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It does feel like a lot of the news are misrepresented or skewed. Take CA as an example. This was FB acting as a developer portal and the following happened (to

It does feel like a lot of the news are misrepresented or skewed. Take CA as an example. This was FB acting as a developer portal and the following happened (to the best of my knowledge) using Apple as a substitute. 1. Your friend downloads a slick email app from company X on the AppStore 2. The OS warns you with a big blocking screen that this app wants to read all emails from your address book, your friend clicks allow and company X uploads your friend's address book to their server for what they claim are some cool autocomplete and search features 3. Apple has also made company X to sign an agreement to not misuse the data in any way outside of what's needed for "core functionality" Later it turns out that company X took the data from their servers and sold it to someone else which means that your email address and any emails your sent to your friend are now leaked. Now you can be mad at your friend, company X, or Apple and I feel like so much of the focus has been on "Apple" ie FB when the main piece of criticism is that perhaps users shouldn't be trusted with a permission this broad (which had already been fixed 4 years earlier).

badfrog 8y ago
> the main piece of them criticism is that perhaps users shouldn't be trusted with a permission this broad (which had already been fixed 4 years earlier). Agreed. This broad permission was also widely known well before CA. IMO the only reason the CA story blew up is that lots of people were upset about the 2016 election and wanted somebody to target their anger toward.
- chromecanary 8y ago
  Traditional news media gave the election to Hillary. And post-election they found it convenient to blame it all on Facebook. Facebook certainly isn't influential enough to swing 20 points of an entire US Prez election all on its own (It obviously contribute though)
basch 8y ago
Exactly. FB has done some crappy things (changing default without clear communication of consequences being a major one http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/ http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/) that LEAD to CA being a problem. Im willing to bet 99% of people dont realize that WHEN they signed up for facebook changed the default settings, and that their defaults might be different than their friends. And letting developers have access to "public data" can be debated, especially when they are playing so fast and loose with what gets posted publicly by default. BUT, the developer itself is the one that got people to fork over their friends info, and having friends that will give up their friends privacy to play a personality quiz speaks way more to the public than it does to facebook.

badfrog 8y ago

> the main piece of them criticism is that perhaps users shouldn't be trusted with a permission this broad (which had already been fixed 4 years earlier). Agreed. This broad permission was also widely known well before CA. IMO the only reason the CA story blew up is that lots of people were upset about the 2016 election and wanted somebody to target their anger toward.

chromecanary 8y ago
Traditional news media gave the election to Hillary. And post-election they found it convenient to blame it all on Facebook. Facebook certainly isn't influential enough to swing 20 points of an entire US Prez election all on its own (It obviously contribute though)

basch 8y ago

Exactly. FB has done some crappy things (changing default without clear communication of consequences being a major one http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/ http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/) that LEAD to CA being a problem. Im willing to bet 99% of people dont realize that WHEN they signed up for facebook changed the default settings, and that their defaults might be different than their friends. And letting developers have access to "public data" can be debated, especially when they are playing so fast and loose with what gets posted publicly by default. BUT, the developer itself is the one that got people to fork over their friends info, and having friends that will give up their friends privacy to play a personality quiz speaks way more to the public than it does to facebook.