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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.
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.
It's impossible.
Since when did Facebook have credibility?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
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.
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.
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?
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.
It is also entirely possible the Ads were pro-Left positions. We won't know until we see the ads.
It is also possible that part of the reason FB may not want to expose or show them is how closely they resemble normal user posts.
Respect the Constitution
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.
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.
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...
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".
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.