OK: Facebook is a bad boy ...
MPs (appear) to finally understand that. What about the rest of them ? How about starting with Google.
Most of the public, unfortunately, will have tut-tutted a couple of times and continued as before.
Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer was not British MPs' first choice of witness, but they certainly made the most of his appearance in Parliament, grilling him on why his firm is a "morality free zone". As part of the global Search For Truth in the ongoing Facebook data-harvesting scandal, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport …
Most of the public, unfortunately, will have tut-tutted a couple of times and continued as before.
Well, let's divide the public into two camps. If you sign up for a service, then you've agreed to share your data. A bit of control would be nice, but you've made your choice, and you need a way to pay for these services. If however, you haven't actually signed up, then you have no choice. As far as I've seen, all the grandstanding politicians have failed to address that second category.
The collection of data without permission should be explicitly banned, and that ban enforced. I'm sure it is under GDPR, but I very much doubt that the collection of shadow profile data will stop because regulators like the ICO will be under-resourced to carry out the necessary investigation and enforcement. And shitbag companies like Google try and circumvent that by pop up "our agreement with you" shit, even when the user doesn't knowingly have a Google account.
Yeah, and the end result is described very well in the Cook and the Cat fable.
The cook catches the cat in the act of stealing a large slice of ham. So he starts to chastise it - You bad kittie, aren't you ashamed of yourself, how can you steal, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah... And the cat while listening continues to eat regardless (А Васька слушает да ест - in the original).
re Agreed! Expenses scandal, anyone?
Not to mention "flipping" one's houses. Didn't one MP lodge with their sister and flip that house a s being their own.
And Blair? Yeah, sure, he did so much to help maintain the right to privacy, and other human rights, of people bombed out of home and homeland.
"Effectively, though, this just amounts to giving Facebook more information - even if it’s in the negative, it's equally telling about your personality. And this speaks to the fundamental disconnect between the business and the public."
Does anyone else see the irony of British MPs accusing someone of a disconnect between them and the public?
I might have misread - perhaps that was only an editorial comment, rather than an actual quote from a politician, but the point is still there: one of the worst groups of people for not understanding the mood of the public is the membership of the House of Commons...
Uh, tell that to the poor creatures it sucks into its beak with its horned tentacles.
FB and the like are leeches on society.
how about making life really tough for them to make any money here?
They are addiction peddlars and IMHO, need to be stopped.
I know that this is a severe POV but having seen what FB and Twitter addicts will go through to get their hourly (or less) fixes is enough for anyone. They are to some extent worse than hard drug pushers.
Get Zuck over here and throw him in the Tower for a few weeks. Let everyone gawp at him and then see how he likes having his whole life exposed to the world.
If it is all right for you to not tell us what Hotel you are staying at but...
Oh why bother ranting... He does not care one atom about us, the people who are affected by his (and other) services.
"Among these were Facebook’s delay in understanding the impact of Russian influence in the US election, its "mistake" not to inform people their data had been sold to Cambridge Analytica when it first found out about it in 2015, and Schroepfer accepted the initial system for policing apps on its platforms had failed."
But that's covered in the terms and conditions you agree to when you sign up to Facebook? That your data belongs to them and it'll be shared amongst 3rd parties. The same way your car insurance details are shared amongst 3rd parties who, inevitably, end up being cash for crash solicitors.
Facebook are evil, Google are evil, all big corps that provide free services that centre on the processing of your data are evil.
But that's covered in the terms and conditions you agree to when you sign up to Facebook?
It's been well established in (English) Law that an T's & C's can't over-rule laws. So, if the T&C specify something that would be illegal under law (ie "you give up all rights pertaining to the information that you give us") then that T&C is illegal and will fail.
The bit that matters is that Facebook gives itself the role of a data controller without any of the controls that that role requires. And that's what is going to get it into serious hot water on day 1 of GDPR..
For a start, advertisers have little recourse or check on what Facebook says are adverts served. Taking out an advertising campaign with Facebook seems, to me, a case of, "Here's my wallet... take what you want."
From a user point of view, adverts make even less sense. If I turn off adverts for politics, because I don't like politics, then that leaves people who do like politics and already have a position.... so are less likely to be affected by such adverts.
I'm not going to change away my use of Ariel, simply because I see an advert for Persil. No... they have to do a little bit more than just show me an advert.
I really can't understand why companies think that people with entrenched positions and loyalties, are going to be swayed by a simple advert. Give me a discount code or something, and then it might interest me... but all this advertising just seems to be so much pissing in the wind.
"I really can't understand why companies think that people with entrenched positions and loyalties, are going to be swayed by a simple advert."
The advertising industry which, let's not forget, sells nothing but advertising will undoubtedly produce results showing how many people respond positively to ads. Rice-Davies applies of course.
"I'm not going to change away my use of Ariel, simply because I see an advert for Persil. No... they have to do a little bit more than just show me an advert."
You just pointed out the whole point of advertising. Brand awareness. Maybe you are more likely to pick up Persil if the local shop is out of Ariel because you keep seeing Persil adverts.
Can't argue with that characterisation of facebook.
Having experienced the way in which, over the last few years, facebook has managed to turn discourse on political matters into nasty, polarised, relationship-harming propaganda shit-flinging, I would add that the term Despair Squid also applies.
Nah, the despair squid is Amber Rudd. I hope she doesn't have any living relatives - for their sake.
she's got the reverse Midas effect - everything she gets within 20yds of turns into the political equivalent of septicaemic plague..
I take it back - the despair squid would feel totally inadequate around her..
And by "things" he means extract-maximum-information-from-products(IE users)-before-selling-it-on-to-customers
That I can absolutely believe he is honest about.
Quality bit of weaseling.
Why? What did you think he meant?
As much as I detest Facebook and its big data peers, accusations of money-grabbing coming from that lot is about as ironic as it gets, especially when the people they're grabbing it from have no choice but to cough up to support shitty projects and Crapita|Atos|<some other bunch of bell ends> whose sole purpose is to leech off the public purse, fuck up the NHS and infest anything remotely government affiliated with a horde of clipboard-wielding numpties spouting buzzwords, arranging utterly pointless meetings, introducing rules that have no basis in reality, tripling the amount of paperwork, screwing up IT systems with needlessly complicated pet projects and generally getting in the way of the poor bastards who actually have to do some work.
Vampire squid are predators. Big data, government and large contractors are more like parasites such as tapeworm, stealing all the nutrients and giving sod-all back except stomach cramp and a slight nausea.
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Quiz them on exactly what services Zuk / Palantir / Cambridge Analytica have offered to provide. Then work backwards and extrapolate from that. Otherwise we're not getting anywhere, except Zucky PR doublespeak. Facebook executives are Sociopathic liars, in complete denial over Shadow-Profiles and Offline-Tracking of Users, plus sleazy Tracking of Non-Users, along with exchanging data with shadowy Data-Brokers etc.
Or " a boot stamping on a human face - forever'... Thiel-Palantir - Zuk - Page/Brin and Schmidt are looking down from their ivory towers and celebrating the death of the 'privacy orgasm', their boot stamping on a human face - forever'.