Cambridge Analytica The Rohingya Genocide Suppressing Palestinian content during a genocide Damage to teenage (and adult) mental health
Anyway, I mention this because some friends are building a social media alternative to Instagram: https://upscrolled.com, aiming to be pro-user, pro-ethics, and designed for people, not just to make money.
These companies are for the most part effectively outside of the law. The only time they feel pressure is when they can lose market share, and there's risk of their platform being blocked in a jurisdiction. That's it.
Stuff like this could easily make them pay multi-billion dollar fines, stuff that affects more users maybe even in the trillion range. When government workers come pick up servers, chairs and projectors from company buildings to sell at an auction, because there is not enough liquid value in the company to pay the fines, they (well, the others) would reconsider quite fast and stop with the illegal activities.
I think Mark Zuckerberg is acutely aware of the political power he holds and has been using this immense power at least for the last decade. But since Facebook is a US company and the US government is not interested in touching Faceebok, I doubt anyone will see what Zuckerberg and Facebook are up to. The US would have to put Lina Khan back in at the FTC, or put her high up in the Department of Justice to split Facebook into pieces. I guess the other hope is that states' attorneys' general when an anti-monopoly lawsuit.
Might also be worth trying to force them to display a banner on every page of the site "you're on facebook, you have no privacy here", like those warnings on cigarette boxes. These might not work though, people would just see and ignore them, just like smokers ignore warnings about cigarettes.
You have it wrong in the worst way. They are wholly inside the law because they have enough power to influence the people and systems that get to use discretion to determine what is and isn't inside the law. No amount of screeching about how laws ought to be enforced will affect them because they are tautologically legal, so long as they can afford to be.
I know people that don't see anything wrong with Meta so they keep using it. And that's fine! Your actions seem to align with your stated values.
I get human fallibility. I've been human for awhile now, and wow, have I made some mistakes and miscalculations.
What really puts a bee in my bonnet though is how dogmatic some of these people are about their own beliefs and their judgement of other people.
I love people, I really do. But what weird, inconsistent creatures we are.
I, too, have vices she tolerates so I don't push as hard as I otherwise would have, but I would argue it is not inconsistency. It is a question of what level of compromise is acceptable.
They care as much as people who claim to care about animals but still eat them, people who claim to love their wives and still beat/cheat them. Your actions are the sole embodiment of your beliefs
Of course Facebook's JS won't add itself to websites, so half of the blame goes to webmasters willingly sending malware to browsers.
https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/cate...
And then meta accessed it. So unless you put restrictions on data, meta is going to access it. Don't you think it should be the other way around? Meta to ask for permission? Then we wouldn't have this sort of thing.
If AWS wanted to eavesdrop and/or record conversations of some random B2C app user, for sure they would need to ask for permission.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/55370837/1/frasco-v-flo...
> [...] users, regularly answered highly intimate questions. These ranged from the timing and comfort level of menstrual cycles, through to mood swings and preferred birth control methods, and their level of satisfaction with their sex life and romantic relationships. The app even asked when users had engaged in sexual activity and whether they were trying to get pregnant.
> [...] 150 million people were using the app, according to court documents. Flo had promised them that they could trust it.
> Flo Health shared that intimate data with companies including Facebook and Google, along with mobile marketing firm AppsFlyer, and Yahoo!-owned mobile analytics platform Flurry. Whenever someone opened the app, it would be logged. Every interaction inside the app was also logged, and this data was shared.
> "[...] the terms of service governing Flo Health’s agreement with these third parties allowed them to use the data for their own purposes, completely unrelated to services provided in connection with the App,”
Bashing on Facebook/Meta might give a quick dopamine hit, but they really aren't special here. The victims' data was routinely sold, en mass, per de facto industry practices. Victims should assume that hundreds of orgs, all over the world, now have copies of it. Ditto any government or criminal groups which thought it could be useful. :(
When the Western app says they don’t sell or give out private information, you can be suspicious but still somewhat trustful. When a dictator-ruled country’s app does so, you can be certain every character you type in there is logged and processed by the government.
[1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/55370837/1/frasco-v-flo...
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