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Comment by brymaster | Hacker News Reader

> Facebook is addressing a strong desire for privacy by its users

This is some serious horseshit by Arrington. Only a fool would believe this[1]. Facebook's entire history is anti-privacy from the very beginning (here's a nice list: http://pleasedeletefacebook.com) and they do their business a disservice by not collecting as much as possible. Facebook users don't care about privacy; it's the reason they still use the service even after every privacy violation.

Trying to spin this into a Facebook vs Google match is absurd. Facebook wants all of your data just as much as Google. They're called Big Data for a reason and information is their currency.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7675962

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When you want companies to change their behavior, it's not fair to forever judge them by the same set if historical facts.

Zuckerberg used to say "real name for eveything." Later he said he could see good reasons to remain anonymous online sometimes. And this "anonymous login" feature sounds great.

Meanwhile Google is forcing everyone into creating Google Plus pages, real name usage on YouTube, lining all services into one, etc.

Look at the arc of their actions--the trend. I think Arrington got this one right. Facebook is improving their treatment of privacy as Google is getting worse.

But what exactly has happened to Mark Zuckerberg's opinion on privacy since the early days of Facebook for example is still an important question, especially if trust is to be regained.

It's important to realise to whom you will be anonymous using that feature.

You'd be anonymous to client sites, but Facebook will still know exactly which apps you've signed up for.

eg Facebook knows that you use Grindr even if you signed in 'anonymously'

> it's not fair to forever judge them by the same set if historical facts

Disagree. The spots on the leopard don't simply change and there's no such thing as "anonymous" to Facebook. That's antithesis to their business. This is purely a PR play.

By the way, we learned from the AOL data breach in 2006 that "anonymous" doesn't actually exist on the internet[1]. So let's not pretend Facebook is trying to do us all a great favor.

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html?page... "A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749"

I didn't think that it would change magically either, which is why I asked the question I mentioned in another comment.

Your dichotomy is as silly as Arrington's; narrative arcs based on what turns out to not even be based on real life events, but actually the absence of knowledge of events because you weren't paying attention.

As far as I can tell they both still require at least pseudo real names, the absence of which will get you flagged. Facebook just had a thing in the news like 6 months ago where they were demanding government IDs from people to unfreeze their accounts.

Here's the help page:

> We require everyone using Facebook to use their real name and birthday. This way, you always know who you're connecting with. When we discover accounts that look fake or like they’re using fake information, we ask the owner to confirm that they are who they say they are.

https://www.facebook.com/help/385569904840341

I avoid ever using Facebook login, but I think this new anonymous login is great, will be a boon to users (though not offering those users privacy from facebook itself, as others are focusing on) and I'd like to see a lot more of that in Android itself (especially those per-function permissions).

>information is their currency

Correction: our information is their (wholly owned) asset. Between the two companies they've managed to honeypot the entire human race - and managed to get us all to do the data-entry for them. It's an incredible story, one that will have repercussions for a very long time.

Perfect observation and you're right - the outcome of this social media explosion will be terrifying. Couldn't help but think of:

"People resist a census, but give them a profile page and they'll spend all day telling you who they are."

― Max Barry, Lexicon

For anyone who is too lazy to read, something like 80% of these links are opinion and conjecture, 10% are things that people did reacting to information that Facebook users made public, 5% are unsubstantiated, and 5% are genuine privacy issues.

There is still enough that are genuine issues that I thought there was a question that was worth asking.

? I don't know anything about you or your question.

I posted it on Quora, as I mentioned in another comment.

Still not clear why you're telling me about this, but ok.

Not even close. Even the EFF archives and acknowledges a lot of these cases.

Not every link is weighted equally. Let's talk about:

* Partnering with data brokers

* Deliberately changing users privacy settings

* Beacon (remember that?)

* Shadow profiles

* Everyone searchable via Graph

* Charges from the FTC

* "Deleted" information not actually deleted

* Like buttons on websites tracking you

* User profile data (photos and names) being used in advertisements

...it goes on and on.

You're employed by Google who also deals primary in the data of users. Are any of these issues relevant or important to you?

There is literally only one intentional privacy issue in that list from the last year, out of ten or fifteen posts. There were several exploited vulns, and a compliance issue (prism), but the only privacy violation facebook intentionally made during that period, at least according to this list, is removing the ability to hide from name searches.

And the issues you don't consider issues somehow make all the "genuine" issues irrelevant? You know, Facebook's entire history of not giving a shit about privacy. Not only stepping up to the "creepy line" (like your employer, Google), but blazing past it in complete disregard.

The game is: see how much you can get away with and deal with the consequences later through PR or other distractions. "Move fast and break things."

No . . . the genuine issues are still issues. There is no need to inflate them by pretending there is a multi-page laundry list and posting a bunch of things that are either not Facebook's fault, or not privacy violations, or both. I wouldn't have said anything at all if the site contained only or even mostly real issues.

The website keeps tracks of "reasons" why using Facebook is a bad idea. That can mean privacy violations (which there is a clear history of and are overwhelming) or issues as a result of a user sharing too much information. Either way, all real issues, "opinion and conjecture" aside. Even what you claimed to be "5% genuine privacy issues" is damning.

Instead of dismissing the list as mostly irrelevant, you could have pulled out the important issues for discussion as I did.

I'm not a developer but is it true that while an App developer who enables Facebook Anonymous login wouldn't know their users--But FaceBook would? If so ouch.

I asked this for a reason:

http://www.quora.com/What-has-happened-to-Mark-Zuckerbergs-o...

I wonder if I should ask this on Secret.

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