Hacker News Reader

Comment by RajT88 | Hacker News Reader

Meta lies about all kinds of other things. No reason not to now - they seem to have paid very little penalty so far for getting caught.

View on HN

Is there any evidence Meta has ever intentionally lied about anything? Like do you have any examples?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44169115

Where's the lie?

Does web-to-app tracking through localhost on Android that is illegal under GDPR count?

Did they intentionally lie about it? Parent post didn't claim Meta has never broken a law.

Lying by ommission is still lying.

Congrats on living under a fucking rock. How can you be so oblivion to such an obvious thing? The question should be, when have they ever not lied?

Ha. This is why the best lawyers in the world work for these people. Over drinks, when I brought up some of the blatant dark patterns in the ad market, someone who worked at one of the biggest companies in the world responded to me bluntly: "yeah, sure, but have we ever lost a case in court over click fraud? No, we have not."

Correct. The best liers like the best bullies are really good at assessing risk. They're honest in close when they sense they're butt is not on the line.

Dark patterns aren't lies though...

And you're not even talking about Meta

Just to be a bit more clear, this was a while ago. The answer in gp was to the question: "hey, I am not an ads guy, but my friend asked me to look at his account, and he had no geo restriction set. Why did 60% of his clicks for 'barn wedding venue east tennesse' come from Malaysia? Why would so many people from there see that, and click on in it?"

The bragging wasn't about their lawyers' ability in court, it was about their lawyers' ability to draft Terms and Conditions such that they could not be caught in a lie.

And yes, not Meta in this story, but come on.

I would classify their "oops we reset your privacy settings accidentally again" as a lie. Granted this was a common occurrence in the 2000's, and not so much the last 15 years.

The privacy settings also did not obviously do what their wording suggested - accidental over-sharing was their goal, and the wording was carefully crafted to deceive and confuse. Is that lying? It's a technical argument, and not really relevant - they are shady AF and always have been.

We care about your privacy

The best lies are corporate lies. And those lies are said plainly, calmly, and with a sense not of conviction but rather it it's not a serious claim because it was always a true statement ... just repeating it now.

They are also uttered on TV, in public talks and to a far lesser extent in court. Court is a formal process. Outside it's not. There's a big difference.

“Discounts upto 50%” - shopper finds out one product (that nobody wants) out of 1000 has a discount of 50%, everything else has like 5%.

But the statement itself is technically not a lie, they did say “upto”, lol. That is how corporate speak works

There is some dish detergent that advertises it cleans dishes up to 100% clean. I guess they figure showing “100%” is all that is needed and the dumb public won’t question it further. It’s still an insulting ad.

From https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-whatsapp-merger-europea...

The European Commission has found that Facebook provided “misleading information” about its 2014 takeover of WhatsApp following an investigation into the deal.

The commission’s complaint relates specifically to the sharing of user data between Facebook and WhatsApp. In a submission to the EU made in August 2014, Facebook said it would not be possible to create a reliable automated system for matching users. In August 2016, WhatsApp announced that it would be linking WhatsApp user phone numbers with Facebook user identities.

I recommend "Careless People" by Sarah Wynn-Something

Read that book in two days. Wild stuff. Of course I don't absolve Sarah Wynn for of her responsibility that is Facebook and it's completely maliciously run company. She is also complicit I don't care how many "I was trying to do the right thing! Whaa!" she sprinkled throughout the book.

The fact that they successfully got the book removed from sale for a while speaks volumes. They not only lie they are encouraged to.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com