
An Update on Our App Investigation and Audit - johnhenry
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/05/update-on-app-audit/
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r3bl
Facebook claims that Facebook suspended the apps because their CEO claimed
that they will.

Meanwhile, they offer no real evidence of doing so, not even a list of names.
Just a number. And even that number isn't exact, since it's _around_ 200 out
of "thousands", which is by itself a ridiculously high percentage.

Also, why the fuck would you first suspend 200 apps, publish a blog post, and
_then_ investigate what they did with the said data? Can you imagine any other
app store denying service to 200 teams or individuals and _then_ investigate
any possible wrongdoings?

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dsfyu404ed
>Can you imagine any other app store denying service to 200 teams or
individuals and then investigate any possible wrongdoings?

The government does stuff like that all the time although usually it's ~200
people over the course of a year or two, not all at once. It's something along
the lines of "Whoops, looks like CPS wasn't actually doing their jobs right
and we took 200 kids from otherwise not too terrible parents, well here's an
official apology and a pledge to investigate this internally, don't worry
we'll conclude we did nothing wrong. Maybe if we feel really guilty we'll
force someone to retire a year early or something."

You can replace the above with other examples of systemic mistreatment if you
want.

Sleazy utility providers and businesses with local monopoly do similar but not
quite so bad things and nobody gets any recourse unless they get a check from
a class action.

These kind of things typically makes the state or regional news for a day with
maybe a 10sec follow up when the apology is actually issued or they find
themselves innocent of wrongdoing.

When you have monopoly or near monopoly position there's less accountability
and more wiggle room to behave like a jerk.

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newscracker
> “To date thousands of apps have been investigated and around 200 have been
> suspended — pending a thorough investigation into whether they did in fact
> misuse any data.“

Sounds like typical PR spin, with a “no update” update. No proper numbers
mentioned. Adjectives used to hide the real numbers. Most of the time this is
done because the worst case scenario is being hidden. When it says
“thousands”, it could mean 2000 and a few more. When it says “around 200”, you
bet it’s 190 or so.

When they find violations they’re just going to ban the app? That’s it? Don’t
they even consider legal action where possible?

What a waste of time and what an insult to the intelligence of the readers.

~~~
thisisit
> Where we find evidence that these or other apps did misuse data, we will ban
> them and notify people via this _website_

The website in question is Facebook. My bet is this didn't even go through a
PR. Rather as this slowly unfolds I really doubt if Facebook even has a PR
team.

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wafflesraccoon
That feels like a very small number to me.

~~~
r3bl
That's a ridiculously high percentage: 200 out of "thousands" tested.

Judging by their use of "thousands", I'd bet that the number is somewhere
between 2000 (making 1 in 10 suspended) and 8000 (making 1 in 40 suspended).

Now if that number was out of _tens_ of thousands or _hundreds_ of thousands,
then the number would indeed be quite small.

~~~
cjhopman
However, it's possible that they prioritized this early investigation to look
first at certain categories of apps that may be more likely to get suspended.

Also, it's possible that they are just being really conservative in suspending
apps. The suspension sounds like a possibly temporary thing while they
investigate them further.

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coldcode
We approved what these apps did for our benefit originally. Now we got caught
and will unapprove them for no stated reason because it might be embarrassing.

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tomkinson
If you believe a word Facebook says, I have a country to sell you.

