
As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening for Tech Giants - jumelles
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/technology/facebook-privacy.html
======
mindgam3
“Among the revelations was that Facebook obtained data from multiple partners
for a controversial friend-suggestion tool called “People You May Know.”

The feature, introduced in 2008, continues even though some Facebook users
have objected to it, unsettled by its knowledge of their real-world
relationships. Gizmodo and other news outlets have reported cases of the
tool’s recommending friend connections between patients of the same
psychiatrist, estranged family members, and a harasser and his victim.

Facebook, in turn, used contact lists from the partners, including Amazon,
Yahoo and the Chinese company Huawei — which has been flagged as a security
threat by American intelligence officials — to gain deeper insight into
people’s relationships and suggest more connections, the records show.”

Well, that explains some of the conspiracy-mongering that was so rampant
around this feature. Facebook (probably) wasn’t secretly recording your phone
calls etc. They didn’t need to - they were getting streams of data from other
partners.

“Facebook also allowed Spotify, Netflix and the Royal Bank of Canada to read,
write and delete users’ private messages, and to see all participants on a
thread”

Uhhhh, excuse me?

~~~
skybrian
One possibility would be that Facebook users were supposed to be able to read,
write, and delete _their own_ chat messages via custom chat clients built by
Spotify, Netflix, and so on.

If so, the New York Times is throwing shade on Facebook basically for not
being enough of a walled garden. I hope their journalists are not that
confused?

~~~
InclinedPlane
That would grant _the app_ access to those permissions, not the companies.

Oh hey, would you look at that:
[https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/14/16143354/facebook-
messeng...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/14/16143354/facebook-messenger-
spotify-recommendations-find-music)

~~~
skybrian
I'm a bit worried that some journalists (and some readers) no longer care to
make any distinction between an app having access for legitimate reasons that
respect users' intentions and the whole company having access to do whatever
they like. At least, they don't explain it well.

~~~
thaumasiotes
The distinction doesn't exist in practical terms. The company controls the
behavior of the app; the fact that an app has access for legitimate reasons
doesn't mean that any given use of the access was for legitimate reasons.

~~~
skybrian
I don't think this article made the case that the access granted was
unreasonable.

------
JumpCrisscross
> The social network allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names
> of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show,
> and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private
> messages.

> The social network permitted Amazon to obtain users’ names and contact
> information through their friends, and it let Yahoo view streams of friends’
> posts as recently as this summer, despite public statements that it had
> stopped that type of sharing years earlier.

The records the _New York Times_ reviewed were "generated in 2017" and "some
were still in effect this year." That means not only did these agreements
cross through Facebook's representations to various governments, they also
overlap with GDPR.

~~~
cageface
I guess this sort of defeats the purpose of switching from Google search to
Bing over privacy concerns.

~~~
7dare
Does it still affect you if you don't connect your FB account? I wouldn't
think so

~~~
zymhan
Advertisers can still figure out how who you are without linking an account.
It may take them slightly longer, but the information is out there.

------
BoiledCabbage
It is absolutely obscene how much of a breach of trust and decency these are.

Facebook still hasn't fully come clean because they knew they were doing
unsavory activities and just wanted to not get caught and keep getting away
with it.

~~~
wmeredith
I’m sure Zuck will offer a heartfelt apology.

~~~
doodliego
Hopefully from Federal prison with a life sentence. Literally billions of
times he and his execs, managers, and engineers have violated the Computer
Fraud and Abuse Act, Electronic Communications Privacy Act, Federal Wiretap
Act, and more.

~~~
alexis_fr
Facebook could be considered as a strategic military asset, as it is capable
of quite accurately mapping people around the world. Relationships between
people in Iran, same place same time, same IP, ghost profiles...

If you were the CIA, wouldn’t you work on protecting/ preventing such people
from having a trial?

~~~
molteanu
Of course it is. I agree with your comment. I also think FB is the work of
secret services, from its inception to the present day. I've seen Zuck talk,
and he doesn't strike me as a specially smart guy. But he's young and always
smiling, shows enthusiasm and that's what people need. It's a nice cover.

~~~
jkravitz61
If you don’t look at Facebook’s origin story this could almost be believable.

~~~
sangnoir
The Onion is ahead[1] of y'all

1\. [https://www.theonion.com/cias-facebook-program-
dramatically-...](https://www.theonion.com/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-
cut-agencys-costs-1819594988)

~~~
Scoundreller
In [2011]

------
yerich
> The social network allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names
> of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show,
> and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private
> messages.

> The social network permitted Amazon to obtain users’ names and contact
> information through their friends, and it let Yahoo view streams of friends’
> posts as recently as this summer, despite public statements that it had
> stopped that type of sharing years earlier.

This information contrasts with a statement Facebook provided in 2018, stating
that such data sharing partnerships ended at the end of 2015. That statement
itself was correcting an earlier statement stating that such access had ended
even earlier.

From [https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-shared-
user-...](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-shared-user-data-
select-companies-after-cutting-others-n881631):

> Facebook shared personal information culled from its users' profiles with
> other companies after the date when executives have said the social network
> prevented third-party developers from gaining access to the data, the
> company confirmed Friday.

> The companies had access to the data during a stretch of time in 2015 after
> Facebook had locked out most developers who build apps that work on its
> social network. Facebook gave select "whitelisted" companies extensions
> before they were also blocked from getting its users' personal information.

> Those extensions expired before the end of 2015, Facebook said. The company
> believes the previously unreported extensions with a select group of
> companies is consistent with previous statements that Facebook CEO Mark
> Zuckerberg has made, including in testimony to Congress, about shielding its
> 2.2 billion users' personal information from third parties since 2015.

> "Any new 'deals', as the Journal describes them, involved people's ability
> to share their broader friends' lists — not their friends' private
> information like photos or interests," Ime Archibong, Facebook's vice
> president of product partnerships, said in a written statement.

------
tlb
A basic principle of PR is that you should trickle out good news, and get all
the bad news out in one dump. Because when bad news trickles out, and the
public reads a fresh bit of bad news every day, it does more damage.

One wonders at Facebook's very passive strategy here. They're not controlling
the narrative at all, and we're reading a fresh bit of bad news almost every
day.

~~~
clomond
I don't think many of the employees at various levels understand the "bad
news" part of this. Therefore, they can't plan appropriately.

I don't think it is intentional but rather a function of most employees being
in a weird corporate "filter bubble" with extra strong cool-aid being served
on the daily.

~~~
warp_factor
I know a couple Facebook employees. It is actually very disturbing to see at
what length they go to cover and find excuses for each of those breaches. Not
a lot of the them are taking a step back. Echo chamber...

------
NelsonMinar
I always wonder about the engineers at Facebook who implemented a feature like
this. Someone like me, more or less. Did they stop to wonder why they were
being told to bypass user privacy preferences? Did they raise any internal
questions about ethics? Did any of them consider becoming a whistleblower? Or
perhaps everyone who works for Facebook is convinced this kind of data sharing
is OK?

~~~
squish78
Most likely why they aggressively hire college grads and keep the developer
workforce young. I doubt they teach corporate ethics in any comp sci program.

~~~
breitling
If someone in their 20s doesn't know much about ethics, then we're doing
something wrong, as a society.

~~~
JansjoFromIkea
I'd imagine the issue is more that a recent graduate doesn't necessarily know
when or how much to push back

~~~
geebee
It may also be futile to try to have a meaningful concept and practice of
professional ethics without professional autonomy.

The ABA and AMA take a lot of heat here on HN and other libertarian-leaning
forums, and some of it is deserved, since they clearly do engage in cartel-
like behavior.

However, it is important to remember that they have established a set of laws
and practices that give the members of the profession the ability to resist
unethical commands from "superiors". For example, generally speaking, a non-
lawyer can't own a law firm. Same for physicians. A lawyer must be licensed to
practice, and that right can be revoked. A lawyer isn't allowed to say "my
boss made me do it", but at the same time, a lawyer can't have a non-lawyer
boss, and that boss can't legally go hire someone who isn't a lawyer (and
isn't bound by a code of ethics) to do it instead.

I want to be clear that I'm aware that in reality, it doesn't come close to
working out this neatly. But the conceptual framework, at least, is there.

I do think programmers are in an untenable position, when they are stripped of
any professional strength but called on to resist unethical demands of clients
and bosses. And yeah, I do mean stripped, not just denied. A large section of
the programming workforce is employed under visa conditions where their
employer controls their right to live and work in the US, as well as their
position in a very long queue for a green card application. So we aren't just
ordinary workers with no special protections but no special liabilities
either, we are often a workforce that is particularly vulnerable and unable to
push back against the orders of people who aren't ethical and aren't part of
our "profession".

~~~
SilasX
This! Knowing that "this is wrong" is only half the battle. Having the
political pull to actually push back and have fellow engineers behind you is
the other blade of the scissors necessary to actually cut any wrongdoing.

We have a word for "when everyone who pushes back against wrongdoing must go
out on a limb and do it at tremendous personal expense": Gomorrah. (I mean, in
the sense of wanton immorality, not the dubious sexual mores.)

------
koboll
I'd love to hear a Facebook critic rebut this thread re: the article:

[https://twitter.com/_mades/status/1075228269845336064](https://twitter.com/_mades/status/1075228269845336064)

What this seems to boil down to is a side channel for certain partners with
looser technical controls but tighter monitoring of misuse, and no evidence
that that tradeoff actually resulted in any misuse that couldn't have occurred
through normal data access channels.

~~~
smackfu
If you don’t trust Facebook to do the right thing, that thread is not much of
a defense, since it just says they will police their partners.

~~~
Ajedi32
It also sounds like access to certain APIs was much more limited than the NYT
article implied:

> When you hear things like read/write access that access was only granted
> when the user gave permission. For example, if you share a Netflix link to
> messenger, the post is coming from Netflix.

> If you're sharing using messenger, you're able to search who you're sharing
> with through Netflix. If you then delete the message within Netflix, it
> would delete on Facebook. Very similar to using Tweetdeck for Twitter - same
> permissions

------
discordance
My surprise is not that Facebook did this, but that developers within Facebook
built this privacy violating ecosystem without question or publicly voiced
concern.

You guys sold your family and friends out for RSUs.

------
malloreon
Question for the most of the people who read this who will still use
fb/instagram/messenger all day, or even at all:

is there something so bad that fb could do that would get you to stop? If so,
what is it? Where is your red line?

Or absent an alternative with fb's network effects, will you keep using their
products regardless of the unseen costs you rack up?

~~~
crocodiletears
I can't think of any concrete red-line that Facebook could cross. I've never
been a techno-utopian, and the Snowden leaks were the catalyst that drove me
to learn programming.

I recall being in my early teens, when I went to create my (first) Facebook
account. I mentioned it to my dad. He explicitly told me that whatever I did
on Facebook would go to their servers, that whatever reached their servers was
theirs, and that they would do whatever they wanted with that data regardless
of whether you agreed to it or not. The whole reason I gave up and made an
account was because my friends had already given the app their contact list,
and the service already had my phone number.

From day one I've treated online services like amoral, dangerous animals, and
so far nothing these organizations have done has especially shocked me, though
I have been impressed or surprised on occasion. My mantra is generally 'if I
or the NSA could imagine it, private industry will attempt it'.

I still get a lot of value out of my Facebook account. Facebook pages are a
gateway to niche interest groups, social trends, and the political fringes
that would otherwise be inaccessible to outsiders. Seeing the ads Facebook
puts in my feed helps me to calibrate my mental model of how I'm being
observed, who's sharing data with who, and how online services perceive me (I
typically use ad-block, and only occasionally close it to check my ads).

If I want to contact someone I've only met in passing, keep up with family and
political bubbles, or do a bit of background investigation, Facebook's there
for me.

Accessing the service requires a bit of a faustian bargain. But by the time I
joined, the country had already made it on my behalf, so I opted to reap the
benefits of that bargain rather than just being social collateral.

Facebook could scare me off the way Google Search did - by sanitizing its
content feed to the degree Google's sanitized its search. But I'd still use
Messenger, and any other useful service they come up with.

But otherwise it'd have to become obsolete in the same way as MySpace.

~~~
rabidrat
what do you use for search, then?

~~~
crocodiletears
For general queries, I use Searx.me. Occasionally I'll use Google if Searx is
down, or I need technical information that I need search operators for.

For current events, I use Searx, Bing, Yandex, Yahoo, and Baidu (if I'm really
digging). I don't trust any one provider on politically sensitive topics, and
the the order/kinds of the results can occasionally carry as much signal as
the the content of them.

I'm not conspiracy mongering, though. I merely think of search algorithms as
extensions of the contexts in-which they're designed, and are more likely to
represent the interests of their creators than my search for knowledge.

~~~
mda
Trusting Bing, Yandex and Baidu for politically sensitive topics? Are you
being sarcastic?

~~~
crocodiletears
Hardly. I use multiple search engines specifically because I lack trust.

While I'm more than likely to take the papers of record at their words, I've
known more than enough police officers, journalists, and armchair philosophers
to know that consciously or not, individual biases can color the processing
and presentation of information.

Details that may seem obvious or superfluous through one lens may not be to
another.

Only by extracting perspectives and datapoints from each source I access, can
I confidently say that I have a reasonable understanding of the progression of
any given event, as well as the metanarratives surrounding it.

Depending on the topic at hand, omission from one search engine can be as
damning as the inclusion of propaganda in another.

The obsession with reputability is why I abandoned Google. In narrowing the
array of sources the search engine surfaced in the hopes of protecting the
average user from misinformation, it narrowed access to fringe sources of
knowledge, which although unreliable can be a goldmine of supplemental
information.

Say what you will of Baidu and Yandex, if you know a bit about their nation's
leadership and international policies, you can guess their biases and can
guess how they'll adjust what you see. That's useful. American companies can
be much less predictable.

~~~
scottlocklin
Just so. Also, though the western spooks can probably see some of the
encrypted traffic through to those companies, if you send it to google or
bing, they can see all of it.

And yes, you should be afraid of western spooks if you live in a western
country. I wouldn't have said that 10 years ago.

------
rhegart
“Facebook also allowed Spotify, Netflix and the Royal Bank of Canada to read,
write and delete users’ private messages, and to see all participants on a
thread — privileges that appeared to go beyond what the companies needed to
integrate Facebook into their systems, the records show.”

Wow...that’s scary

------
AlexandrB
> With most of the partnerships, Mr. Satterfield said, the F.T.C. agreement
> did not require the social network to secure users’ consent before sharing
> data because Facebook considered the partners extensions of itself — service
> providers that allowed users to interact with their Facebook friends.

Wow, this seems like yet another contortion to get out of asking the user what
they want.

~~~
thinkloop
Dude, we are all one, connected through the universe, don't harsh the buzz
with your pesky permissions.

------
rock_hard
After reading facebooks response I am once again disappointed by the art of
journalism we have to deal with these days :(

Turns out NYT either doesn’t understand the technical details or doesn’t want
to

[https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/12/facebooks-
partners/](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/12/facebooks-partners/)

~~~
pookieinc
While I'm also disappointed by many news organizations / journalists these
days, NYT is not one of them. In fact, they are one of the few newspapers that
are keeping larger entities in check and doing their job by reporting them.
I've been continually impressed by NYT, specifically, for its care in ensuring
the highest level of integrity. Mistakes do happen and as far as I know,
they've been pretty good about apologizing for them.

If it weren't for this linked article (much of which I learned a significant
amount and was news to me), we wouldn't have had such a response from Facebook
with further clarification on this topic. For example, did I know they were
also passing my private messages to other entities? No. I also don't blame
myself because they could've made it a lot more obvious that I was sharing
such personal content with other third parties.

Journalists have a tough job, but they should be commended when bringing to
light articles like this.

~~~
porpoisely
For me, the nytimes and the big media companies are the biggest
disappointments. Smaller and local media companies tend to be far more
reliable and trustworthy than large corporations. And integrity isn't a word
I'd associate with the nytimes or any major corporation for that matter. They
are greedy self-serving entities with their own agenda, like every business.

I do believe corporations like the NYTimes and facebook have accrued too much
power and are corrupt and a destructive force in the country and the world. I
think we need more competition in the traditional media and social media
space.

For all the talk about monopolies in tech, we talk too little about the
monopolies in news and media along with every other industry from agriculture
to banking.

Also, Facebook is a symptom of a national ( or international ) economic system
that applies to pretty much every major industry today. Too much consolidation
and too little respect for privacy. Facebook is providing what every industry
( including the news industry ) wants. Information and data. And every
industry is invading their own customers' privacy and selling data. Credit
card and banks sell your data. The NYTimes sells your data ( after all they
sell ads too ).

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
(A) The NYTimes cannot “sell your data” as Facebook does, because it just does
not have that data.

(B) if you are alluding to their ads, then the local media you praise is just
as guilty, and so is any other site financed by ads. They all just include
whatever JS snippet the ad platforms give them.

(C) The rest of your comment is just repeated assertions that you don’t like
the Times. It’s hard to take advise on newspapers seriously, when they come
from someone who apparently has not read enough to pick up on the proper
handling of spacing around parentheses.

(D) Are you making any claim that the story here contains (specific)
inaccuracies? Are you accusing the Times of any specific facts being wholesale
fabrications? Can you point to any instance of the Times publishing fabricated
information? And please don’t use an example that’s old enough to drive, was
discovered and disclosed by the Times itself, and resulted in career-ending
firings of the reporter responsible.

------
erobbins
I'm so glad I left that place. I always had concerns but I had no idea the
greed and abuse of users was so entrenched. Working in infra you don't find
out about this kind of stuff.

~~~
pmarreck
It's fine for sharing publicly-palatable things with friends and family
members.

I wouldn't conduct anything on it that you'd care to keep secret, though.

------
edhelas
> Facebook empowered Apple to hide from Facebook users all indicators that its
> devices were asking for data. Apple devices also had access to the contact
> numbers and calendar entries of people who had changed their account
> settings to disable all sharing, the records show.

> Apple officials said they were not aware that Facebook had granted its
> devices any special access. They added that any shared data remained on the
> devices and was not available to anyone other than the users.

Any more information about that? I would be curious to know if we have actual
proofs about those statements.

~~~
Despegar
That's referring to the Facebook integration in iOS. There were similar
integrations for Flickr, Vimeo and Twitter as well. These have been removed as
of iOS 11.

It would let you sync your contacts and add their Facebook profile pic to
them, as well as post to Facebook using a system UI. Apparently this API gave
Apple more permission than was needed for these features, but that Apple was
unaware of it.

[https://www.macrumors.com/2017/06/05/facebook-twitter-
integr...](https://www.macrumors.com/2017/06/05/facebook-twitter-integration-
eliminated-ios-11/)

------
catchmeifyoucan
Whoa! This makes sense now.

"and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private
messages"

When I watched 21 on Netflix, Facebook Messenger on my phone suggested to play
blackjack, literally the hour after.

~~~
gowld
That's the reverse direction.

~~~
why_only_15
All of these were data sharing agreements, they were two way. Samsung, for
example, had access to Facebook and also gave Facebook contact info

------
historynow
It was only a few weeks ago that people were arguing that it was anti-
competitive for Facebook _not_ to share data with other companies.

~~~
AlexandrB
It’s about control. If it’s _my_ data, I should be able to give permission for
other apps to access it - regardless of whether Facebook views them as a
competitor. Likewise, I should be able to block access for a given third party
- regardless of how much money such a “partnership” would generate for
Facebook.

So yes, it _is_ anti-competitive for Facebook to block access against the
explicit wishes of its users. But it’s also despicable to sell user data to
whomever without asking permission first. It’s pretty obvious from Facebook’s
actions that they consider it _their_ data, not _your_ data.

------
robut_98765
Why do people even speak to Zuckerberg about Facebook? Yes he is the CEO but
he's also the Kellyanne Conway of Facebook pretty much.

------
jumelles
> The New York Times interviewed more than 60 people, including former
> employees of Facebook and its partners, former government officials and
> privacy advocates.

> The Times also reviewed more than 270 pages of Facebook's internal documents
> and performed technical tests and analysis to monitor what information was
> being passed between Facebook and partner devices and websites.

------
puranjay
Deleted my Facebook nearly 6 months back. Never missed it

Deleted my Instagram three weeks back because my feed was 1 ad for every 3
posts. Haven't missed it.

If I could only get rid of Whatsapp, I would never need to use anything from
this awful company

~~~
labster
Install Signal, tell your friends.

Although I tried getting one friend to switch today, didn't work because of
network size. I'm afraid our only alternative is to organize all our really
cool stuff on Signal and get 'em with FOMO.

~~~
fdgsdfgsd
I got my immediate family and the friends I care for (3?) to switch.

My family was easy. No pics of my daughter on any social network. "Y'all want
pics? install Signal. If I catch you posting on FB, you're cut off"

Once mom installed Signal, the rest followed.

As to my friends, the ones I actually care for are privacy freaks like me -
although they're not techies - and understood its importance.

------
bitxbit
I am worried about how much access was given to Palantir.

------
cantthinkofone
This sequence of exposes and revelations doesn't speak to Facebook's
credibility. It would be one thing if it was just the incidents surrounding
the 2016 elections, but the pattern in all these news reports seems to be that
Facebook's design doesn't simply doesn't respect its users.

Too many features and plugins Facebook has seem to be leaky in some respect.
Messanger does not use default end-to-end encryption for whatever mysterious
reason. If Facebook owns the endpoints, it can just as easily obtain the data
for themselves before encrypting and submitting the message if it were enabled
anyway.

How could I have any faith Facebook doesn't collect messages intended to be
sent in confidence if collecting them suits Facebook's purposes?

I'm not sure however if Facebook's sketchiness is intentional or not. We have
few examples of companies that were early movers in the inception days of the
modern internet. And the decisions made early on prefigured everything that
was to come.

At this time I would look to other others for inspiration about the correct
way to make use of a data jackpot. Facebook's own totally unrestricted
laissez-faire mentality in the relentless pursuit and utilization of its data
is undermining itself.

~~~
firstplacelast
Based on the salaries at Facebook, I would hope it’s intentional.

If not, what the hell are they paying top-of-industry salaries for?

------
a3n
I guess we can change "I have nothing to hide" to "I have nothing hidden."

------
EGreg
How much more until we all start using end to end encryption?

I don’t mean server to client. I mean clients have the keys and only the
clients.

Why are we relying on third parties to pretty please enforce access control?

------
happppy
Now I really doubt if whatsapp is secure, even though they say it has end-to-
end encryption.

~~~
temp123131123
its not secure. if you have facebook app and whatsapp installed. the whatsapp
can share data with the facebook app and upload it to their servers. messages
on your phone are not encrypted. they are only encrypted during sending.

~~~
MrBra
A good workaround for Android is installing "Friendly" in place of official FB
app. Not sure if there's an iOS version too.

------
known
Govt can regulate FB with
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_Card_Industry_Data_Sec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_Card_Industry_Data_Security_Standard)

------
randomacct3847
It’s crazy that there ever is/was an endpoint to read a user’s private
messages. What exactly would ever be a good use case for that where a user
would knowingly agree to it.

~~~
pmarreck
Did you know that every single email you've ever sent was readable by every
single mail delivery agent in between?

~~~
18pfsmt
It is possible this random person on HN was using PGP, so I don't think it's
fair to use "every single" verbiage as it is clearly hyperbole.

------
patrickg_zill
So now I understand how it is, that despite putting no personal data on my
Instagram account, the Amazon ads I see when I browse Instagram are so very
well targeted to me...

------
dwd
They never sold user data for cash, but the monerary value of what they would
have gained in network effects would have had measurable value, or they would
not have done it.

Time to pay the piper!

------
aussieguy1234
Where WhatsApp messages shared with Netflix and Spotify? They're owned by
Facebook. I'll never use Facebook Messenger again

------
kofejnik
What really bothers me, is that of all possible partners, they gave access to
Yandex, and Yandex == FSB

------
ryanmccullagh
Would MZ ever face criminal charges?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Would MZ ever face criminal charges?_

He's lied to Congress. He's lied to half of Europe. (Or blown them off.) He's
knowingly directed the violation of a federal consent decree and several EU
directives. He presides over a platform profiting from mass atrocities in
multiple countries.

There's plenty to go after him with. The only things protecting him are his
standing and lack of unexpected criminality.

~~~
pmarreck
Evidence that he's lied to those entities?

~~~
18pfsmt
There is no evidence, just innuendo, raw emotion, and pure discounting of
personal responsibility. Many seem to want all the perceived benefits of FB,
but none of the costs. Just to be clear, I don't use, nor like FB.

------
polskibus
Does anyone know if described behavior violate GDPR?

------
ericzawo
When is the FTC getting involved?

~~~
acjohnson55
When a new administration shows up.

Maybe that's not fair, but I just assume that very little in the form of
corporate regulation is on the table right now.

------
NN88
Great, the Kremlin has your data.

------
InclinedPlane
Interesting. Let's see what the local "defend FB at all costs" group has to
say about this.

