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Pre-2013 was a wild time on the internet. It seems like that’s when a lot of its nasty underbelly went mainstream. The Snowden leaks were a turning point, I th

Pre-2013 was a wild time on the internet. It seems like that’s when a lot of its nasty underbelly went mainstream. The Snowden leaks were a turning point, I think, when people realized “the NSA and corporations are spying on you” wasn’t just a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory. It’s mind blowing to think that most major sites on the internet (including Amazon) were not using HTTPS at that time. It’s possible Amazon used it on its payment pages, but it certainly didn’t for much of the site. Tools like FireSheep existed for years before anyone started to care that everyone from your coffeeshop to your ISP could read your plaintext traffic. Now 9 years later we’re finally about to fix DNS (albeit with protocols hostile to reverse engineering). Then hopefully up next is fixing BGP before the bad guys realize how absurdly vulnerable it is. All this is to say, Facebook could maybe be excused for this experiment, because our standards for “that’s messed up” were already so much lower in 2012 than they are now.

cryptoz 6y ago
There is no excuse for this. This was a morally bankrupt and exceedingly awful thing to do. I was absolutely furious when this happened and made it a life mission to help other people know this was going on. 99% of people don't know this event happened, still. I don't trust Facebook one bit. I assume they do this kind of illegal 'experiment' all the time now, and the only change is they stopped bragging about it. So gross, this whole thing, it makes me mad there were no real repercussions from this. Worse yet is how many people actually support this unethical and sick experiment from Facebook. Lots of people don't see anything wrong with it, even technical people like those on HN, and that is just as disturbing to me as Facebook actually carrying it out. --- Edit: I'm now blocked from posting on HN (for a while I guess?), so here is my response to a poster below. @antiterra says, > That you’d prefer they either stayed ignorant or unconcerned to what changes they made and their effect is exceedingly awful and morally bankrupt. I have no idea how you reached the conclusion that I would prefer either of those things. There is a massive chasm between 'perform illegal, unethical mass psychological experiments' and 'I don't care about stuff'. --- @chatmasta says I'm not blocked, but I am. I cannot reply to you either. It says I'm posting too fast and won't let me submit any content.
- chatmasta 6y ago
  > I assume they do this kind of illegal 'experiment' all the time now Oh 100% they do. But hey at least they've contributed Presto back to the community! > Lots of people don't see anything wrong with it Surely that's not true. In 2021, Facebook is largely hated by people on all sides of all political spectrums. [Remember when people thought Zuck would run for president? Lol!] (Edit: > I'm now blocked from posting on HN You're not blocked; you just can't reply to someone within a minute of their post past a certain nesting level. (Edit edit: Oh guess you're right! That's annoying. :/ But I am enjoying our conversation via edit nonetheless!) )
- antiterra 6y ago
  That you’d prefer they either stayed ignorant or unconcerned to what changes they made and their effect is of questionable morality. Edit re your edit response: It is absurd to me that deciding whether to show more or less ‘I got a new car’ posts based on the resulting behavior is some kind of sinister event. Even the author of this article struggles to articulate why this isn’t just standard A/B testing.
jwilber 6y ago
It sounds like you’re trying to relate the ever changing adoption and development of web standards with longstanding ethical expectations in research. Nevermind the fact that the former aren’t direct actions on customers (Amazon wasn’t not showing https for only certain users) while the latter is a direct, concentrated, understood action on customers. The two aren’t similar at all.
- chatmasta 6y ago
  No, I'm comparing the complete disregard for user's privacy / well-being with the status quo at the time, which was "major payment portals don't even implement HTTPS." If you want to document Facebook's ethical lapses, you could go all the way back to 2004. But it's only the past few years people started actually caring.

cryptoz 6y ago

There is no excuse for this. This was a morally bankrupt and exceedingly awful thing to do. I was absolutely furious when this happened and made it a life mission to help other people know this was going on. 99% of people don't know this event happened, still. I don't trust Facebook one bit. I assume they do this kind of illegal 'experiment' all the time now, and the only change is they stopped bragging about it. So gross, this whole thing, it makes me mad there were no real repercussions from this. Worse yet is how many people actually support this unethical and sick experiment from Facebook. Lots of people don't see anything wrong with it, even technical people like those on HN, and that is just as disturbing to me as Facebook actually carrying it out. --- Edit: I'm now blocked from posting on HN (for a while I guess?), so here is my response to a poster below. @antiterra says, > That you’d prefer they either stayed ignorant or unconcerned to what changes they made and their effect is exceedingly awful and morally bankrupt. I have no idea how you reached the conclusion that I would prefer either of those things. There is a massive chasm between 'perform illegal, unethical mass psychological experiments' and 'I don't care about stuff'. --- @chatmasta says I'm not blocked, but I am. I cannot reply to you either. It says I'm posting too fast and won't let me submit any content.

chatmasta 6y ago
> I assume they do this kind of illegal 'experiment' all the time now Oh 100% they do. But hey at least they've contributed Presto back to the community! > Lots of people don't see anything wrong with it Surely that's not true. In 2021, Facebook is largely hated by people on all sides of all political spectrums. [Remember when people thought Zuck would run for president? Lol!] (Edit: > I'm now blocked from posting on HN You're not blocked; you just can't reply to someone within a minute of their post past a certain nesting level. (Edit edit: Oh guess you're right! That's annoying. :/ But I am enjoying our conversation via edit nonetheless!) )
antiterra 6y ago
That you’d prefer they either stayed ignorant or unconcerned to what changes they made and their effect is of questionable morality. Edit re your edit response: It is absurd to me that deciding whether to show more or less ‘I got a new car’ posts based on the resulting behavior is some kind of sinister event. Even the author of this article struggles to articulate why this isn’t just standard A/B testing.

jwilber 6y ago

It sounds like you’re trying to relate the ever changing adoption and development of web standards with longstanding ethical expectations in research. Nevermind the fact that the former aren’t direct actions on customers (Amazon wasn’t not showing https for only certain users) while the latter is a direct, concentrated, understood action on customers. The two aren’t similar at all.

chatmasta 6y ago
No, I'm comparing the complete disregard for user's privacy / well-being with the status quo at the time, which was "major payment portals don't even implement HTTPS." If you want to document Facebook's ethical lapses, you could go all the way back to 2004. But it's only the past few years people started actually caring.