
Ask HN: Invited by Facebook for privacy roundtable. What questions should I ask? - AdriaanvRossum
This Thursday I&#x27;m invited to a privacy roundtable with Facebook Legal and Privacy Policy teams in Amsterdam. The round table will be with other entrepreneurs and experts in the privacy field. I&#x27;m invited because I&#x27;m the founder of Simple Analytics - a privacy friendly analytics SaaS business [1] - and critical about Facebook on Twitter [2].<p>Some people advised me not to go there because it would only do harm to my name and brand, but I think I should. The Facebook teams are going to give a presentation with some new plans where they want feedback on. For internal push back they need critical people from outside Facebook, which I&#x27;m happy to contribute for.<p>To make it more interesting for the outside world I&#x27;m going to ask a few questions for Facebook in general (privacy wise). And that&#x27;s where I need some help. What questions do you want answers for from Facebook?<p>Facebook agreed I could use the answers outside of the meeting (with the exception of sharing from non-Facebook attendances).<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;simpleanalytics.com<p>[2] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;adriaanvrossum
======
ratel
Well, The big one would be nice: Facebook makes her money from harvesting and
selling privacy sensitive data, or at least that is the perception shared by
nation states, the EU and the wider audience. For any claim Facebook makes
about respecting privacy to have at least face validity she need to show how
she is going to make money without violating her users privacy. So how is
Facebook going to make money if they need to respect users privacy?

Somewhat more constructive: Facebook seems to have an unhealthy appetite to
collect _all_ user data including privacy sensitive information. But lets be
fair: She is definitely not the only company on the quest for the Big Data
insights, that seem to always be at least one data point away. Does Facebook
have information on which data points they really need to make a commercial
viable user profile? What data points are privacy sensitive? Is Facebook
looking into alternatives for those privacy sensitive data points? If not: can
Facebook enumerate those and ask their users for explicit consent to collect
those points and ask for explicit consent in the future for any new data
points?

Good luck this afternoon. I hope you get some insights.

~~~
umanwizard
It is not true that Facebook makes its money by selling private data, as you
can verify by reading its publicly available earnings reports. It makes its
money by selling ads, which it uses private data to target — a completely
different thing.

~~~
ratel
I was really careful enough in my wording: Facebook sells privacy sensitive
data as in very, very specific target groups for among other things ad
targeting for their customers to use. I did not refer to the selling of
private data.

~~~
umanwizard
I genuinely don’t understand the distinction you’re making.

Facebook does not make its money from “selling data” _at all_ , whether
“private data” or “privacy-sensitive data”.

~~~
ghostpepper
Not the OP, but I am guessing they are trying to say that the distinction
between "you pay facebook and they give you a database full of private data"
and "you pay facebook and they give you API access to a database of private
data and allow you to query it in myriad ways leading to you creating your own
database of highly accurate private data" is not as important a distinction as
Facebook would have you believe. Or something along those lines.

~~~
umanwizard
But Facebook _doesn’t_ let advertisers query their database of private data. I
agree that if they did, it would not be very different from selling data, but
they don’t.

~~~
sasasassy
But.. they do, though. You can (and people do) make a very targeted ad, then
query what users matched with it, and so on until you've sufficient data for
your purposes. Plus you can use their public APIs to then match their ad data
with the users public information. Facebook knows this, and does not prevent
it (by hiding user identifiers for instance) because it's part of their
strategy.

~~~
Voxoff
Ah now this is sneaky. Is this widespread? Any sources?

~~~
ambicapter
Here's a guy targeting his roommate[0]. Previous discussion[1].

[0] [https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-
pranking...](https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-my-
roommate-with-targeted-facebook-ads/)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8330931](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8330931)

------
jjmorrison
> Some people advised me not to go there because it would only do harm to my
> name and brand, but I think I should

We need more people who are willing to try and solve problems, not just be
critical. Thanks for being willing to have a conversation with them. You're
making the right call whether you are able to have an impact or not.

~~~
doctorpangloss
> We need more people who are willing to try and solve problems, not just be
> critical.

New Sincerity is exactly the reactionary politics in which Facebook thrives.

~~~
wojonatior
Can you rephrase that without grabbing a pair of buzzwords out of the air?

------
mooneater
When politicians do focus groups to fine tune their speeches, they are not
looking to change their platform, their opinion, or their actions.

They are just looking to fine tune for optics. The knowledge they gain from
the focus groups just helps them make their message more palatable.

I think of fb that way because they are masters of double speak, weasel words,
etc. which is the common behaviour of dishonest politicians.

Imo many of the questions posted here can be easily deflected, handled with
conversation techniques that any politician or lawyer would know well.

You want an airtight position, built on a detailed understanding of how they
typically deflect in the past. And because you are asking, you are probably
the right person to do this.

Harari tried, and despite being brilliant and knowledgeable, he was simply
talked over:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boj9eD0Wug8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boj9eD0Wug8)
Though I suspect he is aiming for a softer approach.

Instead of a pile of disconnected questions, I would suggest developing a
clear list of requirements, statements which must be true as a set, in order
for a social system to have an acceptable level of privacy.

The list should be iterated upon, and not sent to them prematurely. It should
be built on best practices and knowledge of privacy experts from leading
institutions. Then it could be broadly endorsed. Then it could not be as
easily weaselled-around.

~~~
neilv
Also, not just tuning, but, in some forums, the participation of experts
itself can legitimize, and be something the powerful entity (organization or
individual) can point to as outreach on their part, and validation.

This can be a mutually-beneficial transaction -- the powerful entity that
needs to manage perceptions gets a boost, and the participants get a
reputation boost for being seen involved in powerful circles. Witness that the
HN poster's business is being promoted, just by being invited. (Which is a
potential conflict of interest for the experts, if they're supposed to be
representing some truth or public interest, but they probably have to play
along for this personal boost.)

One thing that can possibly upset this transaction is if there's a channel for
uncontrolled speaking out around it. Say, the format is a televised/streamed
roundtable, and an expert with the mic decides to burn bridges with the
organization and others like them, while saying things the organization really
doesn't want them to say. (The motivation could be altruistic/duty, or
calculated career grandstanding.) Or, in a tightly-controlled format, the
expert who wants to never be invited to that kind of thing again could attend
and then immediately bite the hand that just fed it, by ripping it on
Twitter/YouTube/Medium/news/op-eds/etc.

I've seen a lot of experts play-along for their careers (in this kind of thing
and analogous transactions elsewhere), and sometimes you see modest amounts of
pushback by people who are still playing a political game, but rarely you
notice a person who won't get on the slippery slope of game-playing at all yet
who manages to have impact there.

(Personally, I'd be a terrible politician even if I wanted to be, and I just
want to quietly solve technical and societal problems, while someone else
fronts the band.)

------
AndyMcConachie
You should go. But be aware that they're likely using you to look like they
legitimately care about their user's privacy. So just don't let yourself be
used in that way unless you want to be.

The question I've always wanted to ask Facebook is how much is their data
worth? No discussion of privacy at Facebook is interesting unless the
discussion concerns money and their bottom line. They undoubtably have people
inside Facebook calculating how much spcecific bits of PII are worth to them,
and what it would to their bottom line if they stopped collecting them. IMO
any discussion of privacy that doesn't quantify it in terms of money is
basically a waste of time. They're a company and money is all they care about.

As a corollary to value ask them about risk. How much do they calculate the
risk of holding all that PII to be? How much would their bottom line be hurt
if they lost it in a breach?

~~~
dangerface
80% of their money will come from big advertisers like Unilever and Coke who
target everyone and anyone.

It's only the small advertisers who want their adverts targeted at people in
their country and topic, thats it.

That sort of targeting can be done simply by what country is their ip from
whats the topic of the content Im sending them.

The whole targeted advertising thing is 100% a gimmick that advertisers don't
care about.

~~~
the_watcher
This is simply untrue. Large advertisers are often the most demanding about
ensuring that their ads reach the specific audience that they are targeting.
Giant companies are the only ones who can afford to hire someone whose entire
job is "drive engagement with millennials in the American Southwest" (and yes,
I personally know someone whose first job was basically that). Small
businesses are much less active in managing targeted ads beyond location, as
their marketing is usually done in the spare time of the business owner.

------
uptown
1\. Do your apps upload metadata and/or thumbnails from photos to which
they’re permissions to access, but which aren’t explicitly selected by the
user for posting/uploading?

2\. Do your apps “skim” the contents of device clipboards and send this info
off device without user intent to do so?

And one open-ended question to try to gauge how open they’re being about the
whole process:

3\. What information do you collect that would surprise or upset privacy-
conscious individuals?

~~~
mehrdadn
> “skim”

I feel like if you ask questions where you have to quote your own words like
this, you're basically begging them to be interpreted differently than you
intend. I'd be crystal clear about what is being asked.

~~~
uptown
Agreed. It’s almost impossible to construct a question that can’t be talked
around if their intent is to deceive. But if that’s their intent then the
whole exercise is pointless.

How’s this?

“Do your apps access the contents of device clipboards and send this
information or any modified version of this information off the device without
explicit user consent to do-so?”

~~~
mehrdadn
I'd imagine they'd just say "no" to that because almost certainly somewhere in
their ToS/PP they got "explicit" consent from you to sell your soul and
everything that goes with it.

Remember, all you need to know from them is what they do and when they do it.
You don't need or want them to make a judgment call on the legalities or
morality or anything else when responding; you can do that yourself later.

To that end, I'd word it like this:

"What are _all_ the situations in which your apps read clipboard contents, and
why is it necessary in each case?" (Obviously pasting would be one scenario,
to which you'll just nod and move on...)

(And I would ask the same about microphone data, location data, etc. too, not
just clipboard contents.)

------
monkeynotes
Before you decide to go, I'd evaluate exactly what you want out of the
engagement and keep that in mind during the whole process. It's so easy to get
used in this sort of scenario. Facebook obviously has an agenda of some kind
and so should you. If those two agendas don't mesh then you should probably
disengage or else be open to a one-sided benefit in their favour.

Be aware that their PR guys could use your name to dilute your previous
critical commentary once you have gotten involved and are part of their
'consulted expert' club. This could potentially leave you fighting their PR
which will likely just end up with a muddy mess.

Be prepared is what I'd say, a reputation is on the line for you and not much
for them.

------
rahuldottech
1\. How can one find out about their shadow profiles that have been created by
FB?

2\. How can they delete the data associated with the above?

3\. Info on how they group personal data from WhatsApp, FB and Instagram

4\. Who do they share such data with?

5\. Who within FB is responsible for privacy policies, etc.?

~~~
mehrdadn
> 1\. How can one find out about their shadow profiles that have been created
> by FB?

I feel like this is a misguided notion. Facebook doesn't need to create
"shadow profiles" for anybody to achieve the same effect: they can just pull
together the data on-demand (e.g. say when you create an account, they could
scan others' contact lists for a match for your name), without aggregating
them together into a 'profile' beforehand. Unless you really intend to ignore
that possibility (which I doubt, given the effect would be exactly the same),
you probably want to approach it differently than talking about 'shadow
profiles'.

~~~
WA
For some data, this might be true. But, for example, where is my browsing
history stored, which is undoubtedly collected by FB through their social
sharing buttons even if I don't have an account? Or any other drive-by data
that is collected through third-party apps, websites or whatever and send back
to FB. It wouldn't make any sense to store my browsing history somewhere else
than in a shadow profile.

~~~
rock_hard
No, it actually doesn’t make sense to store it in any kind of profile.

You are right that some fly by data might end up in a server log somewhere but
those aren’t kept around for long...if they are kept at all at Facebook scales

Storing and computing data is very expensive and risky at FB scale so they
will only keep around what they actually need for as long as they need it.
Meaning that data gets send to the server, gets aggregated and then deleted.

An exception of course is content generated by users such as a newsfeed post,
as is the nature of the product that content stays around until users delete
it

~~~
WA
I have my doubts that storing compressed plaintext is expensive for a company
that makes, what, 13 billion a year in profit or something like that? Their
business is data. The more data they have, the more profit they can generate.
The browsing history reveals a lot about humans. Storing it makes sense imho.

------
mft_
Try to investigate the background to this privacy roundtable initiative.

* Which part of Facebook did the initiative come from - privacy policy, or (maybe) PR? How many of the people in the room are from (communications/PR/crisis management/some other related team)

* Is it genuinely an attempt to listen to critics and try to improve? (Can they point to examples of improvements they've already implemented?)

* What will the outcomes of this initiative be? How will they summarise and communicate their action points; how will any such points be followed up?

------
gshdg
Ask which one person at FB is held ultimately accountable for privacy, by
whom, and how they measure it.

~~~
harianus
Thanks. That would be interesting to know. One thing; what do you mean with
measure it?

~~~
pdpi
> One thing; what do you mean with measure it?

Come PSC (Performance Summary Cycle) time, how do they justify a "Meets All"
or "Exceeds" evaluation?

~~~
mediumdeviation
Only aiding and abetting _one_ genocide this year would be a 50% improvement
over last year!

------
thisplacesucks
You're being invited to Facebook Amsterdam. That's like speaking at a Walmart
in Kentucky. They won't have any answers to any questions.

~~~
iaml
I'm about 70% sure someone from fb will notice this thread and construct non-
answers for all questions here. Hi!

------
chatmasta
How can I completely delete a messenger conversation? Is it even possible? If
I’m talking to someone on messenger, and we both decide we want to delete the
entire conversation, that should be possible with two button clicks.

I talk to my significant other on messenger. It gives me nightmares that any
employee at Facebook could access that conversation at any time in the next
thirty years.

It’s going to be really interesting when people from my generation start
running for office. It’s conceivable a Facebook employee might think it’s
“worth it” to check a candidate’s private messages, since he’s a racist Nazi
and deserves it, or whatever.

~~~
creaghpatr
Conceivable? It just happened. [https://www.thedailybeast.com/we-found-shawn-
brooks-the-guy-...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/we-found-shawn-brooks-the-
guy-behind-the-viral-drunk-pelosi-video)

edit: not a candidate though, would be harder to punch down on someone with
political clout and a legal team.

------
bostik
I have one.

1\. How can someone who does _not_ have an account prevent themselves from
being tagged and/or identified in uploaded photos? Corollary: why isn't the
tagging and identification of a person an opt-in feature only?

~~~
lioeters
I'd like to add to the above question: how does (or _can_ ) a person who never
had an FB account request deletion of (possibly illegally collected) private
data about them, without having to register to the very platform they're not a
member of?

------
amelius
The one privacy control that everybody is waiting for is: automatically delete
all my activity data older than N days, where N can be specified by the user.

Why isn't it implemented yet?

~~~
tbronchain
While allowing them to specify a minimum and/or incremental value for N.
They're a business after all, and our data is their value. I'd be happy with
that compromise.

~~~
Xelbair
I expect minimal value of N to be either sky high, or decent..with plenty of
exceptions written in ToS so that it dosen't do anything - just like most 'out
out' forms in other sites that always 'fail' to deliver your opt out.

------
jasonhansel
"Why have you argued in court that your users have no 'reasonable expectation
of privacy'?"

~~~
danShumway
I'm not sure how to phrase this in a non-combative, constructive way, but I do
think it's a really good question.

Facebook's PR team and legal team are arguing two completely separate things
right now, and I'd like management to explain how they reconcile those views.

I'd like to know whether their lawyers are right that users have no
expectation of privacy, or whether Zuckerburg is right that privacy is the
future of Facebook. If Facebook's lawyers aren't misrepresenting the company,
then I'd like to know why Zuckerburg and management are so hesitant to make
the same arguments in public press releases.

~~~
elliekelly
No matter how you phrase it I would guess the response would be something
along the lines of "cannot comment on matters relating to ongoing litigation."
They'll have a clever way to sidestep every issue they haven't explicitly
decided in advance to discuss.

------
WA
Assuming you won't get actual answers to any of the critical questions, maybe
take the opportunity to make the employees more self-conscious about their
jobs at FB through questions. Maybe something like: If you decide on a privacy
policy as a team here in Amsterdam, does it have any effect on the overall way
how FB handles privacy? Do you, as a team and individuals, feel empowered
enough to have actual influence over privacy questions and concerns?
Especially in the light of FB saying one thing and then doing things
completely different.

------
Dwolb
I’d take a different approach to your preparation:

Try to find videos of FB officers (Zuck, Sandburg) who have already been
publicly grilled.

Most likely on a corporate level, FB employees already know how to answer and
respond to most of these privacy questions.

That means you need to figure out their initial canned responses, what
assumptions they’re building on, and prepare a line of questioning/reasoning
to chip away at their logic in follow-ups.

------
I_am_tiberius
This one: If you don't use Whatsapp but a friend of yours does, he has to give
Whatsapp access to his address book which includes your name as well (although
you don't use Whatsapp). So the question is: Does Facebook/Whatsapp have
information about such passive users (e.g. the name or phone number)?

~~~
unfunco
This is already known, yes, and they're called shadow profiles.

~~~
I_am_tiberius
Ok, good to know. But then I would like to know if these show (Whatsapp)
profiles are used to match with existing Facebook profiles (based on phone
number or name).

~~~
lozenge
The European Commission has fined Facebook €110 million for providing
incorrect or misleading information during the Commission's 2014 investigation
under the EU Merger Regulation of Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp... When
Facebook notified the acquisition of WhatsApp in 2014, it informed the
Commission that it would be unable to establish reliable automated matching
between Facebook users' accounts and WhatsApp users' accounts. It stated this
both in the notification form and in a reply to a request of information from
the Commission. However, in August 2016, WhatsApp announced updates to its
terms of service and privacy policy, including the possibility of linking
WhatsApp users' phone numbers with Facebook users' identities.

Facebook using the phone number they requested "for security purposes" to
improve ad targeting and let people identify you from your phone number:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/leemathews/2019/03/04/facebook-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/leemathews/2019/03/04/facebook-
lets-people-find-you-by-your-two-factor-phone-number-and-you-cant-stop-
it/#e472bbb6b755)

~~~
I_am_tiberius
Thanks for the detailed information. However, this seems to refer to a match
between your own whatsapp number and your own facebook account. What I find
even more interesting is that the entire address book can be matched, also if
most of your address book contact don't have a whatsapp account but a facebook
account!

------
jddayley
Start with them defining, "What is privacy?" \- Privacy is the ability of an
individual or group to seclude themselves, or information about themselves,
and thereby express themselves selectively. - source
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy)

\- How does the average customer know they have achieved "privacy". I have a
feeling that they have many privacy features, but turned off by default.

\- If you start with the end in mind. What does success look like?

------
tjpnz
Not really privacy related but I would ask them why they allowed a fucking
lunatic to livestream a mass killing spree, why they didn't do anything to
shut down the stream despite numerous people alerting them to what was going
on, why their systems couldn't detect near duplicates of said content in the
days, weeks and months that followed and finally, why they would allow
absolutely anyone to start live streaming to audiences of potential tens of
thousands to begin with. This was a disaster waiting to happen and I'm betting
Facebook knew _damn_ well that their technology, processes and culture were in
no way equipped to deal with it. This is a rant but as someone who grew up in
Christchurch I can't help but feel that they've learned _nothing_ and done
even less.

~~~
novok
Why does the phone company let drug dealers take phone calls on their
cellphone!? How could this happen!?!? Why don't they have a ML global on
demand censorship system while also being under privacy scandals!? /s

------
kodz4
Ask them if they agree the like and view count next to every post/image/vid
has a psychological effects on individuals and groups.

If they agree, ask them if there is anything blocking them from studying the
cases where the effects are negative on individuals and groups.

If it is possible to list the kind of content where likes and views are having
negative consequences to society that data(counts not content) should not be
stored on Facebook server or shown to Facebook users.

Right now there is too much emphasis during privacy debates on all data.

There is no distinction being made between the like and view counts that cause
the ALS challenge funding to be produced - a positive to society, and like and
view counts that reinforce my antivax aunt's beliefs,

Some of these counts are harmful, some are harmless and some are useful. Why
store or display the harmful stuff?

~~~
dangerface
The problem with this argument is who decides whats harmful and whats
legitimate society vs fringe society.

We might both agree that your aunt's beliefs are harmful but the anti-vax
society that your aunt is a part of will argue that us blindly following
experts is harmful.

Should facebook be the ones to decide whats harmful to society? If yes don't
be surprised if they consider what they are doing not harmful.

~~~
kodz4
Do Like and View counts have effects on Individuals and Groups outside of
whatever their designed purpose is? Its a simple question Facebook needs to
answer.

Those counts don't just effect my Aunt, they effect me too. If both the left
and the right can agree that the numbers are having an effect, then the
narrative changes. Currently we don't even acknowledge the root cause of lot
of problems is not the content but the counts.

Those counts aren't just used by Facebook mind you, they can be used by anyone
to trigger a particular group or an individual. The content used to do the
triggering is just a superficial piece of the story.

------
DanielBMarkham
Hypothetically, some businesses should not exist. For instance, although a
children's-heroin-selling business might be in great demand and turn a huge
profit, such a business is not in the best interests of society. Simply
optimizing the delivery of things people want is not sufficient to make a good
business. "Heavy equipment rental for people under the influence of narcotics"
is similar. Without getting into a discussion of social good, or what's moral
or not, we can all agree that at times people are willing to make trades for
which they themselves would find stupid at other times.

Once data is captured it never goes away. As time passes and as it aggregates
with other similar data, it actually becomes much more valuable.

So, continuing along, hypothetically, what are you going to do if capturing
personal data in exchange for "free" services is not a business that should
exist?

I understand that right now you're engaged in a long and drawn-out split-the-
baby campaign, where you try to assure privacy advocates of your intentions
and that's there some magic sauce involving algorithms that will solve
everything, but what if that is not the case? What if your business model is
built on harming people by encouraging them to make trades for personal
information where, once we all figure out what we're doing, none of us would
agree to fifty years from now? How will you know? Will you tell us? Do you
already know? What are your plans?

If you truly want to respect privacy and are on the side of people living
their lives without being constantly examined like lab rats and having every
piece of their existence recorded for any hacker to see forevermore, what are
your plans for knowing that it's not working out? What's your tripwire, your
exit plan?

Because frankly, if you don't have one of those, then this is all just a PR
exercise, right? You've already decided that you win, you just haven't figured
the details out yet.

You can restate the question several different ways, but it all boils down to
"How do we know you're serious about this?" Because so far it just looks like
a bunch of the usual public relations BS.

------
gorbachev
I would ask a more generic question.

What's the right level of control users should have over their data?

Then as a follow up I would ask what's keeping Facebook from implementing
those controls.

Unless this was already covered in an acceptable way after the Cambridge
Analytica f*ckup (I haven't followed what actions Facebook took afterwards to
address the issue), I would also ask about what are they doing about policing
bad actors, companies trawling or leaking users' private information or
abusing it. How are they going to better prevent that in the future. Once it's
outside of Facebook they've already lost control of the situation.

------
andrerm
Facebook and a "privacy friendly" analytics company. This roundtable will be
used just for propaganda.

~~~
r3bl
Huh? From a quick skim here[0], they don't collect IP addresses, respect DNT
headers, and delete user agents after 90 days.

I legitly can't think of a more privacy-friendly way to do that. If you're
paranoid enough to believe that no analytics is the only right solution, you
probably have DNT on, and this is one of the rare cases in which it's actually
respected.

[0] [https://docs.simpleanalytics.com/what-we-
collect](https://docs.simpleanalytics.com/what-we-collect)

~~~
kemonocode
It'll be propaganda for Facebook, not Simple Analytics. If anything, those
fears about this roundtable tarnishing their reputation may not be so
unfounded...

------
yayr
1\. What sustainable business models will Facebook pursue that respect or even
facilitate user privacy?

2\. What will be simple to use mechanisms / technologies / standards employed
by FB to allow users to identify and delete their private information?

3\. Will those privacy control mechanisms be standardized across Facebook
products / technologies?

4\. Will there be an effort to open source technologies / standards with
respect to user privacy, so they can be peer reviewed and if good implemented
by others in the industry?

Thanks for your efforts!

------
Theodores
I work on the assumption that everything I do on Facebook platforms including
WhatsApp is secure from random hackers but not secure from the Five Eyes.

Years ago in the Snowden docs there was a diagram of a link into Google's
infrastructure where they could take the SSL off and put it back on again,
fooling people into thinking everything said about SSL and HTTPS implied
actual privacy.

Since this is a taboo, 'not this again' type of question, can you think of
ways to ask this in such a way they can only lie?

For instance, what guarantees can Facebook offer to their users that their
messages are not being mass intercepted by Five Eyes?

I am fine with police with a job to do getting someone's texts, e.g. if
someone is in a road traffic accident when they were texting on WhatsApp, I
would gladly have the police get access to that person's data. However, the
mass surveillance and the chilling effects that go with it are not good for
society. It is a breach of privacy. If the government do such things it is
still illegal. Even if they write laws that say it is okay, it is not. So
rather than sweep this topic under the rug, I would like the answer from
Facebook as to what they are doing and what they would do if their customers
were subject to mass surveillance from Five Eyes.

I don't think it is unreasonable to ask this.

------
DSingularity
What prevents them from publishing an explanation of what they do with their
users private data in language understandable by their average users?

~~~
bryan_w
What about their current privacy policy do you find hard to understand?

~~~
DSingularity
Bit late, but not me. The average user. I think the average user still doesn’t
understand how and to what extent their data is analyzed for the ultimate
purpose of discovering details about the user which the user did not reveal —
for the purposes of advertisements.

------
1shooner
If social media platforms do not legally provide an expectation of privacy, as
Facebook has recently claimed in US court[1], why should users expect
otherwise?

[1][https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/18/opinion/facebook-court-
pr...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/18/opinion/facebook-court-privacy.html)

------
robomartin
More of a request than a question:

If they want to show respect for privacy a user ought to be able to deep-
delete (meaning, from backups too) any and all information they ever posted in
any form on FB. This might even include information that was the result of
inference from posted data.

I would like a setting that, by default, erases all of my posts older than,
say, 30 days.

I would actually pay for this. Not a lot. A nominal amount, like $10 or $20 a
year for “premium” options. No problem at all with that concept.

Privacy, amongst other things, should mean the user owns their information,
not the service. If I can’t ensure my information is deleted I am one data
breach or one disgruntled employee away from losing my privacy.

In this age of vindictive “the internet hates everything” polarization,
privacy is critically important.

------
mooneater
How can a user purge all data about them on fb, including shadow accounts and
backups? How can a non-user opt out of having a shadow profile about them? How
can they claim to respext privacy if they dont have flawless answers for
these?

------
LastManStanding
Tell them you want easy access to your "friends" email address and other
contact information and a quick way to transfer it to other social networks if
you want. That is the "privacy" they say they are protecting.

------
TimTheTinker
Ask them if (and how) they intend to change their ad platform to sell ads to
ethics and privacy conscious owners of small businesses.

I’m a small business entrepreneur and I’m frustrated that to compete well in
my sector I would have to advertise on Facebook. Their ad system currently
seems intractably unethical because they know and actively use so much user
data that users have not knowingly given away for the purpose of advertising.
I don’t want to be asked in the Final Judgment why I paid into such a scheme
of abuse — which is what it currently seems to be.

------
hblanks
You don't have to agree with her politics, but I think Peggy Noonan had the
right answer on this one: it's a show and there's no good to be found in
taking part.

Just say no and hit send.

> In February 2018 Nicholas Thompson and Fred Vogelstein of Wired wrote a
> deeply reported piece that mentioned the 2016 meeting. It was called so that
> the company could “make a show of apologizing for its sins.” A Facebook
> employee who helped plan it said part of its goal—they are clever at
> Facebook and knew their mark!—was to get the conservatives fighting with
> each other. “They made sure to have libertarians who wouldn’t want to
> regulate the platform and partisans who would.” Another goal was to leave
> attendees “bored to death” by a technical presentation after Mr. Zuckerberg
> spoke.

([http://peggynoonan.com/overthrow-the-prince-of-
facebook/](http://peggynoonan.com/overthrow-the-prince-of-facebook/))

------
dvfjsdhgfv
Any info on shadow profiles you could get would be very valuable.

~~~
harianus
Yes, will definitely ask about that.

~~~
mehrdadn
I'm not so hopeful. I explained here why:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20390678](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20390678)

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
I agree. I also don't think it's useful to use the term as Zuck explicitly
evaded answering to that. What is more useful would be the answer to the
question how easy for them is to aggregate information about a person not
using FB and whether this information is used in any way (I have no hope of
hearing any meaningful answer to that, but it can be amusing to see how they
evade it).

------
OliverJones
Privacy settings:

Would FB be willing to work with a neutral third party group of user
experience designers? Let's call them the PWHUX Board for Privacy White Hat
User Experience. (Or maybe something else, PWHUX sounds a bit rude in
English.)

This PWHUX Board would create standardized user interface conventions for
disclosing and controlling personal privacy settings. This same group might
work with other datahoovering businesses to establish multi-vendor standards.

------
gtirloni
I'd assume the Legal and Privacy Policy teams can't give you answers about
strategy from their C-level other than what they've already made public
through vague statements. So I wouldn't get angry if I couldn't get anything
useful from them.

You could ask if they plan to let users know exactly (and be able to opt out)
where their data will end up (internal only, 3rd-parties, which ones? Could
you select purpose?).

And of course, GDPR globally.

------
catacombs
If you're seriously soliciting HN for questions, then make sure to record
yourself asking questions you pick here so we can hear FB's response.

------
carapace
This is a privacy roundtable that's private?

...

You see what I'm getting at? They understand privacy just fine when it's their
own privacy.

I think you would just be a fig leaf.

------
mehrdadn
Ask them why the exposed moderators who now live in constant fear for their
lives in their own countries were not offered serious compensation that could
last them a significant chunk of their lifetimes (which would be on the order
of hundreds of thousands of dollars). [1] Facebook will most likely respond
that their threat assessments didn't warrant it. To which you'd ideally
respond by asking them why a reasonable victim should consider it fair or
reasonable to be forced to trust Facebook's security chops when Facebook
already failed him once and put his _life_ in danger.

Seriously, it's ludicrous to offer just a "home alarm system" and a ride to
work (which I also assume is to their _current_ job... why the hell should
they keep doing the same job?) for a moderator who's now going to be in
perpetual fear of getting killed. Those people may well no longer be able to
work like they used to, for _any_ employer.

[1]
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/16/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/16/facebook-
moderators-identity-exposed-terrorist-groups)

~~~
ryanlol
I really don’t think this is as credible of a threat as you paint it to be.

Terrorists don’t go around killing people for banning them from forums.

~~~
cjaybo
This is such a strange response. First of all, Facebook's inability to keep
their moderators' identities private is an issue regardless of how the
terrorists respond.

> Terrorists don't go around killing people for banning them from forums.

It seems incredibly arrogant to assume that you know what terrorists will and
will not do (especially when used as a rebuttal to someone expressing concern
for real people who have been put in this situation).

I don't have any experience interacting with terrorists, but growing up in a
poor education system in the southeastern U.S., I've witnessed my fair share
of gang activity. I have seen incredible confrontation/violence erupt as a
consequence of amazingly trivial actions.

It does not seem far fetched to me that an extremist group would possess the
potential to respond dispraportionately to a perceived act of disrespect or
aggression. Given the circumstances, it's hard to find a charitable
interpretation of why you would suggest otherwise.

~~~
ryanlol
>First of all, Facebook's inability to keep their moderators' identities
private is an issue

Agreed, but it’s not an issue because they’re going to get killed by
terrorists. I’m objecting to the dishonest framing, not trying to argue that
this isn’t an issue.

>It seems incredibly arrogant to assume that you know what terrorists will and
will not do

Your assumptions seem at least as arrogant.

>I don't have any experience interacting with terrorists

I do

~~~
wbronitsky
Why are you continuing to hammer away with the Reddit style comments? You
might have a good point, but now you are acting like an argumentative ass.

This isn't some sort of internet pissing contest with people you don't know
and will never meet; that is literally any other online forum that I've seen.
This is a forum to discuss issues with people who are interested in them. You
are purposefully diluting the conversation, and for what? The lolz?

Go somewhere else with this crap

~~~
dang
Please don't cross into personal attack here. We ban accounts that do that, as
you know, but we don't want to ban you.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
dalbasal
Adjacent to pure "privacy" issues is a/the "data ownership" question, or maybe
it should be framed as the public vs private data issue.

That is, maybe if FB own the data, advertisers buy it and states/others hack
into it... the right solution is to "push the arrow through" rather than
extract it. Make the data (or most of it) public. Publish it. It's not really
"private" in a meaningful way. The subject (object?) does not have control of
and/or knowledge of the dataset describing them. Also (this relates to my last
point) data is not the sum of its part. A lot of what the data _is_ only
exists at the aggregate level, and without publication users can never have
control, ownership or any rights to these crucial aspects of their data..

To put it in the form of a question: _Are there ways of arriving at a better
state, with less distrust and paranoia that involves opening data, rather than
just better protecting it._

I'm not suggesting that it's simple or that I know exactly how it should work.
But, if advertisers had the same access everyone has, I think it'd be less of
an issue. If the default was "data is public," I suspect we'd find better ways
of dealing with data that truly needs to stay secret.

As an aside, unconnected to privacy, data has become a new class of IP. We may
legally consider it copyrighted (raw data) or patent-able (trained NNs), but
as a practical matter it is a new type of IP... of rapidly growing importance.
There are massive, world changing examples of what can happen when we manage
to create cultures of "public IP" or sharing. The scientific revolution was
(arguably) directly related to the new culture of publishing experimental
results. CS was irrevocably changed by free and/or open source software,
especially compilers, operating systems, libraries... The WWweb, in lots of
ways. The pace of the current ML explosion is directly related to and enabled
by open source, free software, scientific publishing and "open IP" generally.

Imagine how held back we would have been, if those cultures of sharing hadn't
emerged. I think data sharing is probably similar in this regard to compiler
code or scientific experiments. Openness creates value, potentially a lot of
it.

Privacy is a meaningful reason/excuse for closed data. I think it's worth
trying to solve these two together. Dunno how to phrase a question for that.

------
mudil
Ask them what they think is their impact on the journalism and the news. We
see destruction of local news, specialty journalism, etc, and lots of it is
thought to be attributed to privacy violations by FB and Google. Who needs a
local newspaper if a local business can target people on FB or on Candy Crush
Saga? That's the bottom line.

------
novok
What incentives do employees & engineers have for improving privacy or
preventing privacy issues & bugs?

Kind of like how FB's performance became part of annual review & promotion
rubrics for employees recently?

Can other employees spike projects started by anti-privacy gordon gekkos to
improve short term metrics?

------
mikosty
Ask them do they provide all the data what they store on an individual when
the data is requested, and if they don't do that, ask them why.

A reference read:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19959064](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19959064)

------
annadane
Why do you insist on switching to Top Stories even when the user consistently
switches back to Most Recent?

Why are there not more granular privacy controls?

Why is what a user sees of their friends that which is in the audience for a
post? I don't need to see what someone "commented on".

------
camjohnson26
Why don’t they provide an API to easily use your personal data in other
places? Why don’t they use federation services to let Facebook talk to
ActivityPub services? If they truly cared about privacy they would give you a
way to use your data outside of the platform.

------
ianai
Which teams budget is larger, privacy or legal?

If that question is deniable, then does FB take no efforts to guess at
individuals budgets? (Ie household income, rent/mortgage, monthly
subscriptions, etc) Does FB grant people privacy for what’s in their bank
accounts?

------
TACIXAT
I have had quite a bit of trouble registering an insta account via Tor. I get
that the IPs are likely blacklisted for abuse, but I do not see a path to
privacy on that platform. Would they be interested in supporting an onion url
for insta?

------
Mindwipe
What are they doing to lobby against the age verification procedures in the
UK, initially applied to porn, but which the government has clear intent to
extend to all social media and is one of the biggest attacks on privacy in
history?

------
thinkcomp
Ask how Facebook actually measures its fake accounts. See
[https://www.plainsite.org/realitycheck/facebook.html](https://www.plainsite.org/realitycheck/facebook.html).

------
bashinator
“Given Facebook’s ability to track the amount of time a user spends on any
given item in their newsfeed, do you also track how long users spend reading
terms and conditions, privacy policies, and so forth? If not, why not?”

------
mabbo
I think what everyone truly wants is the ability to be forgotten. "Like I was
never there".

But Facebook has a strong monetary incentive to never forget anything, ever.
They have an incentive to make it unclear just how much data they're keeping
about their users. They have a strong incentive to be as opaque as possible.
And even if they let users be forgotten, they've got a strong incentive to
make that hard to do.

How can Facebook balance it's responsibility to shareholders to earn profits
with their responsibility as ethical humans to allow people to be forgotten? I
do presume that, as people, they want to be ethical (and I'm sure someone will
say I'm naive for believing that).

And how can Facebook make it's decision on where they lie on that spectrum
clear to their users, so people can make informed decisions about what they
want to share and do on the platform?

The hardest decisions businesses have to make is when to give up profit by
doing the right thing. And the most profitable companies are the ones run by
sociopaths for whom this is not a difficult problem.

------
tgragnato
> Some people advised me not to go there because it would only do harm to my
> name and brand, but I think I should.

Is there anything in particular that drives your participation? The reasoning
is peculiar.

------
ForrestN
It's obvious to anyone that their current business models are hostile to
privacy. Do they have a plan to fundamentally change the way they make money?
If so, what is it?

------
TrinaryWorksToo
What is the motivation for improving privacy? Do they aim to do just enough to
get good PR or can they demonstrate a more fundamental change to their
security culture?

------
marapuru
I'd be interested in knowing if Facebook has any ties with the (Dutch)
government. And if that is the case, to what extend do these collaborations
go.

------
cardimart
Ask why they lied to the EU when they said they couldn't merge WhatsApp's data
with Facebook's data.

When they knew they could.

~~~
kypro
What's the point in asking them what they could do, there's plenty they could
do but shouldn't.

------
egberts1
What are being done about countries buying political ads to be displayed in a
targeted country?

------
aestetix
Will they honor GDPR related requests? The last I saw, the have some checkbox
they require european users to "agree" to in order to continue using FB, which
basically waives their GDPR rights.

In addition, you might want to review the questions from when Zuckerberg was
in front of the European parliament. The MEPs asked some good questions and
Zuck basically weasled out of it. I'd love to see the same questions brought
up again.

And also, info about shadow profiles.

~~~
Wiretrip
GDPR is a good question as I'm not sure they can 'waive' the GDPR rights.
There is an ongoing court case in the EU at present.

~~~
mrweasel
I'm fairly sure that you can't make "waiving" the rights that the GDPR grants
you a condition for using a service.

~~~
privacy_esq
Privacy lawyer here...you 100% cannot waive your GDPR rights as a condition of
the service. In fact your consent can not be a precondition of using the
service. Most adtech companies out there will try to rely on legitimate
interest as a basis for processing.

------
arthurofbabylon
How are you redesigning your business model in order to honor user privacy?

------
amelius
What would the most privacy aware social media company look like?

------
pelario
A "simple" one,: Do they plan to fullfill GDPR requests?

Here is a good story of a guy who tried to get all the data the company had on
him without anything close to a real answer:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19959064](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19959064)

------
jamesmadison66
Shadow profiles. Man everyone wants and answer on these

------
jasonhansel
"Would you object to GDPR-style legislation being passed in the United
States?"

------
thoughtstheseus
How is Facebook a free speech platform if users cannot control how and to who
their speech is directed?

------
privacy_esq
Ask them what their main basis for processing personal data under GDPR is when
they collect user data. Also ask about their retention management. How can
they ensure personal data is only retained so long as they have a basis for
processing?

------
kjar
You might ask if FB organization is a parasitic operation sucking down
personal data any way they can and selling it to who?. Who knows who else. You
know part of the answer. Watch the squirm ensue.

~~~
rfrey
The squirming would be from everyone else in the room, embarrassed on your
behalf.

