
Facebook Back on the Defensive, Now Over Data Deals with Device Makers - Cbasedlifeform
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/04/technology/facebook-device-partnerships-criticized.html
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merricksb
Previous/ongoing discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17229397](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17229397)
(272 points/251 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17223926](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17223926)
(700 points/200 comments)

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mlb_hn
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.

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supercanuck
>"Facebook acknowledged that some partners did store users’ data — including
friends’ data — on their own servers"

Let's just let this statement stand on it's own for a moment.

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cjhopman
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.

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dmagee
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.

~~~
ehnto
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.

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wyldfire
> 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.

~~~
extralego
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.

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Larrikin
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.

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amarkov
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.

~~~
ericd
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.

~~~
amarkov
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?)

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Yetanfou
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.

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dingo_bat
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.

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bobbyi_settv
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?

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dingo_bat
> 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"?

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yoav
Yes

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Froyoh
Do you think the using 'facebook.com' in Apple's demonstration of their social
media blocking feature at WWDC was deliberate?

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pacala
facebook.com is the largest social media site out there.

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adamnemecek
Fb, pls die already.

