[HN Gopher] Facebook sued for 'losing control' of users' data
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Facebook sued for 'losing control' of users' data
Author : bmcn2020
Score : 309 points
Date : 2021-02-09 15:07 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| freebuju wrote:
| > Google agreed to pay a record $22.5m (PS16.8m) in a case
| brought by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on the same
| issue in 2012
|
| Guess the cost-benefit analysis checks out
| shanemlk wrote:
| Why do my comments keep getting down voted? How much more obvious
| can it be that zuckerburg has caused more damage to the Earth
| than good? WHY DO I HAVE TO DEFEND MYSELF FOR SUCH A CLEARLY
| OBVIOUS OPINION? You are "HACKERS". Start acting like it.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| Probably because the language you chose to use is less than
| civil.
| shanemlk wrote:
| Touche, valid point. But someone's gotta break the Matrix
| once in a while... at the end of the day, this is just a text
| based website, and I'm hammering keys. It wasn't like I was
| walking down the street yelling obscenities. It's OK, to be
| aggressive sometimes. Everything in moderation.
| hinkley wrote:
| It's okay to be loud sometimes. But in a large room? It's
| the group's sense of 'sometimes', that matters, not the
| individual's. In a big group it's always somebody's
| "sometime", unless you divide by the population.
| shanemlk wrote:
| Certainly. But there's also responsibility of the group
| members to understand what kind of topics and
| conversations they're about to enter. Facebook is
| divisive. It's a stressful topic. The crowd shouldn't
| click on a link about the 100th crime Facebook committed
| if the crowd is not ready for the gun fire. The crowd
| inherited an imperfect world, and it's okay to take a
| stand, because if the crowd doesn't stand for something,
| they fall for anything. In certain cultures, "swear
| words" don't even exist. If certain words deeply offend
| the crowd, they shouldn't blame other people, they should
| turn inward using introspection and ask themselves why
| they're so bothered by certain words written on a
| webpage. It's not like I hate Mark Zuckerburg with every
| fiber of my being. I'm sure there's some cool things
| about him. I'd love to sit down and have him show me his
| love for the video game Civilization, or what kind meats
| he likes cooking, or how he designed his smart home. But
| the topic at hand is business and legality. And frankly,
| I should be able to take as many shots as I want at him
| in the public sphere. Just because he's not personally
| inflicting violence on other humans, does not mean
| there's billions of lives at stake here. When people
| enter the ring, political correctness is entirely
| useless. It's not personal, it's "business".
|
| "If I don't scream, if I don't say something, then no
| one's going to say anything."
|
| "I care. I care about everything. Sometimes not giving a
| f#%k is caring the most."
|
| "The truth that hurts is the same truth that heals."
| flixic wrote:
| I can imagine a lawsuit from the opposite side of the argument:
| it is these APIs that allow to challenge incumbent social
| networks, and if the result of the lawsuit rules these APIs out,
| growing a competitor to Facebook or Twitter might be a lot
| harder.
|
| Recently I've felt the benefit of this, when sharing my Twitter
| following with Clubhouse. Clubhouse can grow and challenge other
| networks because these APIs exist. (We can argue about the degree
| to which sharing your data should be allowed, but setting an
| overly restrictive precedent is a real possibility)
| willxinc wrote:
| I agree, but part of it I think is more finely grained
| permission requests. ie. Distinguishing viewing X's data, vs
| viewing data as X. That still doesn't solve the issue where the
| typical person doesn't actually read permission requests, but
| should still provide better security.
| shanemlk wrote:
| "I'd just continually sue them for literally anything and
| everything, even if they didn't break the law. Fuck that
| zuckerburg cuck. Their apps are literal burning addiction
| dumpster fire garbage. I hope their offices get struck by a
| meteorite."
|
| To the people down voting my previous comment, it's time you
| learned, your significant other is soliciting their genitals on
| WhatsApp and it's all being used as advertisement information for
| addictive products on FaceBook the next day. Sorry you don't like
| the TRUTH. Start thinking with your gut and body in addition to
| your brain once in a while. You could use some damn serotonin.
|
| Fine, maybe WhatsApp is encrypted... then they're doing it
| Instagram. Don't be so pedantic.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I'm still not sure I understand why Cambridge Analytica
| management/executives aren't in prison for Computer Fraud and
| Abuse Act violations.
| bzb6 wrote:
| This is the result of open APIs. It shows why web sites like
| Facebook have to close them down. They are not worth it, they are
| a liability.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Disagreed - this is the result of stupid users. If the APIs are
| gone they will just be entering their Facebook credentials
| directly (which would leak way more data than what relatively
| limited API access allows).
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| People ARE stupid, this is a known fact; this is one reason
| why consumer and privacy protection laws are a thing, why
| two-factor authentication is a thing, why e-mail verification
| of logins is a thing, why you can't just start trading in
| stocks, buy alcohol, etc etc etc.
|
| Companies protect their users from themselves; they HAVE to,
| in case they (the users) shoot themselves in the foot. And
| consumer have a reasonable expectation, regardless of
| Facebook's terms & conditions, that their data isn't shared
| to third parties - or that they at least get asked when it
| happens, instead of being pointed to a tl;dr of T's & C's.
|
| Plenty of people do not have the literacy level to understand
| terms and conditions [1]. This is a worrying trend, but it's
| something that companies like Facebook should (and are) aware
| of - people don't read terms and conditions, people don't
| understand them.
|
| [1] https://literacytrust.org.uk/parents-and-families/adult-
| lite...
| [deleted]
| pratio wrote:
| I think its a bit harsh to call users stupid. When we move
| away from HN, we realize how teach naive a layman can be. We
| haven't seen something of this sort happen at this scale
| happen many times before. A lot of efforts are going into
| privacy now, way more than before.
| bzb6 wrote:
| Obviously it's the result of stupid users, but you can get
| rid of the APIs, you can't get rid of the stupid users.
| jwolfe wrote:
| If you get rid of the API it will just happen through
| malicious Chrome extensions instead. I guess that's an
| improvement in practical impact.
|
| Will the next argument be that browsers shouldn't be
| extensible, because it's a liability with stupid users?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I may be mistaken, but I understood that "stupid users"
| allowed access to their friends/contacts as well.
|
| I guess I'm stupid too if I have a stupid friend or relative.
| bzb6 wrote:
| If your friend has view access to your profile, why
| shouldn't he be able to extract that information via an API
| as well?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| For the same reason visiting my house doesn't mean they
| can steal the silverware?
| delecti wrote:
| More like: just because someone can visit my house
| doesn't mean I'd be okay with them walking around video
| recording everything in sight.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Silverware isn't information though. This is more like
| inviting your friend over and then they tell someone the
| floor plan of your house.
| lupire wrote:
| Nothing was stolen. People visiting your allows are
| allowed to remember and say that your silverware exists,
| unless they sign an NDA.
| [deleted]
| adverbly wrote:
| I grant API access to my friend. That is a direct
| relationship.
|
| I don't grant API access to people that my friend grants
| API access to.
|
| If one grant allowed for another grant, by that logic you
| could chain all the way down to any connected node which
| is clearly not a desirable model.
|
| Data brokers are trying to make it seem like me adding a
| friend is somehow not a grant so that they can "plus one"
| on their reach. But it is a grant. It is literally me
| granting my friend access to my data. Just because the
| company doesn't call it a grant and doesn't treat it like
| one on a technical level doesn't change the fact that I
| have granted my friend access to some data.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| API access or not is just a technicality. You grant your
| friend access to this data. Even if API access was
| restricted, malicious parties would just get your friend
| to install malware or give out their Facebook credentials
| directly (thus bypassing the API access restriction).
|
| Either you trust your friend with that data or you don't.
| Anything else is just playing a game of whack-a-mole
| which may just give people a false sense of security.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Someone who has view access to my profile may view my
| data, and they might also extract that information with
| API - however, they do not have any right to give
| permission on my behalf to someone else (e.g. Cambridge
| Analytica), that would require a power of attorney or
| something like that.
|
| My friend might technically _send_ that information to
| Cambridge Analytica, but my friend can 't give them
| permission to use it, CA would be required to acknowledge
| that they don't have the legal permission to use that
| data and discard it. My friend can tell Facebook "I
| permit you to give that information to Cambridge
| Analytica" but Facebook is not allowed to act based on
| that "permission" since it's not something my friend can
| permit.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > My friend might technically send that information to
| Cambridge Analytica, but my friend can't give them
| permission to use it, CA would be required to acknowledge
| that they don't have the legal permission to use that
| data and discard it.
|
| It's pretty well accepted that Cambridge Analytica acted
| unethically, and potentially even unlawfully.
|
| > My friend can tell Facebook "I permit you to give that
| information to Cambridge Analytica" but Facebook is not
| allowed to act based on that "permission" since it's not
| something my friend can permit.
|
| This seems like an unnecessary technicality - if CA
| wasn't allowed to access your data directly they would
| just proxy it through the original user's device via an
| app or something. The end result would be the same.
| lm28469 wrote:
| If you drive a car at 350kph on the highway, crash and die.
| Your death isn't due to "open roads", it's due to neglect/abuse
| syshum wrote:
| Roads are not really open, there is a ton a regulations
| around roads, what kind of cars can be sold for public road
| use and who can utilize the public road ways as a driver so
| your analogy fails on its face there.
|
| besides that fact, we also do not sue a Car manufacturer if a
| User of their car does go 350kph on the highway' crashes and
| dies.....
| lm28469 wrote:
| > there is a ton a regulations around roads, what kind of
| cars can be sold for public road use and who can utilize
| the public road ways as a driver so your analogy fails on
| its face there.
|
| "open" api doesn't mean "do whatever you want", you're kind
| of making my point and the point of the article. There is
| nothing bad about Facebook going to court over that.
|
| This isn't the result of open api, it's the result of badly
| designed and badly regulated open api.
| Yarnamite wrote:
| am i the only person that would be happy abolishing social media?
| it seems like a good idea honestly. just delete it all, start
| over.
| [deleted]
| f430 wrote:
| man the comments on HN blaming people and defending Facebook is
| creepy.
|
| Facebook screwed up, now they need to pony up and compensate its
| users.
|
| If this lawsuit goes through then expect more all over the world.
|
| It's open season on social networks and it's perfectly justified.
| Facebook's role in bringing 4 years of Trump was punishment
| enough.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I'm no Facebook fan but the reasons behind the lawsuit are bad
| and could set a bad precedent.
|
| Cambridge Analytica used the Facebook API to ask users to share
| data about them & their friends. Stupid users agreed to that.
|
| The argument here isn't that Facebook is playing fast and loose
| with tracking & user data (which would be a legitimate argument),
| it's that Facebook is allowing people to grant access to their
| data to third-parties and Facebook should somehow be faulted for
| that. Facebook is a neutral carrier here, and they acted on
| behalf of the user - he decided that Cambridge Analytica should
| have had access to his data. Facebook should not be forced to
| somehow be the arbiter of this.
|
| This lawsuit will give even more reasons to platforms to restrict
| API access which would impact legitimate usage much more than
| nefarious abuse (stupid people will always find a way to screw
| up, API or not - if the API is gone they'd happily enter their
| Facebook credentials directly instead).
| manux wrote:
| > Facebook is allowing people to grant access to their data to
| third-parties and Facebook should somehow be faulted for that.
|
| It's not clear to me that they shouldn't be faulted. How many
| people read terms and conditions? How many people lack the
| technological literacy to understand what it means to share
| their facebook data with third-parties?
|
| It seems to me like we should make our systems robust to the
| average user, especially systems as big as Facebook.
|
| > Facebook should not be forced to somehow be the arbiter of
| this.
|
| I kind of agree, but at the same time Facebook has some moral
| responsibility as the holder of the data. Perhaps it's not on
| Facebook to implement regulatory mechanisms, but if these
| mechanisms are implemented (e.g. by the "State") then it should
| probably be on Facebook's dime.
| hunter-gatherer wrote:
| > It's not clear to me that they shouldn't be faulted. How
| many people read terms and conditions? How many people lack
| the technological literacy to understand what it means to
| share their facebook data with third-parties?
|
| I'm not trying to argue here, but I see this argument pop up
| often when discussing big tech and user data. I'm curious why
| the tone is so different when it comes to mortgages or auto
| loans, for example. It seems society is content with the
| notion that I must do my ow due diligence when buying a home,
| but for whatever reason that responsibility seems to slide
| away when I'm dealing with social media. Why is that?
|
| To clarify, I'm being sincere, not argumentative. I'm not a
| normal internet user and never have been. I haven't been on
| social media for a decade, use all the ad blockers, and so
| on.
| BlackFly wrote:
| Well for one, I expect the bank not to have snuck in a
| clause that allows them to unilaterally change the contract
| without providing me with a physical copy thereof. I expect
| that if the bank tried that that the courts would rule it
| unconscionable. I expect that if I modify terms in the
| contract such as typos that the representative will ok them
| and accept the modification. I expect that they will keep a
| physical copy of the license or a digital scan thereof so
| they can track which version I received and whether such
| modifications were made and to keep track of the witness. I
| expect the bank to insist on having a translator present
| since I reside in a land where my proficiency in the
| language is suspect. I expect that there is a meaningful
| exchange embodied by the contract and that there is some
| sense in which I can seek redress if the bank fails to
| provide the agreed upon funds.
|
| If you are sincere, you should compare more people trying
| to make payday loans illegal with the fight against
| Facebook's EULA. Banks have always showed much more
| diligence to receive meaningful consent for a mortgage than
| Facebook even comes close to. With Payday loans, a
| predatory lender is trying to rope someone into a contract
| and then wants to use the courts to extract much more money
| out of individuals knowing that the individual may be so
| far in debt that they have no more disposable income. There
| are many people who would argue that such things should be
| illegal (or already are) in the same grain as loansharking.
| Once upon a time people signed contracts whereupon they
| became slaves or indentured. Clearly not all contractual
| terms should be honored by a just society. Facebook is seen
| by some as closer to the predatory lender than a typical
| mortgage provider. People are free to disagree with where
| to place the line, but clearly society places the line
| somewhere on the acceptability of contractual terms.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _It seems society is content with the notion that I must do
| my ow due diligence when buying a home, but for whatever
| reason that responsibility seems to slide away when I 'm
| dealing with social media. Why is that?_
|
| Counterpoint: I'm not content with opaque mortgage or auto
| loan terms (although my last auto loan was actually quite
| simple). I don't think you can generalize how "society"
| feels in this way.
|
| This also happens to be a recent hot button issue. If you
| talked to someone in, oh say, late 2008, mortgages might've
| been on the front of their mind.
| mancerayder wrote:
| > I'm not trying to argue here, but I see this argument pop
| up often when discussing big tech and user data. I'm
| curious why the tone is so different when it comes to
| mortgages or auto loans, for example. It seems society is
| content with the notion that I must do my ow due diligence
| when buying a home, but for whatever reason that
| responsibility seems to slide away when I'm dealing with
| social media. Why is that?
|
| That's a legitimate and good question.
|
| And the answer is that the mortgage industry is highly
| regulated, and so there are things that the federal
| government demands (if we're talking about the U.S.) and
| additionally that states demand. So if you sign a mortgage
| paperwork in my state, for example, there are Riders that
| have to be provided. Same with signing up for a credit
| card. One page information sheets MANDATED by the
| government that the consumer gets to see, before having to
| sign contracts.
|
| You don't need to be a lawyer to not get screwed.
|
| Another good example. Residential leases are long,
| technical contracts. However, the state law overrides
| what's in it. So even if someone signs something that
| violates their rights, it won't apply. In some cases, the
| landlord can be sued for damages. Additionally, Riders are
| often mandated by the state that the landlord should
| provide, that summarizes rights.
|
| The problem is that individual user data privacy is NOT
| regulated.
|
| The lack of regulations and laws are why we're all arguing
| right now.
| manux wrote:
| [Not an expert on this, just my opinion as well]
|
| Well, for one afaik mortgages and auto loans are regulated
| and have been for a long time. They're also simpler to
| understand for _most_ people, since most people interact
| with money daily, they see their income, they understand
| interest, etc.
|
| Most people don't need to understand how banks trade
| mortgages and such because in all likelihood, well except
| in 2008, it will only affect them marginally.
|
| I suspect that most people similarly only have a very
| superficial functional understanding of data. They see
| other people's data daily, they understand that if they
| post something, other people will see it.
|
| Where this differs is that, at scale data is not well
| regulated, and can affect users much more directly and non-
| marginally, in non-obvious ways. Targeted ads, political
| manipulation, identity theft, etc.
| [deleted]
| lupire wrote:
| Reading the EULA and T&C are irrelevant, because what CA did
| wrong was violate the EULA and T&C.
|
| Anyway, You are making an argument for regulations requiring
| disclosures, like in mortgages and nutrition labels, not an
| argument that Facebook is at fault for letting users interact
| with 3rd parties, which could have been a browser extension
| that scraped the same data that the FB API provides.
| manux wrote:
| True, but until these regulations exists, I'm not sure why
| we shouldn't hold Facebook accountable, at least morally --
| and in the example you give, why we shouldn't hold browser
| extension providers accountable.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Why should Facebook be accountable here instead of the
| party that acted maliciously? Facebook acted as a neutral
| carrier. Users told them to share their data with CA, and
| they did.
|
| CA lied to both their users and even to Facebook itself
| (I think they breached FB API's terms and conditions),
| why should it be Facebook that's at fault?
|
| In your argument, if a car is used in a robbery, should
| the car dealership or manufacturer be also at fault, even
| though the manufacturer had no idea this particular
| customer was going to use the car for malicious purposes?
| manux wrote:
| If a car has parts that are easily hacked/broken into,
| leading to injury to its user while the user "chose" to
| drive, shouldn't the manufacturer be at fault? This is
| what happened with CA and Facebook's API.
|
| I'm not saying CA shouldn't be held accountable, I'm
| saying Facebook also has part of the blame.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Cambridge Analytica used the Facebook API to ask users to
| share data about them & their friends. Stupid users agreed to
| that._
|
| Not reading a 1000 page EULA doesn't make users stupid. It
| makes Facebook predatory.
| bzb6 wrote:
| There's no thousand page EULA. Just a screen that says "do
| you want to allow this app to access your profile data and
| your friend list" and they clicked yes.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| Should Cambridge Analytica then be held accountable for
| being dubious in what users were giving access to and what
| they would do with that data?
|
| Do you think if they knew the full scope of Cambridge
| Analytica's work they would've allowed them to access the
| data?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Absolutely, but if I remember correctly Cambridge
| Analytica is no more and the law doesn't seem to be going
| after whoever was behind the company.
|
| > Do you think if they knew the full scope of Cambridge
| Analytica's work they would've allowed them to access the
| data?
|
| Honestly? I'm not sure - a lot of people already dismiss
| privacy concerns and ad tracking as "I've got nothing to
| hide" or "it's just ads, no big deal". Unfortunately I
| wouldn't be surprised if people opted in even if CA was
| fully transparent with their intentions.
|
| However, CA even broke Facebook's API terms of use, so at
| least if CA was transparent Facebook wouldn't have
| allowed them API access to begin with (though I'm sure
| they would've worked around that, with malicious
| apps/browser extensions or just asking for raw Facebook
| credentials, bypassing the API completely).
| bzb6 wrote:
| If I tell you to go on Facebook and take screenshots of
| your friends' profiles and send them to me and then I do
| dubious things using that information, whose fault is it?
| I'd split it between you and me. Facebook is not at fault
| at all.
| lupire wrote:
| There's no 1000 page EULA to read, and FB wasn't the
| predator. CA asked for data and user said yes, same as if you
| accept a friend request with someone who gossips about you
| behind your back.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| This is ludicrous. So somebody friends me on Facebook,
| someone who I know and trust. Then _that_ person comes
| along some quiz, and then in teeny text at the bottom of
| what looks like a standard "blah blah blah" popup is the
| information, carefully worded as to not be too alarmist,
| that that person's _friends '_ data (i.e. me) will also be
| sucked up.
|
| At that point, why just stop at friends? Why not go to any
| transitive relationship with the argument "well, you
| trusted that person, so it's just like them sharing the
| data you already gave to them". Of course, the absurdity of
| that is that one person can share the whole world. I do not
| think this is a slippery slope argument at all, given that
| FB already went halfway down the slope before there was
| outrage.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The same argument could be said today about your web
| browser.
|
| _I_ wrote this comment for people in this conversation
| to see. Yet _you_ allowed Google Chrome access to the
| comment. You let your adblocker see it. You let lots of
| software companies scrape it. You shared the data with a
| wider audience than I intended.
|
| Sure, the argument doesn't hold much water on the public
| internet. But now consider HN was an invite-only forum,
| in fact an invite-only forum just like my facebook
| page...
| lovecg wrote:
| You're making the same argument. Public comments are fair
| game and there's no expectations of privacy. A private,
| or invite only, or a network like fb with complex privacy
| controls is another story entirely.
| CivBase wrote:
| If you told Facebook to give someone access to your
| personal information and they took it and handed it off
| to a third party, what is Facebook supposed to do about
| that? What _can_ Facebook do about that? What could _any_
| website do about that?
|
| I despise Facebook, but I really don't understand this
| whole Cambridge Analytica thing. There doesn't appear to
| be an endgame for those criticizing Facebook over the
| ordeal. Of all the despicable things Facebook has done,
| why is this the one that everyone clings to?
| efdee wrote:
| It's not that my friend gave my info to someone else. My
| friend allowed the app to ask Facebook information about
| me.
|
| In the end, it's still Facebook who handed over my data.
| That my friend decided that was OK doesn't change much.
| CivBase wrote:
| As I understand, it was a browser extension which scraped
| data off the Facebook pages visited by users. There is no
| way Facebook could reasonably detect or combat that.
| cronix wrote:
| I think you're confusing it with another recent FB event
| where they sued browser extension makers for scraping FB
| data.
|
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-sues-two-chrome-
| exten...
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > As I understand, it was a browser extension which
| scraped data off the Facebook pages visited by users.
|
| That is false:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_
| Ana...
| CivBase wrote:
| Nevermind. I thought it was a browser extension. I was
| not aware of the "Open Graph" platform. Thank you for the
| correction.
| cronix wrote:
| How is this any different than FB asking for access to
| your private contacts, to "help" you find them on FB?
| What if one of your friends isn't on FB, and doesn't want
| FB to have their info? Your friend didn't give you
| permission to give FB their private contact information,
| ie phone number. FB then goes and makes a shadow profile
| based on that info you supplied without permission, and
| any time you mention or tag said friend, whether in a
| text of photo.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > My friend allowed the app to ask Facebook information
| about me.
|
| Unless there's a major security vulnerability, you can
| only delegate access to data you have access yourself. So
| your friend did the equivalent of giving Cambridge
| Analytica your data - the technical implementation of it
| (as to whether CA got the data off your friend's phone or
| from Facebook directly) doesn't really change the
| outcome.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| > CA asked for data and user said yes
|
| I think a lot of people are forgetting that you were also
| able to get tons of data on a user's friends, just from
| that user accepting. No consent on the friends part. If you
| and I were FB friends and I accepted one of those requests,
| CA now also knows your profile info and likes.
| coding123 wrote:
| What you said. I was starting to read the like 100
| comments about how people clicked yes and so be it, but
| the entire time I was thinking, wait, no, that's not what
| happened. It's what you just said. Amazing how a little
| time leads to revisionist history for these people
| defending facebook.
| 14 wrote:
| I absolutely believe in my mind that big companies are
| actively posting to HN, Reddit, FB, et all, to steer
| different narratives.
| paxys wrote:
| The OAuth consent screen is like 3 lines of text, maybe 100
| pixels in length and width. There is no EULA, so not sure
| what you are talking about.
| dschuetz wrote:
| As Mr. Zuckerberg stated personally, the main product of
| Facebook are ads. That means, everything around ads and user
| tracking is their core business. Not whatever users do, but
| whatever users see and click when an ad is up. Making privacy
| settings more restrictive or convenient goes directly against
| Facebook's business model, as does transparency about data
| brokerage and third parties. Saying that basically the users
| are to blame, because they are sharing their data completely
| misses the motivation behind Facebook's pretense, that it's all
| about _users, social media and making the world better_. In
| reality it is about collecting and selling as much data and as
| much ads as possible, all while blatantly violating their users
| privacy.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The Cambridge Analytica scandal has nothing to do with
| Facebook's business model and Facebook did not gain anything
| from this.
|
| To the best of my knowledge CA abused a free feature (API
| access) designed for legitimate usage to collect user data
| for nefarious purposes. Facebook was acting as a neutral
| carrier here and respected the user's intention of sharing
| their data with CA.
| ralston3 wrote:
| > The Cambridge Analytica scandal has nothing to do with
| Facebook's business model and Facebook did not gain
| anything from this.
|
| Hilarious.
|
| The Cambridge Analytica scandal is in regards to a
| nefarious 3rd party using Facebook's pipes in a way that
| violated Facebook's policy. There are emails to show that
| Facebook knew about this, and did not act to remove CA's
| access to said pipes (no, [1] there are literally emails
| about this that were found during discovery).
|
| You even mentioned it
|
| > To the best of my knowledge CA abused a free feature (API
| access) designed for legitimate usage to collect user data
| for nefarious purposes
|
| Yes. They abused it. They abused it and were allowed to
| continue abusing it because Facebook's business model is
| data, not user privacy. You're blaming CA for what FB quite
| literally (and I mean quite literally) allowed them to do,
| told them to stop doing, then turned a blind eye when CA
| _continued_ to do it.
|
| Again. Not my opinion. It's a matter of factual record.
|
| Links - https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-emails-
| show-workers... - https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-
| media/newly-released-mes...
|
| Edit: Formatting
| lovecg wrote:
| Thanks for the links. After having read the entire thread
| (it's not long), a few things stand out: 1) This was not
| treated as a high pri issue at all until the story broke
| out in the media (compare the frequency of messages
| before and after) 2) There was a mad scramble to
| understand where exactly CA got their data from. It was
| far from obvious and there was no access to close as CA
| didn't even have any app or a relationship with FB.
| hshshs2 wrote:
| Wow you should really think twice before you start calling
| people stupid, it has the opposite effect that you intend...
| especially considering you're not right in this case.
|
| Do you read the TOS of every service you sign up for?
| regardless, CA was found in violation of the TOS so there
| wasn't much many people caught up in that scandal could have
| possibly done.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| Just because there is no law specifying exactly what happened
| it doesn't mean something is legal. Like there is no law that
| says it's illegal to hit people wearing yellow hats, but if you
| did that you'd certainly get in trouble. The same way you
| cannot agree for someone to murder you. Just because users
| agreed it means nothing.
| staz wrote:
| IIRC the issue with CA was that a friend could share my data
| without me knowing. It could have been data that I uploaded and
| not my friend (and maybe the friend didn't even know the
| existence of this data).
|
| I remember Facebook permissions for Apps in the past were quite
| laxes. I wonder even if theren't were data accessible to apps
| that were not visible from the browser interface.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| > Stupid users agreed to that.
|
| Can we not do this, please? People are being manipulated like
| never before. Almost anyone is susceptible.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| There's plenty of manipulation out there (including _by_
| Facebook themselves), but I wouldn 't consider an OAuth
| consent prompt as manipulation?
|
| Cambridge Analytica may have lied about their intentions, but
| when requesting access, the Facebook consent prompt is very
| clear about what data would be shared. Why should Facebook be
| on the hook for CA's lies?
| smolder wrote:
| Being able to share your friends data or even your own so
| coarsely was a bad design. If it were me designing an API
| for Facebook apps, you'd only be able to present user data
| to users from packaged queries, none of the user data would
| be directly accessible to the app maker, and monetization
| would only be through ad display or in-app purchases. It'd
| be a much less popular API since you can't extract users
| data, but IMO, it's the only sensible form such an API can
| take.
| matsemann wrote:
| > _Facebook is a neutral carrier here, and they acted on behalf
| of the user - he decided that Cambridge Analytica should have
| had access to his data._
|
| You say that like it's okay that anyone else can press a button
| and then share _my_ data. It 's not my friends' to share, I'd
| say fb is at fault here for providing this to third parties.
| ginko wrote:
| >The argument here isn't that Facebook is playing fast and
| loose with tracking & user data (which would be a legitimate
| argument), it's that Facebook is allowing people to grant
| access to their data to third-parties and Facebook should
| somehow be faulted for that.
|
| Even so you wrote yourself that users shared data about their
| friends. Why does Facebook allow people to share the data of
| others who didn't agree to this?
| prostoalex wrote:
| > Why does Facebook allow people to share the data of others
| who didn't agree to this?
|
| "Why _did_ Facebook allow " - they changed the practice on
| friends' data sharing a few years ago.
|
| Every app that implores you to import your phone contacts
| does this.
| indigochill wrote:
| If I put on my blinders against this being Facebook for a
| moment, supposing that you're on a social network in which
| your friend is someone you personally trust, then it's not
| that ridiculous to trust that person with the decision to
| share your data. In a very limited way, you kind of expect
| this (your friend giving your number to someone who they
| think you'll get along with, or whatever).
|
| This goes a bit sideways on Facebook in two main ways, I
| think:
|
| 1. People are way too fast and loose with who they keep as
| "friends" on Facebook
|
| 2. Facebook has way too much data to warrant a blanket "Yeah,
| please share -all- of that at once" agreement. Something more
| granular, like "The phone numbers of your friends who have
| themselves granted permissions for their friends to share
| their numbers" would be more reasonable.
| [deleted]
| PeterisP wrote:
| The thing here is that "you're on a social network in which
| your friend is someone you personally trust, then it's not
| that ridiculous to trust that person with the decision to
| share your data" does not match the legal expectation. If
| my friend allows Facebook to give my data to Cambridge
| Analytica, that does not give Facebook any legal grounds to
| do that - so as Facebook did it, it would be a violation at
| least of the current laws (the UK pre-GDPR legislation was
| more limited). You are required to inform the data subject
| and, if you use consent as the basis, you're required to
| get consent from the data subject (or their legal
| guardian), not some other person, even if that person is
| their friend or family member. My spouse or parent can't
| consent to sharing data on my behalf, and any terms and
| conditions to which they agree can't waive my rights.
|
| Also, it's worth noting that there is a big difference
| between "your friend giving your number to someone who they
| think you'll get along with" and your friend sharing your
| name and number to some company - for GDPR, the first is
| covered by the "personal activity" clause 2.2(d), and the
| latter is not, so GDPR applies and the consent of that
| friend isn't sufficient, i.e. the friend is permitted to
| click "share", however, that does not necessarily mean that
| the company is permitted to use the data shared in this
| manner. So every company that expects EU users to share
| their phone contact lists had better be very careful on
| what and how they do it - you can't rely on informing users
| or getting consent as you're informing someone else and
| getting someone else's consent.
| zaphar wrote:
| In a very limited way, you kind of expect this
| (your friend giving your number to someone who they
| think you'll get along with, or whatever).
|
| I absolutely do not expect this. Nor would I be okay with a
| friend sharing my number to someone they think I'll get
| along with. I don't think I'm alone in this either.
| [deleted]
| stickfigure wrote:
| > Why does Facebook allow people to share the data of others
| who didn't agree to this?
|
| I have names, email addresses, phone numbers, birthdates,
| email contents, and more for most of my friends. There's no
| centralized arbiter of this information; I have the ability
| to share this data in any way I choose.
|
| And I do! I switch email providers, install apps on my phone,
| use calendaring systems, tell our friends where to meet for
| surprise birthday parties, etc. I don't need your consent for
| any of it, because even though the information may be about
| you, we understand that it's "my" data.
|
| Inserting Facebook in this process doesn't really change the
| dynamic.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > we understand that it's "my" data
|
| Not really; it's _their_ data, and you 're allowed to use
| it.
|
| > Inserting Facebook in this process doesn't really change
| the dynamic.
|
| Yes it does, because while you (the individual) are allowed
| under GDPR to use the personal data of your friends for
| personal purposes, that doesn't automatically entitle
| _Facebook_ to use it for their purposes. Only on your
| behalf for your purposes.
| [deleted]
| ginko wrote:
| > I have the ability to share this data in any way I
| choose.
|
| Freely sharing your friends' data without their permission
| may be a GDPR violation.
|
| > because even though the information may be about you, we
| understand that it's "my" data.
|
| That's just not true. Why would you think that?!
| msla wrote:
| > Freely sharing your friends' data without their
| permission may be a GDPR violation.
|
| People subject to EU law should keep that in mind, then.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| > Freely sharing your friends' data without their
| permission may be a GDPR violation.
|
| GDPR is for businesses. Me giving out your phone number
| as an individual is just being a jerk.
| pjc50 wrote:
| It doesn't actually say that; it applies to everyone, but
| there's an exemption for "exclusive to household or
| personal activities" _purposes_.
| voxic11 wrote:
| > Freely sharing your friends' data without their
| permission may be a GDPR violation.
|
| Absurd, how would an email provider or social network
| even work if you couldn't enter your friends contact
| information.
| leothecool wrote:
| There is an exception for data that is required for the
| functioning of the service. You need your friends email
| address to use email, but do you really need their
| birthday or a sentiment analysis of their opinion of
| cheesecakes?
| prostoalex wrote:
| > but do you really need their birthday or a sentiment
| analysis of their opinion of cheesecakes
|
| If you go back to the Wild West of the Facebook apps,
| shortly after platform launch there was an app for
| _everything_ - apps for fancy birthday cards with
| birthday reminders, as well as polling apps telling you
| which one of your friends is the biggest cheesecake
| lover.
|
| Every piece of data can be spun into being essential.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| And you can collect each piece of information as soon as
| the user decides to use some app that needs it to
| function. Just not before.
| prostoalex wrote:
| A polling app building a "psychological compatibility
| profile" can arbitrarily add new data points, and
| "streamline" the onboarding process by collecting all of
| the necessary data with one click (with fully disclosed
| list of collected data points).
|
| Which is what CA has built.
|
| Not just them - any survey app claiming to help you find
| out "which Game of Thrones characters you and your
| friends are" can arbitrarily claim those data points as
| necessary.
| adverbly wrote:
| > Absurd
|
| You're joking, right? Ever played a video game before?
| Add by user name. Share a link... There are tons of
| options without sharing real-world data.
| stiray wrote:
| Foreplay: I know that you don't like what you read but this
| is a diction of GDPR, so before you start down-voting,
| please - Rec.74; Art.24 and read [1]) as the "entity" that
| obtained the data.
|
| Let me shed some light. Facebook/Google have nothing to do
| with it except they are breaking the law because of you
| that have planted data from you friends without their
| consent.
|
| Following the GDPR, the one who gave personally
| identifiable information (PII) to the
| Google/Facebook/whatever, makes HIM/YOU/HER responsible for
| whatever they do with it.
|
| (Or in other words - if you are gathering the personal data
| on your website for a 3rd party, you better be sure that
| the 3rd party has a strong legal bond with you regarding
| the information you have "traded" to it or you might have
| troubles.)
|
| Even if "your friend" has given his/hers PII to you, you
| dont have any consent to share it with whatever 3rd party
| application you are using and is stealing your data based
| on "I Agree button". This is making you, as a controller of
| PII responsible for his PII. If the 3rd party application
| ("Facebook/Google/...) took it from you for whatever
| "reason", those information were not yours to share and you
| have zero comfort in not being given consent. You have
| decided, for your friend, that you will share his/hers
| information with 3rd party application. Due to negligence
| (you didn't read the "I Agree" text, you didn't care
| (negligence),... whatever. It really doesn't matter.)
|
| You have two troubles here.
|
| - The application was violating GDPR. Clearly. Without any
| doubt. They slurped in the PII data from your friends which
| gave no consent. They might argue that you have misleaded
| them. In this case all guilt is on you. Unless they are
| well known for their acts. Which against paints a big red
| text "negligence" over your forehead.
|
| - YOU were violating GDPR by not taking care for PII of
| your friend and giving it to 3rd party without consent,
| approval, anything ("Hey I just took his phone number").
|
| Not only can 3rd party application be held guilty of
| stockpiling PII without consent, in same manner can YOU be
| guilty of giving them PII data (oh yeah, "I Agree" button)
| and your "friend" has all the law support in EU to sue you
| for this - EU wont, they have larger fish to fry but your
| friend can and might.
|
| [1] - GDPR defines a controller as: >>> the natural <<< or
| legal person, public authority, agency or other body which,
| alone or jointly with others, >>> determines the purposes
| and means of the processing <<< of personal data
| bloodorange wrote:
| While a surprise birthday party etc. is definitely not a
| problem for me, if any of my friends considered my address,
| phone number etc. as his/her data, there'd be a rather
| serious conversation about it.
| dtech wrote:
| > I don't need your consent for any of it, because even
| though the information may be about you, we understand that
| it's "my" data.
|
| You do need content though, if I provide my email in a
| social setting I implicitly give consent to birthday
| parties etc. I didn't consent to you selling my email as
| part of a bundle. If people found out you were providing
| data to random people _at least_ a stern talking to would
| happen.
|
| Under GDPR it works this way for business too, just because
| I gave you data for a specific purpose doesn't mean you can
| do whatever you want with it. I'm not aware of other
| jurisdictions.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| This is also my understanding of the law.
|
| GDPR also prohibits me from making a list of my friends'
| addresses and then trading that list to the Girl Guides
| in exchange for biscuits.
| johnjj257 wrote:
| So... Gdpr doesn't apply to individuals or a person who
| happens to use a random social media app to find out such
| freely available info
| [deleted]
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| So if I give you my phone number and you store it in
| Google Contacts, and I later decide I don't want you to
| have my phone number anymore, under GDPR can I request
| that Google delete my number from your contacts? After
| all, I never consented to you sharing my phone number
| with Google.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Because open Internet principles as understood at the time
| required that. Facebook used to be heavily criticized (see
| e.g https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/2007/08/open-
| soci...) for locking data into their platform when it ought
| to be available on the open web. There was a pervasive sense
| that you should be able to authorize third parties to do
| anything you can do through the official webapp; the term
| "walled garden" was common for platforms that wouldn't offer
| this level of control.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Indeed - we should remember that a good chunk of the
| complaints about Facebook are because they opened up an API
| to anyone who granted permission, as demanded by power
| users like us who wanted different services to interoperate
| seemlessly.
| neya wrote:
| Here's a counter argument - API access is just one aspect of
| Facebook selling user data, as far as I know, Facebook will
| license its data via customized methods (eg. a custom API) if
| you pay a fee for its access. There are even vendors who
| provide data from Facebook that isn't available via what you
| see as public on their documentation. Governments around the
| world use this to get user data access from Facebook. To me,
| that is the real definition of selling user data. I think
| Facebook should be held responsible for that and also in
| general for being a sneaky leech of user data.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Facebook does not "sell" data and has absolutely nothing to
| gain by selling it or sharing it with Cambridge Analytica.
|
| CA abused a legitimate feature that allowed users to delegate
| access to their accounts. My comment is about how this
| lawsuit will set a bad precedent and restrict API access even
| further (hindering legitimate usage) without doing much to
| prevent abuse (because people can just share their
| credentials instead).
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| > could set a bad precedent
|
| You're absolutely right. Holding companies responsible for bad
| outcomes due to their their products and practices would be
| very bad for our corporatocracy. So don't worry. I'm quite sure
| we're not going to start trifling with such nonsense now.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _Cambridge Analytica used the Facebook API to ask users to
| share data about them & their friends. Stupid users agreed to
| that._
|
| According to Facebook, this is not what happened and CA's
| collection of this data represented a breach in their platform
| policies [0]:
|
| _In 2015, we learned that a psychology professor at the
| University of Cambridge named Dr. Aleksandr Kogan lied to us
| and violated our Platform Policies by passing data from an app
| that was using Facebook Login to SCL /Cambridge Analytica ...
| He also passed that data to Christopher Wylie of Eunoia
| Technologies, Inc._
|
| _[Kogan] did not subsequently abide by our rules. By passing
| information on to a third party, including SCL /Cambridge
| Analytica and Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies, he
| violated our platform policies._
|
| 0 - https://about.fb.com/news/2018/03/suspending-cambridge-
| analy...
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| From the link:
|
| > The claim that this is a data breach is completely false.
| Aleksandr Kogan requested and gained access to information
| from users who chose to sign up to his app, and everyone
| involved gave their consent. People knowingly provided their
| information, no systems were infiltrated, and no passwords or
| sensitive pieces of information were stolen or hacked.
|
| Users knowingly _agreed_ to share their data with Dr. Kogan.
| Dr. Kogan was contractually prohibited from passing that
| information on to third parties (Cambridge Analytica) but did
| so anyway and was banned as a result.
| btown wrote:
| And Facebook is being sued for... not having technical
| mitigations to guard against contractual breaches?
| mandevil wrote:
| Well sure, I don't have a contract with Dr. Kogan, so
| what can I sue him for? There is no breach of any
| contract between us. I do have a contract with Facebook,
| so they are pretty much the only people I _can_ sue. They
| can turn around and sue Dr. Kogan because they did have a
| contract with him, but I can 't sue him directly for
| breaching a contract I'm not a part of.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I do have a contract with Facebook, so they are pretty
| much the only people I _can_ sue.
|
| Can you sue them for _this_ , though? Your contract would
| need to say "if I personally turn my data over to a third
| party, that third party will not misuse it". And in the
| unlikely event that it did say that, misuse of your data
| by the third party still wouldn't violate the contract,
| because... the third party is not party to the contract.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Facebook offered an API for sharing your data with a 3rd
| party vetted by Facebook.
|
| Even if you don't buy that argument, at the very least
| the people who were FB friends of people who sent shared
| their lists with Kogan should still be able to sue FB, as
| they had absolutely no relation with Kogan or his app and
| still some of their data ended up sold.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| If there's information that I have, and I turn it over
| Cambridge Analytica, where's the justification for you to
| sue Facebook over that?
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| The reason we have a system of civil laws is so that
| everybody doesn't have to all individually set up their
| own system to guard against contractual breaches.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| the way the legal system works: you are responsible for
| your contracts. If your supplier messes up, your
| customers sue you, you sue your supplier.
| musingsole wrote:
| I haven't seen it phrased that way before, and now that I
| have, I simultaneously accept the logic of it and am
| horrified by the bureaucratic churn that must spin up
| just to ferry legal responsibility to (in theory) the
| correct party.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| 'luckily' it is expensive to sue, so everything works
| out.
|
| Consider the alternative: the laptop you bought on Amazon
| catches fire and burns down the school of your daughter.
| The school contacts your insurance, who now has to
| contact a component supplier in Shenzen (who supplied the
| power supply), and sue them under Chinese law, instead of
| Amazon.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think that this can end up resulting in less
| bureaucratic churn then the other approach. In this
| particular case a bunch of users had their data forwarded
| by one entity - if CA had harvested data from multiple
| sources using the Facebook API then I think it'd be
| unreasonable for those users to need to legally pursue
| each terms violator - Facebook may also refuse to share
| the identity of the breach for a variety of reasons[1]
| making the lawsuit without an identified defendant which
| doesn't really help matters.
|
| 1. Proprietary customer information, privacy, just
| generally not talking.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| The real world is ridiculously complex place, something
| about almost endless fractal. I too would like to see
| companies like FB burn because they gave us plenty of
| reasons in the past, but in this case...
|
| I look it from outdoor equipment perspective - if on my
| goretex jacket an YKK zipper fails, for me the jacket
| manufacturer (say Rab) would be the one to raise a
| warranty ticket/questions, not japanese YKK which produce
| billions of zippers for everybody all the time. Although
| Rab is just buying products from DuPont (sigh...), YKK,
| threads etc. and putting them together (at least that's a
| more common situation compared to manufacturing it
| yourself).
|
| I guess in real world Rab would swallow my specific issue
| while in warranty and issue a fix/replacement, and if
| they see enough issues with supplier they raise it in
| batch mode ie for discount for future or one-time
| compensation.
| munk-a wrote:
| Well one potential outcome of a suit against YKK for a
| zipper failure might be that, in fact, the zipper itself
| didn't fail due to poor quality reasons - but instead the
| fabric shed and accumulated in the teeth wearing them
| down over time... Basically, with an assembled product,
| it's unreasonable to expect consumers to try and identify
| the actual fault of the design.
|
| As an anecdote on this topic.... I recall having a long
| necked jacket as a kid where the zipper wore down heavily
| around the collar since the neck was so long that it
| ended up being too tall for normal day-wear - and thus a
| lot of unnecessary stress was put on the zipper mechanism
| when it was partially zipped up. After a few months the
| teeth had weakened in that area to the point where the
| zipper would frequently come off the tracks there. In
| this specific case fitting a jacket with a four inch
| collar caused a zipper failure - the zipper was probably
| cheaply made anyways but if the cut of the jacket had
| been different there likely wouldn't have been an issue.
| [deleted]
| intricatedetail wrote:
| You can agree to many things it doesn't mean it becomes
| legal.
| ysavir wrote:
| And does anything about this make Facebook liable for the way
| CA used the data willingly given to them by their users?
|
| Facebook is either:
|
| 1. a neutral party, acting on the wishes of its users, who
| asked to grant CA access to their data. The victims are users
| and the aggressor is CA for misusing data.
|
| Or:
|
| 2. a victim party, after CA went against their policies. CA
| is the aggressor in this scenario, and the users are not part
| of the equation.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| You are saying Facebook users willingly gave their data to
| CA as if it is a matter of fact. Can I refer you to the
| post you replied to? Facebook disputes this!
|
| Also, no need to set up a false dichotomy. There are other
| possibilities. Usually, figuring out liability is a
| function of the court, thus this legal action. You'll
| probably get the answer to your question when the suit has
| been concluded.
| lmkg wrote:
| Someone is not _responsible_ for causing damages can still
| be held _liable_ for damages if they were negligent. One
| could argue that by having policies but not enforcing them,
| Facebook contributed to the harm befalling users,
| especially if an argument can be constructed that users
| _relied_ on Facebook 's platform policies as part of
| deciding whether to share data with CA.
| orangeoxidation wrote:
| > Cambridge Analytica's app on Facebook had harvested the
| data of people who interacted with it - and that of friends
| who had not given consent.
|
| This is the problem (quote from op article). Facebook
| collected data on people and than shared this data to third
| parties without their consent. That friends gave consent to
| this has no relevance. They don't have the right to do so
| and they didn't do it themselves. Facebook did - on the
| request of CA (or rather that 'researcher'), with the
| approval of friends.
| ergocoder wrote:
| Yeah, it's relevant.
|
| If you share your friend's data, it's primarily your
| fault.
|
| You know your friend's email, and you decide to share it
| with someone else.
|
| Now I agree that FB should bear some responsibility since
| it's such a large platform.
|
| But it's you who is mainly at fault for sharing.
|
| If you shout your friend's email in a hotel's lobby, you
| wouldn't blame the hotel, right?
| munk-a wrote:
| > If you shout your friend's email in a hotel's lobby,
| you wouldn't blame the hotel, right?
|
| No but your friend would be quite in the right to blame
| you if they got threatening emails as a result of it.
| Depending on whether actual harm came from the act and
| whether you shouted their email with an intent to cause
| harm (even a different harm like a cascade of d** pics)
| then you could be held liable for damages.
|
| If you act in a manner intended to cause harm and harm
| results - even if not in the manner you intended - then
| you can be held liable. Greasing a sidewalk so that folks
| will fall on their ass for the giggles and then causing
| someone to break their spine still leaves you liable for
| damages - even if you were unable to foresee the
| potential outcome of someone breaking their spine.
|
| The hotel lobby example is likely to not result in
| liability due to difficulties in showing you acted
| maliciously but there certainly is a possibility there.
| orangeoxidation wrote:
| > If you shout your friend's email in a hotel's lobby,
| you wouldn't blame the hotel, right?
|
| I wouldn't. But if my friend went to reception and told
| the staff "Hey, you know my friend in room 101? Please
| share their mail with the stranger in room 301. Thank
| you." I very much would.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Even worse - in this case, the hotel itself was asking
| your friend "hey, do you want us to share information
| about the one in room 101 with the stranger in room 301?
| The stranger in room 301 won't talk to you unless you
| do".
| tsimionescu wrote:
| That's not what happened here. People weren't actively
| posting their friends' details to some stranger. They
| were using an FB feature and checking a box. They barely
| even had any way of knowing exactly what data about their
| friends would end up being shared with the 3rd party.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Or 3: The law works differently than you expect.
|
| Asking for a victim to find the "root cause" of a problem
| is too much to ask. If X wronged Y causes a wrong to happen
| to Z... the legal system is largely designed for "Z sues Y"
| then "Y sues X".
|
| Asking for Z to sue X directly is asking for too much.
| There's no way for Z to even know that X exists.
| ysavir wrote:
| > There's no way for Z to even know that X exists
|
| Other than the time that X explicitly and directly asked
| Z for access to their data, you mean.
|
| This isn't similar to a case where I stored my users'
| info in a database on Cloud Hosting Service Inc machines,
| CHS's lax security allowed the data to be hacked, and I
| am now accountable to my users because I used an insecure
| service. Facebook's role in this situation was, literally
| speaking, a permissions broker between the end users and
| Dr. Kogan. The end users granted Dr. Kogan permission
| with every opportunity to learn about Dr. Kogan.
|
| Edit: Correction that users had a chance to learn about
| Dr. Kogan, not CA.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Doesn't change my overall point.
|
| Asking for Z to sue X has a number of issues:
|
| 1. Z doesn't know Y's policy towards X. Is the problem
| truly Y's fault or X's fault? "Z sues Y" doesn't
| necessarily implicate Y as the root cause, it just proves
| that Y was "along the way" towards the root cause.
|
| 2. Y sues X is a totally separate question. Consider the
| case where a car-parts company creates a suspension
| ("X"), who sells their suspensions to Ford (aka: Y).
| Sometime while customer "Z" was driving, the suspension
| fails. Z sues Y for a million bucks to cover the cost of
| back surgery or something. Y then has to argue with X to
| figure out who was responsible for the suspension
| failure. Depending on the agreements / contracts Y could
| be the root cause, or X. (Maybe it's Y's fault: if Y was
| using the suspensions incorrectly and X can prove it,
| then the Y-sues-X case will fail).
|
| In this #2 case: if Z sues X directly, Z will fail
| (because X is not at fault). Its safer for Z to sue Y...
| and its also the morally sound way to move things
| forward.
|
| ----------
|
| For better or worse, Z (the typical user) has a
| relationship with Facebook (Y). Cambridge Analytica is X.
| Whether X or Y is at fault is still ambiguous from Z's
| perspective (no reason for Z to come up with legal
| arguments and determine the "right person to sue").
|
| All Z has to prove is someone wronged him, and that Y is
| the next person up the chain. Let Y's lawyers figure out
| if Y or X is responsible. Z just needs compensation for
| Z's issues alone.
| ysavir wrote:
| > Doesn't change my overall point.
|
| That's because you keep making points that ignore that
| the _end users knowingly granted permission to Dr.
| Kogan_.
|
| If I buy a car, I don't expect the transmission
| manufacturer to be part of the specs or shopping process,
| so yes, I would sue Ford. But if Ford says "comes with
| Goodyear tires", and then one of those tires proves
| faulty, I'll be suing Goodyear, not Ford.
|
| But if you really want to use comparisons, let's use one
| that's appropriate:
|
| I purchase an iPhone from Apple. In this scenario, Apple
| has a policy that app developers can't share data with
| 3rd parties. I download an app and grant it permission to
| my data. The app developer then shares that data with
| someone else. Who is at fault? Who is the victim? Should
| I sue Apple? Should I sue the app developer? Can I really
| sue anyone considering I myself downloaded the app and
| granted it access to my data?
| dragontamer wrote:
| Analogies seem to be failing. So lets actually talk about
| the case then.
|
| Cambridge Analytica asked user A for permission. Facebook
| allowed CA to gather information about B (A's friend),
| and B NEVER provided consent. B now is wondering who to
| sue: Facebook or CA.
|
| My opinion: (IANAL). B sues Facebook. Then, Facebook sues
| CA.
|
| This leads to a few results:
|
| 1. If B loses its case against Facebook, the game is
| over.
|
| 2. If B wins its case against Facebook, Facebook
| continues and sues CA.
|
| 3. If Facebook loses vs CA, then the game is over and
| Facebook is found to be at fault. If Facebook wins vs CA,
| then CA was at fault.
|
| 4. If CA was at fault, then maybe CA will then sue its
| consultant over the issue, and it may continue. So on and
| so forth until the root cause is discovered, wherein the
| game ends.
|
| Simple process. At least... simple if everyone could
| afford the proper legal process. B probably can't afford
| it and many "Bs" need to gather together for a class
| action lawsuit and all that jazz.
|
| The hardest part of the puzzle is what exactly B would be
| suing over. It feels like B was damaged as a whole, since
| Facebook leaked B's information to CA. But its hard for
| me to formalize the complaint. Then again: that's a
| lawyer's job to find out.
| ysavir wrote:
| If we're going with a chain lawsuit, then why skip the
| step where B sues A for sharing their information with
| Dr. Kogan?
|
| B sues A for sharing their information, then A sues
| Facebook, then Facebook sues CA. That would be the full
| cycle, no? If B is allowed to skip suing A in favor of
| suing Facebook directly, why shouldn't they also skip
| suing Facebook and sue Dr. Kogan directly? Or maybe it
| doesn't even get to go that far: B just needs to sue A,
| Facebook gets to sue Dr. Kogan, and that's all we see.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > If we're going with a chain lawsuit, then why skip the
| step where B sues A for sharing their information with
| Dr. Kogan?
|
| B interacts to A through Facebook, do they not?
|
| If Facebook wants to sue A as the next leg in the chain,
| they're certainly welcome to try. That's the joy about
| just following the edge of the graph: its Facebook's job
| to figure out if A is more at fault (and should be sued)
| or if Cambridge Analytica is more at fault.
|
| This "chain" methodology further demonstrates which
| lawsuits are likely fruitless. The concept of Facebook
| suing A, or even Cambridge Analytica for suing A (if it
| goes that far) is clearly improper at face value.
| Breaking things up one-step at a time allows us to seek
| justice.
|
| IE: the entire point of the justice system.
| ysavir wrote:
| > B interacts to A through Facebook, do they not?
|
| And what impact does that have?
|
| > its Facebook's job to figure out if A is more at fault
| (and should be sued) or if Cambridge Analytica is more at
| fault.
|
| No, it's not Facebook's job to figure that out. If this
| was an investigation, then it would be the investigating
| office's job to figure out that. But it's not an
| investigation, it's a lawsuit, an accusation by one party
| against another party. The only thing to figure out here
| is if the accusation is legitimate. This thread started
| with the GP remarking that the accusation shouldn't be
| found valid.
|
| To say that it should be found valid because the accused
| can then separately try to sue another party is not a
| proper evaluation of the accusation, nor is it
| demonstrative of a productive legal process (at least in
| my opinion), nor is it "the entire point of the justice
| system".
| tsimionescu wrote:
| You're assuming a lot of information.
|
| B shared some data with Facebook. That data has somehow
| leaked to CA, which B never agreed to. Without doing any
| investigation of their own, B can pretty easily accuse FB
| of losing their data.
|
| FB can defend itself by saying B shared their data with
| A, and it is A who misplaced it.
|
| Or, it could be ruled that A could not be expected to
| understand that they are sharing non-public data about B
| with a 3rd party, so the ball could be back in FB's
| court. Perhaps FB should not have offered this option to
| A at all.
|
| Or perhaps that was well withing FB's and A's rights, and
| the problem instead is that A never agreed to share this
| data with CA, they only shared it with Dr Kogan.
|
| In this case again, it could be Dr Kogan alone who is at
| fault for sharing the data improperly, or it may also be
| FB's fault for not vetting app developers enough before
| giving them access to user's data.
|
| Of course, there could also be many more nuanced
| decisions as well. But for B, the chain can only really
| start with suing FB - the only entity that B shared their
| data directly with. B can't know whether it got to CA
| through A or through D or E, or whether FB was hacked and
| the information was stolen from them etc., and they have
| no right to demand this information from FB outside of a
| lawsuit.
| politicalloss wrote:
| > _Cambridge Analytica asked user A for permission.
| Facebook allowed CA to gather information about B (A 's
| friend), and B NEVER provided consent. B now is wondering
| who to sue: Facebook or CA._
|
| B consented to sharing their information with A (by
| accepting a friend request or making specific data items
| public-readable), who granted Facebook the right to share
| that information with (edit) not CA, Dr. Kogan.
| politicalloss wrote:
| > _The end users granted Dr. Kogan permission with every
| opportunity to learn about Dr. Kogan._
|
| > _Edit: Correction that users had a chance to learn
| about Dr. Kogan, not CA._
|
| The end users granted Facebook the right to share the
| friend data that their friends had granted them access
| to.
|
| Is there a screenshot of the 'Authorize App' screen at
| the time? Indeed, what did the fine print say?
|
| I can draw a chord chart of my friend graph using only
| user IDs and names.
|
| You can analyze my personality with what data that I
| explicitly grant access to?
| josephg wrote:
| If we're friends, I've shared my information with you. I
| haven't given you (or Facebook, or anyone else)
| permission to share my data with Cambridge analytica.
| politicalloss wrote:
| If you authorized an app to access the data shared with
| you, then you authorized release of your friends'
| information because that's what data you agreed to share
| with _the app_.
|
| Indeed, where is a screenshot of the 'Authorize App'
| consent dialogue that users were presented with.
|
| - A agrees to sharing info with B by accepting a friend
| request. Explicitly per the terms of service, and
| implicitly because _technically_ anyone can take a
| screenshot or a photo or a video and share whatever 's
| shared with them (even in DRM'd systems with limited key
| distribution).
|
| - B authorizes C to retrieve the data available to B.
|
| - C then reshares, sells, distributes, or otherwise
| transmits information to D.
|
| F enabled A to share data with B, given explicit user
| consent. F enabled B to share data with C, given explicit
| user consent.
|
| If you don't want people to know things, don't put that
| information on the internet; and don't authorize friends
| to share information you haven't volunteered.
| politicalloss wrote:
| Did the losses and liabilities result from the actions of
| the plaintiff? Do we need multiple non-joined cases?
|
| BTW, the SOLID project believes that data portability is
| a privacy advantage of their competing, open source
| federated system.
|
| If you don't want people to know something, don't put it
| on the internet; regardless of TOS.
|
| We shouldn't expect or rely upon information asymmetry
| holding over time.
|
| Facebook certainly required users (who are not paying
| customers) to sign data sharing agreements.
|
| Facebook did not commit the crimes of Cambridge Analytica
| (Steve Bannon, Trump's campaign guy; Ted Cruz). Facebook
| was fined $5b. Cambridge Analytica went bankrupt and Nix
| is barred from serving on the board of any UK company for
| 7 years.
|
| Facebook's expenses related to Russian misinformation
| campaigns, Facebook's expenses related to the
| administration's denial of ongoing foreign information
| operations paid for by advertisers who don't want a spot
| next to sleaze.
| justapassenger wrote:
| So to solve that we need DRM user data, do platforms can
| control it beyond their properties? Cool.
| Rygian wrote:
| If "stupid" user A can tell Facebook to share user B's
| information with a third party, then I see Facebook evidently
| at fault.
|
| Only user B has the right to consent to such processing.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| to me the transcending point in all discussions about FB (or
| any company that peddles Ad-tech) is that they should not exist
| as a business in the first place. Targeted advertising as well
| as UE dark-patterns that lead to addiction and radicalization
| of vulnerable groups should be illegal. Problem solved.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > Stupid users agreed to that.
|
| This is on the level of "poor people should just stop being
| poor" or "she was raped because she didn't dress decently
| enough"
|
| On on side you have a mega corp doing all it can to harvest as
| much data as possible, backed by behavioural analysis, AB
| testing, and all kind of studies on how to trick people's brain
| into feeding the algorithm with more data points. On the other
| hand you have "stupid users"
|
| The role of governments, at least in Europe, is, in part and in
| theory, to protect "stupid" people from mega corp sharks and
| other predators
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > On on side you have a mega corp doing all it can to harvest
| as much data as possible, backed by behavioural analysis, AB
| testing, and all kind of studies on how to trick people's
| brain into feeding the algorithm with more data points. On
| the other hand you have "stupid users"
|
| This lawsuit is explicitly not about the big tech giant's
| (Facebook) data processing (which I agree is a problem).
|
| The lawsuit is about how Facebook should've somehow been able
| to predict the future malicious actions of a company and
| prevent users from sharing their data with them against their
| own will (again nobody's data was shared without consent -
| people explicitly opted to share their data - which includes
| basic info about their friends, which I'd argue is _their_
| data too - with Cambridge Analytica).
|
| If there's a "megacorp shark" here, it's Cambridge Analytica
| and not Facebook.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > again nobody's data was shared without consent - people
| explicitly opted to share their data - which includes basic
| info about their friends, which I'd argue is their data too
| - with Cambridge Analytica
|
| You frame this as if it was a logical train of thought but
| it isn't to me (and apparently I'm not the only one).
| You're not to decide what the UK courts determine to be
| acceptable or not and imho you're reasoning is rotten from
| the get go so any conclusions you draw from it are equally
| invalid. "consent" isn't a free pass, I can give you the
| explicit consent to kill me and it would still be illegal
| for you to do it in every country I know of.
|
| Facebook has a systemic issue with the way they harvest,
| handle, share and monetise their users data, this case is
| just a drop in the ocean of sketchy things they've done,
| I'm not going to cry for them when they finally get a slap
| on the wrist
| Nextgrid wrote:
| If we agree with your reasoning it would mean that simply
| getting a new phone would involve me calling/texting
| everyone in my contacts list to ask for their consent for
| me to enter their numbers on my new phone since I'm
| potentially sharing their details with a third-party.
|
| > Facebook has a systemic issue with the way they
| harvest, handle, share and monetise their users data,
| this case is just a drop in the ocean of sketchy things
| they've done
|
| How did Facebook benefit from this? Facebook got duped
| just like everyone else. CA did not disclose their
| intentions when they got access to the Facebook API
| because they wouldn't have got that access otherwise as
| their actions were against the FB API terms of use.
|
| There's a bit of a witch hunt going on about Facebook,
| and while I despise that company and want to see it gone
| too, this is just an outraged mob clutching at straws.
| They can't go after Cambridge Analytica nor the people
| behind it (and I guess can't be bothered to vote/lobby
| for a legislative change so that those people can be
| prosecuted) so they're venting their anger on the next
| best thing: Facebook, even though they're a neutral party
| in this case.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > If we agree with your reasoning it would mean that
| simply getting a new phone would involve me
| calling/texting everyone in my contacts list to ask for
| their consent for me to enter their numbers on my new
| phone since I'm potentially sharing their details with a
| third-party.
|
| But again, you're missing the forest for the tree. You
| discuss the symptoms while I discuss the root cause. A
| phone shouldn't let third party randomly siphon arbitrary
| data about you and your friends without making public the
| full scope of their project. A consent isn't consent if
| you're being tricked into giving it for nefarious use
| manux wrote:
| Yeah, this whole "people are stupid" argument is incredibly
| dismissive. Not surprising of tech people's giant ego.
|
| Do people really want their doctor to invest several hours a
| week understanding the latest shenanigans and dangers of
| technology? Or should we just let our doctors be good
| doctors? Replace "doctor" by any other non-tech profession
| you respect, and you get my point.
|
| This isn't even about protecting "stupid" people, it's about
| letting people be useful members of society even if they're
| not tech experts.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I absolutely think regulation should be in place to protect
| against people/companies acting maliciously (thus
| preventing a Cambridge Analytica from existing in the first
| place), and I guess the reason people were so trusting is
| because they do expect such regulations to exist.
|
| However, I disagree with modifying/removing a legitimate
| feature (API access) just because it _can_ be abused.
| Otherwise, why not go further and also ban knives (or go
| after supermarkets that sell them) to solve knife crime?
| manux wrote:
| > Otherwise, why not go further and also ban knives (or
| go after supermarkets that sell them) to solve knife
| crime?
|
| That sounds like a very slippery argument, but no, the
| way to solve knife crime is not to ban knifes, it's to
| understand and "fix" the reasons (systems) why people do
| knife crimes in the first place (e.g. poverty, poor
| mental health resources).
|
| In this case, we need to understand how the systems (e.g.
| the API) allowed for this to happen, and perhaps yes, get
| rid of it (or perhaps some other solution, I don't know,
| but beyond CA it seems that even a "legitimate" use of
| the API can easily cause harm).
| dkarp wrote:
| > Cambridge Analytica used the Facebook API to ask users to
| share data about them & their friends
|
| This may be true technically, but if it was not made clear to
| the users what they were sharing and what their data would be
| used for then the users cannot legitimately agree.
|
| Facebook, as platform owners, can force organisation to be
| clear about what will be disclosed and what for.
|
| This is one of the goals of European GDPR and personally I
| don't think it needs to hinder legitimate usage. It just forces
| you to consider why you're collecting data, have a legitimate
| reason and disclose it to the user. Without that, companies
| have been hoovering up any user data they can get their hands
| on. User data should be a liability, rather than an asset.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > if it was not made clear to the users what they were
| sharing
|
| The Facebook OAuth consent prompt is pretty clear.
|
| > what their data would be used for
|
| This is an issue with Cambridge Analytica, not Facebook.
| Similarly, if a seller on eBay asks you to wire them money
| and then scams you, why should the bank be liable?
|
| Furthermore, Cambridge Analytica's actions apparently broke
| the Facebook API terms of use. There's nothing Facebook
| could've done here unless they can predict the future and
| retroactively deny access to companies that they know will
| break the rules in the future.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| Before the Cambridge Analytica thing, everyone was saying that
| Facebook was evil because they were a walled garden. So they
| created an API, and now everyone is saying they're evil because
| they created an API. Go figure.
|
| There's even a Gaping Void cartoon memorializing the sentiment:
| http://vhirsch.com/blog/2011/10/06/walled-gardens/
| shuntress wrote:
| The API is criticized because (in addition to enabling
| malicious actions) it does nothing to increase the wall's
| permeability to users.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > The API is criticized because (in addition to enabling
| malicious actions) it does nothing to increase the wall's
| permeability to users.
|
| Now, sure. Less so in 2010 or whenever.
| coding123 wrote:
| Maybe they are just evil...?
| nvoid wrote:
| > I'm no Facebook fan
|
| I like how we have to preface our opinions with this now. I
| think if you're on HN it's a given at this point.
|
| I would agree with you that there are a lot of stupid people on
| the site and they will still find away to do something stupid.
| But I despise harsh regulation and I don't think that's
| necessarily the solution. However, when the stakes are so high
| (elections) I think there is something to be said for forcing
| Facebook to be accountable. Akin to a parent being responsible
| for a child, you shouldn't let them get into a situation where
| they can be that badly behaved.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| The stakes change nothing about who is actually responsible.
| If a terrorist steals your car and uses it for an attack does
| that mean it is right to hold you accountable because the
| matter is so serious?
|
| Facebook is not your parent. That logic, that others need to
| be "held accountable" and that voters are children who cannot
| be trusted to make up their own minds is far more dangerous
| to democracy than the Cambridge Analytica ratfucking.
| hshshs2 wrote:
| It's not that voters can't be trusted, they're simply
| outgunned. To keep up everyone would need a personal lawyer
| reading every TOS they encounter. It's insurmountable.
|
| Facebook has thousands of lawyers and engineers acting
| against your best interest when it comes to data privacy
| because they profit off of it. Very few people actually
| understand what they're giving up and that's by design.
| Hell there are lots of people on HN that don't seem to
| understand the extent of control facebook exercises over
| you and your friends' data, and I wouldn't be surprised if
| that extended to some of the people actually building this
| stuff.
| nvoid wrote:
| Sorry, should have made it clearer that Cambridge Analytica
| are the child in my analogy, but I think your point still
| stands.
|
| I don't think voters are children and I agree with you that
| that is dangerous thinking, but I do think that showing
| advertisements based off of data they didn't know they gave
| in order to change their vote is not the way to allow them
| to make their own decisions.
| leothecool wrote:
| Facebook processed data without the consent of the subject of
| the data, right? (The friends of the user who agreed)
| soulofmischief wrote:
| No, I am not stupid, and I did not agree for my friends to sell
| out my personal data to the lowest bidder. This comment is not
| in good faith.
| Deadsunrise wrote:
| Cambridge Analytica's app on Facebook had harvested the data of
| people who interacted with it - and that of friends who had not
| given consent.
|
| That was really messed up.
| wilsocr88 wrote:
| If Facebook can't maintain a business model without selling their
| well-trained and dopamine-addicted userbase like a commodity,
| then their business model does not deserve to be maintained.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Facebook did not "sell" anything in this case. Facebook is a
| neutral carrier that got duped like everyone else. A malicious
| company used Facebook's API to ask for access to people's data
| and certain data about their friends, and people stupidly said
| yes. Should we now fault Facebook for complying with their
| user's wishes?
| loeg wrote:
| Fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal (2018); not a new
| leak (which would be major news).
| bryan_w wrote:
| Also note that the CA events happened in 2014 and all the APIs
| have been fixed since 2015 (before the "scandal" came to light.
| mrits wrote:
| This submitter bmcn2020 spams this site with just enough bad
| articles to cover up all the other links to his own website. I
| don't understand why they allow that here.
| robbyking wrote:
| The HN Guidelines[1] say "It's ok to post your own stuff
| occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for
| curiosity." They may not be following the intent of the rule,
| but it looks like they are following the rule as it's written.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| shanemlk wrote:
| I'd just continually sue them for literally anything and
| everything, even if they didn't break the law. Fuck that
| zuckerburg cuck. Their apps are literal burning addiction
| dumpster fire garbage. I hope their offices get struck by a
| meteorite.
| twinge wrote:
| In what way is he a cuck?
| shanemlk wrote:
| It's a fucking slang term, Jesus Christ. It's a way of
| showing disrespect for someone who's clearly a loser on a
| temper tantrum. Maybe he does get tied up by his wife, I
| don't care, the point is that zuckerburg has caused more
| damage to the Earth than good, not sure why I have to defend
| myself here.
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