WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17145200/brian-acton-delete-facebook-whatsapp

by coloneltcb • 8 years ago

1086 625 8 years ago

Sonnol53• 8 years ago

did he leave after the acquisition? or is he still involved in the company?

In 2014, Facebook bought WhatsApp for $16 billion, making its co-founders — Jan Koum and Brian Acton — very wealthy men. Koum continues to lead the company, but Acton quit earlier this year to start his own foundation.

It's in the first two sentences. Action is one of the co-founders of WhatsApp

hannasanarion2• 8 years ago

What he was asking is the last sentence. He quit WhatsApp to help make Signal.

tptacek• 8 years ago

Acton recently donated $50MM to Open Whisper Systems (Signal) and is now involved with their board.

swyx• 8 years ago

technically he did start a Facebook competitor (loosely speaking), he just happened to have been bought by them!

hannasanarion2• 8 years ago

And then he quit his company to work on another competitor!

He gave 40 million dollars to and works on Signal, the app that WhatsApp is basically a skin of anyway.

hprotagonist• 8 years ago

50 million, i believe.

walrus0110• 8 years ago

I would be very curious to learn what sort of non-disparagement clauses existed in the Whatsapp/Facebook purchase contract. And how exactly they were worded.

fancyfacebook2• 8 years ago

I don't think anyone at Facebook has the bandwidth to deal with a mean tweet from an old employee right now. If rumors are to be believed mass resignations are coming.

walrus0110• 8 years ago

Probably not, but it can mean a great deal if it gets media traction, and Acton would go in the category of "founder made into a billionaire" rather than "employee". It's not like he was some random engineer in a pool of a hundred engineers.

Alex3917• 8 years ago

If rumors are to be believed mass resignations are coming.

Is this just inside knowledge, or has it been published anywhere yet?

mistermann• 8 years ago

Where did you hear this, and what's the reason? Just various rats taking their millions or billions and getting out while the getting a good?

flylib• 8 years ago

unlikely

aioprisan• 8 years ago

Facebook is the new Uber.

gnicholas• 8 years ago

If we use Twitter to announce that people should #deletefacebook, what social network do we use in the event that it becomes necessary to #deletetwitter?

walrus0110• 8 years ago

you ssh into your own trusted openbsd system, run bitchx and connect to efnet, just like the good lord intended back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

i am only partially sarcastic here.

lgregg3• 8 years ago

you lost me after openbsd.

djsumdog• 8 years ago

I do miss the mad west of the IRC/NNTP days. I also miss multiple search engines. Yahoo/Lycos/Hotbot/Dogpile/AltaVista all give you different results and you could have fun searching around.

The current Internet is a monoculture

peterwwillis• 8 years ago

you can afford a dedicated openbsd system?! i'd have to use a friend's free shell account and hope i don't get klined (again)

dopamean2• 8 years ago

irssi

lazyjones2• 8 years ago

IRC, so awesome, until local server admins began k-lining people for disagreeing with them.

sureaboutthis• 8 years ago

An aside and coincidentally, WhatsApp runs on FreeBSD.

threeseed• 8 years ago

It's the wrong question.

Social networks are nothing more than a reflection of our society. Blaming Facebook and Twitter is easy but the hard part is dealing with the polarisation in politics, the intransingence of Russia, the inability of people to know who to trust and what is real or not and the slow disintegration of our institutions.

The real question is how do you fix society ?

ggg99905• 8 years ago

The same can be said about a lot of things like littering, gun violence, etc, but there’s still things you can do to treat the symptomz

moosebear• 8 years ago

I think both questions are good.

People ask for tools and then the tools shape them.

ahtu1232• 8 years ago

Having access to the detailed user data of billions of users is definitely something new and it's being used for efficient propaganda worldwide. FB has again completely naively unleashed a beast they had no intention or intuition on how to control. Anyone who remembers Facebooks early days should not be the least bit surprised that they are playing fast and loose once again.

wu-ikkyu4• 8 years ago

The digital economy at large is based on the mass manipulation and abuse of negative emotions. Profit over people.

"We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin [applause], we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

Dr. King, Beyond Vietnam (1967)

http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentse...

f2n• 8 years ago

Mastadon

drngdds• 8 years ago

Mastodon or other decentralized platforms. Or nothing. That's a pretty good option too.

trimbo• 8 years ago

Post to your .plan file

fabianhjr• 8 years ago

Scuttlebutt, a decentralized social network. ( http://scuttlebutt.nz/ )

I do miss the mad west of the IRC/NNTP days

Plus, a lot of new people on there have described it like that. https://viewer.scuttlebot.io/%25WJZGMingRgdlOTrZJjOz7GHnS1D9...

TheSmiddy• 8 years ago

I've been using MeWe recently, it's basically like classic facebook (chronological, not full of crap you didn't sign up for) but sadly doesn't have a critical mass of users yet.

kawfey• 8 years ago

As a ham radio nerd, packet bulletin board systems should really make a comeback. They fell apart as the internet came about, but in an effort to re-invigorate the now-unused spectrum and hardware TNCs[1] all over the place, APRS[2] was created, which has this nifty feature[3]. We also have a type of email system called Winlink[4] (which runs using the ARDOP protocol[5] or VARA[6] replacing Winmor[7] and Pactor[8]).

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_node_controller

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Packet_Reporting_Sys...

[3]https://aprs.fi/

[4]https://www.winlink.org/

[5]https://www.winlink.org/content/ardop_overview

[6]https://rosmodem.wordpress.com/

[7]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winmor

[8]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PACTOR

Froyoh• 8 years ago

Why but just use Facebook to announce you're nuking your FB account and Twitter to announce the same

chimen• 8 years ago

Smart tactic since Facebook is on fire and Whatsapp is directly pulled into discussions concerning privacy and whatnot.

Curious if he can dish out some facts to backup that tweet or it's just a "convenient" time to shed some light over your new product which is basically another..Whatsapp

matte_black• 8 years ago

Don’t let billionaires tell you what to do.

walrus0110• 8 years ago

the whatsapp cofounders strike me as accidental billionaires, it's not like we're talking about standard oil, jp morgan, the louis dreyfus company or a typical old money davos-attendee billionaire.

paulcole3• 8 years ago

accidental billionaires

Not sure if you were being clever but that’s the title of a book about Facebook’s history.

spyspy• 8 years ago

You weren’t alive for the founding of any of those companies.

isostatic3• 8 years ago

Jan Koum Is entertaining. He was a frequent flyer and wanted to build an app that could tell people what time zone the person they are talking to was in, that they were on a flight, etc

He posted on flyertalk about it and got a "meh, you have to install something? Why bother?" response

5 years later, as a frequent flyer he was into collecting miles and using them on tickets, and he had managed to get business class flights to mobile world congress in Barcelona, but while the deal was going through to sell whatsapp to Facebook there were a couple of delays. Nothing major.

He thought to himself "these are non changeable tickets, they'd better get a move on", then reflected how absurd a position he was in.

1: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-technology/952359-tho...

barbs• 8 years ago

Hahaha, I love some of the replies when he revisted the thread 4 years later:

" Isn't this one of the apps that take all your contacts from your device and upload them to a remote server? Since I have many non-contact entries in my address book (e.g. a contact card with DOB's, passport numbers, etc.), I'm reluctant to use such an app since it would indiscriminately take all this personal information and store it on a remote server.

I stick with Skype b/c basically, by logging in with a distinct login/password (as opposed to a MS ID linked to my other MS programs and accounts) and saving only limited information in Skype's address book, I'm limited the amount of data Skype would have and could take and save."

Odd to think some people used to believe Skype was more secure than WhatsApp, though to be fair, WhatsApp used to send (and store I believe) messages in plaintext.

walrus0110• 8 years ago

It's really funny when you look now at what are the default app permissions in a standard consumer configuration of Windows 10 Home. And what Microsoft by default allows Skype to use. It's basically fully enmeshed with peoples' contact lists, and for business users, whatever other features of Office365 they keep squeezing skype into.

avree• 8 years ago

I think you're reading a lot into the single response he got.

For anyone who doesn't want to click through, the reply said:

"It appears that this requires the other party to also have the app installed, right?"

There's nothing that could be even remotely translated to "why bother" or "meh" in the response. It's a simple question.

isostatic3• 8 years ago

It was more the lack of reaponses that made me think it was a meh. Also I hadn't read the thread for a year or two and was going if memory when I wrote the post, did a search later.

ttul• 8 years ago

I overheard a billionaire say he got worried when the market for his primary stockholding dipped by 20%. “I lost $200M. I actually started worrying I might go broke. Then I realized I still had $1.2B...”

isostatic3• 8 years ago

I suspect people who transition from working class (and I mean it in a sense that you have to work to earn an income to keep a roof over your head, be that $30k/yr or $300k/yr) to capital class (meaning their assets fund their dynasty without sweat, in good times and bad, $100m+ type people) struggle to realise what it actually means to not have to worry about money, and that money is just a way of keeping score.

Likewise a lot of the wealthy people have no real concept of the fact if you don't work, you don't eat. Maybe you've got savings that tide you over for a year or two, or even a 401k that keeps you going for the rest of your life, but that's not really the same thing.

laurex• 8 years ago

Alert: this comment may be seen as self serving.

I work on an app that has been gaining popularity precisely because it's a way to keep in touch with family and friends with no social media aspect (called Marco Polo, a video walkie talkie). I'm curious if there is going to be enough of a backlash to return to more organic face to face (and actually interactive) communication versus broadcast mode and pretending to be something that will seem impressive. That seems to be true of our users anyway.

whalesalad• 8 years ago

No. This is a fad and will blow over in a few days. No one cares that this happened outside of the security community.

dpwm• 8 years ago

No. This is a fad and will blow over in a few days.

I'm not sure you're right. This is spilling into all areas. We don't even know if CA has done all the damage it is going to yet.

No one cares that this happened outside of the security community.

This has very little to do with security and very much to do with Facebook's policies.

tomrod• 8 years ago

My family loves this app but I've heartily resisted due to privacy concerns. What data do you collect now, and what data do you intend to collect in the future?

asteli• 8 years ago

That was part of Snapchat's charm, I think. No pressure to perform, just do silly things with your friends. Then Snap needed to make money, so they got into the content and the advertising and added Stories and 'influencers,' and it's basically the same as any other social network now.

propman• 8 years ago

I don't get what changed? We've knows Facebook tracks everything, we've known Google does the same thing. If you've ever developed anything in messenger even today, it's amazing how much information is given. We know all these sites track everything you do outside of Facebook too. Everyone has been trying to get them to stop, we know it's illegal to build a profile on someone but Facebook gets around that by building a profile but not assigning it to your direct name.

Regulations should have sprouted in Obama years, but the admin and tech execs were too buddy buddy and no way Trump promotes this because it makes him look like he is accepting Russia interfered and it's not politically expedient for him to do so.

Same thing with Harvey Weinstein and all the metoo that was known by everyone. I mean I'm happy with all of this coming out, but why now? How is it so coordinated? Usually these guys pay journalists for fluff pr counter views or to shut down stories. Weinstein did.

Is this Data just a metoo thing? Is google next?

coolso• 8 years ago

I don't get what changed?

What changed is it helped the current President get elected.

The only people who really used to care about Facebook's behavior were people in niche online tech circles like HN. But then the election happened, and the media has been beating the "Facebook is evil" drum very loudly ever since.

justboxing2• 8 years ago

We've knows Facebook tracks everything

Not disputing this, but when you say 'we' I think you mean the < 5% (maybe even < 1%) of techies and lawyers and journalists in the world who really really care about their data and privacy.

The rest 95% either don't know, or could care less even if they know. I've told my non-techie fam and friends about data harvesting, privacy, and how facebook tracks everything, only to be ignored or outright ridiculed ("Oh you techies are so paranoid").

Many of my friends in India (where I was raised) and elsewhere used to freely post their phone # and home address on my wall asking me to call them / send them stuff from US. I don't think this 95% population really cares or gives a sh*t.

walrus0110• 8 years ago

The rest 95% either don't know, or could care less even if they know. I've told my non-techie fam and friends about data harvesting, privacy, and how facebook tracks everything, only to be ignored or outright ridiculed ("Oh you techies are so paranoid").

pretty much exactly my experience with Canadian and American family. People didn't give one iota of a fuck when the Snowden revelations came out because they just assumed that it was the case already.

I think the average techie underestimates how important platform lockin + user interface design + ubiquity are. Once something like Facebook Messenger has reached a critical market share trying to get people to stop using it, no matter how privacy violating FB may be, is about as effective as trying to get people in the year 1985 to disconnect their house's analog telephone line.

ramphastidae• 8 years ago

Yep. I’ve been explaining this stuff to friends for years. Even the most intelligent and rational dismiss it as paranoia or say, “I don’t care, I have nothing to hide anyway.”

mrhappyunhappy• 8 years ago

People got so comfortable with ease of being able to reach anyone anywhere and in one place of all places that they have been conditioned to give up all privacy. Today's environment is a heaven for law enforcement agencies, marketing agencies and cybercriminals. It's too easy to manipulate, build profiles and do just about anything with anyone you'd like to Target. One could argue that while technology improves various aspects of our lives it also dumbs us down to the point of being totally numb to sanity.

sgustard2• 8 years ago

People care, but assume it's inevitable. The government knows everything about me since I have to pay taxes. Likewise the banks because I have to keep my money somewhere. Likewise my cell provider because I need a phone to participate in society. Social media is not as high on the necessity list, but once you've already accepted this inevitability, how much is going to change if you give up Facebook? There is a downside which is measurable if you value the social contact. The upside is completely abstract and un-measurable. What outcome could you ever point to and say, this thing X happened specifically because I gave up Facebook?

amrx1012• 8 years ago

People are fucking okay with their data being in public. They even fucking post any slight event in their lives.

azinman22• 8 years ago

They’re starting to. They just need enough examples of something having gone wrong with huge consequences. This is one of them.

leoharsha2• 8 years ago

I have nothing to hide” - most of the people a pregnant teenager being outed by the store Target, after it mined her purchase data – larger handbags, headache pills, tissues – and sent her a “congratulations” message as marketing, which her unknowing father got instead. Oops!

Don't confuse privacy with secrecy. I know what you do in the bathroom, but you still close the door. That’s because you want privacy, not secrecy. I found this article very interesting about FB - http://www.salimvirani.com//facebook/ reply

jfoster• 8 years ago

It's very simple. No one will care unless it has a tangible effect on their lives. For that reason, if it does have a tangible effect on peoples' lives, Facebook is doing it wrong.

woodandsteel• 8 years ago

Maybe ask them how they would feel if a little robot owned by some giant corporation was following them around every day, all day long. And imagine the corporation had similar robots following everyone else around, even children. And tell them the corporation made its money by selling the information it collected to anyone who could pay. And tell them some of the purchasers use the information for various nasty things, like identity theft, And then ask them how they would feel if the robots were invisible, so they didn't realize they were being monitored. And then tell them that is what is actually happening today.

adamnemecek• 8 years ago

Up until now the bug was known but it wasn't clear it's exploitable. Now there's an exploit and everyone's getting exploited so people are freaking out.

skybrian4• 8 years ago

How do you know Google does the same thing? What can you get out of Google by writing an app?

Off the top of my head, I don't think Google even has most people's friends lists (outside Orkut back in the day, and Google+, which isn't so popular). They do have contact lists in Gmail, which is a bit different.

There is address book spamming via mobile apps, but again, there are permissions. How good are they?

It seems like it's "the same thing" only if you ignore all technical detail. We should be able to do better than that!

HenryBemis• 8 years ago

Google absolutely harvests all info they can get. They scan gmails, they monitorig everything on all Android phones, even when you disable something [1].

It's just that Google maybe be a bit hesitant to sell data to 3rd parties, since they abuse them themselves :)

(and this is the price of a 'free' service).

[1] https://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/google-tracking-user-loca...

46844995• 8 years ago

You are implying friends list is the main factor here. Let's assume you are right. Still, Google may have a database for people you might know, you just don't know its existence yet. They don't have to let you input your contacts voluntarily to find out about your relationships. For example, have you used Google Maps? You search a place, Google tells you popular time of that place, how did they get the data? If they are able to do things like that, they might also be able to know who (or which Google account) you spend time with and where, they just don't have reasons to tell you they have the data or they have deep learned the data for various purposes.

We just don't have a whistleblower to testify that they sell the data yet, possibly because they have strict internal confidentiality policies.[1]

Disclaimer, about that Google Maps example, it's just my assumption, I don't know how it actually works.

[1] https://www.theinformation.com/articles/employee-lawsuit-acc...

glogla• 8 years ago

Google has contact lists, call logs, real-time location and possibly texts from most used smartphone OS. Google has communication graphs and contact lists from the most used email platform. Google has the search logs from your internet searches. Google has web logs from the most used web analytics platform.

Google knows a lot.

46844995• 8 years ago

To be honest, if things like this has to happen, I think Google should be the first.

https://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-workin...

danjayh• 8 years ago

What's more, I suspect that if this exact same thing had been done by a company working for Obama's or Hillary's campaigns, nobody would have batted an eyelash.

PS - the reason that the regs wont happen during the trump years has nothing to do with the collusion investigation. He's put a mandate in place that for every reg to go into the federal register, two have to come out. His administration is in general very anti-regulation. Therefore, yes, absolutely no way he would ever regulate it ... but not for the reason you hypothesized.

bb88• 8 years ago

nobody would have batted an eyelash.

Doubtful, considering the number of scandals from this list that made major media attention:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Obama_administration_...

pteredactyl8• 8 years ago

Exactly, I'm pretty sure Assange tweeted Sheryl Sandberg's emails to Podesta and the Clinton campaign stating the exact thing:

1. "Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO to Clinton campaign chief John Podesta, June 6, 2015" --https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/790713289311387648 2."Facebook let us "suck out the ENTIRE social graph" because "they were on our side" -- Obama campaign team leader for 2012 " https://twitter.com/JulianAssange/status/975847209387380737

TarpitCarnivore2• 8 years ago

The big difference is that the Obama campaign didn't try to hide their intention of having you sign up with Facebook. The 'research' firm tricked people into thinking it was a research study when they were in fact harvesting data for different means.

thousandautumns2• 8 years ago

While I agree that I think the Obama campaign has largely gotten a pass for similar data collection and voter profiling activities, I think that part of the reason its getting such attention now is some of the accompanying scandalous tactics of CA being revealed along with their data efforts. Some of the undercover videos being released, particularly the one regarding the Sri Lankan election, look pretty bad.

spacehome3• 8 years ago

Regulations

Is more government the solution to every problem? Just let people make their choice of whether the product Facebook offers is worth the privacy tradeoff.

rhcom2• 8 years ago

What if you can't judge the privacy tradeoff because it's a complete black box?

germinalphrase• 8 years ago

My mother/family/friends are not even aware there is a trade off. They only privacy 'problem' they know about is accidentally posting something personal in the wrong spot. There's no understanding of the extensive data collection, connection, and trade that's happening behind the scenes.

dylan604• 8 years ago

My problem with this argument is that I cannot surf the web without being tracked even if I have chosen not to use their platform. Even if I stopped using the web completely, their platform would still gather info about me from anyone else that has my contact info and has decided to share info with the platform.

cmac29922• 8 years ago

Regular folks have no idea how any idea how any of these systems work. It's hard for most people to understand the privacy tradeoffs.

Something like "nutrition facts" for data privacy seems like a reasonable policy.

jodrellblank2• 8 years ago

If that worked, there would be no outrage about this because everyone who would be unhappy would have already not used it, so there would be no 'reveal' and no scandal happening.

Since people didn't know, and are shocked and annoyed, it follows that people weren't able (for whatever reason) to make the decision in advance.

Is more government not the solution to every problem? It's like a legal wikipedia of all the behaviours people have found to abuse each other in society, all gathered in one place and applied to everyone. Sounds good.

LarryDarrell• 8 years ago

Sometimes everything is OK until it isn't. Critical Mass can take awhile to build.

pyjammas• 8 years ago

The 'why is this news' sentiment is understandable, but people underestimate how much this kind of public /mainstream attention can matter when it comes to action being taken.

The only analogy I can think of is smoking. IIRC there was already a consensus about their dangers in the fifties, but it took decades, in part by strong lobbying efforts, before the public accepted/internalized this truth.

Similarly, the #metoo thing might cause shrugs among those who were in the know for a while, but I'm sure the public outrage will have lasting effects. I mean, Cosby's crimes were an open secret until suddenly it wasn't (a comedian went viral, or something like that?).

kbos87• 8 years ago

I think the mistake is assuming that time that passes means people are ok with a certain amount of sharing, that it’s a safe investment, whether in cash or in investment in building on their platform or with their data. The reality is that we all know that what Facebook does is unsavory. When the privacy concerns eclipse the Value, whether its in year 11 or year 111, the wrath of society will be severe, as it should be.

jasonlotito4• 8 years ago

The issue isn't the data collection. It's campaign finance laws potentially being broken. It just so happens that data collection was at the center of that.

simonh4• 8 years ago

but why now?

The two things catalysing the latest media frenzy are first the recent Facebook Russian interference scandal increasing interest in Facebook data stories generally. That’s just a tip king issue.

The second is the Channel 4 undercover recording of CA execs advising on the use of corrupt practices in a Sri Lankan political campaign. Of course the US angle is getting all the press in the US, but this is what triggered a Renewed journalistic interest in the company.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...

thirdsun3• 8 years ago

To be honest I was not aware that Facebook invited anyone to take out that data merely asking them to delete it shortly after. That's the part that's new and offending to me.

Meanwhile I tolerate political campaigns using targetted advertising. I just wish people were showing more competence when it comes to media consumption and the ability to distinguish between truthful reporting and obvious lies. The media illiteracy is the real problem I see with this issue.

Freak_NL4• 8 years ago

Is media literacy something that can solve this though? A society can educate its citizens (and should do so), but a large group of people simply can't reach the level of critical thinking necessary to fully grasp the nudging and political weaselling they are submitted to.

specialist7• 8 years ago

It's not incompetence.

It's an exploit of our evolutionary psychology. Fake news, keep people spun up, etc. We've always known these things about ourselves.

"A lie is half-way around the world before the truth even gets its pants on" -- Mark Twain (probably)

Our susceptibility to manufactured outrage and refined sugars are the same thing. Former survival traits are being exploited for profit.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC2• 8 years ago

And the solution to toxic ingredients in food is to make everyone a competent chemist who can analyze the stuff they buy?

While education certainly is a good idea, and helps make society more resilient than relying on centralized authorities, I don't think the successful strategy of collaboration in a society is to make everyone an expert at everything and have no consequences for trying to screw over other people.

JohnTClark• 8 years ago

The thing is that now people see a real consequence of that data harvesting, like voting manipulation.

pbhjpbhj5• 8 years ago

Do people realise they're being manipulated though?

mtgx• 8 years ago

This is similar to how revolutions happen. The government does something bad, many are frustrated by it, but they are still overall happy with the government, and only a few speak out.

Then the government does more bad stuff. More are frustrated, only a few speak out.

And on, and on, for decades. It seems like nothing will ever change. And one day "something happens" that makes all of that frustration come up, and the people are furious like nothing else, and you may even see riots and whatnot. And the people on the sidelines, who have no clue about how life was in that country wonder "why would people be so violent, and destroy things?! It doesn't make sense!" Yes, it does make sense. It's just not pretty.

And yes, it will happen to Google, too. I've tried to warn them and other tech companies many times in the past on HN, that they can't just screw over their users and piss them off, thinking only a few spoke out, so it must not be such a big deal the evil thing they've just done. Many more people are usually frustrated about that thing, but they usually keep that frustration inside because they would like to continue using Google.

So, yes. Google is definitely next. Just maybe not tomorrow, or next year. Maybe in a few years. My guess is it will be something around how they use their AI, especially now that they've become a war contractor. Maybe they'll sell their AI tech to US law enforcement to target American citizens in various ways. It's probably inevitable.

A Facebook exodus was never going to be linear. It will be drastic, and it will "surprise" people, even at the company, just as this surprises you now (although I wouldn't say that exodus will happen now, but this is definitely a one of the big final steps before that exodus, at the very least).

kingkongjaffa• 8 years ago

as the internet has matured, platform exodus has become harder, the 99% tech illiterate will not exodus a platform with years of family conversations and photo albums on there.

bla2• 8 years ago

Old Media ist publishing negative articles about tech at any chance they have, due to them losing all their advertising dollars to online ads. It's just that this time the message finds some traction.

DanielBMarkham2• 8 years ago

It's weird. Almost surreal.

We've known all this stuff for ages.

People say that a lot of what you read is just reporters not understanding what they're talking about, flitting from one subject to another with the herd, and perhaps that's true. But hell, anybody that's paid more than a modicum of attention to this issue should know that BigTech tracks people like lab rats. (Small tech too, they just don't have the user base)

I'm all for getting the word out. It's just an odd way that change is happening. It feels a lot like the internet has turned us all into one big mob, carrying our pitchforks and torches from one outrage to the next. That's probably a problem much bigger than what to do with Google/Facebook/Apple/Amazon/Comcast

aptwebapps3• 8 years ago

It's not that tracking that finally put the fox among the chickens, it's the use to which the data was put. I think to the extent that most people thought about it at all they assumed that they'd just get more invasive advertising. Maybe the read about a girl's parents finding out she was pregnant or something like that.

pteredactyl8• 8 years ago

Yea "we've" known about it for ages. "We've" even known or suspected it well before the Snowden leaks ( 2013 ).

But the general ( non-thinking, sadly ) public really has no idea. And is ironically now catching on because the media's been cramming the whole Russian thing down their throats since the election.

On the subject of the media and general public, has anyone recently heard anything about the southern statue madness from last year, or of police shootings? No, because the general public follows whatever the media says. And forgets about whatever they said the minute they stop talking about it.

2 biggest issues in America: 1) current mainstream media 2) uneducated populace

3ribal• 8 years ago

"developed anything in messenger even today"

I have developed several, your statement is misleading. Messenger user profile API gives,

first_name, last_name, profile_pic, locale, timezone (non precise), gender, is_payment_enabled, last_ad_referral,

Which IMO is much safer than using direct Facebook Graph API. My point being Messenger apps are in-fact better than apps which uses Facebook login when it comes to privacy i.e if you have to use Facebook platform.

qaq2• 8 years ago

One thing I am confused with all the data collection that is going on (and it obviously costing them $ and some reputational risks) is not really helping them to produce decent ad targeting. I am not even surprised by how bad FB ads are most of the time but even Amazon that has 20 years of my purchase history is amazingly bad: I already bought 4 Elixir programming books and looking to buy new books when they come out and yet if I search for Elixir it will keep showing me guitar strings WTF? In 20 years I've never bought a single music related item and I bought a ton of programming books and yet ...

Freak_NL4• 8 years ago

You actually want Amazon to show you different search results?

If I'm starting a new hobby or wanted to buy a present for someone with different interests, I would be very annoyed if results were hidden from me because of a name clash with a product from my purchase history.

A good product search isn't personalized, and doesn't try to predict what I want. It just shows the results in a sensible manner, and lets me use categories and keywords (in addition to user reviews, price, availability, etcetera) to filter the results.

pbhjpbhj5• 8 years ago

The Elixir strings people are paying to be in those search results presumably - even when you don't buy they're getting paid. Amazon's infective is to profit, that doesn't always assign with your desire to buy.

Also, they might find that people who aren't searching for what they're shown keep looking and that it didn't reduce purchases. It's like the supermarkets moving products around to make sure you see other stuff - people don't leave the store, they keep looking and get exposed to more products in unfamiliar positions that make them notice more.

I mean, heck, you just talked about a couple of products and gave a product endorsement because they didn't show the results you expected; seems like the system is working.

MasterScrat• 8 years ago

I don't get what changed? We've knows Facebook tracks everything, we've known Google does the same thing.

This reminds me of the OkCupid scandal: https://www.vox.com/2016/5/12/11666116/70000-okcupid-users-d...

A researcher released a dump of 70K dating profiles and people were horrified. But this data was already accessible to anyone (just had to create a free profile) and you can be sure it was already used for analytics purpose.

TheArcane• 8 years ago

Is google next?

I think Facebook has nothing on Google. One trip to the MyActivity console on Google is enough to creep anyone out.

specialist7• 8 years ago

Scandals don't matter until they do.

The bad stuff is an open secret. But people choose to discount the bad so long as it appears outweighed by the good. Eventually the grace period runs out. Voila: Scandal.

Also, scandals are manufactured distraction. There's no shortage of things to be upset about. What percolates up is governed by the politics of attention.

I can't quickly refind the Ellsberg paper about the structure of presidential scandals. But this one is close enough. Obviously, they study presidential scandals, but the lessons apply to all scandals.

The Timing of Presidential Scandals: The Role of Economics, Divided Government and the Media http://file.scirp.org/pdf/OJPS_2016012915363533.pdf

The Politics of Attention: How Government Prioritizes Problems http://a.co/dTmg3WC

swebs• 8 years ago

The general public and mainstream media do not really care about big tech companies harvesting personal data and using it for marketing. Every now and then you'd see someone bringing it up in an article of Ars or Popular Science, but they never gained much traction.

The difference is now there is an example of it helping Trump. And if you can find any story that puts Trump in a bad light, it's almost guaranteed that it will hit the front page of HuffingtonPost/WashingtonPost/NYTimes/Salon/etc.

ntsplnkv2• 8 years ago

More than anything it's tied to an existing scandal with Trump-Russian collusion.

If the other scandals weren't there no one would care about this, you are right.

r3vo2• 8 years ago

Nothing has changed at all as far as I can tell. It's such a media event right now simply because it was taken advantage of by the President to win the election. Anything that can potentially cast Trump in a bad light is bound to get a lot of media attention.

This is all ignoring the fact that President Obama used almost the same Facebook app analytics tactics to win his campaign (albeit less deceptively).

Regardless of why it is getting attention now, let's be optimistic that the dangers of the silicon valley surveillance apparatus are starting to seep into the public consciousness. I for one would welcome a changing attitude towards how we view and sell our private information to these companies.

gdilla• 8 years ago

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/03/21/no-obama-didnt-empl...

acdha• 8 years ago

One big factor is that Facebook knew about the problem and lied about it for two years. It’s one thing to know that data is mined and another to learn that what should be a trusted third party is actively trying to keep you from learning about abuse.

noetic_techy3• 8 years ago

Its purely Trump hatred driving this. Because Obama doing this in 2012 = Genius. Trump doing this in 2016 = Scandal. I'm a libertarian and yes I threw my vote away on Gary Johnson, but looking at the media landscape, there truly is a backlash against conservatives going on in social media, and this is just part of that. Donald Trump won because fake news... no wait, it was Russia and their abysmal social media spending... no wait, its because he gamed facebook! They want to put more pressure on facebook to "do something about this" now that the coin has flipped. I have a feeling though this is going to get out of hand and drag facebook into the gutter.

wyldfire2• 8 years ago

I suppose Trump hatred plays a role. But superpowers interfering with elections is a big deal, it's the kind of thing that could lead to another extinction level event.

Any of the mechanisms leveraged in this propaganda campaign should receive extra scrutiny.

matchbok2• 8 years ago

What Obama did was very, very different.

The fact that you don't know this (or ignored it) tells a lot about how biased you are.

And yes, there should be backlash against conservatives. They just elected a Nazi in Illinois.

chasing7• 8 years ago

Obama's campaign didn't do what Cambridge Analytica is accused of doing.

wybiral7• 8 years ago

I think it's more that all of these things are gaining traction and people are trying to relate it to Trump.

There's been a growing discussion about data collection and shady advertising practices for a long time. It's not about Trump. And this isn't the first time I've seen distrust raised towards Facebook or Google about this stuff.

The Russian propaganda was mostly divisive messages surrounding things like race / guns. People keep trying to make it about Trump but investigators have been saying that it's more broad the whole time. Regardless of him it's still something we need to investigate.

Anything that seems scandalous or sketchy will probably be tied to Trump by people who don't like him if possible. But the same behavior has been going on for longer than Trump (people tried to accuse Obama of all kinds of stuff, and don't even get started on what people were accusing the Clinton campaign of). It shouldn't distract from the fact that it's scandalous and sketchy and we should keep an eye on these issues.

PS: Get ready to see everything being related back to Trump. All actions of government, law, etc. The positive and the negative. Because that's how this always works. The current administration gets more credit for change than they deserve.

fzeroracer4• 8 years ago

What Obama did is not nearly the same as what Trump did [1].

Also, it's important to keep in mind that this entire argument about Obama is one diversion perpetuated by Cambridge Analytica. They brought up this idea and it has been bouncing around the more surreptitious parts of the internet as a tactic to avoid criticism. I wonder why a place like CA would attempt to change the conversation?

[1] https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/03/21/no-obama-didnt-empl...

anarchy8• 8 years ago

Please don't spread lies. What the Obama campaign was doing in 2012 was nothing compared to what Cambridge Analytica did for Trump.

chasing7• 8 years ago

Its purely Trump hatred driving this.

I would agree that the election of someone so woefully unfit to serve has scared the shit out of a lot of people. And so many people are putting a lot of thought and energy into trying to pick apart how things could've gone so wrong. Thus, we're having discussions like these.

We tend to question things more after they go wrong. Whether or not you liked his policies, Obama was a fairly straightforward politician who at least knew how to operate the office of the Presidency and wasn't nested in an extensive web of shadiness and criminality.

alwayseasy• 8 years ago

Obama didn't use an entire fake news infrastructure coupled with hackers leaking the opposition's emails... Your equivalency is misguided or misleading, you can't compare Obama 2012 to Trump 2016. You present the topics as separate when they are all linked. The damage comes from data + fake news + Russian APT.

wyldfire2• 8 years ago

I'm not sure how authoritative it is but this tweet [1] claims otherwise.

[1] https://twitter.com/mbsimon/status/975231597183229953

jonbarker2• 8 years ago

What changed is awareness. I would like them to provide a resource which allows users to know which microsegments of facebook audience network they are showing up in, without spending any money.

jkFeiwi• 8 years ago

I don't get what changed?

Momentum. Sometimes people won't do stuff unless they know everyone else is too. If you quit Facebook and your friends still use it, you're missing out. But if all your friends delete it as part of the #deletefacebook trend, it'll be easier for you to do the same thing.

efuquen2• 8 years ago

I don't get what changed?

He made his billions.

I know you mean in a more general sense, but I can't let go of the hypocrisy of this. He sold out millions of users to Facebook, basically the most anti-privacy thing you could possibly do other then just dumping all that information out in the open, becomes incredibly wealthy and now he gives a small amount of that to Signal and is all like #deletefacbook and it's fine? Give me a break.

sandov• 8 years ago

Regulations should have sprouted in Obama years

If people voluntarily want to give away their data, who are we to stop them from doing it?.

I don't use facebook, because I value my privacy more than I value "being connected" or whatever facebook is using to convince people these days, but if my neighbor is happy giving away is data, that's fine, it's his data.

tripzilch• 8 years ago

People didn't want to believe that FB and Google (and the rest) tracking and collecting all that data would really cause harm. Denial (because something is really useful and/or a large part of communication with all your friends+family runs through it) is a strong force.

What changed is that this breach made it harder for people to pretend all that tracking and data harvesting "will probably turn out fine".

calvinbhai• 8 years ago

I feel this is just an opportunity for the conventional media to bring down social media, because the latter has certainly hurt the former's powers to control narratives and agenda, affecting and this affecting the ad revenues. (any surprise why $TWTR and $SNAP took a hit along with $FB?)

Facebook has eaten into Mainstream Media ad revenues, and literally is controlling how news is published, because its platform is so powerful.

When Cambridge Analytica stories first broke out, even I had the same reaction. I hope people stop overreacting as if this never happened earlier.

iliketosleep• 8 years ago

It's quite ironic that this is the man who sold WhatsApp and its enormous userbase to facebook, creating a total lock in to the facebook ecosystem for many who do not even use facebook. He would have known what kind of a company facebook is, so I don't understand the contradiction between selling Whatsapp to them and now caring about these issues. Anyway, I am still glad he's getting behind the #deletefacebook movement.

tehlike• 8 years ago

He started a company, and made a delicious exit. Him becoming a privacy advocate maybe was his secondary goal yhat now became primary. Or maybe with his founder he had disagrements but he sold anyway because what else could he do if everyone but you wants that exit?

77ko2• 8 years ago

He owned 20% of Whatsapp, so its possible he didn't want to sell to FB. Only 50.1% of the shareholders presumably had to want to sell to overrule the others.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Acton

efuquen2• 8 years ago

I think if he was against the sale he would have said that.

apotheothesomai• 8 years ago

Jan's commitment to privacy motivated WhatsApp. Jan and Acton always have believed in it strongly.

That said, if your company has 50 people, and FB offers nearly $20B. How exactly do you tell those people that you refused an acquisition that huge, because you personally feel that FB is bad. Could you deprive an engineer who has worked his ass off for 4 years >$100M?

Anyway, I was contracting for WhatsApp, when the acquisition happened. Conversations took place, but I'm not going to quote anyone.

paulcole3• 8 years ago

So you’re saying they believed in privacy strongly but believed in getting rich more. Got it.

Nothing wrong with that. I’d do the same.

bobthechef2• 8 years ago

Lot's of engineers work their asses off for far less than $100M.

Zelphyr• 8 years ago

As Scott McNealy has said; once you have investors, your company is for sale.

So not only would you have to deprive that engineer but you would also have to explain to Sequoia why you weren’t going to give them a gargantuan return on their investment.

askvictor• 8 years ago

Supposing Signal had a larger userbase, and got offered a similar deal. Well, it basically did happen; Moxie's previous company Whipser Systems got bought by Twitter, Moxie left after a couple of years, losing his options in the process. I doubt it would happen again.

intended• 8 years ago

Craigslist did it.

It is very possible to turn down money and avoid becoming a corporate animal.

Does it happen? Yes.

Does it happen very frequently? No.

astro_robot• 8 years ago

I get that it's hard to pass up on the money. Once you take it though it's hard to not look hypocritical. Especially since he gave them a large amount of the data that was abused.

yuhong• 8 years ago

I wrote a draft of an essay: http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2018/03/google-doubleclick-essa... I hasn't even mentioned Urchin/Google Analytics and Mozilla yet.

ggregoire• 8 years ago

I don't understand the contradiction between selling Whatsapp to them and now caring about these issues.

You would refuse $16 billions from Facebook?

bobthechef2• 8 years ago

What if he were given the option today of selling WhatsApp to Facebook (all other things remaining equal)? Do you think he would have refused?

Vinnl• 8 years ago

One thing one might speculate about is that there was a "change it from the inside" motivation. For example, WhatsApp did add Signal's encryption protocol, which I think has been fantastic. Having lots of money available as a fallback to now sponsor alternatives is a nice addition to that.

But of course, all of this is speculation - I can't look inside the man's head.

m52go• 8 years ago

While I agree with you, he's exponentially more powerful now to champion privacy now beyond WhatsApp with the billions he got from that sale.

hnaccy• 8 years ago

I'll take it but I'm still somewhat confused about how sudden this pushback against facebook has been.

What did people think they did before now...

tlarkworthy• 8 years ago

The effect on democratic processes ceased to be hypothetical.

odammit2• 8 years ago

Will deleting Facebook actually remove your data though?

I’ve deleted mine a few times and then inevitably have had to use OAuth for some random site I’d auth’d to and lo-and-behold it works and all my data is back. Last time I went through that flow was maybe a year ago.

I always assumed they did some sort of paranoid delete or “anonymized” the data.

bassman9000• 8 years ago

Nope

The only way to win is not to play

pervycreeper• 8 years ago

Not even. They create shadow profiles for non-users.

criddell3• 8 years ago

I think it actually does delete your data now. They added that in response to upcoming GDPR regulations.

rdtsc• 8 years ago

I never signed up for it and they probably have a profile on me simply because of the connections to people who have FB. That always creeped me out. Wonder if there is something in the GDPR legislation to get all the info they have on me and make them erase it.

odammit2• 8 years ago

I only originally signed up because I was single and dating and girls found it “creepy” I didnt have a Facebook.

Peer pressure, man.

sqdbps• 8 years ago

That is ungrateful on his part.

Much like #deleteuber this #deletefacebook tantrum is about Trump. Facebook was roundly lauded for helping Obama get elected.

avs733• 8 years ago

With the way they create shadow profiles for non-users, I'm a strong believer that the opportunity with facebook is to feed them as much bad data as possible and let them deal with filtering it out.

meri_dian2• 8 years ago

As has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the vast majority of people really don't care what data Facebook collects. Addresses, phone numbers, etc are all publicly available already. Products you like, your political affiliations, etc, not a big deal to most people, not because they aren't aware, but because they don't care.

So ask yourselves, if the vast majority don't care, perhaps it's not really that big of a deal.

And maybe, just maybe, Cambridge Analytica has a target painted on its back because it helped get Trump elected, and we're being manipulated into hating them now by media that is engaged in all out war with the Trump administration.

pmlnr• 8 years ago

So ask yourselves, if the vast majority don't care, perhaps it's not really that big of a deal.

That's not the question to ask. They question to ask is how do we make them care?

meri_dian2• 8 years ago

Why should they care? I'll be honest, it doesn't bother me much. Why should I care?

axd• 8 years ago

If this isn't the opportunity for Diaspora* to become a thing in the public's mind, I don't know what is. We have to use this in order to move to a better platform for social media.

criddell3• 8 years ago

Diaspora is a non-starter.

Look at their getting started page. Step one - choose a pod. You just lost 90% of the people that might be interested. They need to get rid of that step.

noarchy2• 8 years ago

This would likewise affect Mastodon. One of its arguable strengths is also a weakness, in that regard.

fareesh10• 8 years ago

Despite the barrage of negative stories that would have ended nearly every other Presidential campaign - ranging from accusations of racism, misogyny, treason, incompetence, mental instability - despite all of it, tens of millions of Americans absolutely love President Trump.

I cannot imagine how utterly frustrating it must be for them to watch the media bounce from story after story in some convoluted attempt to explain why they voted the way they did - from Russian hacking to white supremacy to Facebook ads to Facebook data. This is just one more in a long line of justifications when the most likely reasonable explanation is that he is beloved by millions, not just in the USA but around the world.

The same goes for Brexit.

"Your side won because the Russians and this data company and Facebook made you vote that way. We're going to make sure this never happens again!"

It's unfortunate that in the aftermath of polarizing and controversial decisions like these, this kind of rhetoric will now drive people further apart, because one side refuses to accept the reality of the other's opinions, and dismisses them with conspiracy theories.

Today people are pretending to be shocked that Facebook shares data with apps through the developer API. Most of the permissions being talked about were removed a long time ago. What is happening now is basically vindictive hatred for Facebook from the tens of millions who feel wronged and cheated by electoral results that they lost fair and square.

scrumper• 8 years ago

What is happening now is basically vindictive hatred for Facebook from the tens of millions who feel wronged and cheated by electoral results that they lost fair and square.

I'm not saying that's not part of it, but it's only part of it. There's plenty of other bad stuff about Facebook that people don't like: children experiencing isolation and depression; cyberbullying; addiction; shallow, empty interactions; clickbait mental junk food replacing content from actual friends... It goes on.

jakear2• 8 years ago

One note: fair and square by your interpretation of "fair", maybe. But the country as a whole uses its laws to interpret fair, and the important allegations are that the Trump campaign broke those laws by directly communicating with this agency.

cabaalis4• 8 years ago

"In 2012, the Obama campaign encouraged supporters to download an Obama 2012 Facebook app that, when activated, let the campaign collect Facebook data both on users and their friends." [0]

The only real difference between what was done here and then was how it was represented to the users.

[0] https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/facebook-data-...

coldtea• 8 years ago

Nah, it's just hypocrisy.

All candidates take such data from social media, and have done for the last 2 elections at least, but, Trump being not that popular with the Republican establishment/deep state either (him coming from outside to steal the party's favorites thunder and not 100% controllable by the party bureaucracy) only one side has enough media stronghold to hammer the other side 24/7. The other can at best spew its own BS on FOX.

Clanan2• 8 years ago

Please include citations and an explanation of a bold claim like that. How did the campaign break the law here? Otherwise you're just stoking partisan fires.

ggg99905• 8 years ago

I mean, I know why people love him too — he is entertaining as fuck and if you’re too poor or too rich to be affected by government policy, who gives a shit about the president?

sergiotapia• 8 years ago

So again, you attempt to hand-wave reasons why people would vote for Donald Trump.

bloaf• 8 years ago

He basically ran a campaign of "People in Washington suck and I'm going to ruin their day" and that is the one campaign promise he's knocked out of the park. Every time the media gets bent out of shape about something he does, his base feels vindicated.

Torwald2• 8 years ago

To answer your question. Me, as a European, I like a POTUS who doesn't drag us into a war with Russia, thank you.

zeth___• 8 years ago

What is happening now is basically vindictive hatred for Facebook from the tens of millions who feel wronged and cheated by electoral results that they lost fair and square.

I'd say that a lot of the articles are driven by the news medias hatred of facebook.

It used to be that facebook would drive upto 80% of the traffic on some news sites from shared articles between 2012-2017. Then when they started to tweak the news feed a lot of news sites found their traffic dying.

There are definite reasons to hate facebook, but news sites hate them for controlling their very existence, and lately pushing them into irrelevance.

Between facebook and google the views news sites receive from other sources are/were a rounding error, before we even start talking about advertising.

That everyone is attacking facebook now is good. From a purely tactical point of view killing it or strangling it with so much regulation they need to ask you 5 times if they can access your data for every picture you upload will be a huge net positive for humanity. I only wish the same happens to google asap.

trendia• 8 years ago

I wonder if the news media's reaction to Facebook explains Google's $300m effort to save online news.

$300m buys a lot of good will, and maybe some favirbale coverage.

pteredactyl8• 8 years ago

That's a huge part of it. Seems to me every NY media story about SV the last few years has been a hit piece.

aptwebapps3• 8 years ago

The election was won by a very slim margin. The core of Trump's support may have been with him regardless but they weren't enough to win. It's the actions on the margin that matter here.

Also, as other's have pointed out, there are a lot of other problems with social media in general and Facebook in particular. Russian meddling in the election is the spark that is lighting the fire but the fuel was already there. (That last sentence optimistic to an extent that might not be warranted).

foxh0und• 8 years ago

Exactly, he won the election thanks to 80000 votes in three states.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/do...

freejulian4• 8 years ago

There was no “Russian meddling” in the election. Stop parroting nonsense without evidence.

Hillary did cheat though. Her campaign directly collaborated with correct the record - last time I checked coordinating with a super pac was illegal. She also directly worked with the media to spread progaganda.

Thank god Trump won. Hillary would have been more of the same.

Also, it’s hilarious that we’ve all stopped caring about Citzens United now. Corporations influencing our elections is A-OK!

AndrewKemendo2• 8 years ago

It's the actions on the margin that matter here.

Just think of what this whole story (Foreign meddling) says about these marginal voters in that case: That they were so easily swayed, that they decided to vote ostensibly against their own better judgement simply by being shown a series of ads to influence their emotions.

Something is very wrong with voter education if it's that easy to sway a certain influential population of voters.

fzeroracer4• 8 years ago

For some reason whenever negative stories come out about Trump or about Facebook or about some political figurehead in today's environment, people drag themselves out of the woodwork to pull out the tired argument that people are just 'jealous' that Trump won.

Could you explain your justification for trotting such an irrelevant point? We can argue all day that everyone knows that Facebook does all this scary stuff (and the nearly tech-illiterate people I interact with have no clue about this sort of thing while being barely able to use Facebook) but I'm more curious as to where your main point comes from.

fareesh10• 8 years ago

1) What makes you think I am from the woodwork?

2) Can you recall a time when a Facebook privacy story ever received so much media and government interest?

There was a time when apps would blindly request a bunch of permissions. Users would blindly accept them. Devs would store tokens in the database. One shoddy exploit later on the application and an attacker had all their photos, friends' photos, and could post and comment on various things impersonating the user.

I can't imagine how much harvesting was done by popular Facebook apps and games in those days.

enlightenedfool• 8 years ago

Absolutely. Trump got the true American feelings in every issue out which have been suppressed for far too long. The media will move on to the next Trump tweet tomorrow and face book will regain lost value in a week.

omarforgotpwd• 8 years ago

Wow, what a spot on comment.

austincheney2• 8 years ago

tens of millions of Americans absolutely love President Trump.

People voted for Trump, but that is hardly an indication of love. Consider that this prior election was between two of the most despised (and possibly incompetent) candidates in US presidential history.

If you don't want to repeat this fiasco stop supporting a divisive two party system. Yes, it was the internal mechanics of each party that picked candidates from the primaries opposed to actual voters. This has been proven with evidence for the Democrats and is likely true for the Republicans as well.

sheepmullet5• 8 years ago

stop supporting a divisive two party system.

I wish we could move to a constitutional republic with a dose of direct democracy a bit like Switzerland.

Otherwise even with more parties we would see parties forming coalitions and continuing to sideline a significant minority of the population. See the anti-immigration parties being ignored in Western Europe for a good example.

abiox4• 8 years ago

stop supporting a divisive two party system

among other things, the voting system itself ("first past the post") tends to encourage a duopoly.

drawkbox3• 8 years ago

from the tens of millions who feel wronged and cheated by electoral results that they lost fair and square.

Are you not doing as exactly as you are highlighting?

If there were underlying forces at work that were foreign would that not mean it wasn't fair and square?

Citizens United vs FEC[1] unfortunate decision in 2011 led to infusions of foreign funds[2] that outnumber what US citizens are legally allowed to contribute. Too much money and now foreign money that is the real problem, it reared it's ugly head in 2016 no matter who won.

We have to backtrack on Citizens United vs the FEC decision or else foreign countries and oligarchs will be deciding every election. If that becomes the norm, it was a good run for the United States but it will be ending.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

[2] https://theintercept.com/2016/08/03/citizens-united-foreign-...

fareesh10• 8 years ago

The winning candidate spent significantly less money in this instance.

Also I tend to agree with Citizens United. Unions and Corporations should be allowed to express their views on a candidate.

If there is someone running for office and making a BS claim about steel workers, I would want steelworkers unions to have the right to advertise and inform me that it is BS.

Also if you get into issue based stuff, it becomes extremely overzealous to prevent unions and Corporations from being able to speak up during an election. Planned parenthood, for example, has a lot of misconceptions about it, they should have the right to do something about that.

I also understand the scope for abuse with citizens united, but I don't think curtailing first amendment rights is ever a good idea.

Probably worth noting that I'm not American, my opinion of this case is shaped by my listening to SCOTUS oral arguments of the case on YouTube many years ago.

racer-v2• 8 years ago

We have to backtrack on Citizens United vs the FEC decision or else foreign countries and oligarchs will be deciding every election.

You are saying that the dollar amount spent decides every election. Do you really believe that democracy is nothing more than rule by whoever spends the most money?

andy_ppp• 8 years ago

Um, what? The whole point of this is whispering hundreds of half truths and individually targeted propaganda into voters ears. It’s all a fabrication even the “Cambridge” connection was faked! What the hell is going on with Facebook running their own investigation and turning up at Cambridge Analytica’s office? Why is Facebook asking to see this whistle blowers laptop? All seems very strange as if there is something to hide here...

Gravityloss• 8 years ago

I'm not sure and I might be mistaken, but I think you also advocate a little about this "people have rights to their feelings" line of argumentation. But people's feelings can be manipulated with things that aren't true.

Say somebody told you that your coworker of similar skill level was earning twice as much as you, because they cheated somehow. You would get angry at them. If it then was revealed that no such thing happened, they have the same salary as you, would you still stay angry?

fareesh10• 8 years ago

In the case of this election there were so many genuine incidents where wrongdoing was committed by both candidates so I'd be less inclined to buy into the theory that fake incidents were what caused the anger.

One candidate stole a primary, was under FBI investigation for most of the campaign, was chastised by the director but then given a pass, had a trove of emails leaked wherein she was called incompetent by her own team, and cheated in debates due to a highly inappropriate relationship with the media.

The other candidate was crucified in the press almost daily with a slew of controversial and crass, lewd statements, each of which was dissected, repeated and debated during the 24 hour news cycle as well as the late night talk shows.

hobs• 8 years ago

"It's unfortunate that in the aftermath of polarizing and controversial decisions like these, this kind of rhetoric will now drive people further apart, because one side refuses to accept the reality of the other's opinions, and dismisses them with conspiracy theories."

That's the rub. The side that doesnt go with the trumpers keeps looking for justifications that dont boil down to "Those people innately agree with those policies after a reasoned and thoughtful approach to the problem."

That's because the beliefs they espouse are an anathema to their core understanding of a civil society, and the only way they can continue to humanize them is to pretend they were tricked or stupid.

Honestly, I pretty much feel the same way myself. If you earnestly understand the consequences of America's current president and you are still gung-ho, I find you to be lacking in about every important moral and ethical measure.

abalone2• 8 years ago

#deletefacebook is not about "conspiracy theories". It's because their personal data was exploited to aid the election of someone they hate.

Whether it actually moved the needle enough to elect Trump is open to debate, but that's not a "conspiracy theory". Even the very idea that their personal data can be exploited this way, against their will, via friends who were tricked, is unsettling. That's more than just being mad about the election. They do not want a service that can exploit them that way in their life.

Maybe Facebook has locked down the API, or maybe there's some other way to exploit it next round. People are realizing that trusting Facebook with their personal data was a bad idea to begin with and not in their best interests.

fareesh10• 8 years ago

Which is my point I guess - Facebook apps have had much more intrusive access to user data in the past. The only reason people care now is political.

resource0x• 8 years ago

ranging from accusations of racism, misogyny, treason, incompetence, mental instability - despite all of it

Same happened in USSR, Yeltsin was accused in almost all of the above, and won - not so much despite of this, but to a large extent due to this. When the entire establishment gangs up against one, the normal human instinct is to support him. And the effect is so well-known that I'm actually suprised Trump's opponents acted this way.

iscrewyou• 8 years ago

How do you explain lower turnout for Hillary Clinton when compared to Obama's two turnout numbers?

booleandilemma2• 8 years ago

For me, one of the most memorable moments during the campaign was when one of my liberal friends told me that he suspected Melania of being a Russian spy. I was so relieved when it was over - people were acting nuts.

matthewwiese5• 8 years ago

Well said. No matter the influence of Russians nor widespread manipulation by Cambridge Analytica, the reality is that people chose to believe these things without their own personal endeavor into critical inquiry. And I'm not talking about that white working class "base" that people like to attribute as Trump's secret weapon.

I know plenty of people, truly well meaning individuals, who are not the dumb animals most outlets like to paint the Trump supporters as. They were just conned into it all, and I'm sure shady Facebook ads had a hand in it, but ultimately it was just trusting people suckered in by a television personality (or character, even).

If this election is the spark that eventually instills a sense of proper analytical reasoning skills in the United States at large, then I'll be satisified. And I say this as a person who, if I could vote in this country, would certainly have not have entertained the idea of Donald Trump at all.

forkwhilefork• 8 years ago

Who the hell are you to talk about Trump voters being conned or voting without critical thinking? You have no idea why people voted for him.

sheepmullet5• 8 years ago

They were just conned into it all

Were they conned?

The truth is if the US doesn't fix illegal immigration and put a general slowdown on legal immigration then conservatives are done for and their way of life is going to be slowly destroyed.

All indicators show first and second gen migrants overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.

wybiral7• 8 years ago

I do agree, but it's also annoying that people keep using this to try and downplay stories like the Russia investigation and the fact that shady practices are going on at places like Facebook and in our political campaigns.

People did vote for Trump. Without someone twisting their arm.

But there is still merit to these other stories (even if the perspective that they got Trump elected is false).

croon4• 8 years ago

Are you saying that hundreds of years of ad business has never worked and the billions upon billions of dollars spent on ads were wasted?

Because if you're not, "People did vote for Trump. Without someone twisting their arm." is disingenuous, at best.

andrepd2• 8 years ago

There are tens of millions who would vote for trump no matter what, and I literally mean no matter what. No candidate has ever got less than ~40% of the popular vote in recent times. So that fact, that "tens of millions voted for Trump after all", tells us squat.

And besides that, the allegations being made are extremely serious, an utter threat to democracy, and they are to be taken so independently of any other factors.

jimmies2• 8 years ago

I can't vote in the US election. I don't give a fuck who wins. I still think Facebook is shit.

didibus• 8 years ago

I'm not sure that's true. I think its just people realizing the power and reach of internet media giants like facebook.

Nobody wants Russia to spam American news. Nobody wants to filter through media coverage and wonder which one is fake or not.

People I think are looking for a bit more liability. Show me content truthfully, validate its source, don't change the order of my news feed, don't purposely remove some content and add others because you've learned my ad click habits.

Trump is trump, I don't think he's the reason for the outcry. He's mentioned in it, because it can be seen as an example, but people on all side of the political spectrum I think have issue with propaganda, and the power that lies to whom control the internet mass media. So Facebook is scary to all party, and I think only now do a majority of people have woken up to its potential destructive influence. It's not known to what extent that potential is, and the debates will probably focus on that. How much/little regulation is needed to mitigate its applications that can affect our free social democracy, while maximising our capitalist ambitions.

knowThySelfx3• 8 years ago

This is even with most of the global mainstream media supporting Hilary and party. And now the media wants to divert their failures to some social media effect - as if FB only showed pro Trump news.

fyfy18• 8 years ago

I don’t think Brexit really falls into the same category. At the time of the Brexit vote there were a lot of stories in circulation that were incorrect or not telling the whole story. If people were given the real facts, I find it very unlikely that the majority would have still voted leave.

Yes I agree there are some real arguments for leaving, but most people were voting leave for reasons like the NHS getting an extra £350m a week, which turned out to be just spin. Maybe a company like CA was invoked to promote stories, and maybe they were funded by powerful people, but that’s not really a conspiracy.

Even now it’s still unclear on what is going to happen on some major issues, like what will happen to British citizens living in the EU.

fareesh10• 8 years ago

The British media has been reporting on CA and its links to the leave campaign for some time now. I watched a video in which an incredibly snarky reporter interviewed someone from CA and demanded to know why they were at an event being held by the leave campaign if they weren't working together.

tensor• 8 years ago

Perhaps the reality is two things. One, there may have really was been collusion and manipulation of peoples psyche as the data seems to be trending towards.

But two, as you suggest, perhaps some people really do like him and what he represents. And maybe the "other side" would rather believe Trump voters were tricked then believe the alternative, that Trump voters really love Trump and what he represents.

The thing that posts like yours seem to silently imply is that if "the other side" would just accept Trump and his ideology, the country will be fine. But perhaps two peoples can become so divided that they would rather take up arms against each other then accept the ideology of the other group. This is the possibility that really scares people the most, and is something that no one wants to talk about.

fareesh10• 8 years ago

There's no reason to accept the ideology, just the fact that the election was won and that a very significant number of people want that ideology. Ideally now is the time to engage with them and reach a compromise.

Unfortunately the reaction has been incredibly childish.

pteredactyl8• 8 years ago

Exactly. And in the US I have a hard time believing the Democrats have done anything to remedy why they lost. In fact, they've made it worse.

jiggliemon• 8 years ago

All of this Facebook hubub and broad public outcry is really all owed to the election of Trump. If Trump handnt leveraged CA, we’d still all be happy and fat on out individual bliss boxes – patting ourselves on the back – because our side [a la Obama] was smart enough to use this technology to our advantage.

Now when the enemy has (and use) the same technology, we’re forced to cry foul. Demand oversight. Demand regulation.

The greater public is OK with this technology. They’re Ok with sweeping data collection (Snowden Files). They’re OK with mining personal data (Facebook, Google, etc). Thy’re OK with 1984, so long as it’s their sides version of 1984.

It takes a Trump for your side to realize how shitty things got while you were enamored with charisma on your bliss box.

Edit: typing on my phone. Fixing grammar.

cabaalis4• 8 years ago

I think the best thing that has come out of the election of Donald Trump is that many people are now excited about the idea of constitutionally limiting the power of the executive branch. That idea seemed to have been forgotten for the past few administrations. Even when I agreed with Obama or Bush, I was very disappointed when they would use innovative methods to single-handedly override the will of congress or the judiciary.

enraged_camel2• 8 years ago

I wasn’t. If Congress is being obstructionist and petty, as they undoubtedly were during the Obama years, the executive branch still needs to do its job, which is to lead the country forward.

That said, I agree with the spirit of your post, which is that every now and then we should scale that power back.

dmfdmf• 8 years ago

The courts need to reign in the use of Executive Orders.

duckMuppet• 8 years ago

Not really. Remember that whole, "Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes" thing.. Yet instead of actually doing this, they continue to essentially outsource their power, and responsibility to the administrative state. I mean DT almost blatantly came out and said, well these new tariffs aren't exactly because of national security..

Don't kid yourself, both parties are essentially the same, who feeds them just look different. On top of that, Congress continues to cede more powers to the administrative state.. It becomes all about control really..

The primary reason no one should have been worried when DT got elected is that for a great many years, the system was designed that no matter who is driving the ship, they won't sink it because they don't have that power (same goes for BO & GWB). But for years we've been pushing for more centralized authority with power resting at the figurehead, that really ramped up after '01, and later BO put it on steroids.

As private institutions fall away for newer generations, the govt becomes "something we all do together", and the primary solution for having someone else take care of societal problems for us, after all, it's what we pay taxes for...

Congress keeps outsourcing it's responsibilities to the president, no matter what letter, R or D is behind the name on the office door. Tariffs, wars, weaponized govt agencies, privacy rights, drone strikes, surveillance, and on and on...

This isn't a problem of the system, it's merely a symptom of the current state of our society and I personally don't think whether it's tariffs or privacy, little will change in a direction that we would like. The people want easy solutions, they want someone to take care of problems for them. That's exactly what we are getting.

Clanan2• 8 years ago

What's ironic is that Trump didn't use CA to win the election. CA was used a bit in the primaries but after that the campaign only solicited a bid as a hedge in case the RNC didn't share its data. CA wasn't used for the general election.

On the other hand, the Obama campaign used sneaky Terms and Conditions to suck up friend lists and create a national social graph for the sole purpose of winning the General Election.

etcet• 8 years ago

Where did you get that information? Channel4 is reporting that Mercer donated to the Trump campaign on the condition that he would take on Steve Bannon and hire CA. Steven Bannon joined the Trump campaign in August 2016, after Trump won the primaries in May.

vondur2• 8 years ago

According to CBS, the trump campaign didn't use the CA data ( they may have in the Primaries):

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-campaign-phased-out-use-o...

In late September 2016, Cambridge and other data vendors were submitting bids to the Trump campaign. Then-candidate Trump's campaign used Cambridge Analytica during the primaries and in the summer because it was never certain the Republican National Committee would be a willing, cooperative partner. Cambridge Analytica instead was a hedge against the RNC, in case it wouldn't share its data.

The crucial decision was made in late September or early October when Mr. Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Brad Parscale, Mr. Trump's digital guru on the 2016 campaign, decided to utilize just the RNC data for the general election and used nothing from that point from Cambridge Analytica or any other data vendor. The Trump campaign had tested the RNC data, and it proved to be vastly more accurate than Cambridge Analytica's, and when it was clear the RNC would be a willing partner, Mr. Trump's campaign was able to rely solely on the RNC.

sangnoir2• 8 years ago

the trump campaign didn't use the CA data

That might be technically correct, but CA was unquestionably working with SuperPACs[1] behind the scenes to get Trump elected in November. CA was particularly proud of it's crooked Hillary campaign ("the OO of crooked was a pair of handcuffs").

1. According to the Cambridge Analytica CEO in the Channel 4 undercover documentary https://youtu.be/cy-9iciNF1A?t=6m21s

stevenwoo• 8 years ago

Among other things, CA and Bannon tested out slogans such as "deep state" "drain the swamp" on the Facebook accounts in 2014 to see what would be most effective in motivating voters for Clinton opponents and discouraging Clinton voter from going to the polls. This shows that one should not be limiting a query to when they started working for Trump.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bannon-oversaw-cambr...

Obviously CA was not infallible, they could only get Ted Cruz to second against Trump among GOP candidates in that initial mad scrum, Cruz thought he could win with only evangelical voters in the primaries based on what they looked at with previous GOP primaries and was blindsided by Trump coming at the primaries from a different angle.

jasonlotito4• 8 years ago

The data collection isn't the concern. The criminal concern is federal election finance laws potentially being broken, as well as foreigners working for the campaign. There are very real and very serious potential issues here that are being brought up.

VVyattPrentice6• 8 years ago

While the criticism directed at social media is certainly warranted. I feel compelled to take exception with your reliance on false equivalence. It's kinda qualitatively different when you're actively engaging in illegal activity while working hand in glove with a clandestine foreign intelligence service to undermine your own countries democratic elections on behalf of an adversarial foreign nation state. If you can't see the difference, then keep at it. I assure you it's there. But if you already know that then you go ahead and keep explaining to folks how apples and oranges are the same things because they're both round fruit.

paulddraper3• 8 years ago

undermine your own countries democratic elections on behalf of an adversarial foreign nation state

Citation needed.

wnevets5• 8 years ago

what a classic deflection by bringing up Obama and some how trying to connect him to this travesty.

SlowRobotAhead• 8 years ago

Um... you can’t say “whataboutism” when you are comparing two directly hypocritical reactions to the same scenario.

CA sold data to Trump, Rubio, and others - pitchforks!

FB gives data to Obama and Clinton, marketing awards and praise.

tarunkotia• 8 years ago

With all due respect, I think you are missing the point altogether. Tools are created for most part with good intentions. What you do with those tools is what separates good from bad. Obama used the same tools to inspire a generation. Deeper penetration of technology is inevitable and there will continue to be bad actors who will exploit those tools to their benefit. Unfortunately, the negative narrative won over inpiration this time. Making tools the scapegoat is not the solution. We need to be more connected as a society than ever before. We have a bigger fish to fry, climate change is the biggest threat to humanity and without being connected it will be impossible to work together.

azinman22• 8 years ago

But he didn’t use the same tools. Obama had people via an app that was a campaign app, so people understood what they were installing. CA took a psychological test admin’d over mechanical turk, expanded it to people beyond those they paid, and ran with that. No one knew it had a political purpose.

mrtksn3• 8 years ago

Are you sure about that? People were not happy with Wikileaks revelations and Obama was forced to end or strip down some NSA programs.

Also, your whole argument says “People are not happy with what’s going on only because they are facing the consequences of it”.

Duh?

It was never easy to explain why privacy matters, the argument that if you are not doing anything bad then you don’t have anything to hide was good enough for many.

Now, things are different. We have demonstrable implications of the privacy violations.

I think it’s not a Trump thing, if Hillary was the smarter one to use computational propaganda we would probably still have an expose considering that the population of Democrats and Republicans are roughly the same and all have been done by a state funded British TV anyway.

I don’t think that you’re claiming victimhood rightfully. The privacy discussions didn’t start with Trump.

robinwassen2• 8 years ago

The outleash regarding collecting personal data for election fiddling started with Trump and Brexit.

Obama's campaign team bragged openly about doing the same thing, nobody cared.

For example: "mined an Obama backer’s Facebook network in search of friends the campaign wanted to register, mobilize, or persuade."

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/509026/how-obamas-team-us... (2012)

thewhitetulip• 8 years ago

Exactly. The sad thing is that Indians are still oblivious or in denial about such tactics being used by our PM.

ironjunkie2• 8 years ago

I agree somehow with you, but Obama didn't push it that far though (probably because that wasn't possible yet at the time).

This is typically what I cannot stand anymore in American politics, it has become so much "We" against "them" that each side gets the pitchfork out for things they would be perfectly fine to do if their side did it

gadders6• 8 years ago

Let's not forget that Facebook gave the Obama campaign privileged access to data because they agreed with them politically:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5520303/Obama-campai...

ionised2• 8 years ago

Please don't cite the Daily Mail as a source. It is not at all credible.

sn41• 8 years ago

I guess maybe it is time to re-evaluate Web 2.0? User-generated content was supposed to be empowering.

But we have ignored the powerful amplifying effects of positive feedback and "echo chambers" artificially induced by such "customised news".

Maybe it is a bad idea to present customised news, what we need are diverse views. Maybe it is a bad idea to tack on voting systems and like buttons with every comment and tweet.

RyanShook• 8 years ago

Calling out the company that made you a billionaire is such a brave move... inspiring.

samstave2• 8 years ago

Serious question, the US constantly states what side of a vote some lame senator or rep is on, but you never here anything about who is the makeup of the electoral college in msm - what their tax returns look like and who is paying them off. Why?

So, have one electoral college rep release their finances, and then you know the true state of politics

learc83• 8 years ago

but you never here anything about who is the makeup of the electoral college in msm - what their tax returns look like and who is paying them off. Why?

Because electors are temporary and almost completely symbolic. In the vast majority of states if the Republican candidate wins, electors nominated by the Republican party go to D.C. If the Democratic candidate wins, Democratic electors go.

The respective parties pick hardcore supporters who will almost certainly vote for the party that nominated them, and in 29 states they are legally obligated to do so.

No one cares about them because they never change the outcome. There have been a handful of times when electors have voted against the will of their states, but they've only changed the outcome once, in 1834. The Democratic nominee for Vice President should have won that year, but 23 electors chose not to vote for VP, so it went to the Senate, who voted for the Democratic nominee anyway (so the electors didn't actually alter the outcome).

77ko2• 8 years ago

Brian Acton's post[0] about the Signal Foundation[1] makes it sound like they could play in the same space as Facebook:

Of course, this is just the beginning. There is a lot of work to be done to make our dream a reality and we will continually be asking our peers, our community, and ourselves if there are more effective ways to serve the public good. In the immediate future we are focused on adding to our talented-but-small team and improving Signal Messenger. Our long-term vision is for the Signal Foundation to provide multiple offerings that align with our core mission. That will come in time.

The tagline on the foundations splash page, To develop open source privacy technology that protects free expression sounds like it could mean a facebook type thingamajig, since what is FB but providing free expression to the masses?

[0] https://signal.org/blog/signal-foundation/ [1]: https://signalfoundation.org/

bitxbitxbitcoin2• 8 years ago

That would be an interesting pivot.

pteredactyl8• 8 years ago

Facebook has been using Signal Foundation's protocol in Whatsapp since last April

https://www.fastcompany.com/3067468/why-open-whisper-systems...

1337biz• 8 years ago

At this point I am sceptical that any communication platform can succeed beyond niche communities unless they go after the teenager market.

gexla• 8 years ago

There's a group of rich people mentioned in this post and now they are telling their followers to delete FB _after_ getting rich. If we were to ask them how FB plans on making money when they started their involvement with the company, then monetizing user data would have been the answer.

This is something the world will just have to get used to. We're past the point of no return. As individuals, we can do a lot to protect our privacy, but it's a lot of work.

fzeroracer4• 8 years ago

So I want to cut off an argument at the pass here. Specifically: "Everyone knows Facebook already gathers all of your data."

We, as people here both on HN and people in the tech world take for granted the fact that we both know and understand how our systems work (mostly). We know that companies package and sell our data, that if something is 'free' the real subscription fee is what they collect on us during each use. But there is a significant population that simply doesn't know, think it's too much of a 'conspiracy theory' or don't care.

My parents, as much as I love them, are absolutely hair-tearingly bad at anything related to computers. They've had issues with scammers and Microsoft phoning them up so that they can upgrade their computer's ram. When I tell them about what kind of things Facebook does, they don't understand. They don't get why their data is so valuable ('well so what they get my phone number not like it affects me') and a lot of the time they have trouble understanding what they actually do.

Breaking stories like this is not necessarily surprising no, not to us. But it raises awareness and makes people wonder what companies actually are doing with their data. I doubt it'll result in the bubble that is Facebook finally popping but opportunities like this are always great times to pull aside your family and let them know why things like this matter. And in this current environment people are hyper-aware of things like this possibly more than ever before.

So I don't think the argument should be based around normalizing this sort of behavior by Facebook and other companies but rather revealing it to those that might not be aware.

TarpitCarnivore2• 8 years ago

To add onto this, I believe a large amount of consumers of these products assumed they were only accessing their own data. This story is highlighting how these companies further connect dots between you _and_ all your connections. This is where I feel people didn't recognize the larger scale of all of this, especially with progmatic programming for ads. Any time you try to outline how ad networks work w/r/t to "FB is recording us" you're met with "yeah buts". I think a lot of people didn't want to believe this was possible, but now have no choice but to accept it is very much happening.

dingo_bat7• 8 years ago

After selling his customers to Facebook for $20 billion. Cool story bro!

Double_a_92• 8 years ago

How could he have denied that much money?

heedlessly2• 8 years ago

let's be honest, everyone would like to become a billionaire.

lovelearning• 8 years ago

While I agree with the co-founder, I wish he'd also suggested deleting WhatsApp given that it's become a tool for many people spreading lies, disinformation, propaganda, faked photos, fake videos and hatred.

exolymph• 8 years ago

Crossposting what I said on Twitter:

My contrarian impulse is that I want y'all to stop dunking on Acton for this tweet. (Context: One of the WhatsApp cofounders who sold to Facebook and made lots of money.) People's views change over time and it can take years for a conviction to form and then crystalize.
It's very possible that Acton is burning bridges with that tweet. Don't assume that he loses nothing by speaking up now.

jonbarker2• 8 years ago

This is true. He could have just sailed off on his social media yacht and laughed at everyone.

luckydude• 8 years ago

This will get downvoted but whatever. I predicted all of this a decade ago and I refused to be part of it. All my friends laughed at me and said I was crazy.

Maybe I am but I don't do all that social media shit because if you don't know where they are making money, they are making it off of you.

And that's creepy. I'm willing to pay for value, but I'm not on board with them making money by looking over my shoulder. It's not about me doing something illegal, I don't do that, I'm fine, it's just creepy.

That social media stuff is like dopamine, feels good, but is not good for you.

wu-ikkyu4• 8 years ago

It's funny seeing the New York Times and others rail against Facebook like this and yet they still don't have the conviction to #deletefacebook. Many of the excuses read like those of drug addicts.

knowThySelfx3• 8 years ago

Delete Facebook? Then what about WhatsApp? Isn't it owned by FB now ;)

thetruthseeker1• 8 years ago

Every company has its ups and downs. Some downs or negative things warrant their demise. I don’t think what FB did here is worth calling burn the witch on them or actively trying to kill them, and I do hope FB are able to learn from this and change for the better.

Now, that said, I do think there is an underlying point others ops have alluded to: The disdain for Trump and everything that could have helped him win ( legitimately or illegitimately ) which I am not sure is the best way to react. I think that approach is not a very rational one. What needs to be done there w.r.t Trump is probably worth a separate discussion, but I disagree with knee jerk reaction here from the whatsapp founder.

knowThySelfx3• 8 years ago

I guess what Snowden said is true. FB is a surveillance company under the guise of social network. FB is not the only one in this case. All companies which store info could be suspect.

cocktailpeanuts2• 8 years ago

I find it very hypocritical of all these people who already have vested their shares in Facebook coming out and criticizing the company.

As someone else mentioned on this thread, this is the guy who contributed to the concentration of all things social into Facebook by selling Whatsapp.

I'm pretty sure most people are not fond of Facebook basically monopolizing people's private data and monetizing, but you don't get to criticize if you are the one who contributed to creating it, no matter how detached you are from the company anymore. And if you really cared about this, why didn't you just come out and say it before all this?

I see this with the recent trend of all these "former early Facebook employees" who obviously got to where they are now by working for Facebook and made tons of money by exploiting users. Now that their shares have all vested, they criticize Facebook about how they're so "unethical", etc.

If you really care about user privacy, just shut up and start your own company and see if you can fix it from scratch, instead of using the fame you gained by working for the company you're criticizing.

It's hypocrisy at worst.

ghthor4• 8 years ago

Financial independence is more important. Once you attain that you can seriously fight back, it's about picking your battles. With the money he made in the sell he can do some SERIOUS investment into what he believe's in that's going to create magnitudes more mass in the direction he wants to go then piddling around without it. FI should be everyone's primary goal, because only then can you put your effort to what you truly believe in and be able to back it up no matter what.

WA• 8 years ago

So where do you draw the line? What if your way to achieve financial independence turns out to outweight the positive effects you could posssibly achieve later with FI?

lloeki• 8 years ago

As someone else mentioned on this thread, this is the guy who contributed to the concentration of all things social into Facebook by selling Whatsapp.

As mentioned nearby he apparently owned 20% of the shares so he may very well have been against it yet falling short on voting power.

sah2ed• 8 years ago

I wouldn't call it hypocrisy, more like having to deal with the unintended consequences of your action.

He and others that have come out to publicly criticize Facebook knew what they were building, they just didn't see how powerful Facebook would eventually become in programming people en masse. The way the last election turned out was the wake up call.

Sean Parker himself admits as much in an interview with Axios:

"When Facebook was getting going, I had these people who would come up to me and they would say, 'I'm not on social media.' And I would say, 'OK. You know, you will be.' And then they would say, 'No, no, no. I value my real-life interactions. I value the moment. I value presence. I value intimacy.' And I would say, ... 'We'll get you eventually.'""I don't know if I really understood the consequences of what I was saying, because [of] the unintended consequences of a network when it grows to a billion or 2 billion people and ... it literally changes your relationship with society, with each other ... It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains."

"The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, ... was all about: 'How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?'""And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that's going to get you to contribute more content, and that's going to get you ... more likes and comments."

"It's a social-validation feedback loop ... exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.""The inventors, creators — it's me, it's Mark [Zuckerberg], it's Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it's all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway."

[0] https://www.axios.com/sean-parker-unloads-on-facebook-god-on...

cocktailpeanuts2• 8 years ago

I think what Sean Parker said was sensible. I'm talking about other people who cross the line.

If these people were such a saint enough to come out and say "Delete Facebook", they had years of opportunity to do so. It's not like Facebook's user exploitation is something new. In fact this breach of user privacy has been the general theme of Facebook from the beginning, even years and years before Facebook acquired Whatsapp.

The appropriate reaction should be them sharing their opinion but in an apologetic sentiment (since they clearly contributed to it AND profited from it) instead of suddenly pretending to be a saint on the other side now that their shares have all vested (and in this case he's working on a competing product, which adds another layer of distaste in my mouth since he's basically leveraging this social justice theme to get more users to use his signal app)

specialist7• 8 years ago

I feels ya. If they were truly contrite, they'd forfeit their ill-gotten wealth.

That said...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_of_War

"Using archival footage, United States Cabinet conversation recordings, and an interview of the then eighty-five-year-old Robert McNamara, The Fog of War depicts his life, from his birth during the First World War remembering the time American troops returned from Europe, to working as a World War II Whiz Kid military officer, to being the Ford Motor Company's president, to serving as Secretary of Defense for presidents Kennedy and Johnson (including his involvement in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War)."

I will always hate McNamara and what he's done. But I respect his mea culpa and attempts to prevent future such mistakes.

IzzFizz• 8 years ago

like all my mom does on her phone is facebook

amrx1012• 8 years ago

Why the hell are my non tech friends and acquittances so surprised by this? What did they think? That Facebook will not sell their data for profit? How can people be so fucking naive?

maephisto• 8 years ago

I just tried to delete the Facebook app on my Samsung Galaxy S8 and it looks like that's impossible. It's so embedded in the OS that it cannot be deleted, but only disabled.

LeoPanthera• 8 years ago

My extended family is "well distributed", living in three different countries around the world.

Facebook has been an essential tool for keeping in touch and keeping track.

What do I tell them all to use instead? Migrating to anything else, even if we all agreed, would be a huge pain.

orbifold• 8 years ago

Telegram or Signal for messages, create a "Family" group there and proceed to receive inspirational quotes from your aunt there.

lambdadmitry• 8 years ago

Telegram collects your messages just the same by default (and inevitably collects them if you want a group), it just doesn't monetize the data in the open. Yet.

josinalvo2• 8 years ago

this. it is easier and more intuitive to have a telegram family group than facebook. The interface is cleaner, the messages are clearer. Your aunts and uncles will (might?) thank you

switch0072• 8 years ago

For keeping in touch and keeping track, what's wrong with e-mail?

CannisterFlux• 8 years ago

I used to think this way, but I've realised that email is crap! It's the minimum, but it has so much friction.

People click "reply" instead of "reply all" so others get cut out of the conversation, attaching photos on a phone is a pain. You have to fill out all those fields (subject, To, CC). The subject is always garbage ("Hi" or just empty). Then you have the message buried 2 clicks in, with random chunks of quoted reply appearing again - and this is with everyone on gmail, that mostly clears up the quoted text problem. And if someone dares to change email address, forget it. That's it, you may as well give up trying to contact them because you'll never get the right address any more. And there's all this old-skool formality that people expect with email ("Dear Mother, ..., regards, Derpface"). Emojis don't always render correctly, it depends on the email client on the other end.

I don't use Facebook, but I do have a couple of Whatapp groups, and whenever my parents can't update Whatsapp because their ancient Android phone is out of space, and Whatsapp requires the update due to some protocol change, they end up going back to email... and it is like the stone age again.

mackrevinack• 8 years ago

if its only keeping in touch with your family then i would say that facebook isnt really that essential since there are countless other services/apps that you could use for that purpose. but if you also want to passively keep up to date with what other people are doing or posting then thats a bit harder to do without facecheck

submeta• 8 years ago

Whatsapp groups? (I know Whatsapp was bought by FB)

heedlessly3• 8 years ago

You can use email, groupme, etc..

Facebook is like the roommate you all agreed to have, but then you find out that he's eavesdropping on every conversation and writing down notes. Wouldn't you want to kick him out?

ionised2• 8 years ago

Signal.

It has messaging and video calls.

known• 8 years ago

FB users are 'unknowingly' revealing sensitive info that could be detrimental to their future

DarkCrusader22• 8 years ago

Instead of requiring Facebook and google to improve their ways, if we all started using ad-blockers more aggressively, setting up things like pihole for our family members and friends, wouldn't this solve the problem since companies won't have any incentive of collecting the data? It seems to me to be a much better idea that expecting multi-billion corporations to act against their interests.

malikNF2• 8 years ago

Not really, the companies would then start asking for the information they want directly from the users. Take for example the quizzes you see posted on your facebook feed. "Find out what kind of potato are you?" and if you wanted to know a user's name, ask a question like, "if one potato year is 10 human years how old are you now?". I mean ask the question disguised as something else, in this case a stupid joke. Ad-blockers alone wont fix this issue. I think its us developers who created this problem and its us devs who has to come up with an answer to this.

DarkCrusader22• 8 years ago

But what are they going to do with this information if they can't show us ads based on them. Collect and target all you want, I am not seeing any ads. If 60-80% users does this, what will be the point of collecting data anymore.

TaylorAlexander• 8 years ago

Random comment but I see so many people talking about regulation. Why do we want to hold the wolf by the ears here, continuing to use a service that doesn’t respect us while trying to force them to act like they do, when instead we could be advocating the use of user friendly services that truly respect our freedom? Why if Facebook has proven to be focused on things we don’t want (deep profiling), would you think any regulation (from politicians who are seemingly all bought by campaign donations) would somehow redeem Facebook?

For those advocating regulation, why do you advocate that over the development of services that genuinely respect user freedom?

Thanks all who comment thoughtfully.

pteredactyl8• 8 years ago

Cynically, it's beyond comprehension or willingness to learn for most. They'd rather complain to the Government than do something about it. Unfortunately, we've found ourselves in this situation. And why people look to the Government as some panacea of trust and integrity is beyond me.

wu-ikkyu4• 8 years ago

And why people look to the Government as some panacea of trust and integrity is beyond me.

Blind allegiance to authority and the government is indoctrinated on us from an early age by state mandated school curriculum, the media, implicit fear, and other factors.

Angostura• 8 years ago

Is this the Same WhatsApp that demands unfettered access to your entire contacts list before it will work?

throwaway613834• 8 years ago

I wonder if the Americans freaking out about this whole foreign influence thing have any idea what their nation has done to other countries' (both democracies and otherwise). What's happened here is a complete joke in comparison, and everyone is losing their head. Do people have any idea what the modern world has been like?

wu-ikkyu4• 8 years ago

Strong nationalism implies hypocrisy towards the rest of the world.

yters7• 8 years ago

It's mostly a way of targeting Trump. No one bats an eyelid when Clintons have Russian ties.

chasing7• 8 years ago

Because Trump's ties are legitimately scary while Clinton's are trumped up bullshit.

Which you should know, Donald Trump, Jr. You were in some of the meetings.

dasyatidprime• 8 years ago

To repurpose what I was thinking of posting as an Nth-level comment, and leaving this long because I don't have time to shorten it (and because I'm trying to phrase it with so many preemption pieces that it won't immediately attract some kinds of detractors which I want to try to advance this argument beyond/around), yada yada:

Making it purely up to the individual to decide these things when they have to decide in a coordinated way or else connections break down results in unhappy situations. Right now, we have enough coordination anarchy in digital social networks that it leads to some combination of entrenchment, pseudorandomness, and fashion cycles (at least as far as I can see).

In the US, mail became a regulated monopoly, and the telephone network has regulation to try to give newcomers a better playing field and avoid capture effects (not that this always works—but things like “in this metro area, all ten digits must always be dialed so that the new numbers being introduced don't become the lower-class numbers that everyone fights to avoid anyway” have happened). Structure and usage regulations for physical shared community spaces have enough difference in focus and constraints that they don't seem to get applied the same way, and the localization and nature of enforcement mean they don't have the same kind of massive leverage. It is my strong suspicion that the lack of a single consensus “physics” in shared digital spaces (and attendant shared approach/instinct; cultural differences and training aside, human bodies have substantially similar baseline physical capabilities and constraints across the world) means that even with arbitrarily “benevolent” (whatever that means) government intervention, the idea of a level field doesn't work the same way to start with, and there's a panoply of little technical decisions that have “already been made” that combine to make things amazingly awkward on that level as well.

We've tried “just stop using it!” since Stallman started saying it ages ago, and it doesn't work in practice for a lot of people (“because not everyone does it!” is of course the exact coordination problem I'm calling out above). Regulation seems almost untenable from this position, at least assuming pace-of-advancement continues to be a serious concern and expectations haven't globally converged, though I wouldn't be surprised if some particularly fluid kind of regulation popped up (especially from the European sphere) that would break logjams better. What else can usefully be tried if we don't want to wind up in the Big Social hegemony world?

One that I rarely see is “capitulate in an accelerationist manner, let them become governments, and then push to make them good ones”—interesting as a thought experiment, but I wouldn't want to try to put that in practice from here. Can we extract useful information from that, though?

A related observation: to some extent, the success of Mastodon (within several communities I'm part of, enough so that I can use it as part of the primary “social network” set in the same way many people use Twitter and observe a lot of jumping ship there from Twitter along the way, even though in terms of absolute popularity it may still be far weaker) mimics what's been called the Amish-congregation government model to me (you are heavily bound by your choice of instance but it generally remains practical to switch), and instance leaders seem to be taking a much more active and community-centered role than Big Social allows. But that's still ultimately based enough on the Twitter model of interaction that there are lingering social problems (at least I find them to be problems) from that, and the currents of code changes are still a coordination/effort problem of their own, though that's partly mitigated by several instances running interesting forks already while leaving interoperability intact. I'll be very curious to see how that evolves.

StreamBright• 8 years ago

Deleted it long time ago on my mobile devices. It is not enough though. Facebook javascript is everywhere.

ironjunkie2• 8 years ago

Tech companies should bear responsibilities to NOT embed facebook javsascript on any of their websites. More shame need to come when those javascripts get embedded somewhere.

Hendrikto• 8 years ago

I deleted my facebook accounts years ago, and never looked back. Nobody in my fried group even really uses it anymore. Most people just check in once a day for 3-5 minutes.

tzfld• 8 years ago

Most people just check in once a day for 3-5 minutes

Actually, that's a huge thing.

timvisee• 8 years ago

I've fallen in a deep, deep hole. One I can't get out of (meaning, deleting my Facebook account), because I've used "Login with Facebook" on quite a few sites and platforms.

What do others recommend in a situation like this?

gpmcadam• 8 years ago

Consider whether any of those associated sites are still useful. You can enumerate these on Facebook itself, it shows you which sites have access to your account.

Secondly, make a list of these sites. Ask yourself: "if I lost access to these sites today, would I care?" - remove the ones you don't care about.

Lastly, separate each one from Facebook one-by-one. Some will be easy, log-in, set a password, unlink Facebook. Done. Some will probably require getting in contact with the site's support team.

Don't worry about doing this over night. Just rest in the knowledge that every step you take, is getting a bit more control over your data.

Eventually the list will shrink, and then you can start the mammoth task of doing the same things with:

* Your post history

* Your likes

* Your check-ins

* Your reviews

* Your event history

* Your employment history

* Your photos

* Your wall posts

* etc.

Good luck!

donttrack• 8 years ago

Keep deleting it after you enable it to login to whatever site and the delete it again after you changed your credentials on said site. Eventually it will stay deleted/disabled and lost at some point.

Thats what I did and the Facebook account is gone now. Haven't encountered any problems so far.

OfficerGuac• 8 years ago

If you go to https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications you can see a list of everything you've signed up for using Facebook OAuth, then determine from there what sites you still use and adjust logins as necessary

objectiveariel• 8 years ago

This is probably the most pathetic PR move we've seen this year so far.

Acton sold off his userbase to Facebook in 2014, with full knowledge of the Snowden revelations of 2013 where we learned about Facebook's involvement in PRISM.

powerapple• 8 years ago

We are in the connected world. News can be generated by anyone and travel very very fast. That's the reality. In the fast you have to talk to people knowing what they think, now you can do it quickly and at massive scale. We will have more and more information out there anyway, regardless how many researchers working on cyber security and other problems. The only way to go back is to unplug electricity grid? Really? There is nothing wrong with Facebook. And that's how technology can empower people to do both good and bad things. Yes, US people are not happy with the election, journalists now have a revenge, but blaming technology? really?

hutzlibu• 8 years ago

The big problem with the whole post-privacy thing is in my opinion, that it is asymetrical.

I mean, if everybody (could) know everything about everybody else, ok, strange, but fine. But the big powerful players know much more about the private lives of the average citiciens(or also politican), than the Gestapo and KGB could ever dream of, but we know not so much about them. This is very dangerous.

As it gives the people with all that (potential dark) information much power. Especialy when there are so many ridiculous laws around, disconnected from reality, like that Marihuana is still mostly illegal. And while for most it would not matter, but someone working in health sector for example, can get in serious trouble(at least in germany), if he would found guilty of smoking sometimes. This makes people vulnerable to blackmailing etc.

I can only hope, that there are also enough righteous people, like Snowden, involved, to blow the whistle, when things get overhand. But I believe there is something fundamentaly wrong, with the current direction.

yters7• 8 years ago

Yes, but that is all of modern tech, and people give them their data willingly for the convenience. No one is stopping that any time soon.

intrasight2• 8 years ago

For several years, I've been pontificating the somewhat abstract idea that a software app will one day hack the human psyche on a massive scale. And by "hack", I mean to do us harm by tapping into the same pleasure mechanisms as addictive drugs. It never occurred to me until today that perhaps Facebook is this app.

imtyler• 8 years ago

"Pontificate" implies a pompous demeanor, I think you meant pondering?

intrasight2• 8 years ago

Both. My friends hear it as potification ;)

disease• 8 years ago

I personally have always viewed Facebook as being in the business of mind control and have said as much to anyone that would listen.

dotsh• 8 years ago

Deleted comment.

niravs• 8 years ago

that's a scam and a fake account.

pretty_dumm_guy• 8 years ago

I quite remember the day when my name appeared on the comments section of a website I visited (through facebook widget I believe). I freaked out. But when I discussed about this with my friends back then almost every one seemed to have a cavalier attitude towards this(meaning they were completely fine with it). I wouldn't be surprised if my friends still have the same attitude.

People are okay with sharing their information online if it provides them convenience. Facebook provides them with the convenience of staying in touch with people. This combined with "I have nothing to hide anyway" & "so what if?" thought processes and monetary benefits on corporate side seems to have led to this huge data bank that is Facebook today.

I am really glad people are talking more about this. Never too late. People need to completely understand their actions online have consequences.d

EnderMB• 8 years ago

The main thing I don't get from this approach is the idea that deleting Facebook somehow frees you from this level of data mining.

In reality, it's well-known (not just by techies, but everyone) that when you "delete" Facebook, you're only really deactivating that account. Your data has already been mined, your data has already been sold and moved onto another server, and even if Facebook wanted to get rid of you, the Channel 4/Guardian expose has illustrated that data has been sold. The damage has already been done.

Instead of trying to get people to leave, there should be pressure on sanctions from affected governments. The only way to stop this level of data misuse is to ensure that Facebook is fined adequately. Instead of trying to crash the stock price, fine them $10k for every user breach, to the tune of several billion.

My biggest worry from this scandal is that the anger will die down, and the world will be told that you can get away with this level of data breach. Equifax have largely got away with their breach, but if Facebook and CA can get away with outright giving data away for profit then all we'll see is that the line hasn't been crossed yet.

josinalvo2• 8 years ago

In calm seriousness:

Can sb compare the technical feats and the scope of the data collection by the obama campaign and the trump campaign?

Cyberspy• 8 years ago

In May, once GDPR becomes mandatory, we'll all be able to issue data requests to the likes of Facebook and Cambridge Analyitica etc, to find out just what they know about us. The requests are free, so with social media, you could almost mount a denial of service attack against a business if enough people make a request!

pers0n• 8 years ago

So many bloody apps and websites require or ask for fb accounts to sign up, tinder, coffee meets bagel, bumble, etc etc. everyone empowered them.

Note I never got a fb account, so some sites I just can’t use.

WhatsApp co-founder tells everyone to delete Facebook

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