Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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
And of course they make no mention of option 3, which avoids both problems and actually protects user privacy: banning the collection of large amounts of data about large numbers of users in the first place.
Of course that would mean eliminating an extremely profitable and increasingly popular business model - but it's not at all clear that the existence of such businesses offers any benefit to society to justify the many risks they inherently create.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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