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We Can't Trust Facebook To Regulate Itself, Says Former Operations Manager (nytimes.com)
schwit1 shares an op-ed on the New York Times by Sandy Parakilas, a former operations manager on the platform team at Facebook: Sandy Parakilas led Facebook's efforts to fix privacy problems on its developer platform in advance of its 2012 initial public offering. What I saw from the inside was a company that prioritized data collection from its users over protecting them from abuse. As the world contemplates what to do about Facebook in the wake of its role in Russia's election meddling, it must consider this history. Lawmakers shouldn't allow Facebook to regulate itself. Because it won't (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source). Facebook knows what you look like, your location, who your friends are, your interests, if you're in a relationship or not, and what other pages you look at on the web. This data allows advertisers to target the more than one billion Facebook visitors a day. It's no wonder the company has ballooned in size to a $500 billion behemoth in the five years since its I.P.O. The more data it has on offer, the more value it creates for advertisers. That means it has no incentive to police the collection or use of that data -- except when negative press or regulators are involved. Facebook is free to do almost whatever it wants with your personal information, and has no reason to put safeguards in place. The company just wanted negative stories to stop. It didn't really care how the data was used. Facebook took the same approach to this investigation as the one I observed during my tenure: react only when the press or regulators make something an issue, and avoid any changes that would hurt the business of collecting and selling data. This makes for a dangerous mix: a company that reaches most of the country every day and has the most detailed set of personal data ever assembled, but has no incentive to prevent abuse. Facebook needs to be regulated more tightly, or broken up so that no single entity controls all of its data. The company won't protect us by itself, and nothing less than our democracy is at stake.
We Can't Trust Facebook. You could have just stopped there.
Sent from my TARDIS
In a neutral sense, this is fine. Everybody likes to be like.
It is the approaches which companies like Google and Facebook take to stop negative stories (censorship, demonizing dissenting voices, commissioning hit pieces, play along with the MSM's agendas) that scare me.
It's too late. We're already at idiocracy, as evidenced by most of the posts here at slashdot.
Facebook can be trusted with information like teenagers can be trusted with car keys and alcohol.
Lock Zuckerberg up.
Corporatism != Free Market
Facebook's entire business model is to sell targeted advertising. That requires huge amounts of data to be collected on its users. Asking Facebook to "regulate" itself by limiting the information it collects is akin to asking it to limit how much profit they make. It ain't going to happen.
When someone uses that phrase, they are implicitly suggesting that you agree that X needs to be regulated.
>> That means it has no incentive to police the collection or use of that data -- except when negative press or regulators are involved
I think you forgot about legal recourse. A couple of civil class action lawsuits could also alter behavior. There's also the possibility that people will leave Facebook en masse (and it may already be happening for anyone under 30 - I know my kid's Facebook accounts are not where they are on social media), leaving Facebook with a lock on GenX/Boomers only.
>> Facebook needs to be regulated more tightly, or broken up so that no single entity controls all of its data.
I hope you realize that your two suggestions are at odds: one would keep all your browsing in one AlGore-quality lock-box, regulated by a government privacy agency (heh), while the other would scatter copies of all your browsing to many entities who would each develop their own slightly-imperfect picture of you. Also, I hope you understand that the real situation is really pretty close to #2 today.
Personally, I'd rather keep regulators OUT of the picture and let Facebook live or die organically; otherwise, I could see a system where regulators keep Facebook propped up twenty years from now because they are the officially-approved gold-star social media provider.
This is how cloud works. You turn over all your data to some centralized entity so that you can access it conveniently from all your mobile devices. What many do not realize, is that by doing that you have turned over all control over your data as well. The cloud decides who, when, where, and how the data can be accessed. The current IoT architecture (which is completely wrong in my opinion) does the exact same thing. It shovels all the details of your private life to the real owners of the data (the company who sold you the device) and holds it hostage. Hackers now have one target for a treasure trove of information. Subscriptions and other fees can be tacked on at a whim. But most importantly, all your data is now available to the highest bidder. It is time for the pendulum to start swinging the other way back to a decentralized web where not only computing but storage happens at the edge.
Of course, a mega-business such as Facebook can be trusted to self-regulate. That's just common sense. Why look at the sterling examples of self-regulating mega-businesses that provide a 100% consumer friendly and beneficial experience: Exxon, Monsanto, Microsoft, Philip-Morris, BP, EpiPen, VW, Ford, General Motors, et al. For sterling examples within the USA Federal Government, just look at the wonderful self-governing agencies and bureaus: IRS, NSA, FBI, DOJ, DOS, DOD, Congress (the best example of enlightened self-regulation), FCC, the Judicial System, et al. We have lots of examples to assure every user and citizen that Facebook is eminently able to provide self-regulation that will suit and benefit the Public 100% /sarc
Facebook knows a lot about you even if you never visited their website, because people all around you use it.
#DeleteFacebook
Lawmakers shouldn't allow Facebook to regulate itself. Because it won't.
Just like Wall Street and the banks back in 2007 who repeatedly told us they knew what they were doing and that any additional regulations would stifle their competitiveness on the world. Don't regulate me bro!
We saw how "self-regulation" worked out for them.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower