
Edward Snowden: Facebook is a surveillance company rebranded as 'social media' - doppp
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/edward-snowden-facebook-is-a-surveillance-company-rebranded-as-social-media
======
krick
Of course it is, it's funny that there even is any arguing about that in the
comments. Since when it's even a question? The real question is: so what can
we do about that? I, for one, don't really see an answer to that. All this
babbling by Snowden or anyone else for that matter is worth nothing. If there
is any war going on, FB is hopelessly winning and I don't see any attempts (or
even possible attempts) to change anything. Fuck, nobody even uses any
somewhat "secure" messenger, people use WhatsApp and Telegram (and even dare
to speak about them in terms of "privacy", which is mind boggling) and nobody
gives a fuck about anything — and "somewhat secure messenger" isn't even that
hard to achieve if people would really want it. And here you are talking about
FB or Android being evil — yeah, of course they are, but they don't even have
any plausible alternative to cover people's needs, so what do you expect…

~~~
runeb
Could you expand on WhatsApp? You are conflating privacy and "secure" and I am
confused. I thought WhatsApp had end to end encryption, even if FB can
probably see who chats with who.

~~~
matheusmoreira
WhatsApp does have end-to-end encryption. It integrated Signal's features a
couple years ago. It's enabled by default.

[https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/](https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-
complete/)

I'm not sure if it's good enough to foil the US government agencies and their
boundless stockpile of zero days. It did, however, make some judges here feel
very impotent and powerless. They really, really wanted the messages in order
to investigate some crime and couldn't understand why WhatsApp was resisting
their requests. They ended up ordering ISPs to block the messaging service for
a while as punishment.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2016/05/03/whatsapp-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2016/05/03/whatsapp-
founder-brazil-shut-down-facebook/)

Sure, it's true that people won't be able to audit the thing... But I think
it's significant that a huge number of people are using end-to-end encryption
by default without even realizing it. That's gotta count for something. It's a
lot better security-wise than whatever it is we used before, and most
certainly objectively a lot better than facebook messenger or SMS.

~~~
krick
> I think it's significant that a huge number of people are using end-to-end
> encryption by default without even realizing it > most certainly objectively
> a lot better than facebook messenger or SMS

Sure, I wouldn't argue with that. Doesn't make up for making me use Google
Services (or a phone & a phone number, for that matter) and sharing _all_ my
contacts with FB though. It might be even making me angrier about whole
situation: it's _so close_ to being good that it makes it obvious, how much
technologically possible it in fact is to have a sane messenger. We don't have
it though. And no surprise, because who would pay for it, if money cannot be
made out of our metadata?

------
zapita
Am I the only one who thinks that Google is getting off easy? When it comes to
1) tracking people and 2) contributing to the perverse incentives which are
transforming the media industry into an enemy of democracy, I think of Google
and Facebook as equally guilty and toxic.

Yet Google seems to get only a fraction of the negative coverage, both in the
press and in the tech community. Why is that?

~~~
devwinportable
because... not many people use Google+?

sorry.

~~~
zapita
But many people use Google Search, Maps, Mail, Analytics... And of course the
endless tentacles of Adsense, Adwords, Recaptcha, Doubleclick.

In my opinion the reach of Google, and therefore their ability to cause harm,
is even greater than Facebook's, and beyond the veneer of perceived
benevolence they are just as unethical.

~~~
John_KZ
The reason Google isn't getting much backlash is because they played their
cards right. They're much more discreet, their ads look like any other ad
except for the tiny adsense symbol, they give the appearance of a free, open
search engine etc etc. How many people know that the search suggestions don't
really reflect the most popular terms? How many know that Google will go
through your emails to pick up information about you? How many know that they
actively derank websites, essentially deleting them off the internet, based on
political choices?

It's also quite possible that people aren't aware of critisism against Google
simply because Google chooses to hide it. They're _that_ powerful right now.

------
boron1006
Usually I like Snowden, he seems to be fairly level-headed about most things.
This seems like a bit of a nothing statement though. No evidence to back up
his statement, no call to action.

I was thinking about reasonable ways to protect personal information. People
always say that they delete FB outright, but I don't think everyone has that
luxury. It's also a pretty good way of staying in touch with others. I came up
with a couple ways of at least making it harder for them to track you.

1\. Whatever email you use for FB, stop using it for other things. My
understanding is that a lot of how they can put your purchase history together
with your facebook profile is that companies that collect purchase data joins
it on e-mail.

2\. Stop using the FB apps. I think the "FB is listening to me" thing is
mostly BS, but apps in general give away a lot more information than websites.

3\. Log out of facebook when not using it. A huge reason that Facebook was
allowed to reach "beyond" they're own website is the Facebook pixel, which
allows FB to know where you're browsing when you're not on the site.

Of course, these won't work 100% (I have no idea if they'll work at all, this
is all stuff that I gathered from working as a data scientist at a much much
smaller social media company), but I think they're reasonable measures to take
to protect your data if you can't just stop using FB outright.

~~~
b1daly
I’m just replying to your comment as it jogged lose an example of what I see
as a missing piece of the issue.

Namely, a course of conduct in self protection needs to have an understanding
of what the potential harm is from a given threat.

As I see it, the big danger is not from these corporate data vacuums like
Facebook, directly.

The biggest threat is the use of this aggregated data by bad actors.

I have yet to hear of a major tech company undertaking actions to directly
harm the users of their products. In fact, they are highly incentivized to
minimize harms to users.

I don’t see targeted advertising as a bad thing. If I’m going to see adds, I
prefer they reflect my interests. I actually find out interesting things from
such adds.

Because the overall system has become so complex and monolithic, I think
taking steps to thoughtfully minimize personal information leakage is prudent.

But inconveniencing oneself to no discernible benefit is counter productive,
and can easily backfire.

For example, if you move your email service to one provided by your shared
website host, you open yourself to many potential woes.

Emails from private domains are more likely to get lost in spam filters. I’ve
had unfortunately breakdowns in relationships because people who needed to
reach me thought I was blowing them off.

Last time I had an email address a private domain, the spam filtering was so
bad, it rendered it almost useless.

You’re also hosting your mail on god knows what server, controlled by a
company with a lot less security resources than Google.

So there is a substantial cost in avoiding the free email services like Gmail,
for nebulous benefit.

I am very concerned about the issue of personal information security. But
everything comes at a cost.

The question of whether allowing law enforcement back door access to private
communications is worth it is not so straightforward as many commenters seem
to imply.

~~~
wiz21c
>>> In fact, they are highly incentivized to minimize harms to users.

You may be right. But it really depends who the users are and the kind of Don
Corleone proposal the management of the social media company might get. (hint
: some group of very powerful people can be the most important users of FB and
can make it a proposal that they can't refuse; people like a shady government
bureau)

>>> You’re also hosting your mail on god knows what server, controlled by a
company with a lot less security resources than Google.

The question is not security. The question is who manages the server and who
he abides to. Security doesn't mean nothing as as long as the server is
cracked/owned, all your data will be open.

------
RandomCSGeek
Why is this even a subject for discussion? A typical HN user already knows
about this, while the general masses don't give a f* about their privacy.

Also, for the most part, FB is not getting your data without your
permission(like a surveillance company), rather, it asks you to give it(eg:
upload contacts so we could find your friends), or people voluntarily give
data to it(eg: uploading selfies, with location and time metadata as bonus).

There are only two things of concern here, 1. How to make more people aware
about the privacy implications of their online actions. 2. How to make these
firms more responsible for properly protecting the data they have.

Regarding #1, when I told people about myactivity.google.com, at least one
person switched to DuckDuckGo(although I don't know if he sticked with it).
Attempts to make people switch to Signal have miserably failed, forcing me to
use WhatsApp as well. No one ever quit FB though, rather they got deeper into
the rabbit hole by using Instagram as well.

Regarding #2, countries should learn from EU and make stronger privacy laws.

~~~
e12e
> Also, for the most part, FB is not getting your data without your
> permission(like a surveillance company), rather, it asks you to give it(eg:
> upload contacts so we could find your friends), or people voluntarily give
> data to it(eg: uploading selfies, with location and time metadata as bonus).

Me uploading pictures of you and a large part of your social graph, and
Facebook correlating that with a shadow profile built with tracking pixels etc
isn't exactly passive? Or with _your_ explicit permission?

------
dotsh
Surveillance and privacy... these are terms that typical "social media" users
don't really care about. We can brag about it, we can delete our accounts,
block them, do whatever we want and nothing will change because brainless mass
will still use it to post hundreds of private information daily. They are
addicted to this and if you take this "toy" away from them they will start
behaving like hungry junkies.

Addiction is the power of Facebook and nothing more.

To fight with Facebook you have to set up another social media addiction that
will dominate the market and expect that after a few years it will not be the
same again...

~~~
etatoby
Instagram managed to do it, but then it was bought by Facebook.

------
734786710934
"Facebook makes their money by exploiting and selling intimate details about
the private lives of millions, far beyond the scant details you voluntarily
post."

Facebook doesn't sell information, it sells ads. It's in Facebook's best
interest to share as little of this information as possible with third parties
so they continue buying ads.

~~~
jijfeoiwha
1\. You're quibbling over semantics. Facebook profits by selling ads. The
value of those ads is that they can be precisely targeted. That precision
comes from all the private data Facebook collects on you. So Snowden's quote
is true.

2\. In the past, Facebook has sold info to advertisers and tracking companies:

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304772804575558...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304772804575558484075236968?mod=wsj_share_twitter)

That article is a little old, and Facebook may have changed their policy. But
the recent story about Cambridge Analytics shows that, at least in some cases,
Facebook still shares your information with third parties.

------
TeMPOraL
If Facebook and Google are like Stasi and KGB, how about we start dealing with
_collaborators_? By default, Facebook and Google can only surveil you on their
own premises - on facebook.com, *.google.com, some parts of Android
experience, etc. But lots - likely most - of their data comes from wilful
collaborators - people and companies that put Google analytics, social
plugins, and other adtech ware in their products.

What I worry about is that even if (through a miracle) Facebook gets slain,
someone else will quickly step up to take their place. In the world of adtech,
surveillance is a free market.

~~~
dustingetz
facebook like button is how they scoop data from non-facebook web properties
about people who don’t have a facebook account or aren’t logged into facebook

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yes. But Facebook buttons don't spread themselves, people actively put them on
their sites.

------
fastball
A bit pedantic, but probably more accurate if you flip that around:

Facebook was a social media company that has pivoted to become a surveillance
company because they can make more money that way.

~~~
switch007
"has pivoted"? Recently? When was it not a surveillance company?

~~~
TeMPOraL
When it was just a small site for bunch of college kids to share their party
experiences.

~~~
switch007
Which is its distant past, not recent (to me implied by saying "has pivoted"
instead of just "pivoted")... as we're being particular here.

~~~
fastball
The present perfect tense does not necessarily mean that the action is recent.

I chose the present perfect because I think Facebook still derives utility
from being a social network and is not _solely_ a data-mining machine. It's a
process that I think is probably inevitable but is not completed yet.

------
pmoriarty
I'd widen this to include search engines, forums, much of the rest of the
internet, phone companies, cable companies, banks, and many other companies.
Everyone seems to want to get in on the spying game these days, most every
company wants to know as much as possible about their customers.

Of course, Facebook differs from most companies in the amount of data it
manages to collect about its users. A cable company isn't going to know nearly
as much about its typical customer as Facebook knows, but they can still
probably infer a surprising amount from your viewing habits -- including
political views based on which news programs you watch, for instance.

Web forums could know even more than cable companies, as many people are quite
candid in discussing what they think and care about on them. Then there are
communications companies like Skype, which have access to all sorts of
confidential and sensitive communications.

The list goes on and on, and I'm really not sure how this runaway freight
train of voluntary participation in surveillance can be stopped at this point,
as for most people all these services are too damn convenient, and virtually
none of them were built with strong privacy, much less anonymity in mind.

~~~
b1daly
Commenters on Internet forums don’t see them as surveillance platforms, from
which they must hide their views.

These are platforms for speech. People crave and seek such platforms, and
frankly I think they provide a valuable service in disseminating ideas that
corporate entities have no incentives to.

It verges on absurd to criticize platforms designed to transmit public speech
on the grounds that they might leak that information.

There seems to be a quaint archetype floating in the collective consciousness
with an image of privacy that has never existed, outside of recluses living in
exile from their community.

Historically, anyone living in a small community had such a lack of privacy,
that it would be intolerable to many modern city dwellers.

There needs to be a more nuanced and realistic concept of how personal
information is managed, by all entities who touch it.

~~~
megous
> Historically, anyone living in a small community had such a lack of privacy,
> that it would be intolerable to many modern city dwellers.

We're talking about information age though, where the information can be
gathered in massive quantities and processed and used in ways such past
communities would not even dream about.

These days someone can be harrased by some idiot/criminal from other side of
the globe.

So the issue is not really comaprable, and risks are different.

------
iliketosleep
From whichever perspective you look at it, this definitely rings true.
Facebook gained popularity as as a way for college students to stalk each
other, and as a corporation it makes money from tracking users and gaining
detailed/intimate information about them.

Combined with the fact that it actually requires effort NOT to be tracked by
facebook - much of the tracking is involuntary - facebook is clearly a
surveillance company. I wish more people would realize this.

------
b1daly
For those advocating for more awareness of the loss of privacy, some more
precision would be helpful.

What Facebook does is not the same as a “surveillance company”.

To throw out the term, with the obvious negative connotations, might attract
attention, but muddies clear understanding of the dynamic flows of networked
information that we are part of, and the incentive structures of the entities
involved.

I’m saying, just getting a clear understanding of what is happening is hard
enough, never mind determining the possible consequences of various paths of
action.

There are a lot of unexpected, emergent properties of such a complicated
system as the global internet, which has billions of autonomous agents as
fundamental components.

A prime example is the current examination of the influence of the “Russian
Trolls” in the 2016 election. I doubt many people foresaw the current
controversy around this subject. I cant think of any parallels to the
phenomenon.

Knee jerk reactions about such complicated systems, which from people
influenced by the “hacker” ethos tend to the anti-corporate, anti-government
point of view, severely misrepresent the threat environment that a common
citizen confronts.

From my point of view, the biggest threat to an individual is from criminal
activity. People like to rag on Equifax for the security breach, but I don’t
come across similar screeds against the actual perpetrators of the breach.

The phenomenon of these large scale hacks of personal information is an
unintended property of the current business, consumer, and governmental
conduct.

A “surveillance company” is a whole different category of threat.

------
rdtsc
The Stasi and KGB would have given everything to have something like Facebook.
Here they were installing listening devices, torturing people, following them,
getting family members to spy on each other. They just needed Facebook and
none of that would have been necessary. People would voluntarily log in and
type everything they do, where they travel, what food they are eating, what
political parties they support, who their friends are, everything connected
nicely in a pretty graph with nodes and edges.

>
> [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg)

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

~~~
appleshore
People can dismiss this saying he was a teenager, and just randomly chatting
to a friend privately.

But I've been developing programs since I was 15, and created my first startup
(hardware) at 18 with an engineer 10-years older than me.

Never once did I ever refer to any of our customers or clients as "dumb
fucks". Why? What did they do to Zuck?

Although, I did refer to AOL executives, FBI agents, Secret Service agents,
federal prosecutors and lame wannabe hackers as dumb fucks. Both then and now.
And I work with the federal government, with an agency that's often unfairly
demonized by a variety of people.

Which makes me think of a new phrase: dumb zucks.

Quasi wannabe devs who build products and services not to advance the hacker
ethos or crypto-anarchy but to get rich being essentially technical marketing
partners for the FBI and corporate America.

EDIT- Facebook's address is 1 Hacker Way. Zuck is not a hacker. He is the
opposite of one.

~~~
tritium
Meh, if Mark Zuckerberg has only that one, same, tired sideways quote dragged
out and tossed around every time criticism is leveled against him, then Christ
almighty if he isn't squeaky clean. A little too clean, if you really wanted
my opinion.

His attitude and all-around conduct is pretty much that of a boy scout, and to
be honest, I find it boring. Linus Torvalds curses like a sailor, and he
doesn't spare anyone's feelings with his criticism, whether it's an individual
or a broad generalization. Would you mistrust Linux based on the principal
developer's language, or is it more about the project's overall opacity?

Mark Zuckerberg's general demeanor can be read from many obvious tells across
all the things he touches. He's not dating super models, he's not buying
people Audis, his flagship website has one theme for everyone, two colors
(blue & white), five uninteresting emojis, and all the personality of AOL and
Yahoo! combined. Yet this reveals nothing about what goes on across Facebook's
backplane.

If you're going to criticize his character, you have to criticize the depth
and breadth of whatever the faustian bargain is, according to the Snowden
leaks. You can compare Zuckerberg to Snowden in terms of choices made, but you
really can't fault Zuckerberg for using harsh language in casual conversation.
It comes across as whiny and pathetic, like some petulant child. Actions speak
louder than words, as they say.

~~~
sillysaurus3
The fact that it's posted often doesn't change its power. And that you rush to
defend Zuck says quite a lot.

One thing is true: Those at the top rarely mean what they say. They are
masters of dissembling, because they understand how dangerous it is to reveal
one's true feelings.

This was a rare glimpse into raw, unfiltered Zuck. And what we find is that
he's just like the rest of those in power. No wonder they love him so much.

We're the dumb fucks to them. And that should be at least a little worrying.

~~~
koko775
Raw, unfiltered me fifteen years ago was probably a misogynistic "nice guy" on
a regular basis. Raw unfiltered me right now is all for feminism and social
justice, and hates the shit out of that guy I was fifteen years ago.

If the worst quote attributed to him shows him calling people dumb for
throwing their personal info at someone they have no reason to trust...that's
not a very strong indictment of his character. And even though it's reasonably
bad, there's no way fourteen years of responsibility won't change people.

The idiot who said "dumb fucks" is an entirely alien person to the person now.
And the quote calling people dumb for giving some online rando their personal
data doesn't exactly demonstrate a conclusive disregard for the value of that
data. If anything, it's an insult to people's intelligence because they should
care more.

It doesn't make him a hero, but doesn't make him a villain, either.

~~~
gear54rus
Yes he's entirely alien person. The one now will hide his sociopathy much
better.

And make you disregard the moment when he showed his true self as a thing of
the past.

~~~
koko775
Assuming he's the same person as back then but hides it better, do you think
that his true self thinking people are dumb to give an unknown and untrusted
online service their information extremely freely is wrong? Or just an asshole
at the time?

Point is, as much as it might color his character, so does his observable
conduct in all the years since. Reiterating: _with_ context (would appreciate
if you don't forget I'm not disregarding it and talk past me) - it really
doesn't give much context, though it's an amazingly compelling soundbite.

------
product50
This is why Snowden is a mixed figure. While I admire what he did and what he
stands for, blatant statements like this reduce trust and makes one question
whether he is indeed righteous.

~~~
shinypotatoe
What is wrong with his statement?

~~~
PaulStatezny
> What is wrong with his statement?

I assume they think it’s disingenuous to paint Facebook in such absolute
terms, ignoring the context in which it was first launched:

It was competing with MySpace. Social media was a much newer phenomenon; it
hadn’t yet taken its modern shape.

Perhaps Facebook has become a tool for surveillance, but it seems a bit of a
stretch to suggest that surveillance is the primary reason it exists.

~~~
rdiddly
And yet surveillance is the foundation of the primary service they sell right
now. If a company makes clocks, we tend to say it's a clock company.

~~~
product50
Yes - FB does all the things it does because it wants to sell your data off to
Russia. That is its mission statement. Awesome right since that is what you
want to hear. Lets go back now - party is all over.

~~~
rdiddly
Nope they sell it to their advertisers. Remember?

