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Zuckerberg Grilled At Angry Facebook Shareholder's Meeting (mercurynews.com)

An anonymous reader quotes the Mercury News' report on Facebook's annual shareholder's meeting: On Thursday in Menlo Park, one investor compared the social network's poor stewardship of user data to a human rights violation. Another warned that scandal is not good for Facebook's bottom line. And one advised Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg to emulate George Washington, not Vladimir Putin, and avoid turning Facebook into a "corporate dictatorship." Facebook struggled to keep order, kicking one woman out of the meeting within the first few minutes for repeated interruptions. A plane zipped overhead pulling a banner that read "YOU BROKE DEMOCRACY" and advertising Freedom From Facebook, a group of privacy and anti-monopoly activists that are pressing the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to break up the company...

Zuckerberg repeated the same reassurances he used in front of U.S. and European lawmakers earlier this year: The company hasn't taken a broad enough view of its responsibility... "We're also very focused on being more transparent," Zuckerberg said, touting the fact that the company had just posted its policies on content moderation for the first time. Minutes earlier, the company announced that shareholder proposals for more transparency and oversight had failed, surprising no one. Zuckerberg controls the company through special stock that gives him more votes than other shareholders.

"Facebook said that just because the proposals were blocked, that didn't mean the company doesn't care about these issues."

9 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Delete Facebook by DaMattster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Stop waiting for the government to take action. If everyone wants to teach Facebook and the Zuck a lesson, all you have to do is to close your account. If millions of people left Facebook for good, it would implode under its own weight. But alas, too many people are addicted to it. Sometimes it's the people who scream the loudest that are the most addicted to it.

  2. Re:Obama used the same social media tactics agains by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Micro-targeting of voters was used by Obama against Hillary.

    But when Trump does it, suddenly Facebook has overstepped.

    The problem is Facebook's shitty policies which allowed a researcher to obtain details of people who hadn't agreed to give them and the amount of people's whose details were gathered. Who used them is not the issue.

  3. Zuckerberg Grilled by lgw · · Score: 5, Funny

    Zuckerberg Grilled At Angry Facebook Shareholder's Meeting

    Oh, metaphorically grilled. Had my hopes up there for a minute. How disappointing.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  4. Wut? by 101percent · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Should have listened to Stallman. I mean seriously it's a sad reflection on society when 100 millions of people just give everything to an unaccountable company and then cry about it later. It's really hard to have sympathy but honestly what where these people thinking? IN 2018 gullibility, peer pressure, and naivety still rule human behavior.

  5. Re: Obama used the same social media tactics again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    In Obama's case an app was made and people OPTED INTO giving it their personal data. In Cambridge's case the data was taken without CONSENT.

    See the difference and the line that was crossed? I capitalized them so it's easier for you to pick out from inside the blurry Fox bubble.

  6. Re: Obama used the same social media tactics aga by orlanz · · Score: 4, Informative

    No it wasn't what people agreed to. Facebook's first response was that Cambridge violated the terms of use of said data access. Facebook did a piss poor job of enforcing data protection but that doesn't make this a "business as it was designed" situation.

  7. Re:So you're not on FB,right? by sacrilicious · · Score: 4, Insightful

    To put it another way: You deleted your FB. Is that the case?

    I've never had a fb account, never will.

    I'm not the OP, but your question implied that nobody could be without fb. I love not being on it. FB is "the mosh pit", full of people who absolutely need others to constantly acknowledge them... and it's gross and pathetic.

    --
    - First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
  8. Re: Obama used the same social media tactics aga by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No it wasn't what people agreed to.

    Like people know what they agree to.

    Granted, most people didn't expect their data to be weaponized.

    Facebook's first response was that Cambridge violated the terms of use of said data access.

    Once your data is sold to someone, it is theirs. The idea that the seller can enforce how the buyer uses that data is cute.

    Facebook did a piss poor job of enforcing data protection but that doesn't make this a "business as it was designed" situation.

    It is business as it will be used. Zuckerberg cannot get out f his responsibility for this.

    There is a saying, unfortunately attributed to Nikita Kruschev, that goes something like:

    "The last capitalist would sell the hangman the rope used to string up his own mother."

    Zuck does not actually care that he was caught, or the results of what he shares responsibility for. He cares that it might affect his bottom line, though.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  9. Re: Obama used the same social media tactics agai by shplopt · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well, you're technically correct in a very narrow sense, which, I'm told, is the best kind of correct. You'd have a rough time convincing any humans that EULAs are informed consent, however, especially unpublicized opt-out data collection and third-party sharing. Besides that, no one consented to a shadow profile, or to the collection and sale of info from data brokers to facebook. This argument just doesn't hold up to any level of scrutiny.