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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.
Water is wet!
To quote Homer (Simpson)
D'oh!
Anybody who thinks Facebook doesn't have the opportunity and means to abuse this data is either a fool or willfully ignorant (otherwise known as your congress critter).
I can't trust anyone who brings up a problem this country has had for 10+ years and connects it to Trump. It makes me wonder what reality distortion field they've been living in and why Trump some how snapped them out of it. Real talk. Why would I want to align myself with someone who is just going to forget the issue exists next time a Democrat gets into the White House? As a non-partisan, both sides just drive me nuts with this relativistic bullshit. How can we fix anything when a large percentage of the voters stop caring about the issues every 8 years, because their party can do no wrong.
Facebook can be trusted with information like teenagers can be trusted with car keys and alcohol.
Lock Zuckerberg up.
Corporatism != Free Market
Take a moment, if you will, to compare the two:
Facebook knows what you look like
Facebook knows your location
Facebook knows who your friends are
Facebook knows your interests
Facebook knows if you're in a relationship or not
He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
There is but one inescapable conclusion: Mark Zuckerberg is Santa Claus .
#DeleteFacebook
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.
The number of Russian shitposters on this and other tech sites aren't going down either. How about Slashdot starts looking into these VPNed users from Macedonia and Russia who can't stop spamming RT/Sputnik talking points?
Maybe one will show up in this very thread to incoherently ramble about the DNC in poorly translated English?
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
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
Or we can because the average person was an idiot before Facefarm. They knew and know their customer base and exploit it. You have a million other options for free speech without it and you get to keep your dignity.
shut down facebook, close their offices, and fire all the employees, confiscate all their computers and pull and shred all the harddrives, put up a server with the facebook domain with a page that says "facebook is closed, now go outside and get some fresh air and exercise"
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
NT.
It is FOX in the Hen house my Russian friend.
... I keep getting a surprised response when I say I don't have a Facebook account. They give me a look like "Oh, your one of THOSE people."
Where's the freakin' edit button? [sigh]
I don't CARE how it works! All censorship must be defeated, by any means possible. Since the law is worthless, we need a technical means of protecting our rights. Fuck the "regulators". They are fascist nazis! All censors are!
And now I need to find out how the spammers circumvent the posting limits I am subject to.
I am still baffled by how nobody really reacted to their emotional manipulation study, where they actively (and successfully) controlled the moods of a few hundred K users for some time. If that isn't the biggest red flag ever, i don't think anyone will ever do anything against FB. But then again, systems like that are every governments wet dream, i guess.
Why is Apple slightly less on the privacy-sucking radar (for most folks) -- battles with the FBI over the Secure Enclave notwithstanding? Because they aren't an advertising company and don't have a vested interest in prioritizing data collection on users over all else. (FWIW, neither is Microsoft, which makes the outcry over low-level telemetry stuff in Windows 10 here seem way over-blown.)
Facebook and, probably more importantly, Google, control 90% of all advertising on the web. With the crater-like decline in print advertising, and the in-progress collapse in traditional OTA and cable non-Tivo'd television (meaning broadcast, non-microtargeted) viewership, this is a HUGE chunk of National revenue combined with a HUGE chunk of data on nearly every internet-using person out there.
Breaking off data collection and advertising from the technology sides of the companies are the only way to ensure privacy practices are respected. Yes, that means disruption. Too bad. The alternative is looking more and more like the type of Dystopian, corporate-led Orwellian state that most of us believed was confined to bad science-fiction.
It's not the late-90s any more, despite the prevalence of Clinton sex scandals in the news. Time to revisit the regulations we passed for the internet back then and update them for the modern technology and consumer landscape.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
water is wet.
Listen, Facebook is full of crap as is the entirety of social media. Where is the surprise there? These things don't exist free of charge because Zuckerberg and the like are still in their dorm rooms trying to get dates. They exist because they are trying to be advertisers' Holy Grail. It's been that way since we started writing on papyrus. Big deal the Russian bought some ads on Facebook and followed them up with posts, etc. You don't think big (and even little) business does that every day? And come on. Whatever the Russians dreamed up is nothing compared to the mud that has flung between the two major parties for decades. Please, everyone stop your whining about how it's the Russians fault or Facebook's that we are all brainwashed. It's our fault. We're idiots, too stupid or too lazy to realize we have no one to blame but ourselves for buying (figuratively and literally) the crap that we do.
absolutely nobody. Correction...anyone that has been paying attention to Facebook and their wanton disregard for the data security of their users. Several years ago I recall reading several articles about how FB has changed their application to set certain items enabled where they should be disabled. Data security items. And they make it intentionally difficult for the average user to find those settings and to change them easily. So predictably, the settings go unchanged for many people.
They also make it really difficult to disable an account. Every picture you post has to be selected individually and deleted. The delete takes about 3 clicks if I recall. Why is there no "select all" button? You know, like every other application on earth has. Obviously they want to make it a royal pain to get out of. The modern day roach motel. I would be willing to bet that there are tons of zombie accounts just sitting out there that have never been properly closed. Meaning all of those photos and check-ins and friend links and other metadata are still there for FB to mine or sell or do whatever they want with it.
A few weeks ago I read an interview with Sean Parker (one of the early founders at FB) basically confirming that, yes, FB is evil. They have managed to create the internet equivalent of the crack pipe. By playing upon the basest of human emotions (envy, jealousy, greed) they have spawned an entire generation of kids completely addicted to the hamster wheel of Likes, Notifications and Check-ins. It's really a sad state of affairs.
I'm sure that somehow, somewhere, I have been linked to in a FB photo or post but any info they have on me did not come a result of me signing up. The more I read things like this the happier I am with that decision.
It has multiple pictures of you. Notice the feature whenever you upload photos and it asks you to tag others- and generally knows who's in the photo? Yes, it knows what you look like.
The mobile apps track your location. You can turn it off at the OS level, but if you don't do that it absolutely knows you location.
It knows your friends, or at least the vast majority of them. If you're about to say that your friends list isn't really your friends- it has correlation scores for how close any two people are. They aren't 100%, but they're damn close.
Your interests- they know everything you like, everything you post or DM about. Through those little like buttons on almost every webpage, they know a good 95% of your web traffic. They know all to almost all your interests.
If you're in a relationship or not- well there's a place to list it that lots of people use. And a high enough friendship coefficient between people of the correct orientation is a pretty good guess if you don't.
What other pages you look at on the web- yes they do. That's the purpose of the like button.
Some small percentage of people may take extraordinary efforts to avoid this- but that's what it takes. They have this info on pretty much everyone.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Clicking on "I Agree" does not mean you actually agree to their 50 pages of dense lawyer jibberish. It means "make this damned piece of shitty proprietary software work so I can communicate with my friends".
Also - all that lawyer jibberish can be summarized in just a free words: "You have no rights. You have no freedom of speech. You have no privacy. You lose. Fuck you pleb, that's why." Any kangaroo court that would enforce that kind of one-sided, rapey, blatantly inequitable "contact" is contemptible.
If Facebook is the "engine of growth" for our economy, we are good and truly fucked.
Private property religionists sure do love dystopian surveillance states.
No. For a dystopian surveillance State you need Collectivism, which "private-property religionists" oppose in all both of its incarnations: Fascism and Socialism.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.