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Comment by torpfactory | Hacker News Reader

It should be clear to everyone now that Facebook is engaged in building a surveillance system which tracks every one of its users throughout their daily lives. Though others will disagree, this kind of behavior, especially done so without informing the user in full candor, is morally wrong.

As I've advocated in other commentary on this site: Engineers at Facebook have a moral obligation either reform from the inside or quit. This kind of surveillance apparatus should not be built, by either government or private entities.

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>> which tracks every one of its users throughout their daily lives

Actually you don't even have to be one of its users! Facebook has what they call "shadow profiles" for tracking people who haven't yet created Facebook accounts. That's how they instantly show you everyone you know when you finally create a FB account. You have Facebook cookies on your computer even if you have never visited facebook.com. Try deleting them. Within 30 minutes of browsing random web sites I guarantee you'll once again have facebook cookies. They track everything you're doing online even if you're not one of their users. Then they buy offline data about you from other companies, to complete their profile of you.

Sadly they only way to put an end to all this is by hoping the European Union will introduce new laws -- the only government that actually represents their citizens, as opposed to big businesses.

I have my browser set to only accept first party cookies, does this help?

Contrary to the other comment, of course it helps to disable third-party cookies.

There are some other ways to identify users, e.g. the E-Tag header or canvas-based methods. But cookies are the main and most reliable tool.

You can go one step further and just always use Incognito/Private mode for sites that don't require a login. If you need to be logged in a lot, Firefox Account Containers are a new feature to separate site data.

For others (Firefox, not sure about Chrome): https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/176046/how-does...

It doesn't.

This is something I've been thinking about. While I don't think that e.g. React poses a threat itself (it's open source and very unlikely to contain malicious code) I do wonder if we should stop using it, out of principle of what else Facebook has been up to.

Oracle has done a lot of evil stuff. Should you stop using Java?

I mean, you should stop using Java, but not for that reason :)

I agree. Now what about engineers at Google, especially with their drone program partnership with the DOD? How about engineers at Uber making cars that are unfit for the road?Engineers in general need to either grow a spine and a conscience fast, or they need enforced ethical standards. It’s. It just Facebook, although Facebook is particularly nasty, and there is no sign of people giving upon their cushy jobs to do the right thing.

Mostly they seem happy to go public while babbling about how they’re “changing the world” as in that pitiful letter from DropBox.

If people working at Google can look at the drone partnership and still try and argue that they're "doing good," we've really entered a whole new era of cognitive dissonance.

(FWIW, I think there are good and moral people who work at Google. But if they're not going to organize their labor or quit to stop this stuff, it doesn't really matter either way)

I refused to even interview for Palantir when their recruiter called and have quit jobs in the past when I was asked to do something unethical. It’s not as if google or fb engineers can’t find jobs elsewhere.

We need more legal protections for corporate whistleblowers.

What part of a DoD contract requires whistleblowers? Are we going to arrest all of Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman?

As long as they don’t kill people incorrectly…

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