6 ms·

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 con

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?
  - miracle2k 8y ago
    Because the recipient could see the message and respond to the message inside the Netflix UI. I am about to change my mind on the GDPR. If Spotify and Netflix are legally obligated to not store any data they do not need, then Facebook can actually make an additional argument that it is ok to give them wider access; after all, the law will ensure they have to handle it properly.
    - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      > If Spotify and Netflix are legally obligated to not store any data they do not need, then Facebook can actually make an additional argument that it is ok to give them wider access; after all, the law will ensure they have to handle it properly. That seems like a huge perverse incentive. Companies will start constructing systems so that more data is "required" so they can legally collect and share more of it. Then convincing them to collect less would require not just convincing them not to collect the data but convincing them to undergo the expense of redesigning all their systems to not "require" it anymore.
      - Kalium 8y ago
        > Companies will start constructing systems so that more data is "required" so they can legally collect and share more of it. This is exactly what companies do. They decide what data they want, and then set out to find a way that each of those data elements is necessary.
- smallgovt 8y ago
  You make a lot of claims without providing reasoning. > That's amoral bullshit and we must demand better. Why is this amoral bullshit? It seems like a lot of the outrage around this topic is born out of a 'feeling' that you have an instrinsic right to online privacy. But, I don't see this right clearly defined in the constitution, so where does it come from? Are you sure it exists? > It should be expected that that connecting accounts means sharing little more than the subset of data required for the integration. I think it's unrealistic to expect FB to expend resources to determine what subset of data is 'required' for every app in its ecosystem. When inspecting the utility/privacy frontier, the current model of requiring users to grant permission to an app makes the most sense to me. The problem in this case is that the permissions modal may not have been clear enough.
  - tk75x 8y ago
    With a name like "smallgovt" I would expect you to be pro-privacy in the real world as well as online. Most people on this forum would likely agree that privacy is a right (just because it's not defined in the constitution doesn't mean we don't have that right. Did people not have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness before the constitution?). Also, it is entirely realistic to expect Facebook to at least do a cursory look-over of the types of data app developers are requesting while running on their platform. No reason every app needs access to every piece of data on its users.
    - whateveracct 8y ago
      A name like "smallgovt" should've made it clear that they would be pro-corporation above all else :)
    - smallgovt 8y ago
      I agree that we have a right to privacy, but to what extent? When it's not defined by law, it's up for debate. And, my main point is that in such a scenario, I don't think calls for moral condemnation are in order.
      - 8y ago
nothrabannosir 8y ago
> ... everyone should... But everyone doesn't, and lawmakers are, on a good day, when doing their jobs, more concerned with reality than idealism. Or at least, they "should" be :)
lawlessone 8y ago
>, but for once I think this is hugely overblown. its actually just gotten incrementally worse..
RhodesianHunter 8y ago
If I connect my Facebook account to a music service like Spotify I would NOT expect them the make my private messages available to that service. It's absolutely nothing like your Thunderbird analogy because Thunderbird exists to present you email but Spotify has absolutely nothing to do with messaging. Facebook should have given Spotify the bare minimum they needed to make me an account and play me music. Anything else is gross incompetence at best.
- 0x8BADF00D 8y ago
  > Facebook should have given Spotify the bare minimum they needed to make me an account and play me music. Anything else is gross incompetence at best. And how did you think they were monetizing in the first place? When I read all the outrage here, it’s almost like I’m reading comments from an alternate universe where nobody knew Facebook’s business model. On top of that, I find it even more amusing that lawmakers are up in arms over this, when they were the ones who passed the Patriot Act in the first place, destroying the Bill of Rights and desecrating the Constitution.
  - Angostura 8y ago
    I would expect them to monetise through advertising and increasing engagement on the site by using linked services to make the whole site experience richer, thus leading to more ad views. I might also expect Facebook to ask the services for some money to get their faces seen on the platform. Is that hopelessly naive?
- lozenge 8y ago
  Spotify wanted to provide a Facebook messaging function within the app. That's all the access was for. It isn't as if Spotify employees were rifling through, or even data mining, your messages
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
kurtisc 8y ago
It's hard not to think there must be ulterior motives when Equifax basically got away with it even though their data wasn't given freely.
pessimizer 8y ago
> If should be fairly clear to anyone that if you connect accounts you are exposing data between the accounts. This is an argument you have to make, but you're just asserting it. If I get pulled over for speeding, I have to show my driver's license, which I also used to open my bank account, which I use to pay my phone bill, which I use to call my mother on her phone, which she pays for out of her bank account, which she used her driver's license to open, which she had to show to get past the security desk at a building downtown to go to a job interview with a business that rents a space there. Are you saying that I should expect that interviewer to have access to my driving record? If not, to what degree should it be "fairly clear" to me that there is information shared, and why? OK, now pretend that I used facebook login to periodically read articles about selling fishing gear, at the website for a membership trade organization for fishing gear merchants that I belong to. I set it up (with two clicks) because I was sick of typing my membership number in on the rare occasion I visit the site. It's like 12 digits, and it's like not I keep my membership card in my wallet; I only need it for conventions...
- sjg007 8y ago
  In some states driving records are public info. Also you are conflating government records with corporate info. We have different laws regulating both. By in large corporate data privacy outside of fair credit reporting law is non existent. And where the law has teeth nothing has happened (e.g Experian)... really the issue for Facebook is the political foreign influence on elections. Politicians really don’t like it when they have no control over their electorate.
ForHackernews 8y ago
It's not even remotely the same. Thunderbird is a client application that 1) Runs on my own machine, not on somebody else's servers. 2) Is FLOSS so it's actually possible to verify what it's doing. I think there's a fair debate to be had about what data should be shared when users volunteer to "connect" accounts, but this Thunderbird analogy is horrendously off base.
bogomipz 8y ago
>"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 that's not at all equivalent. If Hotmail were my only email provider, me and hotmail are the only ones who have access to my inbox regardless of what email client or clients I choose to use. That's not "connecting accounts." Thunderbird is not a company. What an absurd statement to make. >"If should be fairly clear to anyone that if you connect accounts you are exposing data between the accounts." Except that we don't actually know if FB only gave access to people who had accounts with both FB and the specific third party. Nor do we know who the third parties exposed that data to. FB has very problematic relationship with truth and transparency in general. Nothing should be "fairly clear to anyone" about FB. >"The debate about the granularity of permissions is neither here nor there ..." Saying something is "neither here nor there" is a meaningless platitude.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
AndrewKemendo 8y ago
You're not wrong, however the question is, what ethical role does Facebook have to inform their users about how their data is used/transferred, or to educate users on what they are agreeing to? I don't think there is a "right" answer here that solves all of the problems. For example, should FB be required to explain to my technically illiterate Aunt how images and text are used to train feature classifiers, which inform the social graph?
gcthomas 8y ago
When I deleted my unused Facebook account a while back I found that there were a dozen apps linked to my account (incl. Netflix and Spotify), even though I had never giving permission for a single one. FB is sneaky and does not have the culture of valuing users' privacy. It is going to catch up with them eventually.
arbitrage 8y ago
So do something about it. Put up or shut up.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> everyone should have a clear expectation that connecting accounts = sharing lots of data I think this is a common belief in Silicon Valley. It is not elsewhere. This, in a crux, is why decision-making power is being—and needs to be—removed from the former. I agree that few are behaving in a downright evil manner. (At least according to their own compasses.) But there has been moral drift around when permission needs to be asked, how it needs to be asked, and the degree to which business leaders have a duty to safeguarding their customers’ interests. The same thing happened in the trust-busting era; it’s interesting to see it happen again.

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?
- miracle2k 8y ago
  Because the recipient could see the message and respond to the message inside the Netflix UI. I am about to change my mind on the GDPR. If Spotify and Netflix are legally obligated to not store any data they do not need, then Facebook can actually make an additional argument that it is ok to give them wider access; after all, the law will ensure they have to handle it properly.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    > If Spotify and Netflix are legally obligated to not store any data they do not need, then Facebook can actually make an additional argument that it is ok to give them wider access; after all, the law will ensure they have to handle it properly. That seems like a huge perverse incentive. Companies will start constructing systems so that more data is "required" so they can legally collect and share more of it. Then convincing them to collect less would require not just convincing them not to collect the data but convincing them to undergo the expense of redesigning all their systems to not "require" it anymore.
    - Kalium 8y ago
      > Companies will start constructing systems so that more data is "required" so they can legally collect and share more of it. This is exactly what companies do. They decide what data they want, and then set out to find a way that each of those data elements is necessary.
smallgovt 8y ago
You make a lot of claims without providing reasoning. > That's amoral bullshit and we must demand better. Why is this amoral bullshit? It seems like a lot of the outrage around this topic is born out of a 'feeling' that you have an instrinsic right to online privacy. But, I don't see this right clearly defined in the constitution, so where does it come from? Are you sure it exists? > It should be expected that that connecting accounts means sharing little more than the subset of data required for the integration. I think it's unrealistic to expect FB to expend resources to determine what subset of data is 'required' for every app in its ecosystem. When inspecting the utility/privacy frontier, the current model of requiring users to grant permission to an app makes the most sense to me. The problem in this case is that the permissions modal may not have been clear enough.
- tk75x 8y ago
  With a name like "smallgovt" I would expect you to be pro-privacy in the real world as well as online. Most people on this forum would likely agree that privacy is a right (just because it's not defined in the constitution doesn't mean we don't have that right. Did people not have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness before the constitution?). Also, it is entirely realistic to expect Facebook to at least do a cursory look-over of the types of data app developers are requesting while running on their platform. No reason every app needs access to every piece of data on its users.
  - whateveracct 8y ago
    A name like "smallgovt" should've made it clear that they would be pro-corporation above all else :)
  - smallgovt 8y ago
    I agree that we have a right to privacy, but to what extent? When it's not defined by law, it's up for debate. And, my main point is that in such a scenario, I don't think calls for moral condemnation are in order.
    - 8y ago

nothrabannosir 8y ago

> ... everyone should... But everyone doesn't, and lawmakers are, on a good day, when doing their jobs, more concerned with reality than idealism. Or at least, they "should" be :)

lawlessone 8y ago

>, but for once I think this is hugely overblown. its actually just gotten incrementally worse..

RhodesianHunter 8y ago

If I connect my Facebook account to a music service like Spotify I would NOT expect them the make my private messages available to that service. It's absolutely nothing like your Thunderbird analogy because Thunderbird exists to present you email but Spotify has absolutely nothing to do with messaging. Facebook should have given Spotify the bare minimum they needed to make me an account and play me music. Anything else is gross incompetence at best.

0x8BADF00D 8y ago
> Facebook should have given Spotify the bare minimum they needed to make me an account and play me music. Anything else is gross incompetence at best. And how did you think they were monetizing in the first place? When I read all the outrage here, it’s almost like I’m reading comments from an alternate universe where nobody knew Facebook’s business model. On top of that, I find it even more amusing that lawmakers are up in arms over this, when they were the ones who passed the Patriot Act in the first place, destroying the Bill of Rights and desecrating the Constitution.
- Angostura 8y ago
  I would expect them to monetise through advertising and increasing engagement on the site by using linked services to make the whole site experience richer, thus leading to more ad views. I might also expect Facebook to ask the services for some money to get their faces seen on the platform. Is that hopelessly naive?
lozenge 8y ago
Spotify wanted to provide a Facebook messaging function within the app. That's all the access was for. It isn't as if Spotify employees were rifling through, or even data mining, your messages
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

kurtisc 8y ago

It's hard not to think there must be ulterior motives when Equifax basically got away with it even though their data wasn't given freely.

pessimizer 8y ago

> If should be fairly clear to anyone that if you connect accounts you are exposing data between the accounts. This is an argument you have to make, but you're just asserting it. If I get pulled over for speeding, I have to show my driver's license, which I also used to open my bank account, which I use to pay my phone bill, which I use to call my mother on her phone, which she pays for out of her bank account, which she used her driver's license to open, which she had to show to get past the security desk at a building downtown to go to a job interview with a business that rents a space there. Are you saying that I should expect that interviewer to have access to my driving record? If not, to what degree should it be "fairly clear" to me that there is information shared, and why? OK, now pretend that I used facebook login to periodically read articles about selling fishing gear, at the website for a membership trade organization for fishing gear merchants that I belong to. I set it up (with two clicks) because I was sick of typing my membership number in on the rare occasion I visit the site. It's like 12 digits, and it's like not I keep my membership card in my wallet; I only need it for conventions...

sjg007 8y ago
In some states driving records are public info. Also you are conflating government records with corporate info. We have different laws regulating both. By in large corporate data privacy outside of fair credit reporting law is non existent. And where the law has teeth nothing has happened (e.g Experian)... really the issue for Facebook is the political foreign influence on elections. Politicians really don’t like it when they have no control over their electorate.

ForHackernews 8y ago

It's not even remotely the same. Thunderbird is a client application that 1) Runs on my own machine, not on somebody else's servers. 2) Is FLOSS so it's actually possible to verify what it's doing. I think there's a fair debate to be had about what data should be shared when users volunteer to "connect" accounts, but this Thunderbird analogy is horrendously off base.

bogomipz 8y ago

>"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 that's not at all equivalent. If Hotmail were my only email provider, me and hotmail are the only ones who have access to my inbox regardless of what email client or clients I choose to use. That's not "connecting accounts." Thunderbird is not a company. What an absurd statement to make. >"If should be fairly clear to anyone that if you connect accounts you are exposing data between the accounts." Except that we don't actually know if FB only gave access to people who had accounts with both FB and the specific third party. Nor do we know who the third parties exposed that data to. FB has very problematic relationship with truth and transparency in general. Nothing should be "fairly clear to anyone" about FB. >"The debate about the granularity of permissions is neither here nor there ..." Saying something is "neither here nor there" is a meaningless platitude.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

AndrewKemendo 8y ago

You're not wrong, however the question is, what ethical role does Facebook have to inform their users about how their data is used/transferred, or to educate users on what they are agreeing to? I don't think there is a "right" answer here that solves all of the problems. For example, should FB be required to explain to my technically illiterate Aunt how images and text are used to train feature classifiers, which inform the social graph?

gcthomas 8y ago

When I deleted my unused Facebook account a while back I found that there were a dozen apps linked to my account (incl. Netflix and Spotify), even though I had never giving permission for a single one. FB is sneaky and does not have the culture of valuing users' privacy. It is going to catch up with them eventually.

arbitrage 8y ago

So do something about it. Put up or shut up.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> everyone should have a clear expectation that connecting accounts = sharing lots of data I think this is a common belief in Silicon Valley. It is not elsewhere. This, in a crux, is why decision-making power is being—and needs to be—removed from the former. I agree that few are behaving in a downright evil manner. (At least according to their own compasses.) But there has been moral drift around when permission needs to be asked, how it needs to be asked, and the degree to which business leaders have a duty to safeguarding their customers’ interests. The same thing happened in the trust-busting era; it’s interesting to see it happen again.