
FTC Probing Facebook for Use of Personal Data, Source Says - coloneltcb
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-20/ftc-said-to-be-probing-facebook-for-use-of-personal-data
======
ckastner
This presents an interesting opportunity for the FTC.

The amount of data being amassed by Facebook, Google and others has become
exorbitant, and apparently has already been abused (some might even say
weaponized) in a major election.

If Facebook indeed violated the 2011 consent decree, then the FTC can fine
them up to "thousands of dollars a day per violation [per user]". This
presents the FTC with the opportunity to send a message to these data
hoarders: protect the data you collect, _or else_.

Fine them to the point where they have to start asking themselves whether it's
even _worth it_ to collect and store certain data, and with whom to share it.

It shouldn't be the government's job to ensure that the data gets protected,
this should be in Facebook's own self interest.

~~~
xienze
> and apparently has already been abused (some might even say weaponized) in a
> major election.

You mean major election_s_, right? I do seem to remember the Democrats crowing
about how Obama's team had used social media to their advantage and
Republicans were hopelessly outmatched in this arena.

[http://swampland.time.com/2012/11/20/friended-how-the-
obama-...](http://swampland.time.com/2012/11/20/friended-how-the-obama-
campaign-connected-with-young-voters/)

Fun tidbits:

> But the Obama team had a solution in place: a Facebook application that will
> transform the way campaigns are conducted in the future. For supporters, the
> app appeared to be just another way to digitally connect to the campaign.
> But to the Windy City number crunchers, it was a game changer. “I think this
> will wind up being the most groundbreaking piece of technology developed for
> this campaign,” says Teddy Goff, the Obama campaign’s digital director.

> That’s because the more than 1 million Obama backers who signed up for the
> app gave the campaign permission to look at their Facebook friend lists. In
> an instant, the campaign had a way to see the hidden young voters. Roughly
> 85% of those without a listed phone number could be found in the uploaded
> friend lists.

Whoa, that sounds exactly like the "breach" we're talking about here!

And a former Obama staffer confirms this:
[https://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/03/20/ex-obama-staffer-
cl...](https://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/03/20/ex-obama-staffer-claims-
facebook-allowed-campaign-to-mine-user-data-because-they-were-on-our-side)
(yeah yeah "I don't trust your source", but it's just screenshots straight
from the horse's mouth).

Money quotes:

> Facebook was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but
> they didn’t stop us once they realized that was what we were doing.

> They came to office in the days following election recruiting & were very
> candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone
> else to do because they were on our side.

~~~
BryantD
The major differences:

1\. The Democrats didn't harvest the data under false pretenses; the data came
from people who signed up for a political app.

2\. The Democratic campaign data wasn't illegally transferred from one company
to another.

But I agree that the Obama campaign's actions should have been a flag and we
should have worried harder about it, even if they weren't as bad as what
Cambridge Analytica did.

~~~
ams6110
> illegally transferred

I'd question illegality. In violation of agreements, perhaps. If there were
any, and there wasn't a wink, wink type of understanding on what would be
done.

~~~
creaghpatr
It's like SuperPAC coordination. Every election cycle there are countless
obvious violations of SuperPAC coordination at all levels and parties but
these are hardly ever investigated much less prosecuted.

~~~
BryantD
Exactly.

I sort of don't care why the media firestorm is so bad, even if it's unfair,
because it means we might see some action which will limit bad actors on all
sides of the political spectrum.

------
torpfactory
To any engineers reading this who are now working at Facebook, you have a
choice to make:

Stay in the organization and work to turn it away form casual misuse of
personal information. Prevent an Orwellian future of machine-learning
assisted, personally targeted messaging preying upon our fears and
insecurities. Stand up and speak out against the performance of unethical
psychological experiments on unwitting participants.

-OR-

Leave now.

This is one of the important moral issues of our time. To stay on the
sidelines is unacceptable.

~~~
macspoofing
Oh stop with this ridiculous hyberbole. Just stop.

>This is one of the important moral issues of our time.

No, it's not. Even if it was (and it's not) I'm not even sure if it would
crack the top 100. For example, did you know there are people without access
to clean water? There are civil wars? State run gulags? Did you know man-made
global climate change is a thing? How about that we're going through an
unprecedented ecological collapse? All non-issues. The big moral problem of
our time is a social media company that wants to sell you shit.

~~~
mikegioia
Doesn't this entire issue corroborate the idea that this ISN'T just about a
social media company trying to sell us shit?

Two of the issues you mentioned, state run gulags and anthropogenic climate
change, are issues really only solvable at the federal level. Facebook's and
Cambridge Analytica's ability to influence an election can have a profound
effect on those kinds of issues. I mean, we now have a climate change denier
in the White House who is dismantling the EPA. If propaganda spreading through
Facebook created that, could that not also be partly responsible for our
inability to do something about climate change?

That's just one example, but I think you're being just as hyperbolic by saying
this wouldn't crack the top 100.

~~~
macspoofing
>Doesn't this entire issue corroborate the idea that this ISN'T just about a
social media company trying to sell us shit

No. OP called out Facebook, not Cambridge Analytica. OP attempted to shame
Facebook employees not Cambridge Analytica employees. Facebook is here to sell
targeted ads.

>but I think you're being just as hyperbolic by saying this wouldn't crack the
top 100.

I stand by it. This smells like a big nothing burger. I'm not even sure what
the news here is. Candy Crush probably has info on hundreds of millions of
Facebook users. No outrage there.

It isn't even novel that Facebook was used for political targetting, as the
Obama, Romney, and more broadly DNC and RNC did the exact same thing. I just
assumed this was all part of that vauted digital strategy all the news outlet
were blaring about everytime one party won an election. It may be a
coincidence that this is a problem because Trump used this method for voter
outreach. Maybe.

Maybe it's the potential Russian meddling that's the new news here? But then
it's not really what the news outlets are focusing on. It's all about how
Cambridge Analytica created 'psychological profiles' on voters...which sounds
more like a query that was ran against the dataset.

~~~
ppbutt
It's the obvious malicious intent that we see time and time again with
Facebook, the companies they own, and like-minded companies like Google and
Amazon. People are fed up with the BS. It's atrocious that no tech people
speak out or get the airtime to inform people what's going on without their
knowledge (and most of the time, consent). Facebook is a scourge to humanity.

------
davidgordon
Let us please remember that these incidents are not specific to Facebook,
rather they are systemic to the big five.

A couple of years or more I was posting on Facebook regarding Cambridge
Analytica's practices and was considered a tin foil hat and crazy.

No the reason I was able to shed some light at the time was I knew exactly how
we could utilize the Facebook API back then to elicit the kind of data we are
talking about, and completely legally. Nobody needed to circumvent FB API
policies, it was yours for the taking.

I didn't do it although I did put together multiple PoC's from 2011 to 2014 to
see what was possible and it was bad.

Another thing we should remember is that Cambridge Analytica is just one small
tip of a fractal iceberg whose body is Facebook and the big five, your
internet connection and certainly your smartphone themselves.

Google, Apple and Amazon are no less culpable in this regard.

The question now becomes which side of history we want to be on.

Another question is we assume we want to take our privacy back and how we do
that with consent and assurance.

I don't have a Facebook account anymore but I'm still tracked as we all are.
My mother doesn't like me not being there but a small price to pay. I can
contact her elsewhere and do.

Surely enough is enough?

I think it is time to look for broad scale technologies that are better both
in the real world and in our private world.

~~~
robin_reala
Out of interest, is there any evidence that Apple are collating data and
making it available to 3rd parties in the same way as Facebook? They like to
position themselves as more caring of the user’s privacy than the rest, but
I’d definitely like to know more about any problems.

~~~
rockinghigh
Unlike Google and Facebook, Apple does not make money by selling user profiles
for marketers to target.

~~~
FireBeyond
Only because iAd
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd)) was a
horrific failure.

In early 2011, the minimum buy price on the platform was $500K. By midyear,
$300K. By early 2012, $100K. Early 2013? $50 (no K missing, just fifty bucks).

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
I believe you that it was a failure, but that doesn't follow from the minimum
price dropping. Perhaps as they gained confidence in the system, they allowed
smaller buys with smaller prices (but still just as profitable).

------
apo
It's laughable that any Facebook user assumes any degree of privacy.

What's far more concerning, and what this probe doesn't appear to address, is
what Facebook does with the information of non-users.

[https://fieldguide.gizmodo.com/all-the-ways-facebook-
tracks-...](https://fieldguide.gizmodo.com/all-the-ways-facebook-tracks-you-
that-you-might-not-kno-1795604150)

[https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/06/02/facebook-
ads-f...](https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/06/02/facebook-ads-for-non-
users)

~~~
remir
You seriously think grandma and Joe the plumber are aware of Facebook's
constant data collection?

Let's have empathy for people outside the tech bubble and realize that it's
our duty as technical people to educate people around us about these issues.

~~~
lisp_me_away
You don't talk to many casuals then. They are fully aware that all of their
data is being recorded and used against them. They've been aware since the
massive NSA scandal.

~~~
remir
What about the like button on web sites and the FB pixel that is invisible to
the user? Again, you seriously think Joe average is aware of that?

------
fortythirteen
Prediction: Facebook's goal for this investigation will be to make sure the
public doesn't learn that Cambridge Analytica was only one of countless
political actors that "somehow gained access" the pool of user information.

I was in meetings with FB almost 10 years ago, as the OpenGraph API was being
implemented, where they were openly selling, to anyone willing to pay, exactly
what CA supposedly "hacked their way into".

~~~
mistermann
The Obama campaign was very proud of doing something at least as bad, but I
don't think we'll see that on the news, which offers a glimpse into what the
motives are here.

~~~
pcnix
The Obama campaign was involved in laughably simple PR and door to door
efforts compared to the complexity and microtargeting of this one.

~~~
closeparen
The Obama campaign employed Big Data to target which doors to knock on and
which issues to bring up at each one.

------
hodder
To put the FB selloff into a market perspective: -Equifax is only off 13% from
its peak after its unprecedented leak of nearly every American and many
Canadians' credit info, leaving the population vulnerable to identity theft.
The population mostly never agreed to give Equifax this information, but
Equifax collects it anyways.

FB is off 8.5% now as a client business failed to adhere to FB users' privacy
for data that the users were willingly giving out to FB and the client (but
not the third party). Not likely much more downside to the stock on this news
imo.

~~~
matthewmcg
Perhaps the market's reaction reflects the widespread belief that this
publicity may drive users away from Facebook, whereas Consumers can't really
opt out of Equifax's collection.

------
dahdum
Biggest concern for Facebook has got to be them investigating the other
sharing of data beyond Cambridge Analytica. I seriously doubt they turned the
other way for conservative but not liberal think tanks / firms.

~~~
toufka
They also have datasets of 50M user profiles floating around out there filled
with Facebook-like data. There still hasn't been a public leak of that kind of
data that I can think of. I think a concern for Facebook is also what happens
if/when 50M Americans' names, gender, hometown, birthday, and names of 500
closest friends become public for all to see. That's not really data that you
can change or put back into a bottle.

~~~
maxerickson
The name and address data isn't anything unique. There's probably multiple
companies with better address data than Facebook has. And the national party
organizations have pretty much complete voter rolls with addresses.

The unique data is the friend graph and the likes, which they can use to
(quite effectively) predict political attitudes.

------
api
In the long term we need HIPAA style regulation for all kinds of personal
data: friend graphs, behavioral histories, private messages, and especially
things like location data or voice assistant audio samples.

Leak such data without explicit customer consent? That will be $10,000 per
incident. So if you leak 100 data points of someone's location history that
will be a $1,000,000 fine.

Explicit consent must be per-incident as in "YES I give my consent to send
this information to <recipient> for purpose of <...>."

That would incentivize strong security practices and even more importantly
dis-incentivize data hoarding beyond what is needed to provide a service.
Hoarded personal data would be a gigantic risk and liability.

~~~
moduspol
It would just pass the buck. What everyone on HN is clamoring for will result
in basically more bureaucracy and longer EULAs with no actual change in
business practice.

Businesses don't take it seriously because people don't actually care. Some
do. The vast majority don't. They might say so in a survey, but at the end of
the day, Facebook (and companies like it) will continue to survive doing what
they always have been and people will continue using those services.

That's the root of the issue, though. People really don't care as much as
posters on HN think they do. If we could acknowledge that, I think we could
come up with better solutions.

~~~
CaptainZapp
The GDPR should take care of that to a large degree.

Consent must be asked for in a clear understandable fashion.

Burrying some legalese crap at page 29 of your 12'000 word TOS doesn't cut it.

Could be that Facebook tries to push the envelope yet again. They may come to
regret it.

~~~
moduspol
We'll see.

If I had to bet, it will not be the case that we'll see some big exile of
users as a result of having to click through an additional "Agree and
Continue" dialogue to get to what they were going to do anyway. The GDPR will
do a lot more to appear to be doing things right than actually benefiting
users.

~~~
rmc
It depends. Courts could rule that click through licences don't constitute
"informed consent", because let's be honest, people aren't informed about what
they're signing.

~~~
moduspol
Respectfully if users are honestly considered too dumb to read targeted dialog
boxes, the regulation required to "fix" that "problem" is going to be
downright draconian.

------
HenryBemis
I expect that FB will be receiving a few milliong letters like this [1] in a
couple of months, when GDPR will be kicking in. And following that, a few
million requests (smaller number) for the "right to be forgotten" [2].

#1 was on the front page of HN a couple of days ago.

[1]: [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nightmare-letter-subject-
acce...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nightmare-letter-subject-access-
request-under-gdpr-karbaliotis/)

[2]: [https://gdpr-info.com/the-right-to-be-forgotten/](https://gdpr-
info.com/the-right-to-be-forgotten/)

~~~
anonymouz
They already had an obligation to respond to such inquires under the older EU
Data Protection Directive. But they generally ignored the requests or only
gave incomplete data (e.g., you'd get your facebook posts, etc., but no
tracking data they had on you).

------
marcoperaza
The focus of this scandal is curious. Does anyone seriously expect privacy for
information that they willingly share with hundreds of people (their facebook
friends)?

If you think this kind of information floating around is damaging to society,
then you're making an argument against the very idea of FB. Fine; it's at
least worth thinking about how social media is changing our society. But to
really be upset that this data is out there and being used, after willingly
sharing it with many people, is kind of ridiculous. What did you expect? You
should assume that anything you do on FB, short of private messages, is part
of the public record.

Everyone is targeting you based on information you put out in the world. Every
major political campaign in the US works with a database of voters that
includes party affiliation, past turnout, name, age, etc. They can also fold
in the same data that advertisers use. Being a good citizen of a republic—and
a savvy consumer—in the modern world means thinking critically about who is
trying to persuade you and what their agenda is. The government cannot protect
you from persuasion.

~~~
lozzo
You made your point very clear. Thanks. I concur.

------
ablanton
I love how now this issue is alright to talk about on hacker news. For some
reason when it was happening and all of the alarms were going off, it was
banned content on hacker news. Technology is inherently political with
political ramifications. -_-

------
angryasian
Facebook is just one target right now. Working in ad tech, you know how many
data brokers are available and how much information your phone and apps,
regardless of OS, leaks real time personal data. The issue is with the ad tech
industry as a whole.

------
mtgx
Wait a minute.....

Wasn't the FTC already "monitoring" Facebook?

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ftc-to-monitor-facebook-
for-20-...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ftc-to-monitor-facebook-for-20-years-
but-no-fine/)

Oh, that's right. That whole monitoring for 20 years thing, that they're also
applying to Google and a few other companies is a _complete joke_. If
anything, it has become almost a badge of honor/certification thing - like
"Look, the FTC is monitoring us for 20 years, so that obviously means we can't
possibly abuse your data or do anything nefarious with it!"

------
nepotism2018
"...50 million users..."

Anyone know how this number was added up? Any reason not to believe it wasn't
500 million or 5 million?

~~~
mtgx
The Guardian's original article on this says that number was shown in
documents from 2015 [1]. However, the whistleblower said that by now it should
be over 230 million [2].

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-
analy...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-
facebook-influence-us-election)

[2] [https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-
whistl...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-
whistleblower-christopher-wylie-faceook-nix-bannon-trump)

------
mychael
Facebook is a net negative force in our society. Particularly for the startup
ecosystem.

------
rafiki6
Disclaimer: I'm anti-democracy in it's _current form_ so before you down vote
me think through my point carefully.

What I don't get about this whole issue, is that we are basically admitting
that the average person who uses these services has poor critical thinking
skills and the American democratic process is easily gamed as such. I feel we
are trying to fix the wrong thing. Sure, regulate FB and any other company
that happens to collect lots of user data I don't have a problem with that. My
fundamental issue is that FB is mostly an opt-in service. As far as I can see,
the shadow profiles they create on a user who isn't signed up for their
services doesn't really contain enough data to be of material impact for the
type of things that a company like CA is doing (it's mostly to help in it's ad
network to sell you more stuff rather and is rather well anonomyzed).

The only argument against the fact that FB is an opt-in service is that it has
a near monopoly on social media and seems to either buy or kill any serious
threat. More important than trying to regulate FB's data collection and
privacy would be ensuring that our antitrust and monopoly laws are being
enforced to remove FB's near monopoly.

Further, I'm not here to defend Facebook, but I feel it's being used as a
scapegoat for an easily gamed democratic process where rather than biting the
bullet and fixing that, we are saying it's FB and CA are the real evil here.
In fact they are not. They are for-profit businesses who are operating within
the current regulatory framework they've been provided. It seems obvious to me
what really needs to be fixed is a broken electoral process.

~~~
lambda_lover
I think you make a great point here: we absolutely need a population that
thinks more critically before they act, whether it's voting or signing up for
a service or purchasing a product.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure how realistic that is. I think people just don't
want to have to critically think _all the time_ , and it's unrealistic to
expect every member of the population to exert constant vigilance against ill
will. There are simply too many forces trying to manipulate us and get our
attention to expect every person to never mess up ever.

This is where the government steps in. Expect companies to be reasonably
transparent about their intentions (signing up for Facebook definitely did not
give me adequate warning a decade ago about their intentions with my data, and
subsequent changes in their plans were not adequately expressed to me as a
user), and reasonably cautious in their expansion (I signed up for Facebook at
the age of 12, which is technically against Facebook's TOS. They didn't put
enough effort into policing those TOS to kick me off the site at the age of
12, and I certainly wasn't mature enough to understand the breadth of
Facebook's TOS. Unfortunately I don't think many non-lawyers are equipped to
understand the true meaning of signing up for Facebook, which... is it's own
problem).

Basically we need these corporations to be better citizens than then currently
are, which shouldn't be terribly hard since they're currently downright
psychopathic citizens, exploiting the law and their large workforces to
manipulate other citizens at every turn. In a better world than our own,
corporations would actually be _model_ citizens, but that's probably not
realistic in the capitalist system. And we also need the government to do its
job better, by punishing corporations that act selfishly so that others
actually have an incentive to behave well.

~~~
quotemstr
How do you distinguish a population that "thinks more critically before they
act" and one that lives in constant fear of social backlash? They're two sides
of the same coin!

An intellectually free society is one in which one doesn't have to think
critically about the potential social and economic ramifications of every
remark. It's a society in which people can pitch inchoate ideas, receive
feedback, and iterate on worldviews.

That we're increasingly living in an intellectually unfree society isn't the
fault of "corporations" and their citizenship. Instead, it's the result of a
push toward controlling people in the name of 'fixing' society and preventing
'harm'. History tells us that down this road lies only death and blood.

------
jliptzin
Why don’t they just offer the option to turn off ads? If there’s no ads to
show to you because you’re paying to opt out, there should be no reason to
harvest your personal info. They have 2 billion active users and make around
$50 billion a year. So they’d need to charge $2 per user per month to opt out
of ads (and could probably charge more). The fact that this isn’t even an
option just reeks of their holier than thou corporate attitude.

~~~
TAForObvReasons
The type of person to pay to turn off ads is generally the type of person that
advertisers want to influence.

~~~
mrlala
I don't know about that.. those are probably the people who it's way harder to
influence, or even not possible. It's not worth their time. Focus on the.. I
don't know.. 70%? who doesn't care if ads are flying across their screen, it's
easy to influence them.

------
faramarz
I don't know where else to say this so i'll say it here as it's relavant.

Is there not a way to have a browser extension that would scramble the meta
data that is read by websits lik Facebook and Google? so we would still be
feeding data to their brain but it would be worthless and random gibbrish.
Does that make any snse?

~~~
teen
[https://adnauseam.io/](https://adnauseam.io/)

[https://noiszy.com/](https://noiszy.com/)

------
candybar
I'm somewhat surprised by the amount of criticism levied at Facebook here.
Consider the following:

1) Both Android and iOS allow apps to access your contacts, which in aggregate
is more or less the same kind of social graph that Facebook has. If you happen
to be in someone else's contacts, you don't get a say here either. I suppose
Facebook's data is richer in some ways, but not in other ways.

2) When Twitter removed API access for 3rd parties, there was an uproar in the
developer community about how evil this is and so on. There's a trade-off here
- openness at the platform level necessarily means less privacy for users.

3) A lot of the criticism Facebook has received in the past (both here and
elsewhere) had to do with not allowing 3rd party developers to do more and
hoarding user data, which is not theirs, for monetization. Here Facebook was
explicitly giving the app owner and the user the power to decide - the app
owner could ask and the user could either accept or decline. You could argue
that this isn't adequate protection, but consider how this works for other
platforms such as Windows, Mac OS, iOS and Android. Apps can access more or
less everything and permission dialogs, even where they do exist, aren't taken
seriously by the user.

4) Most publishers that are currently publishing these articles criticizing
Facebook are also selling everything they know about you to marketers, often
more explicitly for the purposes of targeting. The "scandal" here is that a
third-party app gathered personal information that wasn't supposed to be used
for targeting and the data ended up being used for targeted political ads.
Most publishers have no problem explicitly selling whatever data they can get
on you to these centralized data brokers who will sell that data to anyone.

5) All this talk about privacy and data aside, the motivation seems to be that
the wrong guy won the presidential election - I don't see anyone whose
personal data was supposedly used in this manner being upset nor anyone owning
up to the fact that they were falsely manipulated into voting for Trump or not
voting. It seems to be mainly Clinton supporters being upset that other people
were manipulated into voting for the wrong guy, amplified by the same concern
about privacy and social graph data ownership issue we've always had.

6) If we accept that it's the presidential election result that most people
are upset about here, the media is even more culpable, both from creating this
false narrative that it was not a close election and prematurely taking the
moral high ground against the potential Clinton administration by focusing on
the irrelevant stuff (emails, etc). And that's just the "mainstream" media,
before we get to Fox News, etc.

~~~
Thriptic
> The "scandal" here is that a third-party app gathered personal information
> that wasn't supposed to be used for targeting and the data ended up being
> used for targeted political ads.

The scandal is that an organization impersonated a health care research entity
and knowingly collected PII for use in political actions. Not only is this
awful in itself, but it undermines public health by making people distrust
legitimate data collection projects for beneficial health purposes. It's
similar to when the CIA used a vaccination effort to locate Bin Laden, and now
those aid personnel are routinely attacked and not trusted by locals which
makes it more difficult to eradicate disease. If you are representing yourself
as a health care entity and collecting PII for stated purposes of public
health, you are likely bound by HIPAA, and I would like to see people go after
this company for HIPAA violations as well as fraud.

------
droopybuns
If we’re going to go this route, Google should be hauled in first. You can
easily choose not to play with Facebook. Google? Not so much.

~~~
Etheryte
I don’t see how this argument makes sense. You can opt out of using Google’s
services just the same, if you so choose.

~~~
aylmao
I have to disagree, and hopefully can make a better job at convincing you than
the other comments. In terms of search "google" is a verb for a reason, but I
actually do think you could use other search engines, true, I agree.

What worries me is Android however. Perhaps not in the US, but in a lot of
other places around the world Android is the only operating system accessible
to people and a large majority of the market, since iPhones are an impossible
purchase. Phone manufacturers depend on Android like computer manufacturers
once depended on Windows.

Apple is raking in the profits because it controls the vertical and sells
expensive phones in premium markets, but in terms of raw market share things
seem to be shaping towards a Mircosoft/Windows like situation. Android is
close to passing the 75% mark [1] and judging by sales it probably will [2].

Maybe we're still not quite there, but it's shaping up in that direction.
Facebook def has the lion's share on social networking, and messaging, but I
can't help but believe that when it comes to Facebook it's mostly network
effects keeping people in, since there are plenty of other (and sometimes
better) messaging apps, lots of photo-sharing apps, and alternatives for event
planning, getting your news, posting updates, etc.

Idk if "Google should be hauled in first", but it should def be hauled in too
(alongside Amazon, but that's a whole other story).

[1]: [http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-
share/mobile/worldwide/#...](http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-
share/mobile/worldwide/#monthly-200903-201802)

[2]: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/266136/global-market-
sha...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/266136/global-market-share-held-
by-smartphone-operating-systems/)

------
myegorov
Sincere question: It appears that it's crystal clear to everyone where the
distinction between fake and real news lies, or who should be allowed to post
(mis)information (serve ads, if you prefer) on the interwebs, or how to
identify the culprits exhaustively. I fail to see a way in practice to draw
the boundary and identify/persecute the offenders. Imho virtually all ads
spread misinformation (push someone's agenda) to my detriment. My only means
of resistance is inherent in my duty (civic, but also self-serving -- to keep
my sanity) to consciously make the effort to seek/filter through multiple
viewpoints.

------
StanislavPetrov
Its simply astounding that the "use of personal data" is seemingly coming as a
revelation to anyone. What's especially ridiculous is that arms of the
government (like the FTC) are feigning indignation. The US government is - by
far - the biggest collector and aggregator of personal data and information in
the world. Both the government, corporations, "social media companies", and
everyone else with access to data has been doing the same, and using this data
to create models to influence people believe and support (or buy) whatever
agenda or product that respective organization is pushing. Unfortunately this
latest episode of faux outrage is very much like the faux outrage that has
infected our cultural landscape for the last 18 months (due to Trump). Things
that have been going on for decades are suddenly being attacked as evils
unique to Trump. If the net result of this selective outrage led to
substantive changes in our society, then perhaps it the outrage would be a
"good" thing (despite its manufactured nature). Unfortunately, its very clear
that all of these practices - the data mining, the troll farms, the bot-
networks, the propaganda (both public and private) - will roll forward at full
steam once Trump is consigned to the wastebin of history (where he belongs).
Once the reigns of power are back into the hands of a trusted steward of
global US military empire (rather than a deluded carnival barker) you should
have absolutely no doubt that Comcast, and GE, and Disney will direct their
minions in the media to focus your outrage somewhere else.

------
strayamaaate
Reminds me of this quote from the tabbacco industry in the early 90s;

“We don't smoke that shit. We just sell it. We reserve the right to smoke for
the young, the poor, the black and the stupid." \- R.J. Reynolds executive’s
reply when asked why he didn’t smoke

------
hawski
Ok. I know it's off-topic here, but...

Now what's good alternative to Facebook Messanger video calls? Signal doesn't
support it - I read that it's in beta, but I can't enable it. Telegram doesn't
seem to support it either. Skype is not an alternative.

Is Matrix/Riot good enough right now? For me it should work on Linux, Android
and iOS for my family.

Now that I think about it, maybe I should setup some private WebRTC service
for video calls. But it seems cumbersome for part of my family. However it
probably would be easier for my parents and my in-laws.

EDIT: As Thriptic mentioned Signal indeed does support video calls. I failed
to find the functionality, because I expected to see separate button for video
call. One has to first start calling and then enable video.

~~~
Thriptic
Signal supports video calling on mobile at least. I've used it many times.

~~~
sgc
What is a socially acceptable way of getting people interested in Signal? I
installed it and use it for messaging (Ive never been able to actually receive
an mms with it). But I have not one contact on signal, so it's not doing much
for me at this point. My daily work contacts don't seem like a prime target
user base.

~~~
Thriptic
You're going to have a hard time convincing non-technical people / people who
don't acutely care about privacy to use it in my experience. I generally try
to shift people who are not in these demographics over to WhatsApp as that has
a large user base and implements the signal protocol for end to end
encryption. It's not a "safe" as signal but it's far better than something
like messenger.

------
fleetingmoments
I don't have much of an issue with targeted advertising or content by
harvesting of data through what you make publicly available, as long as it is
de-identified. It has plenty of applications for good as well. I hope that
platforms are working on ways of taking these algorithms to edge nodes, making
large master databases containing un-aggregated data that can be used to de-
anonymise people less prevalent.

I'm more immediately concerned about blatantly fake news, clickbait, bots,
sock-puppets and fake accounts posing as trusted parties in order to harvest
trusted information and spread misinformation.

------
dgudkov
Isn't Facebook valuation is implicitly based on how Facebook can [ab]use
personal data?

------
chapill
Ah, the other shoe drops. This is the reason for the blitz of anti-Facebook
stories all at once... Legal authority to examine all that juicy personal data
Facebook holds.

And if you think you are safe because you don't have an account, I have bad
news for you.

~~~
krapp
The government doesn't have to resort to conspiracies to get your personal
data from Facebook, if it wants it, it can get it. We live in the age of PRISM
(in which Facebook is a participant,) secret orders, and NSA bulk
surveillance. They could literally just build or hack an app that uses
Facebook's API, apparently, or buy something from the black market, or in the
narrow case _get a warrant._

Not to mention... I don't think this would actually give anyone "Legal
authority to examine all that juicy personal data Facebook holds." I don't
think "legal authority" actually works that way, but IANAL.

------
jsonne
We see companies doing this all the time and I hope there's some sort of fix
here, but I'm curious about the individual to individual implications. If
we're serious about fixing privacy then things like sharing private messages,
doxxing, etc should be addressed as well imho. Not sure what that would look
like without curtailing free speech however.

------
Myrannas
At a previous employer we had a high up executive from Facebook come out to
give a presentation.

One of my main take away was that one of FBs big goals was to build a
'knowledge economy'. It struck me as a bit of an odd objective at the time,
but I think I am now starting to understand what this means (and it's a little
scary).

------
mattnewton
I’m no fan of Facebook, and welcome this scrutiny. But what about all the
people Facebook buys data from? Can we regulate them? What about Equifax?

All these corps do it without even the veneer of informed consent; we should
make sure we criminalize the activity and not just crucify a well known
practitioner and call it a day.

------
SirLJ
Nothing will change with government regulations, those companies like
Facebook, Google, etc are gold mines for the FBI, CIA, NSA and other 3 letter
organizations, so in the interest of national security, they will continue to
harvest the user data... Only major boycott can do some damage...

------
thrillgore
Facebook deserves a good deal of criticism for this, but I can't be the only
one who thinks this is just a continuation of the anti-startup, anti-social
media dialog the major press agencies have been pushing ever since the
Election?

------
TaylorGood
With these practices or lack of restriction on data pulling at Facebook, is it
wrong to assume the board knew about this? Too many brilliant minds on their
board, including pmarca, to not understand firms were able to do this.

------
kodablah
Better than a new law. I'm sure Congress is mulling one over, but surely they
won't take a large sweeping, harm-the-good-more-than-the-bad, regulation-
instead-of-enforcement approach.

~~~
Jaepa
I'd wage money that Feinstein will campaign on Facebook Regulation this year.

------
colejohnson66
> If the FTC finds Facebook violated terms of the consent decree, it has the
> power to fine the company thousands of dollars a day per violation.

Maybe I'm misreading this, but only a few thousand?

~~~
wpietri
Yeah, this struck me too. It seems like the FTC's powers are far too light to
deal with modern tech.

I'd really like to see something like the NTSB here, but for privacy/security
issues. After an incident, the NTSB comes in, investigates everything, and
produces a very detailed report as to what happened and what the industry
should be doing differently. You can see their recent reports here:
[https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/Ac...](https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/AccidentReports.aspx)

It's very clear from Facebook's behavior since the elections that they can't
be trusted to investigate and report on themselves. E.g., this article on how
their execs thought it best not to say anything until forced by circumstances:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/facebook-
alex-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/facebook-alex-
stamos.html)

~~~
laurentoget
European fines are much stiffer.

[https://www.gdpreu.org/compliance/fines-and-
penalties/](https://www.gdpreu.org/compliance/fines-and-penalties/)

------
therealmarv
So about what number roughly (FB needs to pay) do we talk here?

~~~
chopin
According to this article [1], trillions in possible fines.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
switch/wp/2018/03/18...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
switch/wp/2018/03/18/facebook-may-have-violated-ftc-privacy-deal-say-former-
federal-officials-triggering-risk-of-massive-fines/?utm_term=.a6662b465919)

------
kgc
Not as bad as Equifax, yet... all this hoopla.

------
matz1
In the long run this should not affect facebook much, opportunity to buy FB.

------
hapnin
The Executive Branch deflecting from the Executive Branch.

------
askatwork
As someone who wants to seen the societal view of facebook change, what's
prevents a viral uninstall campaign from happening to facebook?
#UninstallFacebook

------
bob_theslob646
This is crazy! Peter Thiel spoke on March 15,2018 and said this about tech
companies :"...If they do not take these issues seriously there is a risk they
will be regulated.."

I have the video with the timestamp of the quote I mentioned, posted below.[1]

Ridiculously ironic on the timing of all this (evermore so that it is his
darling Facebook) because I think this recent blunder by Facebook is a shot
across the bow for other tech companies and even borderline bordering their
"vessels" for search and seizure by the U.S government.

For those who do not know who he is.

> Thiel became Facebook's first outside investor when he acquired a 10.2%
> stake for $500,000 in August 2004. He sold the majority of his shares in
> Facebook for over $1 billion in 2012, but remains on the board of directors.
> [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel)]

[1][Tech investor Peter Thiel speaks at the New York Economic
Club]([https://youtu.be/sxWpvgTH9oI?t=33m52s](https://youtu.be/sxWpvgTH9oI?t=33m52s))

~~~
tinalumfoil
This is a particularly thorny issue for Thiel who said Gawker "ruined people's
lives for no reason" after being outed as gay. Despite his involvement in
Facebook, I think he's one of the few powerful people in tech who cares about
people's privacy.

~~~
moate
Does he though, or does he care about HIS privacy? I have no clue where he
stands on the world at large based on his actions, just that he really didn't
want to be outed (which is a reasonable request)

------
bantunes
That's why regulation always comes to be - no company can be trusted to do the
right thing on its own.

~~~
Aunche
Despite what Redditors like to say, the big banks have done a surprisingly
good job at self regulating since the financial crisis. That said, these
regulations will probably lax as people get more confident and comfortable
with taking risks.

~~~
munificent
_> a surprisingly good job at self regulating since the financial crisis._

The financial crisis was less than ten years ago. That's like calling a drunk
driver "responsible" for going a whole week sober since that time they crashed
into a minivan and killed an entire family.

~~~
jonathanyc
Do people who think banks and corporations are good at self-regulating not
look at history? The same pattern has repeated for hundreds of years—it’d be
embarrassing and horrible if a drunk driver didn’t learn their lesson after a
decade, but we haven’t learned our lesson after at least a century.

~~~
rafiki6
Hundreds is a bit of a hyperbole here. We've only had modern corporate America
for maybe the last 150 years. Pre-industrial companies didn't have as much
power or clout as large behemoth enterprises do today.

~~~
jonathanyc
We’ve only had the Internet for a few decades, but that doesn’t mean we can’t
draw parallels between the dot-com bubble and what happened before, or that we
shouldn’t have learned from the past.

Consider the Amsterdam banking crisis of 1763, which some have compared to the
2008 financial crisis.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam_banking_crisis_of_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam_banking_crisis_of_1763)

------
d3ckard
I remember reading a book on Facebook in 2010 or so. I remember distinctly
quote from Mark Zuckerberg that "privacy is the concept from the past". Then,
a couple years later I read he bought houses surrounding his house to ensure
his own privacy.

Lost any respect I had for the guy in that moment. I really hope FTC will
force FB to stop most of their unfair practices.

~~~
reaperducer
I'm not trying to make this political, but I've always found it ironic that
people in Southwest cities who talk big about border walls not keeping people
out very often live in communities or cities where every house being
surrounded by a wall is the norm. And the richer they are, the taller and more
elaborate the walls get.

Again, this isn't about politics. It's about irony and how rich people in
California often seem to say one thing and do another.

~~~
tyleraldrich
There's a huge difference between having a wall around your home so your
neighbors/peeping toms can't look at you and having a wall on the border to
keep immigrants out.

These things aren't even comparable, I have no idea where you think the irony
lies.

~~~
golergka
These things are very similar. In one case, your defend your personal property
(a house), in another, you defend your collective property (a country). In
both cases, you rightly feel that you have the privilege of using that
property that you want to be in control of, personally or collectively.

~~~
tyleraldrich
I think you completely misunderstand why people build fences or walls around
their homes.

House wall: \- keep pesky neighborhood kids from running through it and
ruining your grass \- keep your neighbors from being able to see you while
youre swimming in your pool

Border wall: \- attempt to keep Mexicans from immigrating into the country
illegally

I fail to see how these use cases are at all similar. Please, if I missed a
use case for a house or if your home is constantly being attacked by
barbarians let me know, but I don't think anybody in California builds a wall
to "defend" themselves.

~~~
ModernMech
> I fail to see how these use cases are at all similar.

That's because you don't view Mexicans as pesky neighbors trampling all over
your country.

------
braderhart
I would like them to review my numerous fake profile reports to Facebook,
which they ignored... it was probably in the 100s during this last election.
They failed to act and I am pretty sure that they promote, allow and encourage
the use of bots and fake accounts on their social network as it helps inflate
their user count.

