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>preventing friends from oversharing "your" data. I don't think this is really what privacy advocates are typically after. At least I'm not, and I'd consider m

>preventing friends from oversharing "your" data. I don't think this is really what privacy advocates are typically after. At least I'm not, and I'd consider myself one of them. It's more about what data the provider has access to, not your friends. If you don't trust your friends, uh... get better friends?

stickfigure 7y ago
Every privacy advocate I've met seems to be most incensed at Facebook over Cambridge Analtyica. To recap: CA built a quiz app that recorded data that your friends shared with you; many users installed this quiz app and accepted the "share your friends' data" permission. Facebook didn't share your data with Cambridge Analtyica; your friends did. Facebook was just the medium. With a distributed social network, there's no feasible legal or technical means of stopping your friends from installing another Evil Quiz App. It's barely possible to stop with a centralized system - it's slowed down only because FB put enough friction in the process.
- seanhunter 7y ago
  > Facebook didn't share your data with Cambridge Analtyica; your friends did. Facebook was just the medium. Facebook shared data that people had shared with their friends with Cambridge Analytica. That's not remotely in dispute - both Facebook and CA have admitted that. CA used Facebook's API and Facebook's servers gave CA the data. People's friends didn't share that data with CA.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    It didn't like, round trip through them. But people's friends did authorize CA to read that data; otherwise CA wouldn't have been able to use the API to get it.
    - seanhunter 7y ago
      That's not true. People's friends had no relationship with CA. They ran an app by a third-party (Aleksandr Kogan) which harvested the data and then he sold it to CA.
  - stickfigure 7y ago
    A genie grants you one wish; <poof> Facebook has been replaced with a decentralized social network based on open protocols. To your horror, your friends _still_ install insipid quiz apps and grant them permission to all of "your" data. And now there is nothing to stop it and no one to blame. From a systems perspective, the fact that the medium is currently named Facebook is irrelevant. The primary actors in the Cambridge Analytica Scandal are your friends. You can remove Facebook and the same narrative remains - you shared data with your friends, and they shared it with someone you don't like.
    - seanhunter 7y ago
      I'm not sure why you think your hypothetical changes the fact that facebook actually did share the data with Kogan (and thereby Cambridge Analytica) in the real case, and blaming the "friends" avoids responsibility by the actors in this case who provided the medium and those who knowingly exploited it. "We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you. I’ve been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn’t happen again. ... Given the way our platform worked at the time this meant Kogan was able to access tens of millions of their friends’ data.... This was a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. But it was also a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it. We need to fix that." - Mark Zuckerberg as reported https://qz.com/1234956/read-mark-zuckerbergs-full-facebook-statement-on-cambridge-analytica/ https://qz.com/1234956/read-mark-zuckerbergs-full-facebook-s... and elsewhere) You could as usefully blame yourself for sharing anything with your friends - after all if you had not done so, they couldn't have shared it with someone you didn't like. "He who would keep a secret must keep secret that he has a secret to keep" as Goethe wrote. It's certainly conceptually possible to design a system without facebook such that your friends share data they shouldn't. The real world also works in this way - people are indiscreet and share things which were told them in confidence. In the real facebook/CA case, the friends did not knowingly share their network's data with CA, they did a personality test quiz set by a social science researcher. That quiz used the facebook API to grab data on the social network of everyone who participated which was then sold to Cambridge Analytica by the developer. Given that facebook's privacy settings have been the subject of studies in UX "dark pattern" design (eg https://fil.forbrukerradet.no/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/2018-06-27-deceived-by-design-final.pdf https://fil.forbrukerradet.no/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/201... and elsewhere) it seems unreasonable to consider this 3rd party sharing to be consensual.

stickfigure 7y ago

Every privacy advocate I've met seems to be most incensed at Facebook over Cambridge Analtyica. To recap: CA built a quiz app that recorded data that your friends shared with you; many users installed this quiz app and accepted the "share your friends' data" permission. Facebook didn't share your data with Cambridge Analtyica; your friends did. Facebook was just the medium. With a distributed social network, there's no feasible legal or technical means of stopping your friends from installing another Evil Quiz App. It's barely possible to stop with a centralized system - it's slowed down only because FB put enough friction in the process.

seanhunter 7y ago
> Facebook didn't share your data with Cambridge Analtyica; your friends did. Facebook was just the medium. Facebook shared data that people had shared with their friends with Cambridge Analytica. That's not remotely in dispute - both Facebook and CA have admitted that. CA used Facebook's API and Facebook's servers gave CA the data. People's friends didn't share that data with CA.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  It didn't like, round trip through them. But people's friends did authorize CA to read that data; otherwise CA wouldn't have been able to use the API to get it.
  - seanhunter 7y ago
    That's not true. People's friends had no relationship with CA. They ran an app by a third-party (Aleksandr Kogan) which harvested the data and then he sold it to CA.
- stickfigure 7y ago
  A genie grants you one wish; <poof> Facebook has been replaced with a decentralized social network based on open protocols. To your horror, your friends _still_ install insipid quiz apps and grant them permission to all of "your" data. And now there is nothing to stop it and no one to blame. From a systems perspective, the fact that the medium is currently named Facebook is irrelevant. The primary actors in the Cambridge Analytica Scandal are your friends. You can remove Facebook and the same narrative remains - you shared data with your friends, and they shared it with someone you don't like.
  - seanhunter 7y ago
    I'm not sure why you think your hypothetical changes the fact that facebook actually did share the data with Kogan (and thereby Cambridge Analytica) in the real case, and blaming the "friends" avoids responsibility by the actors in this case who provided the medium and those who knowingly exploited it. "We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you. I’ve been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn’t happen again. ... Given the way our platform worked at the time this meant Kogan was able to access tens of millions of their friends’ data.... This was a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. But it was also a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it. We need to fix that." - Mark Zuckerberg as reported https://qz.com/1234956/read-mark-zuckerbergs-full-facebook-statement-on-cambridge-analytica/ https://qz.com/1234956/read-mark-zuckerbergs-full-facebook-s... and elsewhere) You could as usefully blame yourself for sharing anything with your friends - after all if you had not done so, they couldn't have shared it with someone you didn't like. "He who would keep a secret must keep secret that he has a secret to keep" as Goethe wrote. It's certainly conceptually possible to design a system without facebook such that your friends share data they shouldn't. The real world also works in this way - people are indiscreet and share things which were told them in confidence. In the real facebook/CA case, the friends did not knowingly share their network's data with CA, they did a personality test quiz set by a social science researcher. That quiz used the facebook API to grab data on the social network of everyone who participated which was then sold to Cambridge Analytica by the developer. Given that facebook's privacy settings have been the subject of studies in UX "dark pattern" design (eg https://fil.forbrukerradet.no/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/2018-06-27-deceived-by-design-final.pdf https://fil.forbrukerradet.no/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/201... and elsewhere) it seems unreasonable to consider this 3rd party sharing to be consensual.