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Comment by tacostakohashi | Hacker News Reader

This is completely naive.

Firstly, social media's only incentive is to make your data as widely available as possible (in the interests of ad revenue), and maintain a good relationship with the government in their jurisdiction. Every other existing "privacy" setting on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc is already obfuscated to the point of unusability, for this reason, and "travel mode" would be no different.

Secondly, lets imagine that FB did implement a watertight "travel mode" that hid your embarrassing data effectively while you were travelling. Third parties would just start capturing and storing posts while you have "travel mode" off, and sell that to CBP, or whoever else wants to pay for it.

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He's pointing out what social media companies should do, not predicting that they'll actually do it. That is not naive. Imagine what would happen to the Overton window if we never talked about what people should do, even when we expect them never to do it.

People who care deeply about these issues work at Facebook and Google.

Please clarify: I take your answer as a (fair) response to the first objection, but what about the other ("third parties would just start capturing and storing posts while you have "travel mode" off, and sell that to CBP, or whoever else wants to pay for it")?

Does that possibility worry you? Wouldn't that also put you in a position where you’re lying at the border?

edit: readability

I'm not sure I understand that objection. How will a third party collect non-public information from my Facebook account, or my email?

Maybe the surveillance economy can send a diff or two?

https://boingboing.net/2016/11/13/the-surveillance-economy-h...

I fell strange linking to your own warning...

The surveillance economy is not a magic thing that sees all, though. What's the specific way in which third parties end up with my email and private Facebook data?

Sorry, I don't use Facebook, and I applaud the initiative (as I understand it, it's about limiting the exposure).

I just think that the use of a such a travel mode could be likened to/misconstrued as the practice (perilous, as you indicate), of using a decoy account, given for example, some previous snapshots of any public/semipublic social media activity suddenly invisible for the border agents.

Just trying to get a clearer view of your proposition (I think I'm doing it, thanks for answering!)

You also wrote

> They can do whatever they want to do, including organize, work to rule, walk out, or go on strike.

Observationally, they don't organize or go on strike. Maybe some "work to rule", get PIP'd and walked out. Maybe some actually walk out on their own.

In the long run, the "People who care deeply about these issues" get boiled off.

In fact, they probably are largely boiled off by now. Probable, because that's consistent with observable Google behavior.

I see no actual reason beyond "be nice to everybody" to assume a random Googler "cares deeply".

That's a statement that's true for all sorts of issues, for all sorts of people, at all sorts of places. But what matters is whether their employer has made them responsible for solving those issues.

What are they paid to do?

They can do whatever they want to do, including organize, work to rule, walk out, or go on strike.

If only they would!

Facebook and Google also cooperate closely with the US government, law enforcement, intelligence services and state department. How can they be part of the solution when they're part of the problem?

If they already have unlimited access to your account, they wouldn't need to ask for the password. But ok, fine, stipulate that the US knows everything. The feature is still useful for people going to Canada.

They don't seem to be in positions of any authority though -- see eg realnames. Or maybe this is enough of a threat to the core business for them to care?

This is the problem that trade unions solve.

Facebook has incentives to make your data available to advertisers. That does not mean it needs to make your data available to someone who possesses a device that you accessed Facebook from. The point of the idea is that when you turn it on, your data isn't removed, it's simply not accessible via a device until it's turned off.

If a third party could access my private Facebook posts then border patrol wouldn't require my phone in the first place.

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