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Facebook Now Faces a Massive Backlash. But Will Anything Change? (fortune.com)
Slate argues that Facebook "is a normal sleazy company now," saying the company "obscured its problems and fought dirty against its critics" -- but that now its failings are being publicly aired. And Reason provides yet another example:
The Times also reveals that Facebook chose to support FOSTA (and its Senate counterpart, SESTA) -- legislation that guts a fundamental protection for digital publishers and platforms, and makes prostitution advertising a federal crime -- not as a matter of principle but as a political tactic to tar opponents and cozy up to Congressional critics.
Even Steve Wozniak has joined the critics, saying this week that Facebook should "stop putting money before morals," adding later that "I haven't seen them do one real thing." Woz also suggested that Facebook should allow users to export their data so they could upload it onto competing social networks.
Now long-time Slashdot reader pcjunky reports that the same scammy ad has been running on Facebook for a full two months after it was reported. But maybe they're just understaffed? Engadget reports that over the last six months Facebook has discoverd and eliminated 1.5 billion different fake accounts -- which is 200 million more than the 1.3 billion accounts it removed in the previous six months. On the Blind app, one Facebook employee reportedly asked the ultimate question: "Why does our company suck at having a moral compass?"
So where will it all lead? According to Fortune, Senators Chris Coons and Bob Corker "warned Friday that Congress would impose new regulations to rein in Facebook unless the social-media company addresses concerns about privacy and the spread of misinformation on its platform."
But will anything change?
Even Steve Wozniak has joined the critics, saying this week that Facebook should "stop putting money before morals," adding later that "I haven't seen them do one real thing." Woz also suggested that Facebook should allow users to export their data so they could upload it onto competing social networks.
Now long-time Slashdot reader pcjunky reports that the same scammy ad has been running on Facebook for a full two months after it was reported. But maybe they're just understaffed? Engadget reports that over the last six months Facebook has discoverd and eliminated 1.5 billion different fake accounts -- which is 200 million more than the 1.3 billion accounts it removed in the previous six months. On the Blind app, one Facebook employee reportedly asked the ultimate question: "Why does our company suck at having a moral compass?"
So where will it all lead? According to Fortune, Senators Chris Coons and Bob Corker "warned Friday that Congress would impose new regulations to rein in Facebook unless the social-media company addresses concerns about privacy and the spread of misinformation on its platform."
But will anything change?
Zuckerberg
As I recall, Facebook has always been one of the sleaziest companies on the planet. You'll recall the "dumb fucks" quote.
'no'... and it's correct. nothing will change. not until zuck gets off his power tripping ride and/or the profits start drying up.
As if we, as a society, don't have worse more urgent and a lot more pressing issues at the moment.
As if we are required to post our private information for everyone to see.
As if people haven't already understood that everything that they see on the Internet might be false and Facebook is not an exception.
So, why are people still so concerned about Facebook privacy/data policies/advertising so much?
He bragged about their misbehavior back then, as well as how much money they were making off it. The data mining facebook was just a matter of time based on what he said back then, and I didn't trust them much as a result. Finally everybody else is catching up to the concerns I've had for 20 years and they have been oblivious to.
Next up: Google, Cloudflare, Akamai, Valve/Steam, Akamai, and a few other huge data companies.
We are not a number, or a product, we are a customer. The sooner the peasants remember that mantra the sooner corporations will be reined in.
Nothing will change. Deal with it.
The best thing to do is stop using it or if, like me, you have never started using it - don't. Problem mitigated, because there are always those who need to perform in front of the mirror.
Or just decent trusting people.
[($)]
I've given up even bothering checking my friends and acquaintances on Facebook. 95 percent of them are dead. Most actively post on other social media services and a few of them will occasionally post something randomly on Facebook but it feels like a ghost town.
And besides the dead accounts, Facebook feels incredibly outdated and clunky to use.
One might suggest that the accounts I follow are just an anomaly, but they are a pretty diverse set of family, friends, and work focused accounts. I have to imagine that the entire Facebook valuation is a giant house of cards just waiting for some social media/data scientist to come out with some study that shows the emperor has no clothes.
My stocks!!!
It was sleazy before, but it's also normal now. It's now an established sleazy company, not a sleazy startup anymore.
Beyond the obvious Betteridge response, Facebook is now a publicly traded corporation and board members of publicly traded corporations are required to do whatever it takes to increase the value of stocks or be voted out. This seems like a good idea until you realize this brings out the absolute worst and most sociopathic behavior. Facebook is not going to change.
However, what is going to change (eventually) is everyone else's obsession with Facebook. Sure, you'll always have a class of fools who will keep using it regardless of the what they hear but the allure is that other people are also using it. As more people recognize it's making them unhappy, more people will quit. The good news is that far fewer people from the latest generation are actually joining. Sadly, this pattern will only happen language by language. Small language bases will form quickly and evaporate just as quickly. However, widespread languages will slowly decay.
Ultimately, a better alternative to Facebook is going to be what eviscerates Facebook's userbase but it's corpse will forever haunt the internet just like MySpace.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
When the company run by Mark Zuckerberg and Shery Sandberg hires a right-wing company which then uses anti-Semitic attacks against George Soros just because Soros publicly criticized Facebook, that is astonishingly bad. Both Zuckerberg and Sandberg will apparently throw the Jewish community under the bus to protect Facebook's massive profits. I would not count on congress to do anything to rein in Facebook, since Republicans still control the senate and the Republican president would have to sign any bill which would be a longshot reaching his desk anyway.
The only way to stop Facebook is for everyone reading this to spam their family, friends, and colleagues with news articles about how bad Facebook is. Only when enough people dump Facebook, will Facebook even consider changing.
User data portability is one aspect of the GDPR that seems to have slipped under a lot of people's radar - and companies like Facebook too, it seems - but what Woz is asking for is pretty much echoing the requirements of the GDPR's Article 20: Right to data portability. Now that the EU's various governments are clearly looking for non-compliance examples that they could turn into additional revenue/legal case studies, they might want to get on that - especially since Zuck seems determined to keep giving the finger to requests from the EU to attend meetings to discuss Facebook's approach to user data, fake news, and political manipulation.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
and consequently the rest of the world (especially the EU) needs some meaningful input on this too.
And to think that HRC won none of the stuff they're being pilloried for would be a problem. I hope they go after the entire fucking web ads ecosystem next. It's not like FB is the only company out there that collects data and sells targetable ads to whoever wins the realtime auction.
that's how the genocidal wmd on credit corepirate nazi regime treats it's own..
There are too many folks out there that want a service that brings friends and families together so they can share movies and pictures--"for free." Unfortunately, most of them fall into either the "I just don't care, it's free. lulz" category on privacy or the generic "respect my privacy, where da gubmint, and oh yeah, I'm still not paying monthly or yearly but don't spy on me either" category. In other words, either folks don't care or they do "care" but refuse to acknowledge that unless they're paying this is just the nature of the beast.
There is where Gab's business model could have made things very interesting if the founder hadn't decided that free speech for trolls was a hill worth dying to defend. They were starting to expand into a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook, and it would have been straight forward for them to let pro users open a page where family members could share that content for a nominal fee.
The business is built on idiots freely putting all the details of their personal lives online, and then Facebook vacuuming that all up and correllating it with lots of stuff they gleaned from other users, and then selling it to every possible buyer for any possible use for as many dollars as they can get.
What about that business model even hints at ANY morality or ethics? For that matter, what serious sane person puts himself on sale in such a slave market? All the black slaves who found themselves for sale in the 1850s in the deep south were also on the auction block "for free!" as others bought and sold them - and I doubt any of them were dumb enough to complain about their "terms of service" from the auctioneer or in any way to ever imagine themselves to be the customers. As uneducated as many of them were, even they would have known that they were not customers getting time on the auction block for free - they would have understood themselves to be the merchandise in a transaction that was definitely NOT in their best interest.
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Its been pretty clear for awhile now that Facebook is so big its only real concern is to continue to bring in money to sustain itself. Do any of the people running Facebook have any moral values? Probably not.
""Why does our company suck at having a moral compass?"
Because Greed N. Corruption is CEO of US Capitalism, and has been for a long time now.
And Facebook is hardly the only one who's morally bankrupt here. All the other mega-corporations do it. They're just not standing in the spotlight, live-streaming their dirty laundry for the world to see right now. Even if they were, they wouldn't care.
The world is so flat right now that all of the mega-corps always have plenty of customers. Corporate Arrogance is the standard by which they act. They're going to do what makes them money, and no longer give a shit about how they treat you or what you want. That is why you repeatedly hear stories about companies doing shit that seems to make little or no sense from a consumer demand standpoint, with the end result being more profit, which is all that matters. This is why you have $1000 smartphones with a ton of bullshit features you never asked for bolted to non-removable shitty batteries. This is why you new cars come with $10,000 worth of shit you don't want, but is now standard. All new computers will soon have soldered memory and storage with no upgrade options. It's become almost impossible to find a new non-Smart TV, and soon will be the case for every appliance in your house.
My advice? Buy stocks. Because you can't beat 'em and won't leave 'em (en masse) to stand up to this bullshit.
All the young users are leaving.
All the older users are joining.
Net-on-net, this will change their stock. As in it will spiral down to Zero over time.
Seriously, what is with this story it reads like every other PR from tech companies. Simply saying you had an epiphany doesn't magically grant you forgiveness no matter what drugs you're smoking.
The fake account thing alone is something a lot of tech companies do because it's inflated growth. Don't tell me Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, Google, etc all don't benifit from it either.
I'll take a smaller site with an active community over bot infested hell holes. Thanks.
Slate argues that Facebook "is a normal sleazy company now," saying the company "obscured its problems and fought dirty against its critics" -- but that now its failings are being publicly aired
"Now"? They have ALWAYS been a sleazy company from day one. There have literally been movies made about the lack of moral compass their founder has. Of course they fought dirty. Anyone who believes or believed otherwise is either naive or a moron.
Even Steve Wozniak has joined the critics, saying this week that Facebook should "stop putting money before morals," adding later that "I haven't seen them do one real thing."
Easy to say for the guy who made a fortune 30+ years ago and has been more or less coasting ever since then on his celebrity. Don't get me wrong, I like and respect the hell out of Woz but what has he done besides some charity work in the last 30 years that I should care about? It has no more credibility than me pointing out that Facebook lacks a moral compass - he just has a bigger megaphone. When Woz uses his fortune to actually build something bigger than his public image I'll take his opinion on the matter more seriously. Not to mention he hasn't exactly taken Apple to the woodshed for many of their ethics problems so I think we might have a glass house in play here.
Woz also suggested that Facebook should allow users to export their data so they could upload it onto competing social networks.
You know, Woz is seemingly a very decent but this is just almost weapons grade stupid. How about Woz tell Apple to drop all their patents and open source their software? Because that's the functional equivalent of what he is suggesting. He's telling Facebook to hand over the crown jewels of their empire which is data about their customers. Woz cannot possibly be dumb enough to believe that is a useful suggestion for anything other than for puffing up his own image.
People just need to stop using it.
Once that happens facebook will disappear.
> So where will it all lead? According to Fortune, Senators Chris Coons and Bob Corker "warned Friday that Congress would impose new regulations to rein in Facebook unless the social-media company addresses concerns about privacy and the spread of misinformation on its platform."
So in other words, they should from now on distribute only deep-state propaganda or else...
Misinformation is free speech, the problem is not the people spreading false information, it's the people reading it and believing it rather than making the effort to do their own research to determine the truth.
The fact is all media is at least skewed to one side of any issue, and in any case the truth is usually more complicated than can be explained in the limited space of a news article.
However if people start doing their own research, they will discover that they can't trust the mainstream media any more than they can trust trolls on facebook.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Here's my facebook story. I've started seeing ads for "casinos". Each one has a different keyboard-smash name. The ads are all identical, a picture of a politician and "You won't BELIEVE what he said" and they link to a fake news site. It's meant to look exactly like the real news site, and the sidebar is full of real stories from the real news site. But this article, this page, is fake. The " incredible thing" from the clickbait headline is that this politician has legalized online casinos and personally endorsed keyboard-smash casino, a casino so shitty that every time you bet, you win. The "comments" are full of people saying they hate this politician (realism) but, they clicked anyway and are now all millionaires because you just can't lose! So, obvious bullshit, close the tab. Can't. Chrome doesn't allow it to be closed. Back? Disabled. Then it starts the infinite popup chain of "YOU WON ENTER BANKING DETAILS TO CLAIM PRIZE".
I reported them all to Facebook and was told to fuck off "This is fully compliant with Facebook's ad policy".
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Once a company gets large enough to be a publicly traded corp, no matter what lofty goals it might have had at its founding, it by definition loses its moral compass because the driving goal of any publicly traded corp is return on investment to shareholders, i.e., profits, that is MANDATED by law.
Specifically Facebook though, let's look at the history, it was basically founded by Harvard dudebros that wanted to give a platform for appearance judging. Then it grew a business model by encouraging people to be snarky and snipey and stir up drama on the Internet. So honestly, I don't think it's that FB became a sleazy company, it was always a sleazy company.
It makes me wince to come across as defending Facebook, but regarding the "scammy ad" reader pcjunky is talking about.... Facebook is not Amazon. It is not reasonable to expect Facebook to vet the products being sold by some business that has bought advertising on their platform. If something seems too good to be true.... then it probably is. Lots of individuals sell products on Facebook too, and it's no better than Craiglist in that regard. You should at least bother to research the website selling a product before buying. You can't blame that one on Facebook.
Better known as 318230.
The issue isn't facebook datamining. The issue is that Zuck is happily making money off media campaigns that will end in genocide. While you're worried about the Rohinga, you're missing much, much larger social trends. The progressive groupthink now openly calls for the destruction of rural American cultures and the propaganda campaign has been so successful that 60% of Democrats believe all Republicans are racist and sexist. That's not reality. That's just propaganda spread by Facebook.
Load up NoScript and go to any news site. See the two dozen domains being blocked? Those are all companies harvesting your browsing data, just like Microsoft. Which is what you would expect, seeing as how you aren't paying anything to read the website, then YOU are the product.
Unless you want to go back to the days where you pay CompuServe $50/month to read articles from a dozen newspapers on top of an hourly access fee, this is how on-line services work now.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Funny thing is Facebook is blocked in China.
You know, as if the Chinese govt looked at Facebook and understood its implications years ago.
Oliver.
I hate facebook. I don use it. But I actually hate the slate article more. I am already sick of peanut gallery armchair quarterbacks who wave morals around to gain proverbial upper ground. We're already seeing google succumb to this idiocy. Apple under tim only behaves this way. Facebook is sleazy, but so is any other company trying to use morals as their fighting weapon. You don get to say what my morals should be. Stop projecting.
Was Facebook ever not a sleazy company?
California's data protection law goes into affect in 2020. I plan on using corporate fear of non-compliance to benefit from it even though I am not a California resident.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
The moment a platform starts being the ethics police and starts curbing freedom of speech regardless of its political correctness or alignment with whatever lobbyist group, its doomed to fail. Its the ability to create & share your perspective that made it big.
Eventually folks will tire of all the bullshit, someone else will create a ' NEW ' platform that performs similar functions and the masses will simply jump ship and move there.
Facebook will take its place on the social media trash pile of history alongside MySpace.
Zuck will take his billions he's made and retire in luxury to his Hawaii palace, and that will pretty much be the end of it.
Its disingenuous to paint this as a Facebook or even a tech only issue. Classically when you subscribed to a magazine or newspaper, the publisher would the sell your contact information and subscription details to third parties. ISPs are inserting tracking headers in traffic, and selling browsing details. Cell providers are selling demographic information based on location, they're also selling location data. Virtually every business is packaging and trading on the data about you.
Because there is facebook, and it's most important feature is it's scale, there is no possibility of market entry for a competitor. Ask google.
Because there is no other competitor, there is no room to explore other bussiness models, like say not-free
Because there are no other cometitors we are stuck with facebook's bad aspects, many of which can't change because of their entrenched bussiness model
On the other hand, if facebook were to be killed and disappear, competitors would spring up. Nothing facebook provides would be lost.
thus facebook could be killed and nothing would be lost, and it's very likely now that we have the hindsight of why the bussiness model leads to bad behaviours we didn't appreciate before, the new competitors could actually succeed with different ones.
TO understand the vicious cycle imagine the following. Someone announces a subscription service providing the interconnectivy of face book. it will shed all the bad features that came from the advertising and data monetization of the human cattle and survive on subscriptions from customers.
Would you join? no. and not just because of the subscription. But because it will suck when the userbase is small. And a small userbase will also mean higher subscription fees. So this will never find a foothold.
If facebook just were killed tommorrow, and suddenly it's a lot of small companies jostling for market share then that subscription model or some other model where you are not cattle sold off for your data and the desire of others to subject you to brainwashing might become popular!
So facebook needs to be killed off due to creating some data privacy protections that make it's bussiness model go up in smoke.
You could also just try to make some criminal or regulatory laws instead but that would mean government meddling with free speech and a free-press. So that would not be a good way to approach it.
unfortunately both trump (to control it) and russian-injured democrats are looking at the regulatory approach of managing facebooks freedoms.
instead we'd be better off just killing it's bussiness model. example: make all platforms responsible for their content. that would do it. But it would be too strong and have other consequences. Perhaps simply: a $10,000 per user fine for data privacy losses. that would kill them flat and maybe be a good thing even if it killed off some other activities across the web
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If historical evidence is any guide, mine being old MMO's that're still operating today. Evidence suggests there will always being a substantial number of people whom will cling to Facebook.
However, I think these revelations being repeated in various mediums will severely curtail new joins to Facebook. In this age, I suspect many a parent is telling their kids to tip-toe around Facebook if they use it at all.
The current generation will be raised in the atmosphere that every company is trying to spy on you and hopefully they take that to heed and push back on it. I could be wrong, but I hope I'm not.
So, yes, things will change, for the future. For the holdouts, no, nothing will change. They'll keep playing Farmville, trading likes, sharing memes and sharing sensationalist fake news.
In the USA, and Europe, yes I think things will definitely be changing. There's always going to be holdouts, but new joins from these regions of the world are very likely to steeply decline.
However, many people forget Facebook has been up to some deviant behavior in smaller lesser known countries.
I recently seen a news piece about Facebook in Myanmar. In Myanmar, if you ask someone what the internet is, they'll show you their Facebook page. They've been totally brainwashed by Facebook. Kind of sad.
These societies are going to have a real tough time bucking Facebook, given how deeply ingrained Facebook has managed to become, practically synonymous with 'the internet.' That will be a lot harder to unwind.
Zuckerberg has no moral compass, from the first day on:
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks
Instant messages sent by Zuckerberg during Facebook's early days, reported by Business Insider (May 13, 2010)
1. Make it subscription-only, past a modest 'free trial period'. Either that or lots of ads all over the place. Or something in between those.
2. Now that monetizing users' data isn't necessary, stop collecting it and selling it to 3rd parties. Respect users' privacy 100% of the time, no exceptions. Become a paragon of virtue in that regard.
3. Sit back and wait to see if you've managed to pull it out of the fire, or if it's too late for anyone to trust you anymore. Gracefully accept the consequences either way.
Anyone who sees my comments in the past knows I think so-called 'social media' is a cancer on our society, so it's no surprise to anyone when I say 'let Facebook die'. But if they really want to save it, the above is what I think has to happen.
Google allows users to export all of their data. Hasn't seemed to destroy Google.
A) Google definitely does NOT permit exporting all their data or even accessing all of it. Some yes but definitely not all.
B) Different business model and the information Google cares about is different than the information Facebook cares about.
C) Google's crown jewels are the quality of their searches and they aren't about to tell anyone key details of how they do that.
D) Meta-data about group tendencies are as valuable as personal information and they don't (and won't) give you access to that.
"Slate argues that Facebook "is a normal sleazy company now,"
Now? Are you aware of Facebook's origins? Seriously Facebook was a sleazy to begin with. NOTHING HAS CHANGED.
When I quit Facebook, they provided a link to download everything they had on me into a zip file.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
If only we had realized this a decade ago!!
But the problem with that is that they still kept a copy (probably multiple copies) of all of your data, so that they can continue to sell it!
There will always be drama queens and attention whores.
"Decent" is just a dogwhistle for christian.
As in protestant
As in calvinist
As in DUMB FUCK
Before the venerable Usenet makes a triumphant return to supplant the Facebook & other social media detritus.
I've been involved with computers my whole career. The proclamations of who's good and who's bad by geekdom is extremely wearing. They tend to go on benders falling in love with things, then when they find out they are dirty and human, they bail. I'm sorry to inform everyone that Capitalism is human, dirty, and boring. It has the potential of carving out large hunks of our environment and turning them into plastic toys for our fat lovely children's fancy. Facebook? Evil? It doesn't even rate.
Did the Woz seriously insist people should be able to export their data to upload onto -other- networks?
Just wow. People are already insanely stupid for putting any private information on the internet, no matter how "secure" it is, but to suggest doing that is insane. Social media is the problem; not just Facebook. People may or may not realize that -all- social media sites do this with your data. That is how they make money. Facebook is not different.
Why does our company suck at having a moral compass?
Because companies aren't people and do not have morals.
You don't understand how this work. My data is worthless. What is valuable is the ability to target advertisements. A diaper company doesn't want to pay for ads to people without babies. FB, et. al., use the data to make the ads effective. If I'm not there to view ANY of their ads, they don't get paid. AT ALL
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba