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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.

8 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Why should we trust Facebook? by Z00L00K · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why should we trust Facebook?

    It's not a very good place to be considering all narcissists and trolls.

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    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  2. Damaging its credibility? by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Since when did Facebook have credibility?

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    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  3. Because Facebook IS NOT TRUSTWORTHY by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:I love it so much. by CajunArson · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Hypocrisy, thy name is Hillary sycophants.

    Here's another one: According to this, there is now literally infinitely more evidence showing that Zuckerberg "colluded" with the Russians by directly taking money to spread their supposedly pro-Trump propaganda.

    If I recall correctly, the usual SJWs claimed that non-proven allegations of a similar nature were outright "treason" by Trump. So based on their standard, Zuckerberg literally committed treason with Russia -- and unlike Trump there's actually proof that it happened.

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  5. Because Zuckerberg by Dracos · · Score: 4, Insightful

    He's a conniving asshole, and corporate culture is established at the top levels. Remember, he's referred to Facebook users as "dumb fucks".

  6. Noted by HBI · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
  7. I don't trust FB... by ctilsie242 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  8. Re:I love it so much. by MightyMartian · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There's a difference between people masquerading as Americans paying Facebook for pro-Trump or anti-Clinton advertising and Trump's son, son-in-law and then campaign manager going to a meeting with purported representatives of Putin to get the goods on Clinton.

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