There seem to be multiple feeds with different angles. The one posted by the Guardian is currently pointed at the current person speaking, e.g. the Senators. Bloomberg, though, has a feed in which the camera is focused on Zuckerberg's face for the entirety of the hearing:
Say what you will about the intelligence of agreeing to do this hearing at all, at least Zuckerberg is clearly reading from a well-prepared speech. Winging it would have been, er, inadvisable.
That is how these proceedings go at this point (when you posted).
Prepared Statements from the Chairperson, then members of the committee, then the "witness" are read then open questioning is where the "winging it" happens.
>about the intelligence of agreeing to do this hearing at all,
If MZ didn't voluntarily offer himself to testify, Congress could proceed to formally subpoena him. MZ could then ignore the subpoena but then he could theoretically go to jail for "contempt of Congress".
Of course i would. I'd also probably throw up beforehand, at least three times
I'm pretty worried and sour about monolithic things existing that are too big to fail, especially Facebook. It seems suboptimal, but I feel powerless. It mostly felt good to write 'glib leech'.
According to the Lobbying Disclosure Reports[0], if you add up outside council for Facebook, they're paying about $156,000 PER MONTH on lobbyists. You'll want to look at 2017 Q4 reports, as Q1 is not yet due and they don't file until it's absolutely due.
At less than $2,000,000/year, that's pocket change to FB ($30B in annual profit). Facebook probably spends more money on flavored seltzer water than that.
MZ has been well prepared it seems. They pay a LOT for their lobbyists, and his answers have the very cogent, clear, forceful sound of someone who has been well prepared.
Yes and the congressman totally let the line of questioning go on that response. The problem seems to be that (1) many of the congressman are just too unfamiliar to pry at Zuck's bad answers and (2) 5 minutes just isn't long enough to build up a damning line of questions.
It was an answer to a question that wasn't asked. The senator was asking whether facebook owns that data it has about a person, and the answer was that you own what you post. Those are very different sets. A follow up to answer whether facebook believes it owns the data it's accumulated about you would've been great.
The lack of strong followup questions is the best indicator that there is very little about this hearing that is spontaneous and not defined in advance.
As I write this, Ms Cantwell starts her questioning and it is a markedly different style. Interesting
How could Zuckerberg know less than Wikipedia about Palantir considering Thiel's involvement with both FB and Palantir? He seems to merely know of the existence of Palantir.
> there is very little about this hearing that is spontaneous
but, isn't that pretty much always true about Congressional hearings?
it seems like they're just a platform for Senators and Congressional reps to get some high profile air time and maybe enhance their reputation amongst their voters.
and maybe, if they're lucky, some YouTuber will excerpt their "performance" and title it "Watch Senator XYZ DESTROY Mark Zuckerberg!!!"
> The senator was asking whether facebook owns that data it has about a person, and the answer was that you own what you post. Those are very different sets.
It answers by exception; specifically, the answer is “Yes, except for information consisting of content posted by that user or other users, which is owned by the user who posted it.” I don't think the answer was at all unclear.
It's obviously couches in a way which directs the attention of the inattentive to the most user friendly component of that answer because it's the only explicit part, but minimizing the PR fallout is literally Zuckerberg’s job, so expecting him not to anything less than the maximum he can in that regard without lying to Congress is expecting nonfeasance on his part.
I'm pretty impressed with how well the chairmen are grilling Mark. He's dodging a bit and they're not having any of it.
I've never seen a hearing on this sort of thing before, but given the generational gap and the news that Facebook had donated to the campaigns of almost all of the people on the committee, I was expecting Zuck to get off early.
I guess I'm still confused about this matter. As I understand it, nothing was exploited. A company used intrinsic capabilities of the system to do a job. Are we just raising the question of whether this is an appropriate business model? I suppose that's a good discussion to have.
I'm just a bit miffed that we're effectively holding another obscenities hearing while the only thing going on with the Equifax debacle is that a tech manager has been charged with insider trading.
Assuming you're only considering the computer security definition of "exploit", I'm not totally sure why this matters.
User data was obtained via means not allowed by Facebook. Facebook realized this & didn't disclose it to the US government or its users, as required (or, at the very least questionably required) by its consent decree with the FTC. Based on this, it's not out of line for the government to question Facebook about this.
>User data was obtained via means not allowed by Facebook
That's what I'm asking. 1) Is it alleged that CA found a flaw in FB's design and 2) did something illegal with it? I've seen accounts alluding to that, but that makes me think that it is entirely by design and it's just be framed negatively for the greatest political impact.
It's illegal for foreign nationals to make direct or indirect contributions to US politics. So the line that has to be drawn is one connecting that law to the CA scandal and its alleged use to drive the strategies of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.
I don't know for sure if Facebook can be seen as being complicit in breaking US election law. I think their issues are completely domestic as it stands right now. But I'm not a lawyer.
It's all fascinating. How do we reconcile a facebook bot account that may be, at best, loosely tied to Russia, according to some speculators with a foreign national and intelligence officer, Richard Steele, compiling a op report on the Republican presidential candidate?
Ahh, the phantom downvotes. Would you like to address my point? Why is it okay that a foreign national campaigns for one candidate and another foreign national campaigns for another?
The way Cambridge Analytica's got its data was a little nefarious...as I understand it, they obtained data through ways Facebook discouraged (but still enabled).
Whether you consider that an 'exploit' or not is subjective. It's certainly not an 'exploit' in the more common infosec sense.
But the real issue here is that Facebook was complicit in electing Donald Trump. It's political.
>But the real issue here is that Facebook was complicit in electing Donald Trump. It's political.
This bit is really terrifying to me. I don't support Trump, but the idea that we're going to make it even harder for "unapproved" political candidates should make everyone's skin crawl.
I thought the issue was that foreign actors were able to use Facebook to push for their candidate of choice, not that Trump was "unapproved" (why do you use quotes? that phrase doesn't appear anywhere in the comment you're responding to).
Why is it important that Facebook was the medium? Zuck just done saying that they identified 400-500 Russian accounts the were politically active. The "unapproved" in quotes part there is that these are Russians.
Simultaneously, there were tens of thousands of foreign nationals demonstrating in the streets of major cities all over the country, and this is "approved." This is why I'm left wondering: what are we after?
I don't believe for a second that this much fuss would have been made over this issue if Trump had lost the election. Some law enforcement action may have been taken, but it wouldn't have been front page news. The reason for my quotes is that Trump is "unapproved" which is the explanation for the scale of the reaction. I don't particularly approve of him either, but considering the real motivations of the people writing regulation is important.
Of course there wouldn't be as much fuss about it. Trump losing the election would imply that the attempts at influencing people were unsuccessful. At a glance, that would indicate that regulation is unnecessary (though detailed analysis could show otherwise).
Foreign spending on political FB ads was a drop in the ocean. Especially when you consider it played to both sides (acknowledge it leaned towards Trump), was not all in swing states, and a lot of it was after the election. This is almost certainly not about them.
First it's Russia and now it's Cambridge Analytica. Unless you can trace CA's business activities to foreign hires or somehow devaluing the influence of the former for the latter, even though the Russian angle was what was being pushed around for a good while as The Reason Trump became so favoured (rather than actual failures of the Democratic party!), methinks it's just the alphabet agencies and co. looking for excuses.
1. FB users took a personality survey conducted by some researchers at Cambridge University.
2. Then one of those researchers sold the data they'd collected on FB users to the newly formed Cambridge Analytica.
3. The Trump campaign employed CA and CA used this data to directly message FB users who'd completed the personality survey
At some point, FB learned of this unapproved resale of this data and requested that CA delete the data set. But CA did not delete the data set.
Assuming I have the story right, what I don't quite get is: why didn't FB start aggressively suing people who'd taken this data and misused it? FB could have started with a lawsuit against the researcher who sold the data in the first place.
CA told Facebook that they did delete the data set. FB (if you believe their timeline) only discovered they lied when the scandal started circulating in the news.
So ... what about now? Wouldn't it be a good move for FB to start taking legal action against CA, the survey group, and anyone in sight in order to create the impression that they want to protect user data?
I'm thinking of corporations like Oracle, Microsoft, and Disney (very litigious corporations) -- isn't this a good time for FB to start acting more like those companies?
Facebook sent forensic auditors to investigate CA. There was a general public perception that this was sketchy (what if they're really trying to destroy evidence implicating themselves?), and they were asked to stand down by British law enforcement.
Facebook's position is that they should have done more to stop companies like CA from being in a position to abuse user data - and implicitly, that there's no need for strong regulations to make them do it. Suing everyone in sight would make it seem like they're trying to create a narrative where they did nothing wrong.
The survey was a decoy. By taking the survey, you got a screen that asked if you wanted to allow the survey to have access to your profile. If you said yes, it got all of your data from your facebook account, including all of the data on your friends that your account has access to. The survey itself was basically a trojan horse and irrelevant.
Thanks to all who came to watch. I stopped the stream now because it’s been over 20 minutes since the markets have closed and I’m not adding value at this point. The links to my sources are still live. They just took a brief break as well.
https://www.twitch.tv/washingtonpost is continuing to stream the testimony. Some of the questioning sounds tougher now, so it's a shame that markets are closed.
I found that CNBC offers some after market data. It's not good as what I had before, but it's better nothing, so I'm streaming again here: https://twitch.tv/tareqak .
I mean, it's trumpeted from the rooftops here that if you don't pay you are the product. What is the alternative if not charge the user for the service?
I bet you bitch and moan about privacy concerns with a tin-foil hat.. and it's because you are using services for 'free'. But when a paid alternative is suggested which by definition would have more resources to put toward your privacy you bitch about that too??
Wow. I didn't expect that he'd speak in favor of 'special features like facial recognition' by arguing that it's how we can be competitive with 'other regimes like China'. That seems like a comparison I'd avoid if I was facebook.
The people I admire the most are often those I disagree the most with. I fail to see how thinking somebody is smart gives any hint as to whether he likes or dislikes him.
While not suggesting he is not smart, do keep in mind that senators have substantial staff, to such a degree they have specialties. And they contribute substantially to the preparation of their boss.
It's a good strategy, all the media coverage is about his actual testimony today, whereas when he sends an update to the committee next week, it will not make as big of a splash as this one.
Facebook doesn't delete all cookies (for instance, there's an `sb` cookie still set) in their logout response. They may choose not to do anything with the cookies that remain, but the technical answer to the question is yes. And even if they currently did delete all cookies, there's nothing from preventing them from introducing cookies that do remain.
Zuck knows this is generally feasible - he's a talented software engineer. The question was ambiguously worded, and Zuck could have clarified or answered that it's generally feasible but that Facebook has tight controls around the usage of that information. It's the panel's responsibility to not let him get away with that type of maneuver, and they don't have the type of real-time support that, say, a news anchor has (with earpiece and live research staff) to handle interviewing domain experts in an optimal way.
> They may choose not to do anything with the cookies that remain, but the technical answer to the question is yes.
I think you could say the same thing about IP addresses. A website might log the IP addresses of people who visit them, or they might not, but quite a lot of tracking is feasible. The problem with focusing on feasibility there, is that you end up with an answer like "yes, just like every other website in the world, Facebook can track you when you're logged out." Assuming Zuckerberg has been coached to High Heaven not to gives answers like that, it seems fair to respond to the question as though it was asking about the internal details of what Facebook does with cookies / IP addresses / browser fingerprints.
While a website may be able to track you via IP address within itself, it can't track you across websites like FB can since their code gets injected to a lot of websites (which they do use to track you when you're signed in - my guess would be the same holds for when you're logged out).
This is all supposed to be politically scary and demonstrative of the fact that very few people actually knows what is going on. Which all the more scary to me because these are the people who are supposed to understand what's going on so they can have proper oversight. This entire issue reminds me of the time the supreme court tried to wrap their brains around the (finger quotes) "the cloud".
What's really sad is that nobody has been addressing just how creepy the internet is getting. Like the fact that with just 500 likes the social network can insinuate more of your personality than your lover. Or how Google can predict what you will likely like to eat for breakfast tomorrow based on the kind of stuff you are buying at the store whenever you use reward cards that is gets cross referenced to your browsing habits that insinuate moods.
We are really over engineering the internet to the point that we have a "don't touch that red button" being installed into our lives where nobody knows what it does until it gets pressed, we end up wrecking our cars and are left wondering why the car manufacturers thought it was smart to install NOS in our cars without our knowledge in order to remain on the cutting edge (and thus competitive).
For advertising purposes it really only depends as a whole how truthful a picture the likes tell. If the likes are on average 70% truthful it is still going to be more effective targeting than not using them at all.
It's a reference to a study where they had an algorithm fed with a certain number of facebook likes compete against personal acquaintances (including spouses) in predictig personality traits. The algorithm won:
The parent's argument assumes though that this kind of accuracy is achieved regularly and consistently today, which is way different than the report of one study.
It doesn't need to be consistent in order to be horrifying.
The fear is that big data tech will become radioactive.
Imagine a bus full of school kids crashes because the driver was a recovering alcoholic who fell off the wagon.
Some smart SV engineer realizes their tech spotted the driver visited AA groups regularly & his wife just left him. The algorithm knows this data makes him an excellent target audience for _new alco-energy drink!_.
It doesn't really matter if the technology is even capable of that yet, what matters is that this is the sort of outcome that adtech engineers are trying to create.
But what's the supposed ground truth that spouses and algorithms were tested against? Self reporting? Some other glorified coin flip algorithm that maybe just did the same mistakes as the "thumbs" algorithms? An export panel populated with people that, unlike the benchmarked spouses and acquaintances, used the same jargon as the algorithm authors?
(Glancing over the footnotes it seems to be (b), some other algorithm)
The beauty of adtech: it's perfectly fine to be wrong as long as advertisers think you are right.
On meta level, this "better than your lover" meme/study is surprisingly enlightening.
I'm deriving a perverse kind of pleasure from all this. Maciej Ceglowski has a fantastic talk called Haunted By Data, where he compares data to radioactive waste: we collect a lot of it, and ultimately don't know how to handle it safely and responsibly.
He ends the talk with a warning that unless the tech sector is careful, they will have their own Three Mile Island, and will forever afterwards be regulated into the ground. Facebook and Google are almost begging for it. May we see them become a shadow of their powerful selves in not too distant a future.
Browser fingerprinting is already alright, even without world-class data centers with several server rooms the size of football fields, and world-class AI experts tuning those many rooms of servers to intelligently track and classify people online.
Cookies are almost certainly irrelevant to FB's ability to track people, and Zuck certainly knows it.
Cookies? I would assume Facebook is using the latest tracking techniques like canvas fingerprinting and other ways to identify users uniquely on the web.
Even if they can't track single users solely based on canvas fingerprinting, it gives them a big additional piece of information, to narrow down specific users.
Honestly is there anyway that he could explain the Facebook Pixel/ad network that wouldn't just be describing any ad network?
By definition, ad tracking (cookies etc...) is opaque to most people and explaining it publicly would make it seem like FB is doing something more nefarious than others.
It's an important discussion but his response would just make FB seem way worse on that specific issue than highlighting how the entire ad network ecosystem works.
This is a good point, but FB brings the "real name policy" to the data broker's world. Being able to link real people with real credit profiles, and real web browsing habits is a game changer. Many of us were ranting and raving all of over HN ~2010/2011 about the issues FB represented, but we were tinfoilers and haters.
Even those of us without FB accounts (with forgone networking opportunities) are at risk because we all have friends without the same cynicism.
The real name policy is kind-of irrelevant. Data brokers can see what FB account is logged in and link with your real name via credit card transaction codes and e-commerce tracking cookies.
> It's an important discussion but his response would just make FB seem way worse on that specific issue than highlighting how the entire ad network ecosystem works.
Any legislation that comes out of this hearing wouldn't apply only to Facebook. Facebook admitting the extent of its tracking could help clean up the "entire ad network ecosystem."
> Honestly is there anyway that he could explain the Facebook Pixel/ad network that wouldn't just be describing any ad network
The only ad network in front of Congress today, was Facebook. 'Everyone else is doing it' or 'this is the nature of the business' doesn't qualify as an excuse. Perhaps it could have been good for the large public to know what goes on with ad networks these days.
I do not have the facebook app on my phone. I downloaded Instagram and it magically knew one of my email addresses (not the one used with my facebook account). I deleted it, mashed the keyboard for the new email address, declined syncing contacts, blocked the permission as well as every other permission, and lo and behold it still shows all of my facebook friends on instagram as suggestions.
Fucking creepy.
It was people who don't have my phone number or any other information including people who I am not friends with and only messaged once from a buy/sell group.
I am guessing because I used the app at some point on my phone it fingerprinted it, then Instagram goes and fingerprints it when you install and links your account even when you decline to do so.
If you previously had Facebook or Messenger installed on the phone it's possible they saved some user info on the device or in the cloud linked to your device ID.
Lots of ways this could happen but people often forget about GPS/location services which are very accurate. I'm not sure if you have never had FB app on your phone, but even if you never installed FB app on your phone there could still be geo-associations inferred.
Think about the times your phone is near your friends phones, how your phone probably sits in the same space every night, the overlap between your IP location to whatever other devices connect behind your NAT which also send data to FB.
I get the distinct impression that Zuckerberg has been briefed to say "I'll get back to you on that", on anything that might be controversial. Probably some wisdom in that as it defuses a lot of emotion that could arise if certain information comes out in this setting. But it's also disingenuous, even if it avoids a lynchmob for now.
"I'll get back to you" was essentially "On the advice of council, I would like to exercise my fifth amendment right". It was like a Chapelle skit at times.
Every time he said that or "This is a very important question", the honest way to finish the sentence would have been "..which I'm not going to provide an answer to".
It's pretty cringe-y so far. From The Verge's liveblog:
"I would liken this hearing so far to a precocious college junior explaining his major to his grandparents at Thanksgiving"
Agreed. I’ve been involved in a few of these regulator type of questioning and they all speak the same way. It has the effect of making the (obvious) answer seem criminal. People in real life don’t talk that way because it can come across as rude.
I see so many lawyers adopt this same tone. Something about crafting a narrative or something - maybe to get the interviewee to be a little more open than they normally would because they underestimate the knowledge of their interviewer, or just to make the interviewee make the mistake of thinking the interviewer is generally ignorant/stupid.
Zuck actually deflected that one well, and didn't have to elaborate unfortunately (or the Senator was ill prepared). There's a lot more to facebook ads than just "we show ads". To which degree do they sell out users' info to the advertisers?
That senator, Orrin Hatch (R-UT), is 84 years old. He may be genuinely unaware of how sites like Facebook make money, though his expression after Zuckerberg answered seemed like he was entirely aware of how basic the question/answer was.
I think he was trying to get at something here though: can you run a business that is free for some people and isn't ad based? To which I think the answer could be nuanced. Maybe a large enough population pays $4/month and can thus subsidize some part of the population that doesn't have that privilege. Note I'm not actually advocating that, just saying I want to give the guy a benefit of the doubt that he was trying to move the conversation somewhere new and creative.
I think a lot of these questions have been like that, but ultimately the senators couldn't figure out how to phrase what they were getting at and both sides floundered to understand what was going on.
edit: as an example was another senator, "mr funny guy", who was trying to ask if facebook tracks how people use other apps or devices, I'm still not sure, even when they aren't logged in or something. I saw 3 possible questions that he was trying to ask and they all would have been good but I don't think either of them understood what he was asking so they went back and forth uselessly. Could have been some hard hitting commentary on the bundling of permissions, or the bundling of fb with a phone, or the ability for fb to track other app usage, or the ability of fb to track users on websites even when not logged in. oh well.
It sounded like no one even proofread and edited their questions or lines of reasoning. There should be a panel of non-partisan people, not even experts, taking the dumb out of their questions before they engage. It was a waste of time. Even some strong questions and ideas were shutdown because they couldn't formulate it, and then the internet turned it into another way to laugh at congress.
Maybe there needs to be an old-lawyer to SME translator doing the talking too. This person questions a SME on behalf of the senators and they can speak up or seek clarification when needed. Proofread questions and competent speech.
I really liked your first post and building a platform to enable such things is completely simple. Please don't take the cynical/self-defeating attitude. Promotion is not my strong suit. Be careful with people that want to be the watchers of the watchers without laying out clear principles ahead of time.
>large enough population pays $4/month and can thus subsidize some part of the population
Just in case, FB ARPU in US in Q4 2017 was $27. People who talk about "i ready to pay 10$ per year if im not tracked and not exposed to ads" _seriously_ underestimate FB money-printing ability.
Think about it, FB makes almost as much as NFLX per US user (admittedly in Q4, the hottest quarter in advertising), but you dont need to enter your credit card. At all.
If someone comes along with a service that fulfills the same niche that Facebook does, charges $9/month, and has a guaranteed (audited) enforcement of personal privacy ... I'd do it. I like being connected to my family & some friends.
The problem is getting from zero to critical mass with that model. Though I guess that doesn't stop a lot of other companies with less plausible revenue sources from getting seemingly endless money thrown at them.
> The problem is getting from zero to critical mass with that model.
But you just said you just need your family and some friends. That doesn't sound like critical mass is needed. Just convince your family and some friends to join with you, and enjoy the service together. Then your friends can invite their friends and family, and so on and so forth.
I agree. Like every other product in the world, I would base the price on what the local market supports.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it would ever work, because I may value my privacy at more than a few bucks a month, but it's a near certainty that the vast majority of the population disagrees with me. They don't see the cost there, so they ignore it. By the time they ever realize what it was they gave up and for how little, it's too late.
Indeed. At the rate their monetization is likely to grow as advertising & economy (retail etc) continues to shift online, just continuing the existing growth trend and assuming a slow-down over time, it's extremely likely Facebook will reach a ~$200 per year ARPU in the US/Canada market within five years or so.
There is no large audience in any developed market willing to pay $15+ per month for Facebook just to remove ads.
Technically users are entering their credit card information somewhere down the line after an ad click, many times on a website "shadier" than Facebook because sane advertisers make more money than they spend.
I wonder two things though. 1) would their operating costs be lower if their infrastructure wasn't designed around this user tracking and advertising model? 2) regardless of the answer to number #1 but especially if that answer is yes, do they _need_ an ARPU of $27 to get by? Could they survive on $10? (of course I recognize not everyone can pay that, it's a privilege etc)
Yeah I understand the goal of capitalist companies is to endlessly print more money for the shareholders and the promise of ever better advertising enables FB to keep pulling in the dough. But maybe something like social media shouldn't operate in that context.
> Maybe a large enough population pays $4/month and can thus subsidize some part of the population
That's how WhatsApp started to fund itself, I remember there being a nominal annual charge ( £1 ) for some users but not for all. There didn't seem to be any obvious rule as to who was pinged to pay-up, perhaps it really was random.
But that was discontinued after they were acquired.
Interesting take. I actually read that as a 'softball question' from one supporter of adtech 'free as in beer products' to another. As in, aren't these people who are outraged funny? How else could we create something for free? It was in effect a signal 'don't worry, this won't turn into any meaningful regulation affecting your bottom line.' Don't be duped by people who 'play dumb'. There are many examples of people who don't understand technology in Congress, I don't think this is one of them.
The question and its answer succeed in getting Zuckerberg on record (in the Congressional Record, no less) as saying that his business model depends on advertising, with all that that implies about the relationship between Facebook and its users.
Think of it as like when you're on the witness stand and the attorney asks you a question. It's not because he doesn't know the answer. It's because he wants you to say the answer, to make it part of the public record and to have the jury hear it.
Speaking of juries, the arrogance of Zuckerberg's answer wouldn't win any points with a jury, either. He walked into a trap right there.
It's fun to bust on our parents & politicos but I'm pretty sure anybody who managed to raise you, or especially get into the Senate, has a much more extensive and nuanced understanding of life (and politics) than you think.
I've said this before, but I think most people don't have a problem with advertising, per se, but with the tracking required for super effective advertising.
When Google first showed up and just tossed some ads at the top of your search results based solely on the search terms, that was actually helpful. It wasn't something that people were creeped out by until they were tracking you everywhere to sell even more targeted ads.
Since newspapers and TV don't have that tracking capability, the advertisements are annoying but not unsettling, I think.
> Zuckerberg on record (in the Congressional Record, no less) as saying that his business model depends on advertising
This has never been secret and has been "on record" for a very long time. I think most people will see the absolutely dismal lack of technical understanding by Congress rather than any arrogance by Facebook as they too get fed up with these aimless questions.
That's not necessary to realize that these senators do not.
Also yes, based on their questions and age, I do think most people have a better understanding. Just the expressions of the other audience members and staff in the room shows the frustration.
I doubt the hearing audience represents the general population, and I have yet to meet anyone not involved in software development who understands anything about how it works outside of niche, semi-related circles.
Have you ever written an introduction to a technical document before? You make statements in there that are obvious, not because the reader doesn't understand, but because you want to bring the reader into the right frame of mind with the right set of facts before them as context for the rest of the document.
Questions like this are really just asking Zuckerberg to introduce his business in a controlled way.
Alright that's fair, I guess I misinterpreted the original comment as if this was cleverly teasing the information out of him vs just repeating the fact as background for the hearing.
> This has never been secret and has been "on record" for a very long time.
Been a secret to "whom"? Not secret to technical people, no. There are plenty of non-technical people who still don't understand the "you are the product not a customer" trope. They see this free "talk to your family" service which sometimes shows ads which they ignore. They might answer the "how FB makes money question?" with "I don't know, maybe some people pay for it. Or maybe they are just nice and give it away for free".
Other questions might have been stupid but that particular one was typical of how a police investigator might start questioning or how a lawyer might cross examine a witness.
> I think most people will see the absolutely dismal lack of technical understanding by Congress
Back in the day I used to think of lawyers asking witness questions on the stand the same way: "Why do you ask him if he knows the victim, of course he does, these lawyers are sure not very bright..."
It's fun to bust on our parents & politicos but I'm pretty sure anybody who managed to raise you, or especially get into the Senate, has a much more extensive and nuanced understanding of life (and politics) than you think
You say that, but I'd just like to remind you that Louie Gohmert (my home state fwiw) was a judge. And is now in the house.
> It's a really odd line of questioning from people who don't seem to understand the subject matter.
Maybe but that particular quote "Zuckerberg (in a disdainful tone): Senator, we run ads." is not an example of it. Sometimes they ask really basic questions, not because they don't know the answer to it, but to enter it into the record. It's how a police or how cross examination starts, get them to admit basic stuff then later make them contradict themselves. Another reason for basic "stupid" questions is to provide information for others who many not be aware. We all know how FB makes money, but that might not extend to people who aren't proficient technically (think grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles...).
"The Facebook hearing is the greatest generational divide I’ve ever seen. It’s like watching WWII generals question somebody on drone strikes and cyberwarfare."
That's an entirely bullshit statement by the twitter user.
WW2 generals were very arguably some of the greatest military minds the world has ever seen. They rapidly adopted what was radically new military technology at the time and figured out how to use it extraordinarily effectively through understanding it.
This question (like many others) was frustrating, because it was worded in such a way that was incredibly easy for Zuck to dodge. Of course FB isn't using your encrypted messages for ad purposes, because they can't. But messages sent from FB Messenger, not from WhatsApp, are unencrypted and so are likely used for ad purposes -- but of course the question wasn't worded in that way.
The way they scoped that question to WhatsApp and not Messenger seemed quite deliberate.
I suppose there is some value to Zuckerberg dodging whether FB connects what it knows from WhatsApp data with their advertising platform. Even if it's metadata.
But they're probably doing so much more with Messenger and their 'shadow profiles'.
Of course it was deliberate. Him admitting they serve ads based on Messenger content means nothing, we already know that they do.
WhatsApp is sold as an E2E encrypted service, and an admission that WhatsApp message data (or even metadata) is somehow used for advertising as well would be a huge admission.
Maybe. But I believe the conversation at the time was about how FB tracks its users and what data it uses for advertising purposes, not about WhatsApp's encryption, or lack thereof. I meant deliberate in the sense that the question was worded in a way that made it easily dodge-able with a "no, we don't use your encrypted WhatsApp messages for advertising purposes", instead of "yes, we read the content of your FB messages for advertising purposes."
> Him admitting they serve ads based on Messenger content means nothing, we already know that they do.
I don't think that has been confirmed (source if so?), and I think that's what the question should have attempted to confirm.
Exactly, the point is Facebook at anytime can change the client to show ads, or send some of the text up for analysis. The point being the user is not in control. It's all based on trust. Do you trust Facebook won't do it? Do you trust Facebook won't be hacked and does it, etc.. some of the senators attempted to highlight that. One guy asked if Zuckerberg could few is stuff, and Zuckerberg had to admit that technically he could.
Actual question: am I missing something? I get that facebook is big and powerful, and way too many people use it for their own good, but I'm sitting here talking to a bunch of people on another platform right now. A large chunk of which (probably) don't use facebook after recent events. Maybe it's just because I haven't had facebook in well over 5 years, but I don't see them as a monopoly on anything at all.
Everyone has thousands of choices on how to share their data if they don't want to use facebook/instagram/whatsapp. Does the mere fact that they don't use those other choices make the 1 choice a monopoly?
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 334 ms ] threadhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyJosQBtzsw
https://www.c-span.org/video/?443543-1/facebook-ceo-mark-zuc...
Prepared Statements from the Chairperson, then members of the committee, then the "witness" are read then open questioning is where the "winging it" happens.
MZ basically read an abridged version of his formal submission - which is part of the process for the record. http://docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF00/20180411/108090/HHRG-...
https://www.npr.org/2018/04/10/600917264/facebook-in-congres...
If MZ didn't voluntarily offer himself to testify, Congress could proceed to formally subpoena him. MZ could then ignore the subpoena but then he could theoretically go to jail for "contempt of Congress".
I'm pretty worried and sour about monolithic things existing that are too big to fail, especially Facebook. It seems suboptimal, but I feel powerless. It mostly felt good to write 'glib leech'.
And I wouldn’t feel nervous at all. Furthermore, I’d give their obtuse questions the treatment that they deserve.
[0]. http://disclosures.house.gov/ld/ldsearch.aspx
A "good" lobbyist is a time-shared resource that has access to many legislators, not a sole-use asset.
Something seems just a tad bit disingenuous about this.
As I write this, Ms Cantwell starts her questioning and it is a markedly different style. Interesting
but, isn't that pretty much always true about Congressional hearings?
it seems like they're just a platform for Senators and Congressional reps to get some high profile air time and maybe enhance their reputation amongst their voters.
and maybe, if they're lucky, some YouTuber will excerpt their "performance" and title it "Watch Senator XYZ DESTROY Mark Zuckerberg!!!"
It answers by exception; specifically, the answer is “Yes, except for information consisting of content posted by that user or other users, which is owned by the user who posted it.” I don't think the answer was at all unclear.
It's obviously couches in a way which directs the attention of the inattentive to the most user friendly component of that answer because it's the only explicit part, but minimizing the PR fallout is literally Zuckerberg’s job, so expecting him not to anything less than the maximum he can in that regard without lying to Congress is expecting nonfeasance on his part.
"Nobody forces you to post drunken racist rants on your wall or dickpics on Instagram. You control and own the content you post on Facebook."
I've never seen a hearing on this sort of thing before, but given the generational gap and the news that Facebook had donated to the campaigns of almost all of the people on the committee, I was expecting Zuck to get off early.
I'm just a bit miffed that we're effectively holding another obscenities hearing while the only thing going on with the Equifax debacle is that a tech manager has been charged with insider trading.
Assuming you're only considering the computer security definition of "exploit", I'm not totally sure why this matters.
User data was obtained via means not allowed by Facebook. Facebook realized this & didn't disclose it to the US government or its users, as required (or, at the very least questionably required) by its consent decree with the FTC. Based on this, it's not out of line for the government to question Facebook about this.
That's what I'm asking. 1) Is it alleged that CA found a flaw in FB's design and 2) did something illegal with it? I've seen accounts alluding to that, but that makes me think that it is entirely by design and it's just be framed negatively for the greatest political impact.
I don't know for sure if Facebook can be seen as being complicit in breaking US election law. I think their issues are completely domestic as it stands right now. But I'm not a lawyer.
Whether you consider that an 'exploit' or not is subjective. It's certainly not an 'exploit' in the more common infosec sense.
But the real issue here is that Facebook was complicit in electing Donald Trump. It's political.
This bit is really terrifying to me. I don't support Trump, but the idea that we're going to make it even harder for "unapproved" political candidates should make everyone's skin crawl.
Simultaneously, there were tens of thousands of foreign nationals demonstrating in the streets of major cities all over the country, and this is "approved." This is why I'm left wondering: what are we after?
First it's Russia and now it's Cambridge Analytica. Unless you can trace CA's business activities to foreign hires or somehow devaluing the influence of the former for the latter, even though the Russian angle was what was being pushed around for a good while as The Reason Trump became so favoured (rather than actual failures of the Democratic party!), methinks it's just the alphabet agencies and co. looking for excuses.
1. FB users took a personality survey conducted by some researchers at Cambridge University.
2. Then one of those researchers sold the data they'd collected on FB users to the newly formed Cambridge Analytica.
3. The Trump campaign employed CA and CA used this data to directly message FB users who'd completed the personality survey
At some point, FB learned of this unapproved resale of this data and requested that CA delete the data set. But CA did not delete the data set.
Assuming I have the story right, what I don't quite get is: why didn't FB start aggressively suing people who'd taken this data and misused it? FB could have started with a lawsuit against the researcher who sold the data in the first place.
So ... what about now? Wouldn't it be a good move for FB to start taking legal action against CA, the survey group, and anyone in sight in order to create the impression that they want to protect user data?
I'm thinking of corporations like Oracle, Microsoft, and Disney (very litigious corporations) -- isn't this a good time for FB to start acting more like those companies?
Facebook's position is that they should have done more to stop companies like CA from being in a position to abuse user data - and implicitly, that there's no need for strong regulations to make them do it. Suing everyone in sight would make it seem like they're trying to create a narrative where they did nothing wrong.
https://twitter.com/libshipwreck/status/983358587723505666
https://twitter.com/Gizmodo/status/983780434621489153
https://twitter.com/qz/status/983754216861822977
Thanks again.
> MZ: "There will always be a version of Facebook that is free.
Coming soon, Facebook Pro(TM)! Literally putting a price on your privacy.
I bet you bitch and moan about privacy concerns with a tin-foil hat.. and it's because you are using services for 'free'. But when a paid alternative is suggested which by definition would have more resources to put toward your privacy you bitch about that too??
Way to have it both ways...
I imagine that will play out like Apps on iOS and Android that you buy the Ad-Free version of only have have Ads show up a year later.
You buy your privacy and they change the ToS sothat you're not.
Facebook isn't useful to customers without wide adoption.
Facebook can't have wide adoption if it's paid.
Facebook needs revenue.
People want to guard privacy.
Zuck: "I need to get back to you on that"
Edit: Found it, Question from Mr. Wicker ~1:36 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAZiDRonYZI
Zuck knows this is generally feasible - he's a talented software engineer. The question was ambiguously worded, and Zuck could have clarified or answered that it's generally feasible but that Facebook has tight controls around the usage of that information. It's the panel's responsibility to not let him get away with that type of maneuver, and they don't have the type of real-time support that, say, a news anchor has (with earpiece and live research staff) to handle interviewing domain experts in an optimal way.
I think you could say the same thing about IP addresses. A website might log the IP addresses of people who visit them, or they might not, but quite a lot of tracking is feasible. The problem with focusing on feasibility there, is that you end up with an answer like "yes, just like every other website in the world, Facebook can track you when you're logged out." Assuming Zuckerberg has been coached to High Heaven not to gives answers like that, it seems fair to respond to the question as though it was asking about the internal details of what Facebook does with cookies / IP addresses / browser fingerprints.
What's really sad is that nobody has been addressing just how creepy the internet is getting. Like the fact that with just 500 likes the social network can insinuate more of your personality than your lover. Or how Google can predict what you will likely like to eat for breakfast tomorrow based on the kind of stuff you are buying at the store whenever you use reward cards that is gets cross referenced to your browsing habits that insinuate moods.
We are really over engineering the internet to the point that we have a "don't touch that red button" being installed into our lives where nobody knows what it does until it gets pressed, we end up wrecking our cars and are left wondering why the car manufacturers thought it was smart to install NOS in our cars without our knowledge in order to remain on the cutting edge (and thus competitive).
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/07/1418680112
The fear is that big data tech will become radioactive.
Imagine a bus full of school kids crashes because the driver was a recovering alcoholic who fell off the wagon.
Some smart SV engineer realizes their tech spotted the driver visited AA groups regularly & his wife just left him. The algorithm knows this data makes him an excellent target audience for _new alco-energy drink!_.
It doesn't really matter if the technology is even capable of that yet, what matters is that this is the sort of outcome that adtech engineers are trying to create.
(Glancing over the footnotes it seems to be (b), some other algorithm)
The beauty of adtech: it's perfectly fine to be wrong as long as advertisers think you are right.
On meta level, this "better than your lover" meme/study is surprisingly enlightening.
He ends the talk with a warning that unless the tech sector is careful, they will have their own Three Mile Island, and will forever afterwards be regulated into the ground. Facebook and Google are almost begging for it. May we see them become a shadow of their powerful selves in not too distant a future.
I just realized we are not even talking about AI.
Cookies are almost certainly irrelevant to FB's ability to track people, and Zuck certainly knows it.
His response there was an unequivocal lie.
By definition, ad tracking (cookies etc...) is opaque to most people and explaining it publicly would make it seem like FB is doing something more nefarious than others.
It's an important discussion but his response would just make FB seem way worse on that specific issue than highlighting how the entire ad network ecosystem works.
Even those of us without FB accounts (with forgone networking opportunities) are at risk because we all have friends without the same cynicism.
Any legislation that comes out of this hearing wouldn't apply only to Facebook. Facebook admitting the extent of its tracking could help clean up the "entire ad network ecosystem."
The only ad network in front of Congress today, was Facebook. 'Everyone else is doing it' or 'this is the nature of the business' doesn't qualify as an excuse. Perhaps it could have been good for the large public to know what goes on with ad networks these days.
I am guessing because I used the app at some point on my phone it fingerprinted it, then Instagram goes and fingerprints it when you install and links your account even when you decline to do so.
3 years ago uber got popped for this:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/23/15399438/apple-uber-app-s...
I can tell you that fingerprinting is still possible today.
Think about the times your phone is near your friends phones, how your phone probably sits in the same space every night, the overlap between your IP location to whatever other devices connect behind your NAT which also send data to FB.
Edit: I directly transcribed the exchange
I think a lot of these questions have been like that, but ultimately the senators couldn't figure out how to phrase what they were getting at and both sides floundered to understand what was going on.
edit: as an example was another senator, "mr funny guy", who was trying to ask if facebook tracks how people use other apps or devices, I'm still not sure, even when they aren't logged in or something. I saw 3 possible questions that he was trying to ask and they all would have been good but I don't think either of them understood what he was asking so they went back and forth uselessly. Could have been some hard hitting commentary on the bundling of permissions, or the bundling of fb with a phone, or the ability for fb to track other app usage, or the ability of fb to track users on websites even when not logged in. oh well.
Maybe there needs to be an old-lawyer to SME translator doing the talking too. This person questions a SME on behalf of the senators and they can speak up or seek clarification when needed. Proofread questions and competent speech.
And right there is where your plan fails.
Just in case, FB ARPU in US in Q4 2017 was $27. People who talk about "i ready to pay 10$ per year if im not tracked and not exposed to ads" _seriously_ underestimate FB money-printing ability.
Think about it, FB makes almost as much as NFLX per US user (admittedly in Q4, the hottest quarter in advertising), but you dont need to enter your credit card. At all.
The problem is getting from zero to critical mass with that model. Though I guess that doesn't stop a lot of other companies with less plausible revenue sources from getting seemingly endless money thrown at them.
But you just said you just need your family and some friends. That doesn't sound like critical mass is needed. Just convince your family and some friends to join with you, and enjoy the service together. Then your friends can invite their friends and family, and so on and so forth.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it would ever work, because I may value my privacy at more than a few bucks a month, but it's a near certainty that the vast majority of the population disagrees with me. They don't see the cost there, so they ignore it. By the time they ever realize what it was they gave up and for how little, it's too late.
There is no large audience in any developed market willing to pay $15+ per month for Facebook just to remove ads.
Yeah I understand the goal of capitalist companies is to endlessly print more money for the shareholders and the promise of ever better advertising enables FB to keep pulling in the dough. But maybe something like social media shouldn't operate in that context.
That's how WhatsApp started to fund itself, I remember there being a nominal annual charge ( £1 ) for some users but not for all. There didn't seem to be any obvious rule as to who was pinged to pay-up, perhaps it really was random.
But that was discontinued after they were acquired.
Absolutely! Github, Dropbox, etc, that's how tons of "freemium" companies work.
Think of it as like when you're on the witness stand and the attorney asks you a question. It's not because he doesn't know the answer. It's because he wants you to say the answer, to make it part of the public record and to have the jury hear it.
Speaking of juries, the arrogance of Zuckerberg's answer wouldn't win any points with a jury, either. He walked into a trap right there.
It's fun to bust on our parents & politicos but I'm pretty sure anybody who managed to raise you, or especially get into the Senate, has a much more extensive and nuanced understanding of life (and politics) than you think.
When Google first showed up and just tossed some ads at the top of your search results based solely on the search terms, that was actually helpful. It wasn't something that people were creeped out by until they were tracking you everywhere to sell even more targeted ads.
Since newspapers and TV don't have that tracking capability, the advertisements are annoying but not unsettling, I think.
This has never been secret and has been "on record" for a very long time. I think most people will see the absolutely dismal lack of technical understanding by Congress rather than any arrogance by Facebook as they too get fed up with these aimless questions.
You really think most people have more technical understanding than these senators?
Also yes, based on their questions and age, I do think most people have a better understanding. Just the expressions of the other audience members and staff in the room shows the frustration.
Questions like this are really just asking Zuckerberg to introduce his business in a controlled way.
Been a secret to "whom"? Not secret to technical people, no. There are plenty of non-technical people who still don't understand the "you are the product not a customer" trope. They see this free "talk to your family" service which sometimes shows ads which they ignore. They might answer the "how FB makes money question?" with "I don't know, maybe some people pay for it. Or maybe they are just nice and give it away for free".
Other questions might have been stupid but that particular one was typical of how a police investigator might start questioning or how a lawyer might cross examine a witness.
> I think most people will see the absolutely dismal lack of technical understanding by Congress
Back in the day I used to think of lawyers asking witness questions on the stand the same way: "Why do you ask him if he knows the victim, of course he does, these lawyers are sure not very bright..."
You say that, but I'd just like to remind you that Louie Gohmert (my home state fwiw) was a judge. And is now in the house.
Maybe but that particular quote "Zuckerberg (in a disdainful tone): Senator, we run ads." is not an example of it. Sometimes they ask really basic questions, not because they don't know the answer to it, but to enter it into the record. It's how a police or how cross examination starts, get them to admit basic stuff then later make them contradict themselves. Another reason for basic "stupid" questions is to provide information for others who many not be aware. We all know how FB makes money, but that might not extend to people who aren't proficient technically (think grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles...).
Zuckerberg: "WhatsApp messages are fully encrypted."
S: "But can it spit out some algorithmic thing that will affect ads?"
Z: "Facebook's systems don't see the content of your messages."
S: "But could they talk to each other, even if no human ever sees the content?"
https://twitter.com/eugenegu/status/983788172306874369
WW2 generals were very arguably some of the greatest military minds the world has ever seen. They rapidly adopted what was radically new military technology at the time and figured out how to use it extraordinarily effectively through understanding it.
Eisenhower, Montgomery, Rommel, MacArthur, Patton, Bradley would immediately understand drone strikes.
I guarantee their questions would be vastly superior in every regard to what I just watched at the hearing today.
The way they scoped that question to WhatsApp and not Messenger seemed quite deliberate.
But they're probably doing so much more with Messenger and their 'shadow profiles'.
WhatsApp is sold as an E2E encrypted service, and an admission that WhatsApp message data (or even metadata) is somehow used for advertising as well would be a huge admission.
> Him admitting they serve ads based on Messenger content means nothing, we already know that they do.
I don't think that has been confirmed (source if so?), and I think that's what the question should have attempted to confirm.
Z: "No, you would not see ads about Black Panther". (Paraphrased, don't have transcript)
Not the President we need, but the one we deserve.
President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho on the other hand...
Everyone has thousands of choices on how to share their data if they don't want to use facebook/instagram/whatsapp. Does the mere fact that they don't use those other choices make the 1 choice a monopoly?