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- monNom2
When I was a kid, the Stasis secret police in east Germany were held up as the ultimate example of a repressive state. They kept a detailed dossier on every citizen so they could target them precisely whenever they might want.
Today, we have the same thing, but instead of a government, we have large corporations like advertising platforms and credit agencies who aren't accountable to us at all. They hold our information, but we aren't asked to use it, nor allowed to see what they know about us. They own us, in a way.
Since the Berlin Wall fell, we've had 30 years of technological advancement and automation increasing the potential for harm from the sorts of things the Stasis did, and we use it all supposedly for targeting advertisments. I don't know about you, but the quality and targeting of ads I see is terrible, and doesn't appear targeted in the slightest. The claimed benefit doesn't appear to exist, and it is clear there is potential for serious abuse on a massive scale. Something needs to change to safeguard people from the negative consequences of these datasets.
Our medical information is privileged and protected. Our homes and property are considered sacred and not open to investigation without a court order. Why should the other private aspects of our lives be available to a random company? (and private should mean our connections and conversations, even when they take place through some platform on the internet).
I think we all deserve to be in control of our data, and to require affirmative consent to use it, or share it, even in an anonymized state. (deanonymizing data is trivially easy given a handful of data points). This is going to hurt some businesses, for certain. But the businesses it hurts are ugly businesses to begin with. They prey on people's ignorance and strip them of their agency.
This problem is only going to get worse. We ought to do something about it now before it becomes unfixable, or turns against us in a way we can't fight.
/rant
- It's not just about advertising. That's the immediate, obvious thin end of the wedge. it's what's built on those foundations that should concern us all.detritus
- Sorry, sounds like I thought you were ignorant of what I just said - I'm sure you know! I meant "in reaction to the common complaint against FB"detritus
- Totally. Advertising sounds so neutral, but the very same mechanism with malevolent intent could make for a scary weapon.monNom
- Agree and it also shows how ignorant the general public is with sharing all of this too. Why put EVERYTHING about yourself on social and then wonder when robotswhatthefunk
- connect the dots and steal your shit.whatthefunk
- instrmntl7
These Senate hearings really showcase how shockingly old all the people that run our country are.
- renderedred2
- I have developed an odd empathy for the guy. weird.Gnash
- compared to ignorant politicians asking him dumb questions he's actually ok for me too.renderedred
- secondly, data was harvested through a 3rd party app and misused by CA. he's basically innocent in this case specifically as far as i understand...renderedred
- the person that needs to be questioned very closely is steve bannon...renderedred
- Oh, poor wee Zuck. Fuck him and his fucking shithouse operation.face_melter
- Whoever made this doesnt know how to program.err
- whatthefunk3
- hahaprophetone
- lol
all those dumb old expired fuckers questions were hilariousGuyFawkes
- chukkaphob5
- is that his butler being activated in the background?cannonball1978
- #mechazuckprophetone
- lol @cannon********
- lol @cannonKrassy
- monopoly man in the backCGN
- utopian2
- I empathize with my homie Mark. This could be in the Client of the Day thread.********
- I empathize with my homie Mark. This could be in the Client of the Day thread.
- neverscared0
- Didn't linkedin in track you browsing after you visited linkedin?shapesalad
- i don´t know..can u find out? wouldn´t suprise me though.neverscared
- It does if you remain logged in to LinkedIn when you leave. Facebook, Google etc. all does the same.ETM
- mg331
Dick Durbin's portion really bothered me.
He basically tried to equate Zuckerberg’s reluctance to say what hotel he stayed at, and who he sent messages to this week, with information Facebook has available to them based on what users do. These are not comparable. A human being choosing not to divulge certain info to other human beings to protect their privacy isn’t the same as a website tracking or not tracking user actions.
Durbin should have asked if Zuckerberg would be mad that the hotel he stayed at either a) published that Zuckerberg stayed there that night, or b) was hacked because of poor network security and a list of guests, including Zuckerberg was made public.
That would have gotten to the notion of presumably private information being misused.
Durbin was trying to say “okay so you don’t want to give away that info [to us, to people watching,]... can you understand why people are mad about how their info was used on FB?”
It’s so astronomically incomparable because:
A) people agree to terms and conditions to use the site regardless of whether or not they read them).
B ) there’s an expectation that your data is used, but kept private within that network or system, and kept secure there.
C) Any games, apps, candy crushes, quizzes, etc. come with confirmations of what data they will access within your account. You must agree to proceed. These apps also have their own terms and conditions (that nobody reads, but agrees to anyways.)The news that FB looks at your private message isn’t a surprise at all. That’s no different than any email provider scanning your messages to gather data and use it to shape the ads you’re served. Nobody has freaked out about that fact in years. It’s so no different than a website being able to track your activity elsewhere on the web (FB does this) because ad networks are built around tracking your behavior on any site they’re connected to. There’s hundreds of millions of dollars if not billions at play in that alone.
None of this really bothers me at all to be completely honest. I just want to know if my data was used by Cambridge Analytica, how quickly did they decide I wasn’t worthy of targeted Trump campaign propaganda simply because my account is full of decidedly and excessive anti-Trump posts. I just want to know how quickly I was deemed to be a lost cause!
- yupmonospaced
- you could see zucks delight as he realised it was a really crap analogy that was going nowhere.kingsteven
- DRIFTMONKEY14
- ‘...that doesn't look like anything to me senatorrrrrrrrrr’prophetone
- OMG! hahaha. So good!Krassy
- Wow the internet wins againRamanisky2
- ahhaahhahaOBBTKN
- lolGuyFawkes
- Jesus that's AMAZINGDaveO
- Impressivestoplying
- shapesalad0
Congress Woman.
- shapesalad1
All these hearings have done is expose how little the Senators understand about how the web works.
And how they are 100% politicians - with their baited questions and ability to talk circles around things.
- sted2
@shapesalad here u go :D
- shapesalad0
- He should have dressed like that for the hearing.shapesalad
- I dunno, the human costume was pretty convincing.DRIFTMONKEY
- shapesalad0
https://stickershop.line-scdn.ne…
Those looking for a much more pleasant messaging app / social media kinda thing, I highly recommend Line:
https://stickershop.line-scdn.ne…
Haven't a clue about it's privacy/data stuff, but not seen an ad on their platform or had any issues.
Branding is good, if you're ever in Asia you'll see their product stores / shops in malls and like everywhere. And it's not unobjectionable at all. UI excellent. Mac app and iPhone/andriod app means all bases covered.
https://stickershop.line-scdn.ne…
Less about posting crap, more about chatting to friends. And less about 100's of friends, more keeping up with your core base. The free call stuff is great too.
https://stickershop.line-scdn.ne…
Been using Line for 5+ years. Took one look at WhatsApp, couldn't get past the dog ugly typography/ui/colours.
Line stickers are awesome, and is where they get most revenue rather than advertising:
https://store.line.me/stickersho…
- seem the inline images didn't work...shapesalad
- Line is worth it just for Panpaka Pants alone...shapesalad
- Gardener1
FB disabled my account today for posting
this birthday greeting on a friends page, oops!
seems a bit strict
- have I lost it for good or do they do forgiveness?Gardener
- How dare you communicate with your friends how you wish.detritus
- I'm bad to the bone meGardener
- who fucking cares? facebook can go suck a dickhans_glib
- You pissed off a chubby chick with purple hair that has a master's degree in women's studies from Berkeley who works at Google...robotron3k
- ... that there is the deeply ingrained, bitter and angry kind of contempt for females that's born from fear and a misogynistic insecurity of the highest ordermonospaced
- And yes, that is strict.monospaced
- sted0
AAAAAA AAAAAAA AAAAA AAAAAAAAAH AHAHAHHAa
AAHGHAHAHAHAHASDHASHHS HHAHAHAHA
Zuckerberg, buddy here is your dead sentence:"In the last 6 months we've learned that Facebook had few controls in place to control the collection and use of user data by third parties. Now we learn that the largest technology company in Russia, whose executives boast close ties to Vladimir Putin, had potentially hundreds of apps integrated with Facebook, collecting user data. If this is accurate, we need to determine what user information was shared with mail.ru and what may have been done with the captured data."
- note that mail.ru had a data breach 6 months before the elections.sted
- They certainly are walking a precarious line....but I fear their PR and lobbying arms are powerful enough to buy anything, anyone, and people are so lazyformed
- masses can move the boundaries of controlled environments. on the internet this happens by moving away from the platform what caused previous constraints.sted
- the real issue here is Hillary Clinton and her deleted emailsmonospaced
- that data was - in theory - used to match voter registration data, and registered voters were wiped from logs. this is how elections are breached.kona
- not by changing votes by the thousands or millions, but by unregistering voters so that they can't vote. people are already realizing on twitter they're nokona
- longer registered to vote.kona
