In the article, they haven't said why they think FB is "back on the defensive". They just rehashed the whole controversy, no new events seem to have occurred.
I don't see how the article could have been any clearer. The first sentence explains that it is about how they are back on the defensive from US lawmakers and the rest of the article is directly quoting members of Congress including one who says "Sure looks like Zuckerberg lied to Congress".
How is any of that "rehashing"? What lawmakers even knew about this at the time of the previous article?
> The first sentence explains that it is about how they are back on the defensive
> Facebook endured a new wave of criticism from lawmakers and regulators in the United States and Europe on Monday after disclosures that the social media giant had allowed dozens of hardware manufacturers access to its trove of personal user data.
I don't see any evidence of "defensive" action from fb. English is not my first language so maybe I'm misinterpreting being "on the defensive". If someone criticizes you are you automatically "on the defensive"?
This is a followup to the first article where they confused the ability to use a device to access Facebook functionality (e.g. upload photos) without using the app or browser with giving a third party the ability to access Friend data.
The common understanding seems to be that Facebook is allowing device manufacturers to download user data the same way that Cambridge Analytica and other third party services did.
So far, they haven't shown that device manufacturers are siphoning that data to their own databases short of the statement "Facebook acknowledged that some partners did store users’ data — including friends’ data — on their own servers" (in the original article, no explanation of context). What they have shown is that Facebook gave device manufacturers the ability to let users use the device to interact with their Facebook accounts without using the web browser.
Amazon Silk does that whenever you log in to facebook (or any other site, for that matter). The data they capture during that presumably isn't even covered by a similar data use agreement.
> The common understanding seems to be that Facebook is allowing device manufacturers to download user data the same way that Cambridge Analytica and other third party services did.
>"Facebook acknowledged that some partners did store users’ data — including friends’ data — on their own servers"
In other words, the "common understanding" is correct and Facebook has confirmed it.
What I think is really interesting is that there is public appetite for outrage against the tech giants. Hence why this article was published even though there is not a whole lot more information.
Public outrage often results in low hanging fruit for political movements to pick and use for their own gain.
If this snowballs some more I expect reactionary politicians and reactionary policies to rear their ugly head.
It is interesting but perhaps not surprising. They have gone from darling startups to consuming our lives and holding enormous power to influence, people have noticed and people care.
It might be surprising if you don't feel the same way though and aren't exposed to it. In the same way that I wouldn't have noticed the brexit movement had even a handful of followers when infact it was a huge portion of people.
The lesson I took from that was that I have a world view but it is only a tiny fraction of possible world views, and I will never know or understand most of them.
I do wonder what sort of politics it will influence though, as it stands I can't really imagine many outcomes. These are new problems in a unique political climate, I haven't been able to read it well for a while now.
Is there any feasible way to actually have the good parts of Facebook but prevent all of the data mining especially by third parties. I can't actually think of a way. Is there some subset of acceptable data to share? Is Facebook as it is right now totally broken and a new model needed?
The use cases of automatically adding your friends pictures and birthdays to matching phone contacts was awesome when I first used it in college. Games like Words with Friends are a lot more fun when I'm actually playing with people I know. Not everyone discovers and plays games at the same time so its nice seeing when someone new starts playing and also knowing not to pester friends that stopped playing long ago.
Being connected with actual people I know is nice, I just hope it doesn't all have to go away because there are so many people out there trying to abuse the data.
I don't like that my data is exploited to target ads. But I also wouldn't like it if Facebook charged 25 cents per friend request, or threatened to cut me off from my social groups if I didn't pay the monthly fee. Similar problems apply to Facebook's platform standards and data handling.
I don't mean to claim that Facebook's done nothing wrong. But ultimately, there are uncomfortable tradeoffs involved in friendship-as-a-service. Expecting an completely non-creepy version of Facebook is like expecting a completely non-controversial version of government.
Other than the obviously extremely-difficult-to-overcome network effects, I don't think it'd be impossible to create something decentralized that replicated much of the core functionality of Facebook, ie syndicating news, pictures, etc about people you care about, and providing some basic ability to have conversation threads. There'd obviously be some tradeoffs, but I don't think any of them would necessarily be mortal blows to the UX.
But it seems like decentralization would be a mortal blow to privacy. If we struggle to get a monolithic Facebook to treat our data responsibly, how could we possibly convince 500 decentralized Facebook nodes? (And why isn't it trivial for the NSA or FSB to copy the world's data by standing up node #238 under an alias?)
Decentralised as in "run your own for your family and any friends who do not want to run their own", not as in "run the node for this geographical area". As long as the management boundaries coincide with the privacy boundaries - i.e. data within nodes belongs to a group of people who already share said data since they are in the same family or friend group - the scenario you picture here would not come to pass.
Of course there are several attempts at building a decentralised 'social' network like this, e.g. Diaspora and GNU Social. Thus far they have not taken off other than in limited circles.
>Expecting am completely non-creepy version of Facebook is like expecting a completely non-controversial version of the government.
Strange comparison. We should remember that the difference between a government and a company is who owns them. Governments are owned by the people, and many times throughout history, it became obvious to the population that they could not trust a private company to manage their fancy new communication network. And so, they had their government do it, so that they would have a say. That’s what democracy is all about.
They aren’t new problems. Facebook provides communication, not friendship. The friend component is just a network address book of sorts, effectively no different from a phone number. If the phone company were allowed to replace phone numbers with references to a centralized lookup table, they would certainly do it. But it’s illegal, thanks to over a century full of public outcry and contentions just like these.
> But Facebook officials said this week that they did not consider hardware partners to be outside companies, under the terms of Facebook’s privacy policies and a 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission.
....except for when hardware partners are discovered to have had a breach, in which case Facebook officials said that those companies would be held liable.
True. And even besides your example of discontinuity, if they want more specificity, it could be theirs. They are free to specify as much as needed when they write the documents.
25 comments
[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 3867 ms ] threadHow is any of that "rehashing"? What lawmakers even knew about this at the time of the previous article?
> Facebook endured a new wave of criticism from lawmakers and regulators in the United States and Europe on Monday after disclosures that the social media giant had allowed dozens of hardware manufacturers access to its trove of personal user data.
I don't see any evidence of "defensive" action from fb. English is not my first language so maybe I'm misinterpreting being "on the defensive". If someone criticizes you are you automatically "on the defensive"?
The common understanding seems to be that Facebook is allowing device manufacturers to download user data the same way that Cambridge Analytica and other third party services did.
So far, they haven't shown that device manufacturers are siphoning that data to their own databases short of the statement "Facebook acknowledged that some partners did store users’ data — including friends’ data — on their own servers" (in the original article, no explanation of context). What they have shown is that Facebook gave device manufacturers the ability to let users use the device to interact with their Facebook accounts without using the web browser.
Let's just let this statement stand on it's own for a moment.
>"Facebook acknowledged that some partners did store users’ data — including friends’ data — on their own servers"
In other words, the "common understanding" is correct and Facebook has confirmed it.
Public outrage often results in low hanging fruit for political movements to pick and use for their own gain.
If this snowballs some more I expect reactionary politicians and reactionary policies to rear their ugly head.
It might be surprising if you don't feel the same way though and aren't exposed to it. In the same way that I wouldn't have noticed the brexit movement had even a handful of followers when infact it was a huge portion of people.
The lesson I took from that was that I have a world view but it is only a tiny fraction of possible world views, and I will never know or understand most of them.
I do wonder what sort of politics it will influence though, as it stands I can't really imagine many outcomes. These are new problems in a unique political climate, I haven't been able to read it well for a while now.
The use cases of automatically adding your friends pictures and birthdays to matching phone contacts was awesome when I first used it in college. Games like Words with Friends are a lot more fun when I'm actually playing with people I know. Not everyone discovers and plays games at the same time so its nice seeing when someone new starts playing and also knowing not to pester friends that stopped playing long ago.
Being connected with actual people I know is nice, I just hope it doesn't all have to go away because there are so many people out there trying to abuse the data.
I don't mean to claim that Facebook's done nothing wrong. But ultimately, there are uncomfortable tradeoffs involved in friendship-as-a-service. Expecting an completely non-creepy version of Facebook is like expecting a completely non-controversial version of government.
Of course there are several attempts at building a decentralised 'social' network like this, e.g. Diaspora and GNU Social. Thus far they have not taken off other than in limited circles.
Strange comparison. We should remember that the difference between a government and a company is who owns them. Governments are owned by the people, and many times throughout history, it became obvious to the population that they could not trust a private company to manage their fancy new communication network. And so, they had their government do it, so that they would have a say. That’s what democracy is all about.
They aren’t new problems. Facebook provides communication, not friendship. The friend component is just a network address book of sorts, effectively no different from a phone number. If the phone company were allowed to replace phone numbers with references to a centralized lookup table, they would certainly do it. But it’s illegal, thanks to over a century full of public outcry and contentions just like these.
....except for when hardware partners are discovered to have had a breach, in which case Facebook officials said that those companies would be held liable.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17229397 (272 points/251 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17223926 (700 points/200 comments)