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Comment by Niten | Hacker News Reader

There wasn't much substance to the New York Times's report, and as an outsider, Facebook's official reply--corroborated by Tim Cook's statement about Apple's actual use of the reported APIs--seems perfectly reasonable to me.

But dogpiling on Facebook is popular right now, whether it's deserved (Cambridge Analytica) or not (this), so the actual facts of the matter will be secondary when politicians evaluate whether to hop on the bandwagon.

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The issue of whether what Facebook did was reasonable is orthogonal to the issue of whether Facebook/Zuckerberg lied to Congress about it. In this situation it seems that they may have done something reasonable and yet still lied about it. The problem is the latter.

Well it looks like a lie and smells like a lie if these device manufacturers got these info deals from Facebook. It means that the user doesn’t have complete control. This of course hinges on what we mean by complete control. I imagine Zuckerberg is going to become a major campaign donor now going forward... if he isn’t already. I’d expect Facebook lobbying efforts to intensify as well.

I just don't see any evidence of a "lie" in the New York Times article. And if I add my Facebook account to iOS, of course I realize that I'm trusting Apple in that scenario.

This whole controversy feels manufactured.

The irony in that Facebook shares data with Chinese companies despite Facebook being blocked in China.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-privacy-congress...

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