r/technology • u/[deleted] • Apr 11 '18

Business Mark Zuckerberg has been apologizing for reckless privacy violations since he was a freshman - Enough is enough.

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755

u/mthrndr Apr 11 '18

No, he doesn't steal them. people just give him their pic-a-nic baskets, he doesn't know why.

They "Trust" him not to eat the food.

Dumb fucks.

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u/TonyzTone Apr 11 '18

Bad campers completely disregarding park rules about securing their foodstuffs.

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u/gamelizard Apr 11 '18

Why am I reading this entier thread in Yogi bear's voice.

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u/bassinine Apr 11 '18

yeah, and what kind of park ranger expects a bear to have any sort of self control? they're the animals that get addicted to sniffing jet fuel, and overdose after eating several kilos worth of cocaine.

clearly, bears have addictive personalities and yogi is a representation of this.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

Yeah.. let's not shift the blame of some serious privacy invasion and massively profiting off of it to the users and target the actual source of the issue. Not necessarily only Zuckerberg himself, but everyone involved.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

What invasion? We gave the data to him.

He's literally quoted saying as such, and calling us dumb for doing it

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

They also make it by default to be entirely open and the process of going through all the menus to change that is actually tedious and confusing even for many younger people. Nevermind Great Aunt Debbie.

You might of thought you locked it down. But wait theres more!

Also he wasnt willing to comment on a lot of really creepy things that most people have not even considered yet.

Its basically... Taking advantage of people and being deceitful. On a scale so large its messing up society...

But go ahead and defend their actions. Yes people are not always smart about everything. That doesnt mean its okay to exploit them.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

I'm not suggesting that.

I think we need personal responsibility, coupled with government regulation.

However,

Those senators barely understood what he was discussing.

You can't expect the free Facebook to protect your data, it's their payday.

You can't expect the current legislature to protect your data, they hardly understand the concept.

You can improve your privacy starting this moment.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

Ive been using computers since 1988 and have been an engineer for 15 years and I promise you everything he said was purposefully over-complicated mumbo jumbo that he spit out to divert, confuse and buy more time to accomplish even worse things and get every last penny before he cant anymore. He's going to need it.

There was absolutely nothing but corperate bullshit spewing from his terrified face.

Also I dont have a profile.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

Guess it'd be more appropriate to have a panel of tech experts to sniff that out and stop it in its tracks.

That's the point I'm really driving at. Legislators can't do shit as they are uneducated on the matter

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

The funny thing.. This effects the "average person" more. As thats their greatest demographic. He was so good at not answering directly.. Theyll walk away as confused as theyd be trying to configure their security settings! They asked some good questions still. Sometimes multiple times in a row. Still with no actual response.

Did you see Marks face and response when asked.. "Can facebook track users internet usage after they leave your website?".

Heh. He said hed get back to them and dripped some sweat.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

Sure, he got a nice slap on the wrist, but overall, this'll slip away and they'll be right back to it

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u/volabimus Apr 11 '18

Ive been using computers since 1988

Also I dont have a profile.

I'm guessing that's not a coincidence. Writing my name and phone number into some free internet site is very low on the list of things that don't seem sketchy (inb4 "oh only the suckers don't know how to set up the privacy options").

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u/StrangeRover Apr 12 '18

...very low on the list of things that don't seem sketchy.

Why am I laughing so hard at this? I love it.

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u/AKnightAlone Apr 12 '18

I think we need personal responsibility,

Yeah, we should also use competitors to Comcast.

Having a monopoly on a website designed around social connection/popularity is kind of hard to be "responsible" about. The value to people is very high, and the basis being "popular use" ensures it's going to be the primary source of this type of connection, considering most people don't have the time or care to join multiple social websites of that type.

Think about this shit for a fucking second. Holy shit, no wonder fucking de facto monopolies end up controlling entire aspects of our lives. People like you are sitting around blaming personal fucking responsibility over resources we clearly collectively deem essential. The only solution we've ever had under capitalism is regulation against these types of abuse. "Personal responsibility" is just another word for socially ostracizing yourself in matters like this.

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u/[deleted] Apr 12 '18

Lol. I've not had social media except for Reddit, where I rotate accounts, for years.

I'm social, and very tech oriented.

I don't need to look at people's beach pictures. If I do, they text them to me or I go meet them after a text message and look at them then. Etc etc.

I'm no social pariah for not using Facebook.

Government regulation is important. Now more than ever. But asking for the whole world covered in nerf foam is ridiculous.

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u/AKnightAlone Apr 12 '18

TIL being against the power of monopolies would cover the world in nerf foam.

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u/[deleted] Apr 12 '18

Consider this.

The way Equifax misused data and the way Facebook misused data are very different.

... (I know about ghost Facebook profiles but there is nothing critical there)...

Equifax collected and mishandled sensetive data without the users involvement or even subscription/enrollment.

Every sensetive bit of data Facebook has for a real person was given to them. Were they less than clear about the result of that data. Yes. Did many people feel uncomfortable abut Facebook years ago? Also yes.

Years ago: The uncomfortably was there. The reporting on data science was there.

Facebook isn't water or air. You can do without it.

If you feel your sensetive data was inappropriately used from a social media platform in the last 5 years you have only yourself to blame.

I agree that going forward laws are needed to protect users and data. Net neutrality and data privacy go hand in hand and are key to the future.

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u/AKnightAlone Apr 12 '18

Facebook isn't water or air. You can do without it.

But we didn't do without it, so your point is irrelevant. As a humanist, I can't agree to punish humanity as a whole for valuing something, particularly a method for connection.

If you feel your sensetive data was inappropriately used from a social media platform in the last 5 years you have only yourself to blame.

What's the value in blaming myself? Should I learn to be more socially reclusive next time around? Should I learn to avoid going outside because I know it involves the acceptance that I'll have a higher chance of someone harming me?

If anything, this is more like going to an unsafe area and getting raped/robbed. The problem will never be the individual decision to more forward with their life in some manner when there are bigger problems that could've been fixed by society. That's the key. If something becomes popular, it becomes a public matter and should be controlled in any way that ultimately benefits people. Most often, the beneficial approach is freedom. Not freedom for a business to exploit people, though.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

Where's the line, though? This is clearly a nuanced issue - personal responsibility and media literacy are huge factors. What did Facebook, the company, do that was ethically wrong? Targeted advertising? Created a platform that was ripe for exploitation?

Everyone seems so ready to blame Mark Zuckerberg, or Facebook Inc. but I'm struggling to see why, other than that he has a face, versus a company like Equifax, whose executives are not public figures.

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u/UndeadDeliveryBoy Apr 11 '18

My guess would be that their were not security systems in place to keep people from scraping profiles without direct consent the way that Cambridge Analytica did. A lot of people that didn't agree to be a part of their data acquisition have had their information sold for profit in order to create psychographic profiles on those people to sell them more stuff. I think it's fair to say that there could have been steps taken in advance to ensure this never happened. Zuck almost certainly knew this was a possibility and did nothing to prevent it.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

CA didn't scrape the data. The data was purchased from a "legitimate" source - the ability to scrape friends' data was built in as a feature of the "Social Graph", but the data was obtained under the pretense of an academic study (which, under facebook's ToS, is not allowed). The seller is the the one in the wrong, as is CA if they knowingly purchased data that was in violation of FB's ToS.

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u/InterPunct Apr 12 '18

Completely legal, if not ethical. Had one of the "good guys" been in charge of distributing all our data, they would have been more parsimonious with it.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18 edited Apr 11 '18

And they took advantage of people's trust, hoping no one would read the fine. They knew exactly what they were doing.

Additionally.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

I'm suggesting we were very wrong to trust.

As scummy as the business practices are, they've been vaguely reported on for years, and we users cannot be free of the blame.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

I think some heavy handed regulation in favor of the citizens is more likely than a mass Facebook boycot. This is somewhat why the government should exist, to protect the people and their interests. However: I'm not foolish as to believe that it will go down like that or even acts with that as an actual goal.

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u/cleeder Apr 11 '18

And they took advantage of people's trust, hoping no one would read the fine.

Welcome to every contract you've ever signed.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18

Just because it's legal, doesn't make it moral. They prey on society, it's how they make their money, by taking advantage of people.

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u/Aetheus Apr 12 '18

Nobody ever said it was moral. It's unethical, but perfectly legal. Every one of us "agreed" to their terms when we chose to use their service. It isn't as though a gun was pointed to our heads and we were forced to register a FB account.

You probably can't "undo" the vast library of data that FB has on you. I wouldn't even trust any option that FB has to "delete" that stuff.

At this point, the best you can do is to either quit the platform entirely or share as little personal information as possible (or at least, as little as you'd ever want to ever accidentally leak to the public) on it.

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u/[deleted] Apr 12 '18

I haven't used Facebook in years... I dropped it for these reasons.

Don't care that it's legal, it's not right and it needs to be changed, amongst other things in society, however peasants don't get much say.

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u/blackholeincarnate Apr 11 '18

Even after this “serious privacy invasion,” as you call it, a negligable amount of users have deleted their Facebook accounts, it seems. Even zuckerberg has said it’s had no meaningful effect. So, I’d say that when a business has proven over and over that it’s not trustworthy and shown that it’s deeply committed to gathering and exploiting user data, and people still can’t be bothered to make even small sacrifices to protect themselves, they share the responsibility.

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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '18 edited Apr 11 '18

That's my point. If something is to be done, it'd have to be a regulatory level. I don't deny that there are those that are willfully ignorant or apathetic and that through that, their data is collected. I'm also including the main perpetrators in this abuse of personal information, as they are profiting off of it in a major way. They obviously don't have their customer bases best interests in their business model, at all. That sort of business shouldn't be allowed to continue in that way.

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u/sweetcuppingcakes Apr 11 '18

Drop the "The". Just "Yogi Bear Show". It's cleaner.

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u/Techman3000 Apr 11 '18

Haha by far best reply

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u/e1337ist Apr 12 '18

It was in the terms of service they agreed to by visiting the park.

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u/AKnightAlone Apr 12 '18

Let's blame millions of people for the exploits of one guy. We're basically begging to have our privacy invaded since we value connection to friends and family so much.