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Facebook sued for ‘losing control’ of users’ data
- bzb6 6y agoThis is the result of open APIs. It shows why web sites like Facebook have to close them down. They are not worth it, they are a liability.
- Nextgrid 6y agoDisagreed - this is the result of stupid users. If the APIs are gone they will just be entering their Facebook credentials directly (which would leak way more data than what relatively limited API access allows).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pratio 6y agoI think its a bit harsh to call users stupid. When we move away from HN, we realize how teach naive a layman can be. We haven't seen something of this sort happen at this scale happen many times before. A lot of efforts are going into privacy now, way more than before.
- bzb6 6y agoObviously it’s the result of stupid users, but you can get rid of the APIs, you can’t get rid of the stupid users.
- jwolfe 6y agoIf you get rid of the API it will just happen through malicious Chrome extensions instead. I guess that's an improvement in practical impact. Will the next argument be that browsers shouldn't be extensible, because it's a liability with stupid users?
- JKCalhoun 6y agoI may be mistaken, but I understood that "stupid users" allowed access to their friends/contacts as well. I guess I'm stupid too if I have a stupid friend or relative.
- bzb6 6y agoIf your friend has view access to your profile, why shouldn’t he be able to extract that information via an API as well?
- ceejayoz 6y agoFor the same reason visiting my house doesn't mean they can steal the silverware?
- lordnacho 6y agoSilverware isn't information though. This is more like inviting your friend over and then they tell someone the floor plan of your house.
- lupire 6y agoNothing was stolen. People visiting your allows are allowed to remember and say that your silverware exists, unless they sign an NDA.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- delecti 6y agoMore like: just because someone can visit my house doesn't mean I'd be okay with them walking around video recording everything in sight.
- PeterisP 6y agoSomeone who has view access to my profile may view my data, and they might also extract that information with API - however, they do not have any right to give permission on my behalf to someone else (e.g. Cambridge Analytica), that would require a power of attorney or something like that. My friend might technically send that information to Cambridge Analytica, but my friend can't give them permission to use it, CA would be required to acknowledge that they don't have the legal permission to use that data and discard it. My friend can tell Facebook "I permit you to give that information to Cambridge Analytica" but Facebook is not allowed to act based on that "permission" since it's not something my friend can permit.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoPeople ARE stupid, this is a known fact; this is one reason why consumer and privacy protection laws are a thing, why two-factor authentication is a thing, why e-mail verification of logins is a thing, why you can't just start trading in stocks, buy alcohol, etc etc etc. Companies protect their users from themselves; they HAVE to, in case they (the users) shoot themselves in the foot. And consumer have a reasonable expectation, regardless of Facebook's terms & conditions, that their data isn't shared to third parties - or that they at least get asked when it happens, instead of being pointed to a tl;dr of T's & C's. Plenty of people do not have the literacy level to understand terms and conditions [1]. This is a worrying trend, but it's something that companies like Facebook should (and are) aware of - people don't read terms and conditions, people don't understand them. [1] https://literacytrust.org.uk/parents-and-families/adult-literacy/ https://literacytrust.org.uk/parents-and-families/adult-lite...
- lm28469 6y agoIf you drive a car at 350kph on the highway, crash and die. Your death isn't due to "open roads", it's due to neglect/abuse
- syshum 6y agoRoads are not really open, there is a ton a regulations around roads, what kind of cars can be sold for public road use and who can utilize the public road ways as a driver so your analogy fails on its face there. besides that fact, we also do not sue a Car manufacturer if a User of their car does go 350kph on the highway' crashes and dies.....
- lm28469 6y ago> there is a ton a regulations around roads, what kind of cars can be sold for public road use and who can utilize the public road ways as a driver so your analogy fails on its face there. "open" api doesn't mean "do whatever you want", you're kind of making my point and the point of the article. There is nothing bad about Facebook going to court over that. This isn't the result of open api, it's the result of badly designed and badly regulated open api.
- Nextgrid 6y agoI'm no Facebook fan but the reasons behind the lawsuit are bad and could set a bad precedent. Cambridge Analytica used the Facebook API to ask users to share data about them & their friends. Stupid users agreed to that. The argument here isn't that Facebook is playing fast and loose with tracking & user data (which would be a legitimate argument), it's that Facebook is allowing people to grant access to their data to third-parties and Facebook should somehow be faulted for that. Facebook is a neutral carrier here, and they acted on behalf of the user - he decided that Cambridge Analytica should have had access to his data. Facebook should not be forced to somehow be the arbiter of this. This lawsuit will give even more reasons to platforms to restrict API access which would impact legitimate usage much more than nefarious abuse (stupid people will always find a way to screw up, API or not - if the API is gone they'd happily enter their Facebook credentials directly instead).
- manux 6y ago> Facebook is allowing people to grant access to their data to third-parties and Facebook should somehow be faulted for that. It's not clear to me that they shouldn't be faulted. How many people read terms and conditions? How many people lack the technological literacy to understand what it means to share their facebook data with third-parties? It seems to me like we should make our systems robust to the average user, especially systems as big as Facebook. > Facebook should not be forced to somehow be the arbiter of this. I kind of agree, but at the same time Facebook has some moral responsibility as the holder of the data. Perhaps it's not on Facebook to implement regulatory mechanisms, but if these mechanisms are implemented (e.g. by the "State") then it should probably be on Facebook's dime.
- lupire 6y agoReading the EULA and T&C are irrelevant, because what CA did wrong was violate the EULA and T&C. Anyway, You are making an argument for regulations requiring disclosures, like in mortgages and nutrition labels, not an argument that Facebook is at fault for letting users interact with 3rd parties, which could have been a browser extension that scraped the same data that the FB API provides.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- flixic 6y agoI can imagine a lawsuit from the opposite side of the argument: it is these APIs that allow to challenge incumbent social networks, and if the result of the lawsuit rules these APIs out, growing a competitor to Facebook or Twitter might be a lot harder. Recently I've felt the benefit of this, when sharing my Twitter following with Clubhouse. Clubhouse can grow and challenge other networks because these APIs exist. (We can argue about the degree to which sharing your data should be allowed, but setting an overly restrictive precedent is a real possibility)
- willxinc 6y agoI agree, but part of it I think is more finely grained permission requests. ie. Distinguishing viewing X's data, vs viewing data as X. That still doesn't solve the issue where the typical person doesn't actually read permission requests, but should still provide better security.
- loeg 6y agoFallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal (2018); not a new leak (which would be major news).
- bryan_w 6y agoAlso note that the CA events happened in 2014 and all the APIs have been fixed since 2015 (before the "scandal" came to light.
- mrits 6y agoThis submitter bmcn2020 spams this site with just enough bad articles to cover up all the other links to his own website. I don't understand why they allow that here.
- robbyking 6y agoThe HN Guidelines[1] say "It's ok to post your own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity." They may not be following the intent of the rule, but it looks like they are following the rule as it's written. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- shanemlk 6y agoI'd just continually sue them for literally anything and everything, even if they didn't break the law. Fuck that zuckerburg cuck. Their apps are literal burning addiction dumpster fire garbage. I hope their offices get struck by a meteorite.
- twinge 6y agoIn what way is he a cuck?
- shanemlk 6y agoIt's a fucking slang term, Jesus Christ. It's a way of showing disrespect for someone who's clearly a loser on a temper tantrum. Maybe he does get tied up by his wife, I don't care, the point is that zuckerburg has caused more damage to the Earth than good, not sure why I have to defend myself here.
- shanemlk 6y ago"I'd just continually sue them for literally anything and everything, even if they didn't break the law. Fuck that zuckerburg cuck. Their apps are literal burning addiction dumpster fire garbage. I hope their offices get struck by a meteorite." To the people down voting my previous comment, it's time you learned, your significant other is soliciting their genitals on WhatsApp and it's all being used as advertisement information for addictive products on FaceBook the next day. Sorry you don't like the TRUTH. Start thinking with your gut and body in addition to your brain once in a while. You could use some damn serotonin. Fine, maybe WhatsApp is encrypted... then they're doing it Instagram. Don't be so pedantic.
- Deadsunrise 6y agoCambridge Analytica's app on Facebook had harvested the data of people who interacted with it - and that of friends who had not given consent. That was really messed up.
- shanemlk 6y agoWhy do my comments keep getting down voted? How much more obvious can it be that zuckerburg has caused more damage to the Earth than good? WHY DO I HAVE TO DEFEND MYSELF FOR SUCH A CLEARLY OBVIOUS OPINION? You are "HACKERS". Start acting like it.
- jagged-chisel 6y agoProbably because the language you chose to use is less than civil.
- shanemlk 6y agoTouché, valid point. But someone's gotta break the Matrix once in a while... at the end of the day, this is just a text based website, and I'm hammering keys. It wasn't like I was walking down the street yelling obscenities. It's OK, to be aggressive sometimes. Everything in moderation.
- hinkley 6y agoIt's okay to be loud sometimes. But in a large room? It's the group's sense of 'sometimes', that matters, not the individual's. In a big group it's always somebody's "sometime", unless you divide by the population.
- shanemlk 6y agoCertainly. But there's also responsibility of the group members to understand what kind of topics and conversations they're about to enter. Facebook is divisive. It's a stressful topic. The crowd shouldn't click on a link about the 100th crime Facebook committed if the crowd is not ready for the gun fire. The crowd inherited an imperfect world, and it's okay to take a stand, because if the crowd doesn't stand for something, they fall for anything. In certain cultures, "swear words" don't even exist. If certain words deeply offend the crowd, they shouldn't blame other people, they should turn inward using introspection and ask themselves why they're so bothered by certain words written on a webpage. It's not like I hate Mark Zuckerburg with every fiber of my being. I'm sure there's some cool things about him. I'd love to sit down and have him show me his love for the video game Civilization, or what kind meats he likes cooking, or how he designed his smart home. But the topic at hand is business and legality. And frankly, I should be able to take as many shots as I want at him in the public sphere. Just because he's not personally inflicting violence on other humans, does not mean there's billions of lives at stake here. When people enter the ring, political correctness is entirely useless. It's not personal, it's "business". “If I don’t scream, if I don’t say something, then no one’s going to say anything.” “I care. I care about everything. Sometimes not giving a f#%k is caring the most.” “The truth that hurts is the same truth that heals.”
- wilsocr88 6y agoIf Facebook can't maintain a business model without selling their well-trained and dopamine-addicted userbase like a commodity, then their business model does not deserve to be maintained.
- Nextgrid 6y agoFacebook did not "sell" anything in this case. Facebook is a neutral carrier that got duped like everyone else. A malicious company used Facebook's API to ask for access to people's data and certain data about their friends, and people stupidly said yes. Should we now fault Facebook for complying with their user's wishes?
- wilsocr88 6y agoThat very plainly was not the users' wishes. The users' wishes were "go away, window, I want to see my feed, yes whatever, click." That was something that ill-informed users were effectively tricked into doing by a malicious third party who intentionally fogged up the information they gave to those users. The fact that Facebook gathered the data to begin with is already a huge problem. If they need to do that to exist, they shouldn't exist, and this is another tiny straw on top of the huge pile of reasons why that business model shouldn't exist. I don't care how responsible you are with all that data, you shouldn't be gathering it.
- Nextgrid 6y ago> The users' wishes were "go away, window, I want to see my feed, yes whatever, click." Facebook will never ask you out of the blue whether you want to share your data with Cambridge Analytica. They have nothing to gain from it. What happened is that idiots clicked on some kind of personality test (or similar) shared by one of their equally-stupid friends, the consent prompt appears as it should (and is very clear about what data will be shared) and they clicked yes. There are arguments here that these links should've been identified/marked as malicious and thus removed to begin with, but that's a separate issue. Removing API access because some people are dumb will lead to lots of collateral damage (including towards those same idiots who expect to be able to "Login with Facebook" everywhere and are suddenly locked out of all these accounts), and will not solve the problem - malicious parties will just start asking for raw Facebook credentials or to install malicious apps/browser extensions to work around the lack of API access. > The fact that Facebook gathered the data to begin with is already a huge problem Which data are we talking about here? My understanding is that the data obtained by CA is data that the user explicitly put on their profile (such as photos, etc) and "friends" relationships. Ad targeting data (which is the real issue when it comes to Facebook's data collection) was not included. --- My worry here (and the reason for the relatively harsh language) is that this lawsuit will set a precedent and give arguments for platforms to restrict API access even more and hurt potential competition as well as impose annoying & unnecessary barriers to users who know what they're doing. We already have this issue with banking where some banks insist on using a hardware 2FA device to protect against scams, and it's not really effective because people are stupid enough to use the 2FA device over the phone with a scammer despite the bold warnings about not using it over the phone printed right on the device itself.
- freebuju 6y ago> Google agreed to pay a record $22.5m (£16.8m) in a case brought by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on the same issue in 2012 Guess the cost-benefit analysis checks out
- Yarnamite 6y agoam i the only person that would be happy abolishing social media? it seems like a good idea honestly. just delete it all, start over.
- f430 6y agoman the comments on HN blaming people and defending Facebook is creepy. Facebook screwed up, now they need to pony up and compensate its users. If this lawsuit goes through then expect more all over the world. It's open season on social networks and it's perfectly justified. Facebook's role in bringing 4 years of Trump was punishment enough.
- tracker1 6y agoI'm still not sure I understand why Cambridge Analytica management/executives aren't in prison for Computer Fraud and Abuse Act violations.
- Daho0n 6y agoMoney.