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Facebook Emails Could Show Zuckerberg Knew of Questionable Privacy Practices

244 points by Dajsvaro 7y ago

ishan1121 7y ago
Facebook is a one-man show. Zuckerberg owning 60% of the company and no one can say anything to him. Moreover, one man has the entire monopoly over our entire online social life. Other networks have come and failed. Anti Trust regulators should seriously open Facebook's file and break it.
- a13n 7y ago
  Mark owns less than 30% of Facebook.
  - rubyn00bie 7y ago
    Voting shares are real ownership.
    - a13n 7y ago
      No, they're voting shares... He owns the majority of voting shares, but they aren't worth the majority of the value of company, and therefore he doesn't "own the majority of the company".
      - rubyn00bie 7y ago
        I think the shares people buy without voting rights are not ownership, they are a weird financial instrument that should flat out be illegal. If you honestly think he doesn't own the company, despite having full uncontestable control of all it's resources, I believe you're one of the many to have been duped, friend.
  - mikeash 7y ago
    If you count by shares, yes. But his stock gets more votes, so he owns 60% of the votes.
    - ImprovedSilence 7y ago
      Just to be a pedantic asshole, but I’m pretty sure he only owns 53% of voting shares.
      - mikeash 7y ago
        The article I found said 60%, but that could easily be wrong or just out of date.
- briandear 7y ago
  > one man has the entire monopoly over our entire online social life You chose that. I don't need Facebook/Insta/What's App to have an "online social life." Literally nobody is forced to participate in that nonsense. Use Snap, iMessage, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, Slack, IRC, 500px, Vimeo, Signal, email, SMS, phone calls -- there are plenty of options. FB, Insta, What's App aren't the entirety of the social media universe. You can't be "mad" at Facebook and then continue to use it. That's a bit hypocritical. If this situation is really that important, then stop using those services! It seems like the same thought patterns seen in abusive relationships: he beats me, but I can't live without him. That's bullshit. Leave those platforms. You see it as a "monopoly" because you allow it to be.
  - ishan1121 7y ago
    I used to use Snapchat previously, but all my friends (school, college, etc) started posting on IG stories rather than on Snapchat. My snapchat became a ghost town, and I shifted as well. Still active on Reddit, but its more of community than a tool for personal relations. Android user so no iMessage. Slack & IRC not good to connect with school friends. What I mean to say is the country I am in Facebook has a complete monopoly in our social life. And I am sure even in the US people cannot leave FB ecosystem.
inlined 7y ago
Good luck finding those emails. If it’s for a few years in the past it’s probably auto-deleted due to corporate retention policies designed to defend against discovery. When I came back to google I had all my old calendar but none of my emails because retention is 2yrs.
- inlined 7y ago
  This was also a pain in the ass when going for promotion because I wanted to show evidence of how I resolved conflicts and managed a partnership that crossed time zones. The most contentious decisions happened in the beginning of the project 2.5yrs earlier and were wiped. Now I understand why Googlers prefer to use Docs and let the comments go there. It’s a much worse experience for having a serialized discussion but it preserves evidence for promo.
- jlarocco 7y ago
  Literally the first four words of the article say the emails have already been found.
vijaybritto 7y ago
Honestly is anyone surprised by this? He controls everything and how will he not know their own policies?! Facebook needs a serious lesson from the regulators.
- thwythwy 7y ago
  No, the standard for important journalism isn't surprise though.
- joker3 7y ago
  There's a big difference between what everyone believes and what everyone actually knows. Getting confirmation could matter.
- starbugs 7y ago
  Not surprised, but I am afraid regulators will implement rules that would harm small businesses and startups much more than they would hurt FB. On the other hand, the market seems to be pretty much finished anyway. Unless someone comes up with a real decentralized solution that is able to compete with them.
  - vijaybritto 7y ago
    Thats a valid concern. But lets hope that they take input from the tech community when and if they do it
    - starbugs 7y ago
      As an EU citizen I am quite skeptical regarding that one. But I have high hopes that US regulators won't make the same mistakes.
- anoncake 7y ago
  Even if he didn't: He's the boss so he's responsible.
pinewurst 7y ago
"Internal exchanges uncovered in response to FTC probe could cast doubt on founder’s commitment to user privacy, people familiar with the matter say" Who thinks Zuckerberg has (or ever had) _any_ commitment to user privacy?
- jakear 7y ago
  You’re preaching to the choir on HN. The victims are the “dumb fucks” using his product. (His words, not mine)
- chipperyman573 7y ago
  Probably people who listen to FB claim that they do.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- basch 7y ago
  Pretty disingenuous. People can change. AND we dont have a timeline. Facebook kept pushing more and more info public, in an attempt to make facebook more useful. ( http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/ http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/ ) Then they saw they went too far and quietly scaled it back. Four years later they got burned by mistakes they already knew they made and had already started taking action on. There's multiple issues at foot: when he knew, how he reacted, and why he didn't disclose. He could have absolutely found out, ordered changes, and tried to keep it quiet, and later learned what a mistake it was to keep quiet.
  - CaptainZapp 7y ago
    Zuck: 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 [1] [1] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg I see absolutely no indication that Mr. Zuckerberg changed his attitude since then.
ziddoap 7y ago
Given the paywall, I didn't get the pleasure of reading the full article. Based on the title and opening paragraphs however, I don't think this is really news. Especially in light of the recent statement by Facebook counsel Orin Snyder: "There is no invasion of privacy at all, because there is no privacy" [1] In fact, there has been legal statements on the privacy of Facebook floating around for awhile. One judge, in 2013, explicitly said there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.[2] Zuckerburg has also previously made statements regarding his disdain for privacy, such as: "'They "trust me." Dumb f--ks'" [3] In the wake of the mobile phone number sharing with your friends list by default, Mark had this to say: "We realize that people will probably criticize us for this for a long time, but we just believe that this is the right thing to do." [4] I could go on ad nauseum, and I'm sure none of these quotes are new to anyone. So, I just don't get why it is news that Zuckerberg was aware of questionable practices. Of course he was aware of them. He championed them. [1]https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-reportedly-thinks-theres-no-expectation-of-privacy-on-social-media/ https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-reportedly-thinks-theres-... [2]https://www.law.com/thelegalintelligencer/almID/1202532899353/No-Reasonable-Expectation-of-Privacy-on-Facebook-Judge-Says/ https://www.law.com/thelegalintelligencer/almID/120253289935... [3,4]https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerbergs-statements-on-privacy-2003-2018.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg...
bitxbit 7y ago
Antitrust discovery will be juicy. It’s going to make the Microsoft witch-hunt look tame in comparison.
- thwythwy 7y ago
  If there's on thing these companies do well it's limit discovery and keep it confidential.
  - bitxbit 7y ago
    Not when it’s the entire world against them. Public opinion is overwhelming now but it will only get worse with time. I personally don’t think it’s all on Zuckerberg but the politics will make it so.
- imiric 7y ago
  Part of me is glad that the public and governments are finally catching up to what FB has been doing for years now, but I'm worried that we don't have a better platform/solution that fills in the void without the risk of these privacy violations happening again. Some of the decentralized networks are interesting and seem like a good way forward, but they're still far away from being adopted by non-technical users and masses at large. This seems like it's not only a technical and UI/UX problem, but one of marketing as well. The advertising-based revenue model has certainly become hostile towards user privacy, and we should rethink that too. Whatever comes after FB, I hope it addresses all of these issues, for the sake of all of us.
  - antod 7y ago
    > I'm worried that we don't have a better platform/solution that fills in the void without the risk of these privacy violations happening again. Can we just keep the void?
willyg123 7y ago
All organizations, no matter if they are public or private, need checks and balances at the top. I predict that legislation will become the de facto check on FB and there will be many negative unintended consequences for the rest of the tech industry, harming companies who are ethical stewards of privacy.
- inetknght 7y ago
  Can you name an organization that you think is an ethical steward of privacy?
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    Mozilla might be as good as it gets? That being said, even the other tech giants aren't nearly as bad as Facebook. It just seems to be cultural there at this point.
  - willyg123 7y ago
    A great point in the form of a question. I should have phrased my comment differently. The emergence of DuckDuckGo and the excitement for Apple's upcoming anonymous sign-in feature proves there is a massive gap in the market for privacy-focused products. I'm afraid there will be regulation that will harm the ability for new companies, with a focus on privacy, to emerge due to the increased compliance costs.
  - newscracker 7y ago
    Not one, but a handful, in no particular order. Mozilla Apple Posteo.de (and similar email providers) Signal app (though the app quality is very poor) Matrix.org SpiderOak DuckDuckGo
tehjoker 7y ago
Don't be fooled. Zuckerberg is the head of the organization and has both created and internalized the economic logic of his organization, but the problem is systemic. If you put in someone else, they'll have a different style and might do a few things slightly different, but the economic logic is the same. Spying on the population is profitable, so such operations must be expanded to the maximum possible extent. We can't simply undertake anti-trust litigation against these companies. We must go further and outlaw this business model.
- bongobongo 7y ago
  It never ceases to amaze me how people who are opposed to government surveillance by accountable liberal constitutional democracies are OK with surveillance by unaccountable private interests who lie all the time and do harm in order to make money.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    The government has the ability to make me disappear. Facebook does not.
    - tehjoker 7y ago
      "Facebook Is Looking for Employees With National Security Clearances" "October 16, 2017, 4:00 AM EDT Updated on October 16, 2017, 12:23 PM EDT" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-16/facebook-is-said-to-seek-staff-with-national-security-clearance https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-16/facebook-...
    - arrosenberg 7y ago
      Facebook does have the opposite ability though - they could make one appear to be whoever they want. If they were inclined to use their data and technology maliciously, against an individual, I think it's likely they could ruin that life pretty quickly.
    - bongobongo 7y ago
      A liberal constitutional democracy does not have any more ability to make you disappear than Facebook does. And repressive governments already use Facebook to disappear their people: >The Facebook posts were not from everyday internet users. Instead, they were from Myanmar military personnel who turned the social network into a tool for ethnic cleansing, according to former military officials, researchers and civilian officials in the country. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... So, the notion that it's somehow "safer" for Facebook to engage in omnipresent surveillance doesn't prove true.
camjohnson26 7y ago
Honestly I don’t see the problem, Facebook’s privacy stance has been well known for years. I don’t use their product much because of this, but friends and family couldn’t care less. Their response is that they don’t care if someone reads their messages or tailors ads to them and no matter how hard I try it won’t change their minds. If you don’t like their privacy stance just don’t use the product, it’s not like there aren’t alternatives. The media outrage feels the same as if they came out and said that it turns out Coca Cola knew its products could lead to obesity. Of course they did, and no reasonable person thought it didn’t. You can’t police every problematic product, at some point the end user has to take responsibility.
- rjkennedy98 7y ago
  I haven't used Facebook in nearly 8 years, however to say there are alternatives is specious. For example, I have recently learned I missed my first high school reunion because it was only posted on Facebook. Unfortunately, there isn't another service out there that I could subscribe to that would ensure I receive such communication.
  - jerkstate 7y ago
    you mean like.. email?
    - freehunter 7y ago
      >it was only posted on Facebook Not sure how email solves that problem.
    - seandougall 7y ago
      Email will notify you of events that are only publicized on Facebook? :thinking_face: I mean, to be fair, even Facebook won't necessarily tell you about an event unless the event creator pays them money to promote it. It's actually not a great platform for small-scale publicity, and _only_ publicizing an event on Facebook is clearly a mistake for a number of reasons. But despite its many virtues, email doesn't actually address GP's case at all.
kodz4 7y ago
This seems to be the one guy on the planet who surpasses Trump in his ability to get into the news every 2 days. No tweeting required even. How are his staff not just jumping out of windows? I mean it's been one article after the other for 3 years now. Almost impressed by the endurance.
- bongobongo 7y ago
  >How are his staff not just jumping out of windows? Because everybody has a price, and Facebook knows how to find 'em cheap.
- Bakary 7y ago
  To some extent Facebook acts the way it does because it knows media attention has no teeth. Zuck knows he can just bide his time and scandals will slide off him like morning dew off a leaf.
Meekro 7y ago
I see a lot of these articles about Facebook and privacy lately, but I'm still wondering what, precisely, Facebook is doing that people object to and what kinds of changes would satisfy those who are upset. Near as I can tell, this is about data in Facebook's databases finding its way to other organizations without the users' knowledge or consent. But the way this happens is pretty benign: 1. User installs Facebook app, and that app phones home with info about user's friends (who did not consent to this). This is what happened in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. People started asking why apps are allowed to see info about the user's friends (who did not install the app). But to a programmer, the answer is obvious: it's the "app inherits owner's permissions" model that's been part of the Unix tradition for decades. Anyway, Facebook has since changed this behavior. 2. User adds some bots as friends (maybe because their profile photo is of a cute girl), and the bots phone home with public info about user's friends. This is an entirely predictable consequence of the "friends of friends" permission model. Facebook users can set "friends only" permissions to prevent this, but most don't bother. Is it one of these two vectors that's getting people upset, or something else that I'm missing? Keep in mind that advertisers never get to see people's private info. They just make an ad and say something like "show this to people aged 18-25 who are into video games."
- cm2012 7y ago
  I'll note that FB changed the behavior for number 1 over five years ago - and they only had that policy in the first place since the tech community at the time was slamming them for being a walled garden. Most people complaining about FB's privacy practices are just on a bandwagon - I've never seen actual evidence of harm from FB's practices re: privacy.
- zachrose 7y ago
  You've already hit the nail on the head. Facebook is providing a friendly user interface to do normal people stuff. To the users who aren't technically sophisticated or haven't thought deeply about any of this, sucking up their contacts and shipping them off to wherever is just not something they would have imagined, let alone agreed to. And yet they did, at least technically, when they clicked some button saying they had read 40-pages of legalese.
- 7y ago
mindcrash 7y ago
So hours after writing this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20158714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20158714 this dropped. As you can see it was downvoted, and the only comment downvoted in the entire thread so I guess it was most likely done to bury it. And I must say... at first I was shocked to see it getting buried because I am pretty sure most of HN feels the same way about me in regard to this subject. But reading the article from the WSJ I'm not surprised at all because apparently there was a good reason to bury it.
mrnobody_67 7y ago
He also openly ignores requests to testify in front of UK & Canadian parliamentary committees... Think about that for a minute. Someone who controls 3b people. Runs psychological experiments using AI. Bans accounts of people who violate corporate-created policies that weren't debated or voted on by the public. Violates FCC settlements. And then refuses to be held accountable - or answer questions- from first world, democratic governments.
- peteretep 7y ago
  > Someone who controls 3b people This bullshit hyperbole helps nobody
  - mrnobody_67 7y ago
    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/02/facebook-sorry-secret-psychological-experiment-users https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/02/facebook-... They decide what news & ads get shown. FB played a significant role in Brexit and US Presidential elections, enforcing filter bubbles, and running ads in violation of campaign finance laws (i.e. Russia).
    - peteretep 7y ago
      Extrapolating that to “Zuck controls 3b people” is bullshit hyperbole
      - tty2300 7y ago
        Facebook has also performed studies where they controlled the items that show on individuals news feed and recorded how it changed their emotions. Controlling 3b people is exactly how I would describe it.
  - AlexandrB 7y ago
    If there was a single newspaper that was read by 3b people I think many would be rightly concerned that it has too much power/influence. Why is this any different? That's setting aside the fact that Facebook does not even try to firewall content moderation from advertising the way a traditional newspaper would.
vmurthy 7y ago
Heh! This article is just below an article on spying (“The thing”). Sure made my evening :-)
baby 7y ago
How can an article behind a paywall collect so many votes that quickly? Now I'm wondering if any of the upvoters have actually read the article.
- neonate 7y ago
  https://hn.algolia.com/?query=rsswn&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=rsswn&sort=byDate&dateRange=al...
neonate 7y ago
http://archive.is/Dctf0 http://archive.is/Dctf0
malloreon 7y ago
Stop taking away personal responsibility from the thousands of facebook employees, each of whom chooses to be evil every single day. None of these people are being forced to work there. They choose to. They are just as responsible.
- lixtra 7y ago
  In that case don’t spare the users of FB either. They could carry their content elsewhere but they chose to feed the monster even more. Or - accept the fact that people consider a fair deal what seems to be exploitation to you. If you don’t believe that people are able to make a reasonable, conscious choice then the end of democracy has come (for you).
  - AlexandrB 7y ago
    > They could carry their content elsewhere but they chose to feed the monster even more. They did (Instagram, WhatsApp), but then Facebook bought those companies too.
  - malloreon 7y ago
    There is no alternative to facebook within orders of magnitude of network effects. FB employees could use their experience and knowledge to work elsewhere.
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. The signal/noise ratio is way too low. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20166045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20166045 and marked it off-topic. Edit: it looks like you've been posting a bunch of these fiery denunciations to HN. I appreciate your strong feelings on the subject, but please don't use this site in that spirit. It's not what it's for, and it destroys the intellectual curiosity that it is for.
trpc 7y ago
This is like saying that Hitler may knew about the Holocaust.
- whenchamenia 7y ago
  But will we spare the guards when the walls fall?
  - ionised 7y ago
    We shouldn't.
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't do this here.
  - trpc 7y ago
    do what? why did you delete my comment?
    - dang 7y ago
      Please don't Godwin up HN threads. I didn't delete your comment; when enough users flag a comment and the flags aren't outweighed by upvotes, the software killed it.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
3xblah 7y ago
Not sure if anyone has noticed but the submitter has given HN readers who prefer Javascript-enabled browsing a workaround for the WSJ paywall. Add ?mod=rsswn to the end of the URL.
sonnyblarney 7y ago
The article is misrepresentative. This was way back in an era where fb had slightly more open apis. Of course some people were going to exploit that and break fbs own policies. Cambridge did that and broke fbs rules. Once it became more obvious that 3rd parties would break the rules fb adjusted their policy and closed the loophole. The open nature of the policy was known to everyone on the planet including the ftc at the time. If those policies were problematic why wouldnt someone at the ftc say something? Those whose job it is to regulate just sit there and watch for a decade before doing anything? As someone mentioned above this is a systematic issue and a problem with the business model. This is not some sneaky thing fb did on the side or behind closed doors. The apis were there for the public and everyone to see the whole time. Though there wwtr a few voiced concerns there certainly was not outrage. I have several problems with fb but this specific issue is being misrepresented.
tosh876 7y ago
You need the help of an hacker? Contact spylink80@keemaip.me he helped me out I was able to check my husband device without him knowing he is good and reliable.
tosh876 7y ago
You need the help of an hacker? Contact spylink80@keemail.me he helped me out I was able to check my husband device without him knowing he is good and reliable.

244 points by Dajsvaro 7y ago

Facebook is a one-man show. Zuckerberg owning 60% of the company and no one can say anything to him. Moreover, one man has the entire monopoly over our entire online social life. Other networks have come and failed. Anti Trust regulators should seriously open Facebook's file and break it.

a13n 7y ago
Mark owns less than 30% of Facebook.
- rubyn00bie 7y ago
  Voting shares are real ownership.
  - a13n 7y ago
    No, they're voting shares... He owns the majority of voting shares, but they aren't worth the majority of the value of company, and therefore he doesn't "own the majority of the company".
    - rubyn00bie 7y ago
      I think the shares people buy without voting rights are not ownership, they are a weird financial instrument that should flat out be illegal. If you honestly think he doesn't own the company, despite having full uncontestable control of all it's resources, I believe you're one of the many to have been duped, friend.
- mikeash 7y ago
  If you count by shares, yes. But his stock gets more votes, so he owns 60% of the votes.
  - ImprovedSilence 7y ago
    Just to be a pedantic asshole, but I’m pretty sure he only owns 53% of voting shares.
    - mikeash 7y ago
      The article I found said 60%, but that could easily be wrong or just out of date.
briandear 7y ago
> one man has the entire monopoly over our entire online social life You chose that. I don't need Facebook/Insta/What's App to have an "online social life." Literally nobody is forced to participate in that nonsense. Use Snap, iMessage, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, Slack, IRC, 500px, Vimeo, Signal, email, SMS, phone calls -- there are plenty of options. FB, Insta, What's App aren't the entirety of the social media universe. You can't be "mad" at Facebook and then continue to use it. That's a bit hypocritical. If this situation is really that important, then stop using those services! It seems like the same thought patterns seen in abusive relationships: he beats me, but I can't live without him. That's bullshit. Leave those platforms. You see it as a "monopoly" because you allow it to be.
- ishan1121 7y ago
  I used to use Snapchat previously, but all my friends (school, college, etc) started posting on IG stories rather than on Snapchat. My snapchat became a ghost town, and I shifted as well. Still active on Reddit, but its more of community than a tool for personal relations. Android user so no iMessage. Slack & IRC not good to connect with school friends. What I mean to say is the country I am in Facebook has a complete monopoly in our social life. And I am sure even in the US people cannot leave FB ecosystem.

inlined 7y ago

Good luck finding those emails. If it’s for a few years in the past it’s probably auto-deleted due to corporate retention policies designed to defend against discovery. When I came back to google I had all my old calendar but none of my emails because retention is 2yrs.

inlined 7y ago
This was also a pain in the ass when going for promotion because I wanted to show evidence of how I resolved conflicts and managed a partnership that crossed time zones. The most contentious decisions happened in the beginning of the project 2.5yrs earlier and were wiped. Now I understand why Googlers prefer to use Docs and let the comments go there. It’s a much worse experience for having a serialized discussion but it preserves evidence for promo.
jlarocco 7y ago
Literally the first four words of the article say the emails have already been found.

vijaybritto 7y ago

Honestly is anyone surprised by this? He controls everything and how will he not know their own policies?! Facebook needs a serious lesson from the regulators.

thwythwy 7y ago
No, the standard for important journalism isn't surprise though.
joker3 7y ago
There's a big difference between what everyone believes and what everyone actually knows. Getting confirmation could matter.
starbugs 7y ago
Not surprised, but I am afraid regulators will implement rules that would harm small businesses and startups much more than they would hurt FB. On the other hand, the market seems to be pretty much finished anyway. Unless someone comes up with a real decentralized solution that is able to compete with them.
- vijaybritto 7y ago
  Thats a valid concern. But lets hope that they take input from the tech community when and if they do it
  - starbugs 7y ago
    As an EU citizen I am quite skeptical regarding that one. But I have high hopes that US regulators won't make the same mistakes.
anoncake 7y ago
Even if he didn't: He's the boss so he's responsible.

pinewurst 7y ago

"Internal exchanges uncovered in response to FTC probe could cast doubt on founder’s commitment to user privacy, people familiar with the matter say" Who thinks Zuckerberg has (or ever had) _any_ commitment to user privacy?

jakear 7y ago
You’re preaching to the choir on HN. The victims are the “dumb fucks” using his product. (His words, not mine)
chipperyman573 7y ago
Probably people who listen to FB claim that they do.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
basch 7y ago
Pretty disingenuous. People can change. AND we dont have a timeline. Facebook kept pushing more and more info public, in an attempt to make facebook more useful. ( http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/ http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/ ) Then they saw they went too far and quietly scaled it back. Four years later they got burned by mistakes they already knew they made and had already started taking action on. There's multiple issues at foot: when he knew, how he reacted, and why he didn't disclose. He could have absolutely found out, ordered changes, and tried to keep it quiet, and later learned what a mistake it was to keep quiet.
- CaptainZapp 7y ago
  Zuck: 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 [1] [1] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg I see absolutely no indication that Mr. Zuckerberg changed his attitude since then.

ziddoap 7y ago

Given the paywall, I didn't get the pleasure of reading the full article. Based on the title and opening paragraphs however, I don't think this is really news. Especially in light of the recent statement by Facebook counsel Orin Snyder: "There is no invasion of privacy at all, because there is no privacy" [1] In fact, there has been legal statements on the privacy of Facebook floating around for awhile. One judge, in 2013, explicitly said there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.[2] Zuckerburg has also previously made statements regarding his disdain for privacy, such as: "'They "trust me." Dumb f--ks'" [3] In the wake of the mobile phone number sharing with your friends list by default, Mark had this to say: "We realize that people will probably criticize us for this for a long time, but we just believe that this is the right thing to do." [4] I could go on ad nauseum, and I'm sure none of these quotes are new to anyone. So, I just don't get why it is news that Zuckerberg was aware of questionable practices. Of course he was aware of them. He championed them. [1]https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-reportedly-thinks-theres-no-expectation-of-privacy-on-social-media/ https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-reportedly-thinks-theres-... [2]https://www.law.com/thelegalintelligencer/almID/1202532899353/No-Reasonable-Expectation-of-Privacy-on-Facebook-Judge-Says/ https://www.law.com/thelegalintelligencer/almID/120253289935... [3,4]https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerbergs-statements-on-privacy-2003-2018.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg...

bitxbit 7y ago

Antitrust discovery will be juicy. It’s going to make the Microsoft witch-hunt look tame in comparison.

thwythwy 7y ago
If there's on thing these companies do well it's limit discovery and keep it confidential.
- bitxbit 7y ago
  Not when it’s the entire world against them. Public opinion is overwhelming now but it will only get worse with time. I personally don’t think it’s all on Zuckerberg but the politics will make it so.
imiric 7y ago
Part of me is glad that the public and governments are finally catching up to what FB has been doing for years now, but I'm worried that we don't have a better platform/solution that fills in the void without the risk of these privacy violations happening again. Some of the decentralized networks are interesting and seem like a good way forward, but they're still far away from being adopted by non-technical users and masses at large. This seems like it's not only a technical and UI/UX problem, but one of marketing as well. The advertising-based revenue model has certainly become hostile towards user privacy, and we should rethink that too. Whatever comes after FB, I hope it addresses all of these issues, for the sake of all of us.
- antod 7y ago
  > I'm worried that we don't have a better platform/solution that fills in the void without the risk of these privacy violations happening again. Can we just keep the void?

willyg123 7y ago

All organizations, no matter if they are public or private, need checks and balances at the top. I predict that legislation will become the de facto check on FB and there will be many negative unintended consequences for the rest of the tech industry, harming companies who are ethical stewards of privacy.

inetknght 7y ago
Can you name an organization that you think is an ethical steward of privacy?
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Mozilla might be as good as it gets? That being said, even the other tech giants aren't nearly as bad as Facebook. It just seems to be cultural there at this point.
- willyg123 7y ago
  A great point in the form of a question. I should have phrased my comment differently. The emergence of DuckDuckGo and the excitement for Apple's upcoming anonymous sign-in feature proves there is a massive gap in the market for privacy-focused products. I'm afraid there will be regulation that will harm the ability for new companies, with a focus on privacy, to emerge due to the increased compliance costs.
- newscracker 7y ago
  Not one, but a handful, in no particular order. Mozilla Apple Posteo.de (and similar email providers) Signal app (though the app quality is very poor) Matrix.org SpiderOak DuckDuckGo

tehjoker 7y ago

Don't be fooled. Zuckerberg is the head of the organization and has both created and internalized the economic logic of his organization, but the problem is systemic. If you put in someone else, they'll have a different style and might do a few things slightly different, but the economic logic is the same. Spying on the population is profitable, so such operations must be expanded to the maximum possible extent. We can't simply undertake anti-trust litigation against these companies. We must go further and outlaw this business model.

bongobongo 7y ago
It never ceases to amaze me how people who are opposed to government surveillance by accountable liberal constitutional democracies are OK with surveillance by unaccountable private interests who lie all the time and do harm in order to make money.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  The government has the ability to make me disappear. Facebook does not.
  - tehjoker 7y ago
    "Facebook Is Looking for Employees With National Security Clearances" "October 16, 2017, 4:00 AM EDT Updated on October 16, 2017, 12:23 PM EDT" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-16/facebook-is-said-to-seek-staff-with-national-security-clearance https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-16/facebook-...
  - arrosenberg 7y ago
    Facebook does have the opposite ability though - they could make one appear to be whoever they want. If they were inclined to use their data and technology maliciously, against an individual, I think it's likely they could ruin that life pretty quickly.
  - bongobongo 7y ago
    A liberal constitutional democracy does not have any more ability to make you disappear than Facebook does. And repressive governments already use Facebook to disappear their people: >The Facebook posts were not from everyday internet users. Instead, they were from Myanmar military personnel who turned the social network into a tool for ethnic cleansing, according to former military officials, researchers and civilian officials in the country. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... So, the notion that it's somehow "safer" for Facebook to engage in omnipresent surveillance doesn't prove true.

camjohnson26 7y ago

Honestly I don’t see the problem, Facebook’s privacy stance has been well known for years. I don’t use their product much because of this, but friends and family couldn’t care less. Their response is that they don’t care if someone reads their messages or tailors ads to them and no matter how hard I try it won’t change their minds. If you don’t like their privacy stance just don’t use the product, it’s not like there aren’t alternatives. The media outrage feels the same as if they came out and said that it turns out Coca Cola knew its products could lead to obesity. Of course they did, and no reasonable person thought it didn’t. You can’t police every problematic product, at some point the end user has to take responsibility.

rjkennedy98 7y ago
I haven't used Facebook in nearly 8 years, however to say there are alternatives is specious. For example, I have recently learned I missed my first high school reunion because it was only posted on Facebook. Unfortunately, there isn't another service out there that I could subscribe to that would ensure I receive such communication.
- jerkstate 7y ago
  you mean like.. email?
  - freehunter 7y ago
    >it was only posted on Facebook Not sure how email solves that problem.
  - seandougall 7y ago
    Email will notify you of events that are only publicized on Facebook? :thinking_face: I mean, to be fair, even Facebook won't necessarily tell you about an event unless the event creator pays them money to promote it. It's actually not a great platform for small-scale publicity, and _only_ publicizing an event on Facebook is clearly a mistake for a number of reasons. But despite its many virtues, email doesn't actually address GP's case at all.

kodz4 7y ago

This seems to be the one guy on the planet who surpasses Trump in his ability to get into the news every 2 days. No tweeting required even. How are his staff not just jumping out of windows? I mean it's been one article after the other for 3 years now. Almost impressed by the endurance.

bongobongo 7y ago
>How are his staff not just jumping out of windows? Because everybody has a price, and Facebook knows how to find 'em cheap.
Bakary 7y ago
To some extent Facebook acts the way it does because it knows media attention has no teeth. Zuck knows he can just bide his time and scandals will slide off him like morning dew off a leaf.

Meekro 7y ago

I see a lot of these articles about Facebook and privacy lately, but I'm still wondering what, precisely, Facebook is doing that people object to and what kinds of changes would satisfy those who are upset. Near as I can tell, this is about data in Facebook's databases finding its way to other organizations without the users' knowledge or consent. But the way this happens is pretty benign: 1. User installs Facebook app, and that app phones home with info about user's friends (who did not consent to this). This is what happened in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. People started asking why apps are allowed to see info about the user's friends (who did not install the app). But to a programmer, the answer is obvious: it's the "app inherits owner's permissions" model that's been part of the Unix tradition for decades. Anyway, Facebook has since changed this behavior. 2. User adds some bots as friends (maybe because their profile photo is of a cute girl), and the bots phone home with public info about user's friends. This is an entirely predictable consequence of the "friends of friends" permission model. Facebook users can set "friends only" permissions to prevent this, but most don't bother. Is it one of these two vectors that's getting people upset, or something else that I'm missing? Keep in mind that advertisers never get to see people's private info. They just make an ad and say something like "show this to people aged 18-25 who are into video games."

cm2012 7y ago
I'll note that FB changed the behavior for number 1 over five years ago - and they only had that policy in the first place since the tech community at the time was slamming them for being a walled garden. Most people complaining about FB's privacy practices are just on a bandwagon - I've never seen actual evidence of harm from FB's practices re: privacy.
zachrose 7y ago
You've already hit the nail on the head. Facebook is providing a friendly user interface to do normal people stuff. To the users who aren't technically sophisticated or haven't thought deeply about any of this, sucking up their contacts and shipping them off to wherever is just not something they would have imagined, let alone agreed to. And yet they did, at least technically, when they clicked some button saying they had read 40-pages of legalese.
7y ago

mindcrash 7y ago

So hours after writing this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20158714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20158714 this dropped. As you can see it was downvoted, and the only comment downvoted in the entire thread so I guess it was most likely done to bury it. And I must say... at first I was shocked to see it getting buried because I am pretty sure most of HN feels the same way about me in regard to this subject. But reading the article from the WSJ I'm not surprised at all because apparently there was a good reason to bury it.

mrnobody_67 7y ago

He also openly ignores requests to testify in front of UK & Canadian parliamentary committees... Think about that for a minute. Someone who controls 3b people. Runs psychological experiments using AI. Bans accounts of people who violate corporate-created policies that weren't debated or voted on by the public. Violates FCC settlements. And then refuses to be held accountable - or answer questions- from first world, democratic governments.

peteretep 7y ago
> Someone who controls 3b people This bullshit hyperbole helps nobody
- mrnobody_67 7y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/02/facebook-sorry-secret-psychological-experiment-users https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/02/facebook-... They decide what news & ads get shown. FB played a significant role in Brexit and US Presidential elections, enforcing filter bubbles, and running ads in violation of campaign finance laws (i.e. Russia).
  - peteretep 7y ago
    Extrapolating that to “Zuck controls 3b people” is bullshit hyperbole
    - tty2300 7y ago
      Facebook has also performed studies where they controlled the items that show on individuals news feed and recorded how it changed their emotions. Controlling 3b people is exactly how I would describe it.
- AlexandrB 7y ago
  If there was a single newspaper that was read by 3b people I think many would be rightly concerned that it has too much power/influence. Why is this any different? That's setting aside the fact that Facebook does not even try to firewall content moderation from advertising the way a traditional newspaper would.

vmurthy 7y ago

Heh! This article is just below an article on spying (“The thing”). Sure made my evening :-)

baby 7y ago

How can an article behind a paywall collect so many votes that quickly? Now I'm wondering if any of the upvoters have actually read the article.

neonate 7y ago
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=rsswn&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=rsswn&sort=byDate&dateRange=al...

neonate 7y ago

http://archive.is/Dctf0 http://archive.is/Dctf0

malloreon 7y ago

Stop taking away personal responsibility from the thousands of facebook employees, each of whom chooses to be evil every single day. None of these people are being forced to work there. They choose to. They are just as responsible.

lixtra 7y ago
In that case don’t spare the users of FB either. They could carry their content elsewhere but they chose to feed the monster even more. Or - accept the fact that people consider a fair deal what seems to be exploitation to you. If you don’t believe that people are able to make a reasonable, conscious choice then the end of democracy has come (for you).
- AlexandrB 7y ago
  > They could carry their content elsewhere but they chose to feed the monster even more. They did (Instagram, WhatsApp), but then Facebook bought those companies too.
- malloreon 7y ago
  There is no alternative to facebook within orders of magnitude of network effects. FB employees could use their experience and knowledge to work elsewhere.
dang 7y ago
Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. The signal/noise ratio is way too low. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20166045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20166045 and marked it off-topic. Edit: it looks like you've been posting a bunch of these fiery denunciations to HN. I appreciate your strong feelings on the subject, but please don't use this site in that spirit. It's not what it's for, and it destroys the intellectual curiosity that it is for.

trpc 7y ago

This is like saying that Hitler may knew about the Holocaust.

whenchamenia 7y ago
But will we spare the guards when the walls fall?
- ionised 7y ago
  We shouldn't.
dang 7y ago
Please don't do this here.
- trpc 7y ago
  do what? why did you delete my comment?
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't Godwin up HN threads. I didn't delete your comment; when enough users flag a comment and the flags aren't outweighed by upvotes, the software killed it.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

3xblah 7y ago

Not sure if anyone has noticed but the submitter has given HN readers who prefer Javascript-enabled browsing a workaround for the WSJ paywall. Add ?mod=rsswn to the end of the URL.

sonnyblarney 7y ago

The article is misrepresentative. This was way back in an era where fb had slightly more open apis. Of course some people were going to exploit that and break fbs own policies. Cambridge did that and broke fbs rules. Once it became more obvious that 3rd parties would break the rules fb adjusted their policy and closed the loophole. The open nature of the policy was known to everyone on the planet including the ftc at the time. If those policies were problematic why wouldnt someone at the ftc say something? Those whose job it is to regulate just sit there and watch for a decade before doing anything? As someone mentioned above this is a systematic issue and a problem with the business model. This is not some sneaky thing fb did on the side or behind closed doors. The apis were there for the public and everyone to see the whole time. Though there wwtr a few voiced concerns there certainly was not outrage. I have several problems with fb but this specific issue is being misrepresented.

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