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Facebook Warns Investors They Expect To Find 'Additional Incidents' of User Data Abuse (siliconvalley.com)
Facebook earned $4.99 billion in the first three months of 2018 (on sales of $11.97 billion). But their quarterly report included some new warnings, according to the Bay Area Newsgroup:
In its 141-page filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday, Facebook -- like all public companies -- warned of risk factors, the official version of what might keep CEO Mark Zuckerberg up at night. Chief among them is the possibility of other Cambridge Analyticas. "We anticipate that our ongoing investments in safety, security, and content review will identify additional instances of misuse of user data or other undesirable activity by third parties on our platform," Facebook said in its 10-Q filing. It is a point that Zuckerberg made again and again during his Congressional testimony earlier this month.
What's more, Facebook knows it won't catch everything, even though the company is investigating and auditing away after revelations that political data consulting firm Cambridge Analytica accessed the information of up to 87 million Facebook users without permission... "We may also be notified of such incidents or activity via the media or other third parties."
What's more, Facebook knows it won't catch everything, even though the company is investigating and auditing away after revelations that political data consulting firm Cambridge Analytica accessed the information of up to 87 million Facebook users without permission... "We may also be notified of such incidents or activity via the media or other third parties."
For example: Our entire business model.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
FB gave permission via the APIs. Zuck is flat our lying and trying to throw everyone under the bus.
Facebook doesn't anticipate finding "additional instances of misuse of user data". They've already found it and have no way to hide it. They're just figuring out how to announce with minimal impact.
If they hadn't found it or had found it and thought they could hide it they would keep their mouths shut on the issue.
They already know about them and they're huge.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Was looking at Discord (extremely popular with Gamers), thing not only calls home but leaks data on the local user. There's _nothing_ in their client that says it happens. Like Twitch, their entire API is built to be harvested while locking down the client from casual perusal. It's also _very_ tightly coupled with Cloudflare.
Discord themselves laughed at the findings.
tl;DR - Sooner these companies are fined, the better for everyone. But I'm anon and this is slashdot. You'll never see this thanks to the new mods.
They make $20,000,000,000 a year BECAUSE they don't self-police.
SEC reports don't work like that. This isn't a tacit admission from Facebook that after much soul searching they realize they've done wrong. Nor does it mean they've found other incidents that haven't been reported yet.
All this means is Facebook is guarding against future lawsuits. SEC reports disclose every possible negative event so shareholders are considered aware of the risks. If another data breach event happens, Facebook has protected itself against shareholder lawsuits.
It's like reporting "Well our CEO could get eaten by a bear." Disclosing it as a possible risk doesn't make it any more or less likely to happen.
There probably will be more incidents. Facebook may in fact know of some already. But this report is not evidence of that.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
It should be obvious by now, right?
I mean, if anyone thinks Cambridge Analytica was an isolated case... they must be clueless politicians who think any of this is new.
Dude, Facebook has been harvesting this data from it's inception basically... and the whole games and apps thing was founded on the idea of allowing other companies to do exactly that. Obviously, they'll say it's to empower users and let more functionalities flow in, but if Facebook really had any intention of not letting others make use of the data they were harvesting, there would be privacy and security measures put in place there in the first place.
Make no mistake, Facebook always knew this shit was happening. They might not have predicted that the data would be exploited and weaponized for political propaganda in such a bare and flagrant way, specially they might not have predicted that they'd be caught red handed, but it's not like they didn't know mass data harvesting was happening. They knew, they didn't care enough to do anything about it, and they probably profited a whole ton because of it.
And let me tell you something: other social networks are just the same. They are also doing it, but Facebook was basically chosen as the symbolic lynchpin to be appaled against the practice. Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and several other social networks have been embroigled in several private data scandals over the past couple of decades or so, they always comes with the same justifications, and they always react poorly. We always have a round of excuses, saying they are sorry, saying they'll try to do better, until the whole thing dwindles from public perception and they can resume focusing on what they care most: profitability and investors demands.
A practice which, let me remind people, the government is also at fault - creating virtual traps and honeypots for mass surveillance efforts.
If opaque data harvesting and shady usage of said data is something to be indignated about, let the government first look at the mirror and then start judging the private sector for following their example.
People should know that neither Facebook nor other social networks will change from this. They have no choice. Their profitability depends on this. And you can make all your boycotting campaigns, your pedestal posts about leaving social networks, and all your anti-corporation posts... it will change nothing. Because not only said social networks already have a firm grasp on the majority of population that cares nothing about privacy, they already secured a way of harvesting data on you even if you are not on social networks yourself.