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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.
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.