5 ms·

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 famil

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.
    - asdff 7y ago
      A contact list would, like what likely existed for every previous reunion in GPs high school since before 2010. My schools periodically reach out to update your contact info for their alumni roster. I bet GP never gave the school their contact info after graduation rather than this being a facebook only situation (unless it was just organized by a handful of alums and not tied with the school itself). There isn't a passive tool that would solve this other than getting people's email or mailing address, and that's absolutely fine since if you wanted to go to these reunions and be invested in these events, you can send an email to the school and get yourself on this contact list.
      - seandougall 7y ago
        That relies on a number of speculations, most importantly that GP was incorrect about the event having only been published on Facebook. I've seen enough small organizations work that way that I wouldn't be so hasty to second-guess GP's description.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    Email wouldn't allow you to effortlessly aggregate the email addresses of everyone, and then to communicate the message out. There's a really large overhead there that doesn't really exist with Facebook.
- camjohnson26 7y ago
  Alternatives don’t have to be services, you can directly contact people who do use the service or who live with the people you want to know about. And your opting out of the network makes it a little less valuable, since now no one has access to updates about yourself. If you can convince a few more people to lower their exposure or to move to something like friendica then the network becomes even less valuable and helps to lower Facebook’s power. I would much rather fight the problem this way than trust legislators to come up with a fair way to regulate it. Same with sugar, I would rather invest in educational campaigns to convince people how bad sugars and sodas are for their body than have the government ban all sugar or decide how much can be in a product. The lobbies will usually end up writing the final laws anyway, and who knows what their incentives are.
- kjar 7y ago
  I have never used FB for many reasons, and it drives me nuts when close friends assume everyone does then you miss invites.
- asdff 7y ago
  Pretty absurd that your alumni communication is through facebook and only facebook, and they don't maintain actual contact info. Email is still the standard for my hs and uni alumni spam and I reckon it always will be, since it's pretty impossible to find people on facebook with common names unless you have mutual friends.
- ryandrake 7y ago
  Think about it this way: Why would you want to go to an event where the organizers were too lazy to even invite you? I’d say you lucked out and whatever else you were doing at the time was likely more valuable. I’ve been off of Facebook for a decade and still have a robust, satisfying social life. My real friends know how to contact me and I never feel left out of the actual important stuff going on. I think of Facebook’s existence as a blessing: it allows me to easily filter out all those low-effort “events” run by people who don’t really care if I come.
wqnt 7y ago
I don't think not using their products is a solution. Even if you don't use facebook, your friends and colleagues have your name and phone number on their phone, and your friends upload photos with your face in them. You may also share the wifi with family members so facebook knows where you are indirectly. As we are all parts of the society that we can't escape from, regulation matters a lot to everybody who may or may not use facebook products.
rhizome 7y ago
Aside from the ethnography you lay out, do you think FB/Zuck should enjoy zero liability for all privacy issues that transpire now or in the future? >it turns out Coca Cola knew its products could lead to obesity. Of course they did, and no reasonable person thought it didn’t. https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2005/02/15/51451.htm https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2005/02/15/51...
idlewords 7y ago
There are lots of situations where you have no choice but use Facebook. Some schools, for example, communicate through Facebook groups. Your church might do the same thing. You may have relatives abroad you can only talk to through Facebook or WhatsApp, because that's all they know how to use. Your landlord or employer might demand to see your Facebook profile as a condition of getting a lease or a job. The stance of "just opt out of stuff you don't like" bakes in a lot of assumptions about your position in the world, and trivializes real criticisms of Facebook by people who do not have the same choices you enjoy.
- SapporoChris 7y ago
  I call BS. Every situation you mentioned exists because people passively accept the situation. Simply demanding a method to communicate other than Facebook can remedy the situation. I'd love to see a list of companies that require a Facebook account. Not ask for Facebook account, require Facebook account. "You may have relatives abroad you can only talk to through Facebook or WhatsApp" They can't pick up the phone? Side note: I've never had a Facebook account.
  - idlewords 7y ago
    So... you're opining on a service you've never used? I guess you're on the right site for that.
    - SapporoChris 7y ago
      Ad hominem fallacy: attacks the characteristics or authority of the writer without addressing the substance of the argument. source: https://medium.com/@fagnerbrack/personal-experience-doesnt-matter-cb060b42f99a https://medium.com/@fagnerbrack/personal-experience-doesnt-m...
      - idlewords 7y ago
        Only a fool would think that was an example of the ad hominem fallacy.
ravenstine 7y ago
> no reasonable person thought it didn’t What's a reasonable person? Plenty of "reasonable" people drink Coke every day because the system indoctrinates otherwise rational people into believing that sugar isn't a poison comparable to alcohol. One of my friends, who is an attorney, still thinks that snack foods devoid of fat but loaded with sugar are somehow healthier. Speculating how a rational person would respond ideally isn't very useful in this situation because most people, including those who are well educated, are influenced heavily by their environment and, more specifically, peers and authority. When you have Zuckerberg and journalists touting the end of privacy as being a good thing(there are plenty of articles and quotes from 10 years ago reflecting this sentiment), as well as surveillance gradually integrating into people's lives through convenience, you bet that most people are going to shrug their shoulders at privacy. Does the fact that people comply with invasion of privacy mean that the issue doesn't matter? Maybe it does if you don't think that the behavior of the masses can be manufactured. I do agree with you that the current media outrage against social media, Silicon Valley, etc., is essentially the same kind of consent-manufacturing as when they were telling us that privacy is gone and that we should accept Facebook as the lesser evil because it "makes us more connected". I happen to agree with the current manufactured outrage, but I don't agree with the intent behind it. (which I suspect has to do with the old-guard media finally realizing that it's dying and it doesn't like the fact that social media has taken their audience and, hence, their money)
- idlewords 7y ago
  What the hell is your problem with alcohol?
  - Liquix 7y ago
    Way to pick out the least important sentence in that well-crafted response and attack it for no reason. Alcohol can indeed be classified as a poison. When someone gets their stomach pumped after drinking too much, they're being treated for alcohol poisoning.
  - cm2012 7y ago
    https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2014/09/drinking.png&w=1484 https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://...
Liquix 7y ago
Agreed; it's frustrating and scary how difficult it is to get people to care about online privacy. If data harvesting/target advertising continues unchecked, we'll be living in an Orwellian surveillance state by 2030. That's not the scary part, though. The scary part is that the writing is on the wall and no one can be bothered to care (excluding HN users and the like - ya'll are awesome). Also agree re:Coca Cola. However I also believe that we shouldn't blindly accept a status quo of "companies are inherently evil and value financial growth over the wellbeing/health/privacy of their customers". There are a few shining examples of business being conducted with true respect for customers. These ethical entities are few and far between, but they are worth their weight in gold and we should be mindful to vote for them with our wallets. Getting aunt Sue to care about data harvesting and stopping the likes of Google/Amazon from taking over the world are both uphill battles. But something has to change, soon.
jchrisa 7y ago
Not using Facebook isn't a meaningful way to opt-out. The better analogy is not soft drinks, but asbestos or CFCs. All that private information amassed, just waiting to fall into the wrong hands.
Barrin92 7y ago
obesity is one of primary public health concerns, with costs associated going into the tens if not hundreds of billions, affecting billions of people. Societies all over the globe try hard to tackle it, and you would have to make a very good case why you should not, or cannot police products that cause harm like this, we do it all the time. If Facebook is the new Coke I'm not sure you're making the point you're intending to make. This just sounds like the stereotypical libertarian tech excuse about not taking responsibility for what is clearly becoming a pressing social concern.
- camjohnson26 7y ago
  Yes they are both big problems, the point is that not every problem can be solved through regulation. Sedentary lifestyles are a big problem but that doesn’t mean we should pass a law forcing people to move a set amount every day. At some point people have to be given the freedom to be allowed to hurt themselves and society’s role should be to help them make the decision not to. Ideally this is done through education, not force.
  - Barrin92 7y ago
    I don't think anybody is advocating to force end users to do anything, but we can certainly regulate businesses who profit of harmful products. Sugar taxes, smaller cupsizes, transparent information about the dangers of consumption, and so on are all fairly modest ways to set the right incentives. And when it comes to companies behaving in irresponsible ways, for example if it turns out they ran disinformation campaigns, or hid important information about breaches from the public, then I think from time to time it's fair to bring out the hammer and hit them with substantial fines. It can absolutely not be the case that Facebook violates user privacy, is aware of it up to the very top, and the next day the stock price soars by billions of dollars because evidently the market doesn't take our ability to correct this behaviour seriously.
JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> I don’t see the problem Facebook entered into a consent decree with the FTC [1]. (Facebook had to do this because it violated promises made to consumers.) Facebook then violated that consent decree. These e-mails may show Mark Zuckerberg--the Chairman, CEO and majority vote holder--complicit in those violations. One can dig deeper into the privacy and antitrust issues [2], cultural issues and other matters. But at its core, this relates to their flagrantly violating a binding agreement with a federal regulator. The individual criminal-law analogy would be violating one's parole agreement. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2011/11/facebook-settles-ftc-charges-it-deceived-consumers-failing-keep https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2011/11/faceb... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/opinion/privacy-antitrust-facebook.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/opinion/privacy-antitrust...
bongobongo 7y ago
Facebook has 70% of the social media global market share. Coca-Cola has just 40% of the non-alcoholic beverages global market share. And as others have pointed out, "don't use Facebook" doesn't solve the problem of all the data they already have on you and will never destroy.
la_barba 7y ago
Not all, but part of the outrage is political. A lot of (D) folks are looking for someone to blame for the current political climate. I'll stick my neck out a bit and wager that a lot of news outlets running privacy stories wouldn't think twice about selling their customers data for ad revenue.
- briandear 7y ago
  > A lot of (D) folks are looking for someone to blame for the current political climate. Correct. When the Obama campaign used data just as aggressively as Cambridge, people cheered how "technologically advanced" that campaign was. People have a selective memory, but Facebook data harvesting and exploitation was a critical strategy used by Obama to win his elections. I guess 2008 and 2012 are too far back for most people to remember.
enumjorge 7y ago
The problem is that their indifference to how their data is used is starting to affect all of us. As evidenced by the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it’s not just advertisers tailoring ads to you. You now have shady organizations trying alter elections and pushing propaganda into users. If this leads to voters developing bizarre views of the world that influence who they vote for, then their carelessness becomes our problem.
baby 7y ago
With that logic, should we get mad that Google can read our emails?

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.
  - asdff 7y ago
    A contact list would, like what likely existed for every previous reunion in GPs high school since before 2010. My schools periodically reach out to update your contact info for their alumni roster. I bet GP never gave the school their contact info after graduation rather than this being a facebook only situation (unless it was just organized by a handful of alums and not tied with the school itself). There isn't a passive tool that would solve this other than getting people's email or mailing address, and that's absolutely fine since if you wanted to go to these reunions and be invested in these events, you can send an email to the school and get yourself on this contact list.
    - seandougall 7y ago
      That relies on a number of speculations, most importantly that GP was incorrect about the event having only been published on Facebook. I've seen enough small organizations work that way that I wouldn't be so hasty to second-guess GP's description.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  Email wouldn't allow you to effortlessly aggregate the email addresses of everyone, and then to communicate the message out. There's a really large overhead there that doesn't really exist with Facebook.
camjohnson26 7y ago
Alternatives don’t have to be services, you can directly contact people who do use the service or who live with the people you want to know about. And your opting out of the network makes it a little less valuable, since now no one has access to updates about yourself. If you can convince a few more people to lower their exposure or to move to something like friendica then the network becomes even less valuable and helps to lower Facebook’s power. I would much rather fight the problem this way than trust legislators to come up with a fair way to regulate it. Same with sugar, I would rather invest in educational campaigns to convince people how bad sugars and sodas are for their body than have the government ban all sugar or decide how much can be in a product. The lobbies will usually end up writing the final laws anyway, and who knows what their incentives are.
kjar 7y ago
I have never used FB for many reasons, and it drives me nuts when close friends assume everyone does then you miss invites.
asdff 7y ago
Pretty absurd that your alumni communication is through facebook and only facebook, and they don't maintain actual contact info. Email is still the standard for my hs and uni alumni spam and I reckon it always will be, since it's pretty impossible to find people on facebook with common names unless you have mutual friends.
ryandrake 7y ago
Think about it this way: Why would you want to go to an event where the organizers were too lazy to even invite you? I’d say you lucked out and whatever else you were doing at the time was likely more valuable. I’ve been off of Facebook for a decade and still have a robust, satisfying social life. My real friends know how to contact me and I never feel left out of the actual important stuff going on. I think of Facebook’s existence as a blessing: it allows me to easily filter out all those low-effort “events” run by people who don’t really care if I come.

wqnt 7y ago

I don't think not using their products is a solution. Even if you don't use facebook, your friends and colleagues have your name and phone number on their phone, and your friends upload photos with your face in them. You may also share the wifi with family members so facebook knows where you are indirectly. As we are all parts of the society that we can't escape from, regulation matters a lot to everybody who may or may not use facebook products.

rhizome 7y ago

Aside from the ethnography you lay out, do you think FB/Zuck should enjoy zero liability for all privacy issues that transpire now or in the future? >it turns out Coca Cola knew its products could lead to obesity. Of course they did, and no reasonable person thought it didn’t. https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2005/02/15/51451.htm https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2005/02/15/51...

idlewords 7y ago

There are lots of situations where you have no choice but use Facebook. Some schools, for example, communicate through Facebook groups. Your church might do the same thing. You may have relatives abroad you can only talk to through Facebook or WhatsApp, because that's all they know how to use. Your landlord or employer might demand to see your Facebook profile as a condition of getting a lease or a job. The stance of "just opt out of stuff you don't like" bakes in a lot of assumptions about your position in the world, and trivializes real criticisms of Facebook by people who do not have the same choices you enjoy.

SapporoChris 7y ago
I call BS. Every situation you mentioned exists because people passively accept the situation. Simply demanding a method to communicate other than Facebook can remedy the situation. I'd love to see a list of companies that require a Facebook account. Not ask for Facebook account, require Facebook account. "You may have relatives abroad you can only talk to through Facebook or WhatsApp" They can't pick up the phone? Side note: I've never had a Facebook account.
- idlewords 7y ago
  So... you're opining on a service you've never used? I guess you're on the right site for that.
  - SapporoChris 7y ago
    Ad hominem fallacy: attacks the characteristics or authority of the writer without addressing the substance of the argument. source: https://medium.com/@fagnerbrack/personal-experience-doesnt-matter-cb060b42f99a https://medium.com/@fagnerbrack/personal-experience-doesnt-m...
    - idlewords 7y ago
      Only a fool would think that was an example of the ad hominem fallacy.

ravenstine 7y ago

> no reasonable person thought it didn’t What's a reasonable person? Plenty of "reasonable" people drink Coke every day because the system indoctrinates otherwise rational people into believing that sugar isn't a poison comparable to alcohol. One of my friends, who is an attorney, still thinks that snack foods devoid of fat but loaded with sugar are somehow healthier. Speculating how a rational person would respond ideally isn't very useful in this situation because most people, including those who are well educated, are influenced heavily by their environment and, more specifically, peers and authority. When you have Zuckerberg and journalists touting the end of privacy as being a good thing(there are plenty of articles and quotes from 10 years ago reflecting this sentiment), as well as surveillance gradually integrating into people's lives through convenience, you bet that most people are going to shrug their shoulders at privacy. Does the fact that people comply with invasion of privacy mean that the issue doesn't matter? Maybe it does if you don't think that the behavior of the masses can be manufactured. I do agree with you that the current media outrage against social media, Silicon Valley, etc., is essentially the same kind of consent-manufacturing as when they were telling us that privacy is gone and that we should accept Facebook as the lesser evil because it "makes us more connected". I happen to agree with the current manufactured outrage, but I don't agree with the intent behind it. (which I suspect has to do with the old-guard media finally realizing that it's dying and it doesn't like the fact that social media has taken their audience and, hence, their money)

idlewords 7y ago
What the hell is your problem with alcohol?
- Liquix 7y ago
  Way to pick out the least important sentence in that well-crafted response and attack it for no reason. Alcohol can indeed be classified as a poison. When someone gets their stomach pumped after drinking too much, they're being treated for alcohol poisoning.
- cm2012 7y ago
  https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2014/09/drinking.png&w=1484 https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://...

Liquix 7y ago

Agreed; it's frustrating and scary how difficult it is to get people to care about online privacy. If data harvesting/target advertising continues unchecked, we'll be living in an Orwellian surveillance state by 2030. That's not the scary part, though. The scary part is that the writing is on the wall and no one can be bothered to care (excluding HN users and the like - ya'll are awesome). Also agree re:Coca Cola. However I also believe that we shouldn't blindly accept a status quo of "companies are inherently evil and value financial growth over the wellbeing/health/privacy of their customers". There are a few shining examples of business being conducted with true respect for customers. These ethical entities are few and far between, but they are worth their weight in gold and we should be mindful to vote for them with our wallets. Getting aunt Sue to care about data harvesting and stopping the likes of Google/Amazon from taking over the world are both uphill battles. But something has to change, soon.

jchrisa 7y ago

Not using Facebook isn't a meaningful way to opt-out. The better analogy is not soft drinks, but asbestos or CFCs. All that private information amassed, just waiting to fall into the wrong hands.

Barrin92 7y ago

obesity is one of primary public health concerns, with costs associated going into the tens if not hundreds of billions, affecting billions of people. Societies all over the globe try hard to tackle it, and you would have to make a very good case why you should not, or cannot police products that cause harm like this, we do it all the time. If Facebook is the new Coke I'm not sure you're making the point you're intending to make. This just sounds like the stereotypical libertarian tech excuse about not taking responsibility for what is clearly becoming a pressing social concern.

camjohnson26 7y ago
Yes they are both big problems, the point is that not every problem can be solved through regulation. Sedentary lifestyles are a big problem but that doesn’t mean we should pass a law forcing people to move a set amount every day. At some point people have to be given the freedom to be allowed to hurt themselves and society’s role should be to help them make the decision not to. Ideally this is done through education, not force.
- Barrin92 7y ago
  I don't think anybody is advocating to force end users to do anything, but we can certainly regulate businesses who profit of harmful products. Sugar taxes, smaller cupsizes, transparent information about the dangers of consumption, and so on are all fairly modest ways to set the right incentives. And when it comes to companies behaving in irresponsible ways, for example if it turns out they ran disinformation campaigns, or hid important information about breaches from the public, then I think from time to time it's fair to bring out the hammer and hit them with substantial fines. It can absolutely not be the case that Facebook violates user privacy, is aware of it up to the very top, and the next day the stock price soars by billions of dollars because evidently the market doesn't take our ability to correct this behaviour seriously.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago

> I don’t see the problem Facebook entered into a consent decree with the FTC [1]. (Facebook had to do this because it violated promises made to consumers.) Facebook then violated that consent decree. These e-mails may show Mark Zuckerberg--the Chairman, CEO and majority vote holder--complicit in those violations. One can dig deeper into the privacy and antitrust issues [2], cultural issues and other matters. But at its core, this relates to their flagrantly violating a binding agreement with a federal regulator. The individual criminal-law analogy would be violating one's parole agreement. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2011/11/facebook-settles-ftc-charges-it-deceived-consumers-failing-keep https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2011/11/faceb... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/opinion/privacy-antitrust-facebook.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/opinion/privacy-antitrust...

bongobongo 7y ago

Facebook has 70% of the social media global market share. Coca-Cola has just 40% of the non-alcoholic beverages global market share. And as others have pointed out, "don't use Facebook" doesn't solve the problem of all the data they already have on you and will never destroy.

la_barba 7y ago

Not all, but part of the outrage is political. A lot of (D) folks are looking for someone to blame for the current political climate. I'll stick my neck out a bit and wager that a lot of news outlets running privacy stories wouldn't think twice about selling their customers data for ad revenue.

briandear 7y ago
> A lot of (D) folks are looking for someone to blame for the current political climate. Correct. When the Obama campaign used data just as aggressively as Cambridge, people cheered how "technologically advanced" that campaign was. People have a selective memory, but Facebook data harvesting and exploitation was a critical strategy used by Obama to win his elections. I guess 2008 and 2012 are too far back for most people to remember.

enumjorge 7y ago

The problem is that their indifference to how their data is used is starting to affect all of us. As evidenced by the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it’s not just advertisers tailoring ads to you. You now have shady organizations trying alter elections and pushing propaganda into users. If this leads to voters developing bizarre views of the world that influence who they vote for, then their carelessness becomes our problem.

baby 7y ago

With that logic, should we get mad that Google can read our emails?