"...defendants made false or misleading statements and failed to disclose that Facebook violated its own data privacy policies by allowing third parties access to personal data of millions of Facebook users without their consent..."
The "without their consent" part is BS, as is this lawsuit. When you use Facebook platform apps, you have to consent to the disclosure of your information to the developer, and have to agree to allow whatever special permissions the developer is asking for. As for friend data that apps may have access to, when you sign up for and use Facebook, you agree to the terms and conditions, which allow this behavior.
Investors had the opportunity to view both the developer platform policies and Facebook TOS long before they ever bought shares. If they didn't like the possible implications of them, they should not have invested. My guess is that this case will go nowhere.
> agree to allow whatever special permissions the developer is asking for
You can't just write up an arbitrary contract and assume it will hold up in a court of law. For example, if I tried to rent out a unit by signing a lease that allowed the landlord to turn my water off if I posted a negative review about them, their lease would probably be found in violation of the corresponding state's landlord-tenant laws.
Precedents are established all the time. In the case of Facebook, this is something that common law would not have addressed prior to the early 2000s. Never before have we had such an efficient data-mining machine in the hands of anyone. New technologies warrant new laws.
I am a developer of an app that makes use of Facebook friend permissions and have seen the various API changes they have made since 2014.
Applications using Facebook Graph 2.+ (which is the only option since Spring 2015 or so) who access friend data may only access data of friends who have also given consent to your app. So if A and C log into a Facebook app, and A is friends with B and C, the app can only be aware that A and C exist. This is true of legacy and new Facebook applications. It used to be possible to get basically everything about B (name, age, gender, photo, etc), but that all got shut down when Graph API 1.0 was discontinued. If this is somehow not the case for some Facebook apps that got special permission or there is a hack to get at the data, that would be a huge breach of trust.
Is this correct? Because all this time I was wondering about this scandal: apparently, this all started because someone had some app or website which got downloaded by a few hundred thousand FB users (who gave access to their info), and somehow they turned that into data of 50M users. And I also am well aware the current FB API doesn't allow you to get info about your friends if only you give permissions to an app. That this "breach" happened some time ago, when API permissions were different, would make a lot of sense to me.
Before 2015 Facebook apps could access the data of your friends if you gave it permission. Your friends didn't need to give explicit permission (though there were never-used settings to block access).
Some academic dude made a personality test app that harvested the data from all of the friends of people who used it. He paid lots of people (almost all American) on Amazon's Mechanical Turk to use it and harvested their data and the data of their friends.
He sold that data to Cambridge Analytica. This was in 2012 I think. Facebook removed that version of the Friends API in 2015 so this is no longer possible.
That’s actually the point of my post. I have been developing Facebook apps since the very beginning of the developer platform, but stopped because the new rules were so restrictive that they made apps useless. There is no point to developing social network apps that can’t involve the user’s social network.
Since all apps have these restrictions, I don’t believe that any apps at issue here had special permissions. However, it is possible that they scraped public data and were assisted in being pointed to which data to scrape by the direct profile data they obtained through the apps. Enough friends lists etc. are public to make this potentially beneficial.
No specs have been released about CA’s “psychographic profiling”. We don’t know the extent of the data that they had access to, what data went into it (perhaps it was based on name and friends list only, which are mostly public etc.). So until we know more, we can only assume that these apps had the same constraints that all others do.
> When you use Facebook platform apps, you have to consent to the disclosure of your information to the developer, and have to agree to allow whatever special permissions the developer is asking for. As for friend data that apps may have access to, when you sign up for and use Facebook, you agree to the terms and conditions, which allow this behavior.
So it depends on what you mean by consent, and whether you want to specify "informed consent". Lots of EU data protection law talks about "informed consent". If you asked 1,000 facebook users what they had consented to, they probably would not think that they had consented to that. One can make a case that the long legalese with a checkbox at the end isn't (informed) consent.
In fact, I can demonstrate that Facebook has the wherewithal to explicitly determine that I haven't read their TOS, yet chooses not to do so. I would argue that construes some kind of acceptance that the TOS are unenforceable. IANAL, and I'm not aware of that argument being attempted, but I'd quite like it to be.
>If you asked 1,000 facebook users what they had consented to, they probably would not think that they had consented to that.
SomeFacebookApp is requesting permission to do the following:
Access my basic information: Includes my name, profile picture, gender, networks, user ID, list of friends, and any other information I've shared with everyone.
Access my contact information: Current Address and Mobile Phone Number
I can't imagine how much more explicit this could be. I don't think the argument that it's behind legalese would hold. And it seems pretty informative about what information is going to be taken.
>Ah yes, and what exactly are they doing with this information? I can't imagine how much less explicit this could be.
I would have appreciated less smugness, but I get your point. The permissions request should go further and say how the permissions will be used and what can happen if they are used.
The idea of informed consent applied here (which is EU law) gives SomeFacebookApp permission to access the data, like the text you have written says, and nothing beyond that.
Once they had accessed the data, they would not [legally] be able to store it, or use it for any purpose. Text like this worries me because it's clear there is some illegal intent - that doesn't mean I agree to the illegal action.
That 'list of friends' meant 'oh, and all of these for all of your friends as well, and by accepting this, you tell us they know about this and they accepted it as well' - in which case, your friends, of course, are not even aware of this.
Please don’t post blatantly incorrect statements like this.
An app that gets a friend list of a user does not get the same access to each friend as to the authorizing user. This should be obvious; if I agree to allow an app to post on my wall and access my friends list, it doesn’t mean the app can post on my friends’ walls from my friends’ identities.
The only information the FB API returns about the authorizing user’s friends is data those friends have made publicly available. In fact, the friends even have the option to configure their privacy settings to exclude them from any “friend lists” given to apps.
Honestly it’s ridiculous... nothing was breached in the CA scandal. Users authorized access to their data, and any data of other people was publicly available and authorized by TOS or (admittedly opt-out) privacy settings.
If you want to stay private online, maybe don’t use a service with the singular business model of monetizing your data.
You assume an unlimited ability to give consent. Some protected classes (ie children) and countless others may not be able to give consent. And id assume that in some country somewhere even adults might not be able to divest themselves of all privacy rights forever. There are limits to reasonability.
Well that notification doesn't say what SomeFacebookApp will do with the information, it implies they won't share it with anyone else. "any other information" is too broad, so it's not clear what that covers.
Correct me where I'm wrong but did it not used to be the case that facebook apps could access almost as much info about your friends as they could about you?
So where is the consent? Fred gives consent to run a personality quiz and its associated data gathering - Fred's 180 friends didn't.
This is, of course, true but it's not clear why investors should have any grounds to sue over it. This wasn't actually a PR problem for Facebook until relatively recently - for instance, the 2012 Obama campaign harvested data about the Facebook friends of people who volunteered access to their accounts, those friends obviously didn't consent, and this mostly just lead to glowing articles about how clever this was and how commercial companies could copy it.
What it took for this to be a problem for Facebook was Trump running for and winning the presidency, the press needing someone to blame other than themselves, and them being willing to bury minor details like the campaign probably not actually using the data in question in any form. That doesn't seem like something which could reasonably be predicted in advance.
That consent is contained in the TOS that you and all of your friends agreed to when you signed up for Facebook. Further, the access to friend data has always been more limited than you imply here, and more recently, it’s become so limited that using apps for data collection about friends is almost a pointless endeavor.
"Well duh, it says it right there in section 37, paragraph 12, in dense legalese – how could anyone be surprised?"
Perhaps the very best thing that could come out of this is an end to the longstanding legal fig leaf of lengthy, complex legal documents presented as click-through agreements somehow constituting "informed consent."
I fully agree with this, there should be laws that enforce TOS length and legibility for those who didn't take the bar exam or had their personal counsel available before clicking I Agree.
Or create a universal TOS where service creators can just check off various options, in the same way that Creative Commons created a universe copyright licensing agreement.
This is the only reasonable way I can see going forward.
I recall reading once that a person would need a lifetime's worth of time (50 years? 80?) just to read and understand the legal ramifications of the contracts and TOS he or she must agree to in order to use software.
Clicking "I agree" is probably the most obvious and common lie told by humanity today. Something has to change.
I mean terms of service are not that hard to read. Facebook's TOS is only 4k words long. It is not particularly dense or full of legalese. I have written source code comments a tenth that length for a single function. That is not many words to describe the plethora of implications of using their service.
Go ahead and have a glance at it. What would you remove from it that wouldn't cause a significant gap?
Some example clauses:
> For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.
(They have to put this. If they didn't, they would get sued by someone who shared a video and then was mad that other people could see it.)
> Facebook users provide their real names and information, and we need your help to keep it that way. Here are some commitments you make to us relating to registering and maintaining the security of your account:
>
> You will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission.
(Not exactly dense legalese. It is good to ban impersonation, and it is right that they should include such a ban in their terms.)
> We’ll notify you before we make changes to these terms and give you the opportunity to review and comment on the revised terms before continuing to use our Services.
(Seems reasonable to me. Many years ago, people used to complain that the terms changed without notice, so FB committed to not doing that any more.)
I don't know. This whole "terms of service are impossible to read except by a lawyer" meme just doesn't hold water for me.
Great. So far so good. Where was the part where I agreed they could harvest my profile information because a friend filled out a quiz/questionnaire/etc.?
When you use an application, the application may ask for your permission to access your content and information as well as content and information that others have shared with you. We require applications to respect your privacy, and your agreement with that application will control how the application can use, store, and transfer that content and information. (To learn more about Platform, including how you can control what information other people may share with applications, read our Data Policy and Platform Page.)
You gave access to your friends, who then authorised access to the application.
Let's see what the readability of the FB TOS is, using a random Googled analyzer, in this case https://readable.io:
Readability Grade Levels
A grade level (based on the USA education system) is equivalent to the number of years of education a person has had. A score of around 10-12 is roughly the reading level on completion of high school. Text to be read by the general public should aim for a grade level of around 8.
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level 12.6
Gunning Fog Index 13.9
Coleman-Liau Index 11.8
SMOG Index 14.9
Automated Readability Index 12.4
Average Grade Level 13.1
The whole point is that you cannot meaningfully consent to give out information about your friend since they’d have to consent to that. Even acknowledging they exist and are your friends is already information. To make matters worse, the v1 API would happily hand out information about your friends, such as their likes without _their_ consent. Not your privacy is breached - theirs is. And there’s no way user A can meaningfully consent to have user B’s information exposed.
That's just not how it works. Apps could for example request access to all messages. Let's make that a physical world example: I write you a letter that contains private details. Are you free to share this letter with third parties? The established legal precedent is clearly "no, not at all." Another example: I allow you to peek into my diary. I shared my private thoughts with you. Are you now allowed to go out and trumpet those out in the world? No, not by any standard. So the default assumption is that things shared privately are private, not public. There are cases where a higher good allows to breach that assumption, but "financial gain" has never been accepted as a higher good in such cases.
Failing to honor that assumption is facebooks fault here.
Actually, that is how it works. Unless there is an NDA in place between you and I, I can share anything you choose to share with me, especially in the context of a social network where we both agreed to and are bound by the same TOS where we authorized exactly this kind of sharing.
There is a setting to globally disable and enable all apps. If you disable it, no apps can see you, even if your friends use the app. Facebook actually has tons of settings - discoverability is a big problem
And they change all the time, often resetting defaults. And without notice. Playing “respect
my privacy” whack a mole with a billion dollar company grows old quickly.
“... the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now. ...“
This will hopefully be a learning experience for everyone- consent doesn't make something right, nor will it prevent legal investigations and implications. In addition, I'd assume less then 0.1% of users read any TOS.
The point is that Facebook disclosed to you that this might happen. Failing to read the TOS is not the same as not having been informed. If you fail to read your mortgage contract but sign it anyway, you’ll still lose your house if you don’t live up to the terms. And for the record, the friend data that Facebook makes available to apps is far from “all” of it, especially nowadays
In Australia, people who work for organisations that sell mortgages have a professional duty they're required to perform by explaining to you, to your face, in simple terms, what certain parts of the contract mean and what obligations each party has, and sign off that they are satisfied that you understand.
I don't recall that ever happening when a TOS was displayed on any of my electronic devices.
In EU all sorts of EULAs are invalid almost by definition and have proven time and time again that they don't stand up in court. Terms of any contract have to be reasonable - if your mortgage has a clause that says "the bank can terminate your mortgage for displaying flower pots on the north side of the building" that would 100% not stand up in court. Yes, you agreed to it, but it's not a reasonable clause.
> access to friend data has always been more limited than you imply here, and more recently, it’s become so limited that using apps for data collection about friends is almost a pointless endeavor.
Not sure what was limited, but you were able to get name, age, location, gender, photo, categories set (the profile stuff that I don't think many use any more), and other info. That seems more than enough to start building a profile on someone that you have no relationship with. Particularly if you're able to collect in quantity and join the dots.
> more recently, it’s become so limited that using apps for data collection about friends is almost a pointless endeavor.
I was aware it had changed some, but not when or how much. You seem to agree that it used to be useful for data gathering on friends.
That's less than ideal when most of us have connections to teen, and elderly, relatives who might be insufficiently suspicious of a fun questionnaire. To over-generalise a little neither group is renowned for tech awareness.
When I click a button that says I agree to share my data with a third party app, I am also clicking it on behalf of all of my friends. Where in the TOS does it say that?
When you use an application, the application may ask for your permission to access your content and information as well as content and information that others have shared with you. We require applications to respect your privacy, and your agreement with that application will control how the application can use, store, and transfer that content and information. (To learn more about Platform, including how you can control what information other people may share with applications, read our Data Policy and Platform Page.)
How can you give consent to share with a third party what I have shared privately with you? Just because the TOS says so doesn’t make you exposing my private Information consentful.
Look at the example of what LinkedIn and WhatsApp and all its ilk does: I don’t want to be on those platforms. But friends upload their address books all the time, so I’m fairly sure they all have a full view of my social connections. How and where did I agree to that? How can my friends meaningfully consent to that on my behalf?
Once again, your friends agreed to the possibility of this happening when they agreed to the TOS. I’m on my mobile phone right now, so I won’t be combing through the TOS looking for the specific clause atm. Maybe in an edit later. But it’s there.
In the US if you are unable to enter a legally binding agreement if you are intoxicated... Users who aren't reading anything, just ticking a box with a mouse click and hitting next defeats the purpose of a legally binding agreement.
If both parties aren't all committed or informed, this is simliar an intoxicated person entering a legally binding agreement.
These so-called "clickwrap" or "browser-wrap" agreements have definitely been found to be enforcible. However the details of exactly how the agreement was presented and what the user had to click can affect their enforcibilty.
The modern approach to consent in these things arguably immoral, and indisputably awful.
Most adults simply don't have the ability to understand the dense legalese that these contracts are written in, so they don't. Asking people to take an hour or two to properly read and digest it just to sign up for a website is ridiculous, and expecting them to actually do so is like something out of a Terry Gilliam movie.
The provision that allows this is ~460 words into the TOS, and is written in pretty easy to understand english. At some point you need to hold yourself accountable for agreeing to this stuff.
"... you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License)"
I would expect the implications of that provision to be inscrutable to someone who doesn't have at least some familiarity with IP law. Techies tend to have that background, because software licensing is such a big factor in open source software. But I would bet that if you go out and survey people off the street about what that's saying, very few would anticipate that it means, "We can sell your data to anyone we want, including exporting it to places where your local privacy laws may not apply, and they get to do whatever they want with it, including selling it to still other people." Especially in light of the (misleading, if you're interpreting it in terms of vernacular English instead of legalese) statement that, "You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook," that opens the section.
Expecting most people I know to reliably all of the relevant implications for their privacy out of that saucer full of tea leaves is, to put it bluntly, bullshit.
> The "without their consent" part is BS, as is this lawsuit. When you use Facebook platform apps, you have to consent to the disclosure of your information to the developer, and have to agree to allow whatever special permissions the developer is asking for. As for friend data that apps may have access to, when you sign up for and use Facebook, you agree to the terms and conditions, which allow this behavior.
As far as I am aware, across the whole of Europe, pretty much none of those TOS click-through things hold up as informed contractual consent. They aren't really worth the pixels they are written on in many jurisdictions.
Disagree - your argument makes no legal point. This suit is by institutional investors who have access to the best lawyers in the country. They chose to sue fully aware of the TOC, they obviously know more
Or they're just greedy and looking for a quick settlement, like all other class action securities attorneys do when the sue over large stock price drops. These types of suits are filed daily, many of them without merit.
For a fascinating look at Bill Lerach, the lawyer who perfected this tactic, check out [1]. He squeezed so much money out of public companies and caused so many problems with these often ridiculous lawsuits, that Congress passed a bill limiting them that became known as the "Get Lerach Act". He eventually went to federal prison for paying kickbacks to plaintiffs.
I find it remarkable that when Obama did something similar in 2012, it was hailed as a major strength of his campaign and nobody had any problems with FB.
The data & privacy abuse by the Obama campaign was in fact dramatically worse. As an opinion piece at TheHill.com noted today:
> The former Obama director of integration and media analytics stated that, during the 2012 campaign, Facebook allowed the Obama team to “suck out the whole social graph”; Facebook “was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn’t stop us once they realized that was what we were doing.” She added, “They came to [the] office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.”
It's universally understood why the media wasn't interested in turning that story into a scandal. When it's your team, you look the other way for the perceived greater good.
> It's universally understood why the media wasn't interested in turning that story into a scandal.
I agree that it's bad (not just looks bad), but you can't blame the media for something they didn't know about. Fox News went on for years about Benghazi. So in 2018, you can't complain about media being too friendly to democrats.
Also, the piece links to a tweet[1] in 2018, not an article from 2012.
That's interesting but it's also just television. I'd ask what the rural/urban split is on television versus Internet syndication, and then see what comes out on top.
The Trump case complicates "dramatically worse," since the issue is that the data was sold to third parties who ultimately affected the election with it.
The whole point of gathering data on voters is so that you can affect the election with it. The whole point of campaigning is affecting elections. Elections are not some input-free, side-effect free process performed in a vacuum. If they were, campaigning would be illegal.
This leak was not the biggest, or even the most detailed source of voter information controlled by the Republican party.
What Facebook did is a disservice to it's users - not to the democratic process. Framing it is as such is nothing but sour grapes.
the issue is that the data was sold to third parties
Afaik, there has been no allegation that Facebook sold this data. Rather, someone created an innocuous looking quiz app that then used its access tokens to gather data on people through the Facebook Graph API. The app was called "thisisyourdigitallife".
who ultimately affected the election with it.
I've seen zero evidence that any of the psychobabble being touted by CA had any effect on the election (and I've been scouring the internet for such proof). As much as it may pain Democrats to hear, it's possible that Hillary just lost because she was unpalatable to a large percentage of voters, and not because of Russian conspiracies/Facebook/CA. She had more than her share of baggage.
This is more of an aside, but given that Clinton lost by so little, _very many things_ caused her to lose. Because of such a small margin, for almost any X: "X had little effect" and "X caused Clinton to lose" can be simultaneously true.
If you lose by only one vote, then every vote caused you to lose.
(Of course if you're running a campaign, going after things that are bigger issues is more useful, but when we're talking about billion dollar operations, you can go after everything in theory)
She did lose by quite a bit, though. 74 electoral votes out of 538. And that’s after rigging the primaries and spending twice as much as Trump did. Not even 1.2 billion could make this albatross fly.
It sounds like a lot, but it ends up not being much. It was, of course, 40k votes over 3 states. But most Presidential elections the winner carries more than 320 electoral votes. Bush 2 had pretty slim margins, of course. Before that, you need to go back to Carter to get 297 electoral votes.
It's not the tightest margin, but it's among the lowest margin of victories in the electoral college. Not that it matters, because you either win or lose. And we all know the rules of the game before we start playing
Electoral votes are a terrible way to measure the closeness of an election though. You could win every state by a single vote, and according to the electoral votes it would look like a blowout, but in reality it would have been the closest election in modern history.
I find it remarkable that people don't understand there's a non-subtle difference between signing up voluntarily on the Obama website using Facebook and consenting to the information collection vs. signing up for a quiz from an unrelated company and having that data used by the Trump campaign.
If you don't understand the difference, it is the same difference between having consensual sex with your girlfriend and raping your neighbor girlfriend because she consented to have sex with him...
Now, this metaphor is imperfect, but from what we could see the Obama campaign was within the boundary allowed by Facebook TOS and what disclosed to the user. Did they push this to the limit? Yes. To the point that FB didn't think it was feasible. But legit according to the rule. Maybe having consensual extreme BSDM sex with your girlfriend vs. raping your neighbor's GF? Quiz, which one is legal and which one is not?
I believe the Obama campaign used Facebook friend connections to target individual voters [1]
("Online, the get-out-the-vote effort continued with a first-ever attempt at using Facebook on a mass scale to replicate the door-knocking efforts of field organizers. In the final weeks of the campaign, people who had downloaded an app were sent messages with pictures of their friends in swing states. They were told to click a button to automatically urge those targeted voters to take certain actions, such as registering to vote, voting early or getting to the polls.")
Note that I specifically picked an article from 2012 because the past 48 hours has seen quite a few articles discussing the Obama Facebook campaign -- articles which I'd argue are likely subject to a taint of bias, given the recent CA events (I'd guess that journalists are digging for a story, which tends to skew perspectives). Anyway, this kind of targeting is, in hindsight, not really OK with me -- but I think the line here is that the Obama campaign collected information and asked your friends (who supported the campaign) to pitch in by asking particular friends to vote. This year's election was much more subtle, since instead targeted voters were treated to a slew of biased ads and propaganda stories. At least, that's how I see it.
Also, while I don't disagree with your analogy, anything involving sexual assault is probably going to hurt rather than help your arguments with most crowds. I don't think it's something we should ignore, of course, but we should keep in mind that it's a strong metaphor -- akin to calling someone "literally Hitler" -- so you might want to reconsider that in the future. Not trying to be a jerk, just trying to be helpful, so feel free to ignore my unsolicited advice.
Every time an individual volunteers to help out – for instance by offering to host a fundraising party for the president – he or she will be asked to log onto the re-election website with their Facebook credentials. That in turn will engage Facebook Connect, the digital interface that shares a user's personal information with a third party.
Consciously or otherwise, the individual volunteer will be injecting all the information they store publicly on their Facebook page – home location, date of birth, interests and, crucially, network of friends – directly into the central Obama database.
---
> it is the same difference between having consensual sex with your girlfriend and raping your neighbor girlfriend because she consented to have sex with him...
Really, rape, that's the best metaphor to reach for...
You are right, that is non-subtle difference and should be noted. But I feel like the most egregious aspect of the process was being able to gather data on unsuspecting users by getting their friends to use the app. That's entirely legal, but definitely is the part that I think most people take the biggest offense to, and that is something that was done by both the Trump and Obama teams.
I fail to see how this comment is at all constructive to the situation at hand. What personal bias are you talking about here? Would it really be that hard to elaborate? Instead of acting like you're better than the grandparent poster, it would be far better to either a) engage him in a conversation or b) not comment at all.
Constructive conversation on certain topics is sometimes not possible when in a forum that leans too far to the right or the left. There is a common mentality among many people where they know they are right, such that no response to differing opinions is even necessary, a downvote will do (which is doubly useful, because it censors the downvoted person for some period of time). And if you do not support the narrative, you will be downvoted. Respect is a two way street, or at least it used to be.
I'm happy to engage in a debate any time, finding someone else willing to participate is a problem when everyone is only interested in discussing the nuances of how they agree with each other.
I'll also disagree that it's not better to comment at all - voices of dissent are valuable in a democracy, silencing them is the actually dangerous path to take, but that seems to be the path that's been chosen, so we'll see how it works out.
I agree that constructive conversation is sometimes very very difficult depending on biases in participants. You make a good point that people sometimes simply dismiss differing ideas because "they're wrong" with little basis -- these kind of shortcuts are generally necessary in life (you'd never get anything done if you didn't sometimes use heuristics to assess the value of an argument) but also reinforce biases since your heuristics tend to favor arguments with which you agree.
However, I'd just like to say that your previous comment didn't give me much of an impression that you're happy to engage in a debate -- how on earth can I participate in a conversation with you when your comment is 18 words, and I have no clue what you're trying to express? That is why I responded: because I had no clue what you were trying to say, but I was curious.
My point about "not commenting at all" wasn't so much in regard to democracy (on a political platform, most discussion is good, because you need to consider the needs of many different people), but rather just a guide to good behaviour, a la "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." I think HN is made a better place by dissenting opinions (I dislike echo chambers in general) but one-off dismissive comments do not a constructive conversation make. You need to give reasoning and explain your arguments.
I also noticed that you seem a little preoccupied with downvotes. Personally, I don't think you should sweat them too much, as long as you feel like you're having constructive conversations and behaving civilly (in this comment thread, I'm happy to report that you made a lot of good points, and did a lot better than that first comment I responded to). If somebody downvotes you simply for having a different opinion, they're breaking HN rules. Downvotes, as far as I know, are supposed to be used for limiting the visibility of off-topic/poor quality comments. So if you get downvoted, your comments might be poor quality... or you might just be off topic. This thread is awfully off-topic, but I personally believe it's good quality discussion, so if it gets downvoted, I don't mind much: I still benefited, but it might get hidden from general readers. That's OK.
Anyway, thank you for responding to my (probably slightly-too-critical) comment in a reasonable way where you explained your thoughts. I apologize for misjudging you based on your previous comment.
> You make a good point that people sometimes simply dismiss differing ideas because "they're wrong" with little basis -- these kind of shortcuts are generally necessary in life (you'd never get anything done if you didn't sometimes use heuristics to assess the value of an argument)
YES! The problem is, who besides you and I realize this, nowadays? As far as I can tell, and believe me I'm sincerely looking for it, I feel like people are falling into some sort of a zombie state. Reddit has been like this for quite some time now, I honestly think it is spreading to HN now, at least on any topic that has a non-technical, non-purely-objective component.
> However, I'd just like to say that your previous comment didn't give me much of an impression that you're happy to engage in a debate -- how on earth can I participate in a conversation with you when your comment is 18 words, and I have no clue what you're trying to express? That is why I responded: because I had no clue what you were trying to say, but I was curious.
That's me lashing out at you due to my frustration with the new culture of close-mindedness around here. 100% wrong on my part no doubt, but being reasonable doesn't do shit so might as well join the party and get an adrenalin shot I guess is my thinking.
> If somebody downvotes you simply for having a different opinion, they're breaking HN rules
That didn't used to be true, because there have been discussions about just that. Currently, it's not even mentioned in Guidelines or FAQ afaict. (I've been breaking a few of these lately tbh.)
> So if you get downvoted, your comments might be poor quality
My main frustration is, you can post a substantive, reasoned comment, and rather than a reasoned disagreement, just downvotes. And fast. That by itself is not so big a deal, it's the intellectual swagger (my interpretation, of course) that so many people carry, but can't piece together a decent argument. Again, this is pretty much what reddit has become, but it's sad to see even HN isn't immune.
> I apologize for misjudging you based on your previous comment.
I can be a jerk from time to time.
Thanks for replying by the way, encountering someone who actually thinks, even if it's differently than me (not that it's the case here), helps restore my faith in humanity.
Fair enough, but it wouldn't have made any difference. Disagreement with this particular aspect of the local culture will get you a downvote, not a discussion. Any discussion, if you're lucky to get one, would be better described as a re-education lecture, to teach you the "facts" of "how things are".
Jonathan Haidt has studied this psychological phenomenon quite extensively and in my opinion it does a good job of explaining the recent unusual behavior of the public, it's a shame no one's interested.
I've found Haidt's work very useful. One of the things I've taken from Haidt is how important both sides of the communication are. Blaming everything on "the other side" as you are doing here ("ny discussion, if you're lucky to get one, would be better described as a re-education lecture" and "it's a shame no one's interested") does exactly the opposite, regardless of how accurate you might feel the description is.
If you're looking for nuance and constructive discussion, it's crucial to put that foot forward yourself. And understanding, given the climate, that it's likely going to be a lot of work, as you're working against built-in human psychological biases that are unfortunately being reinforced by many trends in media, both traditional and online. Loading your discourse with the phrases you do here are working against that. I'm glad that you've found Haidt interesting in some way. Step up and work the problem, rather than contribute to it. There's no quick fix.
> Blaming everything on "the other side" as you are doing here
> Step up and work the problem, rather than contribute to it.
My argument is that HN is increasingly becoming a ~"progressive, illiberal echo chamber", where dissenting ideas are not welcome or open for discussion, and censored (to the degree that people like me often have to wait up to several hours or until the next day (in which case the discussion is effectively over) to post a comment as I am almost always in the penalty box, for the reasons being discussed here).
If that's true, should the onus be only on the censored side to fix the situation?
If you believe my claim isn't true:
- do you believe that it is possible for any community to be like this?
- do you believe HN has any imperfections at all in this respect?
If you think the problem is solely (or mostly) on one side (regardless of which side that is), then there's no point on continuing this discussion, as you're completely ignoring my opening point: that good communication requires all sides to participate in a constructive manner. You must take into account the effect your behavior and words have, beyond your intent, and beyond what you believe the content of what you're trying to convey. You need to take into account the human in general, and if you know more about the human you're engaging with, what you know of them.
If that's not something you believe, take to heart, and practice, you're part of the problem, and it's not worth my while to continue attempting to engage. This is regardless of one's ideological views, and something Haidt hammers home repeatedly.
Edit to add: Of course HN has imperfections. (And to answer your other question society has imperfections: to suggest otherwise is facile and disingenuous.) Online discourse is hard, and new, and we haven't come close to figuring out the best ways to do so. That doesn't excuse each of us taking responsibility for trying to make it the best we can.
Ok, maybe I'm a complete autist, I simply can't understand where you're coming from.
> If you think the problem is solely (or mostly) on one side (regardless of which side that is), then there's no point on continuing this discussion
Literally, you are saying that unless I don't believe that the "guilt" is exactly 50/50, you won't continue the discussion? I'm communicating in good faith am I not? If not, what am I doing wrong?
Or, is the problem that I'm not agreeing with you? Because that is exactly what this feels like to me, and it is precisely the aspect of the recent HN culture that I'm complaining about.
There is no shortage of conservative science-hating idiots on forums, is that what I am? Does it seem likely that the person who first mentions Jonathan Haidt, and links to a talk very closely related to this subject, is the same type of person "who believes 100% of a communication problem is on the other side"? Political discussion is difficult, that's my point. Human beings of both political stripes suffer from the same psychological shortcomings. I am aware of this. I am pointing this out. I regularly get censored (via time-outs in the penalty box), not for posting crap (which I admittedly do on occasion, largely out of extended frustration from what I'm complaining about), but because I disagree with the general political sentiment. But then if one reads the HN guidelines, considering a downvote as a means of disagreement is correct behavior, expecting anything else is probably bordering on mentally retarded and I should just take the hint.
I suppose as a last request, I'll ask for a favor: what should I have written in my previous reply? Other than just completely agreeing with you (which I don't, and makes conversation a bit pointless), I honestly can't think of anything that would be appropriate.
Tribalism is a powerful bias, and one we need to work against if we're to have reasonable discourse with people we might not necessarily agree with. That means we must actively work against that, which includes not reinforcing "us" vs "them" dynamic, which is what you do when you continue to use language like "HN is increasingly becoming a ~"progressive, illiberal echo chamber"". Regardless of how true that may be, that might work in a long-form, thoughtful essay, but it definitely doesn't work in an online forum in short soundbites. It comes off as labelling people into groups and name calling. That's just another form of tribalism.
You also need to be charitable, which means when I bring up "If you think the problem is solely (or mostly) on one side (regardless of which side that is), then there's no point on continuing this discussion", providing examples of where you're doing this, you don't put words in my mouth such as "unless I don't believe that the "guilt" is exactly 50/50". And you certainly don't promote a constructive discussion where we're talking about how to promote better conversation by accusing me of requiring you to agree with everything I say. There's a difference between providing a framework, a set of expectations where people can usefully discuss contentious issues and requiring people to agree on those contentious issues. I don't know how to have a conversation when the focus is on blame and pointing fingers rather than on what actually move things forward, and I also know that if I don't think a conversation is worth having or continuing (for whatever reason, including that I don't know how to move forward), it's best that I leave it.
You mention "I honestly can't think of anything that would be appropriate" in considering alternative replies: there's nothing wrong with not replying at all. Sometimes that's the right choice. Another option is to look at Rapoport's rules of criticism as a guide when you feel you're stuck:
You also need to be aware of what you leave yourself open to. While you may not be one of the "conservative science-hating idiots on forums", when you use similar language ("re-education lecture"? really?), you aren't doing yourself any favors by making it easy for others to lump you into those groups. It would be nice if people were perfectly rational and able to always make such nuanced distinctions, but you know that's not the case. You need to take that into account because that's how people are.
You need to be better than those you decry. You don't get to point and say "that's not fair, look what they're doing", because that's all some will hear. You don't get to say in so many words "you need to listen to me because you're ignorant of your biases and I'm telling you the hard truths." You don't get to label people into groups. You don't get to have a chip on your shoulder, even when you see the chips on others'. Yeah, you might feel like you're fighting with a hand tied behind your back. But the point is that we're not supposed to be fighting or arguing. We're supposed to be figuring out how to work through things together.
If you think or know you're treading on sensitive topics or at (or across) the edges of the community's expectations, you need to take that into account and be even more reflective in what you say. Those that already agree with you aren't those you really need to reach; and realistically, you're not going to reach people who aren't willing to listen to you. You have a chance with those who are still open-minded enough to listen to you. You need to take advantage of that, couching what you say in ways that are going to be effective in encouraging them to believe you're reasonable and someone who's worth listening to in the future. People stop listening when they're feeling attacked and put on the defensive, so you need to endeavor not to do that (and to recognize when you have, learn from it, and likely back off). From my experience that's the same online and off.
You know this is tough stuff. You've said so yourself. And people make mistakes, both in speaking/writing and in listening/reading. It makes it all the more important to be unrelenting in being charitable and constructive in discourse, in working against the biases we both know are there. And very likely HN isn't the proper forum for contentious stuff. The bandwidth's too limited. Our reputations aren't on the line like they are in real social interactions. But if you intend to, I encourage you to take this stuff to heart and work on the only thing you immediately can, which is your own actions and behavior.
As the original poster who started this chain (by criticizing /u/mistermann's comment) I'd just like to say that I found this exchange both thought-provoking and civil, especially given its contentious beginnings. I'd just like to thank you for taking the time to express your opinions in a clear, respectful way. As it turns out, I'm also a fan of Jonathan Haidt -- I'm currently reading through several of his books at varied paces -- and you've clearly really taken the time to understand and convey some of his key ideas here. Sites like Hacker News are a great deal better due to commenters like you.
I am constantly on the lookout for people whose studies are related to what the f has "suddenly" gone wrong with humanity. I really think Jonathan is on to something (although at the same time, I sense he's trying to sell a lot of books, but what can you do).
I just listened to:
#03 Under The Skin with Russell Brand & Adam Curtis - Do We Really Want Change?
Adam Curtis is a documentary film maker, his most recent one is fairly famous, Hypernormalization. I haven't seen it because I thought it was a hardcore conspiracy theorist movie, but now I think that's not the case.
Very sound advice, and I'd like to extend my extremely sincere thanks for you taking the time to write it.
I think the key takeaway is that HN is simply not the forum for political discussions, so probably the best strategy for me is to not open any comments on those topics.
If you're talking about how much data siphoned through Facebook and how much help they got from Facebook. Yes I agree pretty much the same thing (although I guess CA hid it somehow(?) and Facebook just refused to block them even after discovering it)
The differences I see between CA and the Obama's own campaign.
CA was accused of, "Setting up proxy organisations to feed untraceable messages onto social media"
There's also the issue of whether they went around campaign finance laws.
"So, campaigns are normally subject to limits about how much money they can raise. Whereas outside groups can raise an unlimited amount. So the campaign will use their finite resources for things like persuasion and mobilisation and then they leave the ‘air war’ they call it, like the negative attack ads to other affiliated groups"
As sibling comment pointed they were about just as scummy on average but everyone decided to look away and pretend to not notice, even FB after they caught them siphoning all social graph data.
Well actually that's not quite accurate, some didn't look away, they were singing praises. His campaign won a major marketing award in 2008, beating Coke, Nike and Apple:
I honestly look at Obama's campaign and I look at it as something that we can all learn from as marketers [...] to see what he's done, to be able to create a social network ...
Jon Fine, marketing and media columnist for BusinessWeek, pointed to Mr. Obama's facility with engaging voters in social-media channels. "It's the fuckin' Web 2.0 thing," he said.
---
(Sorry for repeated link, I know it has been posted many times but I think it perfectly illustrates the point well).
Your comment points out something very interesting about modern marketing. I think it is still ethically questionable even if you voluntarily hand over your data and not in a sketchy let-me-mine-your-friends-data-through-this-quiz way.
I feel like you used to be able to avoid getting swindled by ignoring the swindler, ex. close the door to the saleman, or ignore the gypsy pear salesmen at the market.
Today, marketing is engineered at such a level that it is difficult to awknowledge it's influence. That, and you are constantly bombarded by ads, either explicitly or implicitly.
I don't think I am saying anything novel. I guess I am curious what this mean about society and our political systems. People with power and wealth could still be toppled when you exposed them to the truth. How in the fuck does that even come close to happening today? How do you overcome marketing that is engineered to exploit the psychological vulnerabilities you are not even aware of? How do we patch our society and governing systems from being pwned?
This isn't meant as a rant. I am curious, because to the best i can tell we don't live in a society where voting matters and we have a say in our governance.
Whataboutism isn't a defense. Folks can legitimately be outraged and push for change based on CA. Reflection on past or ongoing abuses should absolutely happen.
Whataboutism isn’t excusing; it’s deflecting. To quote from the OED:
“The technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue”
While whataboutism is definitey toxic to conversation, I've noticed a lot people tend to throw accusations of whataboutism around when they are uncomfortable with their hypocrisy being pointed out.
This happens any time a public company's stock goes down because of unexpected news. Investors sue for breach of fiduciary duty in an attempt to recover losses in the share price as a result of alleged negative, material information being withheld from the public by the company's management.
That being said - this should be particularly interesting given the topic. Securities fraud cases are usually boring, but this lawsuit may bring to light more details on exactly what FB didn't disclose.
It's part of the startup mythos: lone wolf (nerdy dev in a hoodie no less), builds a CRUD app, becomes stupidly rich via nothing but the hustle. Attacks on that weaken the foundation of belief.
For some perspective: I’m ex-Facebook. I wouldn’t claim that Facebook are completely benign, but I think they’re getting a raw deal in this situation.
The argument that they shared too much information with third parties is a fair one. I don’t know if it was caused by naivety or apathy. But they never hid what they were doing from users. And, unlike some are claiming, they definitely didn’t sell that information.
It was Cambridge Analytica who chose to “weaponise” (their word) that data. The engineer who acted as a whistleblower is currently playing the victim but chose to participate in a morally bankrupt project.
I've already ran across at least one user who was obviously astroturfing trying to play down FB's involvement in this crap, it's actually kind of horrifying to see on here.
On the one side, you have Facebook. On the other, you have lawyers trying to bring a questionable suit and wealthy investors upset that their portfolio's value went down slightly short term.
This is not the thread to get sanctimonious about people defending Facebook.
The stock price went up by any measure, from Feb 3, 2017 to Mar 19, 2018, so it can't be compensation for that. Unless they are willing to give those gains back?
Facebook has lost almost $60 billion in value since the CA story broke. If you’re an investor, and this information wasn’t publicly available to you, you might feel aggrieved and want to seek compensation.
Facebook is a public company. They have strict rules related to informing stock owners and insider trading.
Investors should be able to win a lawsuit if they can prove that company did not immediately disclsee important information, falsified information or that some owners were privy to insider information when they traded (Zuk sold his shares in suspicious time).
If you read the article a bit further, you might find the explanation:
>Zuckerberg's sales accounted for the most, by far. He announced plans in September to sell 35 million to 75 million shares over the next 18 months to fund philanthropic efforts.
It's not new and was announced in September 2017.
From the same article:
>CEO Mark Zuckerberg sold 1.14 million shares as part of regularly scheduled programs.
The whole discussion surrounds events that occurred long before September 2017, which is why this is interesting. Previous articles indicated that the company, and likely Zuckerberg himself, was aware of part of the situation in 2015 and found out more in 2016 / early 2017. If it can be established that he knew about it, the 2017 September sales announcement is arguably tainted.
I have read the lawsuit, and it accuses Facebook of making false and misleading statements in their data privacy policy. It takes issue with this section of Facebook's privacy policy:
While you are allowing us to use the information we receive about you, you always own all of your information. Your trust is important to us, which is why we don't share information we receive about you with others unless we have:
• received your permission;
• given you notice, such as by telling you about it in this policy; or
• removed your name and any other personally identifying information from it.
The lawsuit claims Facebook violated bullet points 1 and 2, citing the CA news. The lawsuit uses this point to argue Facebook lied to their investors, did not provide more information on this in their SEC filings, and that investors suffering financial loss when the stock price fell after CA news.
IANAL, but I think the key phrase from the article is this:
"The suit would represent people who bought shares of Facebook from Feb. 3, 2017, when Facebook filed its annual report and cited security breaches and improper access to user data, through March 19.
Investors may be able to sue Facebook successfully if they can show the company induced them to invest based in part on false, misleading or incomplete information regarding practices that might have averted the user privacy issues, Robbins said."
The fact is, Facebook knew about the voter-profile harvesting. The question is, were they legally supposed to disclose it publicly and did anyone invest in Facebook under the false pretenses created by Facebook choosing not to disclose it.
It's kinda narrow and it is very hard to prove why someone chooses to invest in a company. I doubt this get much traction. I also think it sets a scary precedent, unless the plaintiffs can prove Facebook covered this up with an intention to lure potential investors (like a memo from Zuck stating as such).
Yea I'm still baffled why this is 'news'. Facebook and Mark Z have been very upfront with investors and the public about the lack of privacy that users should expect when using their platform.
> “defendants made false or misleading statements and failed to disclose that Facebook violated its own data privacy policies by allowing third parties access to personal data of millions of Facebook users without their consent,” according to the complaint.
I'm not sure it's that straightforward -- from the Guardian's coverage:
"The data was collected through an app called thisisyourdigitallife, built by academic Aleksandr Kogan, separately from his work at Cambridge University. Through his company Global Science Research (GSR), in collaboration with Cambridge Analytica, hundreds of thousands of users were paid to take a personality test and agreed to have their data collected for academic use."
It's not clear to me whether the transfer of data from GSR to CA was legal, or covered in the ToS for the app.
I'd guess that end users agreed to blanket sharing of data in the FB ToS, but again I don't think we can be certain that their ToS covers exactly this situation -- according to FB, CA / GSR were in breach of their ToS agreements, which might mean they transitively caused FB to breach their agreements with their users. I'd be interested to hear theories from anyone with legal expertise, but I imagine we'll hear more before too long.
This gets to the debate around if you can consent when giving up information about your friends. For example, is it OK for someone to give a company access to their phone's address book when the people in it haven't consented themselves?
Dunno. I just deleted mine, was sort of annoying not being able to find mobile phone numbers or emails for people I'd like to stay in touch with. I think that it'd be good to have a script that scrapes facebook id's, names, mobile numbers etc from your friends list, or some automation to prepare for deleting your account.
I clicked that yesterday and got a notification telling me that it would take a while to get the copy of the data. Still waiting. In the meantime, a user who clicks that button has to guess whether it's safe to delete their facebook while facebook is getting the data.
However, the facebook data isn't good enough because I found that most of my friends didn't put in their contact information. So whether you download a copy of the facebook data or not, you're going to lose contacts (you decide whether it matters) and the rest you're going to need to call friends of friends and find the contact info you need, or ask people directly on facebook for their information.
Does anyone know the percentage of Zuck's total FB stock that he has sold in the past year? It looks like a lot but have not been able to find a precise percentage change.
There should be also the class action lawsuit filled by owners of harvested profiles. Hope to see that soon and celebrate the beginning of the end of Facebook.
The media discusses voter-profile harvesting mostly in a past context of Brexit and US elections. These countries are politically stable. A far more dangerous picture paints itself in emerging and poor economies.
For example FB recently announced it would roll out job-posts[1] for low-income workers.
In poor parts of Europe like Croatia, Serbia, BiH & Balkans (where I chose to live and work as a foreigner), many people use Facebook to find work and network w/ colleagues. In these locations facebook is the Internet. Often you usually accept a friend request before you are able to discuss a job.
FB job market will lock in users from those regions even further. These economies don't stand a chance and are already bled dry thanks to facebook & Co not paying their taxes. These locations already suffering a huge braindrain of local talent.
Their local society / governments are becoming increasingly corrupt[2] because and honest work opportunities are so scarce some people (like nurses or occupational therapists helping the elderly and disabled) even work for free[3] (I know several people who have the choice of working for free or not be able to graduate).
So many people just leave to the North where they find themselves in slave-labor like conditions in Germany[4]. (sorry for switching focus to Germany for a second I'm trying to show some causality). It's not limited to healthcare. Literally any industry has setups where shady middle-man benefit from Germanys "Arbeitnehmerüberlassungsgesetz" (yes that's a word) which is Germany's outsourcing law (a law criticized for creating a dual class workforce) and they are making a killing thanks to the many loopholes present to exploit foreigners/minorities.
When facebook rolls out it's job postings for low-skilled and low-paid jobs it's targeting the most vulnerable minorities in politically volatile regions.
One takeaway from the facebook/CA election meddling is that because majority of people in Balkans are already depending on facebook, it's even easier to spread disinformation and rig elections. And it's giving powers to local crime gangs which usually influence 100% of the electorate[5]. Ask yourself what data harvesting means in these regions, who benefits and what effects this might have 3-5 years from now.
The "without their consent" part is BS, as is this lawsuit. When you use Facebook platform apps, you have to consent to the disclosure of your information to the developer, and have to agree to allow whatever special permissions the developer is asking for. As for friend data that apps may have access to, when you sign up for and use Facebook, you agree to the terms and conditions, which allow this behavior.
Investors had the opportunity to view both the developer platform policies and Facebook TOS long before they ever bought shares. If they didn't like the possible implications of them, they should not have invested. My guess is that this case will go nowhere.