

Mark Zuckerberg: 'We've Made A Bunch Of Mistakes' - taylorbuley
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/11/29/facebooks-mark-zuckerberg-weve-made-a-bunch-of-mistakes/

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cryptoz
> Facebook will be subject to privacy audits for the next 20 years, and
> subject to $16,000 fines if it does anything deceptive.

The correct business plan would deem that Facebook should continue doing
deceptive things and make its billions, then pay out its $16,000 fine when
necessary.

~~~
kmfrk
I believe it's something to the effect of $16k _a day_ of the duration of the
infraction, but regardless, it doesn't detract from the fact that the fine is
off by orders of magnitude.

~~~
46Bit
So Facebook just needs to make an extra $16k a day on top of what it would
have otherwise. Not so unrealistic. (Just to carry on the point.)

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swang
"Facebook promised users that it would not share their personal information
with advertisers. It did."

Wow, that sounds like a huge violation of user's rights and kind of
contradicts everything Facebook has been saying about using "anonymized data."

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D_Drake
I'm uninterested in anyone's apology after they've been caught. If I'm
convicted of a crime, I go to jail. No matter what comes out of Zuckerberg's
mouth, anything less than people behind bars is a perversion of justice.

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libraryatnight
"We've made a bunch of mistakes." And you haven't had to pay for any of them,
congratulations.

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pjo
Here is Mark's blog post reference in the article.
<https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=10150378701937131>

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Groxx
"Contrite". yeah. That's what I think when I see this:

> _Overall, I think we have a good history of providing transparency and
> control over who can see your information.

That said, I’m the first to admit that we’ve made a bunch of mistakes. In
particular, I think that a small number of high profile mistakes, like Beacon
four years ago and poor execution as we transitioned our privacy model two
years ago, have often overshadowed much of the good work we’ve done._

</saveface,saveface,saveface>

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endlessvoid94
What's the point of this article? It is basically a summary of Mark's blog
post...

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napierzaza
Mistakes all the way to the bank. Zuckerberg at the helm allows them to make
all sorts of sophomoric apologies as if everyone at Facebook is "awe shucks"
sorry about everything.

Perfect because he appears as a naive first timer and makes it sound like
these sorts of changes were just an idea he had and they rolled it out like
things work as a start up.

But it's more likely that there were very many long meetings about just how
far to push it, and just how much money that would make them.

~~~
numlocked
They may have had meetings about how far they can push it, but I'm not so sure
about the money bit. Facebook has actually shown a remarkable amount of
restraint when it comes to making money. It's in Zuckerberg's DNA - the guy
just doesn't seem to care that much about money.

For instance, if Facebook was trying to maximize profits it could have fairly
easily rolled out an off-site ad network ala adsense that is FAR better
targeted (based on FB cookies) than adsense could ever be. They could displace
Google practically overnight. But they've resisted doing that and instead just
continued to make enough money to run and grow the company at a healthy clip.

I'm not a Facebook apologist - some of the "mistakes" are really scary and
unconscionable, but I don't believe the motive is as simple as profit
maximization.

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napierzaza
So they will have a "Chief of Privacy" stationed in Washington DC? Sounds
closer to a lobbyist to change privacy laws than it does someone who makes
sure Facebook abides by them.

