Comment by sxp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sxp | Hacker News Reader

Disclaimer: I work for a competitor of FB. Opinions are my own, etc.

There is an aspect of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect when hearing stories about FB. I've heard similar stories about various tech companies from major press outlets and the facts & opinions in the stories directly contradict my own first hand knowledge.

Given this data, why should I trust press articles about FB when they're written by the same journalists who are focused on maximizing revenue for their own companies? Most articles I see are ~10% cited sources and ~90% speculation.

Two examples of press stories that most technical people know are false are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto#Dorian_Nakamo... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermicro#Allegations_of_comp... . People with technical knowledge can evaluate those stories and realize that they're incorrect, but others without technical knowledge probably believe the newspapers. Similarly, people at FB with insider knowledge probably realize that most of the press articles about FB are 90% incorrect and that FB is in the same moral league as all the other major tech companies.

> they're written by the same journalists who are focused on maximizing revenue for their own companies?

That's a pretty huge accusation to casually throw out. Where is the actual evidence that a journalist writing an article critical of Facebook is doing so because they are focused on maximising revenue for their own company? Most journalists have nothing to do with the business side of their company, and this feels like a way to shut down absolutely any critical article without further analysis.

Further to that, the two articles you cite have nothing to do with Facebook. I'd be interested to know what technical knowledge disproves the stories about Cambridge Analytica or genocide in Myanmar:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/23/17151916/f...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

I find the genocide case particularly interesting to talk about because it doesn't really require much technical knowledge to understand at all - the military set up fake FB profiles in order to push propaganda and promote ethnic cleansing. It's a question of Facebook's role in society and how proactive they should or should not be about moderating the content transmitted through their platform. I don't think there's a simple right or wrong answer, and it feels like a shame to dismiss the idea entirely because the article was written by a newspaper that technically competes with Facebook for ad impressions, or to dismiss it because of an assumption that the story is false because other false stories exist in the world.

>Where is the actual evidence that a journalist writing an article critical of COMPANY is doing so because they are focused on maximising revenue for their own company?

recent example is bloomberg and their china chip hacking (did that ever turn out to be true?) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...

where the writers get compensated if their story moves stock prices https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensa...

Well, you removed the word "Facebook" from the quote there, and the Business Insider article itself states that the practice is extremely unusual in the industry.

I'll agree that if Bloomberg was the sole reporter of a controversial story about Facebook that couldn't be proven I'd be very suspicious. But as far as I can tell, that hasn't happened.

First, I don't think moving the price of an OTCBB stock counts.

Second, there is still the issue of accuracy, and that is even mentioned in the BI article. Bloomberg is not going to reward reporters for publishing bullshit, because it hurts the credibility of the terminal as a news source.

Third, while I wasn't in news while I was there I'm not aware of such a policy existing, and can't find anything more recent than that 2013 article.

The majority of people I've talked to about Cambridge Analytica think that Facebook just sent out a big pile of user data without asking anyone's permission. Which is a natural and reasonable interpretation of summaries like the one Vox provides in that article:

> Facebook exposed data on up to 87 million Facebook users to a researcher who worked at Cambridge Analytica, which worked for the Trump campaign.

What actually happened is that Facebook allowed a researcher to ask individual users to volunteer their data, and that researcher gave the data to Cambridge Analytica even though he promised he'd only use it for his research. There are ways Facebook could have prevented this, and I agree they should have - the UX implied a level of trust that Facebook wasn't properly vetting. But the popular narrative is almost entirely false.

But... Facebook did expose that data, by allowing a researcher to gather data on 87 million users with no actual restrictions on what he could do with that data. The root cause here is Facebook. It feels like arguing semantics to say the narrative is "almost entirely false" because Facebook exposed that data to an individual who later exposed it to Cambridge Analytica. Arguably Facebook exposed data on far more than 87 million Facebook users - it exposed data on every single user it has.

To be clear, the scenario was this. Facebook allowed people to voluntarily share their data with a large number of third-party apps, including one called "This Is Your Digital Life". This was a popular feature; lots of people wanted to share their data in order to get quiz results and such. The guy who created "This Is Your Digital Life" said the data was only for his academic research, but it was secretly for Cambridge Analytica.

When the news reports that some company has exposed data, that normally means they set an S3 bucket to public or got hacked. I don't think many people would naturally describe the above scenario, where I voluntarily handed my Facebook data to a third party who lied about who they were, as "Facebook exposed your user data".

Some clarifications:

- Facebook allowed people to share their data and the data of their friends with third parties. So there was no requirement for me to use My Digital Life, or to accept a single permission prompt, in order for the researcher to have access to my data.

- people didn't "want to share their data", they wanted their quiz results. Was every bit of the data they provided required in order to get the quiz results? Doubtful. Were users aware that this data could be permanently stored outside of Facebook and used at a later point? Again, doubtful.

> that normally means they set an S3 bucket to public or got hacked

I'd argue that the combination of the above means that what Facebook did absolutely was equivalent to leaving an S3 bucket on public. Without absolutely any involvement by me, the researcher was able to access my personal data, and was given permission by someone whose understanding of what they were doing was, at best, dubious. Facebook knew all of this because they created the system it lived in, but didn't appear to consider the consequences, so yeah, I consider them responsible.

But this is similar to any phone/email/contact book app will allow you to upload or manage your address book. Your friends could leak your email address or phone number by installing a malicious app and granting the permission, do you blame Google/Apple for this?

For one, Google and Apple would remove an app from the App/Play Store if it was abusing those privileges. My Digital Life would never have passed App Store approval in the first place, since it in no way demonstrated why it needed the amount of personal information it requested. Facebook clearly had no such monitoring.

Not to mention the scale of data is radically different. I'm not over the moon about someone uploading my phone number to an unknown service, but it's mild compared to someone uploading my phone number, friend network, wall posts, photos shared, likes, etc. etc. etc.

I'm not so sure that it wouldn't have passed AppStore review back in 2011, this was way before most privacy crackdowns began. It is also the case that the app claimed that this data would be used to analyze "your digital life" AND that it would be collected for research purposes only. Play Store definitely would've let it through.

As for the quality of the data. Right now any of your friends could have apps installed that are secretly leaking your private conversations with a third party and there is no realistic way for Apple or Google to know. That information seems more sensitive than what you linked. Why are you setting the bar higher for Facebook?

> Why are you setting the bar higher for Facebook?

The difference is this:

> there is no realistic way for Apple or Google to know.

There was a way for Facebook to know. The tool was using their own API, so they knew exactly what was being fetched and how often.

I'm also not sure why it matters. Let's say Apple and Google are just as bad, I don't particularly care. It doesn't make what Facebook did any less worthy of scrutiny.

My grandmother had her business destroyed by false newspaper stories paid for by a competitor. Till the day she died she wouldn’t touch a newspaper.

I’ve never been the target of a journalist before, but many who have seem to find their perspective profoundly changed by the experience.

> Most journalists have nothing to do with the business side of their company

Is that really true? It's the business side that pays their salaries, after all. Most people, in any business, are aware of where their employer's revenue comes from, who their competitors are, what threats they face, etc. This awareness is often heightened after being caught in a layoff, or working with others who have been. The news business has been pretty rough for a while so I'm pretty sure every working journalist has a pretty clear idea about these things.

There doesn't have to be a conspiracy here, and inferring one is a bit of a strawman. All that's necessary is plain old human cognitive bias. Availability bias: journalists are hyper-aware of Facebook because of how it relates to their lives. Confirmation bias: most journalists are predisposed to think ill of Facebook. These effects become even stronger when the journalists are all validating and reinforcing each other when they give negative stories about Facebook more prominence than they rationally deserve. Such stories are routinely repeated and exaggerated far more than other objectively similar stories that don't play into the same biases - not because of specific intent but just because journalists are humans.

Facebook is not the first company that has gone from media darling to media scapegoat. It won't be the last. Look at the extremely positive and extremely negative stories about any of Elon Musk's ventures. Or any celebrity. Anybody who denies that journalists play favorites isn't being very realistic.

This seems like really flimsy reasoning. Sometimes news stories are wrong, therefore 90% of what you hear about Facebook is false?

More like "the explicit fact laid out in the article is true, but its context, meaning, effect on the world, and interpretation are so sensationalized that the original fact becomes irrelevant to the narrative."

EG back in the day when the entire world lost its shit over the permissions an android app was asking for, not really understanding how a permission system for access to api's work. They seem to think they are legal permissions not technical ones.

>They seem to think they are legal permissions not technical ones.

There has to be either oversight or trust for legal permission to be distinct from technical permission. I think most people feel there is little of either in tech, and I can't blame them. Trust is given out as a social favor, tech companies have systematically abused this social favor by extracting extreme levels of data from every interaction. When I talk to someone face to face, I don't expect them to whip out a video camera and start recording our interaction, and if they did that I wouldn't approach them with so much trust. If a tech company Hoovers up my personal data, I likely won't know it. The abuse of trust is the over-collection of data and that particular abuse is what funds the internet. If you are arguing that there is oversight on the internet, consider that Facebook still won't let you really delete your data.

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