Honest question: why is it a problem that Facebook has personal data and uses it in their advertising platform?
No one is forced to give their data to Facebook. It's not a public utility. It's an entertainment site, first and foremost.
No one is forced to give their data to Facebook. It's not a public utility. It's an entertainment site, first and foremost.
Neither do we have to. Facebook is grabbing it all anyway. With pre-emptive measures ala ad-, cookie and tracker blocking we can reduce the amount of data they get, but they still get something.
If they'd only collect data about their users, that would be totally fine. But they don't. They build shadow profiles of people who are not on FB and track them just the same way.
FB is a whole lot closer to Orwellian surveillance apparatus than it is to entertainment site.
Maybe they think "you don't have to use FB"... By that logic "you didn't have to use AT&T or the internet at all" either.
And then there's also the thing that, arguably, Google and FB give those people something in return which they might consider worthwhile for just data. I'd question that the majority of the user population is aware of the implications of handing over data about themselves and specifically other people, who may or may not be okay with that.
All the more reason to keep an eye on the people who control the page that so many people view their news from these days.
Given that the mass media is in direct competition with FB, I wonder why they haven't destroyed FB already.
All things considered, Facebook presents a similar level of risk, especially if nation states use it as a digital weapon as we've seen recently.
When the state tells you its on, its at least to your face.
Many social groups use Facebook to organize on. If an individual weren't on Facebook, they'd be much more socially isolated in the same way that if they didn't use a phone (considered a public utility), they'd also be more isolated. I suspect for some people, Facebook/Messenger/Whatsapp is more important than a telephone number.
Some services now require Facebook to use their service. For example, for people who can't afford to own a car, GetAround lets you rent neighbors cars, but they don't accept a government issued ID, only Facebook.
This meme has to stop. In many countries universities are state-run, and they provide more value than most companies.
- Universities develop social media algorithms that are provenly secure and respectful of privacy. "Federation" should handle issues of trust over network partitions.
- Governments (not a single one) decide if they want to provide computing infrastructure for said algorithms. Alternatively, users could host their own social networks or partitions thereof.
- Big companies provide hardware and maintenance. (And that's all they do. I.e., hands off of our valuable data).
Basically, that's a lot like how the internet functioned when it just started (Universities and DARPA developing the concepts, and companies doing just hardware).
There are also countless examples of privatisation disasters. Source: am British.
Although those often are to some degree a result of corruption.
Efficiency is out of the question as well. You cant argue the State will do it better. It wont. And in this case, it can even be harmful.
With shadow profiles, they are being forced to give their data to Facebook or live like an outcast.
How intrusive are the shadow profiles actually? We will know only if their data collection process (as well as the data collection process for all these ad-first companies) is completely and thoroughly investigated.
By having it myself, I have the technical capacity to cut the middleman, which is better for me and for the advertisers that target me.
(This is not a defense of FB, only trying to be useful)
The above statement has a high reach: information fb uses to then deduce something for advertisers has to be included. It doesnt work immediately, so I will have to wait analyze what they share. Its certainly good that they do.
EDIT: just looked at the docs and it is better than I thought but might not be probably enough to get the effect I want to achieve.
ITs revelatory that it contains all the chats I ever had, and would find that hard to share with anyone, yet, clearly FB has it .
Is it? I've always seen it pitched as a communication service with emphasis on staying in touch with friends and always being connected with loved ones.
Why should they be regulated?
Because the more ubiquitous a service becomes, the more it is ingrained in everyday life, the harder it is to avoid. And it should be regulated.
After all, nobody is forcing you to have and use electricity. So why should power companies be regulated?
Or car manufacturers. Or anything really.
Because it makes society a better place.
It is absolutely possible to have privatized power supply.
Edit: to elaborate a little, one shows the ownership form and the other how free of constrains is that activity on the market.
It is. And power companies should be regulated anyway.
For example: to provide current within specific parameters so the white smoke doesn’t escape our devices.
Same with Google - website optimise for Google and Google ranks them higher. Network effect completely captured the market.
Another word for it is 'experience monopoly' - there is no one else that can offer remotely useful to it.
Most people recognize that behaviors that can be seen as voluntary agreements between independent parties can still be problematically imbalanced or in need of "regulation."
It's not reasonable to just ignore the power of network operators. How do you think about net neutrality?
Facebook is a social media website. It doesn't provide a basic, necessary service. It doesn't operate under the physical constraints that utilities do, and it's not impossible to compete with Facebook, as evidenced by the numerous social media services out there like Snapchat, Tumblr, Youtube, Reddit, LinkedIn, Google+, Qzone (China), and Sina Weibo (China).
I'm certainly not against regulation as a general concept. The free market does not produce the best, ethical incentives in all cases. That being said, I fail to see why regulating Facebook is even necessary, and what that would look like in practice.
People on HN seem to take as a given that Facebook having loads of personal data is somehow a bad or dangerous thing. Why? Facebook has 2 billion users. That's 25% of the human population. 2 billion people voluntarily created profiles, provided details about themselves like their age and relationship status, and uploaded photos of themselves, their friends, and their families. For those 2 billion people, the "cost" of "losing privacy" was worth it to them. Face it, nobody outside of the tiny HN bubble cares about the security of their vacation photos or cat pics, nor should they.
And people say Facebook allows companies to upload their customer data to Facebook so they can be targeted through ads on FB, so it would be possible (in theory, not sure about the practice) that Facebook has things like your address and income level as well, for example if you ever filled a marketing survey.