Zuckerberg hits users with the hard truth: You agreed to this(vanityfair.com) |
Zuckerberg hits users with the hard truth: You agreed to this(vanityfair.com) |
Any claim of theirs that I "consented" to them building, using and profiting by my foibles, relationships and habits is false. Not merely disingenuous; an outright lie.
Pokemon Go, Skype (now Microsoft), Whatsapp, Snapchat, Line & WeChat if you live in Asia, Path, Yelp, Twitter, ... all the bigger internet companies [1]
And sadly there's the really cheesy ones like "Fantasy War Tactics" [2]. How many of your friends play that sort of crap ?
[1] https://venturebeat.com/2012/02/14/iphone-address-book/
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidGaming/comments/42ok29/why_w...
Of course, some of the blame for that belongs with Google, for failing to accurately describe the permissions being given to apps.
> Continuously upload info about your contacts like phone numbers and nicknames, and your call and text history. This lets friends find each other on Facebook and helps us create a better experience for everyone.
https://fbnewsroomus.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/opt-in_scre...
Granted, those six words are tacked on the end of a sentence, and given the intrusiveness of the feature should probably have been called out in its own opt-in dialog with its own switch. But it's not like they asked for contact access and turned around and used it for something else.
Everybody has known for years that Facebook uses this data against you to make money. If it didn't upset you before why would it suddenly upset you now?
This happens with many scandals. I'm reminded of LIBOR "rigging", which all the participants thought was entirely normal.
Speaking of financial services, the UK had a long run of "pensions mis-selling" scandals. https://pensionsorter.co.uk/pensions-scandals/ ; I put the personal information leaking into the same category. People were presented with options they did not fully understand the implications of and then induced into picking ones which turned out badly for them. This kind of thing is why so many people hate the financial services industry, and the data mining industry is going to end up the same way if they're not careful.
If Facebook presents the user with an alternate simple-to-understand representation of their EULA, it their responsibility to be fair and honest in this alternate representation. I think it is completely fair to blame them for failing to do so.
I just don't feel like it's fair to say everybody has known for years. Maybe in your circle, but certainly not in every ones.
People have been upset about this since Messenger came out. You can look up articles dating back to 2014 warning people about all the permissions Messenger uses. False assertions that people weren't upset before are getting old.
This might sound counter-intuitive at first glance, but nevertheless can make sense, legally speaking.
Let's begin with an extreme example: Say someone holds a gun to your head, and forces you to sign an unspecified agreement. In that case, undisputibly, it is all their fault, and you don't know what you agreed to. Clearly, this would not be legally binding.
Well, there are less extreme examples which also lead to results that are not legally binding. Sometimes, these are part of consumer protection laws. In some jurisdictions, these might even be part of common contract law.
Or, to use the best example: "agreements" of this sort will almost certainly be null and void under the GDPR.
I suspect most people on HN are aware of how naive much of the public are about the implications of technology.
If we consented to this and were still genuinely surprised, its an indication that the consent was not sufficiently informed. This is your problem, not ours. Most of us Average Joes just don't understand the scope of what data collection is possible when we give you access to our phone's features - especially when you couch the access request for quite innocuous and even helpful features.
Worse, we don't really understand what can be done with this data. That you can take location data and will use it to infer where we live and work - that you could use it to categorize us according to race and religion - these kinds of possibilities just never crossed our minds when you asked for our location to share with nearby friends.
So, no, we did not agree to this - we were not well enough informed to agree with this. To paraphrase a meme: You might be legally correct, but you're an asshole.
The role of parental systems is to mitigate the issues of orphans who become disenfranchised. Entire races can be orphaned from traditional values of they were severed from their cultural root. (slaves) the elderly also often become orphaned and so are a big target for scams.
Excessive and imposed "family" is just a cult but that doesn't mean family values don't at a role in functioning society. There is a limit to individual ability.
The problem and consequences to individuals will only really lead to directed consumerism and outrage. Which is going to matter more?
https://i.imgur.com/zGUdifB.png
Specifically, the very first sentence of the dialog box, which says:
> Continuously upload info about your contacts like phone numbers and nicknames, and your call and text history.
The article's not entirely clear on that point, so I thought I'd mention it here.
...And one I would never agree to, yet my address book is in my Facebook data export. I wonder what previous iterations of that prompt looked like, especially around the time of Android 4.0, which must have been about when I installed the app. Does anyone know if there are old screenshots, or historic versions of the APK available anywhere to check?
This reminds me of Steve Jobs' "You're holding it wrong." Tone deaf. Platforms always share the most responsibility. This applies to any UX thing. You can argue that the users are "idiots" for not doing what you think they're supposed to do, or you can fix your UX to make it as easy to understand as possible.
Alternatively, you can design your UX with dark patterns to ensure that users do a lot of stuff that are not good for them and aren't supposed to do, but you convince them or trick them into doing anyway, because that's good for you.
I also think that by using this strategy Facebook may win the battle, but it's going to lose the war. Eventually people will go "Well, then, if it's my fault, then maybe I shouldn't be accepting all of that stuff Facebook is pushing into my face in their apps." And then Facebook will slowly but surely die as people use it less and less as "Facebook intended" them to use it.
P.s we will sell this on to third parties so they can target you to influence elections."
The problem here is Facebook doesn't ever word things like this, they up sell Facebook platform features, even if they are segways into increased advertising revenue.
I think regulation should have a stance on this. It needs to be easy for users to see exactly how their data is being used, and in a timely fashion. If the company can't protect our data, they don't deserve to have it.
What do you say Mark? You agreed to this*
* - https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/180325071038-01-faceb...
But, as it turned out my friends were not so lucky. All of them had my number saved. Some had my birthday. Quite a few had tagged me at my work location etc.
So, even with efforts on my side to try and not share data, FB still has a profile on me. I find it hard to believe that there are lot of other platforms which can build such a cache of information about me, without me giving them explicit permission.
>"Contact uploading is optional. People are expressly asked if they want to give permission to upload their contacts from their phone – it’s explained right there in the apps when you get started."
doesn't really cover the complaint from Dylan McKay regarding;
> "metadata about every text message I've ever received or sent"
and;
> "the metadata of every cellular call I've ever made, including time and duration"
Some percentage of users will do that. If 1% of 2 billion users choose it, then they get $800 million per year.
It seems logical if people don't like being the product, let them pay for the product, right?
Almost every NDA, including those standard with employment packages, include in the definition of confidential information the time, date and duration of phone calls with customers and sensitive suppliers. Anyone in a customer-facing role would thus be required to keep those data confidential, i.e. not disclose it without proper authorization to a third party, e.g. Facebook.
As an aside: one thing to remember about Australia compared to the US is that the Aussie version of things is like the US version, but in a fun house mirror. Everything is called the same, and is similar, but is just different enough as to give you 'category-vertigo'. The Aussie BBQ is a BBQ, but not really anything like a US BBQ. The Aussie seafood is seafood, but not really anything like US seafood. Aussie radio is radio, but not really anything like US radio. ETC.
The Aussie version of Dateline that I stumbled upon was taking an in-depth look at a rancher in QLD and his issues with an oil/gas company. The rancher quit school at 16 (generally, a wonderful idea in commonwealth countries that the US should import) and became a boxer, then a car salesman, then a rodeo bronco rider, and then a cattle rancher with a wife and 3 young kids. Very importantly, neither he nor his wife could read. His contracts would be signed with an 'X' and a handshake. From what I could tell about QLD law, every contract must be read to a person that cannot read, and a sense of 'good faith' must exist between both parties.
Well, a US oil/gas company came to him and found the black gold under his ranch. They set up many pump-jacks and ruined his grazing land. He quickly went bankrupt as all his cattle died. So he went to court over it. The US company put their hand to their face and basically went: 'Nee-neer-Nee-Neer-Nee-neer, you signed the contract! Ha!' The contract was written in a very favorable way to the company and screwed the rancher. So much was the stress, that the wife tried to commit suicide. Watching that portion of the interview was heartbreaking. Here was a tough, sunburnt man, brought to tears over finding his wife just about to commit the act.
But QLD law was very favorable to the man. The contract was voided as it was created in bad faith and the US company was made to pay to remove the jacks and pay the rancher back for the damages. The Dateline piece was mostly following their attempts in international courts to get the company to pay up, as they had fled Australia in order to skip out on the payment.
Here's my point: What the Zuck is doing, by saying: 'Nee-neer-Nee-Neer-Nee-neer, you signed the contract! Ha!', is a very American thing to do; and it won't stand up in many other countries, or even his own. Just because a contract was clicked on and agreed to in bad faith, doesn't mean that he will be able to hide behind that shield forever. Even if you have a piece of paper that says 'I can be an asshole', and everyone has signed it, doesn't mean that you can be an asshole forever. People don't like assholes and they will get lawyers/barristers in to express that feeling.
As a point of reference, if you're in the US or Canada, Facebook would be losing money on this model, according to info on their investors' site [0].
0 - https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_presentations/FB-Q... (search for Average Revenue per User)
Maybe this is an opportunity for a startup to create a paid social media platform?
Where did the meme that paying for a product means they won't advertise or sell your data come from? Everyone is aware of cable TV's business model, right?
A simple division doesn't tell the whole story, but gets us into ballpark territory, call it $20/user/year. It's probably something power-distribution-ish, with a few whales clicking on the most profitable scams and mesothelioma ads, and a long tail of people who are below average. Much like with what network TV actually makes per eyeball-second, it's actually shockingly easy to outbid advertisers.
One of the reasons I kinda look askance at the whole advertising ecosystem is precisely that it seems like nobody is even trying anything else despite the fact it seems like it ought to be a very swift and huge boost to Facebook's real revenues and stock price if they could convince people to give them $50/year. The obvious offer to me would be some sort of all-inclusive cloud storage service for photos or something, which, I mean, they're already doing. The fact that this seems to be unthinkable is what makes me start giving a bit more credence to the idea that there truly is some sort of ulterior motive at play here. Even just "here's $34.99 for the year, facebook, remove the damned ads! and now that you don't need it, stop tracking me" would probably make them a shitton of cash, even without any other changes like giving you back more control over your feed now that you've removed their incentives to manipulate it for their own advertising gain. Where's all that notorious capitalistic greed?
And suppose we were living in an alternate universe where that was an option... how different would the news stories of the past week look? There's non-monetary reasons for this too.
(Compare with Netflix, for instance. I pay them real money. They get lots of real preference data. It would totally be "monetizable" levels of detail. But there's basically nothing they could possibly do with that data that's worth more than the ~$150/year I give them, and trying to start stuffing ads in my face runs a marginal risk that I'll just leave that is probably not worth it. Maybe when Facebook first came out, subscriptions were out of the question, but they are clearly an option now.)
[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/277229/facebooks-annual-...
[2]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly...
> If it didn't upset you before why would it suddenly upset you now?
...were probably putting down the people who were upset by saying they were being paranoid.
I think the fuel that's driving the intensity of this scandal is the evidence that the "paranoid" fears were broadly correct and the trust people placed in Facebook was misplaced.
The distinction is diminishing over time.
Has that prompt always been there? A lot of people seem to be unaware that Facebook has been doing this, and I haven't seen anyone say they saw that prompt in 2015.
I searched Google for the text of that prompt, or any reference to Facebook accessing your SMS history, in 2014 to 2017, and didn't find anything.
This might work for an employee defending against their employer. It wouldn’t work for the employer relative to their customers; or a contractor to their clients; or any other situation. In any case, my point is Facebook may have caused many people legal harm.
The public basically believes that Facebook enabled to Putin to get Trump elected. So suddenly the issue of all that data we've been sharing has gone from "I've got nothing to hide" to "This got that guy I hate elected"
Whether or not that's accurate or informed is beside the point.
In the UK, the trigger issue is Brexit instead. The fake news long predates the internet - Boris Johnson built a career printing false articles about the EU in the Spectator, and the EU has long had a debunking site to deal with the UK press in general: https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/
Indeed although that's always been seen as OK because those are "our guys" manipulating public opinion vs. Putin being "the enemy" and getting Trump elected i.e. the tool (Facebook) is not under "our" / establishment control so Something Must be Done(TM)
It’s dark UX and the terrible Amdroid permissions system that tricked them into it.
Were the same information design effort applied to explaining the data collection and sharing, all users would at least know what is happening.
Most users should know/intuit how this pervasive data collection/sharing can have unwanted side effects, even without such nicely designed explanations, but one of the most effective rules of UX is don't make me think.
[0]: "Frictionless" in practice means "don't wait, start using this now and only think about it later".
Dark UX suggests a control designed to trick you into making a decision you would deliberate otherwise not make. I looked at their opt-in control and it is very clear that you have to opt-in.
In other words, if you didn't want Facebook to have all your call and SMS data then why would you deliberately agree to give it to Facebook with their very obvious consent form?
Thats exactly what this is, Dark UX. No reasonable person would think that “text anyone on my phone” means “log all my calls and text messages in perpetuity” despite the deliberately obtuse (and light gray!) paragraph below.
It’s a trap.
I haven't used FB in a long time and I never used their mobile app, so here's a genuine request: do you have a screenshot or some example of how they gather consent for this?
Fixed that for you.
Also not a surprise, it was well-known that the 2012 Obama campaign used targeted advertising and the media at the time raved about this brilliant use of an emerging technology. No one at the time saw fit to question them or Facebook. Let's all just be intellectually honest here: people only care because Trump made effective use of social media.
I'm not sure that's accurate either in the context of how the Trump campaign used this data and the investigation into the Trump campaign. The issue isn't that Trump used social media, it's how they used it and who they worked with (Roger Stone and the WikiLeaks/DNC hack angle for example).
What if the audience in question is limited to people reading Hacker News? Do they have an excuse for the sudden change of heart?
Often with these things it's not the same people switching from a view to its opposite, it's more that one group shuts up and the other speaks up. The collective appears to change its mind without any individual having crossed the floor.
Personally, I'd prefer the message to be split in two parts, like so:
------
# Text anyone in your phone
This lets friends find each other on Facebook and helps us create a better experience for everyone.
## Privacy
This will continously upload:
- Info about your contacts like phone numbers and nicknames
- Your call and text history.
------
(I don't think I'd have gotten FB to a half-trillion market cap.)
