6 ms·

Since this is apparently a verbatim repost of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18813468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18813468, I'm going to repost m

Since this is apparently a verbatim repost of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18813468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18813468, I'm going to repost my (lightly edited) comment from that empty thread since I think it's a crap article with some serious flaws. --- This is a really disappointing article. I'd like to agree with the premise, but some of the specific examples they chose to use seem a more than a little unfair. > There were the agonizing video clips from April’s Facebook hearing, in which 68-year-old Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) attempted to ask Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg a question about data privacy, and revealed a conception of social media resembling a wad of tangled Christmas lights: “Do you track devices that an individual who uses Facebook has that is connected to the device that they use for their Facebook connection, but not necessarily connected to Facebook?” Yeah, sure, the phrasing is not great, but interpreted charitably there's a decent question in there: > If I use Facebook on my desktop computer but don't use it on my phone, does Facebook still associate activity on my phone (e.g. browsing, location, payments) with my Facebook profile? I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the answer's almost definitely yes given existing info[1], and that that answer would be somewhat disquieting to even the most tech-impaired senator. > Come December it was the Google chief Sundar Pichai’s turn to visit the Capitol and watch Rep. Steve Cohen, the 69-year-old Democrat from Tennessee, wave his hands in the air and complain: “I use your apparatus often, or your search engine, and I don’t understand all of the different ways that you can turn off the locations. There’s so many different things!” Google has an established track record[2] of forcing users to toggle multiple settings to achieve a simple goal: "stop tracking location history!" Cohen is fairly clearly referring to that issue. If frequent users can't figure out how to disable location history due to dark UX patterns, that's a problem. So, again, actually a pretty reasonable question that hits close to a lot of fevered discussion in our circles[3]. This strikes me as, ironically enough, a technically illiterate reporter trawling for bad-sounding Twitter-length excerpts while ignoring any of the underlying issues. At least the article goes on to quote Hatch's communications director: > “Perhaps one part of the problem is Congress-illiteracy among tech reporters.” > Maybe so. [continues to address tenuously related claims about the age of Congress, which in itself plays into avocado-toast tier reporting by generalizations] What? That's got to be the weakest dismissal of a critique of the shallow reporting model underlying pieces like this that I've ever seen. --- [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/03/facebook-track-browsing-history-california-lawsuit https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/03/facebook-... [2] https://www.techlicious.com/blog/google-tracking-after-location-history-turned-off/ https://www.techlicious.com/blog/google-tracking-after-locat... [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17749330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17749330

ghaff 8y ago
Yes, I actually don't see anything in that article that makes me come close to doing a facepalm. Some of the questions aren't the most elegantly worded but I'd be a lot more concerned if someone expressed surprise that users were tracked or data kept or some other naive lack of understanding of how social media and ad networks operate. >revealed a conception of social media resembling a wad of tangled Christmas lights That actually seems like a pretty good analogy. I might use it someday. There's also the sort of smug superiority that one often sees directed at everyone who isn't as immersed in a particular field as the speaker or writer.
- djur 8y ago
  The "Internet is a series of tubes" meme from years back was an earlier example of this. The senator was trying to explain the concept of network congestion. Now, his actual argument was garbage (it was an anti-net neutrality argument), and there were things he said that were very funny (like referring to an email as "an Internet"), but the "series of tubes" language was a perfectly reasonable analogy.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    People who are deep in a particular area are often very dismissive of metaphors and other simplifications or attempt to explain for a broader audience because they're not "right." But that's often fine if you're trying to get a concept across rather than writing technical documentation.
djur 8y ago
Other than the use of the word 'apparatus', those quotes don't strike me as "old out-of-touch person who doesn't understand technology" but rather "normal non-technical person who isn't familiar with the jargon". Either of those questions could have easily been asked by the average 30-year-old. The problem here isn't that members of Congress are old or unfamiliar with technology. It's that these public inquisitions of industry leaders are pretty much entirely a production for the media. The way congressional hearings are run is designed to ensure that every member gets camera time, not to uncover truths.

ghaff 8y ago

Yes, I actually don't see anything in that article that makes me come close to doing a facepalm. Some of the questions aren't the most elegantly worded but I'd be a lot more concerned if someone expressed surprise that users were tracked or data kept or some other naive lack of understanding of how social media and ad networks operate. >revealed a conception of social media resembling a wad of tangled Christmas lights That actually seems like a pretty good analogy. I might use it someday. There's also the sort of smug superiority that one often sees directed at everyone who isn't as immersed in a particular field as the speaker or writer.

djur 8y ago
The "Internet is a series of tubes" meme from years back was an earlier example of this. The senator was trying to explain the concept of network congestion. Now, his actual argument was garbage (it was an anti-net neutrality argument), and there were things he said that were very funny (like referring to an email as "an Internet"), but the "series of tubes" language was a perfectly reasonable analogy.
- ghaff 8y ago
  People who are deep in a particular area are often very dismissive of metaphors and other simplifications or attempt to explain for a broader audience because they're not "right." But that's often fine if you're trying to get a concept across rather than writing technical documentation.

djur 8y ago

Other than the use of the word 'apparatus', those quotes don't strike me as "old out-of-touch person who doesn't understand technology" but rather "normal non-technical person who isn't familiar with the jargon". Either of those questions could have easily been asked by the average 30-year-old. The problem here isn't that members of Congress are old or unfamiliar with technology. It's that these public inquisitions of industry leaders are pretty much entirely a production for the media. The way congressional hearings are run is designed to ensure that every member gets camera time, not to uncover truths.