Facebook’s disingenuous explanations call for more questions and even less trust

It was.

You needed to be his FB friend, which at the time was limited to 500 (if I remember right).

But if you were, the Graph API gave the same access as it did to others.

Honestly, it would be almost better if that wasn't true. That would mean they knew something was wrong. The problem is they think "I'm fine with this, so everyone else must be too."

How about something like HIPPA (in the US)? There are strict penalties for violations, but it hasn't prevented small companies from thriving, provided they comply with the act..

Before we start talking about solutions we should defind the problem.

How would you define the problem at a high level?

> The question is how to solve this problem.

1) Pass a law forbidding it, with severe penalties.

2) Actually enforce that law.

My first guess was that it was meant to be "ass-covering". A "sphincter" is a generic type of "circular muscle that normally maintains constriction of a natural body passage or orifice", of which there are "over 60 types in the human body" (Wiki), but there's only one sphincter people usually talk about (outside scientific literature). Looking more closely at the definition of the "per-" prefix, I get "through"[1], in which case a "persphinctery" statement is most directly defined as one that "came out of someone's ass".

[1] http://membean.com/wrotds/per-through

But not using Facebook gives a +80% score too right? I mean, only a terrorist cares about his privacy. I have nothing to hide. :|

HN routinely de-fang headlines, particularly on hot-button topics, in the interest of more informed discussion.

maybe we can suggest they write about Mother Teresa >> https://www.huffingtonpost.com/krithika-varagur/mother-teres...

> The people who do care are not a majority and not even a significant statistic

I hear this from my friends in technology. It is not supported by the data: Facebook’s net favourability is down 28 points [1].

> Shareholders know this

Facebook trades 20% down from its highs and lower, to trend, than its peers [2].

[1] https://www.axios.com/exclusive-poll-facebook-favorability-p...

[2] https://m.nasdaq.com/symbol/fb/real-time

Yes. This is all over HN and Reddit, but when I try to introduce my friends to Signal (or encryption in general), they shrug and say they have nothing to hide.

Hate to say it, but the general public needs Kim Kardashian or some tastemaker to make privacy and security "cool".

Citizens of the United States have rights when they engage in consumer behavior.

Yes, you have to expect anything you do on the web can get leaked, but that's not what this is about.

This is about buying a cheap alarm clock and finding out it's recording videos of you and your girlfriend and selling them online.

The public doesn't care about appropriate capital ratios for "too big to fail" banks either, and yet Dodd-Frank passed.

The internet industry may be banking on this blowing over, but I wouldn't be so sure. Especially if the tech industry can't provide a unified front (see Tim Cook calling for privacy regulation).

GDPR has already arrived in the EU, and it will serve as a model for anyone campaigning for privacy legislation in the US. Politicians will respond to the outrage with Facebook/Google's behavior around data privacy, it doesn't matter that the public can't articulate what the response should be at a policy-making level.

And it doesn't matter that these internet companies' Terms of Service allowed everything that was done or not. This isn't a legal issue, this is a political issue. What people think they're agreeing to is more important than what they actually agreed to when it comes to legislative responses.

I used to think that, although I'm surprised how many of my family members have already deleted their accounts or are now seriously considering it since the news has broken about the breach.

I know very few people who now aren't actually suspect of the company now.Maybe their not willing to give up their accounts yet; However I truly think there is more public awareness of the situation than you think.

> To be honest, about this issue of privacy and security, most of the world really doesn't care. The people who do care are not a majority and not even a significant statistic. Providing an apology is enough for most people, since they don't understand the depth and scope of the problem at hand.

This is what worries me most of the time. Another commenter under this thread pointed to some kind of poll about Facebook. But polls don't matter much. People may have negative sentiments about Facebook, but what really matters is if this sentiment is reflected in almost the same proportion by an exodus of users from the platform or a significant drop in usage of the platform, while showing an increasing trend (even if it is for a short time). I believe most people will be angry, but will keep expressing that anger only on Facebook while their "friends" like and react and comment, creating exactly the fuel that Facebook needs — engagement and attention-minutes on its platform!

> Shareholders know this. Mark will receive a slap on the wrist, and business will continue as usual as this fades out over the next 1-2 months.

I believe the same too. Based on all the goofs from Facebook over the years, this one is just a bit more serious but would not be the reason why millions of people would boycott it. That requires a "disaster" on a larger scale, which I'm sure will come in the future because of Facebook being Facebook.

Your question brings to mind the (possibly apocryphal) story about (IIRC) Target, who through the use of a customer's purchase history deduced that she was pregnant before she had informed her family. They sent targeted mailers to her house, leaving her father wondering why she was getting advertising for diapers and the like.

I think the general public would care more if they got a better sense of what having a large volume of their seemingly innocuous data lets companies figure out about them.

Well a decent part of the most recent furor is that it affects people the do care. The Cambridge Analytica data was scraped from customers that had enabled it, but extended into their own friend networks, including those that had not chosen to make their data accessible.

I am sorta of the opinion that nothing on FB should be considered private, but even with that noted, and the fact that I don't particularly care what personal FB info on me is scraped, I'm a bit annoyed that any random friend could expose data that I have marked as private by allowing some random BS app to access to their own account. According to FB, this was solved years ago (but the data already scraped from the previous state was never successfully recalled), but I hardly trust them to give a shit about this or other issues popping up in the future, barring another mass outrage.

> Not sure about 'surprise'

That this was possible and happening was well known in Silicon Valley. What has changed is (a) Cambridge Analytica and the 2016 election made the issue relatable and (b) Zuckerberg et al are dissembling and attempting what appears to be an incompetently-executed public cover-up.