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Facebook reportedly argues there's no 'expectation of privacy' on social media
- vikramkr 7y agoThat's not at all unreasonable on social media
- Barrin92 7y agoDo you really think putting the word 'social' in italics is sufficient to argue that Facebook can hand my private data over to third parties without my knowledge? If you've read the article, the context here is the cambridge analytica scandal, not someone posting on their public timeline.
- vikramkr 7y agoYeah. Because frankly I dont get what information you put on Facebook should be considered private, and that would include what cambridge analytica did. I think that knowing it's a social media platform is more than sufficient to have zero expectation that anything at all put there is private.
- RickJWagner 7y agoGiven that people are fired on a pretty regular basis for social media posts, I'd tend to agree.
- clubm8 7y agoPeople have been fired for being gay, does that mean there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in the bedroom?
- pugworthy 7y agoThere is privacy in the bedroom because we expect there to be. On social media, we share (and over share), and yet we are shocked at our privacy being exposed. We should not expect it. If we talk quietly to each other in the privacy in our homes, sharing that information is a breaking of social trust. If we talk on the bus around others, we should't be too surprised if someone hears us. If we share what we say to all, we should absolutely not be shocked. Especially when we are explicitly sharing on purpose.
- JKCalhoun 7y agoAm I missing something? When I was on FB I only shared with maybe 50 friends/family. My expectation was that it ended precisely there.
- Alex3917 7y agoSo have they officially given up on Facebook at Work?
- ulfw 7y agoNo. But companies should.
- fredgrott 7y agoDid they suddenly forget the court cases oh say oh crypto? Those held that yes we do have a US right to non public free speech.
- eraad 7y agoI have to admit this sounds awful but true. I'm not going to be hypocrite and claim to have read the Facebook terms of use but I have never really expected those to be in my favor in terms of privacy. Society and regulators should treat the social media industry like we do with tobacco and firearms.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ahartmetz 7y agoContrast to Facebook's recent "privacy initiative". A certain level of untruth is unfortunately expected from company PR, but Facebook is really taking it to the next level.
- bayesian_horse 7y agoI would agree with facebook in this point. Data you put on social media is basically public. It may not be easily discoverable by the public at large, but that lack of discoverability is not a perpetual guarantee at all. But most participants on social media don't understand that. Maybe it's because they overestimate the confidentiality of social circles. Even offline that's not much of a protection.
- kevincox 7y agoI don't agree. You set a list of people you want to share it with. Obviously those people have the ability to forward but I would expect (or would like to expect) that only those on the recipient list would be able to access it directly.
- bayesian_horse 7y agoThat's not a reasonable expectation in my opinion, but a fairly common one. For example I never understood how people would want to send intimate pictures to someone else (even in the case of on-paper or video phones) and expect them not to share it.
- coldtea 7y ago>Data you put on social media is basically public. It may not be easily discoverable by the public at large, but that lack of discoverability is not a perpetual guarantee at all. That's an individuals own risk, and not the same as whether Facebook should treat them as private, and don't sell them, expose them, etc. Sure, I should be cautious of what I say in social media, because e.g. the other side could leak it, the servers could be hacked and the contents exposed, etc. The same holds for my snail mail or what I type in my laptop. But I still expect those to be kept private (and even more importantly, want them to be kept so, and want the law to enforce that). Just because there's no "perpetual guarantee" doesn't mean there shouldn't be company closing fines for selling your data, or showing negligence in making them private (e.g. unencrypted passwords come to mind) etc.
- 7y ago
- village-idiot 7y agoGiven the outrage about data theft and sales, I believe the consumer has an expectation of privacy on Facebook.
- coldtea 7y agoI always find this BS legal idea of "expectation of privacy" backwards. The important thing is not whether there's some pre-existing "expectation of privacy" in a domain (e.g. public square, or social media). The important thing is whether (1) society wants (or deems beneficial) privacy in that domain and (2) privacy is achievable in that domain. If (1) and (2) hold, there should be no talk of "expectation" and other such BS. [1] and this can be settled with e.g. a referendum or a number of other ways.
- dahart 7y agoI probably wouldn’t be so cavalier about writing off and calling BS the legacy of legal definitions that are successfully protecting citizens. It has taken a long time and a lot of smart people to get to where we are with expectation of privacy, and while it might not be perfect, it has been battle tested in court, so it’s presumptuous to assume your untested opinions are clearly better. The problem I see with your suggestion is then society must pro-actively make some sort of decision for each and every domain in advance, which isn’t possible. The goal of expectation of privacy is as a test to determine when privacy would be or has been violated on a case by case basis. In that sense it’s already somewhat doing what you’re talking about; it is a way to determine whether society deems privacy beneficial in a given domain. Whether privacy is achievable does not make a good criteria at all, because it’s always possible to compromise privacy. The entire point of the “expectation of privacy” test is to determine whether someone who did violate another’s privacy should be allowed to, it’s a pre-cursor to determining right to privacy.
- coldtea 7y ago>The problem I see with your suggestion is then society must pro-actively make some sort of decision for each and every domain in advance, which isn’t possible. First, why not? It's very much possible, we have all kinds of systems in place, even electronic voting. Second, privacy is a serious matter, of which there aren't tons, so it's not like "each and every domain" is equally important. Third, it's not like a decision for all domains has to be taken simultaneously and right now. We could vote for one domain per year, and we'd have covered 10 most important domains in a decade... >The goal of expectation of privacy is as a test to determine when privacy would be or has been violated on a case by case basis. It's also used to mean "you wouldn't expect it in X domain, so you don't get to have it there". And, as lots of domains where privacy is important are new, what's "expected" can go either way, like FB trying to argue that "people don't expect privacy in social media". If we instead change it to whether people want privacy in social media, that's more clear cut, regardless to whatever someone can argue we "expect" or "not". In fact, even if we keep it to "expect" (as the deciding factor), why shouldn't we vote on whether we do expect it or not? Why expect should be speculation? Ask us (the people) to vote directly whether we expect it or not, don't decide for us, with some BS medieval-style theological syllogisms...
- cmsonger 7y ago> "There is no invasion of privacy at all, because there is no privacy," ... and therefore one should seriously consider not using Facebook.
- ravenstine 7y agoWow, just... wow. What happened to their thing of building a "privacy based" Facebook? Either their PR sucks worse than I thought or that whole balloon deflated rather quickly.
- zwaps 7y agoThis should not hold. Facebook has been running huge ads all over media and streets with "your privacy choices" and "we protect your privacy" to salvage some of their reputation. If they do this, and then at the same time claim there is no privacy on their platform, any judge who does not throw this out would be really dumb. Right?
- brennebeck 7y agoThis was my first thought. The ability to specifically control your post privacy and profile profile seems to imply there /is/ and expectation of privacy? IANAL but that just doesn’t make sense to me.
- mehrdadn 7y agoFor anyone looking for the actual PDF page, my best guess is it's referring to page 25 of docket number 261. Here's the quote I found; it seems to be referring to a particular tort. You may also want to look at the full text to see the citations I omitted in the [...] for brevity: Intrusion upon seclusion. This tort requires intentional intrusion “upon the solitude or seclusion of another or his private affairs or concerns … if the intrusion would be highly offensive to a reasonable person.” [...] Plaintiffs have not alleged any intrusion into their private affairs; rather, the information at issue is all data they already shared with a broad circle of friends and even strangers (friends of friends). [...] Nor could the disclosure of information such as page likes, which are designed to be communicated to other people, be “highly offensive to a reasonable person.” Disclosure of far more private information, such as private medical records and the identity of undercover police, has been found insufficient. The “highly offensive standard … is reserved for truly exceptional cases of intrusion,” [...] and this is not such as case.
- negamax 7y agoTech people and young people are quitting Facebook or have done so. These are the trendsetter groups. We have likely seen peak of social media
- bigiain 7y agoI hope you are right. I also fear what FB and Zuck are capable of if they realise they're on a dead-end business model, and what abuses of personal data we might see as they attempt to cash out before everything dries up...
- o10449366 7y agoTech people and young people in general? Or just people you know? I've been seeing variations of this comment on Hacker News for over 10 years now, and yet the imminent demise of Facebook as a result of users who probably never actively used it anyway leaving has yet to be realized.
- negamax 7y agoThat’s fair point. I can only speak for people I know. Facebook has become less for sharing with friends but more about messenger and events
- rococode 7y agoJust another point of view: I'm Gen Z the trend I'm seeing among my friends is not en masse quitting of Facebook, but less regular usage of some of its functions - sharing articles, uploading photos, posting status updates, commenting on random posts, and so on. A quick scroll through my current feed only shows 1 or 2 posts made directly by friends, and they're all big life updates: graduations, engagements, etc. It's certainly not like the old days where people would share an album of a vacation or post about a small quirk of their day. But even though people use many parts of Facebook less often, it's really hard to quit Facebook entirely because a lot of social activity revolves around it. In my circle, people tend to plan events using Facebook and often use Messenger to communicate. In university, people would ask questions in various FB groups. So while no one's really happy with Facebook, it still provides several conveniences that we don't want to live without. Also, Instagram is still very popular - much of the activity that used to be on Facebook seems to have moved there.
- onedognight 7y agoZuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask. Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks.
- dTal 7y agoYou know everyone always calls this the "dumb fucks" quote, but I think it ought to be the "just ask" quote. That's the truly objectionable part, the part that exposes the black heart of Facebook even today - you have no expectation of privacy, and your data is handed over to third parties for a pittance (or even, in this case, to impress Zuck's friends).
- pugworthy 7y agoIs this really a surprise to anyone? I mean beyond that they admit it?
- jasonkester 7y agoWell said, Facebook. People are uploading thing to the internet for the sole purpose of having as many people as possible see it. That’s the entire goal of the exercise. It’s baffling that those same people would then turn around and behave as though they are surprised that people can see those things.
- rusk 7y agoYes just like if a lady wears a sexy dress that makes it okay to cat call her on the street. She’s not wearing the sexy dress for you ...
- sgt101 7y agoI upload photos to S3 as a backup, only I have ever seen them (I think). Is it ok for Amazon to sell or use them? How about using them to blackmail me ? Would that be ok?
- jasonkester 7y agoNo. Just the things I said in my comment. So if instead of uploading that photo to S3 and marking it private, you uploaded it to Facebook and clicked the "Show This Photo To Everybody In The World" button, it would be OK for Facebook to show it to everybody in the world. It would be impossible to blackmail you with it, given that there is nobody left without the ability to see it, at your request. I personally have lots of photos up on Facebook that anybody in the world can look at if they choose. I also have lots of photos that nobody but me and my family can look at unless I show them personally. I accomplished this by not uploading photos from that second group to Facebook.
- sgt101 7y agoBut if Facebook (as they do) offer you a service that allowed you to share the photos with a selected set of individuals would you not have the reasonable expectation that Facebook would not share them further? What I'm parsing out of your comments is that no matter what Facebook says we should expect it to act without regards to privacy?
- bryanrasmussen 7y agoGoing from a model where social media is a new instance of the public square I guess I would agree there is no expectation of privacy in the public square, but where the public square metaphor breaks down is that this square is actually owned by a corporation that is taking pictures and wiretapping all the individual conversations taking place in their square and selling the contents thereof to other corporations. So as always metaphors are a lousy way to reason, and quickly break down because once you are arguing that X is like Y you will end up hitting the limit of X being unlike Y anytime you try to deal with something complicated in regards to X. Hence regulation of a medium where everything lasts forever and can be looked up instantaneously from almost anywhere, and copied and repeated all over the world by anyone wanting to do so, should not follow the model of regulation for a medium where everything is ephemeral and while theoretically open to anyone in practice not so open because availability of space is a limiting factor on proximity and proximity is needed to take part.
- rightbyte 7y agoThe methaphor is good. It clearly shows why wiretaping the public on the square is unreasonable.
- michaelchisari 7y agoAlso, given that metaphor, if I'm whispering to a friend in a public square, I do have an expectation of privacy in the sense that there should not be boom mics placed everywhere to pick up the smallest of conversations.