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> repeating the same tired line that APIs, data standards, and personal control of information are fundamentally at odds with privacy. It’s not in general but

by bertil 6y ago

> repeating the same tired line that APIs, data standards, and personal control of information are fundamentally at odds with privacy. It’s not in general but it is if you share information with your relatives and they don’t understand the consequence of their actions. That unique property of social data is something that creates that contradiction and something that privacy advocate keep missing. > But my goodness if Facebook isn't engaged in exactly the same kind of propaganda, constantly encouraging the exact same confusion between scraping and leaking, between consenusual data-sharing and hacking, whenever it fits their purposes and whenever it gives them an excuse to tighten the moat around their product. There’s a lot of people at Facebook, me first, who would love to have a different communication, but we know from experience that we’ll get pummelled if we try to introduce nuances like that in the public debate. I always find that frustrating until someone reminded me the trope about having two wolves inside of you. The story is corny but it explains the problem with coverage of Facebook really well: the misguided critics make it so that only spin-doctors manage are the only ones who can have a positive impact on the company’s image.

danShumway 6y ago
> and something that privacy advocate keep missing. The majority of privacy advocates understand that distinction, it's just that our criticisms of Facebook go beyond that distinction to a bunch of other issues. If you want to talk about nuance, then tackle those issues. Tell me why Facebook is choosing not to notify users about this breach. It's really, really convenient that a supposed lack of nuance is an excuse to avoid talking about privacy breaches and bad policies across the board. I mean, to be blunt, it sometimes just feels kind of insulting. I'm supposed to believe that Facebook would love to talk about what went wrong here and why an authentication issue and a clear vulnerability in their API is being labeled as a "scrape" instead of hack, but instead they have to be silent about the entire thing because nobody on Hackernews would understand their "nuance." Come on. And I really do believe that the majority of complaints that most people have about Facebook are not related to API access. It's ridiculous crud like misusing phone numbers that were intended for authentication. It's this leak that we're talking about right now. It's the propaganda and fearmongering from official accounts and press releases that's being spread about iOS's new privacy changes. It's tying unrelated products like Oculus into Facebook accounts after customers were assured that wouldn't happen. It's not just accepting information about me from other people, but aggressively targeting those people to get that information. It's everything that happened with Instagram and Snapchat. I am perfectly willing to talk about nuance in the very narrow case of Cambridge Analytica, and in the very narrow instances where "who owns information about me" is actually relevant to what Facebook is doing. But I don't think Facebook is desperate for nuance and just can't get anyone to have a productive conversation, I think Facebook is using nuance as an excuse to avoid talking about the litany of issues it has in other areas. > There’s a lot of people at Facebook This is a weird point, because it plays both sides of the issue. I'm supposed to excuse a lot of bad messaging coming out of Facebook because the people saying it might not represent the full company, but I'm also supposed to ultimately say that Facebook as an entity is trying to do the right thing. I'm supposed to trust "Facebook" with my data, not an individual team. So it doesn't make me feel better to label Facebook's messaging teams as un-unified, it just makes it harder for me to trust anything that comes out of their mouths because nobody seems to be willing to say "this is what Facebook believes as an organization." This is one of the most powerful social media companies in the world. At what point does it become reasonable to ask the company to get its crap together and present some unified messaging? Or, alternatively, if Facebook is so gigantic that it contains multitudes of different teams that have different motivations and messaging and its impossible to think of it as a single entity, at what point does it become reasonable to ask Facebook to stop representing itself as a unified entity and to stop pulling products like Instagram, Oculus, and WhatsApp closer and closer to its main services where upper management and other teams can interfere with their operations? The argument you're making about a disjointed company is a really strong case for having some good data silos, and based on your other comments it seems to me that you're saying data silos have gotten considerably worse since 2016 because the company wants teams to more easily integrate and collaborate with each other. I guess what I'm saying here is, when I sign up for a Facebook account who am I trusting? Am I trusting a specific team? Can I get to choose which teams I trust with my data? When a press release comes out from Facebook, will all the authors and chain of management behind it be identified? Because if Facebook wants me to treat it like a unified entity, then I'm going to do what it wants and treat it that way. It can't have it both ways.
- bertil 6y ago
  If someone from Facebook PR reads your response, they’d very much prefer me to not engage with you. I’m assuming that’s obvious but happy to explain why. Because they have more authority over communications, the more you write like that, the more they’ll have elements to make the case for "Less is more" and even stricter rules about speaking about the company publicly. You’ll get a message that ignores your specific points. That’s who you trust to draft public statements: they’ll say as little as possible — because that’s the wolf that you chose to feed. People who you trust with your data are privacy specialists, literally every single of of the best that money can buy. The company is very large and full of people who care about it deeply and the internal culture means that you can’t get away with bad design. Every hacker in the world, starting by the people Snowden worked with, are trying; preventing them from winning motivates a lot of smart people. You might not like the disjoint between what you hear in the press and the idea that some of the most sophisticate activist are working on making Facebook the safest service out there. That’s because, as I pointed out many times, most of the coverage, including most of the things you raise, is misleading or plain false. A common pattern is around settings: a piece of information can be visible or used in different context. Someone makes that information open; screen-captures the information being shared. They then change their settings; screen-capture that and then claim that the settings were abused. It sounds too big to be true, so no one will believe they can get away with it, but they do, often. That article is guaranteed to trend; any denial will be buried, or more likely used against the company. Previous scandal will be re-hashed, especially similarly made-up ones. Some people like me will be outraged. They’ll try to explain that what happened, that truth is the exact opposite of what was reported: "Facebook didn’t commit that, they _prevented_ it. They were the only one who did anything!" We’ll write “I _worked_ on that project personally” “I’m a primary source for this” and that comment will get downvoted and ignored. My comment history is full of those. I don’t think you want me to explain individually why every scandal you raised isn’t something I’d be worried about, but… I’m not. Some decisions were poorly explained (see my first paragraph for why) but the actual, internal motivation was sound. If there’s anyone that worries you particularly, happy to answer specifically. I understand that I’m asking you to trust a pseudonym on the internet, against literally the entirety of the press and most of the content of social media. Trust me: I know how confusing things are when so many people are trying to gaslight you _about your own job_. It gets weirder because they are some real, bigger issues (that oddly no one cares about). I started early (with my PhD in 2005-2008) so I got into that gradually; I think that has made me able to handle that better than most. But the weight of that constant unfounded hostility is heavy. I’m simply trying to answer the original question: Why people stay in spite of all the scandals? Because they are genuinely making things better from the inside. Because it’s easy (necessary) to ignore all the noise when, for those that you have more context about, it’s mostly lies. Many people leave, me included, but that’s generally a far more complicated problem, related to the fatigue that this dichotomy carries, and internal priorities.

by bertil 6y ago

danShumway 6y ago

> and something that privacy advocate keep missing. The majority of privacy advocates understand that distinction, it's just that our criticisms of Facebook go beyond that distinction to a bunch of other issues. If you want to talk about nuance, then tackle those issues. Tell me why Facebook is choosing not to notify users about this breach. It's really, really convenient that a supposed lack of nuance is an excuse to avoid talking about privacy breaches and bad policies across the board. I mean, to be blunt, it sometimes just feels kind of insulting. I'm supposed to believe that Facebook would love to talk about what went wrong here and why an authentication issue and a clear vulnerability in their API is being labeled as a "scrape" instead of hack, but instead they have to be silent about the entire thing because nobody on Hackernews would understand their "nuance." Come on. And I really do believe that the majority of complaints that most people have about Facebook are not related to API access. It's ridiculous crud like misusing phone numbers that were intended for authentication. It's this leak that we're talking about right now. It's the propaganda and fearmongering from official accounts and press releases that's being spread about iOS's new privacy changes. It's tying unrelated products like Oculus into Facebook accounts after customers were assured that wouldn't happen. It's not just accepting information about me from other people, but aggressively targeting those people to get that information. It's everything that happened with Instagram and Snapchat. I am perfectly willing to talk about nuance in the very narrow case of Cambridge Analytica, and in the very narrow instances where "who owns information about me" is actually relevant to what Facebook is doing. But I don't think Facebook is desperate for nuance and just can't get anyone to have a productive conversation, I think Facebook is using nuance as an excuse to avoid talking about the litany of issues it has in other areas. > There’s a lot of people at Facebook This is a weird point, because it plays both sides of the issue. I'm supposed to excuse a lot of bad messaging coming out of Facebook because the people saying it might not represent the full company, but I'm also supposed to ultimately say that Facebook as an entity is trying to do the right thing. I'm supposed to trust "Facebook" with my data, not an individual team. So it doesn't make me feel better to label Facebook's messaging teams as un-unified, it just makes it harder for me to trust anything that comes out of their mouths because nobody seems to be willing to say "this is what Facebook believes as an organization." This is one of the most powerful social media companies in the world. At what point does it become reasonable to ask the company to get its crap together and present some unified messaging? Or, alternatively, if Facebook is so gigantic that it contains multitudes of different teams that have different motivations and messaging and its impossible to think of it as a single entity, at what point does it become reasonable to ask Facebook to stop representing itself as a unified entity and to stop pulling products like Instagram, Oculus, and WhatsApp closer and closer to its main services where upper management and other teams can interfere with their operations? The argument you're making about a disjointed company is a really strong case for having some good data silos, and based on your other comments it seems to me that you're saying data silos have gotten considerably worse since 2016 because the company wants teams to more easily integrate and collaborate with each other. I guess what I'm saying here is, when I sign up for a Facebook account who am I trusting? Am I trusting a specific team? Can I get to choose which teams I trust with my data? When a press release comes out from Facebook, will all the authors and chain of management behind it be identified? Because if Facebook wants me to treat it like a unified entity, then I'm going to do what it wants and treat it that way. It can't have it both ways.

bertil 6y ago
If someone from Facebook PR reads your response, they’d very much prefer me to not engage with you. I’m assuming that’s obvious but happy to explain why. Because they have more authority over communications, the more you write like that, the more they’ll have elements to make the case for "Less is more" and even stricter rules about speaking about the company publicly. You’ll get a message that ignores your specific points. That’s who you trust to draft public statements: they’ll say as little as possible — because that’s the wolf that you chose to feed. People who you trust with your data are privacy specialists, literally every single of of the best that money can buy. The company is very large and full of people who care about it deeply and the internal culture means that you can’t get away with bad design. Every hacker in the world, starting by the people Snowden worked with, are trying; preventing them from winning motivates a lot of smart people. You might not like the disjoint between what you hear in the press and the idea that some of the most sophisticate activist are working on making Facebook the safest service out there. That’s because, as I pointed out many times, most of the coverage, including most of the things you raise, is misleading or plain false. A common pattern is around settings: a piece of information can be visible or used in different context. Someone makes that information open; screen-captures the information being shared. They then change their settings; screen-capture that and then claim that the settings were abused. It sounds too big to be true, so no one will believe they can get away with it, but they do, often. That article is guaranteed to trend; any denial will be buried, or more likely used against the company. Previous scandal will be re-hashed, especially similarly made-up ones. Some people like me will be outraged. They’ll try to explain that what happened, that truth is the exact opposite of what was reported: "Facebook didn’t commit that, they _prevented_ it. They were the only one who did anything!" We’ll write “I _worked_ on that project personally” “I’m a primary source for this” and that comment will get downvoted and ignored. My comment history is full of those. I don’t think you want me to explain individually why every scandal you raised isn’t something I’d be worried about, but… I’m not. Some decisions were poorly explained (see my first paragraph for why) but the actual, internal motivation was sound. If there’s anyone that worries you particularly, happy to answer specifically. I understand that I’m asking you to trust a pseudonym on the internet, against literally the entirety of the press and most of the content of social media. Trust me: I know how confusing things are when so many people are trying to gaslight you _about your own job_. It gets weirder because they are some real, bigger issues (that oddly no one cares about). I started early (with my PhD in 2005-2008) so I got into that gradually; I think that has made me able to handle that better than most. But the weight of that constant unfounded hostility is heavy. I’m simply trying to answer the original question: Why people stay in spite of all the scandals? Because they are genuinely making things better from the inside. Because it’s easy (necessary) to ignore all the noise when, for those that you have more context about, it’s mostly lies. Many people leave, me included, but that’s generally a far more complicated problem, related to the fatigue that this dichotomy carries, and internal priorities.