Stop Facebook
howtostopfacebook.org
howtostopfacebook.org
Unfortunately they've clearly listened to the same god-awful consultancies that other major charities have, and gotten really sob-story heavy. They also share your data with everyone else in the non-profit space, who will soon be begging for your time/money.
Ask me how I know...
There are some smaller red flags in the privacy statement and cookie notice. (3) ("As is standard practice on many websites, we may [use] ... tracking technologies") and "(We will only make Personal Information about users available to third parties as [...] permitted under the terms in place with our third-party partners."). Wow such data protection, much privacy ^^ very informed - not.
But it gets even worse, when one looks at the API (4,5). The gist of it: the data a user enters on this page can be seen by anyone responsible for the petition the user engages with - named "sponsors" or "partners" aka "paying clients". The red flag: "unsubscribing" does not delete the data or prevent it from being shared, it just sets a "please don't use this data" bit. At least the partners (hopefully) can only see their own engagements, not which other campaigns a user engaged with.
Looking at the business model (6) it is basically a newsletter service painted blue for ngos and political corporations: and - like many newsletter businesses - it is looking at CRM for features.
The big one however is the integration with BlueLink (7,8) as a message bus that allows their clients to share the user data with other cloud based systems. The red flag here is that the user does not seem to have any say in that: total lack of consent mechanics. The practical implication of the implementation: if you sign a petition the petitioner can use your contact data however they want. For comparison: in the EU this might be illegal.
I wonder: if a consumer/user requests their data, would they get details like "we sent you the A variant of this A/B tested newsletter for our partner xy and you clicked on the link to read more" or "partner foo tagged you as 'potential-volunteer' after you responded to an event invitation" or "partner bar send your data to service Z after you signed their petition"?
Honestly, for me this doesn't really look like a pro-privacy platform at all, which raises suspicion that this is a bait-and-switch and the true intention is harvesting contact data. But it is probably a radical opinion that privacy advocates must use privacy friendly tools for advocacy. Maybe this platform will change as well, if and when congress enacts laws as requested by the petition they host.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent#Internet_and_digital_s... 3: https://actionnetwork.org/privacy 4: https://actionnetwork.org/docs/v2/people/ 5: https://actionnetwork.org/docs/v2/delete/ 6: https://actionnetwork.org/partnerships 7: https://help.actionnetwork.org/hc/en-us/search?query=bluelin... 8: https://bluelink.org/
For example, Facebook is provided as authentification service on a huge amount of websites, meaning those websites send parts of your data to Facebook even if you don't use this authentication.
Seems to me, this is pretty much exactly how this works.
The SDK (recommended for login) is set up by default to collect information and installs handlers for app lifecycle events as soon as the app is installed. The default is to do this without requesting user consent.
A rough summary of the data: (Ad ID, device, locale, phone network, maybe install referrer).
To attribute advert -> install, Facebook ads pass on an encrypted blob containing campaign information to the Play Store, this blob is readable by the app, and is transmitted back to Facebook where it's decrypted.
The setting: https://github.com/facebook/facebook-android-sdk/blob/fcd4ef...
Defaulted to true: https://github.com/facebook/facebook-android-sdk/blob/5fe6e2...
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/app-events/getting-star...
In any case, this is not how it's supposed to work in oauth, and it's definitely not required for it to work.
I suppose developers could pretty much use any generic oauth lib for the login purposes.
[0] https://www.facebook.com/business/help/611774685654668?id=12...
> Automatic advanced matching will tell your pixel to look for recognisable form fields and other sources on your website that contain information such as first name, last name and email address. The Facebook pixel receives that information along with the event, or action, that took place. This information gets hashed in the visitor's browser. We can then use the hashed information to more accurately determine which people took action in response to your ad. After matching, we promptly discard the hashed information.
[1] https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-pixel/advanced... - technical specs for uploading hashed user content. Typically done on the frontend.
[2] https://www.facebook.com/business/m/signalshealth/accelerate...
> The manual method feature enables advertisers to leverage their own customer data, such as email address, phone number and so on. This method allows advertisers to report on more conversions, optimise their ads against more conversion data and reach more people on Facebook with their website Custom Audiences or dynamic ads.
Social media is next level. It enables front row access to: social graphs, voice print, biometric data, subversive content promotion. Mental health with bullying, it’s extremely pervasive with the connectedness afforded by 24/7 networked pocket computers that have cameras. Sexting and revenge porn is a thing. Not to mention FB use in Myanmar https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/07/tech/facebook-myanmar-rohingy...
1. The effect social media has on people
2. What social media gathers about you
The comparison you made with video games doesn't delve deep into issue #1. With video games you play perhaps a violent game and the argument is that it might make you violent.
With social media the effect is different. Algorithms are affecting what you see, the echo chamber they create around you and can literary change your perception. This isn't even touching psychological experiments being done by companies like Facebook to see the effects to your mood based on what you see in your feed.
Video games haven't gotten there, they don't alter their behavior based on what you look at and do. They don't present other gamers that match your video game playstyle and likes and dislikes. They don't allow advertisements that specifically target your behavior.
Of course, pretending there are no sociological effects of the average person traveling 5X faster whenever they want is completely absurd but you are correct in what you said.
I think we should start somewhere more practical first. Did you know that Walmart designs their store layout and inventory to maximize purchases? They deviously use our own shopping patterns to manipulate us!! We need to stop retailers from being able to analyze what people are buying right now!
ok, so this is definitely hyperbole, but come on, the fact that Facebook builds its product such that they optimize for the chance that you want to spend time on their platform is not itself evil. If the same sort of simplistic logic had been driving policies back in the “video games are making kids I to violent criminals”-days, the narrative had been just “Evil game developers are making games entertaining in order to get kids to play them! We need to stop this!” And furthermore they would have won that political battle and video games would have been forever outlawed, because apparently the narrative that anything that causes a kid to look at a screen is inherently evil has becomes a given these days, and you don’t even need to argue for anymore you can just assume it.
Now don’t get me wrong, I think that stronger private data laws are a great thing, but you can’t just argue that companies using engagement data to optimize their services is itself evil. They are businesses, of cause they want the better product and of cause the better product is the one that provides what people want. We don’t want congress making it illegal for Walmart to stock more food during Christmas because they know from data that they sell more during Christmas. Now if walmart was asking to see your social security information during checkout, that would of cause be an issue, but that’s an entirely different thing.
Leave Facebook alone. It’s not stoppable by mortals acting alone.
What we need is a containment approach to apps that enables us to configure network settings individually: app1 has no need to connect to FB and is not allowed to do so, yet app2 can use the fb identity provider services. On top of that we must break open some connections and replace the content: app2 gets some don't-crash stub injected when it asks for tracking scripts. There are some obvious problems with "mitm injecting stub code", so containment profiles must be distributed as open source and reviewed. (this is how browser ad-blocker plugins work)
But we know companies like Google aren't going to make such drastic step because they themself want data and have 0 incentives. Mitm is not easy in app due to pinning and requires root access which is very hard these days because banking app doesn't work on rooted phone.
And pi hole have stopped working because app's are using 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8. Future looks bleak tbh.
When did that happen?
Facebook already has the ability to view all interactions, even after the fact, which is already pretty intrusive IMO. Of course they're going for child friendly but I hope not all services will be like this. I don't want to be banned every time I say a bad word.
Ps it's also pretty risky for the perpetrator :P You never know if that hot chick is a 300 pound dude named Chuck, to quote ready player one :)
How's it going since then?
To stop surveillance capitalism more then an email to congress is needed, starting with an amendment to the United States Constitution that declares a human right to personal data and digital privacy (like article 8 of the charta of fundamental rights of the european union.)
Abstractly there are three major ideas related to this: corporations are free to buy, process and sell any data they can however they want, 2) governments have access to all data 3) humans are to be protected from governments and corporations
America does not believe in 3 anymore when it comes to digital data. Changing this will take more then some 1-click-democracy portals sending e-mails to congress - and harvesting contact data for engagement.