
Facebook's seized files published by MPs - AndrewDucker
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-46456695
======
Trill-I-Am
Here is a direct link to the files themselves:

[https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-
committees/cultu...](https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-
committees/culture-media-and-sport/Note-by-Chair-and-selected-documents-
ordered-from-Six4Three.pdf)

~~~
tpush
Really interesting stuff in there.

> Facebook email 24 January 2013

> Justin Osofsky – ‘Twitter launched Vine today which lets you shoot multiple
> short video segments to make one single, 6-second video. As part of their
> NUX, you can find friends via FB. Unless anyone raises objections, we will
> shut down their friends API access today. We’ve prepared reactive PR, and I
> will let Jana know our decision.

> MZ – ‘Yup, go for it.’

~~~
evilzuku
Nothing says evil more than preparing reactive PR to bury your competitors.
And the nonchalant way his response sends chills down my spine. These people
will suffocate innovation just to win.

~~~
e40
> These people will suffocate innovation just to win.

I don't like Zuck, but come on, you just described every CEO in America, that
when they have a choice they will do this.

~~~
oska
I don't agree that Elon Musk is like this (quite the reverse) and I'm sure
there are many other CEOs who aren't too.

Let's not normalise sociopathology, even given its prevalence amongst business
executives.

~~~
fma
I'm no Musk fan but he opened up all the Tesla patents so other manufacturers
can use their intellectual property.

Maybe he had ulterior motives... Don't know. But opening up patents is
certainly the opposite of squashing innovation.

~~~
oska
Yes, that was my point. That Musk actively encourages other companies to share
in his companies' innovations.

------
SirensOfTitan
I worked at Facebook for 5 years on Workplace and Internal Tools. I am
typically very critical of the company nowadays, but even so find the
discussion here difficult to digest.

People are complex. They are more complex than an action, or even a group of
actions. To take a person and alias them into being "good" or "bad" based on
an action or a series of actions is to explicitly _dehumanize_ them for the
sake of making the world simpler. It is a poor model, and in a Dale-Carnegie-
way it leads to poor outcomes, as you close the dialog with that person that
allows you to change opinions and outcomes. It is the same with groups or
companies: some parts of groups do good from some vantage point, some do bad.

I found myself inspired by a lot of what Facebook did. I loved working inside
Infrastructure there, I was amazed by what people were innovating on every
day. Projects like charitable causes have raised a lot for charity. I've seen
the Are you Safe feature reduce so much stress during disasters. I keep
meaningful dialogs going with friends I don't get to see often on FB and
Instagram. It makes me really happy to see my friends thriving.

One of Napoleon's great gifts was in compartmentalizing pieces of his life.
His tumultuous and frankly soul-crushing personal life (which affected him
deeply) with Josephine never got in the way of his military victories. I
wonder if that's a good model, up-to-a-point for people and groups. With
people, by compartmentalizing some unsavory perspective someone has, you have
the ability to change it later on through discussion.

... in groups: if everyone good leaves organizations because they're "bad,"
well, those organizations will just be filled with the worst of us soon
enough.

~~~
decebalus1
> People are complex. They are more complex than an action, or even a group of
> actions. To take a person and alias them into being "good" or "bad" based on
> an action or a series of actions is to explicitly dehumanize them for the
> sake of making the world simpler.

Correct. But we're not talking about people here, we're talking about a
corporate entity as a whole. It's a bit more complex than a person. It has an
incentive model and a set of norms (culture) which enables people to do
good/bad based on the situation to maximize their personal gains (whichever
those are - personal, material, spiritual, you name it).

If this consistently enables people to do what is perceived externally as
unethical, we have a problem.

Nice spin on it, but Facebook is still a bad actor (despite what you say). I
held this opinion since the beginning, before all the leaks and all the
scandals but nobody believed me. Very smart people were incentivized to join
using the entourage (come work with other smart people) and money, then
slightly brain-washed in a cult-like manner (us vs them, wartimes, etc..).
This enabled them to ignore blatant unethical behavior. I've seen all of these
first-hand and it's bad. Bad bad bad.

~~~
drewblaisdell
> Nice spin on it, but Facebook is still a bad actor (despite what you say).

This needs to be a conclusion, not a premise. I do not have a firm belief
about whether or not this is true, but I keep seeing people list bad things
about FB and draw a straight line to “thus it is evil”. Ideally, we would list
the good/bad it does and assign weights to these points to determine if it is
net harmful.

I want to be convinced, HN, but when I read comments like the ones in this
thread (FB has no positive value whatsoever for its users, FB sells users’
data), it makes it hard for me to appraise.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> This needs to be a conclusion, not a premise.

What makes you think it's a premise and not a conclusion?

> Ideally, we would list the good/bad it does and assign weights to these
> points to determine if it is net harmful.

I have 11 years of data points and experiences about FB, I'm not going to
enumerate all of them whenever there is another. I'll just say "typically
fucking Facebook".

At this point, I don't even feel obligated to remember it all -- I can trust
myself enough. We do that with "evil" people in our lives, too. We don't
remember every dirty detail. We remember that there were a bunch of things,
and that overall, we had it at some point. I save the conclusion and the
checksums and that's enough.

If you think I'm operating on a premise, instead of having come to a
conclusion, how is that not you operating on a premise?

> I want to be convinced

Maybe, maybe not. What you are _doing_ is delegitimizing even the conclusions
others arrived at, by simply calling all of that mere premises. You saw a
bunch of posts that struck you as knee-jerk, so all of it is knee-jerk.

You have to form your own opinion either way, that burden is not on others. Do
you also expect anyone who says anything positive to give some kind of
thorough, 1000-page assessment of all the benefits and cons? No, of course
not. Same goes for criticism.

I for one don't _care_ about the "evilness" of people I never met. For me the
harm done through ignorance or fear or "evil" (which is just another form of
weakness really) or not caring enough is the same harm.

~~~
koko775
> At this point, I don't even feel obligated to remember it all -- I can trust
> myself enough. We do that with "evil" people in our lives, too. We don't
> remember every dirty detail. We remember that there were a bunch of things,
> and that overall, we had it at some point. I save the conclusion and the
> checksums and that's enough.

> If you think I'm operating on a premise, instead of having come to a
> conclusion, how is that not you operating on a premise?

A mental conclusion can be a discussion premise. It doesn't invalidate your
conclusion to say it should be a conclusion not a premise, because you're
asserting a premise in a discussion which you are not (yet) supporting.

Also consider that you have seen eleven years of data points and experiences
from the point of view of a small subset of users; there could perhaps be an
equivalent cache of positive datapoints which tend to be significantly less
interesting to report on.

Thus, supporting your point with concrete examples is how you contribute to a
discussion, because then you and any adversaries can challenge you on the
merits of your argument.

That's what the conclusion/premise separation is about.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> Also consider that you have seen eleven years of data points and experiences
> from the point of view of a small subset of users; there could perhaps be an
> equivalent cache of positive datapoints which tend to be significantly less
> interesting to report on.

You know what a thief can be like? 99.99% of the time, they don't steal. They
sleep, they brush their teeth, they do all sorts of stuff, and every 2 weeks
they take all the savings from an elderly woman.

How often you do need to see someone doing that to consider them a thief?
Would you _really_ care about any positive stories after seeing what you saw?

> That's what the conclusion/premise separation is about.

You can't speak for that other person. Let them respond for themselves.

~~~
koko775
> You can't speak for that other person. Let them respond for themselves.

Sounds like you're more interested in competing with someone than talking
about ideas.

> Would you really care about any positive stories after seeing what you saw?

...yes? Of course? I don't automatically dehumanize that hypothetical person
for their deeds, whether I approve or not, or believe there should be
consequences. Like, doesn't Facebook collaborate with law enforcement in
tracking down predators and scammers and the like? It's not as simple as "bad.
go away."

You should remember enough to make a proper argument, dude. A solid conclusion
needs solid support.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> Sounds like you're more interested in competing with someone than talking
> about ideas.

No, I want to talk about the idea they expressed, not what you read into it. I
can only do that with them.

> ...yes? Of course? I don't automatically dehumanize

Who's talking about dehumanizing? How is considering someone a thief
dehumanizing?

edit2: Facebook is a company. It can't be dehumanized, it's not a person in
the first place. People in it are responsible for what they do. Someone who
fought shitty decision and then left is different than someone who, say, hires
a firm to smear critics. That goes without saying as far as I'm concerned. But
my thief example refers to Facebook, you see? Just because apparently my
argument isn't easy to follow for everyone, doesn't mean it doesn't stand.

So, where is the dehumanization? Who is being dehumanized when someone comes
to the conclusion that FB is on the whole "bad"? Because we're not
appreciating all the good, supposedly? When someone is a thief, or a murderer,
or a company is, then all their fantastic properties they may have is
interesting for their personal friends. But not to the police, judges, or
wider society. They _know_ that the person has probably a lot of reasons for
how they became that way, and nice sides to them, but they already have their
own friends, it's simply completely out of scope of the subject at hand,
unless it's directly related to the "crime".

> Like, doesn't Facebook collaborate with law enforcement in tracking down
> predators and scammers and the like?

Yes, and that thief who sometimes robs elderly women who then freeze to death
outside, also has child, and he's very great with that child, and he's singing
in a choir, and all sorts of great things. But you don't judge a meal by the
freshest ingredients, but by the most spoiled. You judge a person by their
worst deeds, and likewise a company. Again, we're talking about judgement with
a capital justice here, not being friends, thinking we're better, or thinking
they're evil and we're good, or _any_ of that.

> You should remember enough to make a proper argument, dude.

I think my argument is just fine, and it even seems to get to you a little.

edit: And what post of mine are you even referring to? Where did I make an
argument without examples? I was responding to someone else complaining that
everyone who thinks Facebook is "evil" (let's just say bad) is operating on a
premise. I was responding to that general point, I'm not decebalus1, who in
turn didn't have "Facebook is evil" as their main point either.

Their main point, if you would follow the guidelines, hasn't been addressed by
_anyone_. Their main point is the first two paragraphs, the rest is bonus. How
come you are trying to teach how to "make a proper argument, dude", but didn't
notice that?

Oh, and clicking buttons instead of reasoning kinda gives away who is
interested in discussion, and who is interested in dehumanization and
censorship.

------
hkt
Sometimes, even amidst the Brexit madness, I love our Parliament. Publishing
and seizing documents like this is a move that proves politicians have the
spine to look after people's interests. Time to get serious, act on this, and
break up Facebook forever.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Seizing documents for a valid inquiry is one thing.

But does that follow that publishing them is OK too?

From the outside, it looks like these politicians are frustrated that a
foreign CEO ignored their demand to appear before them (because he has no
legal obligation to do so), and have decided to retaliate by releasing
embarrassing private internal documents obtained during an investigation in
the hopes that Facebook will be politically and financially damaged.

I get that people hate Facebook, but does that justify any level of bad
behavior as long as it harms them?

~~~
NeedMoreTea
All Parliamentary committees publish online, whether evidence is written or
oral.

You can ask for an exception for part of your evidence, if you fully explain
why, which the committee considers. The usual reasons for discretion apply.
It's almost unheard of for some evidence not to be published at all, though it
has happened. 1980s I think was the last case.

No idea what dusty precedent or procedures apply when someone refuses to
attend or documents are seized. That doesn't happen much.

Maybe no one asked. Maybe this _is_ the redacted for sensitivity version as we
have no idea the amount seized in the first place. I think we'd have to wait
for the report to know.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Excellent, thank you for an actual response that isn’t “haha, screw Facebook,
who cares!”

If this is just part of the normal investigative procedure rather than a gross
abuse of authority, then so be it.

------
mindgam3
Here's Zuckerberg's response in which he "shares some more context around the
decisions we made":
[https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10105559172610321](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10105559172610321)

Quick textual analysis: in a pithy 623-word statement, Zuck manages to mention
"shady", "sketchy" or "abusive apps" no less than 7 times. 8 times, if you
include the time he mentioned Cambridge Analytica without using a sketchy
adjective.

Notice the spin as Facebook the White Knight protecting the public from the
evils of sketchy apps. Unclear how this will play out given public losing
trust in Facebook itself.

[Reference]

1\. "some developers built shady apps that abused people's data"

2\. "to prevent abusive apps"

3\. "a lot of sketchy apps -- like the quiz app that sold data to Cambridge
Analytica"

4\. "Some of the developers whose sketchy apps were kicked off our platform
sued us"

5\. "we were focusing on preventing abusive apps"

6\. "mentioned above that we blocked a lot of sketchy apps"

7\. "We've focused on preventing abusive apps for years"

8\. "this was the change required to prevent the situation with Cambridge
Analytica"

~~~
misiti3780
can you attach the text for people that have black listed all FB IPs ?

~~~
mindgam3
How about this?

[https://web.archive.org/web/20181205191905/https://www.faceb...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181205191905/https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10105559172610321)

------
paganel
> Facebook used data provided by the Israeli analytics firm Onavo to determine
> which other mobile apps were being downloaded and used by the public. It
> then used this knowledge to decide which apps to acquire or otherwise treat
> as a threat

> there was evidence that Facebook's refusal to share data with some apps
> caused them to fail

Stuff like this should trigger the EU Commissioner for Competition to withdraw
the authorization that “allowed” FB to acquire Whatsapp and should force a
split between the two entities. A fine (no matter how big) will be seen by FB
and its investors just as “cost of doing business”. Facebook in its current
form needs to be split up back again.

~~~
breischl
I have no particular love for FB or what they've done with data, but these I
don't understand why either of those points is particularly controversial or
even unusual.

> Facebook used data provided by the Israeli analytics firm Onavo to determine
> which other mobile apps were being downloaded and used by the public. It
> then used this knowledge to decide which apps to acquire or otherwise treat
> as a threat

Checking out your competition is pretty standard among all businesses, as is
buying out the ones you can't beat.

> there was evidence that Facebook's refusal to share data with some apps
> caused them to fail

Sharing or not sharing data with another app is likewise not an unusual
decision. FB is not a public utility - they can not work with other apps for
any reason, or no reason at all. And this is a particularly ironic thing to
point out, considering that the main thrust is complaining that they _did_
share data with other apps. So it's bad if they do share data, but also bad if
they don't?

~~~
johnnyfaehell
> Sharing or not sharing data with another app is likewise not an unusual
> decision. FB is not a public utility - they can not work with other apps for
> any reason, or no reason at all. And this is a particularly ironic thing to
> point out, considering that the main thrust is complaining that they _did_
> share data with other apps. So it's bad if they do share data, but also bad
> if they don't?

To me, this would be Facebook taking advantage of their stronghold on the
market to continue to dominate the market.

Let's remember this is not Facebook's data, this is their users' data. It
should be up to the User who they can share their data with, but they weren't
given the choice to use their data with an app because Facebook decided they
didn't like the way the other business competes with them in some aspect or
how they aren't making money out of the third party app. An example is
Facebook won't grant Influencer Marketing Companies access to their API even
though the user (The Influencer) wants them to have the data so they can get
paid based on the views, shares, comments, and likes of the posts they've been
contracted for. User has a legit desire to share that data to the point where
they will take screenshots, GDPR deletions, etc to fulfil the need for that
data to be shared. Facebook's reason for not allowing them access is simple,
they don't make any money out of the deal.

So if they refuse to allow you to share your data with people you want to
share it with, that is bad. Sharing your data with companies you don't want to
share with is also bad.

~~~
manfredo
> Let's remember this is not Facebook's data, this is their users' data.

No, it's not - short of a change in law it is Facebook's data. Facebook
collected, maintained , and analyzed the data. It's their data, the fact that
their users allowed Facebook to collect it does not change that fact.

GDPR allows users to view the data Facebook collected about them. If users
want manually request their data from Facebook and provide it to competing
apps they can. But this is the user's prerogative, not Facebook's.

~~~
mpweiher
>> this is their users' data

> No, it's not - short of a change in law it is Facebook's data.

Er, actually it is. Under GDPR, and under previous data protection rules that
lacked meaningful enforcement, users own their data. Companies at most get to
"borrow" and/or keep it safe for them.

Alas, this fundamental fact seems to not have quite made it everywhere yet..

[https://digitalguardian.com/blog/tackling-gdpr-
challenge-1-e...](https://digitalguardian.com/blog/tackling-gdpr-
challenge-1-eu-residents-are-new-data-owner)

~~~
zeeed
Does anyone have an explanation as to why parent is downvoted? Is the
information they presented incorrect?

~~~
detaro
Possible reason: It is actually intentionally avoided to use the concept of
"ownership", since those advocating for "data ownership" generally mean things
like "if people own their data, that means they can give it to companies and
then that company can do what it wants with the data, since it is its
property", which is more or less the opposite of what the goal of this privacy
regulation is. The term is used sometimes in more general material, but it is
problematic framing. People have rights to their data and how it is used, but
they don't derive from ownership.

~~~
mpweiher
So in that particular sense, it is even _stronger_ than ownership, at least in
terms of preventing facebook from ever becoming the owner. (Not in the sense
of having all of the rights usually associated with ownership, which include
selling)

------
natch
Just to underline the obvious point the lawmaker is making, perhaps if
Zuckerberg would show up to hearings that lawmakers invite him to, then he
would be able to provide the context that Facebook says is missing.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Translation: if you turn down our "invitation", we'll misuse our legal power
to seize your internal documents and then publish them to embarrass you.

Accurate?

To be clear, I'm not saying that they can't seize and investigate or even
punish if the law was broken. That's the job of government. But this just
seems like a petty attempt to embarrass. However, I'm American and haven't
been following the story closely, so I may be missing context.

~~~
sangnoir
> I'm American [...] I may be missing context.

You are missing context: look up "Parliamentary Privilege" and "Parliamentary
Sovereignty" which do not have US equivalents. The "invitation" was
effectively a subpoena.

~~~
kazen44
Didn't the fact that is not a UK citizen also basically safe him from being
dragged to Parliament by the police?

Im pretty sure, if you are an UK citizen and they summon you, they will
eventually just grab you and put yourself in front of Parliament.

~~~
yerich
No, since the person who's documents were seized was in the UK on a trip.
Except for special cases where immunity is granted, physical presence in a
country means that one is subject to the laws and jurisdiction of the country.
In this case, the UK Parliament had the authority to compel the production of
the documents in question, by threat of imprisonment if necessary.

A question for any legal scholars out there: the seizure of the documents
would be contempt of court in the US, could it not? The person who was
threatened with arrest has the defense of duress, so could the US court charge
the MPs who ordered the seizure? I don't think the UK would extradite, but if
the MPs were to visit the US without immunity, could they be arrested for
violating US law (even though their actions are apparently within their rights
under UK law)?

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Again, the seizure isn’t the problem, the public disclosure is.

------
dgzl
> "As you know all the growth team is planning on shipping a permissions
> update on Android at the end of this month. They are going to include the
> 'read call log' permission... This is a pretty high-risk thing to do from a
> PR perspective but it appears that the growth team will charge ahead and do
> it."

Meanwhile, at the Growth Team™ office: "I think implanting these chips into
our customer's brain is high risk, but we're going to charge ahead anyway".

~~~
rhizome
"Truth serum in the water supply? Don't mind if I do!"

------
throwaway572091
[https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-
committees/cultu...](https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-
committees/culture-media-and-sport/Note-by-Chair-and-selected-documents-
ordered-from-Six4Three.pdf)

Exhibit 79 – linking data access spending on advertising at Facebook

Email from Konstantinos Papamiltidas [FB] to Ime Archibong [FB]

18 September 2013 – 10.06am From email about slides prepared for talk to
DevOps at 11am on 19 September 2013

'Key points: 1/ Find out what other apps like Refresh are out that we don't
want to share data with and figure out if they spend on NEKO. Communicate in
one-go to all apps that don't spend that those permission will be revoked.
Communicate to the rest that they need to spend on NEKO $250k a year to
maintain access to the data.'

------
noarchy
I think Facebook is terrible. So I don't use it. I have a choice.

These same MPs would likely howl in fury if their secret communications were
stolen and published by an entity like Wikileaks (for example). Be careful
what you wish for.

Of course the difference here is that one is "legal".

~~~
rchaud
Let them howl. When they've been involved in shady stuff that's against the
public interest, I will have no sympathy for them, just as I don't when FB is
the "victim". I am glad they didn't decide to sit on it because of any fears
about "I don't want this happening to me, so I won't snitch".

By the way, these emails were not obtained via hacking/phishing, so the
Wikileaks comparison doesn't make any sense.

~~~
samstave
How many of these MPs show up in Panama/Paradise Papers?

This was a valid question. When talking about them getting and publishing the
FB files etc.. and asking if they would want their dirty laundry aired -
asking if they show up in those releases is both relevant and obvious.

------
throwaway572091
[https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-
committees/cultu...](https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-
committees/culture-media-and-sport/Note-by-Chair-and-selected-documents-
ordered-from-Six4Three.pdf)

Exhibit 170 – Mark Zuckerberg discussing linking data to revenue

Mark Zuckerberg email – dated 7 October 2012

'I've been thinking about platform business model a lot this weekend…if we
make it so devs can generate revenue for us in different ways, then it makes
it more acceptable for us to charge them quite a bit more for using platform.
The basic idea is that any other revenue you generate for us earns you a
credit towards whatever fees you own us for using plaform. For most developers
this would probably cover cost completely. So instead of every paying us
directly, they'd just use our payments or ads products. A basic model could
be:

Login with Facebook is always free Pushing content to Facebook is always free
Reading anything, including friends, costs a lot of money. Perhaps on the
order of $0.10/user each year.

For the money that you owe, you can cover it in any of the following ways:

Buys ads from us in neko or another system Run our ads in your app or website
(canvas apps already do this) Use our payments Sell your items in our Karma
store.

Or if the revenue we get from those doesn't add up to more that the fees you
owe us, then you just pay us the fee directly.'

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Seems pretty reasonable to me? Especially in the context of tossing ideas
around.

Note that I don't read this as "let's get devs on board and then yank the rug
out from under them later". Rather, it seems like they're trying to find a way
to make it win/win, where devs can either pay for the platform directly, or
use it for free if they can do so with a business model that helps Facebook
make money elsewhere.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> _devs can generate revenue for us in different ways, then it makes it more
> acceptable for us to charge them quite a bit more_

Generate revenue _for_ us, _so_ we can charge them _quite a bit more_.

> _The basic idea is that any other revenue you generate for us earns you a
> credit towards whatever fees you own us for using plaform. For most
> developers this would probably cover cost completely._

So devs can get credit (they can't convert to money I guess?), and Facebook
gets more money. That's just win/win if you don't consider the audience FB
"generates revenue" from, and then it also would depend on how much you would
care to save, say $10 while generating $50 for FB, or saving $10 to generate
$500, and what those figures would be.

Money isn't "made", it's always shifted around. Value can be generated, not
money. So making money for Facebook means taking it from somewhere.

------
PaulHoule
Hell yeah.

I have been involved with companies that have wanted to do things with
Facebook non-personal data (eg. pages) and could never get anybody to talk.
Some of these were little companies in the "flyover" states, one of these was
pretty good sized in L.A.

When you see them playing favorites you see another thing that S.V. will
struggle with for years.

One reason NYC is so important for finance is that people go have lunch and
trade insider information without leaving a paper trail.

In the same way S.V. companies circle jerk each other giving each other
special privileges, staging fake acquisitions so sons of investment bankers
can make it look like they were successful startup founders, etc. Sometimes
they even get a stooge to come in from a place like Saudi Arabia or Japan to
buy them out so they can tell the people who put money in their fund that they
made money. Those folks will lose a lot of their A.U.M. but they probably get
paid off in some other way.

S.V. doesn't have any problems that wouldn't be solved by opening offices in
the flyover states. But there are two things about those people.

They don't listen They won't listen

------
mandevil
Facebook has released a statement[1] that accuses Six4Three of "cherrypicked"
document dump, that is mostly just denials with no supporting evidence. If
only they hadn't undermined their own trustworthiness by, a few weeks ago,
denying that senior executives were culpable in their relationship with
Definers and then doing a news dump right before a major US holiday admitting
that they had lied in their first response, then people might believe their
unsupported assertions.

[1]: [https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/12/response-to-
six4three-d...](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/12/response-to-six4three-
documents/)

------
IronWolve
I worked for a company that was bought by blackberry and then split up. A
large portion of our developers and engineers went to Facebook in Ireland and
Seattle/California.

This is my personal experience, so I don't know how widespread this is, but I
suspect its common.

I stayed friendly with many ex-coworkers on Facebook for awhile, and saw some
attitudes move towards a harsh alt-leftist view and some went extremely
violent. Anti-Isreal statements started popping up and some Jewish facebook
engineers started to self-censor and talk in personal messages instead of
posting, commenting to me if I was also seeing this attitude in posts.

Could just be how divided facebook made people, amplifying echo-chambers and
enforcing views that "their side" is correct, but many of my old co-workers
show a large political divide and a few just are wildly hardcore political in
very violent tones. How this bleeds into their job, only time will tell.

I finally had to make facebook just for family and close friends and removed
the app from my phone, and only use it in a web browser. I'm guilty of
enjoying a good meme or political cartoon, but things are definitely more
divided now. I would not doubt the documents reflect more political views
seeping into their products.

------
whatshisface
The documents[0] contain market research done by Onavo[1]. This data may have
been bought from them, and if so it was probably bought under a non-disclose
agreement, as is typical for those arrangements (the reasoning being that
Onavo can't sell the data more than once if it is released publicly). This
could pose a problem for Facebook if Onavo decides that another release like
this is likely to happen again. I'd be interested if anyone can weigh in on
what the think the liability situation will be here.

[0][https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-
committees/cultu...](https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-
committees/culture-media-and-sport/Note-by-Chair-and-selected-documents-
ordered-from-Six4Three.pdf)

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo)

~~~
makomk
The bigger problem is that, as I understand it, all of these documents were
obtained from someone suing Facebook who had access to them as part of a
lawsuit against Facebook under a court order that required them to be kept
confidential.

~~~
criddell
That makes me wonder if a confidentiality agreement should ever include
sharing that information with the government? Maybe NDAs from publicly traded
companies should always exempt sharing with elected officials?

~~~
ryacko
Speech and debate clause.

~~~
matt4077
That protects the members of parliament, not their sources.

~~~
ryacko
Ah. Act of state doctrine.

------
tareqak
Facebook's response: Response to Six4Three Documents -
[https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/12/response-to-
six4three-d...](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/12/response-to-six4three-
documents/)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18611492](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18611492)

------
dschuetz
Whoever is still investing in Facebook are complicit in aiding criminal
activity, e.g. aiding unfair competition.

------
bechrissed
I'm very interested in what will be in these documents. Twitter is hyped about
them

~~~
roboyoshi
as mentioned somewhere else in this thread, here is the direct link:
[https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-
committees/cultu...](https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-
committees/culture-media-and-sport/Note-by-Chair-and-selected-documents-
ordered-from-Six4Three.pdf)

------
rajacombinator
Keep in mind this is all punishment by tptb for Facebook execs getting out of
line and thinking they had a seat at the table. Not enough dues paid yet.

------
nakedrobot2
Good for them, thank you!

The sooner facebook is controlled and broken up into pieces, the better. They
are a massive net negative on civilization.

Do you work at Facebook? Shame on you.

~~~
notacoward
Yes, I do work at Facebook. I'm not going to get into some protracted argument
about whether that makes me a bad person, or already was, but I'd like to give
you something to think about.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that we can neatly divide tech workers
into good and bad. Likewise for companies. All categories are non-empty, and
certain to remain so. What's the optimal assignment of workers to companies?
Is it never beneficial for a good person to work at a bad company, perhaps
making it less bad? Is it never harmful for a bad person to work at a good
company, perhaps making it less good? Is it better to have all of the bad
people concentrated at a few companies, or distributed throughout the
industry?

Once you start thinking about it, I think you'll see that the Manichaean
"entirely and immutably good or entirely and immutably bad" model just isn't
very useful. Maybe we should talk about good vs. bad behaviors instead of
demonizing (or for that matter idolizing) people - especially large groups of
people in aggregate.

~~~
kodablah
I don't work at FB and wouldn't (nor do I even have an account), but even I
can recognize that to many the benefits of FB outweigh the negatives. In a
tech-centric board such as this one coupled with media/government-driven
narratives to the contrary, it can appear to be obvious that there are way
more negatives than positives, the world would be better w/out FB, and you
should quit. But in a non-tech-environment the view is sometimes the complete
opposite, and people just can't fathom why people _want_ to use FB (as opposed
to them being "forced" due to network effects and lack of alternatives).

This is a microcosm of our political environment where when one subjectively
determines the weight of harm, they attempt to objectively apply it to others.
Sure, FB does immoral things. But why can't we simply recognize that people
disagree about whether harm exists, whether value exists, and what weights are
applied to each? As you say, this is not clear good vs bad, this is some good
vs some bad and at what levels.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
_This is a microcosm of our political environment where when one subjectively
determines the weight of harm, they attempt to objectively apply it to others.
Sure, FB does immoral things. But why can 't we simply recognize that people
disagree about whether harm exists, whether value exists, and what weights are
applied to each?_

This is a really important point. Political movements often attribute to
malice that which is adequately explained by a differing value system, but
that doesn't rile up your base like proclaiming the other side is evil.

I should remember this myself :)

~~~
dragonwriter
> Political movements often attribute to malice that which is adequately
> explained by a differing value system

Evil is only meaningful in the context of a value system.

Malice is will for things which are evil.

Valuing something positively is willing for it to transpire.

Valuing something negatively is seeing it as evil.

Valuing something positively that others value negatively is, therefore,
exactly malice in the context of the others’ value system (it's not wrongly
attributed to malice.)

------
dmak
What does MP stand for?

~~~
anonymousDan
Member of Parliament.

~~~
dmak
Thank you!

------
_salmon
> "But the facts are clear: we've never sold people's data."

What

~~~
5trokerac3
It's 100% true. They never sold people's data. They sold _access to people 's
data_.

Slimy, corporate lawyerese 101.

~~~
PavlovsCat
Wow, that seems crazy even for lawyerese.. I mean, if I have an "all you can
eat" restaurant, do I sell food, or do I just sell access to food? What about
a buffet where a person can fill their plate once, but can pick among many
things?

~~~
patejam
Not really. It's like buying a space on the wall to advertise inside the all
you can eat restaurant.

The restaurant isn't telling you who goes into the restaurant. They're just
selling you access to those people through that ad.

\-----

The other problem, the Cambridge Analytica problem, is a bit different.

It's like saying that the restaurant requires you to tell them your name and
other personal information in order to eat at the restaurant. Maybe it's to
send flyers or deals, doesn't matter.

The problem happens when the restaurant also asks for your _friends_ personal
information, and you give it to them without asking your friends.

That's basically what Facebook is under fire about. Allowing your friends to
very easily give your information out without you knowing.

~~~
PavlovsCat
I think "giving information about friends" is kind of a stretch. _Facebook_
has that information. Clicking something so Facebook does something with it
isn't quite the same as, say, entering all that info into a text field. Maybe
it is legally, but morally, from a commen sense perspective, FB gives the info
out. Allowing API access is giving info. We all know how servers work. You
can't "take" something, it always gets sent.

~~~
patejam
That's why I said "very easily". I'm not saying it's necessarily the friend's
fault, but the trigger is one of your friends clicking "Accept" on one of
these apps.

I'm also just clarifying what happened, because people don't seem to
understand how any of it works. "Facebook sells your data" is very far from
reality, and yet the reality can be considered just as bad.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> "Facebook sells your data" is very far from reality, and yet the reality can
> be considered just as bad.

Yeah, but those are the cases where it's especially important to not mix
things up, so thanks for elaborating!

------
mscasts
Holy cow, I feel very lucky I dont have facebook now :O

------
dreamdu5t
It’s terrifying that people want to use the government to regulate a free
website that nobody even has to use and which has not actually caused anyone
harm.

GDPR tyrants: get a life and stop using Facebook. Seriously.

~~~
beart
> which has not actually caused anyone harm.

This is not a statement you can just throw out there.

For example

[https://www.wired.com/story/how-facebooks-rise-fueled-
chaos-...](https://www.wired.com/story/how-facebooks-rise-fueled-chaos-and-
confusion-in-myanmar/)

~~~
dreamdu5t
Again. Hyperbole. We’re adults here. Who are you trying to convince with that
crap?

No, Facebook is a website. They aren’t involved in genocide. They aren’t why
Trump is president.

~~~
soared
By that logic, any website that hosts cp isn't involved. Any website where you
can buy slaves isn't complicit.

~~~
spunker540
That means that any site that allows two people to communicate can be
complicit -- be it forums, discussion boards or chat/messages. Criminals can
easily adopt code words, or encrypt their plaintext communications in ways
that a website would be unable to police. How about email? Are email providers
also required to detect all criminal activity occurring in their emails?

Ultimately it's a massive burden placed on companies if they are required to
read and sort through all communication occurring on their platform and it
also necessarily removes any and all privacy from every communication
platform. Do we do the same thing for cell phone manufacturers or telecom
providers? What about monitors that display the messages or keyboards that let
people type the messages soliciting illegal activity?

~~~
beart
I think it's worth considering just how much influence Facebook has that many
of the other entities you mentioned do not. I also think it's worth
considering possible solutions to problems that Facebook may or may not be the
direct cause of before jumping directly to "Welp! Slippery slope, cant do
anything about it i guess!".

------
kodablah
So, FB gave some companies preferential access after removing it for devs,
they surreptitiously collected phone data after given permission to, used
cross-business analytics for M&A or competition info, was choosy and chatty
about who got what data and its value.

I agree there are clear immoralities at play, especially with collecting phone
call info, but not sure that it is worthy of a government inquiry of such
size. Much of this is standard business and worthy of being decried as other
immoral business acts might. Would we expect such an inquiry for any other
company or are there politics at play? I feel the Cambridge Analytica issue is
more which hunt than a real-harm-exacted issue. How would one quantify the
harm? Is this vengeance for Brexit, Trump, and/or Zuck no-show?

All I've learned is to be cautious when having email conversations on
sensitive subjects (no paper trail) and to be cautious when flying execs to
the UK and to be cautious having any real business there for fear of having
confidential information raided and published. Obviously it's not standard
practice but, as with other government-imposed internet tactics of late, as a
business owner it just marks an increase on my "riskometer" that I use to
evaluate where to do business.

~~~
steve_gh
WRT doing business in the UK.

You need to understand that this is a _highly_ unusual situation.

Part of the UK Parliamentary system is that there are "Select Committees"on
MPs, whose job is to review and hold to account the performance of government
bodies and departments. They may also review areas of national interest within
their remit, and invite witnesses to give evidence to them.

For example, there have been significant problems with a rail timetable change
recently, and the Transport Select Committee invited the heads of various rail
companies to give evidence. You don't not turn up - an invitation from a
select committee to give evidence has the same sort of weight as a court
summons to give evidence.

So Zuck was invited to give evidence to the Digital Culture, Media and Sport
Select Committee (DCMS), investigating the impact of Fake News on politics.
Twice (at least). Both times he sent a minion.

DCMS then set up a Grand Committee hearing, with parliamentarians from a bunch
of other countries (Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Ireland,
Latvia, Singapore and UK), and invited Zuck. Again, no show.

So basically, since Zuck gave a whole bunch of governments the finger, the Uk
government used its powers to collect relevant evidence.

I would suggest that unless you are a) the CEO of a Unicorn, or b) Currently
suing a Unicorn and c) that Unicorn is giving the finger to a government

You need have no fear of doing business in the UK

~~~
chrisseaton
> an invitation from a select committee to give evidence has the same sort of
> weight as a court summons to give evidence

It doesn't!

As you say yourself, one is a summons, the other is nothing more than an
invitation to attend.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
I think you'll find under the British constitution, and according to Erskine
May, the definitive guide to Parliamentary practice, that it does.

"any act or omission which obstructs or impedes either House of Parliament in
the performance of its functions, or which obstructs or impedes any Member or
officer of such House in the discharge of his duty, or which has a tendency,
directly or indirectly, to produce such results, may be treated as a contempt
even though there is no precedent of the offence"

The government itself was found in contempt of Parliament over Brexit just
this week. As the linked article notes, applies just as much to refusing to
appear before a Parliamentary committee.

[https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/houses/commons/news/100...](https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/houses/commons/news/100317/explained-
what-happens-if-government-found-contempt-parliament)

~~~
chrisseaton
I think the consensus is that those powers are inoperable

[https://www.consoc.org.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2012/06/Select-...](https://www.consoc.org.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2012/06/Select-Committees-and-Coercive-Powers-Clarity-or-
Confusion.pdf)

[https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.theweek.co.uk/93679/can-
mps...](https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.theweek.co.uk/93679/can-mps-force-
people-to-testify%3famp)

~~~
NeedMoreTea
It's unclear. Trouble is none of the powers seem to have been necessary in
about a century, so it probably needs exploring in court.

Or formalising powers in some new legislation, which will eventually result if
people start to treat committee summons as optional. This is probably well
overdue. :)

------
sbhn
Thx for link. Everytime i read the word ‘whitelist’, i think, havn’t they
caught up with the times, thats racist, whitelist. Why does white suggest
good?

~~~
jerf
"White" as symbolizing purity or goodness and "black" for contamination or
evil is used by a wide variety of cultures around the world, only a minority
of which happens to consist primarily of people with un-melanined skin. If you
think "whitelist" and "blacklist" is racist, just wait until you find out
about Yin and Yang.

~~~
echelon
We're changing instances of whitelist and blacklist to "allowlist" and
"blocklist" similar to the conversion of master and slave to "primary" and
"replica".

Edit: it's interesting that I'm being downvoted. What a weird world this is.

~~~
interesthrow2
> We're changing instances of whitelist and blacklist to "allowlist" and
> "blocklist" similar to the conversion of master and slave to "primary" and
> "replica".

Are you going to change the whole dictionary as well? blackout? blackhole?
dark energy? dark matter? dark side of the moon? and what not? Might as well
deem the whole english language offensive since its the language of slavers?

Maybe you should focus on real problem instead of slacktivism Silicon Valley
style? And I say that as an African descent: The great majority of us don't
care about master/slave dichotomy in a source code. Stop being offended on our
behalf, there are real problems in the real world that needs fixing and this
is not one of them.

~~~
echelon
Changing these takes next to zero effort. "Blacklist" and "whitelist" are more
confusing to new engineers than "allowlist" and "blocklist", since the latter
terms speak for themselves.

Language changes over time. These are just words. I don't understand why we
have to hold onto them like they're our precious children. If we can be more
inclusive with the labels we choose, that's a good thing.

~~~
interesthrow2
> If we can be more inclusive with the labels we choose, that's a good thing.

You are claiming these words are "not inclusive" at first place, which is
purely a matter of ideology, not semantics. Words have different meaning in
different contexts. If you can't understand that, off course you will find
everything "offensive".

Starting with the word "inclusive" itself which basically is newspeak at that
point. You are right, language changes over time, and it's being manipulated
by people like you to steer controversy and division, to deem this or that
racist, sexist because you willfully ignore context for pure political goals.
There is nothing confusing about "blacklist" or "whitelist". anybody can look
up these words in a dictionary, if your "engineers" are incapable of doing
that, maybe you should hire better ones. "allowlist" on the other hand is a
useless neologism only driven by the need to effectively control the language
to force your ideology on others, under threat of being deemed "not
inclusive".

This is a political stunt, nothing more, you are asserting control over
others, in the name of "inclusiveness" which is rather exclusive as a matter
of fact...

~~~
shawnz
> You are claiming these words are "not inclusive" at first place, which is
> purely a matter of ideology, not semantics. Words have different meaning in
> different contexts. If you can't understand that, off course you will find
> everything "offensive".

But "blacklist" could be seen in a negative light in at least some
circumstances whereas that's not possible for "blocklist" in any circumstance.
So why not use it? What's the harm?

> There is nothing confusing about "blacklist" or "whitelist". anybody can
> look up these words in a dictionary, if your "engineers" are incapable of
> doing that, maybe you should hire better ones.

You're misunderstanding their point. They are not saying "whitelist" is too
confusing, just that "allowlist" is equally as good and in some cases maybe
even slightly better.

> you are asserting control over others

Just because someone is criticizing something you've done doesn't mean they
are "asserting control" over you.

~~~
interesthrow2
Well, who decides what is deemed "not inclusive" now? you?

> So why not use it? What's the harm?

The harm is you likes with your intimidation and harassment tactics on social
media trying to force your morals and political beliefs on everyone else in
every possible circle and the insane finger pointing at those who refuse to
fall in line because they don't agree with your ideology.

Antirez, author of redis has something to say about it, given the pressure he
was victim of under the threat of being "casted out" of the open source
community since the verbiage of his project was deemed "non inclusive". And he
is not the only victim. You've gone too far.

> You're misunderstanding their point. They are not saying "whitelist" is too
> confusing, just that "allowlist" is equally as good and in some cases maybe
> even slightly better.

A word already exists for this, "whitelist" and it has nothing to do with
race. You chose to make it about race, because you subscribe to a specific
political framework, not out of "good intentions". You chose to deem it
"problematic", because it's just another political battle for you and any
victory is good to take. This is madness. Do you want me to list the groups
across history that used the exact same dirty tactics? Although I'd rather
not.

edit: there is an obvious sophistry in the act of complaining about racism yet
furthering racist "idioms" by claiming a word that has "black" in it is
automatically associated with race, or the idea of "slave" is automatically
referring to European slave trade thus it hurts the feelings of people of
African descent. This rejection of semantics and context itself is not
"language evolution", it's straight out language hijacking. Now of course,
you're free to believe in whatever you want, but we are passed that fact, we
are now in an era where people who don't subscribe to that same ideology are
harassed, intimidated and coerced into submission.

~~~
shawnz
I don't know why you're strawmanning me into being responsible for every act
of suppression by a person who claimed to be acting for social justice. I am
not deeming anything any which way. I am just saying that there are obvious
conceivable negative interpretations of the terms "whitelist" and "blacklist"
that don't exist with the terms "allowlist" and "blocklist". And the work
required to change the language that you use in this case is very small, so
it's worth considering. That's it, that's the entirety of the argument here.
Nobody is demanding suppression of anyone's ideas.

~~~
interesthrow2
> I don't know why you're strawmanning me into being responsible for every act
> of suppression by a person who claimed to be acting for social justice

You are the one claiming "no harm done". I proved you wrong. Otherwise I would
have absolutely no interest in that issue.

~~~
shawnz
You gave some examples of how social justice overreach can be used as a guise
to suppress people. Which is not really what I asked. I asked what the harm
would be of you adopting the more sensitive language in your own usage. I
didn't ask what the harm would be of you becoming a crusader against anything
that could be perceived in a racial way.

~~~
interesthrow2
> I asked what the harm would be of you adopting the more sensitive language
> in your own usage.

"sensitive"

sensitive according to whom? what morals? what ideology? I'm not hurting my
own feeling as a black man every time I use "blacklist" or "slave" in a
specific context that is even explained in a dictionary, why are you trying to
force your political beliefs (because that's what it is) on me? why are you
constantly patronizing me? that I indeed find it offensive. I'm not going to
change the canonical definition of the words I use to please you.

