I very much like to believe the "trust in Facebook is destroyed" message but...
(1) On every meetup I attend people are genuinely extremely surprised when I share with them even 1-2 of the screwups Facebook did. They are ENTIRELY clueless. And we're talking tech-savvy business founders and CEOs -- and often times CTOs and CFOs.
(2) Most don't care. They write it off as "I am not important enough to be spied on" or just directly admit "Facebook is integrated too much in my life and work and I can't replace it" and that's the end of the discussion. Many even say "they have only a part of my data, they can't have it all, right?" -- and have no idea about how well the tracking industry does cross-referencing of seemingly unrelated data sets.
I don't think Facebook is going away anytime soon in any measurable way or form. Sure they might struggle monetizing their mountain of data and analytics, and sure the stock market circus might not be on their side right now but I can't see them actually losing a significant chunk of users in the next 5 years.
Such a familiar phrase. I'm so tired of hearing it from people I know. This is exactly like saying "I'm too broke for anyone to steal my credit card".
What you think of your own importance has zero bearing on how some unknown third party perceives you. Neither can you predict how they will use your information or how it will affect you. It's insane that people spend time and energy on keeping secrets from their relatives and friends (which everyone does) and yet can't see that a third party that actively seeks your information is more likely to cause you harm than people you know. This is a trivial deduction, yet so many people can't comprehend it. They think that because they can't imagine how someone else could screw them up using their personal info, no one could possibly screw them up using their personal info.
Apparently, I'm not eloquent enough to convey this in a verbal conversation. I've tried. Funny thought: maybe I should print the paragraph above on a card and hand it out when someone says the key phrase.
> It's insane that people spend time and energy on keeping secrets from their relatives and friends (which everyone does) and yet can't see that a third party that actively seeks your information is more likely to cause you harm than people you know. This is a trivial deduction, yet so many people can't comprehend it.
I think this deduction is actually wrong. Ask yourself why you hide some things from your relatives and friends. Could it be because quite a lot of people are really bigoted, and the immediate social costs of them learning more about you would be dire? Whereas data collection currently has only one visible consequence on the individual level: what kind of ads & spam you get, and how much. People correctly recognize this as mostly harmless.
People do react to things that affect them directly. In my country it is widely known that people trying to cheat our IRS or social insurance got busted over Facebook photos, so they know not to present a lifestyle that's different than the one they report to the government. (E.g. if you're consistently reporting low income, don't post photos of your two limos. If you're on a (paid by social insurance) medical leave that restricts you to bed, you'd better not get tagged on a photo placing you in a restaurant.)
EDIT: I don't mean to imply that the government has a backdoor access to this data; it's just there were cases of people dumb enough to share incriminating evidence of fraud that found its way to government investigators, by e.g. being posted publicly.
Customizing the ads and spam is the first step, because that's what technologically feasible and makes business sense. Before long, they'll start "customizing" your search results even when you're not logged in, because your IP and search history gives the gatekeeper enough to decide what you should and shouldn't see.
Net Neutrality in the US was obviously gamed in favour of ISPs, telecoms and large corporations, and the population didn't lift a finger behind posting sanctimoniously on Reddit/HN, and arguing with each other about the semantics of free/un-free markets.
>Whereas data collection currently has only one visible consequence on the individual level: what kind of ads & spam you get, and how much.
The key words are "visible" and "currently". There are less visible consequences like identity theft, scams and all kinds of sneaky profiling that affect you without your knowledge. And no one really knows how this data will be used in the future.
Same, but I gave up. You can't make people care if they genuinely don't.
I noticed that Americans and part of Europeans (mostly Germans I believe but probably others as well) perceive leaks of personally identifiable information as outrageous but everybody I know here in Eastern Europe are indifferent. Unless they lose money or their company gets a negative PR, they could not care less.
> but everybody I know here in Eastern Europe are indifferent.
Fellow Eastern European here, I remember I was made fun of by my former colleagues back in 2005-2006 when I was saying that the United States requiring bio data in order to get a traveling visa (I think fingerprints became mandatory for US visa applicants back around that time) was very not ok, I received the same responses that you mention.
Nowadays that the bio thing has started reaching and directly affecting people more to the West the subject is fortunately debated on websites like this one and also in some parts of the Western mainstream media, but back in EE the subject is still ignored or at best is made fun of. I remember attending a street march/protest against bio ID cards/passports a couple of years ago, and the majority of participants were religious people that believed things like "666 the number of the Devil" and all that + a couple of tech people like myself which are still seen as paranoid by our friends and work colleagues. Unfortunately the civil society from this part of the world is totally mute on this type of subjects.
To be fair to all sides, it's really hard to care about societal problems that might morph into personally dangerous leaks -- especially when many people struggle to make ends meet and have food on the table. I get that part.
But most people in EE are also way too cynical and demeaning by default and yeah, that's a real problem when issues like these arise. Nobody takes them seriously until something monumental happens.
I'd say some Americans. Social Security Numbers and Credit Cards kind of get people going, but basically anything else elicits a "meh." Shocking and sad that the Equifax hack and bungling didn't get more people going than it did.
Because most people really aren't affected. I've experienced no negative consequences of the Equifax hack, nor several other major leaks that I was included in (OMB to name one). I'm not happy about the situation, but it's also not affected me directly, yet.
I think my hope, with the massive amount of SSN data that Equifax has, was that we'd see the SSN system being looked at to convert to something almost like a private/public key type of system where if someone obtains someone's SSN, another one can be generated pretty painlessly with the old revoked and can be linked back to the owner.
I know the primary issue is that the SSN wasn't intended for the use case it is used in, but we're at the point now that it is so probably best to protect it in a manner that protects the user/owner.
"If he's this good at making people love him, why didn't he do it before? Because these fools always look up for power. People above you, they never want to share power with you. Why you look to them? People below you, you give them hope, you give them respect, they give you power, 'cause they don't think they have any, so they don't mind giving it up."
>It's insane that people spend time and energy on keeping secrets from their relatives and friends (which everyone does) and yet can't see that a third party that actively seeks your information is more likely to cause you harm than people you know.
You're more likely to get murdered by your spouse than by a stranger. Your kid is more likely to get kidnapped by its parent than a stranger. Statistically speaking, it's the people who fear the unknown bogeyman who are irrational, not those who fear their friend, relative or neighbour.
This reasoning works when you want to determine whether it's safe to interact with a (single) random person on the street. It does not work when reasoning about privacy, because:
1) Issues resulting from privacy loss mostly have nothing to do with murder and kidnapping statistics. Far more relevant would be the note that as of 2019 identity theft affected 23% of all US internet users [1]. And that's just one way to misuse your information. There are countless others.
2) Loss of privacy means loss of control over who interacts with your data and when that happens. I don't understand why this simple fact is so hard to grasp.
If your information ends up on sale or in a public data dump, anyone who wants to misuse it will have an opportunity to do so, probably forever. It's up to them to decide whether your info is "worth it" or how to use it.
Something you consider trivial today can be used in an elaborate scam tomorrow. Or it could be used for a social media stink campaign by your unhappy ex. Or something else.
The point is, "I am not important enough to be spied on" is a stupid statement, because whether you are important is determined by context. When you loose your privacy, you lose control over that context.
To me, the story reads a lot like a media narrative that has very little to do with users’s actual lives. And I’ve been reading variations on “Why Facebook sucks” and “Why Facebook is doomed” for a very long time. It’s like the “Why this is the year of Linux on the desktop,” but for media companies.
Does anyone else remember reading on Slashdot about how Microsoft is evil and any day now, we're going to move to Linux and revolt? Except that normal people didn't care and didn't notice?
Yep, this is still mostly doomsaying and nothing much else. While all of the objections against Facebook are valid in my eyes -- and in the eyes of many others -- the truth is that the regular folk views Facebook as an utility, akin to having power, hot water and internet at home.
This will not change overnight. Or even after several years. If Facebook fades into irrelevance it will likely be a death by a million paper cuts and not after a short-lived revolution.
Do they have to lose users? I'm still a user, but my engagement is way down. I largely use it to organize events I am hosting. I might respond if someone tags me in something. Otherwise I'm basically not using it. Speaking of which, the last event I hosted I invited 30 people. 16 of them did not see the invite. It used to be I had a few people I had to text or email because they would not see a Facebook invite. Now I basically have to include an event on Facebook out of inertia, but it's not the primary way I invite people anymore.
They don't have to lose users to lose value -- at least for a while. But their hydra heads are spread everywhere. Every single "Like" button on a 3rd party website is a tracking pod and this has been well documented. Every single advert hosted by Facebook is a tracking pod as well.
Your engagement might be low -- mine is almost zero -- but you are still a source of data even if a reduced one. I am not sure even disabling Javascript altogether will help; I am pretty sure they fall back to techniques like your IP history, known devices from which you logged in and few other such techniques.
My gut feeling is they are holding on very tight to their personally identifiable information harvesting practice and won't let go of it anytime soon. Hope I am wrong.
And the GDPR might cause less tracking through like buttons: "the operator of a website embedding [...] the Facebook Like button, which causes the collection and transmission of the users’ personal data, is jointly responsible for that stage of the data processing" -- Advocate General Bobek [0] (emphasis mine)
You have a good point but there are a couple of areas where they're starting to hurt:
1) Politically. While most users don't care enough to stop using the service, users in the US and Western Europe care enough that politicians who stand up to FB get praise and potentially votes. Looking tough on tech is now a quick political win and that will eventually hurt them, most likely in the EU.
2) Talent wars. HN might not a good proxy for the general population but it's reasonable proxy for people FB wants to hire and the general sentiment around here seems to be I don't want to work for FB anymore. IRL most of my engineering friends don't want to work for FB either.
There was a time when I was younger, at the height of Microsoft’s unethical attack on Linux and open standards, when I would not have even considered working for them, and would automatically recommend “no-hire” anyone who had recent experience there (because what kind of depraved moral compass do you have working there?) If your company’s brand gets a black enough mark, it can have real consequences.
I recently graduated from college and was heavily involved in national hackathons, and this story is just BS. It's so laughably BS that this story can be used as proof of the New York Time's willingness to publish anything that'll hurt Facebook.
Facebook goes to the best schools in the country and hires the best of the best.
I fear that (1) might turn into a witch hunt -- "all tech is bad". Mass population is not very good at distinguishing nuance, especially when charismatic politicians tell them what to think. But I guess in this case this will work to Facebook's detriment.
As for (2), I haven't thought of that because I don't live in the USA and lack the perspective. Thanks for providing it! I think this might actually hurt FB a lot.
The "I'm not important enough" comment got me thinking about something Chris Rock said on a podcast (w/ Marc Maron) when he was asked if he faced racism when he was starting out as a comic.
He replied that when he was starting out, he was small fry, so he didn't face anything beyond what he would as an average, non-comedian African American. In the comedy circuit, he was mostly ignored, but not explicitly discriminated against.
Once he reached a certain popularity level, and he was in the running for spots on talk shows, SNL, TV episodes, he started to notice it. The stakes are a lot higher, and there are lots of people coveting those TV appearances. So suddenly, people who would otherwise never even notice him, were acting in ways to specifically exclude him from the running in areas that were traditionally reserved for white comedians.
Just because you aren't important enough to be spied on today doesn't mean that you won't appear on someone's threat radar later.
Yes, public apathy is the biggest roadblock to most meaningful reform (in all aspects of life and politics, not just FB/big tech).
But looking at it another way, the sheer volume of incidents has got to some how desensitize the vast majority of people out there. Personally, probably half of the companies that I regularly do business with have had some major data breach within the last few years. But nothing ever comes of it - no real punishment, no new meaningful requirements to protect their infrastructure, and no specific harm to me personally. So should I stop interacting with these companies? What about all the other companies out there where it’s just a matter of time before their own data breach? Should I eschew all technology and go back to the barter system? I think the genie has already been let out of the bottle and maybe we need to look at solutions assuming that data breaches will happen and how to protect people after the fact rather than preventing them in the first place.
> but I can't see them actually losing a significant chunk of users in the next 5 years
I don't think they will lose users progressively. Nothing will happen until something does, and then everyone will leave en masse (or simply stop logging in, without deactivating their account).
We should just work to make that happen as soon as possible.
There probably is a strong distinction in Microsoft's decline in Windows/Explorer use versus a potential decline in Facebook. Since Facebook is network-based, losing users and engagement could have a much steeper multiplier effect. If one person switched to Chrome in 2007, it didn't change anyone else's Explorer experience. Eventually, if enough users switch, sites will be designed primarily around Chrome, etc., but this is a slow bleed versus a waterfall.
True - but I still think there's a big difference between understanding that your info isn't private and not being bothered versus assuming that your info IS private. The real question is your #1: Is the group of people with this understanding growing by any significant margin?
Facebook is a quasi-monopoly. Its threat comes from regulators, not consumers nor advertisers. (You saw something similar with Uber, by the way. When they lost their Teflon coating, prosecutors and municipal regulators got bold while their grassroots supporters melted away.)
But I'd argue Uber is largely replaceable -- you still have public transport and taxis while Facebook has no alternative and most people are too inert to even think of replacing it...
We can all see how the media grows bolder and reports quite negatively on Facebook but I wonder if that even makes any difference.
Facebook does have alternatives, though. The website does nothing new, only serves it to you in one place. This used to be great when your feed was populated by content generated by people you actually know and care about in your personal life, but facebook pulled the rug out from under us when they gradually increased the amount of advertising pollution you had to sift through to get to any original thought.
Facebook has changed from that useful platform it once was to basically nonstop custom-tailored commercials, but the alternatives that it sought to replace have not and never will. Want to keep in touch with your relatives or friends? Directly engage people again. This can be as simple as an email thread, group text messaging, or an application like GroupMe. Need to plan events with your group? Throw it on a google calendar, who cares about who said they are going or who left your invite on read? Contacts? Your phone and address book on your computer. Keep your photos on something nonproprietary and therefore future proof; contrary to popular belief, no one will remember all the likes your pictures from Cabo got you in two weeks anyway.
Facebook has no alternative because it takes years to build something halfway decent. A social network today must work across all devices seamlessly, integrating with realtime notifications, user accounts and addressbooks across devices and that’s just for a start.
At https://Qbix.com we have spent our own money on a free open source alternative platform to Facebook.
I think we’re still pretty bad at marketing it. Would appreciate some feedback if you check out the site and watch the video.
But it needs a huge effort to make it as nice and appealing as say stripe.com is for payment integrations. Those guys are amazing.
We recently released version 1.1 on github. We have chatrooms, galleries, events, trips, back end and front end components which all work together like BSD systems all work together. Just slap them on pages, theme it and there u have your own social network. It took us years and nearly $1M in funding. But you can’t see much of that at a glance, or play around with it, yet. That should change in 2019.
Don't bother with any arguments that PHP powers huge sites including Facebook and Wordpress. The whole point of this thread, and presumably Qbit's very existence, is that they are not good role models.
If you are trying to be a modern, secure, respectful replacement for Facebook, be modern, secure, and respectful.
A strange response considering you’re not the only person on the Internet. You didn’t post any alternative, and if you had, it would probably have the 1% of the install base of PHP. Remember that most people hosting this thing aren’t going to be setting up their own VPN and Linux. In fact, even YOU don’t do it, you probably will just use AWS creating MORE centralization in “the cloud”. That’s pretty hypocritical. Meanwhile the LAMP stack or NGinX + PHP stack is widely deployed on the web. And many of the installations have the latest PHP. What is less secure about the latest PHP than your favorite language?
Finally, about being modern and chasing trends. Wordpress is not modern but it powers 1 in every 3 websites. Ghost is modern and is used on 0.1% of websites. Thanks but we’ll pass.
I am not even sure how PHP is disrespectful, so I’ll leave that one alone.
If it makes you feel better, we are also working on an app hosting the whole network from a random computer or a mobile phone on a local network.
Your answer somehow conflates popularity with quality.
PHP has a lot of very well documented problems.
Also, do you have a source when claiming that most PHP installations use more modern versions? I seriously doubt that particular claim is true. Most business people think of IT as a one-time expense. You can still find a ton of 5.0 - 5.3 installations out there. Hell, in my country there are good amount of PHP 4.x websites as well.
I’m responding to your “most people are too inert to even think of replacing [Facebook]” comment. My point is, they already have. That presents an easy regulatory solution to Mark Zuckerberg. Break up Facebook.
Most people don't care as they should. Facebook is a useful utility for many people, and the narrative of the marco risk where Facebook is destroying the foundation of social governance isn't accepted by them.
“Then surely you wouldn’t mind sharing your fb password with me, with your spouse and your manager at work. Moreso, we would like to have access to all your messaging activity in real time.”
I guarantee you when the first millennial takes a real shot at becoming president, someone at FB and other data companies will leak all of their private messages since they were teenagers. So much of our data is out there and it’s never going away.
Kompromat has been a normal part of the Russian political culture going back to negative rumors against Kerensky in 1917, and yet Russian society has not adapted a lenient attitude about it. Rather, the opposite happens, the public develops the attitude that everyone is corrupt and the right way to fight this is to make a severe example of anyone who gets caught.
We have all said things, made crude and even cruel jokes, that we'd be embarrassed about if they became public. But I think we are starting to understand that it's pretty common and with cameras everywhere and social media it's much more likely that you'll be "outed" for something you said or did or would rather keep private.
I don't know if a society that doesn't shame people for that sort of stuff will be better. Shame is a powerful way that societies regulate undesired behavior. But I do think it's happening.
That guy's voters had a much lower standard for decency for him than they had for other candidates. Some even rationalized that with religious explanations.
The question is whether the standards for personal conduct have been permanently lowered for future candidates or whether that was a one time thing.
It will be. We always move the goalposts of what "polite society" should look like.
Trump got elected despite having his past (or because of?). People with visible tattoos are CEOs. Elon smoked weed on camera. You think that shit would have flown in the 1940s?
Exactly my point. OP was saying he doesn't think we'll be able to get past the mistakes someone made in the past. Culturally in the US, we do it all the time.
On the other hand it allows us as developers to push back on PMs and other colleagues that are tempted to slide down the slippery slope of data collection.
According to what my wife occasionally shows me, my dad, a man in his 70s, and my cousins, men and women in their 40s and 50s, have posted as questionable of stuff and theoretically-damaging-to-presidential-aspirations on Facebook as I can ever imagine any millennial could possibly post. I don't think millennials are unique in this regard.
I feel like the New York Times really enjoys blowing these Facebook stories out of proportion. Letting a company like Spotify integrate with Messenger is not wholesale selling of messaging data to advertisers. The data was shared with reputable companies using it to expand capabilities of what is offered to Facebook's users. This is not a shocking revelation and certainly not out of scope of the kind of sharing I would expect Facebook to do. Why all the sudden outrage? I have no problems with Facebook doing this with my data. There is nothing revealing about the NYT story. They are just adding hot takes to what is already public knowledge.
Does spotify need read/write on all my messages and posts ever made? I'm sure spotify isn't the only company granted this privilege of omnipotence. The cards are still falling, don't blame nyt for offering analysis when the news continues to break.
Maybe not, but do you think it is reasonable to build an API that explicitly asks the user for every single individual message? I'm not aware of a single web api that functions this way.
Even then, I'm pretty sure the integrations are relatively limited... I mean, most of my friends don't even listen to the same music I do these days. Sure in H.S. it's more common, even through college etc... but tastes change.
Most people still give not a single fuck unfortunately.
I went on a usage embargo for quite a while before deleting my account. Most of my friends’ event planning is done through FB so it’s hard to get invited to stuff if you arent a user.
After the Instagram plaintext password thing I decided it was time to go.
I made a post on FB stating why I was deleting my account and that I was keeping it up for another week for time for friends to read the post.
I outlined a lot of the things FB has done or let happen. The responses were the typical trite FB shit.
I am seriously starting to suspect an astroturfing campaign against Facebook. I'm not saying they do nothing wrong. But the recent laser focus has been incredible.
Facebook basically punked the entire news industry with the video nonsense. Trusting them killed a lot of jobs. A lot of jobs of people who write articles.
So I doubt[1] that there's an organized campaign against them of the sort they launched against Soros. But much like, if you punch a cop, you have to expect it won't end well, destroying a bunch of news rooms isn't going to endear you to the journalists picking up the pieces.
Which basically confirms that the media is out to get Facebook.
I mean I suspect the same thing, but I wish everyone would be upfront with their motives instead of acting like they're just concerned citizens. Facebook's biggest critics are the same people that hated Facebook before they did any of this.
Their lack of willingness to make executive-level changes is appalling given what has come out in the last 12 months. They still refuse to fully cooperate on various investigations involving foreign interference, and have shown practically no remorse for their negligence in these cases.
They've brought every ounce of this pressure on themselves by shirking their responsibility as a corporate citizen.
> Their lack of willingness to make executive-level changes is appalling given what has come out in the last 12 months.
They're under no obligation to. Firms don't (and shouldn't) make personal decisions based on the whims of the mob.
> They still refuse to fully cooperate on various investigations involving foreign interference, and have shown practically no remorse for their negligence in these cases.
How many times does a company need to say sorry? I mean honestly, who would have thought a foreign government would do such a thing?
Plus the foreign interference is overblown. The amount of ads and groups Russia was pushing was miniscule compared to amount of content pushed everyday and political advertising that political parties does.
I don't care about 'sorry'. I'm not even sure what it means for a corporation to 'say sorry'.
I know what it means for humans to apologize for something serious. That involves taking responsibility for the bad act, being willing to honestly, candidly and forthrightly discuss the problem in question, take concrete steps to attempt to remedy the injury, and demonstrate how one is trying to make sure it doesn't happen again.
So FB can prove that. They can show a trustworthy third party[1] evidence that what is currently publicly known about that situation (which is not their only scandal by a long shot) is the full extent of what happened, what they're doing about it, and state in a non-weaselly way that they understand the importance that we don't find out later they're lying again. Sunshine and some time is a magic combination.
But of course, nobody's under an _obligation_ to attempt to regain trust. And given that nobody really expects current management to willingly give up power, I predict that they won't attempt it, because they've shown no material change to their overall behavior at all so far - in fact, they keep doubling down on sneaky, nasty and dishonest to try to keep pushing forward with their plans.
So I predict that they'll keep trying to obfuscate their way through the news-cycle, only later for it to be shown that whatever it is this time, it was worse, and in ways nobody even previously considered. Until they blow something else sufficiently important up that 'the mob' (AKA the rest of the folks on this planet who are sick of jerks blowing important things up, AKA FB's feedstock) decide that's gotta stop.
I also predict it won't be 'the mob' with torches and pitchforks. It'll be the one with Bloomberg terminals.
[1] Given that they have serially obfuscated, to outright lied, to hired firms to spread antisemitic smears against critics, nobody in their right mind would trust anything self-interested said by Zuckerberg or Sandberg.
My thoughts exactly. I don't know anyone who is obsessing over this "Tragic Fall of Facebook" (except maybe some shareholders). There are some big headlines, but there's a constant barrage of articles don't say anything new.
It's probably some old giants of media behind the attack, but I wouldn't be too surprised if FB is relishing in the controversy. It throttles their growth for a bit, but they won't seem like such a Goliath to regulators. They can make some compromises ("We won't let foreign IP Addresses post politically-motivated advertisements"); divert attention away from the data mining; and make one big, symbolic gesture in an emergency ("Mark Zuckerberg will step down as CEO... but will keep boardroom seat and serve in figurative role")
Rupert Murdoch threatened Mark Zuckerberg in 2016 with a war over Facebook
"Murdoch hosted Zuckerberg at his Sun Valley, Idaho, villa and expressed discontent with Facebook's News Feed algorithm and its handling of news.
He requested Facebook consult publishing partners and be more generous sharing digital ad revenue, or he vowed, News Corp executives would take their dislike of Facebook public. He also hinted that News Corp lobbyists would take a more aggressive stand against Facebook with U.S. regulators, as the company had done against Google in Europe."
The idea that Facebook's "Russian meme/adverts" situation had anything to do with Trump winning is laughable beyond any reasonable measure. He won because Clinton was perhaps the worst candidate in the history of US Presidential elections, not because some Russian trolls wrote some silly crap on FB.
But I agree with your premise...FB is just being used as a big fat scapegoat so the real culprits that engineered Clinton's loss don't lose their cushy political positions.
>> I think they made a lot of enemies with their behavior during the election and afterwards. Deservedly so, imo.
> He won because Clinton was perhaps the worst candidate in the history of US Presidential elections, not because some Russian trolls wrote some silly crap on FB.
Both of these things are true. Nothing about Clinton's weakness excuses Facebook's shameful and evasive behavior when it was discovered that they were ground-zero for a foreign propaganda campaign.
You're getting downvoted by people who don't like that you think clinton was bad.
You're point though is true. The $10-200k that russia supposedly spent and the surrounding meme/fake news bubble that expanded around it simply didn't have the influence that people keep claiming it did.
And even if it did, does anyone honestly think that Russia has not been using the US media to try to "influence" elections since at least the end of WWII? Not that it makes it OK, but let's be realistic and understand that this is nothing new.
FWIW I agree that the effects of russian influence—intentionally at least—is overblown. However, Facebook still managed to make themselves look like comically evil in responding to the charges.
The "evil media conspiracy against poor misunderstood underdog Facebook" line seems to show up in every one of these threads. Have the "Definers" been directed to step back from the "Evil Soros" theories and go with this instead?
I think that for anyone paying attention, Facebook has been a continual shitshow since inception. The idea that they will ever learn to have a sense of civic responsibility towards their general userbase is simply delusional, for the simple reason that to do so goes utterly against Facebook's entire core business model. It is the 'punter model' of doing business with customer as puppet/adversary and it is also the main moral failing at the center of Google. The fact that there is a recent pile on by the media might be that there is some nefarious competitor stirring up trouble. Or it might be that they have woken up and decided to do their jobs for once and this seems unusual.
1) Facebook's news feed algorithm is optimized to find viral stories and maximize engagement with them. During the 2016 election, Donald Trump exploited this behavior repeatedly with his many successful PR stunts.
The way it worked was: Trump would make a rude comment, and then everyone offended by it would share the story in outrage. Perhaps 90% of their FB friends would agree, but the other 10% saw the rude comment as telling truth to power. The messages were crafted to maximize this bifurcation.
2) There were efforts by Russia sponsored groups to fund various social media campaigns, both for and against Trump, and for and against various non-mainstream political causes.
Analysis:
Here's where it relates to your observation: Officials realize that #1 above can have real political consequences in the US, and thus view it as a threat to the status quo (which it is).
Facebook did not intend to let itself be used this way by Trump, it just happens to be the profit maximizing evolution of the news feed algorithm after many years of R&D.
Officials suddenly realize both the threat that the news feed poses, and also the opportunity it offers. To make the point clear, Facebook can in essence be a softer version of a Great Firewall, combined with a built-in social credit system, not just for the US but for the world.
Facebook made clear its stance on working more closely with US officials when it announced that under $150K had been spent by Russian-funded interest groups in the 2016 election, but that was not enough to satisfy officials.
As the pressure on Facebook slowly ratcheted up, Facebook announced human reviewers for controversial content, new content guidelines, the eviction of various alt political personalities, etc. This too was not enough to satisfy US officials, who remained concerned about weaponization of the platform and who didn't like Facebook's attitude.
So pressure continued to increase, as evidenced by the PR released by FB which attempted to put Sandberg in the spotlight for missteps. This is a common tactic, akin to Rumsfeld being in the spotlight about torture to shield GWB from scrutiny.
We can see now that scapegoating Sandberg didn't work, though it did buy a bit of time for Facebook to formulate its strategy and hunker down.
So now US officials are spreading the news about various privacy breaches in an attempt to spook investors and force Zuck to come to the table and allow the Great Firewall + Social Credit system that officials want, which will guarantee that no upstart candidate could ever leverage the news feed algorithm to get billions in free marketing budget ever again.
As others point out in this thread, Zuck controls a lot of Facebook and is unlikely to be fired.
I personally expect that Zuck fully intends to play ball but is dealing with employees who (like those at Google who scuttled the big China search deal) are not so ethically adept as to convince themselves that handing the keys to US officials is appropriate. My guess is that FB has such solid internal analytics that it would be impossible to hide such cooperation from the many employees who are laser focused on various metrics and KPIs of the algorithm and its associated revenue streams.
So what is happening is a sort of dance during which both players are watching to see how public opinion evolves before they make their next move. US officials probably have a few fairly impressive cards they have not played yet, and would probably strongly prefer not to play them. I'd also guess that there are efforts underway inside Facebook to create the mechanisms US officials want in a way that may take a bit more time but will not spook the workers.
There may also be a plan to have some innocuous-seeming laws passed such that compliance will give FB the excuse to gut/rebuild various aspects of its algorithm's analytics which allow it to embed the firewall + social credit monitoring hooks without alarming those working on them.
At this point I think the dominant factors are the reality that Zuck does plan to fully cooperate and that there is an unexpected level of urgency from US official to make this happen sooner rather than later. I suppose if you add up the userbase of FB, Instagram and Whatsapp it's clear why the officials are chomping at the bit to get the analytic and censorship dashboards up and running ASAP.
Through this scandal and others, society will learn just how harmful the dual-share class structures that allow founders to reap the economic benefits of public markets while shirking the oversight aspects and keeping all control are.
I wonder if Zuckerberg's job is in jeopardy at this point? I didn't think Uber was going to be able to shed their CEO, but after months negative articles about Uber, Travis lost his job, and I believe he controlled the voting shares also. Seems like FB is going through the same thing now (except there have been no sexual harassment complaints)
Can any lawyers or investors comment on what it would take for Mark to lose his job as CEO? How much value has to be shaved off facebook shares before investors loss all confidence ?
My suspicioun is that while Travis did have voting control they also needed financing and I think that was used as key leverage in the situation. It is possible that the investors had blocking rights on certain investments or that they went to SoftBank to force the issue which was using a possible investment in Lyft as a forcing function.
He first needs to believe in the need to replace himself. Or something easier, yet a permanent solution: He could have completely abolished the CEO position, require board meetings for all executive decisions and require supermajority for all essential board decisions.
Weirder things have happened. He could hire someone else to run Facebook and retain the voting control he has. Or at least to be the face of the company as he is and how Google's founders have made their CEOs do the work of showing up in front of congress and etc.
Zuck might be a prick but all of FB's business relies on user's data. Even if he was to be replaced I can't see how FB could follow a different business plan. Their money comes from advertising and advertisers flock to it because they can target groups of individuals by choosing demographics in a way that no one else offers. If you remove that part from the equation FB's revenue would collapse.
Zuck isn't the problem, the whole fucking service is the problem.
He could be sued out of excess (exceeding his proportion of shares) voting rights by beneficiary action. This is a public company, remember your fiduciary and beneficiary rights.
I had begun to give up hope on the common sense of the masses to whom these stories are being pitched, but the comments in this thread have renewed my hope.
These hit-pieces are getting very tired and don't really do anything but put scary spins on things that have been public info for years. It's a shame a once-respected news org like the NYT has to resort to scrounging around looking for anything, anything that will make for a FUD story about Facebook to get some page views. Problem is that they suffer no penalty as people seem happy to take the headline and run with it and the subtleties of the situation which Facebook itself has discussed in many instances including this one are discounted. Stories about "well it's not that bad" don't sell as well as "OMG HOLY SH*T FACEBOOK HAS BEEN GIVING YOUR MESSAGES TO EVERYONE!!!" and getting clicks is all these orgs care about now because it's all they can do to stay afloat.
The NYT has a nice long history of doing this, even as recently as helping build support for Iraq. Journalism for all the good it’s done is simultaneously a very dirty business for all of its power over public opinion.
call me old fashioned on this one but I believe that a man's character shines through any product he creates and any business he owns. Sooner or later, your business and work decisions become manifestation of your own true self regardless of the work mask you choose to apply.
Maybe, maybe not? Zuckerberg bought a dozen houses so no one would document his activity. I don't use facebook and use an adblocker so no one would document my activity. The medium is different, but it's the same concern.
I don't mean to be rude, but who the hell cares. I don't understand why people think if they are using something for free they have a right to privacy, or if the company isn't trying to make money from them to fund the service. The only way you would know you are protected is if national laws are passed, they are enforced, and they clearly set a framework of privacy that creates an even playing field...
People here might care, it might make good headlines, but I don't think any normal people out there care. When I talk to my friends who are not in Tech they just assume FB knows everything about them.. and they don't give a shit as they just want to use it for free.
Amen! I don't like FB, but I use it for groups I am part of and to stay in touch with a few friends. I also don't care and would love to see more relevant ads.
I some T.V. show last night with Media people decrying Facebook and then Facebook explaining how they were trying their best and helping the world communicate.
Both sides seemed so overwhelming full of themselves. They both clearly thought all of their customers were idiots. And neither had the dignity to come out and say that they though all of their customers were idiots.
This is all going to end with another set of idiots in government passing a bunch of laws that in 10 years half the country will say were a giant mistake and the other half will say "but imagine how much worse things would be if we didn't have these idiotic laws."
Only way FB changes is if big-spending advertisers start dropping out. Losing users will probably not happen because FB can easily spoof user growth numbers.
On their next earnings call, if they say DAU grew by 5%, how would you audit the veracity of that statement? Users aren't cash, which can at least be verified by auditors that review bank statements.
Think about whole new generation of politicians and government. What if many of them said or did something wrong when they were young? Will our society adapt itself to new moral norms or will they be managed by some masters of the puppets?
Now, I am also curious to know how many such deals LinkedIn has and to what level they share data with other tech giants (except off-course Microsoft who already probably have access to everything)
"haunted" all the way to billions in profit. If the FB revelations are to have a real impact on the culture of surveillance, the biggest advertisers have to start withdrawing from the platform (FB, IG, Whatsapp). Unless that happens, we will continue to see these hand-wringing articles and eventually become numb to them.
It helps to explain the whole “if you talk about what happened on the north shore, you’ll never get another job in this town again”. Translated to “silicon valley runs a data mafia for sale to mercenaries” with a personal anecdote of being harassed/gaslighted in public in part with info from a private Facebook message
This stuff ruins lives. “Dumb fucks”
Burn them to the ground. Or, more likely, have the cia silently partner up
I’m literally preparing for my suicide now by giving away all of my money, after years of being harassed by strangers. The incident in August 2015 that was related to my Facebook private messages was one of many, but was particularly insidious and caused significant damage to my life.
It’s highly likely that data has been for sale behind the scenes, readily available for malicious actors, making players like Facebook complicit in ugly shenanigans.
Please understand the downsides of information technology. It can be abused to hurt others in ways you may not have foreseen. I’m unable to withstand being harassed any further, and the harassment is 100% enabled by infotech. The Facebook shenanigans will hopefully serve as a prime example of the dangers of free information sharing by malicious actors.
> It’s highly likely that data has been for sale behind the scenes
I would say it's a near certainty. Not saying that Facebook the company was selling data under the table, but one corrupt or extorted sysadmin in the right place is all it would take.
I consider this a good lesson never compromising yoru morals. Once you do it, it can always come back and bite you in the ass.
I mean most of these deals happened 5+ years ago. And FB's stock is paying the price for it now.
So message to employees:
There are employee's who have received their entire 4 year grant fully vested now who weren't around when any of this happened. What your employer does, even if its not related to you, even if you weren't around for it, can still bite you in the ass.
They are paying the price in terms of the lowered share price and may have had nothing to do with any of this.
As another example banks are still paying fines related to 2008 that affect the current year's bonus pool.
The thing that bothers me the most about this is that rank and file Facebook employees wrote code to allow all of these companies access to users chat messages, personal data, etc. and they never said no.
The crisis is a manufactured "narrative" when the COO is reported to have yelled "You threw us under the bus!" in reaction to the CSO making an embarrassing disclosure to the board? And when FB is under ongoing investigation by the US/UK/EU governments?
