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Mark Zuckerberg and the 2012 Facebook Moscow Hack
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: As Facebook's privacy debacle rages on, it's interesting to look back at Mark Zuckerberg's 2012 visit to the Facebook Moscow Hack (photos, video), at which Facebook provided training in how to access the data of app users' friends and awarded prizes for apps that did so.
In a 2012 video, Facebook's Simon Cross shows the Moscow crowd how they can "get a ton of other information" on Facebook users and their friends. "We now have an access token, so now let's make the same request again and see what happens," Cross explains (YouTube). "We've got a little bit more data, but now we can start doing really interesting stuff. We can get my friends. We can get some more information about one of my friends. Here's Connor, who you'll meet later. Say 'hello,' Connor. He's waving. And we can also get a ton of other information as well."
Cross, ironically, was the spokesperson Facebook later tapped in 2015 to explain to the press why giving friends' data to apps was a horrible idea that had to be curtailed lest Facebook lose its users' trust. Cross told reporters that Mark Zuckerberg said one of Facebook's new slogans was 'People First', because "if people don't feel comfortable using Facebook and specifically logging in Facebook and using Facebook in apps, we don't have a platform, we don't have developers."
In a 2012 video, Facebook's Simon Cross shows the Moscow crowd how they can "get a ton of other information" on Facebook users and their friends. "We now have an access token, so now let's make the same request again and see what happens," Cross explains (YouTube). "We've got a little bit more data, but now we can start doing really interesting stuff. We can get my friends. We can get some more information about one of my friends. Here's Connor, who you'll meet later. Say 'hello,' Connor. He's waving. And we can also get a ton of other information as well."
Cross, ironically, was the spokesperson Facebook later tapped in 2015 to explain to the press why giving friends' data to apps was a horrible idea that had to be curtailed lest Facebook lose its users' trust. Cross told reporters that Mark Zuckerberg said one of Facebook's new slogans was 'People First', because "if people don't feel comfortable using Facebook and specifically logging in Facebook and using Facebook in apps, we don't have a platform, we don't have developers."
This "outrage" is completely fake. You GAVE Facebook that information on yourself. I am more concerned about data gathering by organizations where I didn't willingly give consent. There are companies out there that have a complete profile of you, your finances, everything, married from different sources. Facebook has just junk information collected to sell your ads. That should be the least of your worries.
There are also the 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 Facebook Moscow Hacks to consider. Oh right, different sort of hack.
So if I don't use the app and my friend has me as a contact but does and my phone number is scraped did I give that information to facebook?
The problem with Facebook is that it took advantage of the idiot Facebook users who couldnâ(TM)t figure out this was free because their personal lives were valuable and the commodity for Facebook to make money on. Seriously who canâ(TM)t figure that out? My only complaint with Facebook is that they said one thing in their privacy agreements and many times did something very different that was against that very privacy policy.
Plain and simple, the Facebook user is the commodity in the free social service. You donâ(TM)t like it, you can delete your account.
first BBSes, then early internet, web 1.0, web 2.0, etc.
i have erased my amazon account.
i have erased my facebook account.
i have erased my twitter account.
i have erased my instagram account.
i never had a reddit account.
avoid most forums.
apparently i am not alone. young people also have begun a kind of exodus. there is something fundamentally, at it's core, wrong with these companies, the way they operate, and the way they think about their fellow human beings. it's not OK and we are not going to engage anymore.
i read that if 25% of a population revolts, it can change the behavior of the mass. i see that coming, soon, and i dont see these companies adapting. they are going to become the new myspace, the new friendster.
they replaced businesses that it took 100 years to build... but what they dont realize is the hyper aggressive cycle they have created, is going to eat them just as fast as they ate their predecessors, and it will have just as little mercy for them. Facebook is asking for forgiveness and understanding when it gave none to the businesses and people it destroyed on its climb.
what will always determine the internet, and always has, is the users. and they are done.
Just do it already.
Yes, people gave FB their info. No, they did not willingly give that to Russia to fuck with out system and install a traitor.
Next time someone says, "I don't care about my privacy," give them a cookie.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You went there.... so I play my well-timed but almost 2 year old trump card on your epic stupidity and blatant explatives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTboGG7DMwU
I prefer to ask them when I can come over and watch them poop. Very intensely. Privacy is no big deal after all.
This is entirely about the 2016 election. The majority of Facebook users are left-of-center politically and probably most of the Facebook team is too. EVERYBODY involved was perfectly happy about all this until 2016. When Team Obama openly bragged about using Facebook and vacuuming-up people's "friends" data for a super-campaign tool in 2012, and wiping the floor with Mitt Romney this way, they were celebrated as geniuses and people loved Facebook even more. Facebook and team Obama were the "good guys".
When word got out that Cambridge Analytica did the SAME THING and sold the results to the Trump campaign in 2016, suddenly Facebook lovers recoiled in horror.
Suddenly, people who agreed to let Facebook know EVERYTHING about them and their friends and collate all that data and sell the results to anybody who offerred cash was seen as despicable. Suddenly people who LOVED Zuck and his people analyzing the entire global population like bugs under a microscope and making BILLIONS of dollars doing it were repelled that their PRIVACY was being invaded; laughable really, given how exhibitionist so many Facebook users had become.
Give it a break! Hillary lost! The planet continues to spin on its axis and orbit the sun. Plenty of people who opposed Obama and saw him as an existential threat to America had to suck it up and endure him for 8 years. Obama opponents are seemingly more-mature than the fevered Hillary backers.
Everyone should stop using Facebook and the govt should make their business model illegal.
If we really need such a service, then we need to decentralize it and some entity (internaltional?) can control the bits that must be centralized for it to function. And do it in a non-profit way.
This may be an unpopular opinion, but it needs to be pointed out...
/dev/null on the way to be counted. This may make you mad, of course, if you use Facebook, but let's face it. Wouldn't you rather be on Facebook right now? Wouldn't you rather be clicking on links and watching your "friends" videos and reading their stupid meems or meams or memes or whatever, on Facebook right now? Why not click on the address bar, and type "facebook" right now, and go hang out there, where you won't be exposed to ideas you disagree with? Facebook facebook facebook, friend facebook friend facebook book face. Face?
If how you vote can be swayed by some bullshit you see on Facebook... you probably shouldn't be allowed to vote anyway. Now this begs the question, "who decides who is allowed to vote?" and that is, of course, the $64,000 question, isn't it? How does one verify if someone HAS a Facebook account? Seems simple. Announce anyone with a Facebook page will be allowed to cast their votes for local, state, and federal offices, right there ON Facebook. Then those people are saved the trouble of having to come OUT on election day, wait in line, and cast votes, and have their votes actually COUNT. It would be a great way to get people incapable of thinking to self-select their voices and their votes to be routed to
Are they gone? Good. Now...
The fact that people HAVE in the past tried to prevent people voting based on their race, their religion, their opinions, etc., has made it difficult for a democracy to exist, and have a legitimate claim to BEING a democracy, and yet a lot of people are NOT allowed to vote anyway, in the United States. Like convicted criminals. Somehow, some morons decided to disenfranchise people for being convicted of certain crimes and sent to jail, and the court system let that stand, (which they should NOT have,) since it is sadly true that not everyone convicted of any crime actually COMMITTED that crime, and sure as fuck it is NOT the case that ALL people who commit crimes are expeditiously caught, convicted, and locked up. MANY walk free, and shockingly, or perhaps sadly, it is often the greatest and most heinous crimes that go unpunished. Corruption is the cancer killing our civilization. Courts are too busy worrying about nonviolent and victimless "crimes" to be concerned about real ones, with real, actual victims.
If modern America is anything, it's an indictment of the very idea of democracy itself. You give people power without responsibility, and... well, this is what you get. Sickening as this idea is, I'm wondering if Bre-entry is a possibility at this point. If enough Americans start drinking tea, ditch the coffee, apologize for the revolution, agree to start misspelling things again, like litre and metre, and colour, and ask with a properly stuffy and British accent, do you think they'd take us back?
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
"if people don't feel comfortable using Facebook and specifically logging in Facebook and using Facebook in apps, we don't have a platform, we don't have developers."
Hmmm...so if people just stopped using facecrook, en masse, this would send a message. Gosh, that's a novel concept!
Sadly, we live in the land where perception outweighs fact...and where want is automatically conflated with absolute NEEEEED. Hence companies doing whatever they wish and people believe themselves utterly powerless to stop it. Maybe we should stop being childish with our spending?
Your mind is like a parachute. It works best when it's been opened.
Enough said.