
Facebook accused of striking 'secret deals over user data' - arduinomancer
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46456695
======
arduinomancer
One of the leaked emails threads related to Vine:

 _Justin Osofsky (Facebook vice president):_

 _" Twitter launched Vine today which lets you shoot multiple short video
segments to make one single, 6-second video... Unless anyone raises
objections, we will shut down their friends API access today. We've prepared
reactive PR, and I will let Jana know our decision."_

 _Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook chief executive):_

 _" Yup, go for it."_

~~~
SilasX
Interestingly, I remember Google's employee training[1] was written to warn
against stuff this, something to the effect of:

"Hey, don't leave a papertrail about 'crushing' or 'destroying' competitors.
We do not seek to monopolize markets and run afoul of antitrust laws. Instead,
talk about how your product can better satisfy users and meet a demand."

(Another common theme I remember was that you shouldn't route stuff through
Switzerland to get around export controls.)

[1] I contracted there via a startup.

~~~
rachelbythebay
Google's guidance for this stuff was always in the form of "don't leave a
trail", not "don't do it in the first place".

Sketchy stuff comes up on a list? "Let's take it offline", not "no, stop this
now".

That kind of thing. It was systemic.

~~~
nubbins
What they probably don’t realize is the record of saying “lets take it off
line” ie requesting change in communication media is suspicious in itself and
much easier for humans or algorithms to find in discovery than whatever
complicated scheme they were going to discuss that wouldn’t give good target
keywords.

~~~
skybrian
I don't know, it seems like it's probably better to take it offline than to
have a whole _argument_ about something that shouldn't be talked about in the
first place. If you keep talking, they are just going to put more dubious
speculation on the record.

Shutting this down is just good management.

------
TictacTactic
Is Hackernews being brigaded with anti-Facebook content or is it finaly
Facebooks time to die? This is the 5th anti-FB post I've seen today.

I would be interested if theirs any information on a big tech company rolling
out a FB replacer or if Mark did something to really anger someone. From what
I can tell most posts seems to be around Britain releasing information. Not
trying to start a conspiracy just trying to understand why all the posts
today.

~~~
jseliger
_Is Hackernews being brigaded with anti-Facebook content or is it finaly
Facebooks time to die? This is the 5th anti-FB post I 've seen today._

Facebook is in the middle of a media scapegoat frenzy:
[https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-
facebo...](https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebook-
crisis-or-media-narrative-about-facebook-crisis). So we're going to keep
seeing anti-Facebook articles for a while; it's more attractive to blame
Facebook than it is to examine the media's role in the 2016 election or to
look carefully at underlying forces, a la _The Revolt of The Public and the
Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium_ by Gurri.

~~~
taurath
I feel like what we’re seeing is less of a focus based around the 2016
election and more just general societal scrutiny of what they are actually
doing. These are powerful tools for bad actors in general - It’s not Facebook
vs society, it’s social media/ad-driven personal information vacuuming vs
society. It just so happens that Facebook is by far and away the most used.

------
vogelke
Facebook: We can do whatever we like.

UK: No, you can't.

This totally works for me. If FB doesn't negotiate in good faith, strong-arm
is exactly what's called for.

------
Bucephalus355
Has anyone read Mark Zuckerberg’s emails / his style? He is a very frustrating
email writer.

You know that person who types out an 8 sentence email, but really the first
6-7 sentences are about how they are “just thinking about everything out loud”
and “this could totally be wrong but I think that”. It’s just that, email
after email.

~~~
fipple
No, that’s what you have to do in his position. If Zuckerberg sends out a mail
like “can you get me information on how flowers are sold in China,” a SVP will
delegate to a VP, a product marketing manager will fly to China, they’ll
prepare a 200 page slide deck because this is “for Mark.” It’s very hard as a
CEO with absolute power to participate in a conversation without dominating it
and this is his best effort to do so.

~~~
asveikau
> a CEO with absolute power

Did you mean that to be such a concise description of the problem here?

~~~
fipple
No, because all Fortune 500 CEOs have the power that makes the organization
respond to their slightest whim, whether they wanted that or not.

~~~
asveikau
Typical of this place and our industry, not appreciating that a phrase like
"absolute power" has loads upon loads of baggage.

~~~
fipple
Yes, and all Fortune 500 CEOs have it. They have more power in their
organizations than the President of the United States has.

~~~
asveikau
They don't all have it. They are supposed to be accountable to boards etc.
Look at how Ballmer was made to leave in the current decade, to cite a tech
example. Zuckerberg has broken and circumvented this by concentrating power.

Now, your original point that small indirect suggestions can be amplified
greatly by the network of reports eager to execute on the boss's mandate...
This is true and I have seen it in large and small scale. I am merely poking
fun of "absolute power".

------
taurath
Every single day it seems like a new article comes out - maybe the problem is
that Facebooks business model is destined to fail if people scrutinize what
it’s actually doing.

~~~
dqpb
> _Every single day it seems like a new article comes out_

That's because some news organizations have invested in bringing Facebook
down. If you pay attention, you'll notice those same organizations have also
tested the waters with Google and Amazon, and to a lesser extent, other SV
companies and the SV community itself.

I barely ever use FB. I really don't care what happens to the webapp (although
I do very much appreciate the open source tools they've built, such as react
and pyTorch). But I am concerned that these media companies are attacking the
tech community, and are basically opposed to any platform that circumvents
their role as gatekeepers of information.

~~~
zaphod4prez
Uhhh, I feel like the constant stream of discoveries about Facebook's highly
highly unethical behavior stands on it's own merit. Like, if you just made a
list of the crap they've done, that's really enough for me to be very
convincing. I don't really see why you think there's some media conspiracy (or
why you seem okay with true anticompetitive behavior on FB's part but are
highly concerned about companies having "opinions" on the behavior of a
company in another industry entirely).

------
wrkccnt
Was skimming through the report[1] and they mention “coefficient ranking”
(email starting on page 49). Did some Googling and couldn’t find anything.
Anyone has a brief explanation of this?

[1] [https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-
committees/cultu...](https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-
committees/culture-media-and-sport/Note-by-Chair-and-selected-documents-
ordered-from-Six4Three.pdf)

~~~
a13n
You have a coefficient with each of your friends on Facebook, that represents
how close you are with them, based on how much you interact with them on
Facebook. Coefficient ranking is probably sorting your friends list by
coefficient to show you the ones you're closest with first.

~~~
clubm8
Sounds flawed. What if I interact with someone a lot because they're a family
member who shares dumb boomer memes and we argue? :)

~~~
tristor
That's actually exactly how the algorithm is supposed to work. Negative
emotions are far more catchy. You see dumb boomer memes constantly, you
constantly argue, but you're ENGAGED. Which means you're a juicy user for ad
targeting.

------
wewake
From email dated 4 February 2015

 _Michael LeBeau – ‘He guys, as you know all the growth team is planning on
shipping a permissions update on Android at the end of this month. They are
going to include the ‘read call log’ permission, which will trigger the
Android permissions dialog on update, requiring users to accept the update.
They will then provide an in-app opt in NUX for a feature that lets you
continuously upload your SMS and call log history to Facebook to be used for
improving things like PYMK, coefficient calculation, feed ranking etc. This is
a pretty highrisk thing to do from a PR perspective but it appears that the
growth team will charge ahead and do it.’

Yul Kwon – ‘Based on their initial testing, it seems this would allow us to
upgrade users without subjecting them to an Android permissions dialog at
all.'_

------
resters
Criticism of Facebook fall into the following buckets:

\- Unethical use of UI dark patterns to make users (mostly the young and the
elderly) unwittingly over-share.

\- Unethical design of the news feed algorithm to bias certain kinds of
consumer behavior.

\- Unethical stewardship of private data harvested from users (this article is
an example)

\- Abuse of market share toward anti-competitive ends.

\- The absence of warrant canaries on individual accounts, and compliance with
questionable law enforcement requests for private data.

And then the new upcoming one:

\- Unethical modification of the news feed algorithm to promote political
views deemed favorable, and demote political views deemed unfavorable.

------
forkLding
This can be legally interpreted in many ways:

and I quote: "It is unlawful for a company to monopolize or attempt to
monopolize trade, meaning a firm with market power cannot act to maintain or
acquire a dominant position by excluding competitors or preventing new entry.
It is important to note that it is not illegal for a company to have a
monopoly, to charge “high prices,” or to try to achieve a monopoly position by
aggressive methods."

"It is illegal for businesses to act together in ways that can limit
competition, lead to higher prices, or hinder other businesses from entering
the market."

\- Federal Trade Commission on Anticompetitive Practices.

[https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/anticompetitive-
practices](https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/anticompetitive-practices)

And a relevant tidbit on FTC investigation into FB for user privacy:
[https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43546100](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43546100)

------
bluesign
"Facebook used data provided by the Israeli analytics firm Onavo to determine
which other mobile apps were being downloaded and used by the public. It then
used this knowledge to decide which apps to acquire or otherwise treat as a
threat"

What is wrong with this part?

~~~
mcintyre1994
They have a VPN called "Onavo Protect" that says it can "protect your personal
info" and "secure your personal details" [0] but that actually sends all your
usage data to Facebook. Obviously they'll have some must-agree-to-use
agreement that says that's fine, but it's obviously not what people who
download a VPN for those purposes actually expect.

[0] [https://www.onavo.com/](https://www.onavo.com/)

~~~
bluesign
yeah but in the documents, it is just market research data, if I want to
acquire one application, and let's say use appannie[0] to check how popular it
is, what is different essentially?

[0] [https://www.appannie.com/](https://www.appannie.com/)

~~~
bduerst
I asked the same question yesterday and it seems that FB acquired Onavo. They
joined this data with the rest of their user data, and then used it to make
anti-competitive decisions.

It'd be like if Apple bought Appannie, matched the behavior with their
existing customer database, and then used the data to delist Spotify from
their app store because it competes with iTunes.

~~~
mattnewton
That’s messed up sure, and I am not a lawyer, but I don’t think how they got
the information to act in an anticompetitive way is relevant, in the US at
least (as long as it was legal, which buying up smaller companies is). Am I
missing something? Is it fraud because they continued to market the vpn
service as being private while they used it to collect market research data
for facebook?

~~~
bduerst
I think that maybe it's because Onavo acquired the information with a specific
agreement with it's users, which didn't cover the way Facebook used it after
FB acquired the agency, but then again, I'm not sure.

SOP for these situations is to license the data from the agency, so you can
say that you're using third-party data which is also available to your
competition. Level playing field and all that. Acquiring the entire company is
a risk because it closes it off to competition and isn't necessary to just
_use_ the data.

------
matchagaucho
If anything, FB gave away too much to Developers early on, making it difficult
to pivot to the Apple model of facilitating credit card payments and paying
70% to Developers.

Hence the recurring theme of "Data Reciprocity" in the U.K. acquired docs. FB
needed _something_ , if not revenue, to justify the Developer's ongoing use of
platform.

------
kodablah
So they took one business's confidential documents from another person
travelling in their country who had them as part of discovery for another
lawsuit (that a CA judge asked to remain hidden)? And then they publish them
for everyone? And these are the "bombshells"? Seems like normal (albeit
arguably immoral) big business and would have expected worse from an internal
email cache of such size.

Obviously FB has nobody on their "side" but themselves, but I for damn sure am
not on the UK government's side here. Comes off as look-what-we-can-do strong-
arm tactics when you don't show up when they want you to. And the publishing
appears to be just gloating. Shameful and I would hope others see it this way
regardless of their feelings towards FB. Sadly, the less-principled masses
care more about who it's targeted towards than the actions.

I wonder if the CA judge will formally censure the UK government or encourage
others with sealed documents in hand to not travel to places like this. Cry
"exceptional circumstances" all you want, but we declare non-guilt on harsher
crimes for much less egregious discovery violations than this.

~~~
fhbdukfrh
You may not like the process but it is completely legal for the MP to compel
the third party to turn over this information and then use parliamentary
privilege to publish it. If FB has sent Zuck to talk to parliament in the
first place this would not have happened. Instead he told them to get lost,
and what are you gonna do about it? Well, this is it.

Not sure what you mean about a formal censure. I'm not familiar with any legal
mechanism for a state judge to formally object to foreign parliamentary
procedure; how would that even work between a republic and a commonwealth?

~~~
ceejayoz
I don't think anyone's alleging the UK did anything wrong.

Six4Three's CEO is possibly on iffy legal grounds taking a bunch of sealed
docs overseas unnecessarily and then handing them over, though.

~~~
clubm8
>Six4Three's CEO is possibly on iffy legal grounds taking a bunch of sealed
docs overseas unnecessarily and then handing them over, though.

Yeah, this is weird. I've taken confidential documents overseas, but they were
either on an encrypted device, or stored securely in our cloud and pulled down
over a VPN after I arrived. Not printed out in my luggage. I'd expect to be
fired if I did that and a government got access at customs.

------
swozey
re: Android app and them working out ways to circumvent permission request
dialogs for reading SMS/call logs to build user coefficient levels (who knows
what else)

’The Growth team is now exploring a path where we only request Read Call Log
permission, and hold off on requesting any other permissions for now. ’Based
on their initial testing, it seems this would allow us to upgrade users
without subjecting them to an Android permissions dialog at all. ‘It would
still be a breaking change, so users would have to click to upgrade, but no
permissions dialog screen.’

------
Rotdhizon
Even with the damning information in these documents, can anyone explain what
possible consequences could result from them?

~~~
najarvg
My 2 cents.. either threats of regulation (anticompetitive behavior) or
pressure for Zuck to step down.

~~~
6nf
Can you actually force Mark out as CEO given that he’s the majority voting
share holder?

~~~
wewake
Replacing Mark is not going to change anything. The problem is not Mark, the
problem is what the company's built upon and its business model.

------
tylerplz
Is anyone genuinely surprised by this? I grew up with the early days of
Facebook and everyone around understood the company must be doing _something_
to provide some service to people for free. I've accepted the fact long time
ago that we are the product that they have to sell to make money to give us
something for free. Am I the only one feeling this way?

~~~
malvosenior
I don't think most people are surprised and I don't think most users care.
This is just the media grasping at anything it can get its hands on to attack
their rival.

------
cauldron
Alibaba once said it's "Data Technology" instead of IT now.

Looks like FB became the scapegoat of the entire industry.

~~~
samstave
There seem to be so many labels we could throw:

\- Intent analysis \- Sentiment influence \- Data sculpting \- Information
engineering \- Data engineering \- Stream management \- Cognition coordination

blah blah blah.

Labels are now the things of the commentary artists, howver, how do we
regulate and police things when they are many layers of abstraction.

For example, at what point do we have API exploitation police? Statutes
against very specific cyber-crimes?

Encapsulation policy/regulation?

At what point does spoofing overlap with identity theft?

What I find really interesting - and completely neglected as a source of
directional inspiration - is that Anime has been dealing with these tropes and
issues for decades.

The writers of Anime series with such concepts in mind should be sought,
encouraged, spoken-to to start thinking about such ripple effects of tech.

We will have a cyber 9/11 very soon.

------
mellow-lake-day
Just a reminder:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don't know why.

Zuck: They "trust me"

Zuck: Dumb fucks.

~~~
askafriend
I'd like a transcript of your conversations when you were 19.

And I'd like to keep them around to bring them up over and over again out of
context.

~~~
elefanten
I agree that this being reposted in any Facebook-related thread is old and
tired.

But I wouldn't dismiss the episode itself as irrelevant to assessing how
Zuckerberg thinks. If anything, it should be a well known bit of history and
already long baked into people's opinions.

And therefore it will always be "in context" when updating your opinion on
Zuckerberg's (specifically) and Facebook's (broadly) trustworthiness.

~~~
askafriend
You don't think Zuckerberg has updated a single opinion in the 15 years since
that exchange?

Think about how different the world was 15 years ago. Think about how
different of a person you are today versus just 4 years ago.

And on top of that, I'll share my opinion on the specific incident in
question: the people who volunteered their personal information into a random
web form distributed by a random student they didn't know...is by all
measures...stupid. A 19 year old me might have even used the words "dumb
fuck". So there you go.

My goal is not to defend Zuckerberg here. My goal is to defend people's right
to be 19 and stupid/inexperienced. I'm also defending people's right to grow
over the years.

------
ilovecaching
> [https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/05/seized-cache-of-
> facebook-d...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/05/seized-cache-of-facebook-
> docs-raise-competition-and-consent-questions/)

"The documents were obtained by a legal discovery process by a startup that’s
suing the social network in a California court in a case related to Facebook
changing data access permissions back in 2014/15.

The court had sealed the documents but the DCMS committee used rarely deployed
parliamentary powers to obtain them from the Six4Three founder, during a
business trip to London."

Um, what? This is bullshit. I'm much more concerned about the misuse of
government power to seize documents in court cases outside of the country of
jurisdiction than I am of Facebook.

Whether or not these acts of populism are genuine, governments that abuse
their power are just as bad as companies that skirt the law.

~~~
fuscy
Well I'd be worried if there's the power with no oversight to request anything
from personal nudes to the Coca Cola recipe and Area 51 secrets and then have
no repercussions if made public.

------
ilrwbwrkhv
Ok can we stop using all Facebook technology and stop this nonsense?

------
ssvss
Anyone knows the status of Facebook vs Steven Vachani case,
[https://youtu.be/-W1B89wXJU8](https://youtu.be/-W1B89wXJU8)

------
zeko1195
Facebook needs to be replaced.

------
fuscy
TL;DR required. I didn't quite get it from the article. Is Facebook accused of
doing something illegal under the laws at the time of the action?

If I were to sue them for anything, do I have any grounds?

