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Facebook has not been doing enough to comply with a 2020 privacy order: FTC

486 points by isaacfrond 4y ago

baggachipz 4y ago
> “Facebook has repeatedly violated its privacy promises,” Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a press release. If you're pissing off Facebook, you're probably doing something right.
- karamanolev 4y ago
  Have we gotten to the point where "bad for Facebook" ~= "good for society"? It's both a good indicator for progress and a sad place to be as a community.
  - baggachipz 4y ago
    Far as I can tell, Facebook is fully metastatic at this point. Any benefit is far outweighed by the costs to society, mental health, and privacy.
  - Levitz 4y ago
    We'd be better off without Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and Instagram. Anything that hurts these businesses probably helps society. There is just no big benefit to justify the amount of damage done to mental health and privacy.
    - josephd79 4y ago
      You forgot Snap.
      - hulitu 4y ago
        And Google, and Microsoft and ...
        xbar 4y ago
        I will assume sarcasm. For sake of not letting a bogus argument go unanswered: Google and Microsoft offer generic tools that have very broad social benefit outside the monetization of user data. That said, I would prefer it if the FTC would address data monetization practices at all tech companies--it is a fine business model, but it is troublesome as a necessary addition to my spreadsheet or the operating system for my desktop/laptop/phone-sized computer.
      - MyelinatedT 4y ago
        Snap is more of a messaging app afaict. I'm pretty sure the biggest harms from social media come from algorithmic targeting of content, echo chamber creation, and the ability to hugely amplify fringe opinions and destabilise debate. If your only concern is data handling, though, then fair enough.
        josephd79 4y ago
        I do not use Snap but I'm pretty sure it has algo delivered content as well, just like Tiktok and insta.
        a13o 4y ago
        Children become addicted to Snapchat streaks and their peers in school shun them socially based on whether they have big streaks with popular kids or not. It's like Lord of the Flies mixed with an episode of Black Mirror. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/lets-talk-tween/201703/caution-your-tween-may-be-stressing-over-snap-streaks https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/lets-talk-tween/2017...
        fiveeveralone 4y ago
        Is the social pressure for kids to be popular somehow new or?
        a13o 4y ago
        Do you rephrase my comment reductively because you're okay with corporations monetizing children via addictive dark patterns, in defiance of recommendations from child psychologists? or
        a13o 4y ago
        https://www.apa.org/topics/social-media-internet/health-advisory-adolescent-social-media-use https://www.apa.org/topics/social-media-internet/health-advi...
        4y ago
    - toastal 4y ago
      And GitHub. That site is 50% social media trying to get you to engage and algorithms to suggest new Node.js projects for you.
      - afavour 4y ago
        I use GitHub every day for work and have run into exactly none of what you describe.
        toastal 4y ago
        You’ve never encountered the explore tab, or the recommended projects sidebar, or read the news of users ‘star hacking’ to get more attention to their projects, or chosen one library over another because it had more ‘stars’, or seen the promotion of ‘fork me on GitHub’ banners, or seen examples of ‘link your GitHub account’ right next to ‘link your Twitter account’ as a means of self-promotion?
  - adql 4y ago
    When that wasn't true ?
  - pdimitar 4y ago
    ...Wait, so you thought there was ever a point when "good for Facebook" == "good for society"? IMO "bad for Facebook" ~= "good for society" has always been true. It's not a "sad place to be as community", they are a corp and their bait-and-switch was expected ever since they got created, at least from the people who don't idolize corporations that is. It was extremely obvious they'll position themselves as helpful, pull tons of people in, and will then start to make use of all that precious data. It would boggle my mind if somebody was actually surprised by this.
    - ethbr0 4y ago
      I'd say Facebook was on-the-whole good when it was limited to .edu users. It had a purpose, it solved it better than previous options, and (critically!) it had a ceiling on total addressable userbase. Once it metastisized into "extract maximum revenue from maximum number of people," I think its soul was lost to greed.
      - usrusr 4y ago
        Oh, even long after Facebook has turned sour as a company there have still been very good things running on top of Facebook as infrastructure for linking up disconnected local groups and individuals with shared interests. But eventually they burnt so much goodwill trying to justify their stock valuation that at least were I am, all those informal groups have moved away from Facebook. Some managed to substitute the infrastructure quite well, some suffer quite noticeably. But none of them would consider going back. And openness to newcomers, discoverability, that has all suffered quite considerably.
      - ryandrake 4y ago
        To be fair, many, many corporations start out as a tiny kernel of something that solves a problem for people, and then metastasize into "extract maximum revenue from maximum number of people" cancer once Wall Street takes over. So, honestly, you can generalize this to "bad for corporations" ~= "good for society." A topic for another discussion is why society allows corporations to become parasitic and cancerous without any checks or balances.
  - birracerveza 4y ago
    Yes we did, just around 2014 or so. Probably before that.
  - briffle 4y ago
    Oh man, i'm going to have to start looking at Meta just like I do phone and cable companies...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- candiddevmike 4y ago
  Unfortunately, it's probably more of a shake down/way to get more campaign contributions.
  - dd36 4y ago
    Or it is what it says it is.
  - galangalalgol 4y ago
    Or it was lobbied for by a competitor.
    - josephg 4y ago
      So? People lobby for all sorts of stuff. The existence of lobbyists doesn’t tell you if a proposed policy is good or bad.
      - galangalalgol 4y ago
        That is a good point. We have to take wins when we get them. Getting the oligarchy to fight each other to our benefit is a nice turn of the tables. We should keep our eye on there competition as well though. Meta's whataboutism referencing tiktok wasn't baseless, it just isn't a valid excuse.
- CoastalCoder 4y ago
  > If you're pissing off Facebook, you're probably doing something right. I generally agree. FWIW, I just listened to an interesting CoRecursive interview with Facebook's Jason Gauci (February 2021) [0]. He addresses that question head-on at this point [1] in the interview. [0] https://corecursive.com/061-reinforcement-learning/ https://corecursive.com/061-reinforcement-learning/ [1] https://corecursive.com/061-reinforcement-learning/#the-social-dilemma https://corecursive.com/061-reinforcement-learning/#the-soci... P.S. I don't listen to many podcasts, but CoRecursive is great. I highly recommend other software developers check it out.
- traceroute66 4y ago
  > If you're pissing off Facebook, you're probably doing something right. ^^ THIS ! I remember when Apple hardened iOS so that Facebook & co. could no longer mis-use the system do do evil things such as silently monitor pasteboard contents. Facebook took out enormous billboard ads at the time in major cities on which they exercised their tiny woe-is-me violin, trying to pretend Apple was the evil one.
  - judge2020 4y ago
    But obviously we should allow Facebook to sideload their own app for the freedom of users.
    - freedomben 4y ago
      This comment should probably be included in the dictionary as an example under "strawman fallacy" Who is arguing that facebook should be able to sideload their own app onto users iphones? That's the antithesis of what user freedom advocates argue for. The argument is "it's my device, I should be able to run what I want on it." Not, "anybody should be able to do whatever they want on my device." The latter is more an argument for Apple's status quo where they have full control of the device (that they ostensibly no longer own) and the user does not.
villgax 4y ago
Gonna cry
TwoNineA 4y ago
[flagged]
curiousllama 4y ago
What I'm most interested in is the redacted bits of the Order to Show Cause [1] The scale of the remediation (no new launches) doesn't really match the scale of the accusation in the press release (Messenger kids once had a bug where kids could circumvent parental controls if the parents didn't pay attention). The Order to Show Cause includes a comprehensive, in-depth review of FB's privacy programs - and it's almost entirely redacted. What did FB mess up so badly that the FTC feels this is the appropriate response? https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/C4365-Commission-Order-to-Show-Cause-%28Redacted-Public%29.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/C4365-Commissio...
- radicaldreamer 4y ago
  Likely ads targeting. Twitter had a bug where they would track you around the web even if you opted out... this was obvious for years because you'd immediately start seeing ads for specific drugs if you searched for a medical condition in a separate browser etc. Instead of actually fixing the issues, they removed the ability to opt-out of personalization (lol)
  - steve1977 4y ago
    a “bug”…
  - xevdev 4y ago
    How is this legal? From my (granted, shallow) understanding of GDPR laws, isn’t it required for companies to allow users to opt out of personalization?
sschueller 4y ago
The lobbying by Facebook and co. against TikTok appears to have started to back fire. If you keep pointing out how toxic Tiktok is to the young you can expect people to start looking into other apps that the young use as well.
- bryan_w 4y ago
  It seem like he would be fine with whatever restrictions they placed as long as it applied to all the companies equally. It seems like his major gripe was that it wouldn't affect tiktok
- JohnFen 4y ago
  You can't beat my kids! Only I should be allowed to do that.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    I mean that's broadly the state's argument. You can harvest American's data as long as that data stays under the exclusive control of the US. It's the macro-scale version of why self-hosted in-house applications can have more privileged access than 3rd party services.
criddell 4y ago
How can a corporation be furious? After reading the article, they don't say anything about the company or people inside the company being furious. The closest thing I could find is that a Meta spokesperson said they plan to fight it vigorously and expect to win. Maybe the headline should be "Meta opposed to proposed FTC ban on monetizing youth data".
- xwdv 4y ago
  One way is to train an AI on the entire collection of conversations every employee at Meta has had, and then after sufficient training ask the AI how it feels about this ban. It may then respond that it is furious!!! Thus we can determine the corporation is furious. For some remote first companies that communicate primarily through platforms like Slack or email, this should be trivial to do.
  - nh23423fefe 4y ago
    If I trained an AI on what you said, it couldn't tell me how you feel. Category error.
    - programmer_dude 4y ago
      I don't think it is. The AI would indeed tell you how the OP would feel if he were given the same news and asked the same question.
      - dwringer 4y ago
        That strikes me as an extraordinary claim somewhat in need of extraordinary evidence.
    - xwdv 4y ago
      It does. GPT4 frequently reports the same feelings I do when given similar inputs.
    - shever73 4y ago
wirthjason 4y ago
Since there is bound to be a lot of Facebook bashing I’ll point out that they occasionally do some good. In the case of software they can be good stewards of FOSS. I listened to this CoRecursive episode about the history of Zstandard compression algorithm and how FB allowed the author, Yann Collet, to fully open source it while other companies wanted to keep it proprietary. https://corecursive.com/data-compression-yann-collet/ https://corecursive.com/data-compression-yann-collet/ This doesn’t justify or make up for the wrongs that happen because of the social network but the company, and the reasons they want to work there, can be more nuanced.
- passwordoops 4y ago
  Good points, but it aligns with Shell, for example, making a big deal about investing a few hundred thousand dollars in setting up solar power at one of their least productive refineries. Like, that's great, but...
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  I wonder if it kind of sucks to recognize that your job in FOSS is just a token gesture. Does FB really care about React’s contribution to the community? Or is it just happy to pay a few salaries to look good?
  - anaganisk 4y ago
    FB actively uses it, so it's a win win isn't it?
    - johannes1234321 4y ago
      That is a complicated question. They get marketing and a few more eyes delivering bug fixes. However they also get to deal with contributions going not exactly in the direction they want and either have to argue against or take maintenance burden on themselves. Also they limit the changes they can do. An internal framework they can change as they like. They know all users. For different projects that works differently well.
KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago
I don't know why my opinion is so out of the mainstream but I really think it's good that people's information is used vs not used... I think it's a great boon for ads to become more relevant instead of less relevant. Wasting time looking at ads that aren't for me sucks, it's much better if they could actually improve my life. Literally think making children have less relevant ads is doing them harm.
- passwordoops 4y ago
  You should pitch your local college on giving a master class in sarcasm
- jtbayly 4y ago
  Ads are not “relevant,” or not. They are effective or not. Generally effective means manipulative. Screening children from this seems quite beneficial at first glance.
- c-fe 4y ago
  Ads, targeted ones even more so, make you buy things you don’t need. If you need them, you would go out of your way to buy them without requiring an ad manipulating you.
  - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    That’s not necessarily true because you might not have known about them. Some ads can be informative and provide you with consumer surplus. For example I recently went to a concert based on an ad and it was a great time. I would have never heard about it normally. Actually the most manipulative ads are “brand” ads for things like Coke or BMW. These have no significant difference to their competitors so their only strategy is to manipulate you into associating them with more positive emotions.
  - ahahahahah 4y ago
    There's almost nothing that people need. The vast majority of my spending is on things I want, not need. I get value from spending on those things.
lvl102 4y ago
So our govt has no problem with Tiktok but Facebook is a problem. It’s as if US regulation bodies are all run by clowns.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  You can’t look at the regulation of every other industry and be surprised. I can’t think of a single one in which the government has done a competent job. Remember when you couldn’t get covid tests for like 6 months because the fda had to personally inspect every single one?
AraceliHarker 4y ago
Mark Zuckerberg himself seems to understand the importance of privacy very well, taping over the microphone and camera on his MacBook Pro, keeping his trash can from being scavenged by others, and FB spending heavily to protect his security, so why does he have the exact opposite attitude towards others?
- jason-phillips 4y ago
  In practical terms, Mark is a target. You're not.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    When surveillance is cheap enough, everyone's a target.
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    We all very much are. This is the entire business model of Google and Meta
    - Shish2k 4y ago
      There’s a difference between “targeted for advertising” and “targeted for a bullet”...
  - traceroute66 4y ago
    > Mark is a target. You're not. Define the word "target". I would argue that for the likes of Facebook and Google, they consider anyone fair game. Of course they would never use the word "target", but ...
    - SuperCuber 4y ago
      I work in adtech. Terms like "Targetted advertising" and "Retargeting" are very common.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
fwlr 4y ago
I would caution against believing “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” when that would make the government your friend. Yes, Facebook has been awful and done great harm in some ways, but crucially it is not the case that Facebook was only able to do such harm because the FTC lacked the ability to unilaterally and without oversight deploy extreme powers like “you may not monetize this data” or “you may not release features or products without our permission”. The FTC has some insane thumbscrews now, and though it may be satisfying to see them use their thumbscrews to make Facebook squeal, you still shouldn’t be happy that the FTC has thumbscrews.
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  In what ways are you worried about the FTC using it's powers for things you thinks are harmful? What things specifically?
  - jonhohle 4y ago
    The FTC has no power to create law, just interpret existing laws. Any “bans” would already need to be illegal based on current law enacted by congress. In the past Chevron Deference used to assume executive agencies had broad authority on law interpretation, but that seems to be a crumbling precedent. If there are already existing laws that cover this, the FTC is just doing their enforcement job.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  If the criteria for FTC thumbscrews is "Become a 2023.USD$630 B market cap company" then I'm comfortable with that. Fuck combinations (to use the original 1900s phrasing); restore competition.
  - fwlr 4y ago
    If that was the criteria I would also be comfortable! However, it is not; the FTC has taken action* against many entities smaller than Facebook, and in point of fact Facebook might actually be one of the biggest entities the FTC has taken action against (I don’t think this puts an upper bound on the size of entity the FTC will take on, my point is that it certainly doesn’t put a lower bound on it). * Not necessarily actions I would call “thumbscrews” like their current proposed penalties for Facebook, and mostly actions I think are appropriate, but it is still an indicator of who they’re willing to take action against.
nologic01 4y ago
Regulators should not procrastinate as this only prolongs the agony and the multifaceted damage. Damage to society as it has no protection against such hyperscale, algorithmic, private-data slurping intermediaries. Financial and economic damage as the entire tech sector, while predictably lured by the abnormal profitability of adtech, is long-term undermined by a business model that may actually have no right to exist in a decent, democratic society.
darthrupert 4y ago
Why just Facebook? Also, this is 10 years too late. Kids are using Discord, Tiktok and probably some services I've never heard of. This should include them all or it's silly or even outright harmful.
- justapassenger 4y ago
  According to hacker news Facebook is dead, everyone deleted their account and only racist grandparents use it. And at the same time all the kids in the world are using it.
medler 4y ago
It is insane to me that we allow any advertising to young children at all, whether online, on TV, or anywhere else. I think deliberately manipulating kids is heinous and I genuinely don’t understand why this isn’t the consensus opinion.
- baggachipz 4y ago
  > I think deliberately manipulating kids is heinous Religion has entered the chat.
  - afavour 4y ago
    The idea is to improve, not replicate all the bad parts.
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    > Religion has entered the chat. Parenting in general has entered the cat. (That said, I do agree that we need boundaries on the manipulation of younger minds. I've seen others make this analogy before: We don't let kids buy cigarettes in stores -- why should they have the full force of addictive algorithmic social media unleashed on them? [for that matter, why should adults, but that's another story])
  - skizm 4y ago
    I'm no fan of organized Religion, but I think there is a clear distinction here. Religion is opt-in (by the parents) where most advertising to kids isn't. You could argue that parents could take away their access to [phone|youtube|instagram|etc.], but kids will get access at school, or through their friends one way or another. The internet is too ubiquitous at this point to actually opt-out.
    - p0pcult 4y ago
      You shouldn't be allowed to opt others in, especially those under the age of legally informed consent, to brainwashing.
ferminaut 4y ago
Facebook (and much of social media) is the modern day Philip Morris peddling addictive experiences...except the harm is way less obvious. Folks arent getting cancer, but they are wrecking their mental health. The difference is social media falls under the first amendment and is much harder to regulate. It's a borderline national security issue, too.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  I think it’s a plausible argument. But shouldn’t we regulate the whole industry then instead of going after a single company? Also there are clearly some benefits from social media so I wouldn’t want to get rid of all of it. For example messaging doesn’t seem so bad in terms of harm vs value. Or things like Facebook Groups that are more like discussion forums (even HN itself falls under this!)
  - ferminaut 4y ago
    Yeah I agree. Singling out the largest player is silly. We've basically given different nations the ability to control the thoughts of society. Social media hasnt been organic for a long time. Organic social media grows until it is consumed by bots and bad actors. I dont think removing social media is a solution. I do think some sort of realID for social media that could identify every user is real & a certain age would be beneficial (think Worldcoin but not done by a private entity). I think this alone would solve a large issue around social media. The other requirement that should exist is some balanced discussion to remove the echo chamber effects. Amplifying only certain thought patterns is dangerous. Take reddit for example. A single bot farm with 100 or so accounts can effectively manipulate entire communities.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      > (think Worldcoin but not done by a private entity) The problem with what Worldcoin was doing wasn't that they were a private entity.
      - 4y ago
ianai 4y ago
The government is THE entity entrusted with creating personal property rights, amongst a lot of other things. (Assuming colonial debt as a national debt being how the revolutionaries bought their new country legitimacy.) So it’s about time for government to grant people sovereignty over their data and attention by creating some new personal property rights and protections. Keeping PII should be billable hours. Attention should be billable hours. If not that then something similar.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  > Attention should be billable hours. You are the one who wants to visit my website because it provides you with value and I am now obligated by force to pay you?
  - ianai 4y ago
    If moneys being made off of it then it’s not free.
nimajneb 4y ago
I really wish I could get rid of my FB account. It's so pervasive in my social life that it would things difficult and I would miss out on events with my friends. My family uses it for video chat, my friends use it to organize social activities, I'm on a recreational kickball team that uses it for team communication, etc. I recently deactivated and a few weeks later a friend asked if I was going to an event he invited me to. I had no idea anyone invited to me anything. I had my invite me to an event and it let her invite and didn't tell either of us I was invited to something... If you invite a deactivated account there's apparently no indication the person won't see it.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  Weird, in my circle no one uses it anymore. Although to be fair I’m not convinced that most of the alternatives are likely to be much better. I don’t see why Google wouldn’t be doing exactly the same stuff. At least there is Signal. I’ve moved most of my messaging there.
- codepoet80 4y ago
  Just rip off the band-aid. Your friends can't invite you to things on Facebook if your account is fully deleted, and they'll be forced to reach out in different ways. The first 6-12 months are hard, but if you can make it past that, you won't miss it. I setup a Discord server for my family, and we're enjoying a "semi-private" social network that way -- it works well, even for grandparents. I wrote a bot that let's them save photos posted in Discord to their digital picture frame in their living room, and they love it.
- hbn 4y ago
  There was a point in time where you could sign up for just Facebook Messenger without making a Facebook account, but of course they removed that cause they want everyone to have a Facebook account.
justapassenger 4y ago
Not to defend Facebook, but this headline is misleading. FTC proposes banning Facebook from launching any new products, which is a huge deal. Also from monetizing youth data, which is likely not a serious revenue stream. It’s clickbait to claim it’s the youth part that made company furious, no matter what you think about Facebook.
- SllX 4y ago
  Par for the course for Ars Technica. Also: it is curious that the FTC is acting this way now considering it just got a whole lot easier to take them to an Article III court under Axon vs FTC et al.
- meh8881 4y ago
  Why would you assume youth data is not a serious revenue stream? Parents are likely a large target market
hospitalJail 4y ago
As another person mentioned, advertising to children is gross. If youth data should be banned, youth marketing should also be banned.
datadeft 4y ago
AD company furious about government regulation removing data access that AD revenue depends on.
jimmytidey 4y ago
All those young people on Facebook...
throwaway19423 4y ago
Seeing ads shown to my 3 year old when they do basic supervised web browsing on educational websites seems wrong.
stephenhuey 4y ago
Breaking things was a core mantra of theirs for a while, right?
- markx2 4y ago
  It was, but they could not then move fast enough to escape the law.
  - simultsop 4y ago
    But many of us, enjoy the benefits their agility gave birth to. Let's hope they learned lessons and will be improving their ways. I guess no one plans to get in trouble at first. Consequences become highest price for innovation. Highlighting failures and calling for punishment constantly would stop everyone trying to innovate.
    - fnimick 4y ago
      Maybe we shouldn't be encouraging "innovation" if it's at the expense of other people?
      - nuclearnice1 4y ago
        Probably too simplistic. Innovation serves some and “disrupts” others. Uber might be a handy ride for you. A NYC cabbie who is in debt for his medallion might see it the opposite.
        fnimick 4y ago
        And by the law, Uber should be illegal. That they broke the law and got popular enough to apply political pressure does not mean that they were not technically illegal the entire time. There's no contradiction here. If certain applications are illegal, you don't get to decide that regulation is inconvenient to your "innovation" and deal with the consequences later. Or rather, that is exactly what you do to make $megabux, and that's what should not be allowed.
Veedrac 4y ago
Truly disgusting to allow an under-13 to talk to an unapproved friend. Companies were never meant to have incentives to provide products to such people and not their guardians. There is a reason we make it illegal for that underclass to own or earn capital, and the ability for companies to circumvent this and provide services anyway through indirect revenue is unpalatable. Cutting that off is necessary, as any good-thinking small-person-owner will know. It's a slippery slope we have to cut down on now, lest small people start expecting to go outside without parental overseers or questioning their owners' authority.
- Veedrac 4y ago
  And to clarify in a child comment, yes I dislike Facebook and think it has huge harmful externalities, yes I dislike advertising and think it has huge harmful externalities, but I also dislike that the justification from the FTC I read in this article and in the others I checked against lacks respect for basic human liberties and has huge harmful externalities and I don't feel obligated to overlook that on the basis of any other dispreference.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
baynoob 4y ago
How come FTC keeps coming back at this one company? Whereas TikTok and others having business as normal
- michael_vo 4y ago
  Well, FB does have ~2BB euros set aside to pay for EU fines in 2023. So not just the FTC!
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    You know how it goes. They're going to take the budget away if it doesn't get spent.
  - Rexxar 4y ago
    Hopefully, this will prevent all of the comments that say EU only fine them because they don't like US companies.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- walls 4y ago
  Perhaps because FB is actually breaking the law.
- nickthegreek 4y ago
  Why is FTC making sure the biggest social media company plays by the rules that they continue to break? I find it hard to believe that this question is in good faith.
- theRealMe 4y ago
  TikTok is currently being considered for a total ban in the US isn’t it? And it’s banned on US government devices? Not the greatest example to use for your point.
- uoaei 4y ago
  Every comment from this account is defending or advocating for Meta or one of its products. Don't drink the Kool-aid, folks!
throwaway_1237 4y ago
Mark cannot be trusted.
christkv 4y ago
There is a case coming up at the Supreme Court that might rein in regulatory agencies and push stuff back to congress
deltree7 4y ago
Meta should take FTC all the way to supreme court for their regulatory overreach and kneecap them, so that unelected, incompetent people don't bring their biased agenda to governing businesses https://about.fb.com/news/2023/05/upholding-our-commitment-to-protecting-your-privacy/ https://about.fb.com/news/2023/05/upholding-our-commitment-t...
- isthiseasymode 4y ago
  Well, that won’t go well since they agreed to a settlement.
  - deltree7 4y ago
    https://about.fb.com/news/2023/05/upholding-our-commitment-to-protecting-your-privacy/ https://about.fb.com/news/2023/05/upholding-our-commitment-t... Thank God for the Supreme Court which will see right through Lina Khan's agenda. And you can thank Lina Khan for destroying FTC through her overreach
gampleman 4y ago
Facebook getting in trouble for privacy violations is basically a joke. That should make it their company tagline: Privacy Violations that Scale. Or something like that...
INeedMoreRam 4y ago
[dead]
JohnMakin 4y ago
"What about Tiktok!!!" comments are either purposely obtuse or completely missing the point. Tiktok did not have a FTC judgment on them that they repeatedly violated. Meta does. There you go, explained.
alttab 4y ago
Meta execs are probably wondering when the rest of the crowd just realizes what Facebook is and determines if they want to exchange their privacy for their services. Who is even surprised at this point?
gooseyman 4y ago
I love the FTC lately. Big fan boy now. Feels like they’re going after things that actually matter.
a-user-you-like 4y ago
This is good, next let’s outlaw TikTok. We don’t want internal OR external data mining of our citizens.
acd 4y ago
[flagged]
- ahahahahah 4y ago
  That's not a useful comment.
bcherny 4y ago
Wait, what? Is the FTC saying FB didn’t comply with the 2020 decree in 2019 and 2020, before the decree was issued? Maybe I’m misreading the PDF [0]? [0] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/C4365-Commission-Order-to-Show-Cause-%28Redacted-Public%29.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/C4365-Commissio...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- aw1621107 4y ago
  The full title of the 2020 Order is "2020 Order Modifying Prior Decision and Order". The original order was issued in 2012. In addition, the FTC alleges that Facebook has violated parts of the original 2012 order: > Respondent’s misrepresentations regarding Messenger Kids violated Part I of the 2012 Order, Section 5 of the FTC Act, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”), 15 U.S.C. § 6502, and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (“COPPA Rule”), 16 C.F.R. Part 312. And parts of the original 2012 order that have been superseded by the 2020 order: > Respondent’s misrepresentations regarding its 90-Day Limitation feature violated Section 5 of the FTC Act, Part I of the 2012 Order for the period prior to April 27, 2020, and Part I of the 2020 Order thereafter.
batmaniam 4y ago
If a person is out on bail, violating that bail order forfeits their bail payment and they also go back to jail. So if FB has not been complying with FTC's order, then what's the penalty they have to pay for their failure?
- loeg 4y ago
  Facebook isn't on bail. And as a metaphor, bail is not relevant to the situation.
  - batmaniam 4y ago
    Yea maybe it was a bad example. I meant to say what type of enforcement is behind the FTC's order? With bail, the enforcement is through expensive monetary forfeiture and the guarantee of jail time. And if any laws were broken during the time out on bail, the person will get additional charges in addition to the ones they already had while on bail. Basically all crimes/violations are covered and punishment dished out accordingly to each current/past violations. Facebook violated the order by the FTC, and for the order to have any teeth to it, there must be some sort of enforcement action behind it, just like for bail. Right now it seems like FB is just getting told off by saying the FTC will 'propose' FB not to benefit from certain data collection. Ok, so nothing has been actually enforced for the violation. And what about for the past violations? Will FB be forced to delete all their data they collected during the time they were under the FTC's order? The proposal (if even passed), will only limit future collections, not violations that have already happened and profited from. > Now, the FTC has proposed changes to the 2020 order that would prohibit Facebook owner Meta from launching new products on any of its platforms without procuring written FTC compliance confirmation and prevent the company from monetizing any of the youth data it collects across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus.
themagician 4y ago
The privacy issues almost seem moot at this point to be honest. Everything on Facebook is either a scam, scam adjacent, or some kind of grift. It's actually incredible to see how Facebook has grown over the years. It's like the SPAM inbox in Gmail, but prettier and sprinkled with posts from "friends." Instagram has gone the same way. I would say that, "Maybe I'm just getting old," but when I actually look at the humans on Facebook "interacting" with "content" they are all decades older than me. More and more Meta reminds me of QVC.
- tppiotrowski 4y ago
  I agree but they're Groups, Messenger and Marketplace offerings are best in the industry. It's what myself and most of my friends use it for now.
  - themagician 4y ago
    Funny. Groups is, by far, the worst offender in the entire Meta ecosystem. It's become THE TOOL for scammers. And because they can be private they can hide for much longer than they'd otherwise be able to. I actually feel confident in saying that Jan 6 would not have happened (the way it did) without Facebook Groups. It's a breeding ground for the worst of the worst to hang out in plain sight. If you want to prey on seniors, if you want to run an MLM or affiliate marketing ring, or if you want to organize an insurrection or promote a conspiracy or antivax group Facebook Groups is THE PLACE. By absolute volume it's way worse the Telegram groups. Old people can't figure out Telegram, but Facebook Groups is their jam. If you really want to make "six figures online" while working "four hours a week" all you need is a scammer mentality and a few Facebook Groups. Message me for access when you're ready to level up your life.
    - crakhamster01 4y ago
      > Everything on Facebook is either a scam, scam adjacent, or some kind of grift. > Groups is, by far, the worst offender in the entire Meta ecosystem > It's a breeding ground for the worst of the worst to hang out in plain sight. This is a lot to accuse without any evidence. Is there empirical data showing that these issues are as rampant as you claim? I have similar anecdata to the parent post - Groups/Marketplace/Messenger has been great for my family and friends, across a wide range of interests and use cases. My take is that if you intentionally look for terrible things on the internet you'll be able to find it, and Facebook is no exception. It's non-sensical to think that organizing insurrections and losing your SSN is the de facto experience though.
johndhi 4y ago
Genuine question: FTC is saying a "bug" caused the violation of the consent decree. How can a company ensure bugs don't happen that violate a commitment? I don't think that's possible. I'd assume the decree should ensure they don't INTENTIONALLY violate it.
- majormajor 4y ago
  More testing, more rigor, more review, etc. So even if a bug happens, you don't let it linger without spotting or fixing it for over a year, from "late 2017 until mid-2019".
  - johndhi 4y ago
    Well, the consent decree should then say: you need to do X testing, Y review. If they did that, it's still not a violation.
    - johndhi 4y ago
      You can read the text of the consent decree here [1]. Looks like it just generally required them to have a 'privacy program' and to monitor and test their vendors. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/c4365facebookproposedmodifieddecisionandorder.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/c4365facebookpr...
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > Well, the consent decree should then say: you need to do X testing, Y review. The consent decree can just say you have to not do Z. You take whatever steps are necessary to avoid that. If you do it “accidentally” that’s a violation. The point of a consent decree, from the point of viee of the regulatort agency, is generally to eliminate excuses for a party already seen as a violator as a condition to hold off on an existing enforcement action for the violation. Creating opportunities for technical compliancd while the problem sought to be avoided still occurs is an explicit non-goal. (From the non-government side, the point is to avoid greater penalties now by accepting some obligations and limitations going forward.)

486 points by isaacfrond 4y ago

> “Facebook has repeatedly violated its privacy promises,” Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a press release. If you're pissing off Facebook, you're probably doing something right.

karamanolev 4y ago
Have we gotten to the point where "bad for Facebook" ~= "good for society"? It's both a good indicator for progress and a sad place to be as a community.
- baggachipz 4y ago
  Far as I can tell, Facebook is fully metastatic at this point. Any benefit is far outweighed by the costs to society, mental health, and privacy.
- Levitz 4y ago
  We'd be better off without Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and Instagram. Anything that hurts these businesses probably helps society. There is just no big benefit to justify the amount of damage done to mental health and privacy.
  - josephd79 4y ago
    You forgot Snap.
    - hulitu 4y ago
      And Google, and Microsoft and ...
      - xbar 4y ago
        I will assume sarcasm. For sake of not letting a bogus argument go unanswered: Google and Microsoft offer generic tools that have very broad social benefit outside the monetization of user data. That said, I would prefer it if the FTC would address data monetization practices at all tech companies--it is a fine business model, but it is troublesome as a necessary addition to my spreadsheet or the operating system for my desktop/laptop/phone-sized computer.
    - MyelinatedT 4y ago
      Snap is more of a messaging app afaict. I'm pretty sure the biggest harms from social media come from algorithmic targeting of content, echo chamber creation, and the ability to hugely amplify fringe opinions and destabilise debate. If your only concern is data handling, though, then fair enough.
      - josephd79 4y ago
        I do not use Snap but I'm pretty sure it has algo delivered content as well, just like Tiktok and insta.
      - a13o 4y ago
        Children become addicted to Snapchat streaks and their peers in school shun them socially based on whether they have big streaks with popular kids or not. It's like Lord of the Flies mixed with an episode of Black Mirror. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/lets-talk-tween/201703/caution-your-tween-may-be-stressing-over-snap-streaks https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/lets-talk-tween/2017...
        fiveeveralone 4y ago
        Is the social pressure for kids to be popular somehow new or?
        a13o 4y ago
        Do you rephrase my comment reductively because you're okay with corporations monetizing children via addictive dark patterns, in defiance of recommendations from child psychologists? or
        a13o 4y ago
        https://www.apa.org/topics/social-media-internet/health-advisory-adolescent-social-media-use https://www.apa.org/topics/social-media-internet/health-advi...
        4y ago
  - toastal 4y ago
    And GitHub. That site is 50% social media trying to get you to engage and algorithms to suggest new Node.js projects for you.
    - afavour 4y ago
      I use GitHub every day for work and have run into exactly none of what you describe.
      - toastal 4y ago
        You’ve never encountered the explore tab, or the recommended projects sidebar, or read the news of users ‘star hacking’ to get more attention to their projects, or chosen one library over another because it had more ‘stars’, or seen the promotion of ‘fork me on GitHub’ banners, or seen examples of ‘link your GitHub account’ right next to ‘link your Twitter account’ as a means of self-promotion?
- adql 4y ago
  When that wasn't true ?
- pdimitar 4y ago
  ...Wait, so you thought there was ever a point when "good for Facebook" == "good for society"? IMO "bad for Facebook" ~= "good for society" has always been true. It's not a "sad place to be as community", they are a corp and their bait-and-switch was expected ever since they got created, at least from the people who don't idolize corporations that is. It was extremely obvious they'll position themselves as helpful, pull tons of people in, and will then start to make use of all that precious data. It would boggle my mind if somebody was actually surprised by this.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    I'd say Facebook was on-the-whole good when it was limited to .edu users. It had a purpose, it solved it better than previous options, and (critically!) it had a ceiling on total addressable userbase. Once it metastisized into "extract maximum revenue from maximum number of people," I think its soul was lost to greed.
    - usrusr 4y ago
      Oh, even long after Facebook has turned sour as a company there have still been very good things running on top of Facebook as infrastructure for linking up disconnected local groups and individuals with shared interests. But eventually they burnt so much goodwill trying to justify their stock valuation that at least were I am, all those informal groups have moved away from Facebook. Some managed to substitute the infrastructure quite well, some suffer quite noticeably. But none of them would consider going back. And openness to newcomers, discoverability, that has all suffered quite considerably.
    - ryandrake 4y ago
      To be fair, many, many corporations start out as a tiny kernel of something that solves a problem for people, and then metastasize into "extract maximum revenue from maximum number of people" cancer once Wall Street takes over. So, honestly, you can generalize this to "bad for corporations" ~= "good for society." A topic for another discussion is why society allows corporations to become parasitic and cancerous without any checks or balances.
- birracerveza 4y ago
  Yes we did, just around 2014 or so. Probably before that.
- briffle 4y ago
  Oh man, i'm going to have to start looking at Meta just like I do phone and cable companies...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
candiddevmike 4y ago
Unfortunately, it's probably more of a shake down/way to get more campaign contributions.
- dd36 4y ago
  Or it is what it says it is.
- galangalalgol 4y ago
  Or it was lobbied for by a competitor.
  - josephg 4y ago
    So? People lobby for all sorts of stuff. The existence of lobbyists doesn’t tell you if a proposed policy is good or bad.
    - galangalalgol 4y ago
      That is a good point. We have to take wins when we get them. Getting the oligarchy to fight each other to our benefit is a nice turn of the tables. We should keep our eye on there competition as well though. Meta's whataboutism referencing tiktok wasn't baseless, it just isn't a valid excuse.
CoastalCoder 4y ago
> If you're pissing off Facebook, you're probably doing something right. I generally agree. FWIW, I just listened to an interesting CoRecursive interview with Facebook's Jason Gauci (February 2021) [0]. He addresses that question head-on at this point [1] in the interview. [0] https://corecursive.com/061-reinforcement-learning/ https://corecursive.com/061-reinforcement-learning/ [1] https://corecursive.com/061-reinforcement-learning/#the-social-dilemma https://corecursive.com/061-reinforcement-learning/#the-soci... P.S. I don't listen to many podcasts, but CoRecursive is great. I highly recommend other software developers check it out.
traceroute66 4y ago
> If you're pissing off Facebook, you're probably doing something right. ^^ THIS ! I remember when Apple hardened iOS so that Facebook & co. could no longer mis-use the system do do evil things such as silently monitor pasteboard contents. Facebook took out enormous billboard ads at the time in major cities on which they exercised their tiny woe-is-me violin, trying to pretend Apple was the evil one.
- judge2020 4y ago
  But obviously we should allow Facebook to sideload their own app for the freedom of users.
  - freedomben 4y ago
    This comment should probably be included in the dictionary as an example under "strawman fallacy" Who is arguing that facebook should be able to sideload their own app onto users iphones? That's the antithesis of what user freedom advocates argue for. The argument is "it's my device, I should be able to run what I want on it." Not, "anybody should be able to do whatever they want on my device." The latter is more an argument for Apple's status quo where they have full control of the device (that they ostensibly no longer own) and the user does not.

villgax 4y ago

Gonna cry

TwoNineA 4y ago

[flagged]

curiousllama 4y ago

What I'm most interested in is the redacted bits of the Order to Show Cause [1] The scale of the remediation (no new launches) doesn't really match the scale of the accusation in the press release (Messenger kids once had a bug where kids could circumvent parental controls if the parents didn't pay attention). The Order to Show Cause includes a comprehensive, in-depth review of FB's privacy programs - and it's almost entirely redacted. What did FB mess up so badly that the FTC feels this is the appropriate response? https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/C4365-Commission-Order-to-Show-Cause-%28Redacted-Public%29.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/C4365-Commissio...

radicaldreamer 4y ago
Likely ads targeting. Twitter had a bug where they would track you around the web even if you opted out... this was obvious for years because you'd immediately start seeing ads for specific drugs if you searched for a medical condition in a separate browser etc. Instead of actually fixing the issues, they removed the ability to opt-out of personalization (lol)
- steve1977 4y ago
  a “bug”…
- xevdev 4y ago
  How is this legal? From my (granted, shallow) understanding of GDPR laws, isn’t it required for companies to allow users to opt out of personalization?

sschueller 4y ago

The lobbying by Facebook and co. against TikTok appears to have started to back fire. If you keep pointing out how toxic Tiktok is to the young you can expect people to start looking into other apps that the young use as well.

bryan_w 4y ago
It seem like he would be fine with whatever restrictions they placed as long as it applied to all the companies equally. It seems like his major gripe was that it wouldn't affect tiktok
JohnFen 4y ago
You can't beat my kids! Only I should be allowed to do that.
- Spivak 4y ago
  I mean that's broadly the state's argument. You can harvest American's data as long as that data stays under the exclusive control of the US. It's the macro-scale version of why self-hosted in-house applications can have more privileged access than 3rd party services.

criddell 4y ago

How can a corporation be furious? After reading the article, they don't say anything about the company or people inside the company being furious. The closest thing I could find is that a Meta spokesperson said they plan to fight it vigorously and expect to win. Maybe the headline should be "Meta opposed to proposed FTC ban on monetizing youth data".

xwdv 4y ago
One way is to train an AI on the entire collection of conversations every employee at Meta has had, and then after sufficient training ask the AI how it feels about this ban. It may then respond that it is furious!!! Thus we can determine the corporation is furious. For some remote first companies that communicate primarily through platforms like Slack or email, this should be trivial to do.
- nh23423fefe 4y ago
  If I trained an AI on what you said, it couldn't tell me how you feel. Category error.
  - programmer_dude 4y ago
    I don't think it is. The AI would indeed tell you how the OP would feel if he were given the same news and asked the same question.
    - dwringer 4y ago
      That strikes me as an extraordinary claim somewhat in need of extraordinary evidence.
  - xwdv 4y ago
    It does. GPT4 frequently reports the same feelings I do when given similar inputs.
  - shever73 4y ago

wirthjason 4y ago

Since there is bound to be a lot of Facebook bashing I’ll point out that they occasionally do some good. In the case of software they can be good stewards of FOSS. I listened to this CoRecursive episode about the history of Zstandard compression algorithm and how FB allowed the author, Yann Collet, to fully open source it while other companies wanted to keep it proprietary. https://corecursive.com/data-compression-yann-collet/ https://corecursive.com/data-compression-yann-collet/ This doesn’t justify or make up for the wrongs that happen because of the social network but the company, and the reasons they want to work there, can be more nuanced.

passwordoops 4y ago
Good points, but it aligns with Shell, for example, making a big deal about investing a few hundred thousand dollars in setting up solar power at one of their least productive refineries. Like, that's great, but...
Waterluvian 4y ago
I wonder if it kind of sucks to recognize that your job in FOSS is just a token gesture. Does FB really care about React’s contribution to the community? Or is it just happy to pay a few salaries to look good?
- anaganisk 4y ago
  FB actively uses it, so it's a win win isn't it?
  - johannes1234321 4y ago
    That is a complicated question. They get marketing and a few more eyes delivering bug fixes. However they also get to deal with contributions going not exactly in the direction they want and either have to argue against or take maintenance burden on themselves. Also they limit the changes they can do. An internal framework they can change as they like. They know all users. For different projects that works differently well.

KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago

I don't know why my opinion is so out of the mainstream but I really think it's good that people's information is used vs not used... I think it's a great boon for ads to become more relevant instead of less relevant. Wasting time looking at ads that aren't for me sucks, it's much better if they could actually improve my life. Literally think making children have less relevant ads is doing them harm.

passwordoops 4y ago
You should pitch your local college on giving a master class in sarcasm
jtbayly 4y ago
Ads are not “relevant,” or not. They are effective or not. Generally effective means manipulative. Screening children from this seems quite beneficial at first glance.
c-fe 4y ago
Ads, targeted ones even more so, make you buy things you don’t need. If you need them, you would go out of your way to buy them without requiring an ad manipulating you.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  That’s not necessarily true because you might not have known about them. Some ads can be informative and provide you with consumer surplus. For example I recently went to a concert based on an ad and it was a great time. I would have never heard about it normally. Actually the most manipulative ads are “brand” ads for things like Coke or BMW. These have no significant difference to their competitors so their only strategy is to manipulate you into associating them with more positive emotions.
- ahahahahah 4y ago
  There's almost nothing that people need. The vast majority of my spending is on things I want, not need. I get value from spending on those things.

lvl102 4y ago

So our govt has no problem with Tiktok but Facebook is a problem. It’s as if US regulation bodies are all run by clowns.

zeroonetwothree 4y ago
You can’t look at the regulation of every other industry and be surprised. I can’t think of a single one in which the government has done a competent job. Remember when you couldn’t get covid tests for like 6 months because the fda had to personally inspect every single one?

AraceliHarker 4y ago

Mark Zuckerberg himself seems to understand the importance of privacy very well, taping over the microphone and camera on his MacBook Pro, keeping his trash can from being scavenged by others, and FB spending heavily to protect his security, so why does he have the exact opposite attitude towards others?

jason-phillips 4y ago
In practical terms, Mark is a target. You're not.
- ben_w 4y ago
  When surveillance is cheap enough, everyone's a target.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  We all very much are. This is the entire business model of Google and Meta
  - Shish2k 4y ago
    There’s a difference between “targeted for advertising” and “targeted for a bullet”...
- traceroute66 4y ago
  > Mark is a target. You're not. Define the word "target". I would argue that for the likes of Facebook and Google, they consider anyone fair game. Of course they would never use the word "target", but ...
  - SuperCuber 4y ago
    I work in adtech. Terms like "Targetted advertising" and "Retargeting" are very common.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago

fwlr 4y ago

I would caution against believing “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” when that would make the government your friend. Yes, Facebook has been awful and done great harm in some ways, but crucially it is not the case that Facebook was only able to do such harm because the FTC lacked the ability to unilaterally and without oversight deploy extreme powers like “you may not monetize this data” or “you may not release features or products without our permission”. The FTC has some insane thumbscrews now, and though it may be satisfying to see them use their thumbscrews to make Facebook squeal, you still shouldn’t be happy that the FTC has thumbscrews.

jrochkind1 4y ago
In what ways are you worried about the FTC using it's powers for things you thinks are harmful? What things specifically?
- jonhohle 4y ago
  The FTC has no power to create law, just interpret existing laws. Any “bans” would already need to be illegal based on current law enacted by congress. In the past Chevron Deference used to assume executive agencies had broad authority on law interpretation, but that seems to be a crumbling precedent. If there are already existing laws that cover this, the FTC is just doing their enforcement job.
ethbr0 4y ago
If the criteria for FTC thumbscrews is "Become a 2023.USD$630 B market cap company" then I'm comfortable with that. Fuck combinations (to use the original 1900s phrasing); restore competition.
- fwlr 4y ago
  If that was the criteria I would also be comfortable! However, it is not; the FTC has taken action* against many entities smaller than Facebook, and in point of fact Facebook might actually be one of the biggest entities the FTC has taken action against (I don’t think this puts an upper bound on the size of entity the FTC will take on, my point is that it certainly doesn’t put a lower bound on it). * Not necessarily actions I would call “thumbscrews” like their current proposed penalties for Facebook, and mostly actions I think are appropriate, but it is still an indicator of who they’re willing to take action against.

nologic01 4y ago

Regulators should not procrastinate as this only prolongs the agony and the multifaceted damage. Damage to society as it has no protection against such hyperscale, algorithmic, private-data slurping intermediaries. Financial and economic damage as the entire tech sector, while predictably lured by the abnormal profitability of adtech, is long-term undermined by a business model that may actually have no right to exist in a decent, democratic society.

darthrupert 4y ago

Why just Facebook? Also, this is 10 years too late. Kids are using Discord, Tiktok and probably some services I've never heard of. This should include them all or it's silly or even outright harmful.

justapassenger 4y ago
According to hacker news Facebook is dead, everyone deleted their account and only racist grandparents use it. And at the same time all the kids in the world are using it.

medler 4y ago

It is insane to me that we allow any advertising to young children at all, whether online, on TV, or anywhere else. I think deliberately manipulating kids is heinous and I genuinely don’t understand why this isn’t the consensus opinion.

baggachipz 4y ago
> I think deliberately manipulating kids is heinous Religion has entered the chat.
- afavour 4y ago
  The idea is to improve, not replicate all the bad parts.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  > Religion has entered the chat. Parenting in general has entered the cat. (That said, I do agree that we need boundaries on the manipulation of younger minds. I've seen others make this analogy before: We don't let kids buy cigarettes in stores -- why should they have the full force of addictive algorithmic social media unleashed on them? [for that matter, why should adults, but that's another story])
- skizm 4y ago
  I'm no fan of organized Religion, but I think there is a clear distinction here. Religion is opt-in (by the parents) where most advertising to kids isn't. You could argue that parents could take away their access to [phone|youtube|instagram|etc.], but kids will get access at school, or through their friends one way or another. The internet is too ubiquitous at this point to actually opt-out.
  - p0pcult 4y ago
    You shouldn't be allowed to opt others in, especially those under the age of legally informed consent, to brainwashing.

ferminaut 4y ago

Facebook (and much of social media) is the modern day Philip Morris peddling addictive experiences...except the harm is way less obvious. Folks arent getting cancer, but they are wrecking their mental health. The difference is social media falls under the first amendment and is much harder to regulate. It's a borderline national security issue, too.

zeroonetwothree 4y ago
I think it’s a plausible argument. But shouldn’t we regulate the whole industry then instead of going after a single company? Also there are clearly some benefits from social media so I wouldn’t want to get rid of all of it. For example messaging doesn’t seem so bad in terms of harm vs value. Or things like Facebook Groups that are more like discussion forums (even HN itself falls under this!)
- ferminaut 4y ago
  Yeah I agree. Singling out the largest player is silly. We've basically given different nations the ability to control the thoughts of society. Social media hasnt been organic for a long time. Organic social media grows until it is consumed by bots and bad actors. I dont think removing social media is a solution. I do think some sort of realID for social media that could identify every user is real & a certain age would be beneficial (think Worldcoin but not done by a private entity). I think this alone would solve a large issue around social media. The other requirement that should exist is some balanced discussion to remove the echo chamber effects. Amplifying only certain thought patterns is dangerous. Take reddit for example. A single bot farm with 100 or so accounts can effectively manipulate entire communities.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    > (think Worldcoin but not done by a private entity) The problem with what Worldcoin was doing wasn't that they were a private entity.
    - 4y ago

ianai 4y ago

The government is THE entity entrusted with creating personal property rights, amongst a lot of other things. (Assuming colonial debt as a national debt being how the revolutionaries bought their new country legitimacy.) So it’s about time for government to grant people sovereignty over their data and attention by creating some new personal property rights and protections. Keeping PII should be billable hours. Attention should be billable hours. If not that then something similar.

whimsicalism 4y ago
> Attention should be billable hours. You are the one who wants to visit my website because it provides you with value and I am now obligated by force to pay you?
- ianai 4y ago
  If moneys being made off of it then it’s not free.

nimajneb 4y ago

I really wish I could get rid of my FB account. It's so pervasive in my social life that it would things difficult and I would miss out on events with my friends. My family uses it for video chat, my friends use it to organize social activities, I'm on a recreational kickball team that uses it for team communication, etc. I recently deactivated and a few weeks later a friend asked if I was going to an event he invited me to. I had no idea anyone invited to me anything. I had my invite me to an event and it let her invite and didn't tell either of us I was invited to something... If you invite a deactivated account there's apparently no indication the person won't see it.

zeroonetwothree 4y ago
Weird, in my circle no one uses it anymore. Although to be fair I’m not convinced that most of the alternatives are likely to be much better. I don’t see why Google wouldn’t be doing exactly the same stuff. At least there is Signal. I’ve moved most of my messaging there.
codepoet80 4y ago
Just rip off the band-aid. Your friends can't invite you to things on Facebook if your account is fully deleted, and they'll be forced to reach out in different ways. The first 6-12 months are hard, but if you can make it past that, you won't miss it. I setup a Discord server for my family, and we're enjoying a "semi-private" social network that way -- it works well, even for grandparents. I wrote a bot that let's them save photos posted in Discord to their digital picture frame in their living room, and they love it.
hbn 4y ago
There was a point in time where you could sign up for just Facebook Messenger without making a Facebook account, but of course they removed that cause they want everyone to have a Facebook account.

justapassenger 4y ago

Not to defend Facebook, but this headline is misleading. FTC proposes banning Facebook from launching any new products, which is a huge deal. Also from monetizing youth data, which is likely not a serious revenue stream. It’s clickbait to claim it’s the youth part that made company furious, no matter what you think about Facebook.

SllX 4y ago
Par for the course for Ars Technica. Also: it is curious that the FTC is acting this way now considering it just got a whole lot easier to take them to an Article III court under Axon vs FTC et al.
meh8881 4y ago
Why would you assume youth data is not a serious revenue stream? Parents are likely a large target market

hospitalJail 4y ago

As another person mentioned, advertising to children is gross. If youth data should be banned, youth marketing should also be banned.

datadeft 4y ago

AD company furious about government regulation removing data access that AD revenue depends on.

jimmytidey 4y ago

All those young people on Facebook...

throwaway19423 4y ago

Seeing ads shown to my 3 year old when they do basic supervised web browsing on educational websites seems wrong.

stephenhuey 4y ago

Breaking things was a core mantra of theirs for a while, right?

markx2 4y ago
It was, but they could not then move fast enough to escape the law.
- simultsop 4y ago
  But many of us, enjoy the benefits their agility gave birth to. Let's hope they learned lessons and will be improving their ways. I guess no one plans to get in trouble at first. Consequences become highest price for innovation. Highlighting failures and calling for punishment constantly would stop everyone trying to innovate.
  - fnimick 4y ago
    Maybe we shouldn't be encouraging "innovation" if it's at the expense of other people?
    - nuclearnice1 4y ago
      Probably too simplistic. Innovation serves some and “disrupts” others. Uber might be a handy ride for you. A NYC cabbie who is in debt for his medallion might see it the opposite.
      - fnimick 4y ago
        And by the law, Uber should be illegal. That they broke the law and got popular enough to apply political pressure does not mean that they were not technically illegal the entire time. There's no contradiction here. If certain applications are illegal, you don't get to decide that regulation is inconvenient to your "innovation" and deal with the consequences later. Or rather, that is exactly what you do to make $megabux, and that's what should not be allowed.

Veedrac 4y ago

Truly disgusting to allow an under-13 to talk to an unapproved friend. Companies were never meant to have incentives to provide products to such people and not their guardians. There is a reason we make it illegal for that underclass to own or earn capital, and the ability for companies to circumvent this and provide services anyway through indirect revenue is unpalatable. Cutting that off is necessary, as any good-thinking small-person-owner will know. It's a slippery slope we have to cut down on now, lest small people start expecting to go outside without parental overseers or questioning their owners' authority.

Veedrac 4y ago
And to clarify in a child comment, yes I dislike Facebook and think it has huge harmful externalities, yes I dislike advertising and think it has huge harmful externalities, but I also dislike that the justification from the FTC I read in this article and in the others I checked against lacks respect for basic human liberties and has huge harmful externalities and I don't feel obligated to overlook that on the basis of any other dispreference.
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baynoob 4y ago

How come FTC keeps coming back at this one company? Whereas TikTok and others having business as normal

michael_vo 4y ago
Well, FB does have ~2BB euros set aside to pay for EU fines in 2023. So not just the FTC!
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  You know how it goes. They're going to take the budget away if it doesn't get spent.
- Rexxar 4y ago
  Hopefully, this will prevent all of the comments that say EU only fine them because they don't like US companies.
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walls 4y ago
Perhaps because FB is actually breaking the law.
nickthegreek 4y ago
Why is FTC making sure the biggest social media company plays by the rules that they continue to break? I find it hard to believe that this question is in good faith.
theRealMe 4y ago
TikTok is currently being considered for a total ban in the US isn’t it? And it’s banned on US government devices? Not the greatest example to use for your point.
uoaei 4y ago
Every comment from this account is defending or advocating for Meta or one of its products. Don't drink the Kool-aid, folks!

throwaway_1237 4y ago

Mark cannot be trusted.

christkv 4y ago

There is a case coming up at the Supreme Court that might rein in regulatory agencies and push stuff back to congress

deltree7 4y ago

Meta should take FTC all the way to supreme court for their regulatory overreach and kneecap them, so that unelected, incompetent people don't bring their biased agenda to governing businesses https://about.fb.com/news/2023/05/upholding-our-commitment-to-protecting-your-privacy/ https://about.fb.com/news/2023/05/upholding-our-commitment-t...

isthiseasymode 4y ago
Well, that won’t go well since they agreed to a settlement.
- deltree7 4y ago
  https://about.fb.com/news/2023/05/upholding-our-commitment-to-protecting-your-privacy/ https://about.fb.com/news/2023/05/upholding-our-commitment-t... Thank God for the Supreme Court which will see right through Lina Khan's agenda. And you can thank Lina Khan for destroying FTC through her overreach

gampleman 4y ago

Facebook getting in trouble for privacy violations is basically a joke. That should make it their company tagline: Privacy Violations that Scale. Or something like that...

INeedMoreRam 4y ago

[dead]

JohnMakin 4y ago

"What about Tiktok!!!" comments are either purposely obtuse or completely missing the point. Tiktok did not have a FTC judgment on them that they repeatedly violated. Meta does. There you go, explained.

alttab 4y ago

Meta execs are probably wondering when the rest of the crowd just realizes what Facebook is and determines if they want to exchange their privacy for their services. Who is even surprised at this point?

gooseyman 4y ago

I love the FTC lately. Big fan boy now. Feels like they’re going after things that actually matter.

a-user-you-like 4y ago

This is good, next let’s outlaw TikTok. We don’t want internal OR external data mining of our citizens.

acd 4y ago

[flagged]

ahahahahah 4y ago
That's not a useful comment.

bcherny 4y ago

Wait, what? Is the FTC saying FB didn’t comply with the 2020 decree in 2019 and 2020, before the decree was issued? Maybe I’m misreading the PDF [0]? [0] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/C4365-Commission-Order-to-Show-Cause-%28Redacted-Public%29.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/C4365-Commissio...

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aw1621107 4y ago
The full title of the 2020 Order is "2020 Order Modifying Prior Decision and Order". The original order was issued in 2012. In addition, the FTC alleges that Facebook has violated parts of the original 2012 order: > Respondent’s misrepresentations regarding Messenger Kids violated Part I of the 2012 Order, Section 5 of the FTC Act, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”), 15 U.S.C. § 6502, and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (“COPPA Rule”), 16 C.F.R. Part 312. And parts of the original 2012 order that have been superseded by the 2020 order: > Respondent’s misrepresentations regarding its 90-Day Limitation feature violated Section 5 of the FTC Act, Part I of the 2012 Order for the period prior to April 27, 2020, and Part I of the 2020 Order thereafter.

batmaniam 4y ago

If a person is out on bail, violating that bail order forfeits their bail payment and they also go back to jail. So if FB has not been complying with FTC's order, then what's the penalty they have to pay for their failure?

loeg 4y ago
Facebook isn't on bail. And as a metaphor, bail is not relevant to the situation.
- batmaniam 4y ago
  Yea maybe it was a bad example. I meant to say what type of enforcement is behind the FTC's order? With bail, the enforcement is through expensive monetary forfeiture and the guarantee of jail time. And if any laws were broken during the time out on bail, the person will get additional charges in addition to the ones they already had while on bail. Basically all crimes/violations are covered and punishment dished out accordingly to each current/past violations. Facebook violated the order by the FTC, and for the order to have any teeth to it, there must be some sort of enforcement action behind it, just like for bail. Right now it seems like FB is just getting told off by saying the FTC will 'propose' FB not to benefit from certain data collection. Ok, so nothing has been actually enforced for the violation. And what about for the past violations? Will FB be forced to delete all their data they collected during the time they were under the FTC's order? The proposal (if even passed), will only limit future collections, not violations that have already happened and profited from. > Now, the FTC has proposed changes to the 2020 order that would prohibit Facebook owner Meta from launching new products on any of its platforms without procuring written FTC compliance confirmation and prevent the company from monetizing any of the youth data it collects across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus.

themagician 4y ago

The privacy issues almost seem moot at this point to be honest. Everything on Facebook is either a scam, scam adjacent, or some kind of grift. It's actually incredible to see how Facebook has grown over the years. It's like the SPAM inbox in Gmail, but prettier and sprinkled with posts from "friends." Instagram has gone the same way. I would say that, "Maybe I'm just getting old," but when I actually look at the humans on Facebook "interacting" with "content" they are all decades older than me. More and more Meta reminds me of QVC.

tppiotrowski 4y ago
I agree but they're Groups, Messenger and Marketplace offerings are best in the industry. It's what myself and most of my friends use it for now.
- themagician 4y ago
  Funny. Groups is, by far, the worst offender in the entire Meta ecosystem. It's become THE TOOL for scammers. And because they can be private they can hide for much longer than they'd otherwise be able to. I actually feel confident in saying that Jan 6 would not have happened (the way it did) without Facebook Groups. It's a breeding ground for the worst of the worst to hang out in plain sight. If you want to prey on seniors, if you want to run an MLM or affiliate marketing ring, or if you want to organize an insurrection or promote a conspiracy or antivax group Facebook Groups is THE PLACE. By absolute volume it's way worse the Telegram groups. Old people can't figure out Telegram, but Facebook Groups is their jam. If you really want to make "six figures online" while working "four hours a week" all you need is a scammer mentality and a few Facebook Groups. Message me for access when you're ready to level up your life.
  - crakhamster01 4y ago
    > Everything on Facebook is either a scam, scam adjacent, or some kind of grift. > Groups is, by far, the worst offender in the entire Meta ecosystem > It's a breeding ground for the worst of the worst to hang out in plain sight. This is a lot to accuse without any evidence. Is there empirical data showing that these issues are as rampant as you claim? I have similar anecdata to the parent post - Groups/Marketplace/Messenger has been great for my family and friends, across a wide range of interests and use cases. My take is that if you intentionally look for terrible things on the internet you'll be able to find it, and Facebook is no exception. It's non-sensical to think that organizing insurrections and losing your SSN is the de facto experience though.

johndhi 4y ago

Genuine question: FTC is saying a "bug" caused the violation of the consent decree. How can a company ensure bugs don't happen that violate a commitment? I don't think that's possible. I'd assume the decree should ensure they don't INTENTIONALLY violate it.

majormajor 4y ago
More testing, more rigor, more review, etc. So even if a bug happens, you don't let it linger without spotting or fixing it for over a year, from "late 2017 until mid-2019".
- johndhi 4y ago
  Well, the consent decree should then say: you need to do X testing, Y review. If they did that, it's still not a violation.
  - johndhi 4y ago
    You can read the text of the consent decree here [1]. Looks like it just generally required them to have a 'privacy program' and to monitor and test their vendors. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/c4365facebookproposedmodifieddecisionandorder.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/c4365facebookpr...
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Well, the consent decree should then say: you need to do X testing, Y review. The consent decree can just say you have to not do Z. You take whatever steps are necessary to avoid that. If you do it “accidentally” that’s a violation. The point of a consent decree, from the point of viee of the regulatort agency, is generally to eliminate excuses for a party already seen as a violator as a condition to hold off on an existing enforcement action for the violation. Creating opportunities for technical compliancd while the problem sought to be avoided still occurs is an explicit non-goal. (From the non-government side, the point is to avoid greater penalties now by accepting some obligations and limitations going forward.)