on a free open source alternative platform to Facebook. I think we’re still pretty bad at marketing it. Would appreciate some feedback if you check out the site and watch the video. It’s far far ahead of Mastodon, Solid, OwnCloud or whatever else is out there. It has full documentation (https://qbix.com/platform https://qbix.com/platform and https://qbix.com/platform/guide https://qbix.com/platform/guide and https://qbix.com/platform/tutorials https://qbix.com/platform/tutorials) and can be tried out of the box. It has been audited by third party security firms and come out with flying colors. Here is a laundry list of features: https://qbix.com/features.pdf https://qbix.com/features.pdf But it needs a huge effort to make it as nice and appealing as say stripe.com is for payment integrations. Those guys are amazing. We recently released version 1.1 on github. We have chatrooms, galleries, events, trips, back end and front end components which all work together like BSD systems all work together. Just slap them on pages, theme it and there u have your own social network. It took us years and nearly $1M in funding. But you can’t see much of that at a glance, or play around with it, yet. That should change in 2019.
- rbreve 8y agoFunny thing is that some of my friends are protesting against facebook on facebook
- ardy42 8y ago> Funny thing is that some of my friends are protesting against facebook on facebook Ironically, that's exactly where they should be doing it.
- MobileVet 8y agoWhat trust? It is still shocking to me that people EVER trusted Facebook. Since the very beginning, Mark has always been openly dismissive of user privacy.
- tjpnz 8y agoWe're all dumb fucks to him.
- etxm 8y agoMost people still give not a single fuck unfortunately. I went on a usage embargo for quite a while before deleting my account. Most of my friends’ event planning is done through FB so it’s hard to get invited to stuff if you arent a user. After the Instagram plaintext password thing I decided it was time to go. I made a post on FB stating why I was deleting my account and that I was keeping it up for another week for time for friends to read the post. I outlined a lot of the things FB has done or let happen. The responses were the typical trite FB shit. 1. What even is privacy, man‽ 2. Tin foil hat problems 3. My account is fine 4. I am 12 and what is this
- m23khan 8y agoFor me, the trust was destroyed when Mark Zuckerberg bought houses which were around his house for privacy. How can you trust a man and his company with your private data when he himself is so private about his life? Don't get me wrong, I still admire Facebook's R&D but that's pretty much it.
- pc86 8y agoI'm inclined to agree but surely there's a difference between physical privacy and privacy online.
- m23khan 8y agocall me old fashioned on this one but I believe that a man's character shines through any product he creates and any business he owns. Sooner or later, your business and work decisions become manifestation of your own true self regardless of the work mask you choose to apply.
- asdff 8y agoMaybe, maybe not? Zuckerberg bought a dozen houses so no one would document his activity. I don't use facebook and use an adblocker so no one would document my activity. The medium is different, but it's the same concern.
- mindgam3 8y agoPrevious discussion of the source NYT article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18712382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18712382
- hsienmaneja 8y agoIt helps to explain the whole “if you talk about what happened on the north shore, you’ll never get another job in this town again”. Translated to “silicon valley runs a data mafia for sale to mercenaries” with a personal anecdote of being harassed/gaslighted in public in part with info from a private Facebook message This stuff ruins lives. “Dumb fucks” Burn them to the ground. Or, more likely, have the cia silently partner up
- hsienmaneja 8y agoI’m literally preparing for my suicide now by giving away all of my money, after years of being harassed by strangers. The incident in August 2015 that was related to my Facebook private messages was one of many, but was particularly insidious and caused significant damage to my life. It’s highly likely that data has been for sale behind the scenes, readily available for malicious actors, making players like Facebook complicit in ugly shenanigans. Please understand the downsides of information technology. It can be abused to hurt others in ways you may not have foreseen. I’m unable to withstand being harassed any further, and the harassment is 100% enabled by infotech. The Facebook shenanigans will hopefully serve as a prime example of the dangers of free information sharing by malicious actors.
- ams6110 8y ago> It’s highly likely that data has been for sale behind the scenes I would say it's a near certainty. Not saying that Facebook the company was selling data under the table, but one corrupt or extorted sysadmin in the right place is all it would take.
- bwb 8y agoI don't mean to be rude, but who the hell cares. I don't understand why people think if they are using something for free they have a right to privacy, or if the company isn't trying to make money from them to fund the service. The only way you would know you are protected is if national laws are passed, they are enforced, and they clearly set a framework of privacy that creates an even playing field... People here might care, it might make good headlines, but I don't think any normal people out there care. When I talk to my friends who are not in Tech they just assume FB knows everything about them.. and they don't give a shit as they just want to use it for free.
- dimillian 8y agoYes thanks, I mostly (only) use facebook to manage my social events, even if 100% of my FB leak then what ? I don't post anything private. I don't except them to hold sensitive data. The "I'm deleting my account" thing is very very hipster Silicon Valley stuff. And retarded. And I'm very tired to read about it every day. Why would I remove convenience from of my life? Because FB could (is) sell(ing) my events data and social links to providers ? Please do. Maybe ads I see will be more relevant.
- bwb 8y agoAmen! I don't like FB, but I use it for groups I am part of and to stay in touch with a few friends. I also don't care and would love to see more relevant ads.
- justinph 8y ago> But other moves aren’t as bad as they sound. TechCrunch is sure carrying a lot of water for FB here.
- dkrich 8y agoI had begun to give up hope on the common sense of the masses to whom these stories are being pitched, but the comments in this thread have renewed my hope. These hit-pieces are getting very tired and don't really do anything but put scary spins on things that have been public info for years. It's a shame a once-respected news org like the NYT has to resort to scrounging around looking for anything, anything that will make for a FUD story about Facebook to get some page views. Problem is that they suffer no penalty as people seem happy to take the headline and run with it and the subtleties of the situation which Facebook itself has discussed in many instances including this one are discounted. Stories about "well it's not that bad" don't sell as well as "OMG HOLY SH*T FACEBOOK HAS BEEN GIVING YOUR MESSAGES TO EVERYONE!!!" and getting clicks is all these orgs care about now because it's all they can do to stay afloat.
- chillacy 8y agoThe NYT has a nice long history of doing this, even as recently as helping build support for Iraq. Journalism for all the good it’s done is simultaneously a very dirty business for all of its power over public opinion.
- Bhilai 8y agoNow, I am also curious to know how many such deals LinkedIn has and to what level they share data with other tech giants (except off-course Microsoft who already probably have access to everything)
- rchaud 8y ago"haunted" all the way to billions in profit. If the FB revelations are to have a real impact on the culture of surveillance, the biggest advertisers have to start withdrawing from the platform (FB, IG, Whatsapp). Unless that happens, we will continue to see these hand-wringing articles and eventually become numb to them.
- novaRom 8y ago> "I am not important enough to be spied on" Think about whole new generation of politicians and government. What if many of them said or did something wrong when they were young? Will our society adapt itself to new moral norms or will they be managed by some masters of the puppets?
- calimac 8y agoFacebook is haunted by lack of integrity.
- hackeraccount 8y agoFacebook is a blog platform that sells ads. I some T.V. show last night with Media people decrying Facebook and then Facebook explaining how they were trying their best and helping the world communicate. Both sides seemed so overwhelming full of themselves. They both clearly thought all of their customers were idiots. And neither had the dignity to come out and say that they though all of their customers were idiots. This is all going to end with another set of idiots in government passing a bunch of laws that in 10 years half the country will say were a giant mistake and the other half will say "but imagine how much worse things would be if we didn't have these idiotic laws." Ugh.
- northerdome 8y agoI feel like the New York Times really enjoys blowing these Facebook stories out of proportion. Letting a company like Spotify integrate with Messenger is not wholesale selling of messaging data to advertisers. The data was shared with reputable companies using it to expand capabilities of what is offered to Facebook's users. This is not a shocking revelation and certainly not out of scope of the kind of sharing I would expect Facebook to do. Why all the sudden outrage? I have no problems with Facebook doing this with my data. There is nothing revealing about the NYT story. They are just adding hot takes to what is already public knowledge.
- ikeboy 8y agoAgreed - and other "news" sites are taking this to another level, adding unjustified speculation
- tracker1 8y agoEven then, I'm pretty sure the integrations are relatively limited... I mean, most of my friends don't even listen to the same music I do these days. Sure in H.S. it's more common, even through college etc... but tastes change.
- asdff 8y agoDoes spotify need read/write on all my messages and posts ever made? I'm sure spotify isn't the only company granted this privilege of omnipotence. The cards are still falling, don't blame nyt for offering analysis when the news continues to break.
- UncleMeat 8y agoMaybe not, but do you think it is reasonable to build an API that explicitly asks the user for every single individual message? I'm not aware of a single web api that functions this way.
- rchaud 8y agoOnly way FB changes is if big-spending advertisers start dropping out. Losing users will probably not happen because FB can easily spoof user growth numbers. On their next earnings call, if they say DAU grew by 5%, how would you audit the veracity of that statement? Users aren't cash, which can at least be verified by auditors that review bank statements.