Facebook documents show plans to sell access to user data discussed for years
nbcnews.com
nbcnews.com
So is this yet another case of the media being incapable of distinguishing between transferring of data to third parties and displaying data on devices as an agent of the user, i.e. for the purpose of providing an integrated facebook experience? Until the media shows itself to be capable of making that distinction, I can't take these articles seriously.
In principle this could be the first time Facebook actually just tossed database dumps at Amazon, and in principle Amazon might have abused the access to steal user data for themselves. But neither of those possibilities seem likely or are supported by the described evidence.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/18/18147616/facebook-user-d...
Allowed to ask the user? Can you unwrap that for us?
Back in the day, I was part of a team that built an app that used Facebook Connect/what they were then calling the "Graph API" for login, and our app certainly saved all the data that Facebook made available back into our own database.
> You may use Account Information in accordance with your privacy policy and other Facebook policies. All other data may not be transferred outside your app, except to your service provider (per, Section 3.7) who needs that information to provide services to your app. With the exception of Account Information, you may only maintain user data obtained from us for as long as necessary for your business purpose.
I imagine some smart lawyers worked pretty hard on that. I imagine that most companies have their own smart lawyers who write "[their] privacy policy" to say "we can do whatever we want with your data...to provide you better service." I assume that your app's backend is the "service provider" in question.
IANAL, but I read that as saying it's kosher with FB for your app to push data up to the mothership.
The phrase "for as long as necessary for your business purpose" sure sounds like "indefinitely" to me. Maybe my business is still hoping to make some money from that data?
A friend of mine wanted to remove her name from all social media, she said there's one site left that seemed to just mirror FB, and my name was on it too, it seemed the creator managed to download all the data accessible to apps and he even claimed making that site wasn't against FB's agreement...
Yeah, but that is not what is being alleged.
What is being alleged is that you sell access to people's data.
This constant recitation of "We do not sell users' data" is like being in late stage litigation where each party's lawyers have chosen their respective arguments. They will cling to them no matter what happens, repeating them ad nauseum until the end.
Facebook's argument is "We do not sell people's data".
The issue however is not selling people's data. As such, this is not an argument. It is just misdirection.
The issue is selling access to people's data.
Maybe we could call this "licensing"? Maybe it is more desirable for Facebook to license access to people's data than to sell it.
"People's data" might be their friends list, or whatever they have uploaded or contributed to Zuckerberg's website.
Facebook's lawyers will not address the issue of selling access to people's data. The reason is clear: they do not have a winning argument.
Then we have the matter of metadata. Facebook will let a user download their data, but not their metadata. All that data on her usage patterns on facebook.com and across the web that Facebook collects 24/7/365, e.g. via "Like" beacons and "Sign-In with Facebook".
If a user downloads her data from Facebook it does not tell her anything she didn't already know. It is simply the data she submitted to Zuckerberg.
But of course he has much more data about her that she is not allowed to see. The question is, "Why not?"
The average person interprets "Facebook sells access to your data" as meaning that someone can pay Facebook to access your individual data. e.g. What sites did 3xblah, specifically, visit last week?
This isn't how Facebook's ecosystem works. Advertisers can only target users in large groups. And, there's no way for advertisers to query Facebook's servers for the personal data of a specific user.
If you explain exactly what Facebook is doing to the average person they simply don't care (even if you explain all the potential risks to their personal security).
The "word games" may not be aimed at the "average person". They might be intended to mislead those who have a concern with what Facebook might be doing. For example, it might be part of their job. The FTC is an obvious example, but there are many individuals and groups who are interested in Facebook's activities relating to privacy.
Incidentally, how do you know these things about the "average person"? Is there a citation to some studies you have read?
If yes, then no, that is not what I meant, although I think I see what you are getting at.
What I meant was, "Is there a jurisdiction where a company cannot license (permit) access to data contigent on prior assent to an agreement with conditions on use, duration of use, transfer, etc. such that the licensee does not get the same rights as the owner of the data?"
"Is there a jurisdiction where a company cannot license (permit) access to data contigent on prior assent to an agreement with conditions on use, duration of use, transfer, etc. such that the licensee does not get the same rights as the owner of the data?"
I, uh...do you mean...nevermind, I can't figure it out. Can you rearrange the question into a less pseudolegal form?
I thought perhaps you had a jurisdiction in mind where there is no difference.
Needless to say, in the US and in many other countries where Facebook conducts business, there is a difference.
Does FB have sufficient rights to "sell" copies of users' data? Unless the owners of the data give FB permission, FB cannot sell something FB does not own.
> “The set of documents, by design, tells only one side of the story and omits important context. ...”
Seems like an easy problem to solve. Release the documents that provide the "important context". Unless they're even more damning or don't exist...
But I have to say, that statement means nothing. Mocking people for their poor choices may be in poor taste, or unfair, but it does not mean one is willing to take advantage of them.
It's all he has done since that reveals that he is actually willing.
What about the part of the statement that says
ZUCK: yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard
ZUCK: just ask
ZUCK: i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns
Or the fact that he did use user data in the way he suggested in the quote?
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-mark-zuckerberg-hacked-i...
He had already taken advantage of them and collected their data at that point...
He was mocking the users who had already made the poor choice of letting him take advantage of them.
I seriously cant believe that it’s still a meme people use to justify their hate for Facebook.
The only way to get people to start thinking about these problems and implementing change is by publicizing stories like this. Seems like a very defeatist and unproductive attitude to just say "this is how it is" and leave it at that as your comments seem to imply
How can you claim that in the context of the revelations from this article? Seems like the company functions exactly like we're all "dumb fucks". And why do you think his attitude would change to be more egalitarian as his success and power increased?
Edit: > I seriously cant believe that it’s still a meme people use to justify their hate for Facebook.
It's not a meme. It's the founder and CEO of a company that holds the private data of >2B users telling us exactly how he feels about his users' expectations of privacy. Since then Facebook has only experienced growth and success. What event in Mark Zuckerberg's professional life could have significantly challenged this attitude do you think? It's been all positive feedback loops until recently.
No. It's a (literal) teenager thinking aloud, making comments in jest to a friend about his student project becoming viral and getting hundreds of users, to his own amazement. He seems to be noting how little people seem to care for their privacy.
And that's about it. There's much to say against Facebook these days, but it's a preposterous thing to say these comments accurately reflect the current views of their leadership at a completely different scale.
What are you on the record saying when you were 19 ?
edit1: Guess I made some facebook engineers upset as I'm being downvoted. Looks like dymk is likely a facebook engineer, as his comment history has lots of comments seemingly supporting facebook, data collection, and ads, or at the very least arguing against those that oppose them. Reframe it however you want, Zuckerberg, Facebook, and its engineers are immoral and not concerned with the privacy or security of anyone's data. The people that knowingly continue to work their are complicit in the net negative impact facebook has on society
edit2: dymk is no longer a software engineer at facebook, but he was until early this year
I doubt humans are that simplistic, but at the end of the day, it seems they all have a price, and for that price they can invent lies so they can sleep at night thinking they're decent people.
And until this headline I thought they (and Zuck in particular) still had a code of honor when they say they won't abuse the trust their users had, but, well, apparenly that also has a price.
His words and actions are those of someone who gives zero fucks about his user base as long as he gets to continue exploiting their private information.
"Here's all this data we have about people, pay us money and we'll help you exploit it."
The journalists lately are doing us all a huge disservice by conflating the two.
I haven't seen any evidence at all that FB was selling user data.
I've posted here a couple times on this issue, having been personally involved on the other side of the table in one of these 'deals' - and it was only ever a matter of getting our app integrated into FB so that our users could access their own data. We didn't use any of the data, though some 3rd parties would then have access to that data and do whatever with it, but only with it with the permission of the users.
The article doesn't provide specifics, but from what I can gather, this really is about 'special API access', and shouldn't be frame as 'FB sharing user data'. This is simply unfair to FB however we might think of them because it misrepresents the issue.
In short: FB has publicly available APIs which 3rd parties can use to allow their users to do some integration. Some of those APIs provide quite a bit of access, and so there's reasonable discussion about 'who' they should give access to. It's also perfectly reasonable that FB wanted to sell access to such APIs, or to have some kind of reciprocity.
VISA, Mastercard and AMEX are out there selling your data (on the aggregate, down to the zip code) to whoever wants to buy it, which is far worse and in many cases may theoretically compromise your identity.
FB has a lot to answer for, surely, but the information needs to be more clearly communicated. Sometimes, I'm not even sure if the journalists understand what is going on.
To get crisp, selling data is selling the keys to the kingdom, it would remove FB's need to exist. There are strong economic motivations to not go out of business.
> The documents stem from a California court case between the social network and the little-known startup Six4Three, which sued Facebook in 2015 after the company announced plans to cut off access to some types of user data. Six4Three’s app, Pikinis, which soft-launched in 2013, relied on that data to allow users to easily find photos of their friends in bathing suits.
I no longer use WhatsApp, and I have switched most of the people I text with over to Signal. I don't know if they use it with others, but they certainly use it with me.
I'd prefer Signal, obviously, but I'll take what I can.
You may not owe better to Zuckerberg or Facebook, but you owe much better to this community if you want to keep posting here.
Facebook absolutely deserves to be regulated but right now nothing they or Zuckerberg has done is remotely illegal.
The rule of law does not centre around who is nice or not.
> The company has not been accused of breaking the law.
So there doesn’t seem to be any reason Zuckerberg would be going to prison.
Except that world democracy is at stake.
Can we regulate these goons yet or what?
Let’s not forget people tilt towards economic or cultural nationalism for a reason, and it’s in our power to address those reasons directly, not chase band aid solutions.
But Facebook became an effective tool for a "voter hacking", if you believe the coverage about Cambridge Analytica: data-mine the Facebook profiles to determine the targets (apparently as little as several thousand people in the swing states), and then use FB's targeted advertising to influence these people with videos you know will get them emotionally. Boom. Hacking elections/voting machines is illegal, but no one ever said anything about hacking the voters, right?
But why aren't we addressing the underlying issue of why these several thousand people in swing states thought to vote in this way? How come the mainstream response is to say "gee I wish those people hadn't voted"?
I think addressing the underlying concerns would be more effective. I get that politics can be zero-sum at times but campaigning in swing states and targeting issues that those voters find important should be part of every campaign.
Democracy is at stake. Facebook and its subsidiaries are destroying our societies. The problem is global. Not because it is happening in a far away country you shouldn't care. You can already see the increase in Amazon deforestation due to Bolsonaro election in Brazil.
It's been happening in US, Italy, Israel, Poland, Hungary, Phillipines and now Brazil and the trend will continue whilst those leaders offer strength, populism and can point to immigrants as the cause of society's problems.
This might change and we may have an ascendant party on the left with a primarily negative message eventually. And I'm not saying the current left never does this. But at the moment the right's playbook fits existing social media better.
Those are hardly negative, and to equate their tone with far right rhetoric is textbook false equivalency. They are if anything just positions that one may or may not agree with about the just distribution of wealth and opportunity.
None of them are even in same ballpark or kind as the current toxic rhetoric on the far right, such as "[Mexicans] are criminals", "Muslims are trying to impose Sharia law in the US", "blood and soil", "we can't rebuild our civilization with someone else's babies" (that one is paraphrasing from a sitting member of Congress).
That is the rhetoric of racial and ethnic nationalism, which is almost totally a far right phenomenon on social media. There is no equivalent on the far left today, and that's not to say that it can't develop. But to do so with literally require a complete change of the people who make up the left.
Social media and regular media both contribute to this perception because everyone wants to forget about their own bad associations and focus on the bad associations of others. So, if you want to find out about nationalists you read left-leaning publications and if you want to find out about radical-to-the-point-of-silliness leftists you have to read right-leaning publications.
3 of the 4 examples of right wing rhetoric I quoted were uttered publicly by right wing elected officials (including the highest current elected in the land), not by people entertaining themselves on Reddit. The fourth was shouted publicly by crowds in Charlottesville.
The difference between right and left rhetoric is one of kind, not degree. Ethnic nationalism is not a motivating factor on the left today.
Class tensions and frustration over the distribution of opportunity and wealth - yes, those are prominent left-wing issues and that rhetoric is often expressed via insensitive metaphors targeted at the very wealthy, but again, it's not even comparable to the rhetoric of ethnic nationalism.
I said that the far left doesn't use ethnic nationalist rhetoric. That acknowledges their existence.
I think we'll eventually see a second generation of social media platforms that incorporate the lessons learned from this generation.
https://i.imgur.com/YFQ9zO6.jpg
I would also like to remind that among the many pages removed from the very same Facebook because they were inciting hate and anger as part of the Russian propaganda ops, quite a few were targeting left-leaning audiences.
In general, populists of all stripes are going to appeal to those emotions precisely because it's much easier to evoke them. So whichever side has a stronger populist faction at any given moment is the one that benefits most. In some places (like US) it's the right wing currently, in others, it's the left.
Facebook absolutely bears some culpability in this, but they're not the only reason that this is happening. Facebook cannot successfully control the hateful toxicity of their platform, which is now global.
All along the way, Facebook has lied, concealed, and deflected as much blame and responsibility as they could. This is unacceptable.
Facebook launched internet.org to get the 3rd world online (and more specifically, facebook), and wound up cancelling the project after the UN blamed Facebook for failing to control toxic speech against the Rohingya, who were mass murdered and displaced as a result[0].
[0]: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/meghara/facebook-myanma...