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Comment by d3ckard | Hacker News Reader

I remember reading a book on Facebook in 2010 or so. I remember distinctly quote from Mark Zuckerberg that "privacy is the concept from the past". Then, a couple years later I read he bought houses surrounding his house to ensure his own privacy.

Lost any respect I had for the guy in that moment. I really hope FTC will force FB to stop most of their unfair practices.

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I really hope FTC will force FB to stop most of their unfair practices.

Yeah, Facebook said they would....in 2011.

Ron Wyden (US Senator from Oregon) asks the following:

"In 2011, Facebook entered into a consent agreement with Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Under the terms of that agreement, Facebook is required to maintain "a comprehensive privacy program that is reasonably designed to (1) address privacy risks related to the development and management of new and existing products and services for consumers, and (2) protect the privacy and confidentiality of covered information."

"a. Please describe how, three years after Facebook entered into the consent order with FTC, Spectre and his company were able to download sufficiently detailed data on 50 million Facebook users without their affirmative knowledge or consent."

https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/wyden-cambridge-a...

Hopefully once Zuck is done getting raked over the coals in the UK, he's dragged back to the USA to answer to Congress as well.

What will determine Zuckerberg and FB's fate in the US is the extent and number of politicians that received contributions. If FB donated to many politicians' election campaigns, they may be able to walk away with a slap on the wrist.

Maybe tech companies should take a page from Boeing's playbook and set up offices in all 50 states

And that agreement means absolutely nothing unless the FTC is also willing to enforce it - hard - against Facebook now.

Which they won't. Very few people of significance from the 2008 financial collapse are in jail. The justice system in America doesn't apply to the 1%.

There was a movement that tried to make people aware of that by camping out for weeks. They were marginalized, by the news and media agencies owned by that same 1%.

As the previous post stated, this type of stuff was know in 2011 and 2014. There is a good chance the only reason this is making such strong headwind now is because it's in someone's interest to have the media run with these stories.

Many of the largest players in the 2008 financial collapse -- e.g. banks -- are not regulated by the FTC:

https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/what-we-do/enforcement-authori...

IMO, Occupy marginalized themselves by refusing to ever stand for anything. It's very easy to say what you're against. It's harder to say, in detail, what you would do differently.

Did you attend a rally? Did you sit in at a general assembly? Have you discussed the movements goals with one of its members? The media, quite falsely, reported (cherry-picking interviewees, a similar tactic used for all movements nowadays) the movement lacked any concrete goals - it is patently untrue. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_movement#Goals

That's what the people marginalizing them said. To everyone else, it was pretty clear they wanted to see bankers in jail and regulatory restrictions that would prevent the problem from happening again in the same way.

> They were marginalized, by the news and media agencies owned by that same 1%.

That's not really true. There are many other organizations that have been around much longer, with substantially more members, that have accomplished much more than Occupy did and yet receive almost no media coverage. When you hear about a ballot initiative, an insurgent candidate, etc., there is a whole network of activists behind the scenes working to get things done that are largely ignored.

Contrast this with Occupy; just about everyone in the U.S. knows about Occupy because of the media coverage they received. Occupy got a substantial amount of coverage, particularly when you consider the amount of people involved (smaller than a whole lot of activist networks) and the political impact they had (not much). It's true that the poor state of the media in the U.S. is a big problem, but solving that problem would make the media less focused on political theater and more focused on the people effecting actual change.

Which, unfortunately, probably won't happen. Worse still, large scale intervention and stringent enforcement on the part of governing bodies and sovereign states is likely the only thing that could potentially curb the insane amount of power tech giants have accumulated over the past decade. Our culture is so saturated by the services and technologies they provide that solutions on the cultural or individual level are nigh impossible. No one will stop using these services because of bad press, this has been proven time and time again. People simply don't care enough or are so controlled by habit that a divorce from the network is perceived as more disagreeable than basically forking over anything to them, no matter what sort of implications or consequences relinquishing sensitive data ultimately has.

It's a sort of paradox: take the road of the libertine and accept that those that provide services to you freely take much more than they provide, or take the road of the conservative and accept a future wherein governments can effectively determine the technological landscape, and decide what services, what extent of data collection, and what levels of sharing are permissible. Neither is a particularly appealing option. In any case, the dream of the internet being some kind of individualist haven is long gone.

This is more of a stretch, but I think there is some degree of correlation between the forms of user-facing technology provided by massive data mining companies and users' apparent nonchalance or apathy toward data distribution issues. A great number of socio-technologic tools promote experiences that are fragmentary and break down focused engagement (asynchronity, multi-channel communication, attention deficits, etc. are hallmarks of our age). Batter your brain with instantaneous, reactionary content 24/7 and you soon lose the capacity for deep or prolonged contemplation. If you've robbed the consumer of the intellectual capabilities to engage critically with your product (or sometimes, in the case of giant networks like facebook you even ensure he likely needs to buy in to the product itself to reach an audience) you've gone a long way of ensuring you maintain hegemony.

Many of our modern technologies, like drugs, are habit forming and addictive. Once you're hooked, good luck getting out of it without a struggle. Most people don't want to struggle, so stories like this come out and effectively result in nothing.

Absolutely. Fed time sounds good for him.

Well, if data on European citizens have been exposed, then ideally Facebook's management would be charged with breaching national European laws on data protection, trialed and sentenced to prison.

The legal base for imprisonment for severe violation on data protection laws is there in many (most?) countries but they are rarely, if ever, used.

And there it is, now feels like the fable of the boiling frog. Can't remember wanting a company to crash and burn like this.

>The rise of social networking online means that people no longer have an expectation of privacy, according to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

>Talking at the Crunchie awards in San Francisco this weekend, the 25-year-old chief executive of the world's most popular social network said that privacy was no longer a "social norm".

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jan/11/facebook-...

I'm not trying to make this political, but I've always found it ironic that people in Southwest cities who talk big about border walls not keeping people out very often live in communities or cities where every house being surrounded by a wall is the norm. And the richer they are, the taller and more elaborate the walls get.

Again, this isn't about politics. It's about irony and how rich people in California often seem to say one thing and do another.

There's a huge difference between having a wall around your home so your neighbors/peeping toms can't look at you and having a wall on the border to keep immigrants out.

These things aren't even comparable, I have no idea where you think the irony lies.

These things are very similar. In one case, your defend your personal property (a house), in another, you defend your collective property (a country). In both cases, you rightly feel that you have the privilege of using that property that you want to be in control of, personally or collectively.

I think you completely misunderstand why people build fences or walls around their homes.

House wall: - keep pesky neighborhood kids from running through it and ruining your grass - keep your neighbors from being able to see you while youre swimming in your pool

Border wall: - attempt to keep Mexicans from immigrating into the country illegally

I fail to see how these use cases are at all similar. Please, if I missed a use case for a house or if your home is constantly being attacked by barbarians let me know, but I don't think anybody in California builds a wall to "defend" themselves.

>House wall: - keep pesky neighborhood kids from running through it and ruining your grass - keep your neighbors from being able to see you while youre swimming in your pool

Not according to what I read on Nextdoor. The people talking about making their walls taller, better, covered in more cameras don't care about the neighbors. It's about keeping strangers out.

> I fail to see how these use cases are at all similar.

That's because you don't view Mexicans as pesky neighbors trampling all over your country.

As someone who grew up in a very much not-rich neighborhood, in a very much not-rich household that still got broken into, I'll have to disagree haha.

The only thing similar about these two contexts is the word "wall".

I don't think a border wall is a good idea because it will cost a lot, not solve the immigration problem, it symbolically means a lot in terms of diplomacy and there's better solutions. Also, a lot of these people just want to escape from local conflicts, poverty, etc.

My parents bought window railings because although they hated how they looked, they were cheap, solved the problem and, I mean, these people just wanted our TV and my mom's jewelry.

In my case it was railings cause we didn't live in a house with the square footage for a garden lol. But I guess for all the well-off folk with gardens and steal-able stuff in their gardens, fences ("walls") serve a similar purpose?

Also consider that these people are much more likely to own their houses and would more stand to benefit from the rising housing costs that come from immigration.

Yeah I've been trying to buy a house for a few hundred thousand dollars but all these illegal immigrants keep outbidding me. /s

Any influx of residents puts pressure on local and regional housing markets. Extra pressure on even low income rentals has an appreciating effect on the rest of the housing chain, because on the short term housing supply is inelastic, and space in desirable areas is relatively finite.

There is of course, some effect but it's relatively minor for the middle class. Someone who's making a good income is not going to settle for the same conditions an illegal immigrant does, they're not competing in the same market. Your analysis leaves out a bunch of realities, for example: Most illegal immigrants share housing, reducing pressure compared to the normal. They also tend to stick to immigrant neighborhoods due to language barrier and need for cash transactions, this reduces their impact outside these areas. There is such a thing as homelessness more population on the lower income scale doesn't always mean that property values go up due to resources being taken since some will end up homeless. People tend to get the best they can afford, if illegal immigrants are taking the lower end of the market the legal people aren't just going to start buying "better" places.

Illegal immigrants have a negligible effect on the property values of the type of property people putting up walls and fences around their homes own. And lastly I highly doubt anyone who's against the border wall is realistically thinking "this will keep my property values up!"

>There is of course, some effect but it's relatively minor for the middle class

This was my only point, because low and middle class markets and income are continuous spectra, and displacement at the base puts pressure on the rest of the continuum. People don't typically end up homeless because of a couple percent increase in rent, they find a way to pay it. Now, the exact quantitative effect on pricing throughout the market is something that neither of us can likely provide.

>Your analysis leaves out a bunch of realities...outside these areas.

And what happens when these areas fill up and start to influence surrounding neighborhoods? What about the increased strain on infrastructure, including roads, schools, police, fire, etc, especially by those who do not pay taxes?

What about the effect on markets cause by middle income flight post spillover, when these growing low income neighborhoods bring with them crime and other undesirable activity?

No amount of arguing over left out "realities" changes the simple fact that more people create increased local demand in housing starved locales, which puts upward pressure on all markets, although of course the derivative of income pressure vs population decreases with increasing housing prices.

>People tend to get the best they can afford

"Best" is highly subjective and dependent entirely on market rates. People will pay more for less if the whole market is inflated by pressure from below.

To be clear, I am not interested in blaming immigrants, legal or otherwise, for any of societies problems. I am simply arguing that more people>increased demand>higher price.

You think it's ironic that people with fences around their houses think a 1,954 mile wall 30 feet high is impractical? What makes that ironic?

Are you suggesting that in these heavily walled Southwestern cities, people are using fences primarily as a form of defense against immigrants, and it's therefore ironic that they think their home walls will successfully protect them from large scale immigration, but not a wall along the border of two countries?

Without wading into the politics of the gesture, I'd point out that in the Southwestern US there's a strong influence of Spanish Colonial architecture, which is based on a central courtyard with high walls (in turn influenced by Arabic architecture in Andalusia). Which doesn't mean that what those high walls mean now is necessarily the same, but there is a general pattern[1]

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtyard#Historic_use

> people in Southwest cities... very often live in communities or cities where every house being surrounded by a wall is the norm

In addition to the other points in this thread, I can't think of a city here where this is actually the case.

Do as I say, not as I do.

I'm getting more and more happy that I don't have an account there.

However I'm not that confident that my plugins block all their affiliates and data gathering to my shadow profile.

GDPR ought to kill off shadow profiles..

I mean, only the ones that are GeoIped in Europe, no?

So that's going to be a really interesting thing to watch. Technically, the answer to your question is no - GDPR has nothing to do with being in the EU, it has to do with being a citizen of the EU. So if you're an American who travels to the EU, your shadow profile might get tagged with being in the EU, but you're still not eligible for GDPR protections.

On the other hand, if you're an EU citizen living in the United States for the last 20 years (meaning, before the advent of Facebook), you technically have the right to request that all your data be deleted from Facebook's servers.

Now, how will you know if they have data on you? Can you just assume that they do and make the request anyway? Will tech companies begin verifying your citizenship to tell if GDPR really applies to you? We'll soon see.

If you're an American, then you can gain (indirect) access to GDPR protections by transferring ownership of your Facebook account to a citizen of an EU member state. They can then withdraw consent to track personal data from Facebook for that account and/or send a subject access request.

Taking this action violates the Facebook ToS and will result in your account being closed.

Checkmate?

I wonder if someone could make a legitamite bussiness out of this?

pay someone 5$ to get your account trasferred to a EU citizen, and consequently removed by the GDPR guidelines.

Your still taking a huge risk by giving your profile to someone unknown though.

You might be able to structure the sale so that the European was the data subject for GDPR reasons, but did not have the passwords. That seems reasonable because under the GDPR, a company like Equifax would be obligated to purge your data if you withdrew consent even though you don't have access to the account they have on you.

GDPR applies to anyone processing personal data about a subject who is in the EU. His or her citizenship does not matter. So you can just go to Europe and make your claim from there. https://gdpr-info.eu/art-3-gdpr/

It may be - but that would just allow Facebook to say "if the login is from an EU IP, don't save this record" - but the rest of your profile, generated in the United States, can still remain. As long as no collection happens while you're within the EU, they may be fine. The whole thing will have to play itself out in court, it seems.

Nope. If you are an EU citizen, you have a right to be forgotten under the GDPR.

I fully intend to automate a request every 40 days (the response time for a Subject Access Request) to have myself pulled from their data.

Will it? or is this wishful thinking? How would it kill shadow profiles?

You would have the right (if you were an EU citizen) to ask for your shadow profile to be deleted, and I believe that they would have to collect an opt-in before they started to store a shadow profile about you.

This is technically true, but there are a lot of really weird implementation details. Since GDPR only applies to EU citizens, and those citizens could physically be anywhere in the world, how Facebook implements this will be super interesting.

Think about how a shadow profile gets created, for example - they notice that a group of three people keep getting tagged in photos, but there's a fourth person in the pictures who doesn't have a Facebook profile. The three people keep logging in from the same physical place (say, in the U.S.), and that same place is where the pictures are geolocated. You can assume this fourth person was in the U.S. So, Facebook starts a shadow profile on him - pictures he could have been tagged in, locations he probably was in, interests he probably has based on the intersection of his friends' interests.

But this guy is actually an EU citizen who showed up in the U.S. for a vacation. Uh oh. When would Facebook have found that out? When would they have asked this guy to opt-in? Can they assume everyone in the U.S. is not an EU citizen until told otherwise?

GDPR applies to people located in the EU. Citizenship does not matter.

I wrote this in another comment, but this is only partially true. The GDPR protections can potentially extend to non-EU citizens who travel to the EU, but the letter of the law seems to state that that's only true if data is actually collected while the person is in the EU. In other words, Facebook and others could potentially say "if this data is geotagged in the EU, don't record it. Wait until they're back in the US." Then, since no data collection happened in the EU, they wouldn't have the right to get it deleted.

Edit: rereading https://gdpr-info.eu/art-3-gdpr/, it specifically mentions the "processing of data", not just storing. In other words, Facebook could potentially stop an American from logging in when in Europe. Would they? Likely not, it would hurt their business. But what if I (an American) sign on via a British VPN?

It also doesn't answer what would happen to the data of EU citizens who are never geotagged in the EU (due to living outside of it), but also have shadow profiles created without their consent anyway. The first GDPR lawsuit will be fascinating.

Or maybe GDPR will kill off Facebook.

There are also photos out there with Zuckerberg with a covered device camera, but Instagram requires you to turn on the camera and microphone to post even pre-recorded content to Stories.

Any time the incredibly wealthy tell your things have changed, get over it, grab a pitchfork.

> Lost any respect I had for the guy in that moment

Um ... why only then? His statement "privacy is the concept from the past" was dishonest even back then - because if you have a lot of money, you can always buy more privacy than everybody else - and are generally much less exposed to the issues of, let's say, "average people".

Because even if I didn't like it, I could accept it as an opinion on future human interactions. Once he made it obviously clear that he himself considers it bullshit, while still selling the vision to the masses, I realised the man has no integrity whatsoever.

> Because even if I didn't like it, I could accept it as an opinion on future human interactions

But why could you accept it, from a person who is not affected by this vision anyway?

Did he provide some intimate look into his sphere of privacy back then?

Or, did he offer any transparency intiative regarding the Facebook company?

> I really hope FTC will force FB to stop most of their unfair practices.

Which ones do you want to keep?

None of course, but I don't believe they will get them all.

You lost respect for him over that? Should he put a cam in his bathroom for the world to see to be in sync with his business ambitions?

In May the GDPR comes into force in the EU.

I'm confused. Facebook is a service. As a service it's terms are "your data is ours, if you use our service". If you agree to that and you then use their service that should be the end of it. You are the product for Facebook.

It so happens that we live in a world where terms of service can be restricted by law through established processes.

If a country passed a law most of its citizens didn’t like, would you tell them to grin and bear it because “if you don’t like it you can just move?”

And GDPR puts limits on those terms. Just like labour laws put limits on contracts between a company and its workers. You can agree to an illegal contract, but that contract is still void...

That's how society is supposed to work.

That is not the position of EU law. In EU law, the person owns the data. There are limitations to what you can sign away.

To be fair, privacy and security are two different things

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