
Facebook Emails Could Show Zuckerberg Knew of Questionable Privacy Practices - Dajsvaro
https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-worries-emails-could-show-zuckerberg-knew-of-questionable-privacy-practices-11560353829?mod=rsswn
======
tehjoker
Don't be fooled. Zuckerberg is the head of the organization and has both
created and internalized the economic logic of his organization, but the
problem is systemic. If you put in someone else, they'll have a different
style and might do a few things slightly different, but the economic logic is
the same. Spying on the population is profitable, so such operations must be
expanded to the maximum possible extent.

We can't simply undertake anti-trust litigation against these companies. We
must go further and outlaw this business model.

~~~
starbugs
It seems rather hard to find a legal way to outlaw the business model.

I wonder whether there's a way to make spying so unprofitable that the
business model simply isn't attractive anymore?

Legislation that would force businesses to pay for collecting user data (maybe
a tax on user data) might be a start, but I don't see how something like that
could be implemented successfully.

~~~
closeparen
Democracies are accountable only to issues that affect turnout in swing
districts. Businesses are accountable to everything that might send
transactions to competitors.

It’s quite difficult to stop using Facebook, but it’s effectively impossible
to get an electoral outcome changed over a niche technical issue, or even a
general one like the trains not working.

~~~
paulryanrogers
Agreed. Let's make gerrymandering illegal.

------
pinewurst
"Internal exchanges uncovered in response to FTC probe could cast doubt on
founder’s commitment to user privacy, people familiar with the matter say"

Who thinks Zuckerberg has (or ever had) _any_ commitment to user privacy?

~~~
basch
Pretty disingenuous. People can change. AND we dont have a timeline. Facebook
kept pushing more and more info public, in an attempt to make facebook more
useful. ( [http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-
privacy/](http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/) ) Then they saw they went
too far and quietly scaled it back. Four years later they got burned by
mistakes they already knew they made and had already started taking action on.

There's multiple issues at foot: when he knew, how he reacted, and why he
didn't disclose. He could have absolutely found out, ordered changes, and
tried to keep it quiet, and later learned what a mistake it was to keep quiet.

~~~
CaptainZapp
_Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask

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

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

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don't know why.

Zuck: They "trust me"

Zuck: Dumb fucks_ [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg)

I see absolutely no indication that Mr. Zuckerberg changed his attitude since
then.

~~~
basch
Im aware of the quote. I just think theres more cognitive dissonance than
evil. He tells him self that facebook is xyz, and starts to believe it. I do
think the force of public opinion has forced him to reconsider some beliefs
about everyone being open about everything.

~~~
CaptainZapp
It may be a bit of both.

Sort of like CEO's making north of 20M a year and being completely oblivious
to the fact that this is so far away from the norm and in his opinion it's
perfectly OK to make thousand times the money of the (outsourced) janitor.

Nevertheless I feel that Facebook, including its top level managers, is one of
the most untrustworthy companies around. If you think about it, their
businessmodel absolutely requires it. I leave it to the reader if this is
judged as evil (I obviously do).

For the record: I don't use any of their properties since 2013 and it galls me
that I'm still tracked and spied on to the hilt and back.

edit: slight clarify

~~~
basch
untrustworthy in an ethical sense, BUT from a technical competence sense I
trust them not to leak my data _in a hack_ quite a bit more than about 99% of
companies.

------
ishan1121
Facebook is a one-man show. Zuckerberg owning 60% of the company and no one
can say anything to him. Moreover, one man has the entire monopoly over our
entire online social life. Other networks have come and failed. Anti Trust
regulators should seriously open Facebook's file and break it.

~~~
a13n
Mark owns less than 30% of Facebook.

~~~
rubyn00bie
Voting shares are real ownership.

~~~
a13n
No, they're voting shares... He owns the majority of voting shares, but they
aren't worth the majority of the value of company, and therefore he doesn't
"own the majority of the company".

~~~
rubyn00bie
I think the shares people buy without voting rights are not ownership, they
are a weird financial instrument that should flat out be illegal. If you
honestly think he doesn't own the company, despite having full uncontestable
control of all it's resources, I believe you're one of the many to have been
duped, friend.

------
camjohnson26
Honestly I don’t see the problem, Facebook’s privacy stance has been well
known for years. I don’t use their product much because of this, but friends
and family couldn’t care less. Their response is that they don’t care if
someone reads their messages or tailors ads to them and no matter how hard I
try it won’t change their minds. If you don’t like their privacy stance just
don’t use the product, it’s not like there aren’t alternatives.

The media outrage feels the same as if they came out and said that it turns
out Coca Cola knew its products could lead to obesity. Of course they did, and
no reasonable person thought it didn’t. You can’t police every problematic
product, at some point the end user has to take responsibility.

~~~
rjkennedy98
I haven't used Facebook in nearly 8 years, however to say there are
alternatives is specious. For example, I have recently learned I missed my
first high school reunion because it was only posted on Facebook.
Unfortunately, there isn't another service out there that I could subscribe to
that would ensure I receive such communication.

~~~
jerkstate
you mean like.. email?

~~~
seandougall
Email will notify you of events that are only publicized on Facebook?
:thinking_face:

I mean, to be fair, even Facebook won't necessarily tell you about an event
unless the event creator pays them money to promote it. It's actually not a
great platform for small-scale publicity, and _only_ publicizing an event on
Facebook is clearly a mistake for a number of reasons. But despite its many
virtues, email doesn't actually address GP's case at all.

~~~
asdff
A contact list would, like what likely existed for every previous reunion in
GPs high school since before 2010. My schools periodically reach out to update
your contact info for their alumni roster. I bet GP never gave the school
their contact info after graduation rather than this being a facebook only
situation (unless it was just organized by a handful of alums and not tied
with the school itself).

There isn't a passive tool that would solve this other than getting people's
email or mailing address, and that's absolutely fine since if you wanted to go
to these reunions and be invested in these events, you can send an email to
the school and get yourself on this contact list.

~~~
seandougall
That relies on a number of speculations, most importantly that GP was
incorrect about the event having only been published on Facebook. I've seen
enough small organizations work that way that I wouldn't be so hasty to
second-guess GP's description.

------
sonnyblarney
The article is misrepresentative. This was way back in an era where fb had
slightly more open apis.

Of course some people were going to exploit that and break fbs own policies.

Cambridge did that and broke fbs rules.

Once it became more obvious that 3rd parties would break the rules fb adjusted
their policy and closed the loophole.

The open nature of the policy was known to everyone on the planet including
the ftc at the time. If those policies were problematic why wouldnt someone at
the ftc say something?

Those whose job it is to regulate just sit there and watch for a decade before
doing anything?

As someone mentioned above this is a systematic issue and a problem with the
business model.

This is not some sneaky thing fb did on the side or behind closed doors. The
apis were there for the public and everyone to see the whole time. Though
there wwtr a few voiced concerns there certainly was not outrage.

I have several problems with fb but this specific issue is being
misrepresented.

------
bitxbit
Antitrust discovery will be juicy. It’s going to make the Microsoft witch-hunt
look tame in comparison.

~~~
imiric
Part of me is glad that the public and governments are finally catching up to
what FB has been doing for years now, but I'm worried that we don't have a
better platform/solution that fills in the void without the risk of these
privacy violations happening again.

Some of the decentralized networks are interesting and seem like a good way
forward, but they're still far away from being adopted by non-technical users
and masses at large.

This seems like it's not only a technical and UI/UX problem, but one of
marketing as well. The advertising-based revenue model has certainly become
hostile towards user privacy, and we should rethink that too.

Whatever comes after FB, I hope it addresses all of these issues, for the sake
of all of us.

~~~
antod
_> I'm worried that we don't have a better platform/solution that fills in the
void without the risk of these privacy violations happening again._

Can we just keep the void?

------
vijaybritto
Honestly is anyone surprised by this? He controls everything and how will he
not know their own policies?! Facebook needs a serious lesson from the
regulators.

~~~
starbugs
Not surprised, but I am afraid regulators will implement rules that would harm
small businesses and startups much more than they would hurt FB. On the other
hand, the market seems to be pretty much finished anyway. Unless someone comes
up with a real decentralized solution that is able to compete with them.

~~~
vijaybritto
Thats a valid concern. But lets hope that they take input from the tech
community when and if they do it

~~~
starbugs
As an EU citizen I am quite skeptical regarding that one. But I have high
hopes that US regulators won't make the same mistakes.

------
Meekro
I see a lot of these articles about Facebook and privacy lately, but I'm still
wondering what, precisely, Facebook is doing that people object to and what
kinds of changes would satisfy those who are upset.

Near as I can tell, this is about data in Facebook's databases finding its way
to other organizations without the users' knowledge or consent. But the way
this happens is pretty benign:

1\. User installs Facebook app, and that app phones home with info about
user's friends (who did not consent to this). This is what happened in the
Cambridge Analytica scandal. People started asking why apps are allowed to see
info about the user's friends (who did not install the app). But to a
programmer, the answer is obvious: it's the "app inherits owner's permissions"
model that's been part of the Unix tradition for decades. Anyway, Facebook has
since changed this behavior.

2\. User adds some bots as friends (maybe because their profile photo is of a
cute girl), and the bots phone home with public info about user's friends.
This is an entirely predictable consequence of the "friends of friends"
permission model. Facebook users can set "friends only" permissions to prevent
this, but most don't bother.

Is it one of these two vectors that's getting people upset, or something else
that I'm missing? Keep in mind that advertisers never get to see people's
private info. They just make an ad and say something like "show this to people
aged 18-25 who are into video games."

~~~
cronix
What about the shadow profiles? Collecting data on people who have never even
signed up and have not given them any data whatsoever?

~~~
mrnobody_67
That's what I strongly object to.

The difference in the amount of data that FB has on people who have an account
and those who never had an account (like me) is minuscule...

------
willyg123
All organizations, no matter if they are public or private, need checks and
balances at the top.

I predict that legislation will become the de facto check on FB and there will
be many negative unintended consequences for the rest of the tech industry,
harming companies who are ethical stewards of privacy.

~~~
inetknght
Can you name an organization that you think is an ethical steward of privacy?

~~~
willyg123
A great point in the form of a question. I should have phrased my comment
differently.

The emergence of DuckDuckGo and the excitement for Apple's upcoming anonymous
sign-in feature proves there is a massive gap in the market for privacy-
focused products.

I'm afraid there will be regulation that will harm the ability for new
companies, with a focus on privacy, to emerge due to the increased compliance
costs.

------
tosh876
You need the help of an hacker? Contact spylink80@keemail.me he helped me out
I was able to check my husband device without him knowing he is good and
reliable.

------
tosh876
You need the help of an hacker? Contact spylink80@keemaip.me he helped me out
I was able to check my husband device without him knowing he is good and
reliable.

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/Dctf0](http://archive.is/Dctf0)

------
vmurthy
Heh! This article is just below an article on spying (“The thing”). Sure made
my evening :-)

------
ziddoap
Given the paywall, I didn't get the pleasure of reading the full article.
Based on the title and opening paragraphs however, I don't think this is
really news. Especially in light of the recent statement by Facebook counsel
Orin Snyder: "There is no invasion of privacy at all, because there is no
privacy" [1]

In fact, there has been legal statements on the privacy of Facebook floating
around for awhile. One judge, in 2013, explicitly said there is no reasonable
expectation of privacy.[2]

Zuckerburg has also previously made statements regarding his disdain for
privacy, such as: "'They "trust me." Dumb f--ks'" [3]

In the wake of the mobile phone number sharing with your friends list by
default, Mark had this to say: "We realize that people will probably criticize
us for this for a long time, but we just believe that this is the right thing
to do." [4]

I could go on ad nauseum, and I'm sure none of these quotes are new to anyone.
So, I just don't get why it is news that Zuckerberg was aware of questionable
practices.

Of course he was aware of them. He championed them.

[1][https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-reportedly-thinks-
theres-...](https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-reportedly-thinks-theres-no-
expectation-of-privacy-on-social-media/)
[2][https://www.law.com/thelegalintelligencer/almID/120253289935...](https://www.law.com/thelegalintelligencer/almID/1202532899353/No-
Reasonable-Expectation-of-Privacy-on-Facebook-Judge-Says/)
[3,4][https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/facebook-ceo-mark-
zuckerberg...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerbergs-
statements-on-privacy-2003-2018.html)

------
kodz4
This seems to be the one guy on the planet who surpasses Trump in his ability
to get into the news every 2 days. No tweeting required even. How are his
staff not just jumping out of windows? I mean it's been one article after the
other for 3 years now. Almost impressed by the endurance.

~~~
Bakary
To some extent Facebook acts the way it does because it knows media attention
has no teeth. Zuck knows he can just bide his time and scandals will slide off
him like morning dew off a leaf.

------
3xblah
Not sure if anyone has noticed but the submitter has given HN readers who
prefer Javascript-enabled browsing a workaround for the WSJ paywall.

Add ?mod=rsswn to the end of the URL.

------
baby
How can an article behind a paywall collect so many votes that quickly? Now
I'm wondering if any of the upvoters have actually read the article.

~~~
neonate
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=rsswn&sort=byDate&dateRange=al...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=rsswn&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

------
mrnobody_67
He also openly ignores requests to testify in front of UK & Canadian
parliamentary committees...

Think about that for a minute. Someone who controls 3b people. Runs
psychological experiments using AI. Bans accounts of people who violate
corporate-created policies that weren't debated or voted on by the public.
Violates FCC settlements. And then refuses to be held accountable - or answer
questions- from first world, democratic governments.

~~~
peteretep
> Someone who controls 3b people

This bullshit hyperbole helps nobody

~~~
mrnobody_67
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/02/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/02/facebook-
sorry-secret-psychological-experiment-users)

They decide what news & ads get shown.

FB played a significant role in Brexit and US Presidential elections,
enforcing filter bubbles, and running ads in violation of campaign finance
laws (i.e. Russia).

~~~
peteretep
Extrapolating that to “Zuck controls 3b people” is bullshit hyperbole

~~~
tty2300
Facebook has also performed studies where they controlled the items that show
on individuals news feed and recorded how it changed their emotions.
Controlling 3b people is exactly how I would describe it.

------
malloreon
Stop taking away personal responsibility from the thousands of facebook
employees, each of whom chooses to be evil every single day.

None of these people are being forced to work there. They choose to. They are
just as responsible.

~~~
lixtra
In that case don’t spare the users of FB either. They could carry their
content elsewhere but they chose to feed the monster even more.

Or - accept the fact that people consider a fair deal what seems to be
exploitation to you. If you don’t believe that people are able to make a
reasonable, conscious choice then the end of democracy has come (for you).

~~~
AlexandrB
> They could carry their content elsewhere but they chose to feed the monster
> even more.

They did (Instagram, WhatsApp), but then Facebook bought those companies too.

------
inlined
Good luck finding those emails. If it’s for a few years in the past it’s
probably auto-deleted due to corporate retention policies designed to defend
against discovery. When I came back to google I had all my old calendar but
none of my emails because retention is 2yrs.

~~~
jlarocco
Literally the first four words of the article say the emails have already been
found.

