What's so bizarre to me about this whole ongoing story is the complete lack of perspective and common sense.
You give facebook all your information willingly and for free - and then people are surprised when facebook sells the information?
Facebook's business is not to protect your information.. its to sell your information to advertisers. You're paying to use their platform to connect with your "friends" by giving up your rights to whatever they can scrape off your phone.
This is not a surprise.
Mr. Zuckerberg will appear before the panel and promise data-security changes but at the end of the day facebook is still a business for advertisers wanting your shopping lists, contacts, interests, and personal profile to sell you stuff. The only thing that will change will be facebook's vetting process so only "friendly" corporations like walmart and BP have access to everything Cambridge Analytica had.
I think it's a surprise to many people in society. Weirdly, it's maybe even a surprise to tech-savvy people who knew about all this, but never bothered to really consider or act on the implications.
I do think that this is just how things work a lot of the time. The #metoo 'thing', or in particular the scandals about various people in Hollywood for example, were probably surprising to people outside the industry, despite the fact that they were frustratingly 'open secrets' inside it. And yet even inside the world of Hollywood many people never really considered the consequences of these 'open secrets' until the 'secret' part disappeared.
On a more personal note, I've experienced situations where, in hindsight, a particular person in my social world was obviously a horrible/dangerous individual (think rape/stalking). Somehow none of us either caught on to their malevolence, or kept finding ways to dismiss it until some situation proved how 'bad' they were.
After their 'true' nature became a public issue, for some this was truly a surprise, but probably for more of us than we'd be comfortable admitting, it wasn't all that surprising and we found ourselves struggling with the implications of 'let' things get so far without intervening.
>You're paying to use their platform to connect with your "friends" by giving up your rights to whatever they can scrape off your phone.
The general public (especially in developing countries) don't understand this at all.
In many countries facebook/messenger/whatsapp is unmetered thanks to facebook subsidies, which makes 'giving up your rights' the cheapest way (sometimes the only affordable way) to pay for a service to communicate with people.
Facebook is bundled with pretty much every Android phone ever.
People without facebook accounts have profiles, they're just not generally visible.
They've put a shitload of money and effort into forcing themselves into the position as a totally pervasive social arbitration platform, where the social cost of opting out makes it impossible even if you ignore the fact that your friends are probably still participating and happily handing over your data for you.
What's bizzarre is how people who do know these things still seem to expect 'perspective and common sense' from a totally uninterested and mostly uneducated public, and how people who do know these things can ignore just how creepy and predatory Facebooks practices are.
The nuance you’re missing here is that advertisers can only ask Facebook to show to such and such from high level categories. Gay Male 18-35, San Francisco, into dogs, for example. That’s it. Facebook will then bill that advertiser based on how many people see that ad.
The advertiser has no idea who you are or even if they got your attention to the ad they just paid for.
Facebook collects a lot of data about you that you don't give it. It tracks you across the web using "like" buttons, and cookies from comment sections even if you don't leave comments. It collects your contact info from your friends' phones.
If that is true, and there is no way for Facebook to survive AND give users more control over what, how, and when their data is shared then they may actually be in trouble.
You can safely assume that any pro Facebook editorials are being written by those with vested interests. This is true for most companies in the media/advertising sphere. It’s always been more incestuous than the general public is led to believe.
[+] [-] volak|8 years ago|reply
You give facebook all your information willingly and for free - and then people are surprised when facebook sells the information? Facebook's business is not to protect your information.. its to sell your information to advertisers. You're paying to use their platform to connect with your "friends" by giving up your rights to whatever they can scrape off your phone.
This is not a surprise.
Mr. Zuckerberg will appear before the panel and promise data-security changes but at the end of the day facebook is still a business for advertisers wanting your shopping lists, contacts, interests, and personal profile to sell you stuff. The only thing that will change will be facebook's vetting process so only "friendly" corporations like walmart and BP have access to everything Cambridge Analytica had.
[+] [-] mercer|8 years ago|reply
I do think that this is just how things work a lot of the time. The #metoo 'thing', or in particular the scandals about various people in Hollywood for example, were probably surprising to people outside the industry, despite the fact that they were frustratingly 'open secrets' inside it. And yet even inside the world of Hollywood many people never really considered the consequences of these 'open secrets' until the 'secret' part disappeared.
On a more personal note, I've experienced situations where, in hindsight, a particular person in my social world was obviously a horrible/dangerous individual (think rape/stalking). Somehow none of us either caught on to their malevolence, or kept finding ways to dismiss it until some situation proved how 'bad' they were.
After their 'true' nature became a public issue, for some this was truly a surprise, but probably for more of us than we'd be comfortable admitting, it wasn't all that surprising and we found ourselves struggling with the implications of 'let' things get so far without intervening.
[+] [-] _tulpa|8 years ago|reply
The general public (especially in developing countries) don't understand this at all.
In many countries facebook/messenger/whatsapp is unmetered thanks to facebook subsidies, which makes 'giving up your rights' the cheapest way (sometimes the only affordable way) to pay for a service to communicate with people.
Facebook is bundled with pretty much every Android phone ever.
People without facebook accounts have profiles, they're just not generally visible.
They've put a shitload of money and effort into forcing themselves into the position as a totally pervasive social arbitration platform, where the social cost of opting out makes it impossible even if you ignore the fact that your friends are probably still participating and happily handing over your data for you.
What's bizzarre is how people who do know these things still seem to expect 'perspective and common sense' from a totally uninterested and mostly uneducated public, and how people who do know these things can ignore just how creepy and predatory Facebooks practices are.
[+] [-] jarjoura|8 years ago|reply
The advertiser has no idea who you are or even if they got your attention to the ad they just paid for.
[+] [-] sp332|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nightski|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] common_|8 years ago|reply
Why isn't this disclosed at the top of the article?
[+] [-] DataWorker|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] africasiaeuro|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]