FTC Probing Facebook for Use of Personal Data, Source Says

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-20/ftc-said-to-be-probing-facebook-for-use-of-personal-data

by coloneltcb • 8 years ago

1107 368 8 years ago

If the FTC finds Facebook violated terms of the consent decree, it has the power to fine the company thousands of dollars a day per violation.

Maybe I'm misreading this, but only a few thousand?

koolba• 8 years ago

If each person is considered a separate violation then $1000/day adds up quickly.

fancyfacebook• 8 years ago

Works out to $2 trillion in liability according to one (highly speculative) article I saw.

wpietri• 8 years ago

Yeah, this struck me too. It seems like the FTC's powers are far too light to deal with modern tech.

I'd really like to see something like the NTSB here, but for privacy/security issues. After an incident, the NTSB comes in, investigates everything, and produces a very detailed report as to what happened and what the industry should be doing differently. You can see their recent reports here: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/Ac...

It's very clear from Facebook's behavior since the elections that they can't be trusted to investigate and report on themselves. E.g., this article on how their execs thought it best not to say anything until forced by circumstances: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/facebook-alex-...

laurentoget• 8 years ago

European fines are much stiffer.

https://www.gdpreu.org/compliance/fines-and-penalties/

nepotism2018• 8 years ago

"...50 million users..."

Anyone know how this number was added up? Any reason not to believe it wasn't 500 million or 5 million?

jimbokun• 8 years ago

It's the number of Facebook users whose data was accessed by Cambridge Analytica, allegedly without being authorized for how they used the data.

mtgx3• 8 years ago

The Guardian's original article on this says that number was shown in documents from 2015 [1]. However, the whistleblower said that by now it should be over 230 million [2].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analy...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-whistl...

hanspeter• 8 years ago

It's 270.000 users directly impacted. The friends of those users has also been fetched, but with a limited amount of data most of which is pulic already.

HenryBemis• 8 years ago

I expect that FB will be receiving a few milliong letters like this [1] in a couple of months, when GDPR will be kicking in. And following that, a few million requests (smaller number) for the "right to be forgotten" [2].

#1 was on the front page of HN a couple of days ago.

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nightmare-letter-subject-acce...

[2] https://gdpr-info.com/the-right-to-be-forgotten/

anonymouz• 8 years ago

They already had an obligation to respond to such inquires under the older EU Data Protection Directive. But they generally ignored the requests or only gave incomplete data (e.g., you'd get your facebook posts, etc., but no tracking data they had on you).

apo• 8 years ago

It's laughable that any Facebook user assumes any degree of privacy.

What's far more concerning, and what this probe doesn't appear to address, is what Facebook does with the information of non-users.

https://fieldguide.gizmodo.com/all-the-ways-facebook-tracks-...

https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/06/02/facebook-ads-f...

SkyPuncher• 8 years ago

In my opinion, the problem isn't just with being an active Facebook user. Anytime you visit a website with a FB Pixel, "Like" button, or any other FB embedded content, you are tracked - whether or not you are a user.

2sk21• 8 years ago

I do have the Facebook trackers disabled in Ghostery but I wonder if that’s enough

Crontab• 8 years ago

Just think of all the children whose whole lives are being put unto Facebook by unthinking parents. They never stood a chance.

Raphmedia• 8 years ago

Remember for a lot of regular internet users, Facebook is almost indistinguishable from "the internet" itself.

remir2• 8 years ago

You seriously think grandma and Joe the plumber are aware of Facebook's constant data collection?

Let's have empathy for people outside the tech bubble and realize that it's our duty as technical people to educate people around us about these issues.

tyfon4• 8 years ago

I was on the phone with my mother and told her about the recent facebook things and she said "I am very careful about what I post on facebook so I don't worry".

Then I told her about what they actually do with the pixel and like buttons and she was flabbergasted. "You mean they can see what I read even if I don't press the like button?"

Not sure I convinced her to delete the account though as all her friends are there.

colmvp• 8 years ago

I would guess that the elderly are much more skeptical about handing over their personal information online than younger generations. For example, Facebook started off in colleges. And other forms of social media like Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram are predominantly used by younger cohorts who are ambivalent about what companies might use with their data. The information about data collection is out there, what with Google searches and all. People choose not to abstain.

I'll give a more recent example: I meet 20-somethings at a meetup I go to each week. Most of them go to a pretty well-known university (thus, they are well educated), they ask me if they can connect with me via Facebook. I say I don't use Facebook, and then spend an extra 20 minutes explaining all the reasons why often to their astonishment. In my mind I'm like, "Really? How do you not know all of this? You read tons of magazines/journals?"

The sad reality is that billions of people don't care. Even with this whole scandal, I'd be shocked if Facebook's stock price was hurt in the long term.

lisp_me_away• 8 years ago

You don't talk to many casuals then. They are fully aware that all of their data is being recorded and used against them. They've been aware since the massive NSA scandal.

nothis• 8 years ago

laughable

Yea, so "laughable" that people are not constantly paranoid and super informed about how the information industry works. /s

It's not people's fault that facebook is abusing their data. That's some sociopathic logic.

dahdum• 8 years ago

Biggest concern for Facebook has got to be them investigating the other sharing of data beyond Cambridge Analytica. I seriously doubt they turned the other way for conservative but not liberal think tanks / firms.

dexterdog2• 8 years ago

https://ijr.com/2018/03/1077083-ex-obama-campaign-director-f...

jerf• 8 years ago

For those who may be concerned about this being a partisan hit job because it's a news article, the primary source from a verified account: https://twitter.com/cld276/status/975565844632821760

toufka• 8 years ago

They also have datasets of 50M user profiles floating around out there filled with Facebook-like data. There still hasn't been a public leak of that kind of data that I can think of. I think a concern for Facebook is also what happens if/when 50M Americans' names, gender, hometown, birthday, and names of 500 closest friends become public for all to see. That's not really data that you can change or put back into a bottle.

maxerickson• 8 years ago

The name and address data isn't anything unique. There's probably multiple companies with better address data than Facebook has. And the national party organizations have pretty much complete voter rolls with addresses.

The unique data is the friend graph and the likes, which they can use to (quite effectively) predict political attitudes.

daodedickinson4• 8 years ago

They were directly involved with the Obama and Clinton campaigns... and so was Eric Schmidt.

chubasco• 8 years ago

The Podesta e-mails have conversations between John Podesta and Sheryl Sandberg about meetings to help elect the first woman president. So, while I think Facebook is morally reprehensible, this latest media outrage because of connections to the Trump campaign feels a bit like an economic hit job more than anything.

hbosch• 8 years ago

And with Peter Thiel being a Trump supporter, even giving a speech on stage at the RNC in praise of Trump, it would be crazy to think that Palantir's involvement isn't of similar (if not much greater) scale as Cambridge Analytica.

Palantir, in my guess, is probably like CA on steroids.

daodedickinson4• 8 years ago

Whenever I would talk about stuff like CA a few years back to my friend who works at Facebook, he would just say Palantir is even worse. Palantir has everything that can possibly be scraped from Facebook, and everything else they can get. It's not far off from that show Christopher Nolan's brother made... Person of Interest?

kodablah3• 8 years ago

Better than a new law. I'm sure Congress is mulling one over, but surely they won't take a large sweeping, harm-the-good-more-than-the-bad, regulation-instead-of-enforcement approach.

Jaepa• 8 years ago

I'd wage money that Feinstein will campaign on Facebook Regulation this year.

d3ckard3• 8 years ago

I remember reading a book on Facebook in 2010 or so. I remember distinctly quote from Mark Zuckerberg that "privacy is the concept from the past". Then, a couple years later I read he bought houses surrounding his house to ensure his own privacy.

Lost any respect I had for the guy in that moment. I really hope FTC will force FB to stop most of their unfair practices.

speps• 8 years ago

I really hope FTC will force FB to stop most of their unfair practices.

Which ones do you want to keep?

d3ckard3• 8 years ago

None of course, but I don't believe they will get them all.

tyfon4• 8 years ago

Do as I say, not as I do.

I'm getting more and more happy that I don't have an account there.

However I'm not that confident that my plugins block all their affiliates and data gathering to my shadow profile.

bencollier49• 8 years ago

GDPR ought to kill off shadow profiles..

strict9• 8 years ago

And there it is, now feels like the fable of the boiling frog. Can't remember wanting a company to crash and burn like this.

The rise of social networking online means that people no longer have an expectation of privacy, according to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Talking at the Crunchie awards in San Francisco this weekend, the 25-year-old chief executive of the world's most popular social network said that privacy was no longer a "social norm".

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jan/11/facebook-...

vog2• 8 years ago

Lost any respect I had for the guy in that moment

Um ... why only then? His statement "privacy is the concept from the past" was dishonest even back then - because if you have a lot of money, you can always buy more privacy than everybody else - and are generally much less exposed to the issues of, let's say, "average people".

d3ckard3• 8 years ago

Because even if I didn't like it, I could accept it as an opinion on future human interactions. Once he made it obviously clear that he himself considers it bullshit, while still selling the vision to the masses, I realised the man has no integrity whatsoever.

code_duck• 8 years ago

There are also photos out there with Zuckerberg with a covered device camera, but Instagram requires you to turn on the camera and microphone to post even pre-recorded content to Stories.

rmc3• 8 years ago

In May the GDPR comes into force in the EU.

sigzero• 8 years ago

I'm confused. Facebook is a service. As a service it's terms are "your data is ours, if you use our service". If you agree to that and you then use their service that should be the end of it. You are the product for Facebook.

_jal• 8 years ago

Any time the incredibly wealthy tell your things have changed, get over it, grab a pitchfork.

m3kw9• 8 years ago

You lost respect for him over that? Should he put a cam in his bathroom for the world to see to be in sync with his business ambitions?

reaperducer2• 8 years ago

I'm not trying to make this political, but I've always found it ironic that people in Southwest cities who talk big about border walls not keeping people out very often live in communities or cities where every house being surrounded by a wall is the norm. And the richer they are, the taller and more elaborate the walls get.

Again, this isn't about politics. It's about irony and how rich people in California often seem to say one thing and do another.

tyleraldrich2• 8 years ago

There's a huge difference between having a wall around your home so your neighbors/peeping toms can't look at you and having a wall on the border to keep immigrants out.

These things aren't even comparable, I have no idea where you think the irony lies.

shard972• 8 years ago

Also consider that these people are much more likely to own their houses and would more stand to benefit from the rising housing costs that come from immigration.

jmagoon• 8 years ago

You think it's ironic that people with fences around their houses think a 1,954 mile wall 30 feet high is impractical? What makes that ironic?

Are you suggesting that in these heavily walled Southwestern cities, people are using fences primarily as a form of defense against immigrants, and it's therefore ironic that they think their home walls will successfully protect them from large scale immigration, but not a wall along the border of two countries?

blacksmith_tb• 8 years ago

Without wading into the politics of the gesture, I'd point out that in the Southwestern US there's a strong influence of Spanish Colonial architecture, which is based on a central courtyard with high walls (in turn influenced by Arabic architecture in Andalusia). Which doesn't mean that what those high walls mean now is necessarily the same, but there is a general pattern[1]

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtyard#Historic_use

mintplant3• 8 years ago

people in Southwest cities... very often live in communities or cities where every house being surrounded by a wall is the norm

In addition to the other points in this thread, I can't think of a city here where this is actually the case.

joezydeco• 8 years ago

I really hope FTC will force FB to stop most of their unfair practices.

Yeah, Facebook said they would....in 2011.

Ron Wyden (US Senator from Oregon) asks the following:

"In 2011, Facebook entered into a consent agreement with Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Under the terms of that agreement, Facebook is required to maintain "a comprehensive privacy program that is reasonably designed to (1) address privacy risks related to the development and management of new and existing products and services for consumers, and (2) protect the privacy and confidentiality of covered information."

"a. Please describe how, three years after Facebook entered into the consent order with FTC, Spectre and his company were able to download sufficiently detailed data on 50 million Facebook users without their affirmative knowledge or consent."

https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/wyden-cambridge-a...

Hopefully once Zuck is done getting raked over the coals in the UK, he's dragged back to the USA to answer to Congress as well.

TAForObvReasons2• 8 years ago

What will determine Zuckerberg and FB's fate in the US is the extent and number of politicians that received contributions. If FB donated to many politicians' election campaigns, they may be able to walk away with a slap on the wrist.

Maybe tech companies should take a page from Boeing's playbook and set up offices in all 50 states

mtgx3• 8 years ago

And that agreement means absolutely nothing unless the FTC is also willing to enforce it - hard - against Facebook now.

stickdogg• 8 years ago

Absolutely. Fed time sounds good for him.

flexie• 8 years ago

Well, if data on European citizens have been exposed, then ideally Facebook's management would be charged with breaching national European laws on data protection, trialed and sentenced to prison.

The legal base for imprisonment for severe violation on data protection laws is there in many (most?) countries but they are rarely, if ever, used.

foobaw• 8 years ago

To be fair, privacy and security are two different things

therealmarv• 8 years ago

So about what number roughly (FB needs to pay) do we talk here?

chopin• 8 years ago

According to this article [1], trillions in possible fines.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/03/18...

bob_theslob646• 8 years ago

This is crazy! Peter Thiel spoke on March 15,2018 and said this about tech companies :"...If they do not take these issues seriously there is a risk they will be regulated.."

I have the video with the timestamp of the quote I mentioned, posted below.[1]

Ridiculously ironic on the timing of all this (evermore so that it is his darling Facebook) because I think this recent blunder by Facebook is a shot across the bow for other tech companies and even borderline bordering their "vessels" for search and seizure by the U.S government.

For those who do not know who he is.

Thiel became Facebook's first outside investor when he acquired a 10.2% stake for $500,000 in August 2004. He sold the majority of his shares in Facebook for over $1 billion in 2012, but remains on the board of directors. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel]

[1][Tech investor Peter Thiel speaks at the New York Economic Club](https://youtu.be/sxWpvgTH9oI?t=33m52s)

katastic• 8 years ago

Is that why they hate Peter Thiel so much and try to smear him in the media?

ala

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/06/peter-thiel-i...

(Kind of strange how they can target a gay guy for getting mad at being outed by a media company. Victim blame much?)

Meanwhile, he apparently called Uber "ethically challenged." So far, he's got 2 and 0 for good quotes.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/richkarlgaard/2014/12/10/do-jer...

tinalumfoil• 8 years ago

This is a particularly thorny issue for Thiel who said Gawker "ruined people's lives for no reason" after being outed as gay. Despite his involvement in Facebook, I think he's one of the few powerful people in tech who cares about people's privacy.

moate• 8 years ago

Does he though, or does he care about HIS privacy? I have no clue where he stands on the world at large based on his actions, just that he really didn't want to be outed (which is a reasonable request)

9889095r3jh2• 8 years ago

If he cared about my privacy, he wouldn't have invested in Facebook.

He cares about his own privacy. FYIGM

toastking• 8 years ago

Keep in mind he started Palintir. He doesn't actually care about privacy.

deft• 8 years ago

Really? I think he cared about himself with Gawker. Stop looking up to these people who consistently use you and apparently successfully trick you on their intentions.

ionised• 8 years ago

Nobody involved in Palantir or Facebook gives a shit about anyone's privacy but their own.

c_r_w• 8 years ago

It is crazy Thiel didn't see this years ago and say something then, when there was still a chance something could be done. Plenty of others did. Now, hopefully, it is too late for Facebook to escape regulation and, dare to dream, trust-busting.

ckastner2• 8 years ago

This presents an interesting opportunity for the FTC.

The amount of data being amassed by Facebook, Google and others has become exorbitant, and apparently has already been abused (some might even say weaponized) in a major election.

If Facebook indeed violated the 2011 consent decree, then the FTC can fine them up to "thousands of dollars a day per violation [per user]". This presents the FTC with the opportunity to send a message to these data hoarders: protect the data you collect, or else.

Fine them to the point where they have to start asking themselves whether it's even worth it to collect and store certain data, and with whom to share it.

It shouldn't be the government's job to ensure that the data gets protected, this should be in Facebook's own self interest.

mlb_hn• 8 years ago

To your second point, I argued this sort of data was weaponsized and not just in an election (http://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/NCO-Journal/Archives...).

To the third point, focusing on Facebook seems like that scene from Casa Blanca though: "There's gambling going on, I'm shocked, shocked" "Your winnings, sir" Not confident FTC fines would actually change any trends.

crowbahr2• 8 years ago

Last I saw there were over 1 million accounts distributed by CA.

Even assuming they were only distributed 3 months (unlikely) and there were only 1 million accounts (also unlikely) the maximum fine is:

1000x1000000x90 = 90 billion dollars.

Imposing the maximum fine would be more than double their entire 4th quarter earnings last year.

That's a bite. That would hurt any company.

sevensor• 8 years ago

I just went and read the linked article -- it's definitely worth a look. Personally I hadn't seen media coverage of the evolving relationship between Russia and DPRK, so I learned something new.

mistersquid• 8 years ago

To the third point, focusing on Facebook seems like that scene from Casa Blanca though

It's mere coincidence, but your spelling "Casablanca" as two words (Casa Blanca) put into my mind that the literal translation of that place is "white house" (two words, natch). [0]

To your point, yes, Facebook knows user data trafficking (gambling) goes on as well as the stakes of such trafficking. Facebook is the gatherer and ostensible guardians of such data, but they directly profit from such trafficking. Very likely their "interest" in user data security is pretense.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casablanca#Etymology

EDIT: recast second paragraph to more clearly convey intended meaning.

adrr• 8 years ago

I was the technology lead at Myspace for the Games Platform during the 2011 crackdown by the FTC. We took the FTC filings seriously and spent large amounts of cash and resources to prevent our data from making it to databrokers. Fines are one thing. FTC can shutdown or cripple your business.

I bet if Facebook is found not to take reasonable steps to mitigate issues raised during the 2011 FTC investigation, they'll be forced to do yearly audits of every app on the platform and require KYC(know your customer) process for all app publishers. This will be very costly and we'll probably see the end of the FB graph API except for trusted and highly capitalized partners.

this_user• 8 years ago

The problem for these companies is that hoarding and monetising data _is_ their business model. If they can't do that anymore, they are going to struggle in a serious way.

grasshopperpurp• 8 years ago

That seems like a feature, not a problem.

ckastner2• 8 years ago

They aren't going to struggle, their currently spectacular profits are just going to get somewhat more modest.

This is what happened to the banking industry after the 2008 financial crisis.

gfo• 8 years ago

I've been wondering what kind of collapse would happen when something like this happened to a business where the majority of their revenue comes from monetizing their consumers. Of course, a collapse would only be possible if:

* The FTC actually does something about this in a way that companies in a similar manner are also affected (directly or indirectly) * These companies don't find a way to get around the issues.

I'm not convinced anything will significantly damage tech companies whose primary profit driver is their users' data anyway. The general public has been using them for years now and despite any outrage, it's become too integrated in society for people to suddenly stop (unless someone comes up with a better alternative).

baq• 8 years ago

I'll have two, please.

xienze6• 8 years ago

and apparently has already been abused (some might even say weaponized) in a major election.

You mean major election_s_, right? I do seem to remember the Democrats crowing about how Obama's team had used social media to their advantage and Republicans were hopelessly outmatched in this arena.

http://swampland.time.com/2012/11/20/friended-how-the-obama-...

Fun tidbits:

But the Obama team had a solution in place: a Facebook application that will transform the way campaigns are conducted in the future. For supporters, the app appeared to be just another way to digitally connect to the campaign. But to the Windy City number crunchers, it was a game changer. “I think this will wind up being the most groundbreaking piece of technology developed for this campaign,” says Teddy Goff, the Obama campaign’s digital director.
That’s because the more than 1 million Obama backers who signed up for the app gave the campaign permission to look at their Facebook friend lists. In an instant, the campaign had a way to see the hidden young voters. Roughly 85% of those without a listed phone number could be found in the uploaded friend lists.

Whoa, that sounds exactly like the "breach" we're talking about here!

And a former Obama staffer confirms this: https://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/03/20/ex-obama-staffer-cl... (yeah yeah "I don't trust your source", but it's just screenshots straight from the horse's mouth).

Money quotes:

Facebook was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn’t stop us once they realized that was what we were doing.
They came to office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.

BryantD8• 8 years ago

The major differences:

1. The Democrats didn't harvest the data under false pretenses; the data came from people who signed up for a political app.

2. The Democratic campaign data wasn't illegally transferred from one company to another.

But I agree that the Obama campaign's actions should have been a flag and we should have worried harder about it, even if they weren't as bad as what Cambridge Analytica did.

dontparticipate• 8 years ago

Quality whataboutism that doesn't change the overall debate about these practices. You do realize they talked about exactly this in the linked article right?

veidr• 8 years ago

(Yeah yeah "I don't trust your source", but my methamphetamine-enthusiast uncle assures me that Safeway supermarket lets the Jews decide how much salt your food is allowed to have, and Gwyneth Paltrow's magnet stickers can totally cure hemorrhoids...)

dbnoch• 8 years ago

IMO the point is the origin application. A Campaign App used for that purpose vs. an app that shows you what your face would look like when you were older to swing distorted news.

degenerate• 8 years ago

This is already how HIPAA forces data decisions in the health care industry. We ask ourselves: "Is it worth the time and effort to store patient PII?"

If the answer is no, we don't store it.

downandout3• 8 years ago

"...and apparently has already been abused (some might even say weaponized) in a major election."

While it's clear that CA/Russians/whoever tried to influence the election through these techniques, is anyone aware of any studies or evidence that they actually affected anything at all? Has anyone even done a survey asking people if they either did not turn out to vote, or changed the candidate they were going to vote for, based on paid advertising they saw on Facebook?

I'm genuinely curious about this, I'm not trying to be argumentative. After this erupted yesterday, I went looking and found nothing. This whole thing may be much ado about nothing.

neuronexmachina2• 8 years ago

I think this ultimately comes down to the problem of attribution in marketing -- how do you determine if an ad or story is effective in actually influencing somebody to buy a product or vote for a candidate? We know millions of people engaged with content from Russian trolls masquerading as Americans, but (like any marketing campaign with an offline action) it's difficult to quantitatively measure the ultimate impact they had.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/02/the-r...

lr4444lr2• 8 years ago

When broadband got reclassified by the FCC under the "huge loss" for Net Neutrality, a little noticed M.O.U. was published as part of that decision that explicitly stated the FTC would be now be beefing up its presence to protect the consumer. It's only in Facebook's interest if they believe they'll get caught. If they think they can sell this data for profit and escape scrutiny, they will. Here's hoping this is a sign of more work to come from the FTC.

kevin_thibedeau• 8 years ago

Acxiom and others of the old guard have been doing exactly the same for 40+ years. Why should Facebook be singled out for voluntary disclosures when the data mining industry has far more aggregious transgressions.

swombat• 8 years ago

Isn't the FCC being run by a Trump shill at the moment? I mean, they just repealed net neutrality, I doubt they're going to go around imposing fines on Trump buddies now are they...

Karunamon2• 8 years ago

FTC, not FCC in this case. And what was repealed was a huge blob of legislation called Title 2, not “net neutrality”.

greggarious• 8 years ago

If Facebook indeed violated the 2011 consent decree, then the FTC can fine them up to "thousands of dollars a day per violation [per user]". This presents the FTC with the opportunity to send a message to these data hoarders: protect the data you collect, or else.

No one ever seems to get the maximum fine in America, often because it would "destroy the company".

But we're willing to execute living people.

As the old adage says: I'll believe corporations are people when they execute one in Texas.

api2• 8 years ago

In the long term we need HIPAA style regulation for all kinds of personal data: friend graphs, behavioral histories, private messages, and especially things like location data or voice assistant audio samples.

Leak such data without explicit customer consent? That will be $10,000 per incident. So if you leak 100 data points of someone's location history that will be a $1,000,000 fine.

Explicit consent must be per-incident as in "YES I give my consent to send this information to <recipient> for purpose of <...>."

That would incentivize strong security practices and even more importantly dis-incentivize data hoarding beyond what is needed to provide a service. Hoarded personal data would be a gigantic risk and liability.

mixmastamyk• 8 years ago

Yes, always thought it weird that folks are so protective about health data but nothing else. Why the dichotomy?

moduspol8• 8 years ago

It would just pass the buck. What everyone on HN is clamoring for will result in basically more bureaucracy and longer EULAs with no actual change in business practice.

Businesses don't take it seriously because people don't actually care. Some do. The vast majority don't. They might say so in a survey, but at the end of the day, Facebook (and companies like it) will continue to survive doing what they always have been and people will continue using those services.

That's the root of the issue, though. People really don't care as much as posters on HN think they do. If we could acknowledge that, I think we could come up with better solutions.

CaptainZapp2• 8 years ago

The GDPR should take care of that to a large degree.

Consent must be asked for in a clear understandable fashion.

Burrying some legalese crap at page 29 of your 12'000 word TOS doesn't cut it.

Could be that Facebook tries to push the envelope yet again. They may come to regret it.

portofcall4• 8 years ago

That's the root of the issue, though. People really don't care as much as posters on HN think they do. If we could acknowledge that, I think we could come up with better solutions.

FB didn’t drop billions in value because nobody cares, it’s just that most people take a lot of repetition to grasp the scope of the issue.

api2• 8 years ago

"People don't care" about things like this until there are consequences. Nobody cares about pollution until it impacts their health or destroys their property. Nobody cares about financial crime until it crashes the economy and costs them their job.

I think we're reaching the point where all these data mining honeypots we've built over the past 20 years are being used in ways that are nefarious enough that people are starting to care.

pacala• 8 years ago

[Spammers] don't take it seriously because people don't actually care. Some do. The vast majority don't. They might say so in a survey, but at the end of the day, Facebook (and companies like it) will continue to survive doing what they always have been and people will continue using [email].

madeofpalk• 8 years ago

This is basically what GDPR is.

mrlala2• 8 years ago

Yeah but then who is going to pay to use every single website? I'm going to do that. I'd rather they spend all this time attempting to show me ads that I will never see and be able to use great sites/apps for free rather than keep paying everytime I want to go to a website.

hapnin• 8 years ago

The Executive Branch deflecting from the Executive Branch.

bantunes2• 8 years ago

That's why regulation always comes to be - no company can be trusted to do the right thing on its own.

goatlover• 8 years ago

And that's what libertarians fail to grasp.

DINKDINK• 8 years ago

Methods for choosing to ensure a market that operates how the public wants:

Regulation: Laws that mandate exactly how something should be done and if the company doesn't do it that way they are shut down - with no regard to whether or not the legally-mandated process achieves the end. Quite literally it's politicians controlling the means to hope that a certain end occurs, regardless of that end being achieved. Prone to regulatory capture, rent seeking, anticompetitive practices. Apt for: when a negative outcome will absolutely devastate the public, there isn't much variability in how to achieve the end, the domains in which the market operates are stable.

Tort Law: A company is free to change how some process works but is able to be held financially liable for all ramifications of their process. Prone to failure if the assets of a company are less than the damage they can produce. Apt for: a new market which is highly dynamic, the state of the art is constantly changing, ruin is limited to customers who have chosen to engage with the company (no to little externalities).

Neocons: in favor of no regulation and castrated tort remedies Neoliberals: in favor of bloated regulation (rent seeking) and symbolic tort remedies: Libertarians: in favor of /extremely/ limited regulation and strong tort remedies.

camillomiller• 8 years ago

But... the market... Oh, the damage that neolibertarianism has done.

daodedickinson4• 8 years ago

Neolibs are dead. Trump was elected on "'free' trade is unfair trade" and if Dems want to change some things on this front it can happen.

kodablah3• 8 years ago

That's a strange statement. What about all the regulation that doesn't come to be? To take your statement to its logical conclusion would allow no company to do anything on its own.

Also, a statement like "no company can be trusted to do the right thing on its own" is obviously untrue, doesn't account for many of us with companies out here, and harms your overall point when you make these kinds of broad generalizations.

gt_• 8 years ago

‘can’t be trusted to do’ != ‘does not do’

zerostar07• 8 years ago

.. or government

Aunche4• 8 years ago

Despite what Redditors like to say, the big banks have done a surprisingly good job at self regulating since the financial crisis. That said, these regulations will probably lax as people get more confident and comfortable with taking risks.

munificent• 8 years ago

a surprisingly good job at self regulating since the financial crisis.

The financial crisis was less than ten years ago. That's like calling a drunk driver "responsible" for going a whole week sober since that time they crashed into a minivan and killed an entire family.

redial• 8 years ago

Wells Fargo did excellent.

marcell3• 8 years ago

FWIW having worked at Google, I can tell you they take these issues pretty seriously there. This is largely because of a few self inflicted wounds early in the company’s life.

jonathanyc7• 8 years ago

Which is why Google collects location data even when location services are disabled, right?

Let’s not pretend Google is holier-than-Facebook.

https://qz.com/1131515/google-collects-android-users-locatio...

SirLJ• 8 years ago

Nothing will change with government regulations, those companies like Facebook, Google, etc are gold mines for the FBI, CIA, NSA and other 3 letter organizations, so in the interest of national security, they will continue to harvest the user data... Only major boycott can do some damage...

mtgx3• 8 years ago

Wait a minute.....

Wasn't the FTC already "monitoring" Facebook?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ftc-to-monitor-facebook-for-20-...

Oh, that's right. That whole monitoring for 20 years thing, that they're also applying to Google and a few other companies is a complete joke. If anything, it has become almost a badge of honor/certification thing - like "Look, the FTC is monitoring us for 20 years, so that obviously means we can't possibly abuse your data or do anything nefarious with it!"

davidgordon5• 8 years ago

Let us please remember that these incidents are not specific to Facebook, rather they are systemic to the big five.

A couple of years or more I was posting on Facebook regarding Cambridge Analytica's practices and was considered a tin foil hat and crazy.

No the reason I was able to shed some light at the time was I knew exactly how we could utilize the Facebook API back then to elicit the kind of data we are talking about, and completely legally. Nobody needed to circumvent FB API policies, it was yours for the taking.

I didn't do it although I did put together multiple PoC's from 2011 to 2014 to see what was possible and it was bad.

Another thing we should remember is that Cambridge Analytica is just one small tip of a fractal iceberg whose body is Facebook and the big five, your internet connection and certainly your smartphone themselves.

Google, Apple and Amazon are no less culpable in this regard.

The question now becomes which side of history we want to be on.

Another question is we assume we want to take our privacy back and how we do that with consent and assurance.

I don't have a Facebook account anymore but I'm still tracked as we all are. My mother doesn't like me not being there but a small price to pay. I can contact her elsewhere and do.

Surely enough is enough?

I think it is time to look for broad scale technologies that are better both in the real world and in our private world.

robin_reala3• 8 years ago

Out of interest, is there any evidence that Apple are collating data and making it available to 3rd parties in the same way as Facebook? They like to position themselves as more caring of the user’s privacy than the rest, but I’d definitely like to know more about any problems.

davidgordon5• 8 years ago

Lack of evidence is conspicuous in of itself, although that right now is tin foil hat territory. I'll tell you in a few years.

On the other hand I'd refer you to Bletchley Park.

Turing et al knew the decrypted Enigma messages but the Government were unable to act.

For good reason.

Secrecy is a thing

rockinghigh• 8 years ago

Unlike Google and Facebook, Apple does not make money by selling user profiles for marketers to target.

CaptSpify4• 8 years ago

Apple likes to loudly proclaim that they care about protecting their user's data, but they also refuse to put their money where their mouth is. That to me is telling enough.

I do think it's important to note that I have not seen direct evidence of them abusing that data, but we've seen plenty of companies/governments/organizations doing bad things for years without direct evidence.

tunesmith• 8 years ago

Isn't facebook embedded in iOS to some degree?

Clanan• 8 years ago

I think this is good advice, not only because it generalizes the problem, but also because it avoids the politicization of the topic re: Cambridge. This shouldn't be viewed as a left vs. right problem.

davidgordon5• 8 years ago

Absolutely and hits the nail on the head.

We can't be seen to pick on Facebook or CA here since there is a bigger picture.

It's not about picking on anyone, it's about a line being crossed and bringing it back home.

Thank you for your comment.

IAmEveryone• 8 years ago

It might be beneficial to engage in such fiction, seeing how unable the right is to even pretend to put country above self-interest with regards to election hacking.

But let’s not pretend that this fiction is true. Only one campaign hired this company. And if they are bragging to journalists now that they are willing to entrap politicians with hired prostitutes, I’m fairly certain they would have had some things in their sales pitch two years ago that would raise red flags in an ethical campaign.

The people you hire are a reflection of your character. And if they end up arrested one after another, it becomes less and less likely to just be bad luck.

davidgordon5• 8 years ago

Another point is even if Cambridge Analytica didn't exist, Facebook itself would and are doing the same things themselves, although not over a 50M population radius but over a billion. With a budget to match.

droopybuns• 8 years ago

If we’re going to go this route, Google should be hauled in first. You can easily choose not to play with Facebook. Google? Not so much.

Etheryte• 8 years ago

I don’t see how this argument makes sense. You can opt out of using Google’s services just the same, if you so choose.

adtac• 8 years ago

Tbh, Google has a monopoly over search, but Facebook does not have a monopoly over social networks. Bing and DDG are much smaller competitions to Google in comparison to what Twitter, Snapchat, et al. are to Facebook.

This means you don't have much choice when it comes to search, but you do when it comes to social networks. Obviously, you can live without both; but if you need both search and social networks in your life, it's obvious which company is more powerful. (IMO you can live without social networks, but not without search engines.)

aylmao3• 8 years ago

I have to disagree, and hopefully can make a better job at convincing you than the other comments. In terms of search "google" is a verb for a reason, but I actually do think you could use other search engines, true, I agree.

What worries me is Android however. Perhaps not in the US, but in a lot of other places around the world Android is the only operating system accessible to people and a large majority of the market, since iPhones are an impossible purchase. Phone manufacturers depend on Android like computer manufacturers once depended on Windows.

Apple is raking in the profits because it controls the vertical and sells expensive phones in premium markets, but in terms of raw market share things seem to be shaping towards a Mircosoft/Windows like situation. Android is close to passing the 75% mark [1] and judging by sales it probably will [2].

Maybe we're still not quite there, but it's shaping up in that direction. Facebook def has the lion's share on social networking, and messaging, but I can't help but believe that when it comes to Facebook it's mostly network effects keeping people in, since there are plenty of other (and sometimes better) messaging apps, lots of photo-sharing apps, and alternatives for event planning, getting your news, posting updates, etc.

Idk if "Google should be hauled in first", but it should def be hauled in too (alongside Amazon, but that's a whole other story).

[1] http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide/#...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266136/global-market-sha...

chapill• 8 years ago

Ah, the other shoe drops. This is the reason for the blitz of anti-Facebook stories all at once... Legal authority to examine all that juicy personal data Facebook holds.

And if you think you are safe because you don't have an account, I have bad news for you.

jdhn• 8 years ago

This is exactly how I see it. The government already has your “official” details like your SSN, bank account info, address and phone number, but it doesn’t have a very good look into the kind of things you like to do. Having access to that data would be a surveillance analyst’s wet dream.

9889095r3jh2• 8 years ago

Nice try. The government already has your Facebook data. https://prod01-cdn07.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/20...

krapp2• 8 years ago

The government doesn't have to resort to conspiracies to get your personal data from Facebook, if it wants it, it can get it. We live in the age of PRISM (in which Facebook is a participant,) secret orders, and NSA bulk surveillance. They could literally just build or hack an app that uses Facebook's API, apparently, or buy something from the black market, or in the narrow case get a warrant.

Not to mention... I don't think this would actually give anyone "Legal authority to examine all that juicy personal data Facebook holds." I don't think "legal authority" actually works that way, but IANAL.

jsonne• 8 years ago

We see companies doing this all the time and I hope there's some sort of fix here, but I'm curious about the individual to individual implications. If we're serious about fixing privacy then things like sharing private messages, doxxing, etc should be addressed as well imho. Not sure what that would look like without curtailing free speech however.

hodder• 8 years ago

To put the FB selloff into a market perspective: -Equifax is only off 13% from its peak after its unprecedented leak of nearly every American and many Canadians' credit info, leaving the population vulnerable to identity theft. The population mostly never agreed to give Equifax this information, but Equifax collects it anyways.

FB is off 8.5% now as a client business failed to adhere to FB users' privacy for data that the users were willingly giving out to FB and the client (but not the third party). Not likely much more downside to the stock on this news imo.

matthewmcg• 8 years ago

Perhaps the market's reaction reflects the widespread belief that this publicity may drive users away from Facebook, whereas Consumers can't really opt out of Equifax's collection.

candybar• 8 years ago

I'm somewhat surprised by the amount of criticism levied at Facebook here. Consider the following:

1) Both Android and iOS allow apps to access your contacts, which in aggregate is more or less the same kind of social graph that Facebook has. If you happen to be in someone else's contacts, you don't get a say here either. I suppose Facebook's data is richer in some ways, but not in other ways.

2) When Twitter removed API access for 3rd parties, there was an uproar in the developer community about how evil this is and so on. There's a trade-off here - openness at the platform level necessarily means less privacy for users.

3) A lot of the criticism Facebook has received in the past (both here and elsewhere) had to do with not allowing 3rd party developers to do more and hoarding user data, which is not theirs, for monetization. Here Facebook was explicitly giving the app owner and the user the power to decide - the app owner could ask and the user could either accept or decline. You could argue that this isn't adequate protection, but consider how this works for other platforms such as Windows, Mac OS, iOS and Android. Apps can access more or less everything and permission dialogs, even where they do exist, aren't taken seriously by the user.

4) Most publishers that are currently publishing these articles criticizing Facebook are also selling everything they know about you to marketers, often more explicitly for the purposes of targeting. The "scandal" here is that a third-party app gathered personal information that wasn't supposed to be used for targeting and the data ended up being used for targeted political ads. Most publishers have no problem explicitly selling whatever data they can get on you to these centralized data brokers who will sell that data to anyone.

5) All this talk about privacy and data aside, the motivation seems to be that the wrong guy won the presidential election - I don't see anyone whose personal data was supposedly used in this manner being upset nor anyone owning up to the fact that they were falsely manipulated into voting for Trump or not voting. It seems to be mainly Clinton supporters being upset that other people were manipulated into voting for the wrong guy, amplified by the same concern about privacy and social graph data ownership issue we've always had.

6) If we accept that it's the presidential election result that most people are upset about here, the media is even more culpable, both from creating this false narrative that it was not a close election and prematurely taking the moral high ground against the potential Clinton administration by focusing on the irrelevant stuff (emails, etc). And that's just the "mainstream" media, before we get to Fox News, etc.

Thriptic4• 8 years ago

The "scandal" here is that a third-party app gathered personal information that wasn't supposed to be used for targeting and the data ended up being used for targeted political ads.

The scandal is that an organization impersonated a health care research entity and knowingly collected PII for use in political actions. Not only is this awful in itself, but it undermines public health by making people distrust legitimate data collection projects for beneficial health purposes. It's similar to when the CIA used a vaccination effort to locate Bin Laden, and now those aid personnel are routinely attacked and not trusted by locals which makes it more difficult to eradicate disease. If you are representing yourself as a health care entity and collecting PII for stated purposes of public health, you are likely bound by HIPAA, and I would like to see people go after this company for HIPAA violations as well as fraud.

dgudkov• 8 years ago

Isn't Facebook valuation is implicitly based on how Facebook can [ab]use personal data?

wildmusings• 8 years ago

The focus of this scandal is curious. Does anyone seriously expect privacy for information that they willingly share with hundreds of people (their facebook friends)?

If you think this kind of information floating around is damaging to society, then you're making an argument against the very idea of FB. Fine; it's at least worth thinking about how social media is changing our society. But to really be upset that this data is out there and being used, after willingly sharing it with many people, is kind of ridiculous. What did you expect? You should assume that anything you do on FB, short of private messages, is part of the public record.

Everyone is targeting you based on information you put out in the world. Every major political campaign in the US works with a database of voters that includes party affiliation, past turnout, name, age, etc. They can also fold in the same data that advertisers use. Being a good citizen of a republic—and a savvy consumer—in the modern world means thinking critically about who is trying to persuade you and what their agenda is. The government cannot protect you from persuasion.

lozzo• 8 years ago

You made your point very clear. Thanks. I concur.

matz1• 8 years ago

In the long run this should not affect facebook much, opportunity to buy FB.

fortythirteen2• 8 years ago

Prediction: Facebook's goal for this investigation will be to make sure the public doesn't learn that Cambridge Analytica was only one of countless political actors that "somehow gained access" the pool of user information.

I was in meetings with FB almost 10 years ago, as the OpenGraph API was being implemented, where they were openly selling, to anyone willing to pay, exactly what CA supposedly "hacked their way into".

mistermann2• 8 years ago

The Obama campaign was very proud of doing something at least as bad, but I don't think we'll see that on the news, which offers a glimpse into what the motives are here.

pcnix• 8 years ago

The Obama campaign was involved in laughably simple PR and door to door efforts compared to the complexity and microtargeting of this one.

space_fountain• 8 years ago

At least as bad seems a bit strong. The impression I'm getting is that they gave out an app explicitly from the campaign that also collected some info. There's a major difference between that and putting out an app and getting info under false pretenses

sakuronto2• 8 years ago

Yes, I too doubt that a very different case from many years ago will appear on the news, which is for current events as far as I'm aware.

soundwave106• 8 years ago

Why does everything have to be US based?

For instance, before this, some of the most ethically questionable censorship stories I have heard from Facebook have had to do with minority groups or various activists in more repressive regimes around the world being blocked or censored.

Likewise, with Cambridge Analytica claiming to have worked with more than 200 elections around the world [1], and Channel 4 not painting an exactly flattering picture of their ethics, it's very possible that some of the most disturbing details that will emerge from this scandal have zilch to do with Donald Trump.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/cambridge-analytica-secretly-...

forapurpose• 8 years ago

Both used Facebook data, but the comparison doesn't go further. The Obama campaign did something very different - as different as legal, ethical medical experiments using informed consent and the tests on the Tuskegee Airmen. I won't repeat what was said elsewhere:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16630214

plaguuuuuu• 8 years ago

In Australia the Liberal party did basically what CA was doing - in 2013. There's a pastebin dump floating around containing the JS code; notably, it flags any of the user's friends who lived in specific electorates (I think they were opposition-held swing seats at the time)

torpfactory• 8 years ago

To any engineers reading this who are now working at Facebook, you have a choice to make:

Stay in the organization and work to turn it away form casual misuse of personal information. Prevent an Orwellian future of machine-learning assisted, personally targeted messaging preying upon our fears and insecurities. Stand up and speak out against the performance of unethical psychological experiments on unwitting participants.

-OR-

Leave now.

This is one of the important moral issues of our time. To stay on the sidelines is unacceptable.

freeone3000• 8 years ago

Or, you could make money off people who don't know what they're giving away and don't care even if they're told, be one of the experimenters, and make a lot of money doing so.

kss238• 8 years ago

I'll take one of these, please

oflannabhra• 8 years ago

In this forum, I think this is the most important comment.

I think there is enough information available for Facebook employees to be faced with a decision, after which they are morally culpable for the growing net-negative effect that Facebook has on society.

I'm not a Facebook engineer--and I'm probably not smart enough to be one--so I can't really say how I would act if faced with an ethical decision to provide for my family or take a stand. However, I think anyone who has been employed by Facebook is capable enough to be able to immediately find comparable employment.

Similarly, I think there were lots of well-meaning people involved in Big Tobacco, who didn't realize they were contributing to the deaths of millions of people. I imagine there was a similar inflection point for them, as well.

(Please note, I do not think Facebook is as damaging to the world as Big Tobacco. I also don't think that individual contributors are as culpable as leadership. I am not comparing the degree of moral evil, but am comparing the complicity of individual contributors.)

RpFLCL• 8 years ago

"put your bodies upon the gears"

I absolutely agree with you that this is a moral decision for the employees. At a former company I pushed to improve our user privacy and decrease our storage of unused personally identifying information.

I left that company when they neutered my project to only affect the UI...

We aren't soldiers following orders, we are humans that can reflect on our actions.

That said, I had the savings to be unemployed for a while, not everyone does.

Khaine• 8 years ago

Just following orders wasn't an acceptable excuse at the Nuremberg trials. It shouldn't be an excuse now.

woolvalley• 8 years ago

Another person's job is an easy thing to sacrifice.

asafira• 8 years ago

Luckily, that wasn't the only option.

kiliantics• 8 years ago

As if someone at facebook will have a hard time being hired elsewhere. But either way, that's what solidarity is all about.

AndrewKemendo• 8 years ago

Prevent an Orwellian future of machine-learning assisted, personally targeted messaging preying upon our fears and insecurities.

Is this the only option?

Why can't it (not necessarily facebook) instead be a "machine-learning assisted, personally targeted messaging to help support your long term goals?"

ppbutt3• 8 years ago

Because it's apparent that's not Facebook's goal.

macspoofing5• 8 years ago

Oh stop with this ridiculous hyberbole. Just stop.

This is one of the important moral issues of our time.

No, it's not. Even if it was (and it's not) I'm not even sure if it would crack the top 100. For example, did you know there are people without access to clean water? There are civil wars? State run gulags? Did you know man-made global climate change is a thing? How about that we're going through an unprecedented ecological collapse? All non-issues. The big moral problem of our time is a social media company that wants to sell you shit.

bpchaps2• 8 years ago

He said one of the most important issues. No need to be on such a strong defense for that.

throwaway20483• 8 years ago

Don't forget the starving children in africa.

mikegioia• 8 years ago

Doesn't this entire issue corroborate the idea that this ISN'T just about a social media company trying to sell us shit?

Two of the issues you mentioned, state run gulags and anthropogenic climate change, are issues really only solvable at the federal level. Facebook's and Cambridge Analytica's ability to influence an election can have a profound effect on those kinds of issues. I mean, we now have a climate change denier in the White House who is dismantling the EPA. If propaganda spreading through Facebook created that, could that not also be partly responsible for our inability to do something about climate change?

That's just one example, but I think you're being just as hyperbolic by saying this wouldn't crack the top 100.

maksimum• 8 years ago

Not that I necessarily agree with OP's "call to action," but as software people we have more potential for impact on software-related issues...

ppbutt3• 8 years ago

Do you realize Facebook has the power to change this all, but instead keeps people misinformed with their obvious malicious intent?

evincarofautumn• 8 years ago

For what it’s worth, when I worked there, all the engineers I met sincerely cared about just…making a useful product, and respecting people’s data in the process. Pretty much the only guaranteed fireable offense was looking at someone’s data without permission and a valid reason, e.g., to directly fix something broken about their account, which almost never required viewing anything private anyway.

Nobody appeared to be “casually misusing” data—I think the problem is that they’re largely just engineers, particularly young ones, naïvely considering only the engineering side of things. All the data queries go through the robust privacy-checking system, so everything is good, right?

In a case like this, they didn’t consider the optics of what happens when someone scrapes the public (at the time) profiles of Facebook users and uses that information for nefarious deeds. What happens when users are angry not because their private data was “breached”—a technical problem with an engineering solution—but because they didn’t realise how much they’d already shared publicly (even if you explicitly told them) and how it could be used to influence them en masse?

felipeerias• 8 years ago

It is not so much that something is wrong, but that everything is working as it should. The system is the problem.

Case in point, Cambridge Analytica used ill-gotten data from 50 million people to craft extremely effective political ads. And since user engagement with those ads was very high… Facebook's algorithm made it cheaper for them to buy even more ads.

patja• 8 years ago

One of the problems with the Facebook API is that it is disconnected from policy on too many points. The policy is all hand-wavy honor system, and the API lets you trample all over the policy.

Case in point, one of the most common policy violations is prefilling the user message on posts made via the API. It is forbidden. But the field is right there for you to abuse and put whatever you want into it. Sure there are some automated enforcement algorithms and policy employees look at things when complaints go up, but if the policy says you can't do it, why on earth does the code allow it?

OK I know the pat answer is that apps are allowed to prompt the user earlier in the workflow for the message, and then use that value when calling the API. That is true but weak (what would it hurt to eliminate that loophole vs. the benefit of no longer having to detect and take enforcement action on an impossible action) -- the point remains, if they really cared about their vaunted policy and protecting the user, they would put more controls directly into the code behind the API to disallow prohibited actions.

These are things where smart engineers can make a difference. Spend some time on the FB Developer Community Group and you will see the flood of questions from developers who are completely ignorant of the policy, even on basic things like "don't use an account with a name other than your own" aka, there are no business or developer accounts. Many of them willfully ignore policy and just do what the code allows them to do. A lot of good could be done by FB devs taking more accountability for how the platform is abused.

avip• 8 years ago

Surely you've deleted your own FB account, and went on to convince your friends and family to follow suit, prior to suggesting that?

macspoofing5• 8 years ago

He made an impassioned plea on the social network of his choice.

strayamaaate• 8 years ago

Reminds me of this quote from the tabbacco industry in the early 90s;

“We don't smoke that shit. We just sell it. We reserve the right to smoke for the young, the poor, the black and the stupid." - R.J. Reynolds executive’s reply when asked why he didn’t smoke

faramarz• 8 years ago

I don't know where else to say this so i'll say it here as it's relavant.

Is there not a way to have a browser extension that would scramble the meta data that is read by websits lik Facebook and Google? so we would still be feeding data to their brain but it would be worthless and random gibbrish. Does that make any snse?

teen• 8 years ago

https://adnauseam.io/

https://noiszy.com/

hawski• 8 years ago

Ok. I know it's off-topic here, but...

Now what's good alternative to Facebook Messanger video calls? Signal doesn't support it - I read that it's in beta, but I can't enable it. Telegram doesn't seem to support it either. Skype is not an alternative.

Is Matrix/Riot good enough right now? For me it should work on Linux, Android and iOS for my family.

Now that I think about it, maybe I should setup some private WebRTC service for video calls. But it seems cumbersome for part of my family. However it probably would be easier for my parents and my in-laws.

EDIT: As Thriptic mentioned Signal indeed does support video calls. I failed to find the functionality, because I expected to see separate button for video call. One has to first start calling and then enable video.

fwdpropaganda3• 8 years ago

Wire works ok for me. I use it on my desktop for video calls. I'm on Ubuntu.

Thriptic4• 8 years ago

Signal supports video calling on mobile at least. I've used it many times.

sgc• 8 years ago

What is a socially acceptable way of getting people interested in Signal? I installed it and use it for messaging (Ive never been able to actually receive an mms with it). But I have not one contact on signal, so it's not doing much for me at this point. My daily work contacts don't seem like a prime target user base.

fwdpropaganda3• 8 years ago

I can't even send pictures on Signal.

dharma1• 8 years ago

Riot is perfectly usable now, works on all the platforms you mentioned and it supports video and voice calls. I'm helping them make the UX/UI more pleasant to use

nhooyr• 8 years ago

Whats wrong with Skype?

mychael• 8 years ago

Facebook is a net negative force in our society. Particularly for the startup ecosystem.

angryasian• 8 years ago

Facebook is just one target right now. Working in ad tech, you know how many data brokers are available and how much information your phone and apps, regardless of OS, leaks real time personal data. The issue is with the ad tech industry as a whole.

TaylorGood• 8 years ago

With these practices or lack of restriction on data pulling at Facebook, is it wrong to assume the board knew about this? Too many brilliant minds on their board, including pmarca, to not understand firms were able to do this.

thrillgore• 8 years ago

Facebook deserves a good deal of criticism for this, but I can't be the only one who thinks this is just a continuation of the anti-startup, anti-social media dialog the major press agencies have been pushing ever since the Election?

rafiki64• 8 years ago

Disclaimer: I'm anti-democracy in it's current form so before you down vote me think through my point carefully.

What I don't get about this whole issue, is that we are basically admitting that the average person who uses these services has poor critical thinking skills and the American democratic process is easily gamed as such. I feel we are trying to fix the wrong thing. Sure, regulate FB and any other company that happens to collect lots of user data I don't have a problem with that. My fundamental issue is that FB is mostly an opt-in service. As far as I can see, the shadow profiles they create on a user who isn't signed up for their services doesn't really contain enough data to be of material impact for the type of things that a company like CA is doing (it's mostly to help in it's ad network to sell you more stuff rather and is rather well anonomyzed).

The only argument against the fact that FB is an opt-in service is that it has a near monopoly on social media and seems to either buy or kill any serious threat. More important than trying to regulate FB's data collection and privacy would be ensuring that our antitrust and monopoly laws are being enforced to remove FB's near monopoly.

Further, I'm not here to defend Facebook, but I feel it's being used as a scapegoat for an easily gamed democratic process where rather than biting the bullet and fixing that, we are saying it's FB and CA are the real evil here. In fact they are not. They are for-profit businesses who are operating within the current regulatory framework they've been provided. It seems obvious to me what really needs to be fixed is a broken electoral process.

googlemike• 8 years ago

Isn't regulating companies like facebook part of fixing the democratic process? Or what did you have in mind?

sbov• 8 years ago

The argument is that even if you give information to a company willingly, they should not be able to do whatever the hell they want with it. We have accepted this maxim for certain pieces of information already, I don't see why it can't apply to other information too.

If you think FB can do no wrong since we willingly give them this information, what do you feel about HIPAA? Why is it okay for FB to sell data I willingly give them but a doctor can't? If the answer is "one is illegal, the other isn't", then you aren't arguing against the idea of it being made illegal, just that we don't currently have a law saying they can't do it. Laws change though.

rafiki64• 8 years ago

FB isn't a life or death service and neither is any social media for that matter. I think we sometimes seem to forget that the world existed and did rather well before the FB ad network made it's debut. At the end of the day that's what FB is. It's a large media company/platform that sells ads. Don't ever forget that. I can chose to not use FB and none of my fundamental rights as a human being are being hurt. Comparing FB and health care is disingenuous. I need health care to survive whether I like it or not. HIPAA exists to prevent the for profit medical and medical insurance model from taking advantage of it's patients privacy, because otherwise they would since patients have no choice but to go to a doctor, and provide lots of detailed personal information to their hospitals, insurance and other health care practitioners.

alexbeloi• 8 years ago

It seems obvious to me what really needs to be fixed is a broken electoral process.

Could you propose an alternative that addresses your points.

lambda_lover• 8 years ago

I think you make a great point here: we absolutely need a population that thinks more critically before they act, whether it's voting or signing up for a service or purchasing a product.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure how realistic that is. I think people just don't want to have to critically think all the time, and it's unrealistic to expect every member of the population to exert constant vigilance against ill will. There are simply too many forces trying to manipulate us and get our attention to expect every person to never mess up ever.

This is where the government steps in. Expect companies to be reasonably transparent about their intentions (signing up for Facebook definitely did not give me adequate warning a decade ago about their intentions with my data, and subsequent changes in their plans were not adequately expressed to me as a user), and reasonably cautious in their expansion (I signed up for Facebook at the age of 12, which is technically against Facebook's TOS. They didn't put enough effort into policing those TOS to kick me off the site at the age of 12, and I certainly wasn't mature enough to understand the breadth of Facebook's TOS. Unfortunately I don't think many non-lawyers are equipped to understand the true meaning of signing up for Facebook, which... is it's own problem).

Basically we need these corporations to be better citizens than then currently are, which shouldn't be terribly hard since they're currently downright psychopathic citizens, exploiting the law and their large workforces to manipulate other citizens at every turn. In a better world than our own, corporations would actually be model citizens, but that's probably not realistic in the capitalist system. And we also need the government to do its job better, by punishing corporations that act selfishly so that others actually have an incentive to behave well.

quotemstr• 8 years ago

How do you distinguish a population that "thinks more critically before they act" and one that lives in constant fear of social backlash? They're two sides of the same coin!

An intellectually free society is one in which one doesn't have to think critically about the potential social and economic ramifications of every remark. It's a society in which people can pitch inchoate ideas, receive feedback, and iterate on worldviews.

That we're increasingly living in an intellectually unfree society isn't the fault of "corporations" and their citizenship. Instead, it's the result of a push toward controlling people in the name of 'fixing' society and preventing 'harm'. History tells us that down this road lies only death and blood.

closeparen3• 8 years ago

There are simply too many forces trying to manipulate us and get our attention to expect every person to never mess up ever. This is where the government steps in

If government should step in to prevent manipulation by misinformation, then one or both of the New York Times and Fox News needs to be shut down, depending on who you ask.

rafiki64• 8 years ago

I agree to a certain extent. I'm not a fan of legalese and do think things like TOS should be much simpler. To have rational consumers who think critically we need to remove hurdles for people to think critically. But here's my main issue. Our economy and governments are built on the premise of rational consumers. If that basic assumption isn't in place then let's stop the facade, call it out for what it is and change the system. Let's look into a technocracy or epistocracy. Let's stop pretending that America can function as an unfettered capitalist nation and really it needs elements of socialism to function properly and reduce concentration of power and wealth.

braderhart• 8 years ago

I would like them to review my numerous fake profile reports to Facebook, which they ignored... it was probably in the 100s during this last election. They failed to act and I am pretty sure that they promote, allow and encourage the use of bots and fake accounts on their social network as it helps inflate their user count.

jliptzin• 8 years ago

Why don’t they just offer the option to turn off ads? If there’s no ads to show to you because you’re paying to opt out, there should be no reason to harvest your personal info. They have 2 billion active users and make around $50 billion a year. So they’d need to charge $2 per user per month to opt out of ads (and could probably charge more). The fact that this isn’t even an option just reeks of their holier than thou corporate attitude.

TAForObvReasons2• 8 years ago

The type of person to pay to turn off ads is generally the type of person that advertisers want to influence.

mrlala2• 8 years ago

I don't know about that.. those are probably the people who it's way harder to influence, or even not possible. It's not worth their time. Focus on the.. I don't know.. 70%? who doesn't care if ads are flying across their screen, it's easy to influence them.

ablanton• 8 years ago

I love how now this issue is alright to talk about on hacker news. For some reason when it was happening and all of the alarms were going off, it was banned content on hacker news. Technology is inherently political with political ramifications. -_-

askatwork• 8 years ago

As someone who wants to seen the societal view of facebook change, what's prevents a viral uninstall campaign from happening to facebook? #UninstallFacebook

myegorov• 8 years ago

Sincere question: It appears that it's crystal clear to everyone where the distinction between fake and real news lies, or who should be allowed to post (mis)information (serve ads, if you prefer) on the interwebs, or how to identify the culprits exhaustively. I fail to see a way in practice to draw the boundary and identify/persecute the offenders. Imho virtually all ads spread misinformation (push someone's agenda) to my detriment. My only means of resistance is inherent in my duty (civic, but also self-serving -- to keep my sanity) to consciously make the effort to seek/filter through multiple viewpoints.

StanislavPetrov• 8 years ago

Its simply astounding that the "use of personal data" is seemingly coming as a revelation to anyone. What's especially ridiculous is that arms of the government (like the FTC) are feigning indignation. The US government is - by far - the biggest collector and aggregator of personal data and information in the world. Both the government, corporations, "social media companies", and everyone else with access to data has been doing the same, and using this data to create models to influence people believe and support (or buy) whatever agenda or product that respective organization is pushing. Unfortunately this latest episode of faux outrage is very much like the faux outrage that has infected our cultural landscape for the last 18 months (due to Trump). Things that have been going on for decades are suddenly being attacked as evils unique to Trump. If the net result of this selective outrage led to substantive changes in our society, then perhaps it the outrage would be a "good" thing (despite its manufactured nature). Unfortunately, its very clear that all of these practices - the data mining, the troll farms, the bot-networks, the propaganda (both public and private) - will roll forward at full steam once Trump is consigned to the wastebin of history (where he belongs). Once the reigns of power are back into the hands of a trusted steward of global US military empire (rather than a deluded carnival barker) you should have absolutely no doubt that Comcast, and GE, and Disney will direct their minions in the media to focus your outrage somewhere else.

mattnewton2• 8 years ago

I’m no fan of Facebook, and welcome this scrutiny. But what about all the people Facebook buys data from? Can we regulate them? What about Equifax?

All these corps do it without even the veneer of informed consent; we should make sure we criminalize the activity and not just crucify a well known practitioner and call it a day.

Myrannas• 8 years ago

At a previous employer we had a high up executive from Facebook come out to give a presentation.

One of my main take away was that one of FBs big goals was to build a 'knowledge economy'. It struck me as a bit of an odd objective at the time, but I think I am now starting to understand what this means (and it's a little scary).

kgc• 8 years ago

Not as bad as Equifax, yet... all this hoopla.

fleetingmoments• 8 years ago

I don't have much of an issue with targeted advertising or content by harvesting of data through what you make publicly available, as long as it is de-identified. It has plenty of applications for good as well. I hope that platforms are working on ways of taking these algorithms to edge nodes, making large master databases containing un-aggregated data that can be used to de-anonymise people less prevalent.

I'm more immediately concerned about blatantly fake news, clickbait, bots, sock-puppets and fake accounts posing as trusted parties in order to harvest trusted information and spread misinformation.

FTC Probing Facebook for Use of Personal Data, Source Says

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