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FB scandals

Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 9:54 pm
by ericbarbour
Just had to post this because it's hilarious:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180 ... data.shtml
As for the claims that this is just the same old Facebook model of selling everyone's data... that was not true and still is not accurate. Facebook doesn't sell your data. It sells access to its users via the data it has on you. That may not seem different, but it is different. But the lines do seem to get a bit blurry, as it appears that Cambridge Analytica, via its partnership with the professor Dr. Aleksander Kogan (who apparently briefly changed his name to -- I kid you not -- Dr. Spectre) and his "Global Science Research," basically paid people via Amazon's Mechanical Turk to do a "personality assessment" on Facebook that, as part of the process, exposed information about their entire social graph, which GSR apparently hoovered up and passed along to Cambridge Analytica........

But, regardless of where you come down on all of this, Facebook threatening defamation against the Guardian for calling this a data breach is ludicrous and Facebook should be ashamed and apologize. Even as it clearly disagrees with how the Guardian characterized much of the story, that's no excuse to whip out defamation threats. Not only is it incredibly stupid from a Facebook PR perspective (and makes the company look like a giant bully), it suggests that the company still has absolutely no fucking clue how to communicate with the press and the public about how its own platform works.

This is like a bad Ian Fleming novel.

The Zucc is no different from any other "web billionaire"--no one is permitted to criticize him or his "business partners".

Re: FB scandals

Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2018 5:40 am
by ericbarbour
This is stupid--it's all SOP for political parties all over the world, illegal or not.
https://www.channel4.com/news/cambridge ... estigation

More "interesting" is that Mr. Zucc-ie-poo has been hiding from the media and his own employees.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/busi ... ation.html
So far, most of the social network’s top executives have been silent. Mr. Zuckerberg, its founder, and Sheryl Sandberg, his top deputy, have not made any public statements in recent days. The pair did not appear at an employee meeting on Tuesday in Menlo Park, Calif., where the company is based.


http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-43481330

And guess who's been selling his Facebook stock, just as it's been tanking?
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/20/zuckerb ... iders.html

Re: FB scandals

Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2018 5:50 pm
by ericbarbour
Welcome to Zucktown. Where Everything Is Just Zucky.
The company has not warmed to these names. “I owe my soul to the company store,” Tennessee Ernie Ford sang. But Facebook’s ambitions are now confronting a more urgent problem: an escalating crisis over the company’s power to sway elections, its casual approach to data privacy and its susceptibility to Russian manipulation. If Facebook’s image is permanently sullied by the furor over Cambridge Analytica, the data firm hired by President Trump’s 2016 election campaign, Zucktown will falter before it is finished.

The social media colossus is not the only Big Tech company in the complicated position of dressing up its expansion as a gift to its neighbors.

A few miles down the 101 highway, another new civic-corporate partnership is underway in the city of Mountain View. Google is promising to place the public “in the very heart of Google’s vibrant community.”

The search company plans a 600,000-square-foot office building with a roof that melts up into soft peaks, kind of like a meringue. It will have stores, cafes, gardens and even a space for theatrical performances, as well as a place for consumers to test-drive new Google technology.

Might as well be mining coal or making auto parts. Corporations and their arrogant leaders have not changed at all in the past century: they must still dominate markets, destroy competition, and treat their employees like slaves.

Re: FB scandals

Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2018 10:45 pm
by ericbarbour
maybe we should start a mock-the-Zucc forum instead?

Mark Zuckerberg Can’t Be Bothered
Mark Zuckerberg Fails to Apologize

Re: FB scandals

Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2018 3:49 am
by The End
ericbarbour wrote:Welcome to Zucktown. Where Everything Is Just Zucky.
The company has not warmed to these names. “I owe my soul to the company store,” Tennessee Ernie Ford sang. But Facebook’s ambitions are now confronting a more urgent problem: an escalating crisis over the company’s power to sway elections, its casual approach to data privacy and its susceptibility to Russian manipulation. If Facebook’s image is permanently sullied by the furor over Cambridge Analytica, the data firm hired by President Trump’s 2016 election campaign, Zucktown will falter before it is finished.

The social media colossus is not the only Big Tech company in the complicated position of dressing up its expansion as a gift to its neighbors.

A few miles down the 101 highway, another new civic-corporate partnership is underway in the city of Mountain View. Google is promising to place the public “in the very heart of Google’s vibrant community.”

The search company plans a 600,000-square-foot office building with a roof that melts up into soft peaks, kind of like a meringue. It will have stores, cafes, gardens and even a space for theatrical performances, as well as a place for consumers to test-drive new Google technology.

Might as well be mining coal or making auto parts. Corporations and their arrogant leaders have not changed at all in the past century: they must still dominate markets, destroy competition, and treat their employees like slaves.


I highly recommend "Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City" by Greg Grandin. It's the history of Henry Ford's attempt at making a rubber plantation/social utopia in Brazil from the 1920s to the 1940s. It was a massive failure as both a business and a social experiment. Whenever someone talks about creating that "City on the Hill" or any kind of social utopia, I think of Fordlandia. Zucktown sounds just like it. Henry Ford was a nut with his "Sociological Department" at Ford Motor Company controlling the lives of his employees and employing brutal thugs to keep down any dissent. I guess we haven't learned anything from history?

Re: FB scandals

Posted: Wed May 30, 2018 9:16 pm
by ericbarbour
Ha ha ha. Facebook just dropped to #4 on the Alexa topsites list. Below Reddit ha ha.

topsites053018.jpg
topsites053018.jpg (45.28 KiB) Viewed 3932 times


And it's being bragged up and upvoted on Reddit's front page.
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/com ... t_popular/
"Reddit is strangers amusing me. Facebook is people I know pissing me off."

Re: FB scandals

Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2018 8:37 am
by ericbarbour
Haven't updated this thread in a while, but there has been plenty of Facebook news.

This NY Times story caused a real stir. Their head of security told them they had a problem with Russian manipulation, and his "reward" was verbal abuse from Sheryl Sandberg (a huge Hillary fan).
“You threw us under the bus!” she yelled at Mr. Stamos, according to people who were present.
Inevitably the Zuck got angry that the Times was taking a poke at him and his "infallible team of geniuses".
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/tech ... ule=inline

Remember Zuck and Sandberg in front of a committee a few months ago? oops:
In at least one instance, the company also relied on Mr. Schumer, the New York senator and Senate Democratic leader. He has long worked to advance Silicon Valley’s interests on issues such as commercial drone regulations and patent reform. During the 2016 election cycle, he raised more money from Facebook employees than any other member of Congress, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Mr. Schumer also has a personal connection to Facebook: His daughter Alison joined the firm out of college and is now a marketing manager in Facebook’s New York office, according to her LinkedIn profile.


Followed by this interview with Stamos:
https://slate.com/technology/2018/11/wh ... story.html
I do think we need more regulation. When you look at regulation, one of the other problems here too is that people are smashing both of the platforms together into one, but they’re also not teasing out the fact that any one tech platform actually has four or five different components that are of different interest from a disinformation perspective.


"Does Facebook need to be regulated?"
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/after ... -regulated

Did I or did I not say, repeatedly, that regulation and censorship of the Internet was probably inevitable?