It's interesting how we call Facebook's data either public or private depending on how we want to regulate it. If we're worried about user data privacy, it's private data that CA stole. If we're worried about racial tensions in Sri Lanka its a public forum that needs to be moderated.
Not that it's wrong, but Facebook seems to exist in this grey zone of semi-private content which gives it both sorts of challenges and none of the usual defences.
Facebook users expected a certain level of privacy. They didn’t realize quiz apps would harvest a huge amount of data about their profiles. There is also the question of what kind of data they gleaned based on being friends with people who installed said apps.
Twitter is 100% public like a website and the expectation isn’t the same. When you friend or unfriend someone on FB you are somewhat implying who you give access to your feed.
>> They didn’t realize quiz apps would harvest a huge amount of data about their profiles.
> They would've known, had they read the dialog they had to accept to access their much desired quiz.
You do remember Facebook would share your friends' data with the quiz along with yours? Your friends never got a vague click-thru warning when you accessed your "much desired quiz."
So now average users are expected to be able to interpret adversarial-y written EULAs? If Joe Nobody should be able to disentangle a web of lawyer jingo and ass covering from what may very well be a team of lawyers with combined decades of experience, then why do we even have lawyers in the world?
>If you can't read and understand that I'm sure you can collect disability checks from the government
When it comes to computers there is a WIDE divide between can't read and doesn't read. I'm sure nearly every person in tech has at some point in their life had an encounter with a non-technical user who, given an error message that clearly states the problem, has selective blindness and doesn't read the error message but rather just clicks 'okay' and can't figure out what the problem was. They could read the error message but have effectively been trained not to.
Similarly facebook users could read that message detailing how their privacy is about to be violated, but have probably been trained not to care.
I'm of the opinion that this is definitely something that has occurred and it has been done very, very deliberately. The media and ad industry and companies like fb work(ed) very hard to encourage people that:
* they should give up privacy in return for (carefully metered out dopamine hits) shiny things.
* they should give up more data and privacy because they've given up x much already
* They've given up all this stuff, fb/et etc already knows everything so they don't have any privacy so why bother protecting stuff _now_
* They gave up all this stuff and look, nothing bad has happened, so if you want privacy, you must be hiding something/a terrorist/a paedophile/etc.
And thus we arrive where we are now. Trying to convince people to take back some privacy and control to un-fuck the whole situation is an uphill battle, because those whose interests are in retaining control and lack of privacy are very well resourced and have gone to great effort to hide negative effects from the users and convince them of their non-existence.
Log into? The 'typical user" interpretation of what "access" means in this context is probably worse than what was actually done. "Access" isn't a word that sounds innocent, if the app told them it was going to "'access' their bank account" any user who actually took the time to read it instead of blindly clicking through certainly would have second thoughts to say the least.
The uncomfortable truth of the matter is that facebook users using these kind of quiz apps simply didn't care about privacy. When presented with that dialog they shrug and clicked through. Privacy was something they didn't take seriously at the time, if ever. The two big fuckups by facebook, imho, are:
1) Allowing such privacy invasion, knowing that foolish users would fall for it. They should have protected their users by forbidding this sort of thing in the first place even if their users were too foolish to desire such protection.
2) Allowing careless users to give away information about their friends, many of whom would have avoided such "quiz apps" but got sucked up by the apps because of their careless friends.
It doesn't take much skill to read lawyer lingo. The hard part is writing it, and that's why lawyers make money doing that.
It's the same for any language. For example I can read French and Portuguese but I can't write them. Also I can read very fancy English texts but my writing is very basic.
>When you friend or unfriend someone on FB you are somewhat implying who you give access to your feed.
It may feel that way, but it is an unrealistic expectation. Something shared with hundreds of people is effectively public information. To believe otherwise is a fantasy.
In “the real world”, we intuitively understand this: a secret told to two dozen people is a secret no more. But the illusion of control on social media sites seems to convince people otherwise online.
Most users accepted this as a fact. Behind the scenes and not transparent to the user FB was allowing much more access. Now they are understanding the implications.
Not everyone is a highly technical person and to lump everyone into this category is not right. Try explaining this to elderly users.
I think the right way to think about audience controls on social media posts is as controlling who you affirmatively include in a part of your life, not as a way to actually keep any secrets.
For example, you might post pictures of your college reunion, and not share them with work colleagues because you want to maintain a more professional kind of relationship with them. But you shouldn't expect any confidentiality for things that happened at a 200-person event.
A real world example is meeting up with your friends at the bar and running into a coworker. You aren't prohibiting your coworkers from seeing you out with your friends, but you also aren't affirmatively sharing that part of your life with them. And what is appropriate to coincidentally be seen doing is different than what is appropriate to actively share in certain contexts.
In the real world, something you tell a couple dozen friends is no longer secret, but you don't expect it to wind up in corporate/government databases or on the front page of the paper. That's the model that's misdirecting people about Facebook.
It's weird, but the world in general consists of grey zones. There are no clear black-and-white distinctions.
Facebook clearly is a public forum. It clearly has shared private data with CA. Both of these issues deserve to be discussed, and both will have different, possibly even conflicting outcomes.
And really, that same thing could be true for, say, cable companies as well - they provide a public service, and they are regulated by a local franchising authority. We don't currently see content regulation, but if your local cable provider started, say, providing a channel dedicated to cannibalism, you might see changes in that. At the same time, the subscriber lists are considered private, and sale of them is regulated.
The main reason you don't see much of a mix here is that pre-Internet communication is mostly of the broadcasting type, which has only very few areas where private data actually exists.
Facebook is not clearly a public forum. My close friends do not constitute the public, yet CA got access to data that only those close friends would have otherwise seen.
Many aspects of Facebook with different expectations of private/publicness. Examples: comment form on public website powered by FB, FB page for å product, public FB group, private FB group, FB direct messages, FB group messages, personal FB wall/feed.
In light of these, categorical statements about all of Facebook is not very meaningful.
Stupid but obvious "what-if-question": How can two private citizens attain the equivelant of "attorney-client privilege" -- What is the reason that such privacy 'rights' are exclusive to conversations between an attorney and a person/entity.
Sounds like 'honor among thieves' when talking simply about attorney-client privilege is only honored between and in only those in the legal field?
> How can two private citizens attain the equivelant of "attorney-client privilege"
By one of them employing the other as an attorney (attorneys are private citizens).
(There are other similar but not strictly equivalente privileges, such as physician-patient, accountant-client, clergy-penitent, and marital privileges.)
> What is the reason that such privacy 'rights' are exclusive to conversations between an attorney and a person/entity.
Attorney-client privilege is needed because effective assistance of counsel requires people not to fear increasing their legal jeopardy through honest communication with their attorney.
Not that it's wrong, but Facebook seems to exist in this grey zone of semi-private content which gives it both sorts of challenges and none of the usual defences.