U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut down ad research
reuters.com
reuters.com
Of course they didn't. After you are fined 5b it's no surprise you go full on defensive. What's the alternative? Asking the ftc every single time what they should do?
I'm no fan of Facebook but if they didn't stop the research they could be found guilty again for the exact same reason
Society does not owe Facebook anything. Let them operate only via actions that are ethical and privacy-preserving, and if they cannot do so, then let Facebook die, and good riddance.
Yes. That’s how the consent decree works.
Well I've never really been sanctioned by the law for anything significant, but I would imagine that if I was sanctioned by the law for something afterwards I would be mindful of that fact and try to avoid being sanctioned again?
But there's a big difference between me and Facebook and that's that I don't have a callous disregard for the law and well being of society.
I'm not willing to cut Facebook so much slack here. They very much do not want any independent public oversight of their advertising operations (e.g. they want to release self-congratulatory reports with numbers that lack denominators, and they don't want anyone to be able to call them on the BS). I think any invocation of the consent decree is likely just a smokescreen for what they really want to do.
This view isn't exactly _uncommon_ for such a large company that dominates their market.
If you remove the word "advertising" it might apply to pretty much _any_ company...
Facebook does X, which the Government decides causes Y amount of harm to society. The Government compels Facebook to fund independent research to verify this claim.
Independent research finds that Facebook does cause some amount of harm to society. Government uses that evidence to compel Facebook to act in ways that might reduce that harm.
Facebook agrees and decides to implement controls that might reduce this harm.
Facebook then wonders, “hmm why not just stop paying for this research, it’s actually leading to worse outcomes for us” and decides to shut down that research.
> What's the alternative? Asking the ftc every single time what they should do?
Maybe nothing that extreme, but certainly reasonable controls to operate in a way that’s verified by independent research as to not cause harm to society.
> Facebook must conduct a privacy review of every new or modified product, service, or practice before it is implemented, and document its decisions about user privacy.
But maybe I’m just misinterpreting something half remembered from a Matt Levine column.
In those cases showing the effort that you are engaged in getting there helps, you make an interpretation and go with it, but you might need to change when there is clarity on the proper interpretation, banks are looking at what other banks are doing, external specialists are hired. But it still remains messy.
Though it does tend to have fewer regulations than the EU, the claim that this settlement has resulted in no operational changes does not appear to be true.
Exactly.
Don't you understand that the argument: "You're only guilty if you get caught" doesn't really resonate with most of the public? Whether or not FB talks to the FTC about certain issues has nothing to do with them breaking rules. This is not how the law works.
For example, I could call the police and inform them I was breaking into a house. I would probably get stopped and get arrested. The second time, I think to not inform the police about me breaking into a house. Does not informing the police mean I wouldn't be committing a crime? No, it doesn't.
I'm open to a discussion if you think the rules are too strict.
Yes, that's exactly how a consent decree works.
The people that run Facebook are vain, greedy, and utterly uninterested in the public good, but they are not stupid and are almost certainly aware of the existence of telephones and email. They undoubtedly understood that banning a public interest research group is a fundamentally different activity than banning advertising firms or other commercial actors, and had they been interested in actually following the law here this would have involved communication with FTC about what they should do in this situation. It apparently didn’t.
> Asking the ftc every single time what they should do?
You were so close to getting it.
The FTC would like to be notified when FB is making a statement related to FTC policy so they don't lie. If they hadn't misrepresented the FTC wouldn't have a problem.
Facebook’s claims about the Ad Observer are wrong - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28068359 - Aug 2021 (105 comments)
Facebook bans researchers who were investigating Facebook ads - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28063637 - Aug 2021 (77 comments)
AdObserver Blocked by Facebook - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28059869 - Aug 2021 (46 comments)
FTC: "Now FB, don't you go sharing data with researchers again. You are responsible for preventing scraping of user data"
FB: * consents *
* Proceeds to not share data with researchers *
FTC: * Shocked pikichu face *
"The FTC is a bipartisan federal agency with a unique dual mission to protect consumers and promote competition."
Also, more formally: CA's research was violating privacy laws because it was gathering personal data from Facebook's users without their consent.
This is not the case here. Individual users had to explicitly install a particular browser extension to participate in the research.
It actually gathered data from fb users with explicit consent (a login with FB dialog along with a permissions dialog box). The app then scraped the public information of that user's friend's list.
If you replace "friends list" with "ads list", it seems to have pretty strong similarities to what's happening here.
While finding that link for you, I learned that since that date, the Supreme Court vacated the decision back to the lower courts in light of a new decision of theirs.[1]
Now I don't think it's clear one way or the other just yet. Any lawyers here with an opinion on how this is going to go? I haven't found any analysis.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn
[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-supreme-court-revives-...
It's probably very bad strategy to allow the privacy leak, and then hope that the FTC agrees with your decision later. No one will be sanctioned for adhering too strictly to consent decrees, but you could be sanctioned for being too loose. So the choice is obvious in that light.
As a website owner, beyond that, there is no need to tell someone they cannot access your site if you simply block them from accessing your servers instead using a multitude of techniques.
Where does caching come into play at all here? You cannot cache content to begin with if the server is blocking access in the first place. And if you have already cached it in the act of violating said website’s terms of service, then you are still not in compliance.
According to many rulings the last few years, continually and systematically accessing a third party’s data under the clear expectation that you are aware of (as well as agreed to) their terms is definitely a meeting of minds.
Not to mention the fact that terms and conditions are not contracts. I don't think they carry the same weight, although someone please correct me on this if I am incorrect.
Judge: “what defendant? There is no one here.”
Plaintiff: “Oh he was anonymous, so I am not sure who it was…”
Judge: “Hmm interesting, so you seem to think an implicit contract exists that you want to enforce with no documentation at all with a party you can’t name, because you are not sure who it is?”
Plaintiff: “Exactly.”
Judge: “Feel free to come back when you aren’t going to waste the court’s time”
Also…you missed the word “public”, again.
https://www.upcounsel.com/are-website-terms-and-conditions-l...
This is heavily supported by Case Law.
If you don’t want me to have a copy of it for any reason, don’t let me have it at all.
If you publish content on a website that willingly provides data to anonymous users of your site, even with a TOC on the site, the TOC is not enforceable if you cannot prove that the user explicitly agreed to the TOC. If you don’t know who the user is, you can’t prove that they agreed to your TOC.
Having a TOC is basically legal theater if you allow anonymous users. The implied threat is basically “IF we find out who you are” and you use the site in a way that is contrary to our published TOC, we will take action against you.
Your only recourse in that case is to pursue sites that are republishing your copyrighted content…because only at that point can you actually identify the party that may be misusing your site and it’s content.
This weired mindset where corporations make law shouws up again.
The websites have no power to prohibit anything. If they make bytes avaliable, we may do with them as we please so long as its legal.
If they'd try to prevent you from scraping third-party sites it would be making laws; setting up ground rules with their ToS and enforcing them is absolutely fine.
Actually no.
If a platform provides a generally available service they are (in many countries, idk. about the US) not allowed to arbitrary exclude some people they don't like without a legal valid reason.
And braking legally not valid/binding terms in a ToS is not a legal valid reason. Just because you write something in your ToS doesn't mean it has any legal relevant meaning, there are limits to what you can put in ToS. And limiting (properly done, privacy respecting) research is often not valid. (Through depends a lot on the country.)
Nobody is legally forcing websites to allow access to everyone, and accordingly, nobody is altering the law by blocking access to people (crawlers, hackers, spammers, malcontents, or anybody really) that they feel are not welcome. So exercising one’s existing rights isn’t an act of making or altering laws.
I suggest reading up on what robots.txt is to further understand this.
Either Crawling does not belong on that list, or google exects should be in jail.
Given that crawling is not malicious, what we are discussing now is 'someone is crawling my website in a way I dont like' which is a different gripe.
It mighthave some merit, but robots txt is not legally binding.
In a way, I feel the American government also wants FB to do the same as it advances the US centric world order.
If there is a global monopoly. American wants it. This is evident in America’s position in negotiating the digital tax with the EU.
I'm fine with FB or twitter or whatnot adding their epistemic status banners, like "incorrect according to current scientific consensus". Doing more would, to my mind, produce seriously more harm than good.
It's like painkillers: when the society uses technology to forget that certain parts of it feel unhealthy and hurt, it may lead to much, much worse development of the diseases and far more painful consequences than being open and honest with itself, even when it feels extremely embarrassing.
The problem is, from an European perspective, the US concept of "free speech". Allowing hate (e.g. swastika flags), a putsch attempt or outright lies ("Big Steal") to be shown and supported publicly and not acting against it is only emboldening those who spread this kind of content.
I won't deny that Germany has a problem with a tiny but vocal minority that denies vaccinations. But in the US, it's half the country that fell to the propaganda because no one nipped it in the bud while it was still possible!
Meanwhile, the US Constitution hasn't seen a substantial update in decades, much less a true reform taking into account hundreds of years of learning from history. The result is - again, from a Continental European view - a hot mess ranging from eccentrities such as voting on Tuesdays, over massive influence of Christian fundamentalism in politics despite the US being the first state in the world to not have a state religion, to a total inability of democracy to defend itself against demagogues and, in the case of Russian propaganda campaigns, even enemy hostility.
I think that the problem of Weimar Germany was not in the unchecked circulation of Völkischer Beobachter or whatever. The problem was that the Nazi propaganda fell on intently listening ears, and that the republic's administration wasn't able to fight back the Hitler's power plays. BTW one of the first things Hitler did when he seized power was curbing the "anti-German" public speech, along with political activity. I don't think it's a coincidence.
I see that Germany has had an enormous trauma. I understand the immediate post-war necessity of communication control. But, with all due respect, I think that the current limitations do a disservice to the German democracy, both by creating the notion of thoughtcrime and forbidden speech at all, and by hiding the real amount of problems from the society, which could otherwise more adequately react and help heal them.
The last substantial update was in 1971, to lower the voting age to 18. Since then, nothing was done on a federal level to deal with the load of issues that have cropped up in the meantime: a history of systematic racial, sexual identity and gender discrimination, police and judicial power abuse, voter suppression tactics, equal access to abortion, unionization/worker representation, or the complete dysfunctionality of Congress which couldn't even be bothered to condemn Trump for his role in the January 6th 2021 events!
> and that the republic's administration wasn't able to fight back the Hitler's power plays
We see something similar with the US Republican leadership unable to keep the power plays from the far-right in check. It began with the Tea Party, culminated (for now...) in the 45th Presidency and now there are QAnon believers sitting in Congress. Either Trump himself or Ron DeSantis are going to make the run in 2024 and it's by no means certain that they will be defeated again.
The US is at a crucial tipping point of history.
> But, with all due respect, I think that the current limitations do a disservice to the German democracy, both by creating the notion of thoughtcrime and forbidden speech at all, and by hiding the real amount of problems from the society, which could otherwise more adequately react and help heal them.
There is absolutely no place for right-arm salutes or calling of extermination of people to be in any part of democracy. You don't need to "heal" with this shit, the last people who tried giving Nazis concessions (aka "appeasement politics") ended with a load of V2 rockets on their roofs.
Fascism always devolves into one group of society (be it ethnic, religious or, in case of the modern far-right, sometimes purely ideological) claiming superiority - and using every tool in the book to achieve their aims.
And it's not like the old Nazis hadn't explicitly announced their aims. To quote Goebbels:
> We enter the Reichstag to arm ourselves with democracy’s weapons. If democracy is foolish enough to give us free railway passes and salaries, that is its problem… We are coming neither as friends or neutrals. We come as enemies! As the wolf attacks the sheep, so come we.
The modern far-right acts exactly like this, and anyone refusing to learn from history will only help history repeat itself.
Do you think the constitution needs a change to address that? The constitution already forbids racial discrimination and power abuse (else it won't be called abuse), etc. I think it's the legislature's job to make laws to address the current (and ever-changing) situation, and the executive branch's job to enforce these norms. I would rather keep the constitution from changing for tactical interests.
> the 45th Presidency and now there are QAnon believers sitting in Congress
Still, the power was peacefully (if scandalously) passed to the next elected President. I'd say that the system is working within the designed tolerances. I have a few thoughts about improving the election system in the US, but I don't think it has failed.
> You don't need to "heal" with this shit.
The problem is that the criminals are still citizens, still a part of the society. Seeing pus seeping from a damaged body part and saying that this shit does not need healing seems like a slightly cavalier approach to me. Even when a surgery is the best approach.
Certainly, seeing people doing things that are repulsive an dangerous is very, very, very embarrassing! But I think one thing is worse: closing your eyes to not see them, while they continue doing the repulsive and dangerous things unseen. That's one of the points of free speech.
> giving Nazis concessions (aka "appeasement politics")
Indeed. But I don't speak about any concessions, special-casing like the prewar politics did. I speak about a level playing field.
> "We enter the Reichstag to arm ourselves with democracy’s weapons."
These weapons won't be armed if there were not popular support :( My point is that muffing the voices of that popular support so that we, the nice educated democracy-loving people, don't hear it, may lead to a much more rude awakening than e.g. the Trump's election was.
Yes, because only a constitutional amendment can set federal minimum standards that cannot be undermined by state or other, lower government. And given how state governments are already busy with trying to pass antidemocratic measures - not just the usual gerrymandering stuff, but giving legislatures the power to override Electoral College votes in case of fraud "allegations" - this is a real need!
> Still, the power was peacefully (if scandalously) passed to the next elected President.
It barely was passed peacefully. Had a sole heroic police officer not lured the crowd away, they would have gotten (and probably hanged) Pence - it was a matter of sixty seconds. And anyway, it's hard to speak of a pass of power when large parts of the Republican voter base don't see Biden as legitimate President, and a not-negligible portion is delusional enough to believe QAnon claims that Biden is serving in a replica White House and Trump is still President.
> But I think one thing is worse: closing your eyes to not see them, while they continue doing the repulsive and dangerous things unseen.
It's not about closing one's eyes to not see the pus. It is to pass a clear message to people on the fringe: this sort of opinion is not welcomed in society and you will get punished for it. And it is also a message to democratic people: democracy is worth fighting for, fighting against those that threaten its existence.
That sounds an awful lot like China's new security law. Only patriotic people can run for office - we need to send a clear message that non-patriotic opinions are "not welcomed in society and you will get punished for it". After all, "democracy is worth fighting for" just as you said.
In no country in the world, not even the US, is all speech legal.
Moving from the US to Europe, I've found a much _wider_ range of speech here in practice, partly because money is NOT considered to be equivalent to speech here.
And the latitude of speech is quite great. The Netherlands has some of the strictest laws about hate speech in the world, and yet one of our politicians evaded punishment (a minor fine) because he said Moroccans were like dogs, not that they were dogs. (It was more complicated than that, but that was the basic idea.)
Get a grip.
I find this line of thinking quite perilous, even though it was the prevalent mode of thinking through centuries.
Silly slurs, like "<ethnic group> is like <animals>", can be discounted as silly. The real test is saying something really controversial and not obviously stupid. I'm afraid that in Europe it's not easier than in the US.
That's quite the assumption you're making.
Many were already against vaccines. Many others already distrusted the government to an extreme degree. Then suddenly vaccination became a matter of political allegiance as well.
I don't see how curtailing freedom of speech would have made things any better.
Anything here or elsewhere suggestive of the FTC actually doing anything else, like investigating for other wrongful denial of service?
....would that even be within their powers to investigate?
Fb tried to justify its action as if it was forced to do so by FTC regulations; FTC is saying, “nice try, but no”.
(I don't work there anymore, so I'm just speculating - but I do have experience with the continuous waves of privacy work that every product team would be assigned)
It seems like it's spaghetti argument time, ie. throw everything against a wall and see what sticks.
You could argue that the privacy of people could be violated because the "privacy" of an entity that's public shouldn't that public according to facebook. I know, the weak point is that we can't show what privacy aspect is actually violated, but then we could argue this is reason we should investigate this.
If this was the BCP in my country, I could add other arguments about unfair competition and/or monopoly. But I'm not sure this is the purview of the US version of the BCP.
The FTC/BCP needs to follow certain rules, but this doesn't prohibit them from saying: "Hey, we can kinda work with this sort of argument, especially if you reformulate it like this"