Slashdot Mirror
Why It's So Hard To Trust Facebook (cnn.com)
Brian Stelter, writing for CNN: Why won't Facebook show the public the propagandistic ads that a so-called Russian troll farm bought last year to target American voters? That lack of transparency is troubling to many observers. "Show us the ads Zuck!" Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jason Calacanis wrote on Twitter when The Washington Post reported on the surreptitious ad buys on Wednesday. Calacanis said Facebook was "profiting off fake news," echoing a widely held criticism of the social network. It was only the latest example of Facebook's credibility problem. For a business based on the concept of friendship, it's proving to be a hard company to trust. On the business side, Facebook's metrics for advertisers have been error-prone, to say the least. Analysts and reporters have repeatedly uncovered evidence of faulty data and measurement mistakes. Facebook's opaqueness has also engendered mistrust in the political arena. Conservative activists have accused the company of censoring right-wing voices and stories. Liberal activists have raised alarms about its exploitation of personal information to target ads. And the news business is worried about the spread of bogus stories and hoaxes on the site. Some critics have even taken to calling Facebook a "surveillance company," seeking to reframe the business the social network is in -- not networking but ad targeting based on monitoring of users. Over at The Verge, Casey Newton documents inconsistencies in Facebook's public remarks over its role in the outcome of the presidential election last year. Newton says Facebook's shifting Russian ads stories and unwillingness to disclose information citing laws (which seem to imply otherwise) are damaging its credibility.
Why should we trust Facebook?
It's not a very good place to be considering all narcissists and trolls.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Think about it, you get to hear news that your very own peers promote, that's something you don't typically get on #fakenews cnn. You have the ultimate source of news freedom on Facebook verified by your peers to be 100% accurate and true. IMHO Facebook should be the *only* source of news one digests in a given day...
It's impossible.
Since when did Facebook have credibility?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Now THAT is a good one.
Why is so hard to trust FBook? Oh, give me a break!
Any body who knows anything about computers (especially the mini ones with antennas and apps) knows not to trust them! WTF people?! They really think that we'll trust Facebook?!
Are you all insane? Do you truly think we are??!!
Not a Facebook user.. but this just sounds like a dying media attacking Facebook.. who watches TV for news? 50k worth ads sank Hillary's campaign? Lol!
Facebook is an advertising (=propaganda) platform, and Google makes its money selling ads to go with its chokehold on search, email, and other services. Together, they get between forty and fifty percent of global digital ad revenue and twenty percent of all (digital, print, TV, etc) advertising revenue worldwide. At what point do we consider antitrust actions against the dominant players in the propaganda market? When together FB and GOOG take one out of ever five dollars in all the propaganda sold in the entire world, doesn't that make them dangerous to the public interest?
Why won't Facebook show the public the propagandistic ads that a so-called Russian troll farm bought last year to target American voters?
Because views cost money. That Russian troll farm is going to have to pay for the privilege of having you see the ad.
(Note: that is meant to be sarcastic; I shouldn't have to point that out, but a surprising number of people have defective sarcasm detectors)
Neither have I. Remember kids once upon a time there were commercials like this. You never trust anyone who's only in it for the money. That's our Free Enterprise Capitalism lesson for the day. You're welcome.
We'll make great pets
Mark Zuckerberg has been untrustworthy since Facebook's inception - in fact, before that. For the few who don't already know the story, he stole the idea from the Winklevoss brothers, and did so in a particularly underhanded way, by pretending to code it as a work-for-hire but then running off with it for himself. In fact, Zuckerberg himself calls people who trust him "dumb fucks". On that one point and that one alone, I'm willing to take his word.
It would be very, very strange if a company started by a person this amoral was based on ethics and goodness.
Facebook goes out of it's way to datamine you, track you, surveil you, and otherwise monetize you to death, and you're really not getting anything of value in return.
to the White House, or the senate. American propaganda seeps out of Facebook and other social media as well. Why would they take a neutral objective stance when they can just lie to serve their own?
Conservative activists have accused the company of censoring right-wing voices and stories.
Conservative activists and non-conservative activists have accused them of censoring right-wing stories. And we all know it's true. First it was a bug with the bot, then they claimed they needed to control the bot to better censor things, then they admitted to hiring more humans to manually adjust the bot, injecting more bias.
I imagine a liberal activist who actually cares about free speech, censorship, etc. also complained. There's got to be at least one.
Liberal activists have raised alarms about its exploitation of personal information to target ads.
Ah, here's the liberal mention. Actually, it's the conservatives and other non-liberals who are most vocal against Facebook. I'm sure there are liberals against Facebook's use of personal information (and many more than the hypothetical one who complained about the targeted censorship), but for the most part, liberals love Facebook. They love to feed the machine and any protest is toothless and pointless. Like wearing a mocha colored bracelet for some anti-corporate, free-trade whatever coffee awareness while sipping on your Venti Mocha Frappe Crapa Latte.
Of course, this isn't about politics, this is about age. Younger people love and use Facebook much more than older people. And younger people tend to be more liberal (becoming more conservative as they age). We've got "adults" who don't know a world without Facebook, and don't know a world with privacy, so many of them simply don't see the invasion.
TFA could have just mentioned that people have been complaining about censorship and privacy violations (I assume TFS was copy-pastad from TFA), but no. It had to get a divisive, political angle in there. Conservatives mad about this. Liberals mad about that. Both should be mad at both, as should non-partisan people.
So the progressive echo chamber is disappointed that Facebook isn't feeding them enough Trump-Russia red meat.
Sad.
Remember kids; Facebook is a private corporation, a concept these same people expressing their disappointment with Facebook today we're breathlessly repeating when Facebook got caught grooming their news feed; Facebook is not obligated to help you erect your Russia Did It! narrative.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
"Facebook told advertisers that the platform can potentially “reach” 41 million young adults between 18 and 24 in the US. Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research Group countered by pointing out that 2016 census data shows there were only 31 million people in that age range in the US."
How can you trust them after such error?
some where around the time suckerburg moved facebook from dorm servers to a "proper" location he gave an email interview (unable to find it now). Along with the usual canned questions people get asked, he was also asked about user security, data privacy, and all those like things. His response? A profanity laced diatribe that can be summarized thusly; people are idiots to trust facebook or him. That day I deactivated my account.
I think we give the American voter too much credit to be influenced this way. Most people can't even name a Congressional representative. Why do we think Russian has that much influence over the candidates own massive ad campaigns? But if Facebook thinks it did, lets see some proof of it?
But the main one is easy: Zuckerberg is involved.
When Facebook was censoring posts, and taking down insane things under the pretext of "hate speech" you never heard a peep from the liberals.
Now there's a chance of a Russia connection so OMFG WE WANT ANSWERS!
This is from an AC, so take this for what it will, or just dismiss it if you would like:
A few years back, I was in a humidor at a local place. A friend of mine took a picture of me there, posted it to FB.
A week later, my health insurance company at the time sent me a letter demanding a full physical with bloodwork, or else pay smoker's rates.
Coincidental?
What modern ephemeral services company _doesn't_ generate revenue by targeting ads?
I just noticed that Slashdot is deleting comments by Anonymous Cowards that contain racist content. Is this some new policy?
I only found out because I saw a comment to this story about how Facebook is some sort of zionist plot, and when I went back to the story to reply to it, the comment was gone.
You are welcome on my lawn.
He's a conniving asshole, and corporate culture is established at the top levels. Remember, he's referred to Facebook users as "dumb fucks".
It's a bad change. In the past, nothing was deleted. Even under duress...I seem to remember Taco defying a C&D or two in the past.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Use
yandex
Bing
YaCY
ssh/scp based file server on your OWN raspberry PI
Boycott the Google Internationalists !
He was funded by InQTel, a CIA front.
FB delievers complete dossiers on virtually all of the worlds non-poor people. Great CIA win !
Wait, Facebook *is* a surveillance company targeting ads based on personal information.
"liberals" are all tools of the 1% banksters and corporate overlords. Their objective is to ensure that 99% of the people are helpless, downtrodden "individuals" who can be handled in an atomized fashion. Nations and governments are a nuisance to their World Domination Plans.
We will please you in any possible way, SOROS-tool.
There is a definitely a serious group of determined, semi-religious assholes. For example the ANTIFA stormtroopers, who cannot be reach via reason.
Then the lefties who think they must have sex with other men in order to "display solidarity with fags". Even if they are biologically not in fagottry.
Has FB done much to earn my trust? Let me count the ways...
Mention something in a message, and see ads about it forever more.
The fact that they demand real life info about you, and will "Zucc" your account if not. Makes a great place for stalkers.
The fact that web forums, and many other things are moved to FB groups. Too many eggs in a non private basket.
The fact that is difficult to remove stuff. The only mass delete utility is a Chrome extension, and it has to be run a number of times to remove posts, likes, etc. Even with Reddit, I can run a script and clean an account out completely.
The fact that some sites require FB for authentication.
The fact that even if I am not on there, I still get tagged in images, and an account is sort of built even without me creating it.
AFAIK Facebook hasn't asked anyone to trust them. There isn't any kind of damage they're able to do, where people are counting on them to abstain from doing it.
How is their trustworthiness (or lack thereof) important? Are you trusting them with anything? If so, what is it, and why?
Go read all about O-Tay and the 13 year olds and understand now why I am so PISSED OFF.
There's people walking around with Diplomatic Immunity cards that are smuggling serious dark weapons and shit. Organ harvesting, Human trafficking, Drugs, Depleted Uranium, White Phosphorus okay the whole fucking show.
Go show us a MUG SHOT OF ALPHA JOLLAH (you know the car guy that had the shootout with capitol police)
Sorry. I don't mean to be such a dick. There's fake people because it's a spy ring. They need Cars to raise cash and ship stuff in containers through the various ports (another whole side topic)
Please don't take the few damn paragraphs that Rosiak has published and say okay done.
YOUR NOT DONE.
Well, let's see. You've got Randi Zuckerberg, a relative of the CEO clearly earned their directorship saying "privacy needs to go away", along with Zuckerberg trying to sneakily buy out island property in Hawaii through shadow companies for the purpose of privacy, covering up his laptop camera and microphones, but then calling his users "dumb fucks for trusting [him]". Yeah, sounds like a company I'd trust. And, calling it here, his little trips around the US seem weirdly prescient for someone running for office.
If these people had been "dumb" they would have voted for the serial liar, warmaker and corrupt bankruptee TRUMP. Oh wait, they did do that.
For the record, I don't think they should have voted for Clinton either.
It's not like they even pretended to promise to "Do No Evil".
Their promise is to monetize your personal information as often as possible to maximize their profits.
You can add *.facebook.com to your block lists...
Even Mark Z apparently didn't think people should trust him.
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks
They flat out do not respect the user. They will do whatever they feel is right, regardless of whether you want it or not. IN the end, i had to ask my wife to uninstall it from her phone because i honestly do not trust them to act ethically. Its gotten so bad, Google is resorting to annoying users on Android Oreo to force Facebook to change some its practices regarding how its apps run. (persistent notification that background apps are running)
Good-bye
Their intellectual property policies are keeping me away. Any text or image or anything you put there can be used by facebook for any purpose whatsoever, with no permission from or even notification to you.
When Facebook was censoring posts, and taking down insane things under the pretext of "hate speech" you never heard a peep from the liberals.
Now there's a chance of a Russia connection so OMFG WE WANT ANSWERS!
Meanwhile, the NH has found that out-of-state voters probably tipped the state to Hillary away from Trump, and almost definitely stole the Senate seat.
(NH allows for same-day voter registration, and you don't need a NH license to vote - only a "promise" that you've moved to NH and that you're in the process of getting your license transferred. Using round numbers, of 6,000 non-resident voters who registered on the day of the election, 5,000 have not actually moved to NH 9 months later. MA and VT are predominately Democratic, but NH is a swing state and the senate race was particularly close: incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte lost to challenger Maggie Hassan (D). Hassan won by a razor-thin margin of 1,017 votes. if 59.2 percent of out-of-state voters voted democratic, then that senate seat was stolen by non-resident voters.)
(Also, the senate currently sits at 52-48 in favor of R, and there have been several razor-thin votes since the election. That one seat stolen illegally has had an amplified effect on federal policy.)
Trump uses Russian dressing on his salad and it's all Russia! Russia! Russia!, but mention voter fraud and it's "nothing to see here, move along".
What can you do with their service that you can't do with anything else? Need news? ANY aggregator would be better. A place to store photos? Get a damn hard drive. Got friends in other countries? Golly gee, I wonder what else exists for this? You could just use the damn Internet on your iPhone...morons. No iPhone? Kik, Snap Chat, Signal, and a thousand other multiplatform apps for this, all including audio and video calling. The problem is people are that stupid and lazy, all one-in-four human beings. And for those that wake up one day and realize how creepy that company is, are too far into it to be able to quit because of peer pressure. The other problem is they are a $190 billion dollar company; that's ten more than what's in Fort Knox. Unless they Enron somehow, they are not going anywhere. Imagine how much harder it would be to catch "criminals" if Facefarm didn't exist?
serial liar
Okay.
corrupt bankruptee
I'll give you corrupt, it's a simple fact of business. Bankruptee? You're technically correct, which isn't the best kind of correct, no matter what your puerile pop culture references tell you.
warmaker
Because when all else fails, just make shit up.
I never understood the need to be on that platform in the first place.
It needs to go the way of MySpace.
Facebook is run by a Democrat, so like most of the media which is run by Democrats, can't be trusted. The media is there to help the politician they don't care at all about the people.
Only rubes whine about corporate bankruptcy. Only rubes get uptight about bankruptcy in general. The whole POINT of modern bankruptcy is so that it doesn't end up as some Dickensian nightmare.
People like you are just confirming that you've been successfully indoctrinated by formal education to be so risk averse you can't really fend for yourself anymore.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The story behind Facebook can be found in "The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal" by Ben Mezrich, which "The Social Network" movie was based on. "The Boy Kings: A Journey into the Heart of the Social Network" by Katherine Losse takes place after the movie and from a woman's perspective that I'm currently reading. The most recent Facebook-related book is "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley" by Antonio Garcia Martinez, who sold his startup and engineers to Twitter while getting a job at Facebook in a three-way deal, and developed the ad system at Facebook that tracks both logged in and anonymous users with third-party demographic data.
Who in their right mind would even consider "trusting" Facebook? That company does not even try to hide it's contempt for users and hatred for all varieties of freedom.
Facebook is operated by the "Progressive" nomenklatura for the benefit of the financial oligarchy and their surveillance state. So far as I can tell they make no attempt to hide this, and in fact openly celebrate it.
A plebian user trusting Facebook is like a sheep trusting a pack of hungry wolves.
If you must use Facebook (no other way to connect with some people), use a safe web browser like Brave or Epic.
YOUR NOT DONE.
*You're
NSA / FBI / CIA front is what they are... a self organizing Gestapo...
Says it all.
"F" facebook. Too much stupid, drama, etc. As secure as a wet paper bag. Not on it, never will be.
Maybe we could tolerate the ads if Facebook would just give the full breakdown of who's sending ads our way, and the specific data being used to target those ads. "Facebook verified advertiser", of course, so we can decide who's a troll ourselves.