
An Update on Our Plans to Restrict Data Access on Facebook - robtaylor
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/04/restricting-data-access/
======
not_that_noob
None of these changes will do anything to fix the basic issue. All the
following aspects were derived from watching the testimony Christopher Wylie
gave before the UK House of Commons Select Committee. He's the CA
whistleblower. It's a very illuminating watch -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5g6IJm7YJQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5g6IJm7YJQ)

The problem is the foll:

[1] CA wrote a trojan FB app to derive psychographic user data for FB users.
This let them determine for example how susceptible you were to misleading or
fake news.

[2] They then used FB targeting to target these specific people at scale,
pushing extreme fake news such as "Obama moving troops to Texas to ensure 3rd
term". This is military grade psyops applied at unprecedented scale.

[3] These people, as they were susceptible to manipulation, would then convert
at unusually high rates. He says 5% or higher conversion. Conversion was
measured as an action like donating money or signing up for a mailing list.

In this way, the entire democratic process was corrupted. The issue is not
that there were dirty tricks in the 2016 election. The issue here is that the
existence of FB's app platform allows the detailed psychological profiling of
millions of people on scale, and then allows them to be targeted at scale
using that profiling. This is a clear and present danger to democracy.

Even with these changes, a rogue app such as CA's would be allowed on the FB
platform. FB has no visibility into how app data can be used offline.

~~~
tzs
Note that eliminating the ability to do detailed profiling and precise
targeting does NOT stop this kind of manipulation. It just makes it more
expensive.

Those people who will respond to your fake news in a way favorable to you are
still out there. It just means that instead of being able to target a group of
say, 10 000 people that will give you a 5% conversion rate, you might have to
pay to target 1 000 000 people with a 0.05% conversion rate.

This raises an interesting question: would we be better off if instead of
restricting data we make it more widely available?

As suggested in the second paragraph above, restricting the data doesn't stop
those with enough money from influencing susceptible people at scale. It just
makes it more expensive, so only the very wealthy can do it.

If we make the data more open, we make the playing field more level, perhaps
giving smaller, less well financed groups a chance to compete with the
billionaire backed groups and causes.

~~~
FridgeSeal
The idea is to discourage people from using propaganda to manipulate
democracy. I honestly don't think that throwing open the floodgates so that
effectively anyone can would fix the problem at all. Realistically all you're
going to do there is make it cheaper and easier for existing players and worse
for everyone subjected to it.

~~~
creaghpatr
One solution to OP's problem is to strengthen libel and slander laws to deter
people from casually publishing fraudulent news, akin to a DMCA takedown
request but perhaps a bit more bite. In this case I would distinguish
publishing from 'sharing' with a bit more legal finesse.

The problem is the press will scream bloody murder at any attempt to reign in
their right to publish, perhaps rightfully so. IANAL.

~~~
220V_USKettle
How enforcable would that be outside US borders, realistically?

~~~
creaghpatr
Good point

------
ballenf
I've had facial recognition off forever on FB and every time I've logged in in
the past few weeks the following is one of the first entries in my feed:

[https://imgur.com/a/pMhoL](https://imgur.com/a/pMhoL)

It's a nag to turn on facial recognition. Feels like really bad form to be
asking for such intrusive extra info with what they're going through right
now.

~~~
ghostly_s
I got that every time I used the site for _years_. It wasn't until I deleted
my profile and created a new one where I never opted in to the recognition in
the first place (or allowed any tags of myself for it to build the face
profile, perhaps) that I was able to make it go away.

~~~
alonmower
Random thought: when you created the new account you accepted their right to
do this in the ToS and so they didn't need to explicitly ask?

~~~
ghostly_s
Perhaps, but I believe I recall opting out of it. Also as I said, I never gave
them any seed data under the new account to start with. My original account
had plenty of old pictures that people had tagged me in (back when you had to
do that manually!), and at some point I went through and deleted all those
tags though I'm quite certain they still were cataloged.

------
samfriedman
The actual article title is "An Update on Our Plans to Restrict Data Access on
Facebook". It details a list of new API restrictions for Facebook Apps, as
well as planned notifications of users whose data was leaked to CA.

These additional API restrictions may be closing the door after the horses
have bolted, but they will also restrict more scraping and data mining.
However, I'm sure the value of Facebook data that companies have already
collected just shot up significantly...

I also think that the step of planting an alert on affected users' News Feeds
is a good one, and something that I didn't expect Facebook would go for.
Curious to see what the report says when that feature goes live.

------
dralley
Facebook: "We have no fucking clue how much data they took from us. We're not
a company that specializes in data."

(shamelessly stolen from reddit)

~~~
bertil
The exact number requires to do operations that are non-trivial at scale: you
have to check who accepted to share information with that version of the app
(there were several) and take into account the accounts that have been deleted
in the last four years; whether Facebook can access that particular
information at all is unclear to me (I would believe not). Then you have to
recreate a list of all their friends at the time (which is, again, not trivial
with some friendships being deleted) and take care of duplicates -- doable,
but not trivial at that scale. Whether people are American is also non-
trivial: I’m not sure there was clear geographic entities to make that easy in
2013. People move and Facebook only has your location, not your passport. You
then have people without a recognisable name, who forgot or who are too young
to be in the voting registry. Do you count all the IDs, those who were still
active in November 2016, those who match local registries?

People who specialise in data (like people who code professionally) are
precisely those who would have all those questions on the top of their mind
and know that old, graph-based, editable datasets that need to be matched with
another dataset are bad.

 _Edit:_ I was a data scientist for Facebook and I can personally attest that
most of those are genuinely hard, especially those that I intentionally
overlooked.

------
smn1234
I wish I could just pay a monthly fee to access Facebook but to be protected
from advertising and from being the product.

I also wish I could client-side encrypt all of my content, share the keys with
my friends who I want to have the ability to view my content, and somehow have
this all be friction-less and transparent from my and contacts' perspective.

~~~
rectang
Even when you're the customer, you'll still be a product. They'll sell you
just like credit card companies have for decades.

Companies are relentlessly profit-optimizing entities, and they cannot forego
the extra revenue stream. Employees with ethics are like tissue holding back a
tidal wave.

The only way to avoid having them exploit the data is to deny them the data in
the first place.

~~~
_sdegutis
There are some larger businesses that do right by their customers and
employees, because the leadership has a strong sense ethics and of
responsibility for the ethics of their whole company.

~~~
lagolinguini
Can you give examples of such businesses, I'm genuinely curious.

~~~
c1utch1
IMO Apple doesn't data mine like other large tech companies. Especially since
they shut down iAds.

~~~
rectang
That might be true now. What happens should Apple go bankrupt? Will those who
buy the assets uphold the culture?

------
sumoboy
Doesn't beat Equifax who impacted 143 million Americans, jeopardizing consumer
Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and some driver’s license
numbers. Just another day with no consequences for exposing what I'd label as
highly personal information.

FB can limit what it wants but someone will eventually find the means to
buying the necessary data today and build what CA did going forward. IMO the
2020 election campaign costs will be the billion $ candidate that competes, so
just buy the data you need.

~~~
montag
Yes, the Equifax breach is orders of magnitude more outrageous than this
Facebook business.

------
maxxxxx
I think we need a legal framework around sharing data. Even if Facebook did
everything right some other companies will mess things up. In the end a person
should always be notified when his/her information gets shared with another
party and have the ability to approve. This will make the business model of
many companies difficult but so be it. I don't see any other way.

------
tomc1985
Nobody attacks the data collection itself. Anyone who accepts this is a fool
for letting Facebook continue to pull the wool over your eyes. This human
centipede of data collection needs to die.

~~~
methodover
I accept it. Facebook is probably one of the better companies out there when
it comes to security. They haven't had a true breach; the scandals so far have
been small, mostly because the mores of society have shifted before FB can
roll out changes to match them (and they always do).

~~~
tomc1985
They haven't had security 'breaches' because nobody ever called it that, but
FB has been leaking data out the back door for years.

The amount of info that you used to be able to pull from Facebook's API was
incredible, and most people didn't realize it. Even information as bland as
friends and friends-of-friends is enough to build a useful social graph around
a person. (Years ago I did just this, and it was amazing how the graph
clustered all my different social groups)

------
xendipity
"Until today, people could enter another person’s phone number or email
address into Facebook search to help find them. ... malicious actors have also
abused these features to scrape public profile information by submitting phone
numbers or email addresses they already have through search and account
recovery. Given the scale and sophistication of the activity we’ve seen, we
believe most people on Facebook could have had their public profile scraped in
this way."

Hm. This seems like an interesting tidbit, I would love to know more. It seems
to imply that many profiles have already been scraped in this way. A phone
number is a really strong cross-domain identifier as we use it across a bunch
of different online services. Collate your Facebook scrape with a couple data
brokers and you've got a real strong profile of someone.

------
helloworld
I'm more concerned about fundamental privacy issues, such as so-called "data
onboarding," in which Facebook (and others) helps marketers connect your
online identity with your offline identity. That's where we need more
transparency -- and perhaps more regulation.

------
mankash666
Facebook can't seem to behave in a trustworthy manner. Initial findings about
the improper sharing happened in 2015. How many years does the "move fast,
break things" company need to accurately assess damage, or does it NOT want to
accurately assess at all.

~~~
jlmorton
> Facebook can't seem to behave in a trustworthy manner.

My goodness, this is the same issue, not a new one. Facebook is behaving in a
trustworthy manner right now, over-communicating the scope and details of this
issue, yet here we are to attack them anew over it.

~~~
ionised
Where is the trustworthiness in this that you are seeing?

They are just telling people what they think they want to hear given how they
have been caught out.

~~~
jlmorton
> They are just telling people what they think they want to hear given how
> they have been caught out.

Wait a second, let's back up. They didn't get "caught" doing anything. They
purposely, intentionally, and with everyone's explicit knowledge shared friend
list data with an app developer.

This is just a basic fact. No one, not even my mother, can realistically claim
they did not know and understand Facebook was sharing graph data with app
developers in 2012, or 2014. Not only was it crystal clear when you installed
an app, even if you didn't, anyone that was on Facebook was inundated by
messages from Farmville, and many other apps, letting them know what their
friend's were doing.

Later, by 2014, Facebook decided they needed to be more restrictive with this
data. They shutdown app developers access to the social graph, essentially
killing Facebook Platform, which everyone expected to be a primary driver of
future revenues. They shutdown Graph Search, an extremely useful tool, because
it made it too easy to collect personal data.

But we need to be clear that Facebook was not "caught" doing anything at all.
They did exactly what they said they would do, which was plain to everyone,
even my technophobic mom.

Separately, in 2014, an app developer shared personal data with Cambridge
Analytica. Facebook contacted both parties and requested that they certify
they deleted the data, which they did.

The only reason people are upset now, is because:

a) politics is involved, and b) they are retroactively applying current best
practices with personal data, which were not common in 2014 and before.

The incredible part about all of this is that so many other social networks
(and other companies) continue to collect the exact same data, and many of
them share it publicly. Almost all Twitter users have their friend list open
to the public, for all to see, along with all of their tweets, because that's
what the platform encourages. No one would say Twitter has been "caught" doing
this.

In fact, Facebook has been extremely up-front about the situation. They fixed
the situation 4 years before it came to light. They have announced important
and strong changes to further protect data in the future. They have publicly
and and widely announced their detailed findings in this case, and they have
promised investigations of similar unauthorized usages of personal data that
may have occurred with other app developers.

I mean, what more do you really want them to do?

~~~
ionised
To stop existing.

They are a net-negative for society.

------
kareemm
The optimist in me says these changes have been a long time coming. The
skeptic in me says FB is doing this to avoid being regulated.

Anybody with more insight care to comment?

~~~
dssu
Well just take a look at the techcrunch article published today on how
Facebook is not committing to GDPR standards for North American users.
[https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/04/facebook-gdpr-wont-be-
univ...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/04/facebook-gdpr-wont-be-universal/)

It basically says they are going to do the minimal effort required to protect
privacy while avoiding regulation.

~~~
rock_hard
The TC article is unfortunately misleading.

As I posted elsewhere already. GDRP is more then just some rules around what
you need to ask users for permission for. It's much bigger and very specific
to the EU legal apparatus.

It hence makes no sense to ship globally. What you want is for the underlying
privacy controls to be available for everyone...which according to Reuters is
what FB is doing!

------
post_break
Anyone have an archive? I blocked them in my hosts file.

~~~
samfriedman
Two weeks ago we promised to take a hard look at the information apps can use
when you connect them to Facebook as well as other data practices. Today, we
want to update you on the changes we’re making to better protect your Facebook
information. We expect to make more changes over the coming months — and will
keep you updated on our progress. Here are the details of the nine most
important changes we are making.

Events API: Until today, people could grant an app permission to get
information about events they host or attend, including private events. This
made it easy to add Facebook Events to calendar, ticketing or other apps. But
Facebook Events have information about other people’s attendance as well as
posts on the event wall, so it’s important that we ensure apps use their
access appropriately. Starting today, apps using the API will no longer be
able to access the guest list or posts on the event wall. And in the future,
only apps we approve that agree to strict requirements will be allowed to use
the Events API.

Groups API: Currently apps need the permission of a group admin or member to
access group content for closed groups, and the permission of an admin for
secret groups. These apps help admins do things like easily post and respond
to content in their groups. However, there is information about people and
conversations in groups that we want to make sure is better protected. Going
forward, all third-party apps using the Groups API will need approval from
Facebook and an admin to ensure they benefit the group. Apps will no longer be
able to access the member list of a group. And we’re also removing personal
information, such as names and profile photos, attached to posts or comments
that approved apps can access.

Pages API: Until today, any app could use the Pages API to read posts or
comments from any Page. This let developers create tools for Page owners to
help them do things like schedule posts and reply to comments or messages. But
it also let apps access more data than necessary. We want to make sure Page
information is only available to apps providing useful services to our
community. So starting today, all future access to the Pages API will need to
be approved by Facebook.

Facebook Login: Two weeks ago we announced important changes to Facebook
Login. Starting today, Facebook will need to approve all apps that request
access to information such as check-ins, likes, photos, posts, videos, events
and groups. We started approving these permissions in 2014, but now we’re
tightening our review process — requiring these apps to agree to strict
requirements before they can access this data. We will also no longer allow
apps to ask for access to personal information such as religious or political
views, relationship status and details, custom friends lists, education and
work history, fitness activity, book reading activity, music listening
activity, news reading, video watch activity, and games activity. In the next
week, we will remove a developer’s ability to request data people shared with
them if it appears they have not used the app in the last 3 months.

Instagram Platform API: We’re making the recently announced deprecation of the
Instagram Platform API effective today. You can find more information here.

Search and Account Recovery: Until today, people could enter another person’s
phone number or email address into Facebook search to help find them. This has
been especially useful for finding your friends in languages which take more
effort to type out a full name, or where many people have the same name. In
Bangladesh, for example, this feature makes up 7% of all searches. However,
malicious actors have also abused these features to scrape public profile
information by submitting phone numbers or email addresses they already have
through search and account recovery. Given the scale and sophistication of the
activity we’ve seen, we believe most people on Facebook could have had their
public profile scraped in this way. So we have now disabled this feature.
We’re also making changes to account recovery to reduce the risk of scraping
as well.

Call and Text History: Call and text history is part of an opt-in feature for
people using Messenger or Facebook Lite on Android. This means we can surface
the people you most frequently connect with at the top of your contact list.
We’ve reviewed this feature to confirm that Facebook does not collect the
content of messages — and will delete all logs older than one year. In the
future, the client will only upload to our servers the information needed to
offer this feature — not broader data such as the time of calls.

Data Providers and Partner Categories: Last week we announced our plans to
shut down Partner Categories, a product that lets third-party data providers
offer their targeting directly on Facebook.

App Controls: Finally, starting on Monday, April 9, we’ll show people a link
at the top of their News Feed so they can see what apps they use — and the
information they have shared with those apps. People will also be able to
remove apps that they no longer want. As part of this process we will also
tell people if their information may have been improperly shared with
Cambridge Analytica.

In total, we believe the Facebook information of up to 87 million people —
mostly in the US — may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.

Overall, we believe these changes will better protect people’s information
while still enabling developers to create useful experiences. We know we have
more work to do — and we’ll keep you updated as we make more changes. You can
find more details on the platform changes in our Facebook Developer Blog.

------
paulie_a
This is reminiscent of the yahoo breach where they said "some" and eventually
upgraded the warning to "all of them"

------
grysledman
Are there any companies that rely on Facebook data that are going to face a
rough patch (or cease to exist) because of the API changes?

~~~
mountainplus
One site, your question made me remember was a third party app for events,
Heyevent.

[http://heyevent.com/](http://heyevent.com/)

Out of curiosity I just re-authorised them for access and was displayed the
following message:

"We're sad to announce that due to dwindling traffic, expensive hosting costs,
and new limitations of the Facebook API, we've decided to close down Heyevent.
We're sad to have to do this, but we unfortunatelu we see no other option.
Since the launch of Heyevent, Facebook themselves has added more event
recommendation. They're not as good as Heyevent's recommendations, yet.
Hopefully they'll get better. Thanks for using the service!"

I found it somewhat useful in the past to keep using facebook to a minimum, so
I wish them the best.

There must be some other areas of data based servicing that experience
difficulties that but I can't think of any other right now.

------
jonbarker
I find it ironic that they plan to let users know they've been compromised via
the newsfeed. What about users who have either deleted or never log in? How
will they find out? Is their likely defense 'ignorance is no excuse' really a
great defense if the only way to avoid ignorance in this case to log into
their platform?

~~~
ictoan
It is not in the newsfeed... it is the News Room. I didn't login and I was
able to read this.

~~~
jonbarker
Sorry, was reading multiple articles on this topic at once. Yes this is a
newsroom post, however they plan to let individual users know via their
newsfeeds:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-04/facebook-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-04/facebook-
says-data-on-87-million-people-may-have-been-shared) "Facebook says it will
tell people, in a notice at the top of their news feeds starting April 9, if
their information may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica."

~~~
djhartman
No, you were right, they mentioned the News Feed in this post too.

------
EGreg
“Events API: Until today, people could grant an app permission to get
information about events they host or attend, including private events. This
made it easy to add Facebook Events to calendar, ticketing or other apps. But
Facebook Events have information about other people’s attendance as well as
posts on the event wall, so it’s important that we ensure apps use their
access appropriately. Starting today, apps using the API will no longer be
able to access the guest list or posts on the event wall. And in the future,
only apps we approve that agree to strict requirements will be allowed to use
the Events API.”

Does this mean we won’t be able to show FB events and rsvps in our app?

[https://qbix.com/calendar](https://qbix.com/calendar)

------
mankash666
Facebook can't seem to behave in a trustworthy manner. Initial findings about
the improper sharing happened in 2015. How many years does the "move fast,
break things" company need to accurately assess damage, or does it NOT want to
accurately assess at all.

~~~
mtgx
Facebook's problem is that it has no incentive to fix these issues, which it
sees as "features" for the most part.

That's why it always seems to improve its privacy policy only as a result of
regulations and scandals. Even then, it only does the minimum necessary that
it believes will appease everyone for the time being and until the next
scandal.

------
wfh
Anyone else find the font being used on that page incredibly hard to read?

~~~
darkstar999
Yes.

------
nemoniac
"improperly shared"

------
Finnucane
How much was properly shared?

~~~
garyfirestorm
What was shared would be an additional question. Edit: Or maybe what was not
shared would be easier to answer.

------
vitarilassata
It seems that no one is addressing the problem of segmentation and
microtargeting of ads, that’s key. how the distorted message is delivered. we
will not be able to build as easily psycograph models (but data will be
aquired in other ways) but is every day easier to target super precisely with
ads...

------
tomswartz07
Assuming that they have the info on the accounts to make that number estimate,
are they going to contact those who were affected?

I mean to say, if- for example- my mom was one of the facebook users who had
their information taken/used by CA, what should she expect?

~~~
jey
Yes, they previously claimed that they will be reaching out to people affected
by the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

------
diasp
Since #deleteFacebook started to gather momentum the active users number rose
by about 30% in The Federation [https://the-federation.info/](https://the-
federation.info/)

------
notananthem
What is hilarious is they still hide privacy controls from people esp by
limiting access from desktop. They're awful and people will be slow, but leave
in droves, those who don't find a lot of use for it.

------
masto
There's a sort of running gag at Google that "An Update On Foo" is how the
company announces that they're canceling Foo. So my first read of this
headline was.. different.

------
michaeljbishop
The most important part:

> In total, we believe the Facebook information of up to 87 million people —
> mostly in the US — may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.

------
billysielu
I am admin for a 'closed' facebook group. How can I find out which apps have
accessed my group without admin permission?

------
jumelles
What'll the number be up to by the time Zuckerberg is in front of Congress?

------
greggarious
"We're really going to restrict it this time - pinky swear!"

------
itakedrugs
Were all those people democrats?

------
pcunite
Facebook, do no evil.

------
AndyMcConachie
Define, "improperly".

~~~
joselreyes
They mean in violation of their terms.

------
not_that_noob
What's not being said is that the Russians likely had the data too for use in
the 2016 elections.

See [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/21/facebook-
row...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/21/facebook-row-i-am-
being-used-as-scapegoat-says-academic-aleksandr-kogan-cambridge-analytica) and
the testimony Christopher Wylie gave before the UK House of Commons Select
Committee. He's the CA whistleblower. It's a very illuminating watch -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5g6IJm7YJQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5g6IJm7YJQ)

So to recap:

[1] Kogan writes a FB app for CA to create psychographic profiles of users.
This data allows people to be targeted by how naturally susceptible you are to
rumors and fake news.

[2] Kogan then accepts a position at St. Petersburg State University (so
essentially Russian money) and moves there

[3] Russians subsequently magically gain a new superpower they didn't have
before - the ability to target users on FB who are susceptible to manipulation
towards extreme viewpoints.

~~~
TAForObvReasons
The interesting question, whose answer will likely have to be forced through
some leak or investigative reporting, is whether FB and the execs knew about
the potential connection to Russia in 2016. If it was brought to the attention
of Zuckerberg and Sandberg, in light of their adamant denials back in 2016 and
2017, I don't see how the company or executives walk out of this unscathed.

~~~
not_that_noob
Yes, if they knew about it and didn't do anything, then that's willful
negligence.

They are not helping their image - the latest is a rejection of GDPR for non-
European customers. Seriously? Way to demonstrate commitment to user data
protection FB.

This level of arrogance is a precursor to strict regulations. They are
practically asking for it at this point.

------
feelin_googley
"Facebook, in fact, claims lofty goals, saying it seeks to "bring us closer
together" and "build a global community."

Those are indeed noble purposes that social media can serve. But if they were
Facebook's true goals, we would not be here.

The ideal competitor and successor to Facebook would be a platform that
actually puts such goals first.

To do so, however, it cannot be just another data-hoarder, like Google Plus.

If we have learned anything over the last decade, it is that advertising and
data-collection models are _incompatible_ with a _trustworthy_ social media
network.

...

When a company fails, as Facebook has, it is natural for the government to
demand that it _fix itself_ or face regulation. ...

If today's privacy scandals lead us merely to install Facebook as a regulated
monopolist, _insulated from competition_ , we will have failed completely.

The world does not need an established church of social media."

Source:

Tim Wu, law professor at Columbia University

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/opinion/facebook-fix-
repl...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/opinion/facebook-fix-replace.html)

~~~
threeseed
It's easy to sit on the sidelines and criticise Facebook's business model.

The hard part is coming up with a business model that doesn't rely on
advertising and is actually going to get any traction. Especially since people
by and large like the model. If Facebook can simply lock down their APIs and
handle state/nefarious actors better I think you will find the public moving
past the current situation.

~~~
anigbrowl
Does it have to be a _business_ model? Couldn't we search for ways to support
the costs of federated.distributed platforms, as used to be the case with
NNTP?

~~~
Kalium
You're absolutely right! We could search for _funding models_ , plural, to
support a network of federated and distributed platforms! We could even couple
it with ways we know that enable distributed and federated platforms to
interoperate and keep at bay the problem that come from that.

Of course, it's possible that this may be a sufficiently non-trivial problem
where the best answer anyone's found to date is a centralized business. But
hey, we won't know until we try! Also, email as a federated system and its
history doesn't count, because that runs directly against the basic thesis
that nobody has seriously tried.

------
feelin_googley
"Morgan Stanley cut its price target on Facebook shares to $200 from $230 on
Wednesday, citing concerns about the social media company's ad sales because
of its data scandal.

...

"While we think FB's high advertising performance speaks to the value users
get out of the ads served, _general consumer dislike towards advertising_ and
increased data scrutiny could cause more users to _opt-out of sharing data
with FB_ ," he said."

Source:

[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/04/morgan-stanley-lowers-
facebo...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/04/morgan-stanley-lowers-facebook-
price-target-on-fears-ad-revenue-will-take-hit.html)

------
feelin_googley
"Facebook is asking users whether they think it's "good for the world" in a
poll sent to an unspecified number of people."

Source:

[https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/apps/a19671683/f...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/apps/a19671683/facebook-
asking-users-if-they-think-its-good-for-the-world/)

------
feelin_googley
"In that way and depending on how your personal data is manipulated, Facebook
Login could almost fall under the category of a dark pattern - a method for
websites or apps to _get you to give up more information than is required_ by
playing on assumptions.

...

But it's fair to say that Facebook should be less trusted today than it was
nine years ago.

...

Just like we should all be doing our part to detangle our lives from
Facebook's web, app developers owe it to users to divest in their reliance on
Facebook Login.

...

It's one thing to offer Facebook Login as an _alternative_ way to easily
create an account, but to straight up _not offer any other way_ to log in to
an app or game is just lazy on the developers part, and speaks to the way
Facebook has lulled us all into complacency."

Source:

[https://www.androidcentral.com/its-time-app-developers-
fall-...](https://www.androidcentral.com/its-time-app-developers-fall-out-
love-facebook-login)

------
feelin_googley
"Today, however, the company [Facebook] announced sweeping changes to many of
its most prominent APIs, restricting developer access in a number of crucial
ways.

Soon after, Tinder users started noting on Twitter that they had been kicked
off the dating app and couldn't log back on, as those who used _Facebook
Login_ were caught in an infinite loop that appears to be related to an
unknown bug.

Since _you need a Facebook account to log into Tinder_ , this bug has
potentially affected Tinder's entire user base.

...

Tinder has responded in a tweet, "A technical issue is preventing users from
logging into Tinder. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working to
have everyone swiping again soon."

Source:

[https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/4/17200034/facebook-broke-
ti...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/4/17200034/facebook-broke-tinder-down-
privacy-api-fixes)

------
feelin_googley
"In a statement today, the social-media giant estimated 622,161 Facebook users
in Canada had their data improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica through
apps used by themselves or their friends.

Overall, Facebook says 87 million of its users were affected -- with nearly 82
per cent of them were believed to be located in the United States. ...

Canada's acting minister for democratic institutions has also said he'd be
open to strengthening federal privacy laws, which don't currently apply to
political parties."

Source:

[https://www.cp24.com/news/more-than-620-000-canadians-
affect...](https://www.cp24.com/news/more-than-620-000-canadians-affected-by-
facebook-data-breach-1.3871376)

------
thesausageking

      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
      [friend]: 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

------
skyland
If I was Mark@Facebook I would take a strong defiant stance to the assaults
and further bolden my brand. Facebook is a mass sharing community program and
they are attacking its core, defend it!

~~~
KasianFranks
It's poetic justice for company that started by 'scraping' MySpace text entry
boxes and calling it their own. The DNA of facebook was bad from the start on
many different levels from zuckerberg using a biz card that stated "I'm CEO
bitch", calling his users dumb fu*cks, starting a platform by copying
Friendster+MySpace to voyeuristically spy on users across college campuses and
not doing something on an algorithmic level that was difficult to duplicate as
opposed to what Google did. This is the difference between social media and
Search, which is now made up of AI/ML/NLP.

------
aristocles
This is propaganda put out by intelligence agencies.

So what happened here? Facebook users who took a 'personality quiz' allowed
the 'app' to access their information.

It is extremely depressing that 87 million people are idiots.

There are intrusive apps all over facebook and this is being released with a
narrative that supports 'election interference'.

~~~
eterm
No, 87 million people didn't take a quiz, the whole point is that previously
if _any of your friends_ took the test, _your_ information was shared.

That's how a few hundred thousand people taking a "personality quiz" gets
turned into millions of user-data.

And the term personality quiz is used loosely, an example of a "personality
quiz" can be "Which Game of Thrones character are you? This isn't rigorous
psycometrics.

~~~
aristocles
You are only partially correct.

Social networks were extrapolated from friend data. Cambridge analytica was
able to use social connections to profile people and who they know.

That was the extent of it.

~~~
DonHopkins
You are only totally wrong.

This isn't "propaganda put out by intelligence agencies", and there are not
"37 million idiots" who "took a 'personality quiz' allowing the 'app' to
access their information".

But he already explained that to you quite clearly, something you should have
already known if you were following the real news, and you still don't get it.

But since you choose to subscribe to the conspiracy theory that this is just
all deep state propaganda, and everyone whose privacy was compromised was an
idiot who asked for it by doing something foolish and deserves what they got,
then there's no use in discussing it with you.

Because you're their ideal target and they've already successfully targeted
you and influenced your mind, even though you didn't take a personality quiz
yourself.

