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Facebook lawyers explain to a judge that privacy on Facebook is nonexistent
- tobsmagoats 7y agoJust a corporate entity passing the blame on their massive user base. They need to impose some restrictions or get regulated.
- ulfw 7y agoThe latter. Without a doubt.
- nabla9 7y agoOnly regulation needed is to prevent FB from buying off their competitors. FB would have to innovate internally or turn into MySpace without without Instagram, WhatsApp and others https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Facebook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
- thatoneuser 7y agoThe argument is "if you share it with friends you've abandoned the right to privacy cuz they can share it with others". OK if that's how were going to play it then fb isn't responsible if a friend, of their own volition, shares it. However if fb says "you shared it now WE can share it" is a whole other game. Regulate Facebook. They lied and said they weren't intentionally playing with people's dopamine to grow themselves. They're lying now (in a roundabout way). They're always going to lie. Why will they always lie? Because there's no accountability. Regulate them. Force their hand. That's the only way we can stop creeping further into dystopia. They won't do it on their own and at this point no one should be comfortable with their practices.
- sprafa 7y agoHip hip. We need a People’s movement against FB, or a people’s movement for data regulation.
- mLuby 7y ago>The argument is "if you share it with friends you've abandoned the right to privacy cuz they can share it with others". If those are the rules then it seems copyright is out the window. Looking forward to Clash of the Titans 3: Facebook vs. Disney
- davidhyde 7y agoThe worst thing you can do to Facebook is to stop using it. Sure they keep a profile on you even if you don’t have an account but their power is derived from people using their platform.
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- smallgovt 7y agoYou have more power than that. If you want to hurt Facebook, spread the ideas that Facebook is unhealthy, uncool, and/or a detriment to society. In addition to stopping your personal use, influence your friends to deter them from using it too.
- gridlockd 7y agoDon't be "that guy". It doesn't work any it only makes you less fun to be around. Nobody wants to get lectured about how they're doing something bad or stupid. People are well aware of the problems with Facebook. Maybe they'll change, maybe they won't. If they do, please don't assume it was because of you.
- darkpuma 7y agoIt does work. Not on you I suppose, but plenty of people have stopped using facebook because other people persuaded them to stop. In fact, I wager telling people about facebook being crap works a lot more than telling people to stop complaining about facebook.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago>It doesn't work any it only makes you less fun to be around. It does work and I am crap at being social anyway, so I don't mind taking the hit. Someone has to be 'that guy', as you put it. Might as well be me. So, hear me good people. Get the hell off facebook, it is a terrible place full of demons, woe and all that is tawdry, misplaced and wrong, and since we are on HN, go build alternatives to facebook while you are at it.
- caseysoftware 7y agoCambridge Analytica was never a "breach" - Facebook worked exactly as designed. This is just demonstrating the government/LEO's own definition of Third Party Doctrine which says once you give information to someone else, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. This is why law enforcement claims not to need a warrant to get your bank records, call history, or internet traffic. Like it or not, disagree or not, it's clearly established until States or Congress roll it back. SCOTUS stepped in last year to block cell-location history but that's one piece of the problem. Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine
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- bcherny 7y agoReading through that article, the FB lawyer’s argument is pretty reasonable: > I go into a classroom and invite a hundred friends. This courtroom. I invite a hundred friends, I rent out the courtroom, and I have a party. And I disclose — And I disclose something private about myself to a hundred people, friends and colleagues. Those friends then rent out a 100,000-person arena, and they rebroadcast those to 100,000 people. I have no cause of action because by going to a hundred people and saying my private truths, I have negated any reasonable expectation of privacy, because the case law is clear. Was there more context the article left out about the specific level of privacy the party expected?
- throwaway13784 7y agoIt's pretty reasonable in the same way that the right to bear arms is pretty reasonable considering older technology (muskets), but perhaps worth reconsidering with M16s (much less nuclear missiles).
- salawat 7y agoOr the right to free speech is pretty reasonable with older technology (printing presses), but perhaps worth reconsidering with broadcast stations (much less the Internet!) Yeah, no. Shall Not Be Infringed. You don't get your cake, and to eat it too. Facebook needs to get itself in order. In fact, the tech community as a whole needs to realize that just because they can tap into some data source, doesn't mean they should.
- EastSmith 7y agoIt is kind of reasonable, but when you post on Facebook, you can choose between public post and post that only "Friends" can see. When I post to "Friends", I expect only people that I am "Friends" with on Facebook to see it. So they need to STOP using the term "Friends" and start using the term "Friends and Corporations" instead.
- perennate 7y agoI don't see how it's reasonable for Facebook to enable an app that advertises itself to users as a simple "academic survey" to harvest the private data of not only those users but all of their friends as well. Is it so unreasonable for users to expect that their data would not be harvested by a survey app installed by an online "buddy" who they may have never even met in person? Also I think the analogy the lawyers brought up is misleading. Instead of renting out an arena, it's more like just one of those friends accepted a 1000-page terms of service a couple decades ago for a random forum, and instead of "rebroadcasting" what's "disclosed" at one party, it's more like the forum is now publishing their per-minute GPS location for the past year.
- wybiral 7y agoUsers grasp the idea that posting on social media is a public thing. It's like getting on stage and shouting to everyone in the room... It's not private. But, Facebook is invading privacy in subtle ways that users aren't so good at grasping. Like the fact that Facebook remembers every website they visit. And how long you linger on a post in your timeline. And collects your location data even when you're not trying to broadcast it. And analyzes all of your private messages. And trains neural networks to recognize you so they can correlate you with other pictures throughout the internet (and who knows, maybe they're sharing those models with random governments or other companies). That stuff is the real privacy violation, not the public posts. And that stuff is intentionally obscured from the users and vaguely articulated in their privacy policy.
- annadane 7y agoIt's also fairly difficult when they intentionally make it hard for the distinction of public/non public to be understood. "People you may know" is a privacy violation. "A friend commented on such and such post" is a priacy violation.
- anticensor 7y agoThe latter is not a deprivacy of privacy, as it is already visible to you.
- annadane 7y agoBut you shouldn't be able to just find things like that so easily. Sure if I go on a post I could find it but the fact Facebook notifies me of this in the first place is incredibly disrespectful.
- csallen 7y agoNot true, since the entire point of a social network like this is to browse a playground of publicly-visible conversations involving your friends, and the people conversing are quite aware they're doing so in public. What would be "disrespectful" is if Facebook told you what your friends were saying in private messages between each other.
- HugoDaniel 7y agoFB notion of privacy is wrong. Privacy is not about what i publicly share. My right to privacy is about all the info they secretly collect, keep and sell to make a profit. My right to privacy implies that they do not keep a shadow profile on me and my relatives who are not on Facebook. My right to privacy implies that they dont read through me phone messages at will. My right to privacy gives me the freedom to avoid being spoon fed by the highest bidders such as Trump, farage et al FB knows this and they consciously divert the attention towards what we publicly share. Evil.
- gridlockd 7y agoFacebook can't read through your phone messages unless you give them permission to read through your phone messages.
- darkpuma 7y agoIf everybody I send messages to have decided to install the facebook app on their phones, then the decision is taken out of my hands. Facebook will receive and store messages that I wrote, even though Facebook and I do not have a consensual relationship.
- esoterica 7y agoAny time you communicate with someone you surrender to them the right to control what happens to that communication. This is a property of human communication that predates Facebook by millenia. If you tell secrets to someone you can’t stop them from spreading the secrets to other people. The onus is on you to vet the people you share confidential information with.
- Madmallard 7y agowhat the.... dude. lol. secrets you tell others in confidence get out if they divulge that information themselves and if that happens you may lose trust in that person. they have no idea facebook is eavesdropping intently. it is so drastically different.
- Grustaf 7y agoFacebook is awful in numerous ways but this article is misleading. FBs argument is entirely correct. The problem is of course that this is not the issue with Facebook. Facebook is like a stalker. Even if he only uses public information, like following you in the street and sitting down next to you in a cafe to listen in on your conversations, it’s still creepy, and it is not expected, even if you have the audacity to walk about and talk to people in cafes.
- greypowerOz 7y agoi like this analogy, it seems to address the deeper issue.
- lone_haxx0r 7y agoAnd the best thing you can do is ignore him and never talk to him.
- saghm 7y agoI think the "beat thing you can do" when someone's stalking you is often "go to the police"
- gridlockd 7y agoThis quote: "Again and again, Snyder blames the targets of surveillance capitalism for their own surveillance" This is an awful way of looking at the world, because it denies that people have personal responsibility. Everybody knows what Facebook does. It is in plain sight. It's in their terms of services. It's all over the media. A lot of people don't use Facebook because of what Facebook does. Using Facebook is a fool's bargain, just like smoking or gambling. If people can't be blamed for their own conscious decisions, we might as well throw out the whole legal system. All contracts are void, because nobody has legal capacity. This is all pretext for more legislation, for the nanny state to come in and save us all from our dumb and irresponsible selves, to create more positions for bureaucrats to extract even more rent out of the remaining members of society. Don't buy this.
- drtillberg 7y agoPeople migrated from blogs to Facebook so they could selectively disclose their private information, only to the people they wanted. For a time, it wasn't even clear how FB could make money operating this noble public service. Remember that? The legal argument in the article is just a good old fashioned gaslighting of FB's users, at least the original group. Next they'll claim email isn't private....
- calibas 7y agoWhy does the lawyer keep bringing up "a hundred people"? Is there some kind of official policy where FB respects your privacy if you share with 99 or fewer people? Or is it some calculated legal argument to emphasize that anything shared publicly on FB is going to be seen by plenty of people?
- nyxxie 7y agoHow is “leave the platform if you don’t like it” not the solution here? Facebook’s creepy stalking of its users is well known, and it’s practically their only method of funding themselves. The calls to regulate Facebook just sound like entitled users attempting to use the hammer of government to reshape the site into what they want. Can anyone here make a case as to why regulation is preferable compared to letting the free market force Facebook to change or die? I’m legitimately struggling to find any legitimate reason to do so.
- karangoeluw 7y agoMoxie Marlinespike (Openwhisper Systems, Signal) makes a good argument for why that doesn't work https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DoeNbZlxfUM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DoeNbZlxfUM. Recommend watching the whole talk.
- reallydude 7y agoMaking an argument doesn't change the fact that I am informed, made a decision, stopped using it and have suffered NO HARM. I made a tradeoff that I thought was valuable. Anyone demonstrably can, but are usually less interested in making a philosophical judgement than enjoying the dopamine reward from communal outrage.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 7y agoBecause the network effect means leaving the platform is about as realistic as "abandon all your friends and go live as a hermit in the woods".
- gerdesj 7y agoYou can whitter, you can pontificate, you can reason. We are all dumb fucks.