As a recent insider, this is one of those things where the outside perception doesn't match the inside at all.
Privacy is taken more seriously at Facebook than any other place I've ever worked. It's drilled into you from day one that we have systems in place to catch you accessing things you shouldn't and you will be immediately fired if you do.
You can make mistakes that bring the entire site down and cost the company millions and they won't fire you. If you try to bypass privacy controls on an ex-girlfriend's post, you're gone.
Yes, they hoover up a ton of personal data. But they guard it like the crown jewels. If you do want your data deleted, they'll delete it. I've worked on the systems responsible for this where we had to reason through what to do with things like offline backups.
I appreciate you making the point, but it sounds like the perception is correct, but the definitions don't match. Individual-human-level privacy controls are important, and it's good that they're in place, but equally important is the systemic use of all that hoovered data.
Sure, but I expect most people's primary threat model isn't that a rogue Facebook employee will access their data and use it to stalk them. It's that Facebook will sell their data to advertisers who will use it to better manipulate them, or to insurance companies who will raise their rates.
That’s another common misperception, that Facebook sells data. They don’t. They sell targeted advertising that uses that data. The advertiser API specifies descriptors for who should see the ads. There’s no facility for accessing private data.
Selling the data itself would be giving away a huge component of what differentiates their product from other advertising platforms. It would be like Coca Cola selling the recipe for Coca Cola.
That's true, but most users aren't going to understand or care about that distinction. And for the concern of targeted ads creepily following them everywhere, it doesn't matter.
I know there are lots of people here knowingly redefining the meaning of sell in this regard, but doing so is really harmful to the privacy cause since most companies do actually sell user data so we need that distinction.
Privacy is taken more seriously at Facebook than any other place I've ever worked. It's drilled into you from day one that we have systems in place to catch you accessing things you shouldn't and you will be immediately fired if you do.
You can make mistakes that bring the entire site down and cost the company millions and they won't fire you. If you try to bypass privacy controls on an ex-girlfriend's post, you're gone.
Yes, they hoover up a ton of personal data. But they guard it like the crown jewels. If you do want your data deleted, they'll delete it. I've worked on the systems responsible for this where we had to reason through what to do with things like offline backups.