13 ms·

Lawmakers fed up with Zuckerberg

216 points by evo_9 8y ago

ashelmire 8y ago
"We don't sell data, we sell access to data. And use of it. Big difference." Basically how I imagine the rationality in Zuckerberg's statement.
- jandrese 8y ago
  I told you we don't sell data, but I didn't say we won't sell data on TUESDAY! Checkmate, lawmakers!
- tremon 8y ago
  And this is an important distinction, especially for investors. Selling data is a one-time occurrence, and requires a lot of effort to maintain revenue. Selling access however uses a subscription model, and guarantees future revenue with a lot less effort. It's the same with software sales vs software subscription models (whether through cloud platforms or support contracts). That distinction should not matter to lawmakers though.
  - hannasanarion 8y ago
    Nonsense. Changing the means of transfer or payment model doesn't mean changing the product. This is like arguing that Dominos doesn't have to obey health rules because they're not a restaurant, they're a food delivery. You don't get to decide which parts of your product the law applies to, and which don't. You can't bypass all firearms laws by selling holsters that just so happen to have guns in them as a free bonus. If Facebook tries this in court, the conversation will go something like this: Court: Do you sell data? Zuck: No, we sell access to data Court: so if you took out the data, and gave only access to your systems, completely blank and with nothing on them, people would still want to pay just as much? Zuck: No, our customers want the data Court: Then you are selling data. Case closed. Go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect 200 email addresses.
  - CaptainZapp 8y ago
    Selling data is a one-time occurrence This is not necessarily true. Depending on the deal you make with address brokers you more often than not hire specific addresses for one time use. You are not allowed to reuse them for multiple mailings without paying additional fees. In order to enforce this address brokers seed the data with control addresses. Carefully curated address lists (say, something like C level managers with an income > 500K $, for example) are expensive, even for one time use. If an address broker outright sells addresses those are usually of very low quality.
- mtgx 8y ago
  They also barter data when they partner with data brokers, device manufacturers, service providers. But that's like Totally Different™ than selling data.
ilovecaching 8y ago
They weren’t selling data. It was a series of API integrations for popular sites that ended years ago. Users had to sign in to those services. I have way less trust for our tech illiterate congress than I do for Facebook.
- ___alt 8y ago
  It was unclear to users what they consented to when they signed in. Because Facebook doesn't give a damn about proper consent. The fact that Facebook botched it up is not less problematic than Facebook selling data because the outcome for users is more or less the same. Turns out "move fast and break things" is a shitty policy when it comes to privacy concerns.
  - bg4 8y ago
    Sounds like we need another Facebook apology tour.
    - elliekelly 8y ago
      "We're sorry you misunderstood how we operate." - Zuckerberg
      - how_many_times 8y ago
        Zuckerberg to users:"You are all too stupid" Users are aghast. "Mark, that is utterly disrespectful. Say you are sorry!" Zuckerberg to users: "I am sorry that you are all too stupid"
    - kumarharsh 8y ago
      This strongly reminds me of that South Park episode which had the BP Oil CEO apologizing for fucking up. Over and over again. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WTsDqIcpHUc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WTsDqIcpHUc
  - razakel 8y ago
    >It was unclear to users what they consented to when they signed in. I highly doubt anyone would consent to allowing third party companies to read their private messages if that was actually made clear to them.
tempodox 8y ago
> Zuckerberg assured lawmakers that “we don't sell data to anyone.” So he lied to Congress and now he's busted. I was wondering whether there exists an audience that wouldn't buy his bullshit wholesale.
- bryanrasmussen 8y ago
  if the contracts say something like you are not allowed to save the data into your systems then it is technically true they don't sell data. Just thinking out loud in weasel here.
  - elliekelly 8y ago
    They can't possibly have that clause though. RBC, for example, had read & write access to users' private messages supposedly for the purpose of facilitating customer support messaging and electronic cash transfers among friends. RBC would require permission to save data from Facebook's system to their own in order to keep accurate banking records. RBC's attorneys never would have agreed to the contract without the ability to save data from Facebook's system.
- dylan604 8y ago
  The Zuck just needs to say he misspoke rather than lying. It worked well for Clapper.
  - misiti3780 8y ago
    yes, and clapper still has a great career. he is a disgrace.
JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
Democracy is working, because we, the constituents, are too!
LMYahooTFY 8y ago
The degree of grand standing over this issue leads me to wonder who among the donor base is pushing for such action. Obviously many would welcome something similar to "GDPR", and the question is always how such regulation can be levied in favor of incumbents. Our new digital footprints are much more detailed, but I've yet to understand how they're fundamentally different from what media companies have been selling for most of the last century. I don't preclude the possibility that they might be, I've just not understood it yet.
- elliekelly 8y ago
  > Our new digital footprints are much more detailed, but I've yet to understand how they're fundamentally different from what media companies have been selling for most of the last century. Thirty years ago a media company could say you subscribe to these two magazines, this newspaper, and you're a 35 year old male. That means you probably watch these five TV shows and you're likely to be interested in X, Y, and Z. They could also say to advertisers, if you're looking for a 35 year old male who's interested in X, Y, and Z the most effective way to market to them is probably advertising on this radio station or during this T.V. show. They tranched and profiled viewers as groups and sub-groups. Today, they don't have to profile or make generalizations about trends among groups of people. They have all of the information, for each and every one of us as individuals, at their fingertips. Thirty years ago they sold access to "35 year old males who like football." Today they sell access to you.
  - rock_hard 8y ago
    If you ever used Facebook or Google Ads system you would know that this is factually incorrect! Neither platform sales access to a specific person! Instead what they sell is access to “35 year old males who like football”!
    - reaperducer 8y ago
      Except that you could upload a list of e-mail addresses or phone numbers, or even an e-mail address or phone number list of one, and target that one person.
SimonPStevens 8y ago
I'm the first person to hate on Facebook, but for once I think this is hugely overblown. They didn't sell peoples data, that made it possible to voluntarily connect accounts. It's the equivalent of complaining that hotmail sold your private email data to Thunderbird when you used Thunderbird as your desktop email client. No. They didn't, you gave them access to it because that is what connecting the accounts does. If should be fairly clear to anyone that if you connect accounts you are exposing data between the accounts. The debate about the granularity of permissions is neither here nor there, everyone should have a clear expectation that connecting accounts = sharing lots of data. Unless it is explicitly stated what is excluded the assumption should be that everything is shared.
- martin-adams 8y ago
  The challenge though is when my friends connect their account and drag me into things.
- JeremyBanks 8y ago
  > everyone should have a clear expectation that connecting accounts = sharing lots of data. That's amoral bullshit and we must demand better. It should be expected that that connecting accounts means sharing little more than the subset of data required for the integration. Companies that violation this expectation must face consequences. GDPR takes a step in this direction, prohibiting retention of PII for longer than necessary for business purposes.
  - natestemen 8y ago
    im going to take this a step further and say connecting accounts means sharing _no more_ data than is required for the integration. I don't understand why netflix gets to see all your DM's when all you want the connection to do is send a message to a person you choose. The connection doesn't need to give netflix literally any data besides maybe the fact that a message was sent. why do they need to know who it was too, and any other messages surrounding it?
    - 8y ago
dominotw 8y ago
Isn't google more vicious and powerful in data gathering. Why is google being given freepass.
- chooseaname 8y ago
  Why do you think they are getting a "freepass" [sic] just because Congress is going after Facebook at the moment?
  - dominotw 8y ago
    Yes. Was facebook randomly choosen in coin toss?
- toss1 8y ago
  Google isn't getting a freepass, but they are sending their CEO up to testify, and he is apparently doing so truthfully. In contrast, FB is often sending proxies instead of the CEO, and when the CEO did appear, he was apparently not candid. Not sure if this rises to the standard of felony lying to congress, but if so, I'd not be sad to see Zuckerberg do time for that, considering the scale of damage he's foisted on our society.
  - dominotw 8y ago
    > Google isn't getting a freepass, but they are sending their CEO up to testify, and he is apparently doing so truthfully. We are discussing data privacy though, not algorithmic bias.
miracle2k 8y ago
Say I am running a social network. I want to allow my users to give access to their own damn data to third parties. I want them to be able to use third party chat UIs. Now, how do I do it in a non-evil way? I am presuming here that everyone agrees that should be possible to make that work. Apparently Facebook did it the wrong way. Why? If the argument is "Users who agreed to this integration did not know what they were doing because the permission dialog was not clear enough", then I have a couple questions: - What was the permission dialog like, really? Does anyone have a source for this? - Why does the New York Times not go into this? I mean, if that is the issue, it seems kind of important? - Reading the latest Times piece, does anyone feel comfortable arguing that the reader will understand what is apparently the issue - the permission dialog was not clear enough? Or is it more likely that the reader is left with the vague notion that Facebook just dumped all user's private messages over to a bunch of other companies?
- mistermann 8y ago
  To clear it up, we could just refer to the Facebook blog post where they tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth on this matter. Is there such a thing?
  - miracle2k 8y ago
    The Facebook newsroom posts on this matter go into much more detail than the Times reporting. That said, I don't expect Facebook to tell me the inconvenient truth. But I am paying the New York Times so that they improve my understanding of the situation, not make me feel like I can learn more from Facebook PR.
    - rock_hard 8y ago
      But being a subscription service doesn’t incentive the NYT to improve your understanding of the situation...the only thing it incentivizes them to do is to keep you from unsubscribing which is easier to do by creating outrage than by staying with the truth. See what I did there?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
throw7 8y ago
we the people want to be secure in our papers... increasingly those papers are virtual now and scattered all over the internet. lawmakers need to catch up, setup hearings/panels with real digital privacy advocates (not spectacles of the type we've been getting with zuck/pichai/et al.).
sschueller 8y ago
I don't like Facebook however I think people are blaming the wrong things. Facebook should just come out and say it already. They sell and process data like everyone else (what do people think credit card companies and Amazon do? ) . It isn't against the law and if people want it changed, change the laws. This is mostly on lawmakers for not dealing with the issues for so many years.
- cwkoss 8y ago
  It would be nice if lying to congress had consequences.
- marcosdumay 8y ago
  If they said that, lawmakers would need to deal with the problem, and Facebook would be out of their revenue stream.
c649986ce4b3ba0 8y ago
This is an amazing statement, I don't even know what to say about it (emphasis added): "Facebook also regarded these partners as extensions of itself because they committed to abide by its privacy guidelines, according to the Times report, and therefore the company felt it did not need users' permission before sharing their data."
nijave 8y ago
Still holding out for someone to care about Equifax that arguably did far worse by not only collecting large amounts of data, but failing to give consumers any control over it. Their whole business model is collecting and selling personal data and opting likely has financial penalties.
- IggleSniggle 8y ago
  Thank you! For all the data collection of Facebook, it doesn’t even come close to the non-agreed upon infringement into my personal life of the credit bureaus, who, in turn, seem to have limitless ability to resell whatever they might know about me to their hearts content...or, you know, just lose it to even more nefarious agents
- bepotts 8y ago
  The only reason Facebook is under so much fire is because Facebook is a scapegoat for entire groups of people. You have tech people who hate Facebook because Facebook is a social network and many tech people aren't social, so Facebook represents this experience that they either shun or think they're too "above it". Lots of tech people also hate how much data collection they do, even though users give it up voluntarily. There's also journalists, who hate how much their business model relies on Facebook. You have politically left-leaning individuals all over the world, who hate that people on the right use Facebook to organize political movements against the establishment. You see this in Trump, Brexit, and anti-immigrant movements all over Europe. Almost all the people screaming about Facebook before these allegations came out are the exact same people screaming now. It's just hard to take these people seriously. Facebook needs reform; Facebook will probably get regulated; but Facebook isn't going to get regulated into oblivion and Facebook is going to be here for the foreseeable future.
- beat 8y ago
  And unlike the "private" data of Facebook, Equifax data has serious real-world consequences beyond mere embarrassment.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > Still holding out for someone to care about Equifax No tangible harm can be traced to the Equidate breach. (At least not yet.) That makes it politically useless. If you want the Congress to build the legal tools with which to prosecute Equifax the next time around, Facebook is the lens through which to do it. Remember, the United States doesn’t really have a statorury codification of digital privacy rights. We’re still in the process of distilling popular senses into law.
rdxm 8y ago
lookout! a strong admonishing is coming!!! zuck's laughing all the way to the bank. most of Congress doesn't even know how the Inet actually works commerce-wise, technically, etc. this is yet more kabuki theatre..
jhcl 8y ago
The big companies are collecting and selling our personal data but since we care more about sharing photographs of our lunch, dog and/or holiday we click away all Terms of Services. Not until congress is void of financial incentives can the US expect a somewhat decent political solution like Europe tries to do. In the meantime try not to act like part of the herd and don't post anything that makes you their product.
CWuestefeld 8y ago
Am I the only one feeling deja vu, relative to Comey's statements to Congress claiming that the NSA wasn't monitoring our communications? And given that nothing was ever done to Comey, or anybody else involved in that spying, is there any reason to expect any repercussions for Zuckerberg/FB?
gammateam 8y ago
and the data brokers and adtech networks are still laughing at Zuck for being the Face and fallguy
resters 8y ago
I posted an analysis of this situation the other day which got downvoted harshly. I'd be curious to read any thoughtful rebuttals: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18716646 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18716646
sjg007 8y ago
Queue lobbyists.
FlyingBears 8y ago
I am not trying to imagine a conspiracy here, but are there any forces on the investor side or outside of the company trying to unseat Zuck? The deluge of bad press seems like a concerted effort.
- starbeast 8y ago
  How come nearly everybody saying pretty much this exact thing on every FB thread recently also emphasizes that they are not trying to imagine a conspiracy here? Now, I am not trying to imagine a conspiracy here...
  - FlyingBears 8y ago
    I haven't seen a breakdown of opposition from perspective of financial interest. Privacy noise is just a tool to get to more money and control. Unless this hole is explored, FB has plausible case to play victim.
    - starbeast 8y ago
      Yeah, but everyone has a plausible case to play victim if the evidence threshold is 'scary things that could exist that we currently have no evidence either way for'.
resters 8y ago
Keep in mind that Facebook entered the spotlight only after it was alleged/found that it didn't do enough (in hindsight) to prevent Russian meddling in the 2016 election. What is often overlooked from the analysis is that the current president successfully exploited the intended behavior of the news feed algorithm to obtain billions worth of free marketing/PR during the campaign. The algorithm is essentially a virality detection sensor that finds "high quality" content (measured by how much users will engage with it) and distributes it to users in a way that maximizes the amount of ad revenue generated by their consumption of the content. There is also a mechanism that creates an exceptionally rich psychographic and demographic profile of each user, so that ads can be targeted with great precision (resulting in higher yield and thus higher ad spend by marketers). However just as Twitter ran into scalability issues once celebrities started using the platform, Facebook has run into a different kind of scalability issue. The news feed algorithm had very unexpected behavior when large numbers of users started sharing stories about Trump, commenting, liking/frowning, aggressively, etc. The unexpected behavior was that Trump content (specifically the content he controlled because it was triggered by his deliberate crass remarks) suddenly took over the news feeds of millions and millions of users, and the person controlling the flow of such content was none other than the candidate himself. The Trump campaign used this mechanism successfully to reach undecided voters -- just because someone posts a story criticizing something crass Trump did doesn't mean the content doesn't reach a small percentage of their FB friends who view the content in a positive light. Another side effect was that all the newspapers and media outlets had been increasingly measuring social media engagement as a signal of the effectiveness of their content/editorial strategy. So by successfully creating massively controversial stories which got shared on social media, Trump effectively rewarded journalists for helping him control the focus of press coverage of his campaign. One can imagine the praise reporters received for stories that were shared millions of times which outlined some crass comment or another. The FB news feed algorithm is the way it is because it maximizes revenue for Facebook. At present it is completely possible that Trump or another candidate could use the same exact approach again in 2020 and beyond. As much as Trump is beneficial to many establishment interests, he also endangers many, and this is not a risk that those in power want to allow to happen. So what US officials want is the ability to suppress content that would otherwise have been promoted by Facebook's algorithm. The excuse we are getting officially is that they want to suppress things like the Russian-funded content (which was a very small factor in Trump's overall viral success). But in actuality what they want is the ability to turn down the volume on some political topics/discussion and turn up the volume on other topics/discussion. This is, in essence, the same goal as the Great Firewall of China, only it's far more sophisticated because nobody will get any "451 content censored" errors. Over time the public will just end up with slightly different opinions, focal points, etc., than it would otherwise have had. Keep in mind that Facebook has been gradually doing everything the officials have requested, but Zuck cannot simply wave his wand and make all this available to officials. If he did he might face employees protesting the decision, etc. But officials view the timeline as extremely urgent and are escalating by attempting to harm Facebook's market value so that Zuck gets pressured by other sources to do as requested. It's funny that we are seeing this peculiar turn of events as the build up to the US having its own Great Firewall. But when you think about why certain social media is banned in Egypt and Turkey, it's pretty clear that by amplifying viral themes in ways that government can't control, the status quo is endangered, and those in power stand to lose when that happens. So in an ironic sense, Trump's social media strategy resulted in a "spring" of sorts in the US, which ruffled a lot of feathers among power holders. Trump has largely been contained and is not a threat, but there is great concern about the risks that Facebook's algorithm poses to the political status quo. That is what this harassment is about. The worst nightmare of US officials would be someone like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez utilizing a similar strategy. In much the way that the printing press was used to fuel social upheaval, the same mechanism is at work with social media, but it is thousands of times more powerful. I think we need to ask ourselves what does a democracy look like in an era where social media virality and herd mentality is "enhanced" by news feed algorithms. Twitter started off without an algorithmic feed but adopted one once profits became the sole focus. We think of the design of news feeds as deep science, but it's equivalent to holding various cuts of meat in front of hungry dogs. Human brains and emotions gravitate toward a small number of emotionally potent themes, so algorithms have effectively reduced the dimensionality of social media so that it mainly targets the centers of addiction, the lizard brain, etc. These are the same parts of the brain triggered by the platitudes and fear-mongering of politicians and government officials, so of course they are taking notice and want to control it.
throwww222 8y ago
Murdoch hates Facebook and Google because advertisers are spending their money with those guys instead of in his newspapers. So he's launched a consistent campaign to discredit them. Check the sources of these stories. I bet 9/10 come from Murdoch owned companies. Trust me on this inside info.
gerbilly 8y ago
Facebook is a voluntary surveillance platform as well as a colossal waste of time. Just leave!
lgleason 8y ago
Lawmakers should be fed up with Facebook. That said, Google is an even bigger issue that deserves more scrutiny. The only difference is that Google is spending more money to buy off politicians on both sides of the isle.
flareback 8y ago
Can't say I ever thought too much of Zuckerberg, but anyone who annoys politicians can't be all bad.
btbuildem 8y ago
Are we sure this isn't more about the fact that Zuckerberg has vast financial resources, and has been showing an interest in a political career? With the fallout from FB's role in the US election, I can see the establishment getting a little uneasy. This could be antibodies fighting a parasite, in their own lovely way.
mindcrime 8y ago
Dear Congress: We don't need a law to protect our privacy from Facebook; we need one to protect us from the US government.
- kamarg 8y ago
  Why not both? Seems like my data should be protected from anyone that isn't me until I decide to allow those in either the public or private sector to access it.
  - mindcrime 8y ago
    Strictly speaking, I agree. The defining difference to me, though, is that things like "using Facebook" are voluntary. I can choose to just not use Facebook at all. I can't really opt out of being spied on by the US government. And even though I'm a radical libertarian, EFF supporter, etc., exactly the kind of person you would normally expect to be very worked up over these kind of privacy issues, I have a different take when it comes to sites like Facebook. That is, I've always assumed that anything I post on Facebook is effectively public, and so anything that I don't want seen, I just don't post to begin with. And I don't use Facebook Messenger for sensitive conversations... to me, that's mainly for "hey what you doing this weekend", "wanna catch a movie" chit-chat. Of course I understand that other people are operating from different base assumptions, and so they are going to react differently. Still, the USG worries me more than Facebook, Twitter, Google, and their ilk.

216 points by evo_9 8y ago

"We don't sell data, we sell access to data. And use of it. Big difference." Basically how I imagine the rationality in Zuckerberg's statement.

jandrese 8y ago
I told you we don't sell data, but I didn't say we won't sell data on TUESDAY! Checkmate, lawmakers!
tremon 8y ago
And this is an important distinction, especially for investors. Selling data is a one-time occurrence, and requires a lot of effort to maintain revenue. Selling access however uses a subscription model, and guarantees future revenue with a lot less effort. It's the same with software sales vs software subscription models (whether through cloud platforms or support contracts). That distinction should not matter to lawmakers though.
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  Nonsense. Changing the means of transfer or payment model doesn't mean changing the product. This is like arguing that Dominos doesn't have to obey health rules because they're not a restaurant, they're a food delivery. You don't get to decide which parts of your product the law applies to, and which don't. You can't bypass all firearms laws by selling holsters that just so happen to have guns in them as a free bonus. If Facebook tries this in court, the conversation will go something like this: Court: Do you sell data? Zuck: No, we sell access to data Court: so if you took out the data, and gave only access to your systems, completely blank and with nothing on them, people would still want to pay just as much? Zuck: No, our customers want the data Court: Then you are selling data. Case closed. Go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect 200 email addresses.
- CaptainZapp 8y ago
  Selling data is a one-time occurrence This is not necessarily true. Depending on the deal you make with address brokers you more often than not hire specific addresses for one time use. You are not allowed to reuse them for multiple mailings without paying additional fees. In order to enforce this address brokers seed the data with control addresses. Carefully curated address lists (say, something like C level managers with an income > 500K $, for example) are expensive, even for one time use. If an address broker outright sells addresses those are usually of very low quality.
mtgx 8y ago
They also barter data when they partner with data brokers, device manufacturers, service providers. But that's like Totally Different™ than selling data.

ilovecaching 8y ago

They weren’t selling data. It was a series of API integrations for popular sites that ended years ago. Users had to sign in to those services. I have way less trust for our tech illiterate congress than I do for Facebook.

___alt 8y ago
It was unclear to users what they consented to when they signed in. Because Facebook doesn't give a damn about proper consent. The fact that Facebook botched it up is not less problematic than Facebook selling data because the outcome for users is more or less the same. Turns out "move fast and break things" is a shitty policy when it comes to privacy concerns.
- bg4 8y ago
  Sounds like we need another Facebook apology tour.
  - elliekelly 8y ago
    "We're sorry you misunderstood how we operate." - Zuckerberg
    - how_many_times 8y ago
      Zuckerberg to users:"You are all too stupid" Users are aghast. "Mark, that is utterly disrespectful. Say you are sorry!" Zuckerberg to users: "I am sorry that you are all too stupid"
  - kumarharsh 8y ago
    This strongly reminds me of that South Park episode which had the BP Oil CEO apologizing for fucking up. Over and over again. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WTsDqIcpHUc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WTsDqIcpHUc
- razakel 8y ago
  >It was unclear to users what they consented to when they signed in. I highly doubt anyone would consent to allowing third party companies to read their private messages if that was actually made clear to them.

tempodox 8y ago

> Zuckerberg assured lawmakers that “we don't sell data to anyone.” So he lied to Congress and now he's busted. I was wondering whether there exists an audience that wouldn't buy his bullshit wholesale.

bryanrasmussen 8y ago
if the contracts say something like you are not allowed to save the data into your systems then it is technically true they don't sell data. Just thinking out loud in weasel here.
- elliekelly 8y ago
  They can't possibly have that clause though. RBC, for example, had read & write access to users' private messages supposedly for the purpose of facilitating customer support messaging and electronic cash transfers among friends. RBC would require permission to save data from Facebook's system to their own in order to keep accurate banking records. RBC's attorneys never would have agreed to the contract without the ability to save data from Facebook's system.
dylan604 8y ago
The Zuck just needs to say he misspoke rather than lying. It worked well for Clapper.
- misiti3780 8y ago
  yes, and clapper still has a great career. he is a disgrace.

JohnJamesRambo 8y ago

Democracy is working, because we, the constituents, are too!

LMYahooTFY 8y ago

The degree of grand standing over this issue leads me to wonder who among the donor base is pushing for such action. Obviously many would welcome something similar to "GDPR", and the question is always how such regulation can be levied in favor of incumbents. Our new digital footprints are much more detailed, but I've yet to understand how they're fundamentally different from what media companies have been selling for most of the last century. I don't preclude the possibility that they might be, I've just not understood it yet.

elliekelly 8y ago
> Our new digital footprints are much more detailed, but I've yet to understand how they're fundamentally different from what media companies have been selling for most of the last century. Thirty years ago a media company could say you subscribe to these two magazines, this newspaper, and you're a 35 year old male. That means you probably watch these five TV shows and you're likely to be interested in X, Y, and Z. They could also say to advertisers, if you're looking for a 35 year old male who's interested in X, Y, and Z the most effective way to market to them is probably advertising on this radio station or during this T.V. show. They tranched and profiled viewers as groups and sub-groups. Today, they don't have to profile or make generalizations about trends among groups of people. They have all of the information, for each and every one of us as individuals, at their fingertips. Thirty years ago they sold access to "35 year old males who like football." Today they sell access to you.
- rock_hard 8y ago
  If you ever used Facebook or Google Ads system you would know that this is factually incorrect! Neither platform sales access to a specific person! Instead what they sell is access to “35 year old males who like football”!
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    Except that you could upload a list of e-mail addresses or phone numbers, or even an e-mail address or phone number list of one, and target that one person.

SimonPStevens 8y ago

I'm the first person to hate on Facebook, but for once I think this is hugely overblown. They didn't sell peoples data, that made it possible to voluntarily connect accounts. It's the equivalent of complaining that hotmail sold your private email data to Thunderbird when you used Thunderbird as your desktop email client. No. They didn't, you gave them access to it because that is what connecting the accounts does. If should be fairly clear to anyone that if you connect accounts you are exposing data between the accounts. The debate about the granularity of permissions is neither here nor there, everyone should have a clear expectation that connecting accounts = sharing lots of data. Unless it is explicitly stated what is excluded the assumption should be that everything is shared.

martin-adams 8y ago
The challenge though is when my friends connect their account and drag me into things.
JeremyBanks 8y ago
> everyone should have a clear expectation that connecting accounts = sharing lots of data. That's amoral bullshit and we must demand better. It should be expected that that connecting accounts means sharing little more than the subset of data required for the integration. Companies that violation this expectation must face consequences. GDPR takes a step in this direction, prohibiting retention of PII for longer than necessary for business purposes.
- natestemen 8y ago
  im going to take this a step further and say connecting accounts means sharing _no more_ data than is required for the integration. I don't understand why netflix gets to see all your DM's when all you want the connection to do is send a message to a person you choose. The connection doesn't need to give netflix literally any data besides maybe the fact that a message was sent. why do they need to know who it was too, and any other messages surrounding it?
  - 8y ago

dominotw 8y ago

Isn't google more vicious and powerful in data gathering. Why is google being given freepass.

chooseaname 8y ago
Why do you think they are getting a "freepass" [sic] just because Congress is going after Facebook at the moment?
- dominotw 8y ago
  Yes. Was facebook randomly choosen in coin toss?
toss1 8y ago
Google isn't getting a freepass, but they are sending their CEO up to testify, and he is apparently doing so truthfully. In contrast, FB is often sending proxies instead of the CEO, and when the CEO did appear, he was apparently not candid. Not sure if this rises to the standard of felony lying to congress, but if so, I'd not be sad to see Zuckerberg do time for that, considering the scale of damage he's foisted on our society.
- dominotw 8y ago
  > Google isn't getting a freepass, but they are sending their CEO up to testify, and he is apparently doing so truthfully. We are discussing data privacy though, not algorithmic bias.

miracle2k 8y ago

Say I am running a social network. I want to allow my users to give access to their own damn data to third parties. I want them to be able to use third party chat UIs. Now, how do I do it in a non-evil way? I am presuming here that everyone agrees that should be possible to make that work. Apparently Facebook did it the wrong way. Why? If the argument is "Users who agreed to this integration did not know what they were doing because the permission dialog was not clear enough", then I have a couple questions: - What was the permission dialog like, really? Does anyone have a source for this? - Why does the New York Times not go into this? I mean, if that is the issue, it seems kind of important? - Reading the latest Times piece, does anyone feel comfortable arguing that the reader will understand what is apparently the issue - the permission dialog was not clear enough? Or is it more likely that the reader is left with the vague notion that Facebook just dumped all user's private messages over to a bunch of other companies?

mistermann 8y ago
To clear it up, we could just refer to the Facebook blog post where they tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth on this matter. Is there such a thing?
- miracle2k 8y ago
  The Facebook newsroom posts on this matter go into much more detail than the Times reporting. That said, I don't expect Facebook to tell me the inconvenient truth. But I am paying the New York Times so that they improve my understanding of the situation, not make me feel like I can learn more from Facebook PR.
  - rock_hard 8y ago
    But being a subscription service doesn’t incentive the NYT to improve your understanding of the situation...the only thing it incentivizes them to do is to keep you from unsubscribing which is easier to do by creating outrage than by staying with the truth. See what I did there?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

throw7 8y ago

we the people want to be secure in our papers... increasingly those papers are virtual now and scattered all over the internet. lawmakers need to catch up, setup hearings/panels with real digital privacy advocates (not spectacles of the type we've been getting with zuck/pichai/et al.).

sschueller 8y ago

I don't like Facebook however I think people are blaming the wrong things. Facebook should just come out and say it already. They sell and process data like everyone else (what do people think credit card companies and Amazon do? ) . It isn't against the law and if people want it changed, change the laws. This is mostly on lawmakers for not dealing with the issues for so many years.

cwkoss 8y ago
It would be nice if lying to congress had consequences.
marcosdumay 8y ago
If they said that, lawmakers would need to deal with the problem, and Facebook would be out of their revenue stream.

c649986ce4b3ba0 8y ago

This is an amazing statement, I don't even know what to say about it (emphasis added): "Facebook also regarded these partners as extensions of itself because they committed to abide by its privacy guidelines, according to the Times report, and therefore the company felt it did not need users' permission before sharing their data."

nijave 8y ago

Still holding out for someone to care about Equifax that arguably did far worse by not only collecting large amounts of data, but failing to give consumers any control over it. Their whole business model is collecting and selling personal data and opting likely has financial penalties.

IggleSniggle 8y ago
Thank you! For all the data collection of Facebook, it doesn’t even come close to the non-agreed upon infringement into my personal life of the credit bureaus, who, in turn, seem to have limitless ability to resell whatever they might know about me to their hearts content...or, you know, just lose it to even more nefarious agents
bepotts 8y ago
The only reason Facebook is under so much fire is because Facebook is a scapegoat for entire groups of people. You have tech people who hate Facebook because Facebook is a social network and many tech people aren't social, so Facebook represents this experience that they either shun or think they're too "above it". Lots of tech people also hate how much data collection they do, even though users give it up voluntarily. There's also journalists, who hate how much their business model relies on Facebook. You have politically left-leaning individuals all over the world, who hate that people on the right use Facebook to organize political movements against the establishment. You see this in Trump, Brexit, and anti-immigrant movements all over Europe. Almost all the people screaming about Facebook before these allegations came out are the exact same people screaming now. It's just hard to take these people seriously. Facebook needs reform; Facebook will probably get regulated; but Facebook isn't going to get regulated into oblivion and Facebook is going to be here for the foreseeable future.
beat 8y ago
And unlike the "private" data of Facebook, Equifax data has serious real-world consequences beyond mere embarrassment.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> Still holding out for someone to care about Equifax No tangible harm can be traced to the Equidate breach. (At least not yet.) That makes it politically useless. If you want the Congress to build the legal tools with which to prosecute Equifax the next time around, Facebook is the lens through which to do it. Remember, the United States doesn’t really have a statorury codification of digital privacy rights. We’re still in the process of distilling popular senses into law.

rdxm 8y ago

lookout! a strong admonishing is coming!!! zuck's laughing all the way to the bank. most of Congress doesn't even know how the Inet actually works commerce-wise, technically, etc. this is yet more kabuki theatre..

jhcl 8y ago

The big companies are collecting and selling our personal data but since we care more about sharing photographs of our lunch, dog and/or holiday we click away all Terms of Services. Not until congress is void of financial incentives can the US expect a somewhat decent political solution like Europe tries to do. In the meantime try not to act like part of the herd and don't post anything that makes you their product.

CWuestefeld 8y ago

Am I the only one feeling deja vu, relative to Comey's statements to Congress claiming that the NSA wasn't monitoring our communications? And given that nothing was ever done to Comey, or anybody else involved in that spying, is there any reason to expect any repercussions for Zuckerberg/FB?

gammateam 8y ago

and the data brokers and adtech networks are still laughing at Zuck for being the Face and fallguy

resters 8y ago

I posted an analysis of this situation the other day which got downvoted harshly. I'd be curious to read any thoughtful rebuttals: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18716646 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18716646

sjg007 8y ago

Queue lobbyists.

FlyingBears 8y ago

I am not trying to imagine a conspiracy here, but are there any forces on the investor side or outside of the company trying to unseat Zuck? The deluge of bad press seems like a concerted effort.

starbeast 8y ago
How come nearly everybody saying pretty much this exact thing on every FB thread recently also emphasizes that they are not trying to imagine a conspiracy here? Now, I am not trying to imagine a conspiracy here...
- FlyingBears 8y ago
  I haven't seen a breakdown of opposition from perspective of financial interest. Privacy noise is just a tool to get to more money and control. Unless this hole is explored, FB has plausible case to play victim.
  - starbeast 8y ago
    Yeah, but everyone has a plausible case to play victim if the evidence threshold is 'scary things that could exist that we currently have no evidence either way for'.

resters 8y ago

Keep in mind that Facebook entered the spotlight only after it was alleged/found that it didn't do enough (in hindsight) to prevent Russian meddling in the 2016 election. What is often overlooked from the analysis is that the current president successfully exploited the intended behavior of the news feed algorithm to obtain billions worth of free marketing/PR during the campaign. The algorithm is essentially a virality detection sensor that finds "high quality" content (measured by how much users will engage with it) and distributes it to users in a way that maximizes the amount of ad revenue generated by their consumption of the content. There is also a mechanism that creates an exceptionally rich psychographic and demographic profile of each user, so that ads can be targeted with great precision (resulting in higher yield and thus higher ad spend by marketers). However just as Twitter ran into scalability issues once celebrities started using the platform, Facebook has run into a different kind of scalability issue. The news feed algorithm had very unexpected behavior when large numbers of users started sharing stories about Trump, commenting, liking/frowning, aggressively, etc. The unexpected behavior was that Trump content (specifically the content he controlled because it was triggered by his deliberate crass remarks) suddenly took over the news feeds of millions and millions of users, and the person controlling the flow of such content was none other than the candidate himself. The Trump campaign used this mechanism successfully to reach undecided voters -- just because someone posts a story criticizing something crass Trump did doesn't mean the content doesn't reach a small percentage of their FB friends who view the content in a positive light. Another side effect was that all the newspapers and media outlets had been increasingly measuring social media engagement as a signal of the effectiveness of their content/editorial strategy. So by successfully creating massively controversial stories which got shared on social media, Trump effectively rewarded journalists for helping him control the focus of press coverage of his campaign. One can imagine the praise reporters received for stories that were shared millions of times which outlined some crass comment or another. The FB news feed algorithm is the way it is because it maximizes revenue for Facebook. At present it is completely possible that Trump or another candidate could use the same exact approach again in 2020 and beyond. As much as Trump is beneficial to many establishment interests, he also endangers many, and this is not a risk that those in power want to allow to happen. So what US officials want is the ability to suppress content that would otherwise have been promoted by Facebook's algorithm. The excuse we are getting officially is that they want to suppress things like the Russian-funded content (which was a very small factor in Trump's overall viral success). But in actuality what they want is the ability to turn down the volume on some political topics/discussion and turn up the volume on other topics/discussion. This is, in essence, the same goal as the Great Firewall of China, only it's far more sophisticated because nobody will get any "451 content censored" errors. Over time the public will just end up with slightly different opinions, focal points, etc., than it would otherwise have had. Keep in mind that Facebook has been gradually doing everything the officials have requested, but Zuck cannot simply wave his wand and make all this available to officials. If he did he might face employees protesting the decision, etc. But officials view the timeline as extremely urgent and are escalating by attempting to harm Facebook's market value so that Zuck gets pressured by other sources to do as requested. It's funny that we are seeing this peculiar turn of events as the build up to the US having its own Great Firewall. But when you think about why certain social media is banned in Egypt and Turkey, it's pretty clear that by amplifying viral themes in ways that government can't control, the status quo is endangered, and those in power stand to lose when that happens. So in an ironic sense, Trump's social media strategy resulted in a "spring" of sorts in the US, which ruffled a lot of feathers among power holders. Trump has largely been contained and is not a threat, but there is great concern about the risks that Facebook's algorithm poses to the political status quo. That is what this harassment is about. The worst nightmare of US officials would be someone like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez utilizing a similar strategy. In much the way that the printing press was used to fuel social upheaval, the same mechanism is at work with social media, but it is thousands of times more powerful. I think we need to ask ourselves what does a democracy look like in an era where social media virality and herd mentality is "enhanced" by news feed algorithms. Twitter started off without an algorithmic feed but adopted one once profits became the sole focus. We think of the design of news feeds as deep science, but it's equivalent to holding various cuts of meat in front of hungry dogs. Human brains and emotions gravitate toward a small number of emotionally potent themes, so algorithms have effectively reduced the dimensionality of social media so that it mainly targets the centers of addiction, the lizard brain, etc. These are the same parts of the brain triggered by the platitudes and fear-mongering of politicians and government officials, so of course they are taking notice and want to control it.

throwww222 8y ago

Murdoch hates Facebook and Google because advertisers are spending their money with those guys instead of in his newspapers. So he's launched a consistent campaign to discredit them. Check the sources of these stories. I bet 9/10 come from Murdoch owned companies. Trust me on this inside info.

gerbilly 8y ago

Facebook is a voluntary surveillance platform as well as a colossal waste of time. Just leave!

lgleason 8y ago

Lawmakers should be fed up with Facebook. That said, Google is an even bigger issue that deserves more scrutiny. The only difference is that Google is spending more money to buy off politicians on both sides of the isle.

flareback 8y ago

Can't say I ever thought too much of Zuckerberg, but anyone who annoys politicians can't be all bad.

btbuildem 8y ago

Are we sure this isn't more about the fact that Zuckerberg has vast financial resources, and has been showing an interest in a political career? With the fallout from FB's role in the US election, I can see the establishment getting a little uneasy. This could be antibodies fighting a parasite, in their own lovely way.

mindcrime 8y ago

Dear Congress: We don't need a law to protect our privacy from Facebook; we need one to protect us from the US government.

kamarg 8y ago
Why not both? Seems like my data should be protected from anyone that isn't me until I decide to allow those in either the public or private sector to access it.
- mindcrime 8y ago
  Strictly speaking, I agree. The defining difference to me, though, is that things like "using Facebook" are voluntary. I can choose to just not use Facebook at all. I can't really opt out of being spied on by the US government. And even though I'm a radical libertarian, EFF supporter, etc., exactly the kind of person you would normally expect to be very worked up over these kind of privacy issues, I have a different take when it comes to sites like Facebook. That is, I've always assumed that anything I post on Facebook is effectively public, and so anything that I don't want seen, I just don't post to begin with. And I don't use Facebook Messenger for sensitive conversations... to me, that's mainly for "hey what you doing this weekend", "wanna catch a movie" chit-chat. Of course I understand that other people are operating from different base assumptions, and so they are going to react differently. Still, the USG worries me more than Facebook, Twitter, Google, and their ilk.