> Meta said this was for the purpose of improving the customer experience, and was a common practice among other companies.
Am I reading this correctly?! This is probably the weirdest statement I've read on the internet in twenty years.
> Am I reading this correctly?! This is probably the weirdest statement I've read on the internet in twenty years.
It's total fantasy. I've worked in big tech. Casually uploading and providing company/contractor access to non-redacted intimate photos or pictures of the insides of people's homes vaguely "for the purpose of improving the customer experience" would not pass even a surface-level privacy or data-protection review anywhere I've ever worked. Do Meta even read what they are saying?
Hell, I know of a major firm that decided QA was not needed for their trust and safety process.
Another common issue will be SEA Arabic speakers tasked with labelling Middle Eastern Arabic content, because accents and cultural dialects are not a thing.
I’ve had people at FAANG firms cry on my shoulder, because they couldn’t get access to engineering resources at their own firms.
There was the famous case of meta executives overriding T&S policy and telling them that what content was news worthy during the Boston bombing. On a separate incident, they told their team that cartel violence was not newsworthy when friends in London complained about it.
When you say this is fantasy, what do you mean precisely?
There’s probably an opt out / opt in clause somewhere in the terms and conditions, which makes it feasible for Meta (and other firms) to use this data.
> Am I reading this correctly?!
I'm reminded of Bo Burnham's wonderful "That Funny Feeling" from 2021's "Inside", where one of the absurd examples he offers in the lyrics is:
There it is again, that funny feeling
That funny feeling
Reading Pornhub's terms of service ...edit 2: OK, I see what you mean. But I'm wondering if it should be possible to consent to this via T&C. Basically the same issue as with many online services, turned up to 11, sure. And it involves OTHER people, who have not consented.
Stuff like this used to be outrage fuel even when it was more of a social experiment, e.g. the documentary "We live in public" or the "Big brother" TV show. By now, I'm sure there have been millions of influencers doing similar things, but it's very much not considered normal?
Streaming to an unknown number of employees might be considered different from streaming to the public, sure.
But the core question here is whether there's informed consent, and, IMO also, if it should be possible to consent to this when the other party is a company like Meta and the pretext is not deliberately seeking attention (like influencers and streamers do).
edit, clarified social media comparison
It being scripted doesn't really change much, but yes, I think your tangent is correct.
I wanted to illustrate the shift in what's considered "normal", fully acknowledging that a scripted show catering to voyeurism is different from the situation discussed here. Completely different, just related.
The "outrage fuel" that I meant was that some people consider it immoral to incentivize people to overstep boundaries of privacy, decency and human dignity.
Staged or not, the selling point of the show was that it was about "regular people".
I'm aware that this small and short-lived public discussion seems antiquated today, that's why I mentioned it.
> some people consider it immoral to incentivize people to overstep boundaries of privacy, decency and human dignity
I'd be one of those people. Mr Beast is a cancer on our society and the fact that he is the most popular YouTuber says volumes about our society as a whole (again--never watched, but I've read enough). Though I imagine much of his stunts are staged as well, I think it just goes along with what you're saying about Big Brother.
I don't think this kind of public discussion is antiquated (assuming you're talking about this meta-discussion in this comment thread), I'd say it's just rare to see unless you look for it (HN for example). And I'd also argue that those who criticized pop culture were always in the minority (almost by definition). I think it's a good callout regardless.