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Comment by astro_robot | Hacker News Reader

I just don't get it. I don't get the enormous backlash over this. Users give away their data to a company, the company sells that data to advertisers (or sells ads and targets the ads according to data), and the users can continue using the service they enjoy for free. This was the contract you agreed to when you clicked the sign up button. I don't get why people are mad at Zuckerberg and not themselves! People act like a company is supposed offer their services for free. The free services is the business model of the internet. You want to use Google Docs for free, fine they'll collect data on what you make. You want to play games for free, fine they'll display ads to you. You want to catch up with old friends, fine they'll collect data on your interests. No one is forcing Facebook users to use Facebook. You know they're collecting data on you. If you don't want them to, then don't use their "platform."

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For one, I don't think most people are acutely aware that this is what is going on. The HN reading crowd is the enlightened technical elite. We know that this is the transaction which occurs whenever we do something for "free" on the internet. Regular people may wonder why something as sophisticated as this is free, but are not aware that the cost is privacy. They just think "oh, this is a cool free fun thing. Awesome!" and be on their way.

Even then, the surprising, and technically not against TOS, open secret to every single social app that leverages it, is the comparative ease with which one could scrape a user's peer nodes' entire public history without explicit permission from said node. This is the thing that allows for all those "you may know" invite suggestion engines.

And this is by design, obviously, as it is literally the only thing that makes facebook valuable.

> Regular people may wonder why something as sophisticated as this is free, but are not aware that the cost is privacy.

Precisely. Acting astonished at why people are upset just shows a disconnect from the reality of the masses.

Free, valuable products are all over the internet: Google Docs, Trello, WhatsApp, Waze, Spotify...just to barely scratch the surface.

It’s not obvious to most users that the costs of some of these includes privacy violation / spying on the user.

> I don't get why people are mad at Zuckerberg and not themselves!

Because Trump won and Zuck is the new scapegoat. No one gave a shit when Obama's campaign did the same thing, and they were even public and boastful about it at the time.

Should I remind you that even if you don't click the sign up button that you have a facebook account?

"the enormous backlash" in this case is because it looks like the data was used to hack the US election. If it had been used to sell washing powder no one would give a damn.

You make it sound like it's just a little check box that either means data everywhere or not. There's a lot more to it than that.

This was the contract you agreed to when you clicked the sign up button. I don't get why people are mad at Zuckerberg and not themselves!

Zuckerberg is the one with control over the terms in a contract of adhesion. A contract of adhesion that gates access to a popular tool, that people want to use and don't bother reading or understanding the terms.

Whether or not you like contracts of adhesion, Facebook is taking advantage of people. When society finds terms in contracts (especially contracts of adhesion) to be immoral, they're allowed to voice that. And sometimes that causes the law to act to void contracts or prevent parties from certain actions even with contractual connect.

Also the people in this data scandal took a quiz from a shady company and probably clicked through the prompt to share their info without thinking twice. The only problem was it got some of their friends info... but that bug/feature was fixed years ago.

Personally I quit Facebook upon signing up the first time in 2009. I friended a real life friend then 20 assholes from high school saw that action on my friends timeline and tried friending me. Right away I closed my Facebook account and never signed up again.

It was obvious back then Facebook shares my actions I don't want public with anyone they feel like. If you don't want them to do that then you shouldn't use the service.

Well they sort of promised the FTC they wouldn't just do that without giving you a heads up, but then in the api they let your data out to apps that you didn't get a heads up about.

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