
Zuckerberg Has No Way Out of Facebook's Quagmire - daddy_drank
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-21/facebook-s-mark-zuckerberg-has-no-way-out-of-this-quagmire
======
rectang
It's fascinating that widespread outrage over privacy finally materializes
when data is used for hated political causes. Commerce, law enforcement not so
much... but "Trump" or "Obama" and suddenly people care.

~~~
sverige
The Facebook outrage is interesting since it is tied to Trump. When Obama did
it, no one cared. For example, there's a video of Jim Messina, Obama's 2012
campaign manager, talking about how they obtained the entire Facebook social
graph and used it to target voters. [1] I don't remember any "delete Facebook"
campaigns back then.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZmcyHpG31A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZmcyHpG31A)

~~~
nemothekid
I'm struggling to understand why people keep bringing up the Obama comparison.
At the start of the 2016 elections _everyone_ , Sanders, Clinton, Jeb!, Trump
were doing what Obama did in 2012. The outrage isn't soley in the fact that
the CA campaign used FB data.

1\. CA obtained the data illicitly and tried to cover up the fact they had
used it, and downplay how many users they had reached.

2\. CA used the data to intentionally spread and optimizing the sharing of
bogus news.

Comparing the CA scandal to Obama is willfully ignoring these two facts that
has led to the current backlash.

Society, to the frustration of many of us on this forum, has implicitly
decided to trust Facebook with the personal data of millions and has allowed
the mass-resale of user data, provided that everyone else plays by the "rules"
(for example, you can target me to sell ads, but only as long as you trying to
sell me TVs). CA (and transitively, Trump) broke these rules.

~~~
colordrops
Do you really think most of the outraged public understand the nuanced
differences between the two? The reason the public is outraged is because of
an engineered campaign by Trump's enemies.

~~~
throwaway5752
They aren't nuanced differences, at all. And a substantial majority of the
public can be counted as "Trump's enemies" (whatever that paranoid label may
mean) probably because they understand how different 2016 was than any other
campaign in the US, ever.

------
lkrubner
There is a suddenness to this episode that deserves some examination. For
years, Facebook has been violating people's privacy. For years, people went
along with it. Perhaps on some level, people were disturbed by it, but they
weren't angry enough to do anything about it.

If we were discussing economics, then we would call this a Minsky moment[1].
If you substitute "trust" for "money" then this almost fits:

" _A Minsky moment is a sudden major collapse of asset values which is part of
the credit cycle or business cycle. Such moments occur because long periods of
prosperity and increasing value of investments lead to increasing speculation
using borrowed money._ "

But I think we are also seeing a sudden moral panic, like the one that
destroyed MySpace in 2006. danah boyd wrote about that at the time[2]:

" _Because of their position of power, outsiders are pushing the big red
emergency button, screaming danger and creating a complete and utter moral
panic. Welcome to a generational divide, where adults are unable to see the
practices of their children on kids ' terms. If MySpace falters in the next
1-2 years, it will be because of this moral panic._"

But those children grew up. The 16 year old of 2006 is now 28. So this moral
panic is a bit different. It's not adults freaking out about what is being
done to kids, it's adults freaking out about what is being done to themselves.

Mind you, I think it's obvious that Facebook has behaved very badly, so this
episode of castigation is well deserved. But the suddenness of it makes me
think there is also an element of panic.

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

[2]
[https://www.danah.org/papers/FriendsterMySpaceEssay.html](https://www.danah.org/papers/FriendsterMySpaceEssay.html)

~~~
_bxg1
Speaking for myself, but also probably for a lot of others, I've wanted
Facebook to die for years now. The discomfort around the privacy and toxicity
has been slowly building, but the critical mass of the thing makes it hard to
break away by yourself. You lose touch with people, you miss event invites,
etc.

So maybe, for a lot of people, this moment of collective outrage is an
opportunity to get out. If we can all quit at once, we can all be free.

------
WheelsAtLarge
"Zuckerberg Has No Way Out of Facebook's Quagmire." Unfortunately, yes he
does. It's called time. Act like you're changing things, do a little change,
the least the better, and wait it out. People will bitch about it but
eventually, it becomes the new normal. Even if FB fails, which it won't,
there's another social network right after it.

But I hope I'm wrong.

------
stareatgoats
Facebook is an addiction for several billion humans. It is in itself a
quagmire, but is not going to go away any time soon.

And the business of making money off profiling private behavior online, for
commercial or other purposes, is not specifically a Facebook thing, it is
ingrained into the backbone of the internet itself. It won't go away any time
soon.

Facebook will of course be responsive to demands by the joint forces of tax-
revenue collecting agencies + old media (who are seeing their business models
dissipate into the pockets of Facebook, Google and a few more), and so we'll
probably see some adjustments which will try to satisfy them; less tax-havens
and a trickle of the revenue stream back to the original news creators.

But nothing drastic.

------
Cacti
I’m sorry, what quagmire? Most people either aren’t aware of the privacy
issues or if they are don’t care. People _like_ using Facebook, or at least
are addicted to it.

~~~
cryptoz
You don't see the addiction itself as a quagmire? It sure is on its own. And
"what quagmire"? You know what quagmire. The one where Facebook has been
acting extremely guilty around entering Cambridge Analytica's offices and
refusing to leave until police forced them out. The one where Facebook is
complicit in the stolen information, whereby they had knowledge of the problem
for 2+ years before acting. The one that spoils the trust of investors and
users alike. That quagmire.

~~~
rsp1984
Sorry, I don't see it either. Yes, Facebook makes money off of users data,
surprise surprise! People know that much, they aren't stupid and the deal
worked just fine for both sides so far.

The current outrage is about user's data getting into the wrong hands, and a
rightful outrage it is. However I don't see how fixing that problem would
endanger FB's business model. Quite the contrary actually.

The Bloomberg argument is artifical and relies on the assumption that people
don't want to share any data about themselves at all, which is just plain
wrong. They do, as long as they can be reasonably sure that the data is "only"
being used for harmless things such as targeted ads.

------
Mayzie
Wow, is it just me, or is Bloomberg really on the attack on Facebook? Every
article on Facebook from them submitted here and other places like Reddit have
always been quite negative, especially the headline.

~~~
fredliu
Definitely not just you. And to me, it's not just Bloomberg, looks like most
of traditional media companies are _out_ this time.

~~~
anonnel
So someone is trying to get journalisim to be branded as “traditional media”
now.

The implication is “old and busted”, when in reality they have modern widely
distributed websites which are as contemporary as any alternative medias being
inferred ... which are what exactly? Twitter?

“Journalism media” seems to be an appropriate counter.

------
mirimir
> ... Facebook's de facto anonymity ...

Facebook does a pretty good job of authentication, at least for nontechnical
users, who are arguably the majority. If you sign up using VPN services or
Tor, you get nagged for a mobile number for text verification. So Facebook
either knows your IP address or mobile number. I don't consider that "de facto
anonymity".

Now if you're skilled, and willing to invest some time and money, you can
circumvent that. Or you can buy accounts, if you know where to shop. But
that's not the case, for most Facebook users.

~~~
Kelbit
Mobile number checks are almost trivial to circumvent - you can get a DID with
SMS capability from a VOIP provider for under a buck, just use it once and
throw it away.

~~~
mirimir
Thanks, good tip. However, the last time I looked at VoIP providers, they
wanted to know who I was. Or at least, they wanted a credit/debit card. But
maybe things have changed. And I _am_ an amateur.

------
tristanj
Something I've been thinking about: why doesn't WeChat, the world's 2nd
largest social network with 1B MAU, suffer the issues Facebook is experiencing
today?

If Facebook became more like WeChat, would they avoid these problems? If
Facebook finds it does avoid such problems, will Facebook switch models in the
future?

~~~
aylmao
WeChat is this big because of its dominance in China and it very much operates
in cooperation of the government [1]. It was subsidized by the government, it
has no international competition because the government doesn't allow similar
apps to operate there, and it's an "accepted reality that officials censor and
monitor users".

Aka, the "privacy and collusion with the state" bar is at a very different
level.

[1]: [https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/1/16721230/wechat-china-
app-...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/1/16721230/wechat-china-app-mini-
programs-messaging-electronic-id-system)

------
mudil
The whole operating model of the company based on invasion of privacy. Blatant
invasion of privacy and data collection by Google and FB is a national
security issue. No entity should be allowed to snoop on free citizens more
than KGB has ever dreamed about. Orwellian!

------
jonmc12
> dreams.. "..we're closing the main Facebook app and web site.."

I think a better dream would be if FB open-sourced an advertisement-free
Facebook, and provided $1B in grants to build permutations of the UI that all
sync data.

~~~
apengwin
Why would they have any incentive to do that?

~~~
Alex3917
> Why would they have any incentive to do that?

They could just use a token to align incentives

------
tluyben2
Not sure if offtopic but how does Facebook make money? They talk about micro
targetting me but, while I click often on adword ads because they know me, I
have literally 0 times seen any interesting or a even remotely relevant ad on
facebook? They know everything about me... I did an advertising engine for a
big datingsite long ago which was stupid as mud but got vastly superior ads
for for my demographic based on the data the site had about me than facebook
has ever shown me. So am I just ‘unlucky’ or am I missing something?

~~~
gnahckire
Advertising.

See:
[https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2017/Q4...](https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2017/Q4/Q4-2017-Earnings-
Presentation.pdf)

~~~
tluyben2
So you only read the first line of my post?

------
dictum
(Warning: controversial and conspiratorial opinion; _fake news_ if you will)

I used to think Zuckerberg's pandering to the Chinese government was a power
grab, an expansionist desire.

Now I think it's a hedge strategy. He knows he's not very welcome in some of
the circles he's been in for the past few years.

~~~
ikeyany
That explains why he built his fortress of solitude.

------
sixothree
At this point I very much want to know what data about me has been collected
by private companies. I'm getting sick of not knowing. I'm repulsed by people
divining or extrapolating. I want to fucking know.

~~~
drak0n1c
Whatever you ever filled in or posted to the servers of a private company
under your real identity is "data about me that has been collected by private
companies". It's not that complicated.

Most places now (for compliance reasons) allow you to delete old accounts and
old posts either through a button or if you email customer support or the
webmaster.

------
itronitron
Hopefully professional news organizations will realize how little credibility
there is to social media numbers (likes, followers, etc.) and finally decide
to stop reporting about trends on social media as if it is news.

------
GreeniFi
There is sadly a very clear reason why China banned Facebook - its use has the
potential to destroy social consensus, which is necessary for social cohesion.
I’m not surprised Zuck has been hiding, in his heart of hearts, he realizes
his invention has sort of destroyed America (and Britain, but I concede he
probably cares less about that).

~~~
zrobotics
How does that explain WeChat? No, I think they quickly realized the power
social media has to shape social consensus, which is what this whole scandal
ultimately boils down to. They banned Facebook to eliminate competitors for
their home grown (and highly controlled) domestic alternative vs. an American
company.

------
fooker
No way out, you mean other than the largest ever network effect seen in
business?

------
juststeve
what happens if someone swoops in and buys or merges with facebook, what
happens to the data?

~~~
sunir
Assigned to acquirer.

------
zlo
Well, Zuck responded

~~~
bazeblackwood
With a milquetoast echo of everything we already know.

------
hux_
He should resign. Or this bullshit will keep repeating. As it already has too
many times.

Tech/Engineering folk are totally unfit to run social companies of the scale
of YouTube/twitter/facebook etc. They don't have the skills or the experience
or the sense in handling this stuff.

They know how to scale things and that's where their expertise ends and
contribution should end.

They should be run by elected politicians with an advisory board filled with
people who understand sociology, psychology, religion, culture, law and
security. Those are the people who keep society running not the fucking
plumbers.

------
OrganicMSG
Giggity.

------
knodi
Please keep your bs of "Obama did it too!" for your FoxNews watch
friends/family.

~~~
dang
Please don't post partisan flamebait here. These threads are bad enough
without setting additional fires.

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

