Mark Zuckerberg: 'We've Made A Bunch Of Mistakes' | Hacker News Reader

Mark Zuckerberg: 'We've Made A Bunch Of Mistakes'

forbes.com

57 pointstaylorbuley19 comments

> Facebook will be subject to privacy audits for the next 20 years, and subject to $16,000 fines if it does anything deceptive.

The correct business plan would deem that Facebook should continue doing deceptive things and make its billions, then pay out its $16,000 fine when necessary.

I believe it's something to the effect of $16k a day of the duration of the infraction, but regardless, it doesn't detract from the fact that the fine is off by orders of magnitude.

So Facebook just needs to make an extra $16k a day on top of what it would have otherwise. Not so unrealistic. (Just to carry on the point.)

I assume that $16,000 would apply to each user affected, in which case that would be very unprofitable.

Would each user have to fill out a form against them or how would that work? Anyway, I don't buy this apology. Mark knew exactly what he was doing. He was even warned about doing this many times, and he didn't listen. But now that he got caught by FTC he "admits his mistake". Right.

Make no mistake, FTC oversight of FB is a net-plus for FB. Their actions will be relatively unassailable from now on, since if the FTC (who is supposedly looking over their shoulder) doesn't have a problem with it, why should anybody else? Rinse and repeat.

Ask me how my user-oriented social network app is going! :)

Could make a fb app for submitting the form - lolz

$16K per infringement is akin to $5 parking tickets. There's close to zero financial incentive to not park in a convenient yet illegal location.

who gives a shit!

That $16,000 should go directly to the user, untaxed

"Facebook promised users that it would not share their personal information with advertisers. It did."

Wow, that sounds like a huge violation of user's rights and kind of contradicts everything Facebook has been saying about using "anonymized data."

I'm uninterested in anyone's apology after they've been caught. If I'm convicted of a crime, I go to jail. No matter what comes out of Zuckerberg's mouth, anything less than people behind bars is a perversion of justice.

"We've made a bunch of mistakes." And you haven't had to pay for any of them, congratulations.

Here is Mark's blog post reference in the article. https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=10150378701937131

"Contrite". yeah. That's what I think when I see this:

>Overall, I think we have a good history of providing transparency and control over who can see your information.

That said, I’m the first to admit that we’ve made a bunch of mistakes. In particular, I think that a small number of high profile mistakes, like Beacon four years ago and poor execution as we transitioned our privacy model two years ago, have often overshadowed much of the good work we’ve done.

</saveface,saveface,saveface>

What's the point of this article? It is basically a summary of Mark's blog post...

Mistakes all the way to the bank. Zuckerberg at the helm allows them to make all sorts of sophomoric apologies as if everyone at Facebook is "awe shucks" sorry about everything.

Perfect because he appears as a naive first timer and makes it sound like these sorts of changes were just an idea he had and they rolled it out like things work as a start up.

But it's more likely that there were very many long meetings about just how far to push it, and just how much money that would make them.

They may have had meetings about how far they can push it, but I'm not so sure about the money bit. Facebook has actually shown a remarkable amount of restraint when it comes to making money. It's in Zuckerberg's DNA - the guy just doesn't seem to care that much about money.

For instance, if Facebook was trying to maximize profits it could have fairly easily rolled out an off-site ad network ala adsense that is FAR better targeted (based on FB cookies) than adsense could ever be. They could displace Google practically overnight. But they've resisted doing that and instead just continued to make enough money to run and grow the company at a healthy clip.

I'm not a Facebook apologist - some of the "mistakes" are really scary and unconscionable, but I don't believe the motive is as simple as profit maximization.

So they will have a "Chief of Privacy" stationed in Washington DC? Sounds closer to a lobbyist to change privacy laws than it does someone who makes sure Facebook abides by them.

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