# Facebook - The beginning of the end...



## DB008 (3 April 2018)

I guess the general public is starting to wake up to how Facebook tracks you and saves a lot more of your personal data than first thought. It has come to light that Facebook has been logging all of your phone calls + sms (history), your contacts list and how Facebook has  written secret scripts to track you on the internet.

The biggest draw card for Facebook is that it has made it convenient for people to connect and keep in touch with each other. However, it looks like the tide is starting to turn. Facebook have stepped over the line and Mark Zuckerberg's reply last week was, "well, you said we could, it's in the T & C's ". 

It will be interesting to see what happens to Facebook in the future....


This is a brilliant article - a must read

*INSIDE THE TWO YEARS THAT SHOOK FACEBOOK—AND THE WORLD*​This is the story of those two years, as they played out inside and around the company. WIRED spoke with 51 current or former Facebook employees for this article, many of whom did not want their names used, for reasons anyone familiar with the story of Fearnow and Villarreal would surely understand. (One current employee asked that a WIRED reporter turn off his phone so the company would have a harder time tracking whether it had been near the phones of anyone from Facebook.)​
The stories varied, but most people told the same basic tale: of a company, and a CEO, whose techno-optimism has been crushed as they’ve learned the myriad ways their platform can be used for ill. Of an election that shocked Facebook, even as its fallout put the company under siege. Of a series of external threats, defensive internal calculations, and false starts that delayed Facebook’s reckoning with its impact on global affairs and its users’ minds. And—in the tale’s final chapters—of the company’s earnest attempt to redeem itself.

https://www.wired.com/story/inside-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-2-years-of-hell/​

And now the ABC is also publishing this article....


*Facebook's business model is incompatible*
*with human rights*​Facebook has had a bad few weeks. The social media giant had to apologise for failing to protect the personal data of millions of users from being accessed by data mining company Cambridge Analytica. Outrage is brewing over its admission to spying on people via their Android phones. Its stock price plummeted, while millions deleted their accounts in disgust.

Facebook has also faced scrutiny over its failure to prevent the spread of "fake news" on its platforms, including via an apparent orchestrated Russian propaganda effort to influence the 2016 US presidential election.

Facebook's actions — or inactions — facilitated breaches of privacy and human rights associated with democratic governance. But it might be that its business model — and those of its social media peers generally — is simply incompatible with human rights.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-03/facebook-business-model-human-rights-privacy/9605346



*Facebook collected call and text data*
*from Android phones for years*​This comes courtesy of Twitter user and developer Dylan McKay. McKay, like many of us following the revelations surrounding Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, downloaded his entire Facebook archive to see what data the social media giant held on him. Amongst a record of all his posts, friends, and advertising data, McKay found entire call and SMS records from his connected Android smartphone.

The data contains dates of when calls and texts were made, whom they were addressed to, whether they were incoming or outgoing, and how long calls lasted. Further investigation by Ars Technica revealed other users who found their call and text metadata within their Facebook data archives, as well as within the reporter’s own archives.

So far, Digital Trends has not discovered call and text data within a Facebook archive, but it is important to note that the only Facebook archive we have accessed so far is based in the U.K., so geographical location may play a part in the data collection. McKay himself is based in New Zealand, and has set up a Google poll to gather evidence on which users have been affected.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/facebook-call-data-android-phones/

+

*Ars Technica*
https://arstechnica.com/information...t-message-data-for-years-from-android-phones/​


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## DB008 (3 April 2018)

I should have also included the Cambridge Analytica data breach....


*Cambridge Analytica* (*CA*) is a British political consulting firm which combines data mining, data brokerage, and data analysis with strategic communication for the electoral process.[5][6] It was started in 2013 as an offshoot of the SCL Group.[7] The company is partly owned by the family of Robert Mercer, an American hedge-fund manager who supports many politically conservative causes.[7][8] The firm maintains offices in London, New York City, and Washington, D.C.[9].

CEO Alexander Nix has said CA was involved in 44 US political races in 2014.[10] In 2015, it performed data analysis services for Ted Cruz's presidential campaign.[8] In 2016, CA worked for Donald Trump's presidential campaign[11] as well as the Leave.EU-campaign for the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union. CA's role in those campaigns has been controversial and is the subject of ongoing criminal investigations in both countries.[12][13][14] Political scientists question CA's claims about the effectiveness of its methods of targeting voters.[15][16]

In March 2018, multiple media outlets broke news of Cambridge Analytica's business practices. _The New York Times_ and _The Observer_ reported on the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica data breach, in which the company used for political purposes personal information acquired about Facebook users, by an external researcher who claimed to be collecting it for academic purposes. Shortly afterwards, Channel 4 News aired undercover investigative videos showing Nix boasting about using prostitutes, bribery sting operations, and honey traps to discredit politicians on whom it conducted opposition research, and saying that the company "ran all of (Donald Trump's) digital campaign". In response to the media reports, the Information Commissioner of the UK pursued a warrant to search the company's servers.[17][18] Facebook banned Cambridge Analytica from advertising on its platform, saying that it had been deceived.[19][20] On March 23, 2018, the British High Court granted the Information Commissioner's Office a warrant to search Cambridge Analytica's London offices.[21]

The data about the 50 million Facebook users were acquired from 270,000 Facebook users who shared the data with the app "thisisyourdigitallife". By giving this third-party app permission to acquire their data, back in 2015, this also gave the app information about the friend network of those people, which resulted in information about 50 million users. The app developer breached Facebook's terms of service by giving the data to Cambridge Analytica.[22]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica​


*Your own devices will give the next Cambridge Analytica far more power to influence your vote*
​As the scale and scope of the Facebook personal data scandal grows, there are questions galore: why Facebook took so long to act, whether the company should be held liable, and just how much trouble the executives at Cambridge Analytica are in, across multiple jurisdictions. The FTC has opened an official investigation into Facebook; Palantir, billionaire Trump supporter Peter Thiel’s data company, has been implicated in the scandal; and so has Trump’s new national security advisor, John Bolton.

But what’s most important are the implications for the future.

Though it’s not clear if Cambridge Analytica’s behavioral profiling and microtargeting had any measurable effect on the 2016 US election, these technologies are advancing quickly—faster than academics can study their effects and certainly faster than policymakers can respond. The next generation of such firms will almost certainly deliver on the promise.

Research points to where the field is headed. At an event that NYC Media Lab hosted in 2015, Alexander Tuzhilin, professor of information systems at the NYU Stern School of Business, pointed out that most of the targeting applications we see today represent the second generation of these technologies. The data employed includes context awareness, spatiotemporal and mobile data, multi-criteria ratings, social-media data, conversational recommendations, and more. These are standard tools of the trade used in targeting by internet marketers, as well as by Cambridge Analytica in 2016.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/...e-analytica-far-more-power-to-influence-your/​


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## Zero Sum Game (3 April 2018)

I hope something changes. My wife has been addicted to it for years. Im not on facebook, hard to get through to her sometimes.


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## DB008 (3 April 2018)

Zero Sum Game said:


> I hope something changes. My wife has been addicted to it for years. Im not on facebook, hard to get through to her sometimes.




I hope so too. But, l don't think it will. Social media is here to stay.

There are few glimmers of hope in the pipeline though....

Persona - https://persona.im/

Enigma - https://enigma.co/

And, if users get paid like they do on the blogging site Steemit, in either Steemit or EOS coins/tokens, by the advertisers, it could mean people leaving Facebook and using another platform where they get paid for the content that they consume....

*How Blockchain could help us **take back control of our privacy*​
The Cambridge Analytica breaches show the dangers of leaking personal, sensitive data online – but there’s a way to avoid this

The Cambridge Analytica scandal poses some serious questions about the integrity of democracies in the information age. From Trump to Brexit, the dirty tricks apparently offered by CA’s top executives should cause concern everywhere that elections happen. But the episode is also worrying because of its specific focus: data. We create reams of data every day – every time we open a browser window and every time we make a contactless payment. We do this without thinking. The Cambridge Analytica news demonstrates the power that this data can have when we lose control of it.

Facebook isn’t the only huge data company to have suffered a major breach in recent years. In September it was revealed that 143 million Americans and 44 million Britons had sensitive information stolen from Equifax, the credit rating firm, including home addresses and social security numbers. The kicker in this case was that many of those affected had no idea the company was holding that information in the first place – such is the staggering growth of data creation and collection, and the lack of controls enjoyed by consumers over who gets to keep it.

But there’s a major problem with the application of blockchain technology in this way: privacy. If our data is stored everywhere, how can it be private? This is being tackled by researchers at MIT through their Enigma project, which is a protocol that sits on top of existing blockchains. Enigma promises “secret contracts”, as opposed to existing “smart contracts”, with nodes on the blockchain able to compute data without ever “seeing” it. The researchers say this will allow users to maintain control over personal data, particularly through preventing its monetisation or analysis by platforms. They also claim that it could unlock a new system of lending, in which prospective borrowers can establish their trustworthiness without having to give individual lenders access to their specific personal data.

Blockchain techniques are already being adopted at local and national levels. Estonia, which has emerged as one of the most forward-thinking, digital-first economies, has gradually moved all of its citizen data onto a distributed ledger system. Illinois is testing a number of blockchain-based systems, including a birth registry. And Singapore is considering moving towards a blockchain system to allow citizens to interact seamlessly with government services. There is significant work being done to shift the focus of blockchain technology away from pure currency speculation towards real world applications – especially around privacy and storage.

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...n-privacy-data-protection-cambridge-analytica​


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## SirRumpole (3 April 2018)

What exactly is "blockchain" ?


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## moXJO (3 April 2018)

People are too self absorbed for facebook to disappear. They would give up their pin number, if it meant posting one more pic of their amazing fake life.

They are also adding enough features to keep people hooked.
Social media laid waste to the rest of the net.


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## Humid (3 April 2018)

People go out with their friends and ignore them so they can interact with other’s on Facebook 
Figure that out


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## Porper (3 April 2018)

Humid said:


> People go out with their friends and ignore them so they can interact with other’s on Facebook
> Figure that out




See it all the time. People in cafes meeting for a catchup, sitting in silence whilst they add more highly uninteresting pictures of themselves on Facebook...or texting which is equally ignorant. I am sure people only press the "like" button because they want more "likes" themselves. It is sad that people live life through social media...and not just the youngsters either.


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## Smurf1976 (3 April 2018)

Facebook was a great idea that had got way out of hand.

Good points - ability to find and reconnect with people you haven’t seen since high school. Etc.

Bad points - most of the rest especially issues relating to privacy and the fake nature of a lot of it all.


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## Wolfofwilliamst (3 April 2018)

Advertising revenue and FB's amazing targeted adverts are now very profitable for them....a hard one to crack to really hurt the company. 
I do know a few people who have left, but it wont be more than tje growth of the population that then joins up. FB needs another big scandle to in another nail.
The coffin has been built though!
Biggest danger = the next best social media platform.


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## DB008 (4 April 2018)

*Your Facebook data is creepy as hell*
*… and why you should really have a look at it.*
​Since 2010, Facebook allows you to download an archive file of all your interactions with the network. It’s a 5-click easy process that your grandmother can do (more details below).

Inside the .zip, lies an ‘index.html’ page that acts as a portal to your personal data. Visually, it looks like an ad-free stripped down version of Facebook that’s actually quite relaxing.

As I’m trying to reduce my exposure to social networks, I decided to take a look at this info. By extrapolating the data of a single individual (me), I might be able to better apprehend the capabilities of the beast. In the end, it all comes down to what is tracked and what can be deduced from that.

Quite simply, Facebook never deletes anything. Unfriended friends, past relationships, former employers, previous names, address book: you name it.

I created my account Friday, September 14, 2007 at 10:59am and all my actions have been recorded ever since. I feel that for the first time in history, 10 years of consistent human behavior have been meticulously gathered, stored & analysed.

https://hackernoon.com/your-facebook-data-is-creepy-as-hell-319ae47117e6​


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## qldfrog (4 April 2018)

I also want to add that FB in a technical way is abysmal, data greedy, multiple notifications, and with messenger added, becomes a nightmare;
as I work on the other side of the chinese internet wall, I also use Wechat which is at least technically better and less bloated...but same s.it in term of addiction, privacy etc..
I am afraid until we have real issues (aka hunger) social media is here to stay, and has replaced TV as the opium of the people.


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## wayneL (4 April 2018)

Look up Simon Sinek on YooToob,  he has some great videos on Facebook and internet addiction


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## Joe Blow (5 April 2018)

Perhaps this Facebook scandal will get more people back on forums, the original social media. I think people are just beginning to realise how much Facebook knows about them and how much of their personal information is being leaked and compromised.

You don't even need to use your real name to participate on a forum, and while I can't speak for all forums, I can say with absolute certainty that the very small amount of personal information that ASF has access to (i.e. registration info and IP address) has never been shared with anyone and never will. Not on my watch anyway.


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## basilio (6 April 2018)

Good points Joe. I'm not on Facebook but I can see it's value for keeping contact with friends and relations around the world. 

I can also see the careful management of personal image and the exceptionally creative way Facebook uses peoples likes and looks to incorporate ads and paid stories. It is becoming more and more difficult to separate a "real"story (whatever that is..) from a "fake one" ie a construction intended to sell a product , a policy or a point of view. In my view it's just crazy.

By the way Joe I can appreciate your good will in saying posters information will never be shared by you. *The issue however is not necessarily your ethics. *Hacking into data bases, websites etc is now big business. This is a risk we all run when we give our information to you, banks, clubs whatever.


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## Humid (6 April 2018)

I get the impression when someone non famous breaks the law or does something really dumb journos and the media search through Facebook to use your public photos to give their story a bit of beef.


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## wayneL (6 April 2018)

Joe Blow said:


> Perhaps this Facebook scandal will get more people back on forums, the original social media. .



God I hope so. 

I use FaceAche for business and CPD,  but jeez it's toxic.


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## Joe Blow (6 April 2018)

basilio said:


> By the way Joe I can appreciate your good will in saying posters information will never be shared by you. *The issue however is not necessarily your ethics. *Hacking into data bases, websites etc is now big business. This is a risk we all run when we give our information to you, banks, clubs whatever.




Agreed. The problem is that no system is free from risk of being hacked or compromised in a malicious or criminal way. Big or small, all databases can be hacked. The real threat is where it is being done by the government or large corporations and nobody is aware that it is happening and it is ongoing. You can always get a credit card re-issued, but long term, persistent leaking and compromising of personal information for the purposes of data mining, surveillance or corporate profit is far more insidious in my view. And much harder to detect or do anything about.


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## DB008 (7 April 2018)

basilio said:


> Good points Joe. I'm not on Facebook but I can see it's value for keeping contact with friends and relations around the world.




basillio - even though you haven't signed up to Facebook, they have probably created a ghost profile of you already. Have you ever been in a group photo which has more than likely been uploaded to Facebook? Well, you now have a ghost profile. Nothing you can do about it.

https://spideroak.com/articles/facebook-shadow-profiles-a-profile-of-you-that-you-never-created/



*Facebook admits Zuckerberg wiped his old messages—which you can’t do*​Facebook has been quietly deleting old messages from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg out of their recipients' Facebook Messenger inboxes, the company has acknowledged. This isn't an option available to ordinary users. Users can delete their own copy of a Messenger conversation, but if they do the other party will retain his or her own copy.

"Three sources confirm to TechCrunch that old Facebook messages they received from Zuckerberg have disappeared from their Facebook inboxes, while their own replies to him conspicuously remain," Techcrunch's Josh Constine wrote.

*Facebook argues that it has done nothing wrong.*

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...erg-wiped-his-old-messages-which-you-cant-do/​


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## Gringotts Bank (7 April 2018)

When advanced AI kicks into gear, there's no stopping it.  'They' (the owners of big data) will know everything.  The manipulator's main tool is fear.  If you know that, you can _to some extent_ be free of their control tactics.  

Sales of *1984* have been steadily rising.


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## Tisme (7 April 2018)

Gringotts Bank said:


> When advanced AI kicks into gear, there's no stopping it.  'They' (the owners of big data) will know everything.  The manipulator's main tool is fear.  If you know that, you can _to some extent_ be free of their control tactics.
> 
> Sales of *1984* have been steadily rising.




I suppose one could argue that 1984 was in itself a prediction model and subsequent manipulation tool.

Are sales increasing because of the salient big brother warning messages of profligacy or because of "know  your (free thinking) enemy"?

Even when I screen and post here,  F.B Purity and other software walls I run throw up dozens of trackers that are trying to profile me.

If you want to know how clever Googel, Farcebook and Twatter are ... setup a FBook account on someone else's computer, with fake gender, fake name, fake email, fake location, polarised posts to your own actual stance, etc and see how long it takes for that user to be suggested as a possible "friend" . I did that five years ago and my sepia double found me within months!


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## Gringotts Bank (7 April 2018)

Tisme said:


> I did that five years ago and my sepia double found me within months!




I can imagine that. 

Months will contract to minutes at some point.  How will it feel when one day your computer speaks to you through your own speakers, suggesting you upgrade your iPhone... and you can't turn it off.  So then you go searching for help on the internet and find all the top search results get you more deeply embedded in their web (because Google has made them look like real links from real people having the same problem)?   Or what about the day when you turn on the TV and you just can't tell if it's real or fake.  Did the President actually say that or was it an avatar?  Is that the real newsreader or an animation?  Has the whole TV network been hacked and we don't even realize it?

Presumably all these things will happen at some point. Easy to see how fear could get the upper hand in such a world.  Know thyself.


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## Smurf1976 (7 April 2018)

As an example of the dangers of Facebook, I'm in a group photo with a large number of complete strangers taken in a city I don't live in. Photo was taken at a public event.

I've confirmed that yes, using Facebook and Google I can very easily find out who most of those people are, where they work, who their partners are, if they have children and if so their names, where they live and lots more.

That's rather dangerous to say the least. Thankfully my intentions were entirely honest, I was just proving a point to myself, but the potential for danger is obvious.


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## bellenuit (7 April 2018)

Tisme said:


> If you want to know how clever Googel, Farcebook and Twatter are ... setup a FBook account on someone else's computer, with fake gender, fake name, fake email, fake location, polarised posts to your own actual stance, etc and see how long it takes for that user to be suggested as a possible "friend" . I did that five years ago and my sepia double found me within months!




I've been meaning to do that but not for the reason you suggested. I would like to actually make that additional user a friend of my genuine account, so I can see what gets posted from my genuine account that I am not aware of.

It seems many FB pages that you click LIKE to have embedded in their Ts & Cs that by pressing LIKE you are authorising that liked FB account to post to FB on your behalf. Some of my friends are posting the same stuff over and over from certain FB accounts and when I asked them about it they were completely unaware. These sites were usually of the innocuous dogs singing type stuff, but that doesn't mean there aren't sites out there that are more sinister. From what I can tell, these posts appear on other people's view of your timeline, but you do not see them yourself, so you are completely unawares of what you may be endorsing.


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## SirRumpole (7 April 2018)

Faceache is a complete waste of time as is Twatter. People should get a life if Facebook consumes more than 10% of their time.


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## Bill M (7 April 2018)

I tried facebook a couple of years ago and got rid of it after about 3 Months. Like Smurf said I really hate the fact someone can "tag" you in a photo and then the whole world knows who you are and which city you live in. The other reason I quit was that I was sick at tired of the RUBBISH that flowed onto my pages, like photos of peoples food, photos of other peoples babies that I don't know, cats and dog photos. That has got to be the most boring thing to post. Like I haven't seen fish and chips before, honestly get a life.

Glad I quit and I don't miss it a bit. If someone really wants to contact me, just send an email, so much better without all that other rubbish.


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## CanOz (7 April 2018)

SirRumpole said:


> Faceache is a complete waste of time as is Twatter. People should get a life if Facebook consumes more than 10% of their time.




Twitter is actually the best all in one news feed on the planet. If you don’t agree and cannot supply a superior free alternative, you will bare your complete ignorance of the platform.

Facebook is the best way for families and friends separated by international boundaries to keep in touch. If there is something better, convert me, I want to delete Facebook...


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## Joules MM1 (7 April 2018)

CanOz said:


> Twitter is actually the best all in one news feed on the planet. If you don’t agree and cannot supply a superior free alternative, you will bare your complete ignorance of the platform.
> 
> Facebook is the best way for families and friends separated by international boundaries to keep in touch. If there is something better, convert me, I want to delete Facebook...




yeah you should check out a local haunt...been going for a while now ..run by a top bloke

lots doshy talk about politics and shares n social shtick but you'll find it handy

hang on....got the addy here ....somewhere

ah. here ya go:

https://www.aussiestockforums.com/forums/


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## bellenuit (7 April 2018)

CanOz said:


> Twitter is actually the best all in one news feed on the planet. If you don’t agree and cannot supply a superior free alternative, you will bare your complete ignorance of the platform.
> 
> Facebook is the best way for families and friends separated by international boundaries to keep in touch. If there is something better, convert me, I want to delete Facebook...




Yes, I agree Twitter is very powerful. I don't use it as a medium to communicate with friends, but simply as a means to follow certain organisations and (famous) people. If you follow news media like the BBC, CNN etc., you will often get breaking news minutes after it happens.

People often say that Twitter is useless as you cannot convey much info in 140 characters or whatever it is. But the 140 characters is mainly used to provide links back to the breaking story that will be on that news organisation's web site. If you follow people like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins etc., often it will be a link to a new YouTube video in which they are debating something or other.

Coming from Ireland, FB is a great way to stay in touch, not so much with family with whom I would Skype regularly, but with acquaintances from my younger days that I wouldn't normally be in touch with on a one to one basis but still would like to know how they are doing.


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## pixel (8 April 2018)

Joe Blow said:


> Perhaps this Facebook scandal will get more people back on forums, the original social media. I think people are just beginning to realise how much Facebook knows about them and how much of their personal information is being leaked and compromised.
> 
> You don't even need to use your real name to participate on a forum, and while I can't speak for all forums, I can say with absolute certainty that the very small amount of personal information that ASF has access to (i.e. registration info and IP address) has never been shared with anyone and never will. Not on my watch anyway.



I totally agree, Joe; and I do hope that our Forum becomes increasingly attractive again for discussions many may have moved over to FB for. And that in spite of Google and others knowing what I posted here and anywhere else. Many contributions pop up high on the list of answers to specific Google searches - in case anyone thought that a closed forum is closed: Think again.

... but if you sync your devices, e.g. via a Google or M'$oft cloud, they'll know more than enough about you as well. In that context trust Google just as far as FB, not at all, that is.
That's why I don't have a FB account, and if I see any benefit in subscribing to any news or particular website, I do so with an individual registration and, if required, an individual email address. Never would I allow another party to know my FB, Google, or M$ login.
Problem is, I can't avoid Google's search engine, nor can I keep them out of my Android mobile. But I don't have to sync through them nor do they need to know what other non-gmail accounts I maintain.

So, I'm aware that they keep my searches, in spite of my having Firefox options set to restrict cookies and Do NOT Follow me. I also maintain Ad and Popup Blockers, disabling those restrictions only for websites like Aussie that finance themselves through Ads.


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## noirua (8 April 2018)

I do have a Facebook Account but made sure all the details provided are false or at least a bit wrong.  Putting down my date of birth on Xmas day and being born at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Adds to amusement and confusion and could catch on.


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## SirRumpole (8 April 2018)

CanOz said:


> Facebook is the best way for families and friends separated by international boundaries to keep in touch. If there is something better, convert me, I want to delete Facebook...




Email, Skype, the telephone ?


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## Joe Blow (8 April 2018)

pixel said:


> I totally agree, Joe; and I do hope that our Forum becomes increasingly attractive again for discussions many may have moved over to FB for. And that in spite of Google and others knowing what I posted here and anywhere else. Many contributions pop up high on the list of answers to specific Google searches - in case anyone thought that a closed forum is closed: Think again.




Facebook would love it if all the forums died out and everyone moved over there. That's part of their goal to be the one-stop-shop for everything. Facebook Groups, Facebook Marketplace, these things are just the beginning. Facebook want you to be able to do everything you need to do from Facebook so you never have to leave the website. It's like joining a club to meet people with common interests only to realise after a while that it's become a cult and you're being controlled and manipulated.

But people have choice. They are free to choose whether to join Facebook and if they do, how much time they spend there and what they do there. They are also free to join forums like ASF and post there as little or as often as they like. It's no secret that things are a bit quiet here at ASF at the moment. But that can change overnight if people choose to post more and participate in discussions more, especially in threads that relate to stocks and the stock market. Every visit to or post on Facebook is a vote for Facebook, every visit to or post on ASF is a vote for ASF. Ultimately, the free market will decide how this all pans out.

For obvious reasons, I'm hoping people choose to vote for ASF, and if there's anything I can do to make this place better, or more useful, I'll try my best to make it happen. Just let me know.


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## gav (8 April 2018)

Tisme said:


> I suppose one could argue that 1984 was in itself a prediction model and subsequent manipulation tool




I think Huxley's "Brave New World" does a better job of describing (predicting?) Facebook and other forms of media than 1984


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## wayneL (8 April 2018)

By Jove,  gav.  Your are bang on the money there.


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## bellenuit (8 April 2018)

SirRumpole said:


> Email, Skype, the telephone ?




They are all one to one communications and are obviously the best to use for close family members or very close friends. But as I mentioned in my post, FB is excellent for keeping in touch with 2nd tier "friends" that you would like to know what they are up to but don't particularly want to have a one on one conversation.


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## moXJO (8 April 2018)

Ahh facebook and Twitter .... Head nodders heaven.

Don't like opposing points of view?
Then surround yourself only with like minded thinkers and give yourself whiplash as you all circle nod your morally superior position.

Made a $hit decision?
Then explain it away with a emotional rant blaming everyone but yourself, followed by lots of tears to absolve your sins. 

Want people to know just how well you made that piece of toast?

We now include video to tell the world just how important your life is to the advancement of the human race.


19-year-old Zuckerberg to a friend just after he started his company, then called The Facebook, back in 2004.

“Yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard ... just ask ... I have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns” Zuckerberg wrote.

“What!? how’d you manage that one?” they asked.

“People just submitted it ... I don’t know why ... they ‘trust me’ ... dumb f**ks” Zuckerberg replied.


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## CanOz (8 April 2018)

I loath social media and I'd love it if my family and friends could move to an ad free, safe, private platform where we can openly share our families best moments together. Email phone and Skype don't cut it.

Twitter is 90% newsfeed and 10% other traders or economists that I follow, again...how to find that in one place?


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## bellenuit (8 April 2018)

moXJO said:


> Ahh facebook and Twitter .... Head nodders heaven.
> 
> Don't like opposing points of view?
> Then surround yourself only with like minded thinkers and give yourself whiplash as you all circle nod your morally superior position.
> ...




FB has enough controls that you can make it work for you without being subject to the downsides you listed.


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## SirRumpole (8 April 2018)

CanOz said:


> I loath social media and I'd love it if my family and friends could move to an ad free, safe, private platform where we can openly share our families best moments together. Email phone and Skype don't cut it.
> 
> Twitter is 90% newsfeed and 10% other traders or economists that I follow, again...how to find that in one place?




It's all personal preference isn't it ?

If it's good for you, use it.

I find the constant barrage from Twitter wasteful and the privacy elements of FB intrusive. I don't have a Facebook site personally, and only occasionally look in on other's sites.

Maybe there is a business opportunity to create a "safe" Facebook that doesn't sell your data to outsiders.


----------



## bellenuit (8 April 2018)

SirRumpole said:


> Maybe there is a business opportunity to create a "safe" Facebook that doesn't sell your data to outsiders.




Facebook may become a “safe” Facebook if proper regulations are put in place by government and FB user controls are strengthened and made more transparent. This could happen whether FB likes it or not.


----------



## SirRumpole (8 April 2018)

bellenuit said:


> Facebook may become a “safe” Facebook if proper regulations are put in place by government and FB user controls are strengthened and made more transparent. This could happen whether FB likes it or not.




Yes indeed. Zucker's refusal to show up for questioning in the UK shows contempt for due process and will only increase the likliehood of stricter rules globally.


----------



## noirua (8 April 2018)

Huxley and Orwell were just guessing. Fun to read or watch the film an age back as they were good writers. However, all a load of rubbish in reality.


----------



## Wysiwyg (8 April 2018)

noirua said:


> Huxley and Orwell were just guessing. Fun to read or watch the film an age back as they were good writers. However, all a load of rubbish in reality.



Yes we must have faith the majority can make decisions for themselves rather than be manipulated. For sure there are people who are easily directed. Not everyone has strength of mind, perception and awareness (of self too).


----------



## wayneL (9 April 2018)

Wysiwyg said:


> Yes we must have faith the majority can make decisions for themselves rather than be manipulated. For sure there are people who are easily directed. Not everyone has strength of mind, perception and awareness (of self too).



Ask anyone and they all believe that they are individual, critical thinkers. Almost nobody understands that they are manipulated if not intentionally, at least by groupthink. I'm only need look at the evolution of common vernacular to understand that.

In reality the number of people with strength of mine awareness and perception is very small.


----------



## Tisme (9 April 2018)

wayneL said:


> Ask anyone and they all believe that they are individual, critical thinkers. Almost nobody understands that they are manipulated if not intentionally, at least by groupthink. I'm only need look at the evolution of common vernacular to understand that.
> 
> In reality the number of people with strength of mine awareness and perception is very small.




I think the best test of narcissism is how much of it you are willing to sacrifice in complementing people who deserve it, irregardless of how stupid they are by holding different opinions to your own.


----------



## moXJO (9 April 2018)

bellenuit said:


> FB has enough controls that you can make it work for you without being subject to the downsides you listed.



It has an anti-vanity w@nker button? 

Facebook and Twitter have legitimate uses. From auctions,  information and local clubs, business listings and reviews. It truly is both the best and worst of the net.


----------



## Smurf1976 (9 April 2018)

wayneL said:


> Almost nobody understands that they are manipulated if not intentionally, at least by groupthink.




Very true. 

Try excluding group think from an actual group though and see how you go. Actually, don't try it if you want to remain on speaking terms with the rest of the group.

It's one of those things were most don't see and don't want to be shown. Been there, tried that.


----------



## Gringotts Bank (9 April 2018)

No offense Tisme, but wiki says:

The origin of _irregardless_ is not known for certain, but the speculation among references is that it may be a blend, or portmanteau word, of the standard English words _irrespective_ and _regardless_. The blend creates a word with a meaning not predictable from the meanings of its constituent morphemes.

Most dictionaries list it as nonstandard or incorrect usage, and recommend that "regardless" be used instead.[2][3][4]


----------



## SirRumpole (10 April 2018)

Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak have cancelled their Facebook accounts.

Maybe if more celebrities do the same the message will get through.


----------



## DB008 (11 April 2018)

*Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg apologises again as he faces Congress over Cambridge Analytica scandal*​Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has begun a two-day congressional inquisition with a public apology for a privacy scandal that has roiled the social media giant he founded more than a decade ago.

Mr Zuckerberg opened his remarks before the US Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees by taking responsibility for failing to prevent Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining firm affiliated with Donald Trump's presidential campaign, from gathering personal information from 87 million users to try to influence elections.

Mr Zuckerberg had apologised many times already, to users and the public, but this was the first time in his career that he had gone before Congress.

"It was my mistake, and I'm sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I'm responsible for what happens here."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-...kerberg-fronts-united-states-congress/9639764​



*Cambridge Analytica may have had access to private Facebook Messenger messages*​Facebook has started to help users figure out whether or not they’ve been affected by the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and detailed in the company’s notification is the fact that Facebook users may have also had their private messages leaked to Cambridge Analytica.

As pointed out by researcher Jonathan Albright, the vulnerability dates back to the first version of Facebook’s Graph API, which allowed apps to request massive amounts of users’ friends info with a single prompt. Once permission was granted, apps — like Cambridge Analytica — could continue to pull data for years until either the app was deleted or when Facebook finally killed the 1.0 version of the Graph API for a more limited 2.0 version in 2015.

Included in the data that those early Graph API apps could pull was the ability to read users’ private Facebook messages through a “read_mailbox” API request.

Facebook confirmed to _Wired_ that a relatively small number of Facebook users gave access to Messenger — only 1,500 people gave the “This Is Your Digital Life” app permission to access the data, but anyone who messaged or received messages from those 1,500 people could also potentially be impacted.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/10/17219606/cambridge-analytica-private-facebook-messenger-messages​


----------



## DB008 (11 April 2018)




----------



## DB008 (15 April 2018)

*Steve Wozniak drops Facebook: “The profits are all based on the user’s info”*

*Apple cofounder: "Apple makes its money off of good products,*
*not off of you."*​Steve Wozniak, the cofounder of Apple, has formally deactivated his Facebook account.

Wozniak, who has not been involved with day-to-day operations at Apple in decades, nonetheless has a legendary status in Silicon Valley. He is an active user of social media: his Twitter accountregularly sends out automated messages of where he is traveling and what he is eating.

In an email interview with _USA Today_, Wozniak wrote that he was no longer satisfied with Facebook, knowing that it makes money off of user data.

"The profits are all based on the user’s info, but the users get none of the profits back," he wrote. "Apple makes its money off of good products, not off of you. As they say, with Facebook, you are the product."

His Sunday announcement to his Facebook followers came just ahead of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s scheduled testimony before Congress on Tuesday. The CEO is also reportedly set to meet with members of Congress privately on Monday.

Wozniak wrote that Facebook had "brought me more negatives than positives."

Facebook is still under notable public pressure in the wake of the scandal involving Cambridge Analytica, the British data analytics firm that worked with the Donald Trump presidential campaign. The company is said to have retained private data from 87 million Facebook users despite having assured Facebook that the data was deleted. Cambridge Analytica and its affiliated companies maintain that they did nothing wrong.

In the wake of the March 2018 revelations, there have been increasing calls for users to #DeleteFacebook, however only relatively few appear to have actually done so. In a call with reporters last week, Zuckerberg said that the number of people who have undertaken such efforts remained small.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...-the-profits-are-all-based-on-the-users-info/​


----------



## WarrMunger (16 April 2018)

I've created a tool that lets you evaluate the value of Facebook and therefore what you think it should be priced at.

http://34.253.103.63/companies/fb

Give it a jam! I would be interested to see what valuations you guys arrive at. I think Facebook is still overpriced.








Feedback on the tool is also very much welcomed. This is our first prototype, we are aiming to make stock valuation a lot easier and faster for ourselves and everyone. Let us know if we are wasting our time or if this might be something you would use if you could look up and value any stock.


----------



## Tisme (16 April 2018)

Gringotts Bank said:


> No offense Tisme, but wiki says:
> 
> The origin of _irregardless_ is not known for certain, but the speculation among references is that it may be a blend, or portmanteau word, of the standard English words _irrespective_ and _regardless_. The blend creates a word with a meaning not predictable from the meanings of its constituent morphemes.
> 
> Most dictionaries list it as nonstandard or incorrect usage, and recommend that "regardless" be used instead.[2][3][4]




Fair comment. I haven't looked up that word, but I do claim bah lees because I was brought up in a household of generational educators, so it's their fault for the word; the one they used to negate my excuses for acting up as kids are want to do.

With my binary maths hat on and in my defence, no one bails up people who use the term "proactive"  like verbal confetti. If that can get away with a facile clunky double addends, I reckon "irregardless" should too coz it's a finessed bookend use of subtrahends.... poetry in motion.


----------



## greggles (2 May 2018)

Now Facebook is planning on getting into the online dating game: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/zuckerberg-unveils-facebook-dating-service

I used to think that Facebook was just a cool way to stay connected with people who I didn't need to contact all the time. Now I think that Facebook is trying to become the absolute centre of our online existence to the exclusion of everything else.

I'm starting to feel like I'm being stalked by Mark Zuckerberg and my anxiety levels are rising.


----------



## Gringotts Bank (2 May 2018)

greggles said:


> Now I think that Facebook is trying to become the absolute centre of our online existence to the exclusion of everything else.




I doubt they'd be any more advanced than Google or a multitude of other big corporations.  They're all after your data so they can manipulate your decisions.  Their excuse is that they collect data in order to create a better customer experience.  Big business has always been corrupt - you just have to be a bit more mindful of how they want to use you.

The other day I was at a department store buying a clothing item.  The first thing the sales assistant did at the checkout was ask for my phone number and post code.  "No".

Yahoo Mail reserve the right to read all your emails if they want.  Many email services do the same.


----------



## HelloU (2 May 2018)

...............I gave my phone number to the sales person.............and ended up married to them.........it is all about the angles peeps.


----------



## Gringotts Bank (2 May 2018)

I'd like to see the number of bots querying FB for data every second, from around the globe.  FB won't be the only ones analyzing that data, though they have obvious advantages.  'Connectors' (~Gladwell) would be analyzed to the nth degree.

edit - connectors


----------



## Tisme (2 May 2018)

Gringotts Bank said:


> I'd like to see the number of bots querying FB for data every second, from around the globe.  FB won't be the only ones analyzing that data, though they have obvious advantages.  'Connectors' (~Gladwell) would be analyzed to the nth degree.
> 
> edit - connectors





I run FB Purity to screen and monitor


----------



## DB008 (26 May 2018)

*Facebook accused of conducting mass surveillance*
*through its apps*​Company gathered data from texts and photos of users and their friends, court case claims

Facebook used its apps to gather information about users and their friends, including some who had not signed up to the social network, reading their text messages, tracking their locations and accessing photos on their phones, a court case in California alleges.

The claims of what would amount to mass surveillance are part of a lawsuit brought against the company by the former startup Six4Three, listed in legal documents filed at the superior court in San Mateo as part of a court case that has been ongoing for more than two years.

A Facebook spokesperson said that Six4Three’s “claims have no merit, and we will continue to defend ourselves vigorously”. Facebook did not directly respond to questions about surveillance.
Documents filed in the court last week draw upon extensive confidential emails and messages between Facebook senior executives, which are currently sealed.

Facebook has deployed a feature of California law, designed to protect freedom of speech, to argue that the case should be dismissed. Six4Three is opposing that motion.

The allegations about surveillance appear in a January filing, the fifth amended complaint made by Six4Three. It alleges that Facebook used a range of methods, some adapted to the different phones that users carried, to collect information it could use for commercial purposes.

“Facebook continued to explore and implement ways to track users’ location, to track and read their texts, to access and record their microphones on their phones, to track and monitor their usage of competitive apps on their phones, and to track and monitor their calls,” one court document says.

But all details about the mass surveillance scheme have been redacted on Facebook’s request in Six4Three’s most recent filings. Facebook claims these are confidential business matters. It has until next Tuesday to submit a claim to the court for the documents to remain sealed from public view.

https://www.theguardian.com/technol...conducting-mass-surveillance-through-its-apps​


----------



## wayneL (27 May 2018)

I just now got pinged for a post I made5 years ago, how about that boys and girls?


----------



## moXJO (28 May 2018)

wayneL said:


> I just now got pinged for a post I made5 years ago, how about that boys and girls?



Did someone make a complaint,  or was it an algorithm?


----------



## wayneL (28 May 2018)

moXJO said:


> Did someone make a complaint,  or was it an algorithm?



I don't know.  It didn't say anything about a complaint,  just that it didn't meet community standards.

In it I complained that I was about as interested in the colour of their underwear as the political views they keep posting.

That's about it.


----------



## PZ99 (28 May 2018)

Sounds like you've exposed a bunch of poxy-morons that have become so tight arsed they can't even afford underwear


----------



## Tisme (28 May 2018)

wayneL said:


> I just now got pinged for a post I made5 years ago, how about that boys and girls?




Be happy it even got screen time. 

This is why Twatter is so good....I can aggravate thousands of virtue signallers.


----------



## wayneL (5 June 2018)

Can facebooks agenda ever become clearer? 

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/...-mocking-hamas/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

*Anti-Extremist Muslim Imam Tawhidi Banned From Facebook After Mocking Hamas*



_





Imam Tawhidi
ALLUM BOKHARI 4 Jun 2018 

*Facebook banned anti-extremist Australian Imam Mohammad Tawhidi after he sarcastically mocked Hamas in a post.*


Breitbart News has reached out to Facebook for comment.
_


----------



## Tisme (5 June 2018)

wayneL said:


> Can facebooks agenda ever become clearer?
> 
> http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/...-mocking-hamas/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
> 
> ...




Farcebook doesn't have a choice...its freedom of expression bedrock has been destroyed by govt interference in Europe and USofA. 

Meanwhile in Oz, because posts are deleted by meta robots, the govt's ability to track terrorists and fifth columnists via it's meta data spiders has been invalidated because of it.


----------



## basilio (5 June 2018)

Wow Beitbart is now a respected authority on news ?  That is a surprise...

And who is this Iman Tawhidi, distinguished Islamic scholar who is so resolutely attacking extremist Islam? Maybe worth looking beyond the the obvious and digging deeper.

*Imam Mohammad Tawhidi: The problem with the media's favourite Muslim*
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-...blem-with-the-medias-favourite-muslim/8643726


----------



## wayneL (5 June 2018)

Smear smear. The only shock was that it wasn't the Gaurdian.... But yeah,  the ABC, no surprises. 

I would advise *you to dig deeper bas. 

Additionally,  the concurrent dearth of hit pieces on radical Imams preaching real hate is telling. 

But,  even if true,  it's irrelevant to the point at hand in that facebook et al is trying to "ethnically cleanse" content that disagrees with its politics. It is not an open platform.


----------



## wayneL (5 June 2018)

...and yes bas, Breitbart is at least as respected and credible as anything you post up.

The fact that Tawhidis account has been closed is incontrovertible.


----------



## SirRumpole (5 June 2018)

wayneL said:


> Breitbart is at least as respected and credible as anything you post up.




Confirmation bias there I think wayne.


----------



## wayneL (5 June 2018)

SirRumpole said:


> Confirmation bias there I think wayne.



Oh please,  Horace,  lets not double down on dumb. 

I absolutely concede that Breitbart has a conservative agenda and bias. But my point is that it is no more so than the Grauniad's and the ABC's left wing and and bias. 

Are you,  bas,  et al,  willing to concede that? 

Here is where we may reveal the real confirmation bias.


----------



## SirRumpole (5 June 2018)

wayneL said:


> But my point is that it is no more so than the Grauniad's and the ABC's left wing and and bias.




The Guardian is Left Wing, the ABC less so but still Left of Centre but you can't expect every media outlet to sing your song, this being a democracy n'all.


----------



## basilio (5 June 2018)

Breitbart lies through it's xrse. It's presentation of news and current affairs runs from the right to the Alt Right to Extreme right.

It has an agenda of promoting Donald Trump and to that purpose it will not write anything that undermines his Presidency.

The Guardian is certainly a liberal site. But ironically it actually attempts to examine other conservative viewpoints.

And it does not lie.

https://www.snopes.com/tag/breitbart/  Check out the lies in detail

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/breitbart-fake-news-alex-marlow/

*"It is useful to know that you can’t believe a thing Breitbart says, because it’s willing to publish fake news that serves its perceived interests. I mean, you knew this anyway, but now you’ve had it confirmed by the editor-in-chief."
*
https://www.mediamatters.org/resear...hoods-an-updated-guide-to-andrew-breit/168051
ttps://www.rollingstone.com/culture/pictures/10-most-despicable-stories-breitbart-published-under-bannon-w452226


----------



## wayneL (5 June 2018)

SirRumpole said:


> The Guardian is Left Wing, the ABC less so but still Left of Centre but you can't expect every media outlet to sing your song, this being a democracy n'all.



I'm a little left of centre,  but I still value truth bro.


----------



## wayneL (5 June 2018)

basilio said:


> Breitbart lies through it's xrse. It's presentation of news and current affairs runs from the right to the Alt Right to Extreme right.
> 
> It has an agenda of promoting Donald Trump and to that purpose it will not write anything that undermines his Presidency.
> 
> ...




So,  it is your contention that the Grauniad and the ABC doesn't lie through it's ar5e?


----------



## moXJO (5 June 2018)

Tawhidi (right, or wrong) has been physically attacked,  death threays and constantly slandered. I'm sure there is a Facebook page "Tawhidi exposed" or something. 

Muslims ain't doing themselves any favors as they attempt to silence him in such a way.


----------



## basilio (5 June 2018)

wayneL said:


> So,  it is your contention that the Grauniad and the ABC doesn't lie through it's ar5e?




I can, and did, quote chapter and verse numerous examples of deliberate lies and an extreme right wing agenda of Beibart that would do whatever was needed to promote its cause.
I thought the example and comments  from the Americian Conservative was pretty telling. Anyone can find a hundred/a thousand more -  but they would be wasted on you wouldn't they ? 

Wayne you can smear the Guardian and the ABC all you like. But actual offering proof ? Good luck to you.

There are similarities between Breibart and The Guardian and the ABC.  Both use words ; both have pixels on screens. But only one side  actually tries to tell anything approaching the truth. 

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/breitbart-fake-news-alex-marlow/

*"It is useful to know that you can’t believe a thing Breitbart says, because it’s willing to publish fake news that serves its perceived interests. I mean, you knew this anyway, but now you’ve had it confirmed by the editor-in-chief."*


----------



## wayneL (6 June 2018)

Like I said, telling.

But also still irrelevant to the point that Facebook is selective and draconian in who it bans. Going off on a tangent about Breibart doesn't change that.


----------



## Tisme (6 June 2018)

wayneL said:


> Like I said, telling.
> 
> But also still irrelevant to the point that Facebook is selective and draconian in who it bans. Going off on a tangent about Breibart doesn't change that.




Doesn't help that the Turnbull govt is now making policy to force farcebook and telcos to provide conversation, texts and posts of clients under guise of terrorist hunters.

For a so called freedom of choice party, this lot are good at reducing the choices available.


----------



## basilio (6 June 2018)

Tisme said:


> Doesn't help that the Turnbull govt is now making policy to force farcebook and telcos to provide conversation, texts and posts of clients under guise of terrorist hunters.
> 
> For a so called freedom of choice party, this lot are good at reducing the choices available.




This surprises me and is a challenge...

The issue of terrorism, the grooming of people to join terrorist groups and be part of lone wolf attacks for ISIS etc has been recognised and responded to by authorities.
On a similar note authorites are looking at other extreme (right wing) groups that also attempt to radicalise people by publishing false and inflammatory stories and examining the contacts they make.

On the overall front we can be concerned about Big Brother and the capacity of governments to monitor anything and everything that passes through the internet.  Remember Edward Snowden telling us how governments were into* everything *not just the bad guys (who are always someone else )
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-...nting-snowden-leak-costs-20180604-p4zj9d.html


----------



## SirRumpole (6 June 2018)

basilio said:


> Remember Edward Snowden telling us how governments were into* everything *not just the bad guys (who are always someone else )




Yep, there have been cases of police officers accessing data for personal reasons, and even if the government doesn't abuse the data, hackers will.


----------



## moXJO (6 June 2018)

Tisme said:


> Doesn't help that the Turnbull govt is now making policy to force farcebook and telcos to provide conversation, texts and posts of clients under guise of terrorist hunters.
> 
> For a so called freedom of choice party, this lot are good at reducing the choices available.



One  of the worst in living memory. They really want to lock everyone in a box routine. They even made legal tender illegal.


----------



## Smurf1976 (6 June 2018)

Get yourself a slow internet connection.

Open up some common websites.

Watch carefully to see what's going on while you wait for them to load (that's why you need the slow connection).

You'll find that what you're waiting for is mostly Facebook and Google on sites completely unrelated to either since most things connect to one or both in some way. Those two have become intertwined with the internet in much the same way as Coles / Woolies are with Australian retail or things like banks, fuel and communications carriers are in your day to day life. Even if you think you're avoiding them in reality you're not.


----------



## Tisme (6 June 2018)

Smurf1976 said:


> Get yourself a slow internet connection.
> 
> Open up some common websites.
> 
> ...




Which is why you should have FB Purity running on top of facebook app


----------



## Tisme (6 June 2018)

https://transparency.facebook.com/government-data-requests


----------



## DB008 (10 June 2018)

*Facebook confirms data sharing with Chinese companies*
​WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Facebook Inc said Tuesday it has data sharing partnerships with at least four Chinese companies including Huawei, the world’s third largest smartphone maker, which has come under scrutiny from U.S. intelligence agencies on security concerns.

The social media company said Huawei Technologies Co Ltd HWT.UL, computer maker Lenovo Group, and smartphone makers OPPO and TCL Corp were among about 60 companies worldwide that received access to some user data after they signed contracts to re-create Facebook-like experiences for their users.

Members of Congress raised concerns after The New York Times reported on the practice on Sunday, saying that data of users’ friends could have been accessed without their explicit consent. Facebook denied that and said the data access was to allow its users to access account features on mobile devices.

More than half of the partnerships have already been wound down, Facebook said. It said on Tuesday it would end the Huawei agreement later this week. It is ending the other three partnerships with Chinese firms as well.

Chinese telecommunications companies have come under scrutiny from U.S. intelligence officials who argue they provide an opportunity for foreign espionage and threaten critical U.S. infrastructure, something the Chinese have consistently denied.


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...-sharing-with-chinese-companies-idUSKCN1J11TY​


----------



## DB008 (15 June 2018)

*Australian Cybersecurity Expert: Facebook Listens To Conversations, Serves Ads Based On What It Hears*


*Triggered by certain phrases, the Facebook app uses the smartphone microphone to listen to conversations, then serves ads based on what it hears, Dr. Peter Henway claims.*
​“You’re talking about this conspiracy theory that gets passed around, that we listen to what’s going on on your microphone and we use that for ads. We don’t do that,” Mark Zuckeberg said after Senator Gary Peters asked whether Facebook listens to its users, according to the _Independent_.

Yet, seemingly everyone – Senator Gary Peters and his staff included – has a story that echoes the sentiment expressed in what Mark Zuckeberg dismissed as conspiracy theories; a story about discussing a certain trip, idea, TV show, clothing item, and having an ad pop up on Facebook’s feed the next day, or within a few hours.

A senior security consultant for cybersecurity firm Asterix and former lecturer and researcher at Edith Cowan University, Dr. Peter Henway, recently talked to _Vice_. According to him, having a Facebook ad effectively referencing your recent conversation pop up in your feed is more than a synchronicity, and more than just a spooky coincidence.

Facebook’s AI, Henway claims, is triggered by certain words and phrases. Just like “hey Siri” triggers Apple’s virtual assistant, certain words trigger Facebook’s mechanisms. Rather, snippets of audio are sent to Facebook servers, from time to time, triggering its AI to process the information, and then serve suitable advertisement.

Mobile apps like Facebook and Instagram, according to Dr. Henway, could have thousands of triggers. An ordinary conversation about needing to buy a clothing item, for instance, could trigger Facebook’s AI. The law, as well as the user agreement, Henway said, allows this, so it is perfectly reasonable to assume that Facebook and other tech companies listen, but there is no way to know for sure.


https://www.inquisitr.com/4939834/a...versations-serves-ads-based-on-what-it-hears/​


----------



## DB008 (30 June 2018)

*Facebook patent would turn your mic on to*
*analyse **how you watch ads*​
*Application hints to proximity to a "broadcasting device" before*
*your mic turns on.*​As Facebook tries to get ahead of public pressure about what the service does and doesn't track about its users, a patent application has emerged which would enable something that the service's detractors have long theorised and feared: silently triggered microphones that keep tabs on Facebook users.

The patent, filed by Facebook in December 2016 and published on June 14 (PDF), emerged this week thanks to its discovery by UK publication _Metro_. The patent's language revolves specifically around advertisements—Facebook's biggest cash cow—and how a device with an installed app could be triggered by a vague "activation module" to turn on its microphone and listen to how those ads play out in an average home.


*Proximity and “blockers”*

How exactly would this work? We dove into the patent language to see that Facebook has, at least in this patent's described method, spelled out a specific mic-triggering scenario. Though the company mentions high-frequency sounds as part of the ambient-audio collection process, these sounds aren't what will activate this hypothetical Facebook app's recording feature. (Meaning, the patent doesn't appear to revolve around an always-on mic in your pocket.)

Instead, Facebook's patent spells out a case where smartphones and other "client devices" are connected to a "household broadcasting device" via Bluetooth or another protocol. Based on the patent's language, this could include signing into a Facebook profile on a given set-top box, _or_ it could simply auto-recognize certain broadcasting devices being connected to the same local network without any additional Facebook credentials being supplied. The patent, however, doesn't describe either exact scenario.

Having established this proximity to a broadcasting device, the app in this patent scenario would then "activate the client device to perform actions, such as recording of ambient audio" and that one thing an activated mic might listen for is "an ambient audio signature associated with a sponsored-content item."

The app would then take this recorded ambient noise and analyse it in search of "an audio feature" which is described in many parts of the patent as "a high-frequency modulated sound." This inaudible frequency blip could be brief or persistent, but its purpose is clear: to determine whether or not a broadcast viewer listens to full or at least significant portions of content like advertisements, and to pass that information back to Facebook. One example in the patent mentions analysis of perfectly timed gaps in a high-frequency audio sample, which would specifically tell Facebook that a TV viewer "skipped the [advertisement] by installing a blocker."

https://arstechnica.com/information...urn-your-mic-on-to-analyze-how-you-watch-ads/​


----------



## Miss Hale (1 July 2018)

Joe Blow said:


> Perhaps this Facebook scandal will get more people back on forums, the original social media. I think people are just beginning to realise how much Facebook knows about them and how much of their personal information is being leaked and compromised.
> 
> You don't even need to use your real name to participate on a forum, and while I can't speak for all forums, I can say with absolute certainty that the very small amount of personal information that ASF has access to (i.e. registration info and IP address) has never been shared with anyone and never will. Not on my watch anyway.




I much prefer forums to Facebook. Facebook groups are a poor substitute.  I was on a forum that relates to a medical condition I have and last time I visited it they said the forum had closed because there was now an active FB group that had taken its place and they posted a link.  The link didn't work and when I checked out groups for that subject there were several and I couldn't determine which was the Australian one (if any were) and which ones were good and or active ones. Gave up in disgust. Vale my useful forum, now I have nothing.

I am on FB mainly to keep up with non-immediate family members, that's really all I use it for.  Twitter I am on under a pseudonym just to follow a few sporting teams to get results/updates etc. I like it even less than FB!  You can have a decent in depth discussion with anyone on FB or Twitter like you can on a forum.


----------



## greggles (1 July 2018)

Miss Hale said:


> I much prefer forums to Facebook. Facebook groups are a poor substitute.  I was on a forum that relates to a medical condition I have and last time I visited it they said the forum had closed because there was now an active FB group that had taken its place and they posted a link.  The link didn't work and when I checked out groups for that subject there were several and I couldn't determine which was the Australian one (if any were) and which ones were good and or active ones. Gave up in disgust. Vale my useful forum, now I have nothing.
> 
> I am on FB mainly to keep up with non-immediate family members, that's really all I use it for.  Twitter I am on under a pseudonym just to follow a few sporting teams to get results/updates etc. I like it even less than FB!  You can have a decent in depth discussion with anyone on FB or Twitter like you can on a forum.




I agree. While I use Facebook for the purpose for which it was originally intended - to stay connected with friends and family - I have no use for its Groups feature. I have taken a look at some of the ASX groups and they seem to be mostly ramping and petty infighting. "What does everyone think of (insert stock code here)?", "(insert stock code here) is going to fly soon!"

A forum like ASF feels like a resource with useful content that dates back many years that you can search for easily and access at any time. It's a place of stored knowledge. There is no sense of permanency on Facebook. It's there for a moment and then it's gone. But in the end, 99% of it is not worth keeping anyway. It's disposable for good reason, because not much of it has any real value.

I'll stick with forums. I prefer the functionality too.


----------



## SirRumpole (1 July 2018)

Too many people on Facebook and Twitter who just want to make zingers with no real debate. 

This forum is an example of how it should be done, very few smart a$$es, good levels of discussion and information.


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## fiftyeight (1 July 2018)

SirRumpole said:


> Too many people on Facebook and Twitter who just want to make zingers with no real debate.






Smart people talking about this, featuring Jordan Peterson for all the fan boys


----------



## wayneL (1 July 2018)

SirRumpole said:


> Too many people on Facebook and Twitter who just want to make zingers with no real debate.
> 
> This forum is an example of how it should be done, very few smart a$$es, good levels of discussion and information.




My God, Twitter is even worse.

It's weird. Fora are far better for discussion in my profession (IMO), yet they struggle, always have done. Our main faceache group has 8,000 members and it has been a boon for sharing intel and knowledge... but dammit, a forum would be so much better.


----------



## greggles (1 July 2018)

How much more time do people really want to spend on Facebook anyway? Can't they see what's happening? I don't want Facebook to be the centre of all communication on the internet.

When Facebook started out, it seemed innocuous enough. Keep people connected. Fair enough. Stay in touch with old friends and new without ever leaving your house. It works especially well for the introverts among us. But that's not what Facebook is about. It's about learning everything they can about you, creating a dossier of information more complete than any secret service could ever have. And this is the crazy part... people hand over this information willingly. So who has access to this information? How is it being used? Facebook know everything you've liked, every Facebook page you've looked at, every group you've joined, every post you've clicked on.

I wouldn't want the government knowing this much information about me, so why should I hand it over to Zuckerberg? I don't trust Facebook. Information is power and as Lord Acton once said, "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."


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## Gringotts Bank (1 July 2018)

"We'd like to know a little bit about you for our files. We'd like to help you learn to help yourself. Look around you, all you see are sympathetic eyes. Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home".  ~S&G or FB?

They want to control you - pure and simple.  And they are smart.


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## Miss Hale (2 July 2018)

greggles said:


> I'll stick with forums. I prefer the functionality too.




Was going to mention the functionality. FB (and Twitter) drive me nuts because when I check them (probably only every few days) there is so much crap on my news feed that it takes ages to get to anything I actually want to read. Makes it virtually unusable at times.


----------



## bellenuit (2 July 2018)

Miss Hale said:


> Was going to mention the functionality. FB (and Twitter) drive me nuts because when I check them (probably only every few days) there is so much crap on my news feed that it takes ages to get to anything I actually want to read. Makes it virtually unusable at times.




In FB you can turn off notifications for specific people and still keep them as friends, which means their posts won't appear on your newsfeed. I do that for all my teenage relatives and the few adults who use it as a political or religious platform. Every few months I visit their individual timelines to see if anything significant has occurred in their lives. 

That gets rid of a lot of cr*p.


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## Miss Hale (2 July 2018)

bellenuit said:


> In FB you can turn off notifications for specific people and still keep them as friends, which means their posts won't appear on your newsfeed. I do that for all my teenage relatives and the few adults who use it as a political or religious platform. Every few months I visit their individual timelines to see if anything significant has occurred in their lives.
> 
> That gets rid of a lot of cr*p.




Yes, I do that already for the same reasons (teenage relies and political crap from some others). It's more others things/institutions I follow.  I follow a few sports clubs and the like that I am interested in but there is just too much flimsy stuff they post. Really just want to know if anything really important happens but you just get a lot of tedious crap as well. 

The news feed is also sorted on most popular rather than most recent. I want to see the posts in chronological order. You can change this but you have to change it EVERY time you go in and you are not able to change it on your phone at all.


----------



## moXJO (2 July 2018)

FB had an ad on TV last night about the new privacy features. Wonder if they were hit much with the inquiry?


----------



## notting (2 July 2018)

Perhaps the Republican Party should declare itself a religion and Trump their profit. Then anyone knocking it will be banned from FB for religious intolerance.


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## DB008 (6 July 2018)




----------



## DB008 (18 August 2018)

*Exclusive: U.S. government seeks Facebook help to *
*wiretap Messenger - sources*​
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The U.S. government is trying to force Facebook Inc (FB.O) to break the encryption in its popular Messenger app so law enforcement may listen to a suspect’s voice conversations in a criminal probe, three people briefed on the case said, resurrecting the issue of whether companies can be compelled to alter their products to enable surveillance.



https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...lp-to-wiretap-messenger-sources-idUSKBN1L226D​


----------



## DB008 (4 September 2018)

*Facebook-Owned Security App Caught Snooping on iPhones*​
Facebook is facing another embarrassment for once again violating user privacy, this time from one of its apps being sold on the Apple App Store.

Apple officials confronted Facebook last week for violating the company’s regulations about apps collecting user data. The app owned by Facebook, Onavo Protect, was acquired when they bought the Israeli security app developer Onavo in 2013. It provides a VPN (virtual private network), a technology that is supposed to provide privacy protection while browsing and downloading apps. Instead of providing privacy, the app was collecting lists of apps that users had installed on their phone, learning how they were being used, and sending the information to Facebook.

An Apple spokesman said in an email to CNBC, "We work hard to protect user privacy and data security throughout the Apple ecosystem. With the latest update to our guidelines, we made it explicitly clear that apps should not collect information about which other apps are installed on a user's device for the purposes of analytics or advertising/marketing and must make it clear what user data will be collected and how it will be used."

Facebook has been offering the app without clearly disclosing that it is the owner. Facebook had earlier told Congress that it does not use Onavo data for Facebook product uses or to collect information about individuals. But it admitted that it uses Onavo to collect a wide range of information about the apps and how they are used in order to improve its own products.

Facebook responded to the ban: "We've always been clear when people download Onavo about the information that is collected and how it is used. As a developer on Apple's platform, we follow the rules they've put in place."


https://pjmedia.com/trending/facebook-owned-security-app-caught-snooping-on-iphones/​


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## DB008 (29 September 2018)

Another reason to delete facebook....

*Facebook Confirms Giving Advertisers Access to*
*User Phone Numbers*​Facebook confirmed a Wednesday report claiming it gave advertisers access to user phone numbers and contact lists. “We use the information people provide to offer a better, more personalized experience on Facebook, including ads,” a Facebook spokeswoman told AFP. “We are clear about how we use the information we collect, including the contact information that people upload or add to their own accounts.” In a Gizmodo report published Wednesday, two studies found that the social network was giving advertisers access to data sources that users did not explicitly permit could be used. For example, the studies found user phone numbers given to the social network to enable two-factor authentication were being targeted in advertisements. The studies also found that user contact lists that were uploaded to the site could be “mined for personal information,” meaning that data from friends of the user could also be available to advertisers.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/facebook-confirms-giving-advertisers-access-to-user-phone-numbers​


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## DB008 (20 October 2018)

*Facebook’s confusion about its Portal camera is concerning*

*If execs aren't sure about how the company could use data*
*from the device, why should we trust it?*​Facebook couldn't have picked a worse time to introduce Portal, a camera-equipped smart display designed to make video chatting in your home easier. And, if the rumors are true, the company is reportedly also preparing to launch a video chat camera for your TV, based on the same system as Portal. Not only does news of this hardware come at a time when when Facebook is under major scrutiny after suffering a massive data breach in September, which exposed private information of 29 million users, including usernames, birth date, gender, location, religion and the devices used to browse the site. But the most concerning part about Portal, is that Facebook's own executives don't seem to have a basic understanding of what types of data the company will be collecting or what it will be using it for.

As _Recode_ reports, during the announcement of Portal, Facebook execs said no data collected through the hardware, such as call logs or third-party app usage, would be used to serve users targeted ads on Facebook. But, over a week later, Facebook (which has not replied to our request for comment) told the publication that this information was actually wrong.​

https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/18/facebook-portal-camera-ads-data-privacy/​


----------



## DB008 (25 October 2018)

*Facebook, Google Hit With Lawsuits for*
*‘Secret’ Location Tracking*​
Tech giants filed location histories, even when users opted out of the feature, lawsuits claim
​Facebook and Google have both been hit with lawsuits claiming that the Silicon Valley giants secretly track their users’ locations against their will and use the information to pad its advertising business.

The class action complaint against Facebook, which was filed by Brett Heeger last Friday in San Francisco federal court, said the social network tracks its users even after they’ve opted out of its “Location History” feature.

“Facebook secretly tracks, logs, and stores location data for all of its users–including those who have sought to limit the information about their locations that Facebook may store in its servers by choosing to turn Location History off,” the suit said. “Because Facebook misleads users and engages in this deceptive practice, collecting and storing private location data against users’ expressed choice, Plaintiff brings this class action on behalf of himself and similarly situated Facebook users.”

Heeger said users aren’t aware of Facebook’s “secret tracking” unless they download their data from the company and search “multiple levels of obscure folders.” He claimed he set up his privacy settings to stop Facebook from tracking his location, but the company continued to do so. Facebook used “estimated locations,” using his IP address and WiFi data, to continue tracking his location, Heeger claimed. The action violated federal and state wiretapping laws, according to the suit.


Facebook benefited from tracking Heeger, the suit claimed, because the company makes money off location-based advertisements. The complaint seeks unspecified monetary damages.

Facebook, in a statement to TheWrap, pushed back against the lawsuit, saying its location tracking policy has always been transparent.

“Our Data Policy and related disclosures explain our practices relating to location data and provide information about the privacy settings we make available,” a Facebook spokesperson told TheWrap. “This lawsuit is without merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously.”

The lawsuit follows a similar complaint against Google, which was filed on Oct. 12. in San Francisco federal court. The suit claims that Google “intentionally provided inaccurate instructions” for its users to turn off its own “Location History” feature.

“Google explicitly represented that its users could prevent Google from tracking their location data by disabling a feature called ‘Location History’ on their devices. Google stated: ‘With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored.’ This statement is false,” the lawsuit claimed. “Turning off the ‘Location History’ setting merely stops Google from adding new locations to the ‘timeline’ accessible by users. In secret, Google was still tracking, storing, and monetizing all the same information.”

Instead, users have to navigate a labyrinth to reach the correct “Web & Activity” page to turn off location tracking — a page “Google’s instructions intentionally omit all references to,” according to the class action complaint. The suit points to an Aug. 13 report from the Associated Press that brought Google’s tracking policies into question.

https://www.thewrap.com/facebook-google-lawsuits-secret-tracking/​


----------



## DB008 (8 December 2018)

*Facebook accused of striking 'secret deals over user data'*​Emails written by Facebook's chief and his deputies show the firm struck secret deals to give some developers special access to user data while refusing others, according to MPs.

A cache of internal documents has been published online by a parliamentary committee.

It said the files also showed Facebook had deliberately made it "as hard as possible" for users to be aware of privacy changes to its Android app.

Facebook had objected to their release.

It said that the documents had been presented in a "very misleading manner" and required additional context.

The emails were obtained from the chief of Six4Three - a software firm that is suing the tech giant - and were disclosed by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee as part of its inquiry into fake news.

About 250 pages have been published, some of which are marked "highly confidential".

Damian Collins MP, the chair of the committee, highlighted several "key issues" in an introductory note.

He wrote that:

Facebook allowed some companies to maintain "full access" to users' friends data even after announcing changes to its platform in 2014/2015 to limit what developers' could see. "It is not clear that there was any user consent for this, nor how Facebook decided which companies should be whitelisted," Mr Collins wrote
Facebook had been aware that an update to its Android app that let it collect records of users' calls and texts would be controversial. "To mitigate any bad PR, Facebook planned to make it as hard as possible for users to know that this was one of the underlying features," Mr Collins wrote
Facebook used data provided by the Israeli analytics firm Onavo to determine which other mobile apps were being downloaded and used by the public. It then used this knowledge to decide which apps to acquire or otherwise treat as a threat
there was evidence that Facebook's refusal to share data with some apps caused them to fail
there had been much discussion of the financial value of providing access to friends' data
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46456695​


----------



## $20shoes (8 December 2018)

Gee, the Australian Govt sounds a lot like facebook right now.


----------



## DB008 (19 December 2018)

Check out these idiots....


*As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening for Tech Giants*
​For years, Facebook gave some of the world’s largest technology companies more intrusive access to users’ personal data than it has disclosed, effectively exempting those business partners from its usual privacy rules, according to internal records and interviews.

The special arrangements are detailed in hundreds of pages of Facebook documents obtained by The New York Times. The records, generated in 2017 by the company’s internal system for tracking partnerships, provide the most complete picture yet of the social network’s data-sharing practices. They also underscore how personal data has become the most prized commodity of the digital age, traded on a vast scale by some of the most powerful companies in Silicon Valley and beyond.

The exchange was intended to benefit everyone. Pushing for explosive growth, Facebook got more users, lifting its advertising revenue. Partner companies acquired features to make their products more attractive. Facebook users connected with friends across different devices and websites. But Facebook also assumed extraordinary power over the personal information of its 2.2 billion users — control it has wielded with little transparency or outside oversight.

Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages.

improperly used Facebook data to build tools that aided President Trump’s 2016 campaign. Acknowledging that it had breached users’ trust, Facebook insisted that it had instituted stricter privacy protections long ago. Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive, assured lawmakers in April that people “have complete control” over everything they share on Facebook.

But the documents, as well as interviews with about 50 former employees of Facebook and its corporate partners, reveal that Facebook allowed certain companies access to data despite those protections. They also raise questions about whether Facebook ran afoul of a 2011 consent agreement with the Federal Trade Commission that barred the social network from sharing user data without explicit permission.

In all, the deals described in the documents benefited more than 150 companies — most of them tech businesses, including online retailers and entertainment sites, but also automakers and media organizations. Their applications sought the data of hundreds of millions of people a month, the records show. The deals, the oldest of which date to 2010, were all active in 2017. Some were still in effect this year.

In an interview, Steve Satterfield, Facebook’s director of privacy and public policy, said none of the partnerships violated users’ privacy or the F.T.C. agreement. Contracts required the companies to abide by Facebook policies, he added.

Still, Facebook executives have acknowledged missteps over the past year. “We know we’ve got work to do to regain people’s trust,” Mr. Satterfield said. “Protecting people’s information requires stronger teams, better technology and clearer policies, and that’s where we’ve been focused for most of 2018.” He said that the partnerships were “one area of focus” and that Facebook was in the process of winding many of them down.

Facebook has found no evidence of abuse by its partners, a spokeswoman said. Some of the largest partners, including Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo, said they had used the data appropriately, but declined to discuss the sharing deals in detail. Facebook did say that it had mismanaged some of its partnerships, allowing certain companies’ access to continue long after they had shut down the features that required the data.​
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/technology/facebook-privacy.html​


----------



## sptrawler (19 December 2018)

For the life of me, I can't understand why people use facebook, especially now when there are so many ways to contact people privately. Why do it all in public?

It appears as though everyone now, needs constant affirmation, to support their fragile personalities.


----------



## bellenuit (20 December 2018)

sptrawler said:


> For the life of me, I can't understand why people use facebook, especially now when there are so many ways to contact people privately. Why do it all in public?
> 
> It appears as though everyone now, needs constant affirmation, to support their fragile personalities.




I am well aware of the privacy issues, but FB to me has a lot of value. Perhaps because I am now settled in Australia but came from Ireland originally. FB keeps me in touch with the happenings in my home town, but also lets me know what my friends of earlier years are up to. These are past friends that I no longer have or want to have a one-to-one relationship with, but would still like to know how they are doing. For me it's a way to keep in touch with your roots in a semi-anonymous way.


----------



## Humid (20 December 2018)

sptrawler said:


> For the life of me, I can't understand why people use facebook, especially now when there are so many ways to contact people privately. Why do it all in public?
> 
> It appears as though everyone now, needs constant affirmation, to support their fragile personalities.



I use messenger without Facebook it’s a very easy way to get in touch with friends


----------



## wayneL (20 December 2018)

It's  great for my business.. 

...and trolling SJWs


----------



## sptrawler (20 December 2018)

I think if it used correctly it would be great, the problem is, it isn't.
Rather than a medium for doing or advertising business, using it to message people, keep in contact with distant relatives, from what I've heard from friends it ends up being a medium for mindless dribble from all and sundry.
People who use the platform, also appear to think they are in a cone of silence or a vacuum where no laws can reach them, where they are free to make outlandish statements with no regard for recourse.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/how...ech-in-the-lucky-country-20181219-p50n4p.html

Obviously the papers are becoming nervous, as most should be, I think they are lucky Abbott hasn't had a piece of them.lol


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## DB008 (20 December 2018)

WOW

Total invasion of privacy....

*FB STOCK PRICE FALLS AFTER FACEBOOK REPORTEDLY SHARED YOUR PRIVATE MESSAGES WITH NETFLIX, SPOTIFY*​
Facebook’s stock price fell steadily Wednesday amid a flurry of bad news for the social media giant. *According to a new report from The New York Times, Facebook allegedly was giving tech giants like Spotify and Netflix access to private Facebook Messenger messages.*

Documents obtained by the _Times_ showed that "Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages."

The report also alleges that Facebook allowed Amazon to get usernames and contact information and Yahoo to view friends' posts. Facebook put out a statement defending the practice, saying none of the information it gave to its partners was given without people’s permission.

“To put it simply, this work was about helping people do two things. First, people could access their Facebook accounts or specific Facebook features on devices and platforms built by other companies like Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry and Yahoo,” Facebook said. “Second, people could have more social experiences—like seeing recommendations from their Facebook friends—on other popular apps and websites, like Netflix, The New York Times, Pandora and Spotify.”

Facebook said most of the practices and features listed in the report are now gone.

https://www.newsweek.com/facebook-s...ring-private-messages-netflix-spotify-1265319​


----------



## DB008 (30 January 2019)

*EU data watchdog raises concerns over Facebook integration*​Facebook’s plan to merge WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger could raise significant data protection concerns, according to the Irish commission that regulates the social network in the EU.

The Data Protection Commission has asked for an urgent briefing with Facebook Ireland so it can assess the proposals, it said in a statement. “The Irish DPC will be very closely scrutinising Facebook’s plans as they develop, particularly insofar as they involve the sharing and merging of personal data between different Facebook companies.

“Previous proposals to share data between Facebook companies have given rise to significant data protection concerns and the Irish DPC will be seeking early assurances that all such concerns will be fully taken into account by Facebook in further developing this proposal. It must be emphasised that ultimately the proposed integration can only occur in the EU if it is capable of meeting all of the requirements of the GDPR.”

Facebook’s only previous attempt to merge WhatsApp with its wider business was shot down in the European Union due to data protection concerns. In March 2018, the UK information commissioner (ICO) ruled it would be illegal for the company to carry out a plan, paused in 2016, to share personal data between the two services in order to improve targeted advertising on Facebook.

The ICO’s investigation found “WhatsApp has not identified a lawful basis of processing for any such sharing of personal data” and that “if they had shared the data, they would have been in contravention of the first and second data protection principles of the Data Protection Act”.

Following that ruling, WhatsApp entered a voluntary commitment that, if it did decide to share data, it would only do so in accordance with the requirements of GDPR, the pan-European data regulation, and working with the Irish data protection commissioner.

Under GDPR, a company may designate one national regulator as its “lead supervisory authority”, to prevent it having to deal with 28 separate regulators; for Facebook, Ireland’s DPC takes that role.

Facebook has not given a timescale on its plans to merge the three networks, but has confirmed it is “considering ways to make it easier to reach friends and family across networks”. The plans, first reported by the New York Times, would see the three apps continuing to operate independently, but with a merged back-end that would allow messages to be sent between users of different services.


https://www.theguardian.com/technol...watchdog-raises-concerns-facebook-integration​


----------



## sptrawler (31 January 2019)

If facebook starts cross sharing details with Whats app, I will be dumping Whats app.


----------



## Smurf1976 (31 January 2019)

Setup any computer with an intentionally slow internet connection so you can see what's going on.

Have a look and most likely even your online banking is "waiting on Facebook" as the reason you're looking at a blank screen as you wait for the site to load via your slow connection.

However entrenched you think it is, it has gone way beyond that.


----------



## DB008 (31 January 2019)

*Apple says it’s banning Facebook’s research app that collects users’ personal information*​
Facebook is at the center of another privacy scandal — and this time it hasn’t just angered users. It has also angered Apple.

The short version: Apple says Facebook broke an agreement it made with Apple by publishing a “research” app for iPhone users that allowed the social giant to collect all kinds of personal data about those users, TechCrunch reported Tuesday. The app allowed Facebook to track users’ app history, their private messages, and their location data. Facebook’s research effort reportedly targeted users as young as 13 years old.

As of last summer, apps that collect that kind of data are against Apple’s privacy guidelines. That means Facebook couldn’t make this research app available through the App Store, which would have required Apple approval.

Instead, Facebook apparently took advantage of Apple’s “Developer Enterprise Program,” which lets approved Apple partners, like Facebook, test and distribute apps specifically for their own employees. In those cases, the employees can use third-party services to download beta versions of apps that aren’t available to the general public.

Apple doesn’t review and approve these apps the way it does for the App Store because they’re only supposed to be downloaded by employees who work for the app’s creator.

Facebook, though, used this program to pay non-employees as much as $20 per month to download the research app without Apple’s knowledge.

Apple’s response, via a PR rep this morning: “We designed our Enterprise Developer Program solely for the internal distribution of apps within an organization. Facebook has been using their membership to distribute a data-collecting app to consumers, which is a clear breach of their agreement with Apple. Any developer using their enterprise certificates to distribute apps to consumers will have their certificates revoked, which is what we did in this case to protect our users and their data.”

Translation: Apple won’t let Facebook distribute the app anymore — a fact that Apple likely communicated to Facebook on Tuesday evening. Apple’s statement also mentions that Facebook’s “certificates” — plural — have been revoked. That implies Facebook cannot distribute other apps to employees through this developer program right now, not just the research app.​

https://www.recode.net/2019/1/30/18203231/apple-banning-facebook-research-app​


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## DB008 (8 February 2019)

What lots of people don't realise is that Facebook is trying to track everyone on the web, everywhere and everything they do. If you have ever visited a website and down the bottom there is a 'share on Facebook' they have tracked you...


*German court orders Facebook to redesign data collection, saying it abuses market dominance*​
Facebook has been ordered to curb its data collection practices in Germany after a ruling that the world's largest social network abused its market dominance to gather information about users without their knowledge or consent.

Germany, where privacy concerns run deep, is in the forefront of a global backlash against Facebook, fuelled by last year's Cambridge Analytica scandal in which tens of millions of Facebook profiles were harvested without their users' consent.

The Cartel Office objected in particular to how Facebook pools data on people from third-party apps — including its own WhatsApp and Instagram — and its online tracking of people who aren't even members through Facebook "like" or "share" buttons.

"In future, Facebook will no longer be allowed to force its users to agree to the practically unrestricted collection and assigning of non-Facebook data to their Facebook accounts," Cartel Office chief Andreas Mundt said.

These have gone down badly with Germans, reflecting broader concerns over personal surveillance that dates back to Germany's history of Nazi and Communist rule in the 20th century.

German Justice Minister Katarina Barley welcomed the ruling.

"Users are often unaware of this flow of data and cannot prevent it if they want to use the services," she said.​
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-08/germany-says-facebook-must-redesign-data-collection/10791948​


----------



## DB008 (23 February 2019)

*You Give Apps Sensitive Personal Information. Then They Tell Facebook.*​
Millions of smartphone users confess their most intimate secrets to apps, including when they want to work on their belly fat or the price of the house they checked out last weekend. Other apps know users’ body weight, blood pressure, menstrual cycles or pregnancy status.

Unbeknown to most people, in many cases that data is being shared with someone else: Facebook Inc.

The social-media giant collects intensely personal information from many popular smartphone apps just seconds after users enter it, even if the user has no connection to Facebook, according to testing done by The Wall Street Journal. The apps often send the data without any prominent or specific disclosure, the testing showed.

It is already known that many smartphone apps send information to Facebook about when users open them, and sometimes what they do inside. Previously unreported is how at least 11 popular apps, totaling tens of millions of downloads, have also been sharing sensitive data entered by users. The findings alarmed some privacy experts who reviewed the Journal’s testing.

Facebook is under scrutiny from Washington and European regulators for how it treats the information of users and nonusers alike. It has been fined for allowing now defunct political-data firm Cambridge Analytica illicit access to users’ data and has drawn criticism for giving companies special access to user records well after it said it had walled off that information.

In the case of apps, the Journal’s testing showed that Facebook software collects data from many apps even if no Facebook account is used to log in and if the end user isn’t a Facebook member.

Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, which operate the two dominant app stores, don’t require apps to disclose all the partners with whom data is shared. Users can decide not to grant permission for an app to access certain types of information, such as their contacts or locations. But these permissions generally don’t apply to the information users supply directly to apps, which is sometimes the most personal.

In the Journal’s testing, Instant Heart Rate: HR Monitor, the most popular heart-rate app on Apple’s iOS, made by California-based Azumio Inc., sent a user’s heart rate to Facebook immediately after it was recorded.

Flo Health Inc.’s Flo Period & Ovulation Tracker, which claims 25 million active users, told Facebook when a user was having her period or informed the app of an intention to get pregnant, the tests showed.

Real-estate app Realtor.com, owned by Move Inc., a subsidiary of Wall Street Journal parent News Corp , sent the social network the location and price of listings that a user viewed, noting which ones were marked as favorites, the tests showed.

None of those apps provided users any apparent way to stop that information from being sent to Facebook.

Facebook said some of the data sharing uncovered by the Journal’s testing appeared to violate its business terms, which instruct app developers not to send it “health, financial information or other categories of sensitive information.” Facebook said it is telling apps flagged by the Journal to stop sending information its users might regard as sensitive. The company said it may take additional action if the apps don’t comply.

“We require app developers to be clear with their users about the information they are sharing with us,” a Facebook spokeswoman said.

At the heart of the issue is an analytics tool Facebook offers developers, which allows them to see statistics about their users’ activities—and to target those users with Facebook ads. Although Facebook’s terms give it latitude to use the data uncovered by the Journal for other purposes, the spokeswoman said it doesn’t do so.

Facebook tells its business partners it uses customer data collected from apps to personalize ads and content on Facebook and to conduct market research, among other things. A patent the company applied for in 2015, which was approved last year, describes how data from apps would be stored on Facebook servers where it could be used to help the company’s algorithms target ads and select content to show users.

Apple said its guidelines require apps to seek “prior user consent” for collecting user data and take steps to prevent unauthorized access by third parties. “When we hear of any developer violating these strict privacy terms and guidelines, we quickly investigate and, if necessary, take immediate action,” the company said.

A Google spokesman declined to comment beyond pointing to the company’s policy requiring apps that handle sensitive data to “disclose the type of parties to which any personal or sensitive user data is shared,” and in some cases to do so prominently.

Before Alice Berg began using Flo to track her periods last June, she checked the app’s terms of service. The 25-year-old student in Oslo says she had grown more cautious about sharing data with apps and wanted to ensure that only a limited amount of her data would be shared with third-parties like Facebook.

Now Ms. Berg said she may delete the app. “I think it’s incredibly dishonest of them that they’re just lying to their users especially when it comes to something so sensitive,” she said.

Flo Health’s privacy policy says it won’t send “information regarding your marked cycles, pregnancy, symptoms, notes and other information that is entered by you and that you do not elect to share” to third-party vendors.

Flo initially said in a written statement that it doesn’t send “critical user data” and that the data it does send Facebook is “depersonalized” to keep it private and secure.

The Journal’s testing, however, showed sensitive information was sent with a unique advertising identifier that can be matched to a device or profile. A Flo spokeswoman subsequently said the company will “substantially limit” its use of external analytics systems while it conducts a privacy audit.

Move, the owner of real-estate app Realtor.com—which sent information to Facebook about properties that users liked, according to the Journal’s tests—said “we strictly adhere to all local, state and federal requirements,” and that its privacy policy “clearly states how user information is collected and shared.” The policy says the app collects a variety of information, including content in which users are interested, and may share it with third parties. It doesn’t mention Facebook.

The Journal tested more than 70 apps that are among the most popular in Apple’s iOS store in categories that handle sensitive user information. The Journal used software to monitor the internet communications triggered by using an app, including the information being sent to Facebook and other third parties. The tests found at least 11 apps sent Facebook potentially sensitive information about how users behaved or actual data they entered.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook condemned what he described as a ‘data-industrial complex’ in an October speech to privacy regulators in Europe.Photo: stephanie lecocq/epa-efe/rex/Shutterstock

Among the top 10 finance apps in Apple’s U.S. app store as of Thursday, none appeared to send sensitive information to Facebook, and only two sent any information at all. But at least six of the top 15 health and fitness apps in that store sent potentially sensitive information immediately after it was collected.

Disconnect Inc., a software company that makes tools for people to manage their online privacy, was commissioned by the Journal to retest some of the apps. The company confirmed the Journal’s findings, and said Facebook’s terms allowing it to use the data it collected were unusual.

“This is a big mess,” said Patrick Jackson, Disconnect’s chief technology officer, who analyzed apps on behalf of the Journal. “This is completely independent of the functionality of the app.”

The software the Journal used in its tests wasn’t able to decipher the contents of traffic from Android apps. Esther Onfroy, co-founder of cybersecurity firm Defensive Lab Agency, conducted a separate test showing that at least one app flagged by the Journal’s testing, BetterMe: Weight Loss Workouts, was in its Android version also sharing users’ weights and heights with Facebook as soon as they were entered.

BetterMe Ltd. didn’t respond to email and social-media inquires from the Journal. On Feb. 16, after being contacted by the Journal, it updated its privacy policy, replacing a general reference to Facebook’s analytics to one that says it shares information with Facebook so it can determine “the average weight and height of our users, how many users chose a particular problem area of their body, and other interactions.”

Apps often integrate code known as software-development kits, or SDKs, that help developers integrate certain features or functions. Any information shared with an app may also be shared with the maker of the embedded SDK. There are an array of SDKs, including Facebook’s, that allow apps to better understand their users’ behavior or to collect data to sell targeted advertising.

Facebook’s SDK, which is contained in thousands of apps, includes an analytics service called “App Events” that allows developers to look at trends among their users. Apps can tell the SDK to record a set of standardized actions taken by users, such as when a user completes a purchase. App developers also can define “custom app events” for Facebook to capture—and that is how the sensitive information the Journal detected was sent.

Facebook says on its website it uses customer data from its SDK, combined with other data it collects, to personalize ads and content, as well as to “improve other experiences on Facebook, including News Feed and Search content ranking capabilities.”

But a spokeswoman said Facebook doesn’t use custom events—the ones that can contain sensitive information—for those purposes. She said Facebook automatically deletes some sensitive data it might receive, such as Social Security numbers.

She said Facebook is now looking into how to search for apps that violate its terms, and to build safeguards to prevent Facebook from storing sensitive data that apps may send.

Privacy lawyers say the collection of health data by nonhealth entities is legal in most U.S. states, provided there is sufficient disclosure in an app’s and Facebook’s terms of service. The Federal Trade Commission has taken an interest in cases in which data sharing deviates widely from what users might expect, particularly if any explanation was hard for users to find, said Woodrow Hartzog, a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University.

The privacy policy for Azumio, maker of the Instant Heart Rate app, says it collects health information including heart rates, and that it may provide some personal data to third-party service providers and advertising providers. It doesn’t say anything about providing those outside entities with health information drawn from its apps, nor does it mention Facebook as a provider.

Bojan Bostjancic, the company’s CEO, said in an email message that it uses Facebook analytics to analyze its users’ behavior in the app, and that it discloses the use of third parties in its privacy policy. He didn’t respond to follow-up questions.

After being contacted by the Journal, Breethe Inc., maker of a meditation app of the same name, stopped sending Facebook the email address each user used to log in to the app, as well as the full name of each meditation completed.

“Clearly, Facebook’s business model is unique and, unfortunately, we were not as diligent in aligning our data management with their privacy policy as we should have been,” said Garner Bornstein, the company’s co-founder.

In the European Union, the processing of some sensitive data, such as health or sexual information, is more tightly regulated. The EU’s new privacy law usually requires companies to secure explicit consent to collect, process or share such data—and making consent a condition of using a service usually isn’t valid.

Some privacy experts who reviewed the Journal’s findings said the practices may be in violation of that law. “For the sensitive data, companies basically always need consent—likely both the app developer and Facebook,” said Frederik J. Zuiderveen Borgesius, a law professor at Radboud University in the Netherlands.

The Facebook spokeswoman said the company is in compliance with the EU privacy law.

A Las Vegas monorail with a Google advertisement passes an Apple billboard about privacy.Photo: robyn beck/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Facebook allows users to turn off the company’s ability to use the data it collects from third-party apps and websites for targeted ads. There is currently no way to stop the company from collecting the information in the first place, or using it for other purposes, such as detecting fake accounts. Germany’s top antitrust enforcer earlier this month ordered Facebook to stop using that data at all without permission, a ruling Facebook is appealing.

Under pressure over its data collection, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said last year that the company would create a feature called “Clear History” to allow users to see what data Facebook had collected about them from applications and websites, and to delete it from Facebook. The company says it is still building the technology needed to make the feature possible.

Data drawn from mobile apps can be valuable. Advertising buyers say that because of Facebook’s insights into users’ behavior, it can offer marketers better return on their investment than most other companies when they seek users who are, say, exercise nuts, or in the market for a new sports car. Such ads fetch a higher cost per click.

That is partly why Facebook’s revenue is soaring. Research firm eMarketer projects that Facebook this year will account for 20% of the $333 billion world-wide digital-advertising market.

In a call to discuss the company’s most recent earnings, however, Chief Financial Officer David Wehner noted that investors should be aware that Apple and Google could possibly tighten their privacy controls around apps. That possibility, he said, is “an ongoing risk that we’re monitoring for 2019.”

—Mark Secada, Yoree Koh and Kirsten Grind contributed to this article.​


https://www.wsj.com/articles/you-gi...formation-then-they-tell-facebook-11550851636​
To get around the wsj paywall, copy the above address and put it into this website
https://www.outline.com/ZUGZzz​
Hey presto!


----------



## DB008 (5 March 2019)

*Facebook admits using two-factor phone numbers to target ads*​Facebook has admitted that it uses the phone number provided by users for two-factor authentication (2FA) to target them with ads. Naturally, its repurposing of information passed on for security purposes to make more ad dollars is causing quite the stir, with users lambasting its tactics on social media. Facebook's acknowledgement comes in the wake of a _Gizmodo_ report that exposed the practice.

"We use the information people provide to offer a better, more personalized experience on Facebook, including ads," a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement to _TechCrunch_. "We are clear about how we use the information we collect, including the contact information that people upload or add to their own accounts. You can manage and delete the contact information you've uploaded at any time."

Last year, Facebook began giving users more 2FA alternatives beyond a code sent to your phone, including USB key support, followed by the ability to use third-party authenticator apps in May. Users may have opted for those methods over supplying their phone number if they knew what Facebook was up to. The company also came under fire in February for spamming 2FA phone numbers with codes. It blamed that on a bug.​
https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/28/facebook-two-factor-phone-numbers-ads/



*Facebook lets people find you by your two-factor
phone number and you can't stop it*​
Your Facebook account is teeming with personal data and you should be doing everything you can to protect it. That's why Facebook lets you set up two-factor authentication (2FA). What you might not know is that 2FA could be weakening your Facebook privacy settings.

Facebook gives you a few different ways to utilize 2FA. You can pair a FIDO U2F hardware key. You can use an authenticator app to generate single-use codes. You can also have Facebook send those codes to you via text message.

It's that last option that privacy-minded Facebook users want to avoid. As reported by TechCrunch, if you set up a phone number to use with Facebook's two-factor authentication system people will be able to search for you by that phone number.

No big deal, right? Well, there's a catch. Most other spots where you might enter your phone number on Facebook can be blocked from prying eyes. That's not the case with your two-factor phone number. There's no setting that lets you hide it _completely_ from other Facebook users.

Your 2FA number can be hidden on your profile, but it's still searchable. One scenario TechCrunch mentions is automated contact matching from your phone's address book.

That may not be a huge issue on the surface -- there's a very good chance you know most of the people who have the phone number you use for 2FA stored in their phones. The real issue is that Facebook is misusing your information.​
https://www.forbes.com/sites/leemat...one-number-and-you-cant-stop-it/#7659c54f6b75​


*Facebook Uses Two-Factor Authentication Phone Numbers*
*to Help Users Find You*​Facebook's promises are getting harder and harder to believe. Despite telling people that phone numbers used for two-factor authentication (2FA) wouldn't be used for anything else, it's been revealed that the company also uses those numbers to help Facebook users find people's accounts, and there's no way to prevent that process.

We already knew that Facebook had lied about only using phone numbers gathered via 2FA setup for security purposes: researchers discovered in September 2018 that Facebook used those numbers to inform targeted advertisements. This wasn't disclosed to users.

But the ability to find someone's Facebook account with their phone number was only publicized Friday by Jeremy Burge, chief emoji officer at Emojipedia, an emoji reference website. He explained in a series of tweets that Facebook lets its users decide if their phone numbers can be used this way by everyone, friends of friends, or friends. There's no opting out.

Worse still is the fact that this option is set to "everyone" by default. At this point, it's not clear how Facebook's decision to stop using phone numbers in its search results benefited users, since this new feature essentially does the same thing. 

Facebook also apparently shares numbers used for 2FA with its other services. Burge shared a screenshot of Instagram, which Facebook owns, asking him to confirm a phone number that he only shared with Facebook to set up 2FA on an account. Numbers are also shared with WhatsApp, another Facebook property, the whistleblower said. 

Plus, Facebook's reportedly looking to merge the back-end of all these services.​
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/facebook-two-factor-authentication-phone-numbers-search,38740.html​


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## DB008 (11 March 2019)

Link to Zuckerburgs letter :

*A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking
*
https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/a-privacy-focused-vision-for-social-networking/10156700570096634/​
*


MIT Technology Review article on Zuckerbergs letter :
*

*Zuckerberg’s new privacy essay shows why Facebook needs to be broken up*​

*Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t understand what privacy means—he can’t be trusted to define it for the rest of us.*


In a letter published when his company went public in 2012, Mark Zuckerberg championed Facebook’s mission of making the world “more open and connected.” Businesses would become more authentic, human relationships stronger, and government more accountable. “A more open world is a better world,” he wrote.

Facebook’s CEO now claims to have had a major change of heart.

In “A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking,” a 3,200-word essay that Zuckerberg posted to Facebook on March 6, he says he wants to “build a simpler platform that’s focused on privacy first.” In apparent surprise, he writes: “People increasingly also want to connect privately in the digital equivalent of the living room.”

Zuckerberg’s essay is a power grab disguised as an act of contrition. Read it carefully, and it’s impossible to escape the conclusion that if privacy is to be protected in any meaningful way, Facebook must be broken up.

Facebook grew so big, so quickly that it defies categorization. It is a newspaper. It is a post office and a telephone exchange. It is a forum for political debate, and it is a sports broadcaster. It’s a birthday-reminder service and a collective photo album. It is all of these things—and many others—combined, and so it is none of them.

Zuckerberg describes Facebook as a town square. It isn’t. Facebook is a company that brought in more than $55 billion in advertising revenue last year, with a 45% profit margin. This makes it one of the most profitable business ventures in human history. It must be understood as such.

Facebook has minted money because it has figured out how to commoditize privacy on a scale never before seen. A diminishment of privacy is its core product. Zuckerberg has made his money by performing a sort of arbitrage between how much privacy Facebook’s 2 billion users think they are giving up and how much he has been able to sell to advertisers. He says nothing of substance in his long essay about how he intends to keep his firm profitable in this supposed new era. That’s one reason to treat his Damascene moment with healthy skepticism.

“Frankly we don’t currently have a strong reputation for building privacy protective services,” Zuckerberg writes. But Facebook’s reputation is not the salient question: its business model is. If Facebook were to implement strong privacy protections across the board, it would have little left to sell to advertisers aside from the sheer size of its audience. Facebook might still make a lot of money, but they’d make a lot less of it.

Zuckerberg’s proposal is a bait-and-switch. What he’s proposing is essentially a beefed-up version of WhatsApp. Some of the improvements might be worthwhile. Stronger encryption can indeed be useful, and a commitment to not building data centers in repressive countries is laudable, as far as it goes. Other principles that Zuckerberg puts forth would concentrate his monopoly power in worrisome ways. The new “platforms for private sharing” are not instead of Facebook’s current offering: they’re in addition to it. “Public social networks will continue to be very important in people’s lives,” he writes, an assertion he never squares with the vague claim that “interacting with your friends and family across the Facebook network will become a fundamentally more private experience.”​
More on link below :

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/...say-shows-why-facebook-needs-to-be-broken-up/​


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## DB008 (26 March 2019)

*Facebook employees had access to millions of user passwords*
​ KEY POINTS

The company releases a statement Thursday saying it would be notifying those affected in the near future.
The incident may have affected between 200 million and 600 million customers and has been ongoing since 2012, according to the report by cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs.

Facebook stored up to 600 million user account passwords without encryption and viewable as plain text to tens of thousands of company employees, according to a report Thursday by cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs.

Facebook confirmed the report in a blog post. Facebook shares were down less than 1 percent Thursday. The Irish Data Protection Commission, which administers the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, also said Thursday that Facebook had reached out over the issue: “We are currently seeking further information,” the commission said in a statement.


The 600 million users represents a significant portion of Facebook’s user base of 2.7 billion people. The company said Thursday it planned to start notifying those affected so they could change their passwords.

“As part of a routine security review in January, we found that some user passwords were being stored in a readable format within our internal data storage systems,” Facebook said in a statement. “This caught our attention because our login systems are designed to mask passwords using techniques that make them unreadable. We have fixed these issues and as a precaution we will be notifying everyone whose passwords we have found were stored in this way.”

Facebook’s blog post did not say how many users were affected.

The incidents date back to as early as 2012, according to the report. A Facebook software engineer named Scott Renfro was quoted by Krebs as saying the company hasn’t found any misuse of the data in question and that “there was no actual risk that’s come from this.”

Facebook, however, has been under intense scrutiny due to several years of privacy and security scandals that have earned the company criticism from customers and inquiries and fines from several regulatory agencies, particularly in the European Union.


But Facebook’s scandals haven’t significantly dented the company’s count of active daily users, which rose last quarter despite an extended social media campaign by Facebook critics encouraging privacy-minded customers to delete their accounts.​
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/21/facebook-employees-had-access-to-millions-of-user-passwords.html​


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## greggles (3 April 2019)

*Facebook Is Just Casually Asking Some New Users For Their Email Passwords*



> Facebook has been prompting some users registering for the first time to hand over the passwords to their email accounts, the Daily Beast reported on Wednesday—a practice that blares right past questionable and into “beyond sketchy” territory, security consultant Jake Williams told the Beast.
> 
> A Twitter account using the handle @originalesushi first posted an image of the screen several days ago, in which new users are told they can confirm their third-party email addresses “automatically” by giving Facebook their login credentials. The Beast wrote that the prompt appeared to trigger under circumstances where Facebook might think a sign-up attempt is “suspicious,” and confirmed it on their end by “using a disposable webmail address and connecting through a VPN in Romania.”




Unbelievable. Facebook now wants access to people's email passwords? The arrogance and audaciousness of this company is staggering. All they want is your personal information so they can sell you like a product to advertisers.


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## DB008 (4 April 2019)

*Millions of Facebook records were exposed*
*on public Amazon server*​
Security researchers found the Facebook data on an unprotected server, including 22,000 passwords stored in plain text.

A treasure trove of Facebook data containing more than 540 million records was exposed online in a public database, security researchers from UpGuard said Wednesday.

The data contained extensive details, including people's comments, likes, names and Facebook IDs. It had been collected by two third-party Facebook apps. 

"Facebook's policies prohibit storing Facebook information in a public database. Once alerted to the issue, we worked with Amazon to take down the databases. We are committed to working with the developers on our platform to protect people's data," a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement.

In the incident revealed Wednesday, the databases resided on Amazon cloud servers without any protection, and came from a Mexico-based media company called Cultura Colectiva, as well as another app, called At the Pool.

UpGuard said it notified Cultura Colectiva in January and hasn't received a response. The security researchers also reached out to Amazon to secure the database, and the retail giant did not take action. The database wasn't secured until Wednesday morning, when Bloomberg, which reported the story first, reached out to Facebook. 

Amazon didn't respond to a request for comment.

The massive social network has suffered multiple security lapses over the last month alone. It announced, for instance, that it had inadvertently stored passwords of hundreds of millions of people in plain text. It also was caught requesting people's passwords to their personal emails when they were signing up for new accounts, a verification method it had used for several years and stopped using this week.​
https://www.cnet.com/news/millions-of-facebook-records-were-exposed-on-public-amazon-server/​


This sums it up :

So just the last 10 days we learnt that :

1. 600 Millions passwords were stored I plaintext by Facebook and thousands of employees could access it.

2. They were found guilty of housing discrimination due to targeted ads.

3. They erased the past communication of Zuckerberg and the press release that is no longer in line with their current business

4. They demand new users to give them their email account password 5. A huge part of their data was in a public database and anyone could access it.



Facebook keeps data on _everyone_ even if there hasn't been a Facebook account made directly by that person, so you can bet they'll be keeping your data after you close your account.

Shadow accounts exist, pieced together by data scraped from friends and friends-of-friends allowing Facebook access to their contact lists, calendars, photos, everything.

Facebook originally claimed these shadow/phantom profiles didn't exist but previous incidents have led this collected data to be leaked and Zuckerburg himself came out April 2018 quasi-admitting their existence to congress. Facebook has even been so bold as to try and make deals to collect patient data from hospitals.
​


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## DB008 (19 June 2019)

Facebook launched their own crypto today.....


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## DB008 (1 September 2019)

​


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## Garpal Gumnut (2 September 2019)

Bugger Facebook.

It's a pox on civil society.

Soon pray it ends.


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## wayneL (3 September 2019)

I can tell you that in my little social media ecosystem, people are getting entirely sick of the censoriousness and bias on twitter, yoootooob and facebook.

As soon as the are viable alternatives,  these platforms will go straight down rhe shxt chute... and viability is probably only a matter of critical mass.


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## DB008 (13 November 2019)

*Facebook is secretly using your iPhone’s camera*
*as you scroll your feed*​iPhone owners, beware. It appears Facebook might be actively using your camera without your knowledge while you’re scrolling your feed.

The issue has come to light after a user going by the name Joshua Maddux took to Twitter to report the unusual behavior, which occurs in the Facebook app for iOS. In footage he shared, you can see his camera actively working in the background as he scrolls through his feed.

Maddux adds he found the same issue on five iPhone devices running iOS 13.2.2, but was unable to reproduce it on iOS 12. “I will note that iPhones running iOS 12 don’t show the camera (not to say that it’s not being used),” he said.

The findings are consistent with our own attempts. While iPhones running iOS 13.2.2 indeed show the camera actively working in the background, the issue doesn’t appear to affect iOS 13.1.3. We further noticed the issue only occurs if you have given the Facebook app access to your camera. If not, it appears the Facebook app tries to access it, but iOS blocks the attempt.​​
​


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## DB008 (19 December 2019)

*Facebook fails to convince lawmakers it needs*
*to track your location at all times*​
In response to a letter from Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., Facebook explained why it tracks users’ locations even when their tracking services are turned off.
The lawmakers now say Facebook should give users more control over their data.
Facebook said it used location data to target ads and for certain security functions.

Facebook told two senators why it tracks users’ locations even when their tracking services are turned off. The lawmakers now say Facebook should give users more control over their data.

Facebook was responding to an inquiry from Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., who asked Facebook last month to “respect” users’ decisions to keep their locations private. In a letter dated December 12 that was released Tuesday, Facebook explained how it is able to estimate users’ locations used to target ads even when they’ve chosen to reject location tracking through their smartphone’s operating system.

Facebook said that even when location tracking is turned off, it can deduce users’ general locations from context clues like locations they tag in photos as well as their devices’ IP addresses. While this data is not as precise as Facebook would collect with location tracking enabled, the company said it uses the information for several purposes, including alerting users when their accounts have been accessed in an unusual place and clamping down on the spread of false information.

Facebook acknowledged it also targets ads based on the limited location information it receives when users turn off or limit tracking. Facebook doesn’t allow users to turn off location-based ads, although it does allow users to block Facebook from collecting their precise location, the company wrote.

“By necessity, virtually all ads on Facebook are targeted based on location, though most commonly ads are targeted to people with a particular city or some larger region,” the company wrote. “Otherwise, people in Washington, D.C. would receive ads for services or events in London, and vice versa.”

Hawley, a frequent tech critic, tweeted the letter, saying it showed Facebook “admits it. Turn off ‘location services’ and they’ll STILL track your location to make money (by sending you ads). There is no opting out. No control over your personal information. That’s Big Tech. And that’s why Congress needs to take action.”​

More on link below...


https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/17/fac...rs-questions-on-location-tracking-policy.html​


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## DB008 (3 February 2020)

*Stephen King quits Facebook over concerns
of 'false information'*​"I'm quitting Facebook," the author said on Twitter Friday. "Not comfortable with the flood of false information that's allowed in its political advertising, nor am I confident in its ability to protect its users' privacy. Follow me (and Molly, aka The Thing of Evil) on Twitter, if you like."

His Facebook profile has since been deleted.

King, who has written more than 50 books, is best known for his works in the horror and fantasy genres, many of which have been adapted into films and television programs.

However, the 72-year-old is politically active and very outspoken, especially regarding his views on US President Donald Trump. And when it comes to Facebook, King isn't much of a fan of it either.
Facebook has been met with increasing scrutiny for allowing politicians to run false ads.​

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/02/us/stephen-king-quits-facebook-trnd/index.html​


----------



## DB008 (4 April 2020)

*Facebook tried to buy controversial tool to spy on iPhone users, court filing reveals*​
Over the last few years, Facebook has had a slew of privacy and security blunders and more details about one of them have come to light through a new court filing as the social media company is suing the spyware company NSO Group. It turns out Facebook tried to buy controversial government spyware to monitor iPhone and iPad users.

Reported by _Motherboard_, when Facebook was starting to build its spyware cloaked in a VPN product, Onavo Protect for iOS and Android, the social media company reached out to the controversial company NSO Group that creates spyware for government agencies.

A declaration from NSO Group’s CEO, Shalev Hulio revealed that “two Facebook representatives approached NSO in October 2017 and asked to purchase the right to use certain capabilities of Pegasus.”

Further documentation in the lawsuit revealed that:

it seems the Facebook representatives were not interested in buying parts of Pegasus as a hacking tool to remotely break into phones, but more as a way to more effectively monitor phones of users who had already installed Onavo.​
And in particular, Facebook thought Pegasus would give it an advantage in spying on iPhone and iPad users as Apple devices are more difficult to compromise than Android ones.

“The Facebook representatives stated that Facebook was concerned that its method for gathering user data through Onavo Protect was less effective on Apple devices than on Android devices,” the court filing reads. “The Facebook representatives also stated that Facebook wanted to use purported capabilities of Pegasus to monitor users on Apple devices and were willing to pay for the ability to monitor Onavo Protect users.”​
NSO declined to sell Pegasus to Facebook, but it still built and launched Onavo without Pegasus as a spyware tool in early 2018 under the misleading pretense of being a VPN app.

Apple made Facebook remove Onavo Protect from the App Store in August of 2018.

Then in 2019 Facebook repackaged it as a “Research app” and tried to pay teens to sideload it on their devices.

The Research app was shut down as well and Facebook finally shutdown Onavo completely in February 2019​
https://9to5mac.com/2020/04/03/face...-to-spy-on-iphone-users-court-filing-reveals/​


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## DB008 (7 January 2021)

I assume most people know that Facebook owns Whatsapp and Instagram?




*WhatsApp Will Delete Your Account If You Don't Agree Sharing Data
With Facebook*​
"Respect for your privacy is coded into our DNA," opens WhatsApp's privacy policy. "Since we started WhatsApp, we've aspired to build our Services with a set of strong privacy principles in mind."​​But come February 8, 2021, this opening statement will no longer find a place in the policy.​​The Facebook-owned messaging service is alerting users in India of an update to its terms of service and privacy policy that's expected to go into effect next month.​​The "key updates" concern how it processes user data, "how businesses can use Facebook hosted services to store and manage their WhatsApp chats," and "how we partner with Facebook to offer integrations across the Facebook Company Products."​​The mandatory changes allow WhatsApp to share more user data with other Facebook companies, including account registration information, phone numbers, transaction data, service-related information, interactions on the platform, mobile device information, IP address, and other data collected based on users' consent.​​Unsurprisingly, this data sharing policy with Facebook and its other services doesn't apply to EU states that are part of the European Economic Area (EEA), which are governed by the GDPR data protection regulations.​​The updates to WhatsApp terms and privacy policy come on the heels of Facebook's "privacy-focused vision" to integrate WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger together and provide a more coherent experience to users across its services.​​Users failing to agree to the revised terms by the cut-off date will have their accounts rendered inaccessible, the company said in the notification.​​WhatsApp's Terms of Service was last updated on January 28, 2020, while its current Privacy Policy was enforced on July 20, 2020.​​Facebook Company Products refers to the social media giant's family of services, including its flagship Facebook app, Messenger, Instagram, Boomerang, Threads, Portal-branded devices, Oculus VR headsets (when using a Facebook account), Facebook Shops, Spark AR Studio, Audience Network, and NPE Team apps.​​It, however, doesn't include Workplace, Free Basics, Messenger Kids, and Oculus Products that are tied to Oculus accounts.​​WhatsApp's revised policy also spells out the kind of information it gathers from users' devices: hardware model, operating system information, battery level, signal strength, app version, browser information, mobile network, connection information (including phone number, mobile operator or ISP), language and time zone, IP address, device operations information, and identifiers (including identifiers unique to Facebook Company Products associated with the same device or account).​​"Even if you do not use our location-related features, we use IP addresses and other information like phone number area codes to estimate your general location (e.g., city and country)," WhatsApp updated policy reads.​



https://thehackernews.com/2021/01/whatsapp-will-delete-your-account-if.html



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## DB008 (31 January 2021)

Funny how the left is now crying when they are getting censored....


​


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## dutchie (18 February 2021)

The way millions of Australians use Facebook is OVER as the tech giant bans posting and sharing of all NEWS from the social media platform - after Google made deals with media​
*Facebook will no longer allow people in Australia to read or share news *
*The decision means Australians can't read or share any news on Facebook *
*The move is a response to the country's proposed Media Bargaining law  *
*Comes after politicians threatened to force tech companies to pay for content *
*








						Facebook BANS Australians from viewing news on social media platform
					

The move is in response to the country's proposed Media Bargaining law, which forces tech companies like Facebook and Google to negotiate with news providers to feature their content.




					www.dailymail.co.uk
				





No great loss as most of MSM news is fake.*

Will Aussies owning Facebook shares dump them now? Swap them for Google shares?


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## Joe Blow (18 February 2021)

News organisations should be thanking Facebook and Google for the free traffic. This proposed Media Bargaining law is just a heavy handed way to force Facebook and Google to subsidise old media companies such as Fairfax and News Corp. who are becoming increasingly unprofitable and irrelevent.

I will happily take all the free traffic these ungrateful corporations do not want. This law seems ludicrous to me and I don't blame Google and Facebook for standing firm. If news websites thought it was bad before, just wait and see how bad it gets after Facebook and Google stop sending them traffic.


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## dutchie (18 February 2021)

You may not know it, because of the news block, but Facebook has gone bankrupt.


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## bellenuit (18 February 2021)

Joe Blow said:


> This law seems ludicrous to me and I don't blame Google and Facebook for standing firm




Didn't Google cave in. They have been signing deals over the last few days to pay for content. Seven Wst Media was one and I think Nine Network was mentioned.


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## Joe Blow (18 February 2021)

bellenuit said:


> Didn't Google cave in. They have been signing deals over the last few days to pay for content. Seven Wst Media was one and I think Nine Network was mentioned.




They may have. I'm not sure. I haven't been following the news closely in the last couple of days.


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## dutchie (18 February 2021)

Zuckerberg might not be sharing the news with you but you are sharing your news with him.


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## satanoperca (18 February 2021)

Joe Blow said:


> News organisations should be thanking Facebook and Google for the free traffic. This proposed Media Bargaining law is just a heavy handed way to force Facebook and Google to subsidise old media companies such as Fairfax and News Corp. who are becoming increasingly unprofitable and irrelevent.
> 
> I will happily take all the free traffic these ungrateful corporations do not want. This law seems ludicrous to me and I don't blame Google and Facebook for standing firm. If news websites thought it was bad before, just wait and see how bad it gets after Facebook and Google stop sending them traffic.



Playing devils advocate, but you are only taking that side as google gives you revenue through Adsense. 

Posters provide you content for FREE
Your sites get more visits making it more attractive to advertisers that general use one of googles platforms
You get paid for running and supporting the site.

While I agree that old media companies are becoming less profitable, Facebook also saw the removal/distruction often by users intent of a lot of forums across the internet. You might be next.

But lets discuss the business of the internet (IT IS NOT FREE, people are kidding themselves if they believe in the concept), so the question is if google or facebook have a feed for news.com.au or seven news etc, do uses click through to the originating site (CTR), I will guess that it is very very low CTR, hence no real benefit to the originator of the news article.

While I believe the old media companies were very slow on the uptake of free media, it is hard to change user behavior, ie we once we happy to buy the newspaper $$ but now we expect the news for free online.

This site is no different, it cost Joe to run it, he needs to be paid for his time and expenses, how he generates revenue is through banner ads, more than acceptable, if it is not, I wonder how many users of this forum were willing to pay a yearly subscription to access all the site content, I will guess again, by it would be <20% of the current user base.

So inturn, all ASF users are supporting Joe through google, the circle of life.


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## SirRumpole (18 February 2021)

Our politicians are doing the bidding of Murdoch, however I'm pretty disgusted with the way Facebook have reacted to the laws of a sovereign elected government, Zucker must have an ego bigger than Musk.

Facebook pays very little tax in Australia compared to the revenue generated, I think our politicians would be better advised addressing that issue rather than stuffing Rupert's Christmas stocking.

Anyway, the way is open for alternatives to Facebook to step in and fill the gap.

Personally I rarely use FB, if I want weather or news I go directly to the relevant sites.


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## Smurf1976 (18 February 2021)

SirRumpole said:


> Personally I rarely use FB, if I want weather or news I go directly to the relevant sites.



Isn't that really the point FB are making though?

News organisations aren't really adding much value to FB so it doesn't make sense for them to pay for it.

If I want actual news, FB would be third tier at best of places I'd go to get it.


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## SirRumpole (18 February 2021)

Smurf1976 said:


> Isn't that really the point FB are making though?
> 
> *News organisations aren't really adding much value to FB so it doesn't make sense for them to pay for it.*
> 
> If I want actual news, FB would be third tier at best of places I'd go to get it.




I think the value to FB is that having news on their pages makes it more like a supermarket, easy access to a range of stuff while people are swapping cat photos (no offence meant to cats, lovely creatures   ).

So if people have to go elsewhere for news and other info then they may spend less time on Facebook.

Therefore imo there is a value to having as much on their page as they can in order to keep customers in their shop, even better if you don't have to pay for the goods.


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## Smurf1976 (18 February 2021)

Joe Blow said:


> I will happily take all the free traffic these ungrateful corporations do not want. This law seems ludicrous to me and I don't blame Google and Facebook for standing firm. If news websites thought it was bad before, just wait and see how bad it gets after Facebook and Google stop sending them traffic.




If the traditional media can't grasp the value of promoting themselves on another platform with a large audience then they've really shot themselves in the foot given that their entire business depends on others doing exactly that and paying to be promoted in newspapers or on TV.

Effectively arguing that advertising has negative value and that the host ought to pay the advertiser, when their own business revolves around selling advertising, is really quite bizarre.


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## sptrawler (18 February 2021)

I think a lot of this is about creating the argument to arrive at a reasonable compromise, there is so much interconnection and cross over involved with websites.
I think for the government it is like trying to undo a knot in a fishing line, so they can work out who to tax and for what.  
It must be impossible to find out who gets paid for what and how much IMO.


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## satanoperca (18 February 2021)

Smurf1976 said:


> If the traditional media can't grasp the value of promoting themselves on another platform with a large audience then they've really shot themselves in the foot given that their entire business depends on others doing exactly that and paying to be promoted in newspapers or on TV.
> 
> Effectively arguing that advertising has negative value and that the host ought to pay the advertiser, when their own business revolves around selling advertising, is really quite bizarre.



Smurf, I responded in the other thread. 

But I am guessing you do not or have not worked in the digital marketing and advertising space.

But just to add "advertising cost $$$", employing reporters costs $$$, FB using the copy/articles from reporters for free so that their customer base benefits is not the media companies gaining anything.


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## SirRumpole (19 February 2021)

ASX endures second-worst day of 2021; Facebook has been 'dead money for months', analysts say
					

Facebook shares fall on concerns it might face tougher regulation overseas after its Australian news ban, while the Australian share market has fallen sharply and retail sales are off to a slow start in 2021.




					www.abc.net.au
				




"
_*"The market was reacting to information which may support the argument that Facebook is now too big, and needs more anti-monopolistic regulation put in place to maintain a level playing field for competition," said Chris Pedersen, the chief executive of Pedersen Asset Management.
*_


> _*"It is really about Facebook wanting to be one-stop shopping for all your information sources.*_



_*"This is a monopolistic business plan — it's the end result of a tremendously successful business model. Free market economics and capitalism at work."

The social media giant was sold off more heavily than its tech-related peers, including Apple (-0.9pc), Netflix (-0.6pc), Google's parent company Alphabet (-0.6pc), Tesla (-1.4pc) and Microsoft (-0.2pc)."*_


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## SirRumpole (21 February 2021)

What is Facebook all about ?

Surveillance capitalism.









						All Facebook cares about is your personal data. Should it really be running Australia's quasi-public messaging board?
					

The fog lifted after Facebook blocked Australians from "news content" last week; we saw the role the social media giant plays in Australian society. Our heavy reliance on a corporation to provide fundamental public services is deeply problematic, writes Gareth Hutchens.




					www.abc.net.au


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