Long-overdue legislation and increased activism, including activism by the tech community, and ongoing informing of consumers about dangers of sharing their data, are some of the possible mitigation steps.
A simple first step: send an article on digital privacy, that you like, to your network and invite them to get back to you with questions they have. A possible start: EFF have an excellent privacy hub https://www.eff.org/issues/privacy
I have taken a case study with my teen about people loosing careers after facebook flame-wars; and being hauled in by police on face-recognition and geolocation data. We have a discussion at least once a month about the cyber-dystopia we find ourselves in.
As I posted before, I'll just leave this here:
1. "It turns out that Facebook also buys data about your offline purchases. The next time you pay for a burrito with your credit card, Facebook will learn about this transaction and match this credit card number with the one you added in Messenger.
In other words, Messenger is a great Trojan horse designed to learn everything about you."
2. "Google now knows when its users go to the store and buy stuff.
Google has begun using billions of credit-card transaction records to prove that its online ads are prompting people to make purchases – even when they happen offline in brick-and-mortar stores [...] Privacy advocates said few people understand that their purchases are being analyzed in this way"
You're doing a great thing for your teen. Have you ever considered hosting a cryptoparty[1]? I just learned about these recently and found out the makerspace in my city used to do one every third thursday, but stopped sometime a few years ago. I've been thinking about getting in touch with whoever used to host it to see about starting it up again
Pretty clear at this point that the US govt is willing to do nothing to claw back big tech. Its going to be things like cryptocurrency, encrypted and decentralized messengers and social networks, etc, that pave the way to getting freedom back. Being loud about using these things especially with younger folks is going to be crucial.
That's what cryptoparties are for though, it's kind of like a workshop for technical and non-technical people to learn how to use those tools with hands-on examples
At the current state of events, in-life meetings are low on my priority list, but this would be fun to do at some point in the future.
I have not seen that resource before, thank you for sharing, it appears to be a great starting point!
Off topic, but I thought I should share this joke someone sent me:
CALLER:
Is this Pizza Delight?
GOOGLE:
No sir, it's Google Pizza.
CALLER:
I must have dialed a wrong number. Sorry.
GOOGLE:
No sir, Google bought over Pizza Delight last month.
CALLER:
OK. I would like to order a pizza.
GOOGLE:
Do you want your usual, Sir?
CALLER:
My usual. Do you know me?
GOOGLE:
According to your caller ID data sheet, the last ten times you called, you have ordered an extra-large pizza with three cheeses, sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms and meat-balls on a thick crust.
CALLER:
OK! That's what I want ...
GOOGLE:
May I suggest that this time you order a vegan Pizza with ricotta, arugula, sun-dried tomatoes and olives on a whole wheat gluten-free thin crust?
CALLER:
Why a Vegan Pizza? I detest vegetables.
GOOGLE:
Your Cholesterol levels are not good, Sir.
CALLER:
How the hell do you know?
GOOGLE:
Well Sir, we cross-referenced your Mobile phone number with your medical records. We have with us, the result of your blood tests for the last seven years.
CALLER:
Okay, but I do not want your rotten vegetable pizza! I already take medication regularly, for my cholesterol.
GOOGLE:
Excuse me sir, but you have not taken your medication regularly. According to our database, you purchased one box of 30 cholesterol tablets only once in the recent past, at Drug RX Network, 4 months ago.
CALLER:
I bought more medication from another drugstore.
GOOGLE:
That doesn't show on your credit card statement, Sir.
CALLER:
I paid in cash.
GOOGLE:
But you did not withdraw enough cash, according to your bank statements.
CALLER:
I have other sources of cash.
GOOGLE:
That doesn't show in your last Tax Return, unless you bought the Tablets using an undeclared income source, which is against the law.
CALLER:
WHAT THE HELL!!
GOOGLE:
I'm sorry, sir, we use such information, only with the sole intention of helping you.
CALLER:
Enough already !! I'm sick and tired of Google, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and all the others.
I'm going to a remote island without any Internet, Netflix, Cable TV, where there is no Cell phone service and no Big Brother to watch me or spy on me.
GOOGLE:
I understand Sir, but you need to renew your passport first. It expired six weeks ago...
I'm assuming you're in the US; in Europe, how to talk to people who are not "privacy-inclined", and who think GDPR was the silver bullet that automagically stopped all privacy abuse by each and every company?
I feel I'm fighting a losing battle where everyone is Winston Smith, and [spoiler]loves Big Brother[/spoiler]
I think it depends on who you are talking to... you know them better than me.
Sometimes leaving out the big concerns and bringing up the concept of the "digital trace" may be a good start, bringing up relevant cases.
Even if they think and say "the idiots deserved it, I have nothing to hide", the seed still gets planted.
A neighbor I have that supported surveillance and likes to share his hunting images was surprised when I showed him that his images could be traced back to his home address, which he absolutely did not want. He started asking for help with digital privacy issues after that and has even contacted his political representative about his concerns. He has shared this new-gained knowledge in his circuit, and so it spreads...
Obsolecense assumes that something has become outdated. If you did something morally reprehensible, then it doesn't become outdated unless you apologize and promise that you'll never do it again, or that you in the least admit that you made a mistake. I do not know if Facebook did that before ending their contract. Either way people and companies who misuse trust like that still deserve criticism. That's the only way we can make sure that things change for the better.
Simple data of "users of the facebook app on your devices spent ~1 hour per day on the app" sounds like legitimate data to share to decide how much facebook should pay for the privilege of being preinstalled.
I can see how the companies involved need to see the data to audit it.
> Facebook said all the data collected remained on users' phones not servers.
> A Huawei spokesperson said: "Like all leading smartphone providers, Huawei has worked with Facebook to make Facebook's services more convenient for users. Huawei has never collected or stored any Facebook user data."
Sure, it has about as much relation to the whole issue like randomly replacing subjects in sentences with other organizations has.
I mean if CCP is same as Huawei, Trumps government has to be the same as Facebook and might as well find a way to equate Ghanas government with something if we're being all xenophobic. Maybe something about the government being criminals because it's mostly people of color?
It's pretty naive to think this is the extent of it. They didn't make a billion dollars by sending people information about how much time you spent on the app. They analyse your chats and posts to see what kinds of things you're interested in so they can build a sort of 'person data structure' full of data points unique to you that they can package up and sell to advertisers.
This is just my best guess anyway, based on what I've seen elsewhere in the industry. It's safe to assume Facebook is hoarding any data about you they can legally get their hands on, including contact info, speech info, facial info, information of people who don't even use Facebook.. There's almost no laws for this industry yet, you can collect anything.
Only on Hacker News could an out of date 2 year old article about Facebook be the no.1. story.
Less popular articles posted around the same time include Intel's announcement of a new processor, a new prototype operating system, and a plan to create a vaccine against AIDS.
Wasn't the reported reason for the Tik Tok ban that we don't want them to have our data? Yet an American company with some of the most data on American citizens was already info with China.
So this begs the question, what is the real reason for the Tik Tok ban?
This is unbelievably concerning because Facebook is pre-installed on many phones now, and Facebook's apps send your out-of-app SMS messages to Facebook. This is part of the reason I quit the app; Literally gathering up my texts and keeping them on their servers without my knowledge or direct consent is an overwhelmingly huge violation of privacy. This is why I recommend everyone download a copy of their Facebook data. If you still have an account, you shouldn't.
the data is already up there, everywhere... instead of deleting facebook account just be a regular joe; never post personal stuff, just memes or scientific things, news
this way wherever they data mine your data it will only return crap
This is not enough in my opinion: even if you are not sharing anything important, the fact that you are playing a role in a social network means you are pushing your friends into sharing more data.
So, as all chinese companies have communist party members in their board of directors, this is effectively like making your personal profile go and be shared to "the KGB". Is the "a new chinese KGB" but you get the idea. Change my mind.
The finger on top of the facebookcide button feels heavier for some reason...
Facebook is one of these companies that are so disconnected with their user base they cannot even comprehend why people are upset.
The best part about facebook is that they think they're so freaking good, lecturing others about how to speak and act while themselves doing the opposite.
Corporate double speak, the main thing I hate about woke culture.
Corporations adhering to 'woke' politics / ethics is a result of this overprotectedness that the most recent generation was subjected to. Jonathan Haidt has a lot of great work in this area. He mentions how things started to shift in earnest around 2015, and I gotta tell you, having left college at 2013, I definitely agree. I started seeing rumblings of it around that time. Eventually those people leave university and go get jobs at these corporations.
The other part, and I don't know how dramatic it is, is that a lot of corporations are so terrified of losing a single nickel, that they'll support whatever trend of the moment they need to, to protect their profits.
And it seems many of those students have ended up in the social media departments of those large corporations, because they "understand" social media "better than older people".
Meanwhile some senior managers must be asking themselves whether they'd be better off having no Twitter presence at all.
> a lot of corporations are so terrified of losing a single nickel, that they'll support whatever trend of the moment they need to, to protect their profits.
This speculation doesn't really add up considering the historic behavior of corporations in context of the feelings of their employees, or threats to their bottom line because of employees.
One rule of thumb for detecting agency (if any) behind any major social shift is to review corporate cultural products that introduce and promote the social change to a wider audiance. The key question to answer is this: Were they leading or lagging indicators?
If you first encounter such shifts in advertising, TV, movies, and print, and then see gradual adoption, rest assured that it is not a 'bottom-up' phenomena.
> This speculation doesn't really add up considering the historic behavior of corporations in context of the feelings of their employees, or threats to their bottom line because of employees.
On the contrary, this reinforces the idea. Big companies fuck their employees from time to time not because they are meanies, but because they think they will make money that way. If you offered all the companies a Faustian agreement of triplicating their earning but they have to support racism (with no other consequences) they will do it in a heartbeat.That's why so irritating the magnificient coup they've made in the last 5-10 years to put themselves at the forefront of "social issues", if they can control the discourse there is less chance that people will question all the bad stuff they do.
I completely disagree, I am ~30 and I believe my generation strongly dislikes woke culture and people younger than me hates it with all their hearts, except for a rare few that is into it.
The main pushers of woke culture, imo, is my parents generation and generally people older than 40. My generation cares a lot more about facts than the boomer generation which cares a lot more about feelings.
That is why when selling to my generation you always want to be upfront with facts and pricing and when selling to older people you want to paint how the product or service are gonna make their lives better and much more about the emotions.
My generation is used to being spammed by information since we were small, my parents weren't and are much more susceptible to bullshit.
> my generation strongly dislikes woke culture and people younger than me hates it with all their hearts, except for a rare few that is into it.
My nephew has a totally different take on this... he's graduating from UT Austin, and I know that's a very liberal campus, but he's also persona non grata, being a 22 year old straight white male who got his Dad's 9/11 G.I. Bill and grew up in thoroughly middle class / lower upper middle class areas for his entire life.
He had a bit of mini-breakdown when he and his girlfriend came to spend a weekend with me in Fort Worth around Christmastime. The constant barrage of "white men" being the source of the world's problems, and "recognize / check your privilege" when he would have discussions in classes over the past four years had really worn on him.
As someone whose time at UT Austin overlapped your nephew's and who has opportunity to work on campus with UT students regularly, my experience is nothing like his.
Being a middle/upper class straight white male does not make you a persona non grata. On the Contrary, due to the automatic admission requirements the most common person you'll meet on campus is an upper/middle class person from a Houston suburb.
I've never encountered the "white men being the source of the world's problem" thing in person at any point, only in characterizations online and in some people blaming some perceived slight or disadvantage on it. I even took a wide range of the "softer" liberal arts courses to supplement my CS education.
I also disagree with UT Austin being a particularly liberal campus beyond a typical college campus. Austin itself is plenty liberal compared to the average city in Texas but again, due to the automatic admission requirements, UT is really a fairly average distribution of upper/middle class people throughout Texas.
I've also had more professors try to sell me on the ministry of Jesus (3, insistently) than on any sort of leftist politics (1, in my Eastern Philosophy course) and had one professor that moved to UT Austin after being ejected from his prior university for in his words "being too conservative".
Of course, it wears on me too and while I have constantly heard the same through my life it never broke me down but rather did the opposite. However I think this may be an age thing. I am just too old to experience the extreme wokeness that is going on many campuses around the world right now. But also, I think european campuses are much less woke than american ones.
I am so very glad I am not a student in america right now.
It is precisely this that mass-produces the sort of angry young white man that attacked DC. People thought I was being too dramatic when I had been saying this for the past four angry years (for everyone): Stop frivolously accusing young white men of being "racists," and being "Nazis." Don't use those words to beat people over the head with it. The political mindset that enables the use of those words as blunt weapons against those we hate is resentment-based and vengeance is its goal.
The use of these terms as bludgeons in a lot of these youth cultures combined with a culture that makes young men feel increasingly isolated with its habitual treatment of them that is at best arid and at worst psychologically abusive. "They'll be alright," everyone reasons. "They have everything given to them by default." By whom?
In my guesstimation, it amounts to gaslighting. Young angry white men feel deprived by society of anything to grasp, or to believe in, or to look forward to, or to work toward. Then they're told that, even though they were among the first generation that was wholly ready to forget about race and ignore it as a social factor... they were told, oh no, you're always racist. In fact, irony of ironies, you're racist by blood and birth. How sustainable is such a social environment before legions of terrified young men start picking up the label that has been thrown at their feet and wearing it as a badge of honor because it's the only possible identity they have left? "Fine, I'll give them something to treat like shit."
Plus, those are not the sorts of words (racist and Nazi) we should risk over-using and numbing people to... We kinda want them to keep their sting. So, let's not morph them into a weapon to justify treating our fellow humans poorly. I think doing that might actually mass-produce neo-Nazis.
Facebook is absolutely not disconnected from their userbase - their product is great at addressing their user's needs.
There are many problems with Facebook, including being disconnected with the law/regulations, ethics and morals, but being disconnected from their userbase is not that.
Regarding "wokeness", this is not specific to Facebook per-se and is commonplace in the startup/tech world where the majority of companies make their revenue from intangible things such as "growth and engagement" which bad PR (or just a loud minority) would adversely affect. Wokeness is not usually a thing in companies which have a competitive edge and a real product people buy because their revenue isn't entirely dependent on public opinion and their competitive edge means it's hard/impossible to replace their product with a competitor's (assuming there are competitors even).
I think what Facebook is very good at is developing features and app elements that Increase User Engagement(TM). Which is some thin PR language on top of the truth: Facebook develops their apps to maximize user addiction and subsequently enact a lot of de-facto peer pressure to constantly expand their install base without them even having to try. Built-in word of mouth plus peer-pressure.
Facebook conditions their userbase to need the app in their life, whether because your pictures are all there or because your family is on it, and beyond that it doesn't really matter if they listen to their base. They've got them already.
Maybe the userbase thinks facebook addresses their users' "needs" (strong word for it), but that's more of a commentary on FB's propaganda team and black-hat UX than anything else.
Unless said technologies are for stealing user data, what would be the point?
At the risk of angering Godwin, did post-WW2 Germany tear down the incredibly useful "Autobahn" highway system that the Nazi party built during their reign?
A simple first step: send an article on digital privacy, that you like, to your network and invite them to get back to you with questions they have. A possible start: EFF have an excellent privacy hub https://www.eff.org/issues/privacy
I have taken a case study with my teen about people loosing careers after facebook flame-wars; and being hauled in by police on face-recognition and geolocation data. We have a discussion at least once a month about the cyber-dystopia we find ourselves in.
As I posted before, I'll just leave this here:
1. "It turns out that Facebook also buys data about your offline purchases. The next time you pay for a burrito with your credit card, Facebook will learn about this transaction and match this credit card number with the one you added in Messenger.
In other words, Messenger is a great Trojan horse designed to learn everything about you."
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/23/facebook-knows-literally-e... From 2018!
2. "Google now knows when its users go to the store and buy stuff.
Google has begun using billions of credit-card transaction records to prove that its online ads are prompting people to make purchases – even when they happen offline in brick-and-mortar stores [...] Privacy advocates said few people understand that their purchases are being analyzed in this way"
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/05/23... From 2017!
Consumer data is the gold the consumer appears to be giving away, unwittingly or carelessly, regardless of the regime or geographic location.