The impulse to make something better by applying a database engine that you might feel for business processes, can just as easily be felt for customer interactions or the world at large.
For an interesting (and very critical) look at this philosophy I recommend The Circle by Dave Eggers.
The current EU data privacy guideline will be replaced by a regulation in 2018 and Safe Harbor has just been replaced by Privacy Shield for EU->US data transfer, but it will probably not change much.
Compared to the EU, in the US data privacy is hardly existent but people seem to accept it.
edit This is not even touching on the fact that all the data these US companies mine of European citizens is also accessible by the NSA in one form or another (no, Privacy Shield does not effectively prevent this) and the implications that arise from this.
This! Seriously, there's moral relativism and there's squabbling whether a human right "would be nice to have". They/we don't call it a human right lightly. It's to shine a spotlight on something very important that people otherwise don't realise.
> This is not even touching on the fact that all the data these US companies mine of European citizens is also accessible by the NSA
Well in a way, it does. Total surveillance by governments that openly admit you have zero rights in their eyes (as do their citizens, by the way, many times, even on HN ...) is one of the many terrible implications of the existence of these databases.
I feel that the IT world is irresponsible in its collection of data, and doesn't treat it as the liability it is.
(What's the proper word for old data/information before computers)?
A lot of that is due to a lack of training. There's two major ways new people come into programming.
1. Go to college, get a computer science or engineering degree.
2. Self taught.
Neither of those prepares you to deal with the ethics of information storage.
I happened to have an entire course on the topic but only because I took an Information Science minor with my Computer Science major. That course wasn't even an optional elective for me otherwise.
A computer science degree trains you for thinking how to do something. It doesn't teach you how to figure if you should do something.
IMO every SE curriculum should contain a mandatory course looking into historical precedents how information was used in genocides and oppressive regimes (Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic are two of the most obvious examples but there are plenty others).
It's ridiculous how it took Trump to get elected for the liberal techies in my Twitter stream to realise that the US government has the power to do really bad things with all the data FB & friends have been collecting.
On the other hand, the data private organisations collect is not restricted - neither what data is collected, nor how or from who.
If voter registration started to ask for skin color, there would be immediate public outrage. If credit scoring services include skin color as a scoring factor, it's a trade secret...
You pretty much need a state ID or drivers license, which lists your skin color. Political contributions are a matter of public record for anticurruption purposes. Vital records offices are more than sufficient for tracing ancestry. Welfare offices know who is poor and medically needy. Telecoms and the post office knew who you communicated with.
There was more than enough information to mount a holocaust on any of those axes long before the current crop of tech companies.
Again, this worst case scenario may not happen, but the fact that it can, even if only with a small chance, makes this massive data collection totally irresponsible.
Also it's a bit of a bizarre argument that tech companies are doing data collection on such a massively intrusive scale, we should really look at the government databases first because they're already more than enough to screw us over with? It's not even a "but they're doing it more!" ...
Files.
That said, I wouldn't consider it wrong, per se, to call it data or information these days. Strictly-speaking, old files and records do constitute data, whether they happen to be digitized or not.
Facebook doesn't sell information, it sells ads. That's not the same thing.
The companies that try to sell those types of profiles, by IP or cookie syncing or whatever, seemed to get it wildly, wildly wrong - but the role of accuracy/auditing in the ads business is another discussion. FB seems to be buying a different sort of data than we were, since they know so much more (first/last/birthdate, etc).
Anyway, this is a problem that doesn't start or stop with FB, and the brokers are the dangerous part.
As people shy away from phone calls, and with the competition of VoIP, we gradually saw the erosion of the price per minute we could charge (roughly 40% drop over the course of 5 years).
The company tried to shift by looking at the data we had available. Millions of phone calls, and we knew exactly what kind of service was being called. Banks, airlines, airports, sex lines, restaurants, customer support, whatever. We could see when people called most, for how long, and we even knew which service inside the call centre they were talking to.
It wasn't long before the company wanted to exploit this, and they started working on the ability to play ads while people were waiting to get in touch with a service representative. Targeted ads.
Based on phone habits, we could tell whether the person calling was a stay-at-home parent, retiree, teen, young professional, etc. We could also tell their gender, in 60-70% of cases.
Because of the technology, we had access to actual phone number, even when people called with restricted identity. It's just how it works when you are registered as a "network operator".
This shift from "let's provide an amazing service" to "let's mine the crap out of everyone" definitely contributed in my leaving the company.
That's not really possible. Proof: Say Alice is your client, and her ad targets gay people (even though the ad or the advertised product itself is not necessarily related to being gay). Then using your data about sexual preference, you serve the ads only to gay people. Only gay people will see the ad, and thus only gay people will reach Alice's website. Hence Alice got the data out. QED.
Imagine the government put a policeman on every corner and they recorded the movements of every person in the neighborhood at all times. 4:36pm Mr. Jones walked to newsstand, 4:43pm Mrs Jones opens front door, looks around, closes front door. 4:45pm Mr. Smith dog starts barking. 4:51pm Unknown man shows up at Mr. and Mrs Miller's house. Mr Miller is not home. She invites him in. 5:01pm Mrs Wayne tends to her tomato garden.
Many (most?) people would feel creeped out to know they are being constantly watched and all activities logged. And yet Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook and a bunch of others are trying to do exactly that through your computer, your online activity and through your phone and eventually they'll probably also do it with cameras and mics
That argument relies on the collected data being closer to the truth, than the absence of it. I think that may be true for (statistically) normal people. But for narcissists and sociopaths, it may also be a helpful tool for someone creating a fake alter ego of benevolence and 'harmlessness'.
The implications and other uses and data transfers are not talked, or often known about. Just like when you look into food production or global supply chains you find many inconvenient truths there too. As age is so often correlated with cynicism it's probable that many tech applicants (to FB or anywhere) are simply not adequately cynical yet. There's quite a few cases of high profile techies suddenly and surprisingly (well according to reportage anyway :) becoming rather anti.
btw I thought The Circle far too gentle, and simplistic, about the criticism.
Perhaps it's the "cynical Brit" perspective as I felt very much the same about Black Mirror after arrival at Netflix.
Moreover, in the age of information, the one who knows more about the other becomes a potential predator (every country has secret services and spies).
Facebook (and others) knows a lot more about me than I do myself because their computers don't forget, because they analyze what I do in a way I don't.
Moreover Facebook can be tied to other companies or institutions with my consent.
So although the optimization might seem like a good idea, I think it also needs to be put in context. Is this really a good idea. Is optimizing advertisement a noble goal ? It's useful for the advertisers, true. But is it useful for their targets ?
And that's okay, so far as they're open about it. But I don't think they are, especially the sophistication of their psychology research (and experimentation).
If there's so much crap, maybe I want to be able to complain about it.
People might act on the tsunami of crap in manners that may not be profitable for Facebook.
The solution to undesirable, stupid, homeless, uneducated, etc etc isn't to hide it from your vision.
Aside from that this is as silly as "If you don't like organized crime don't buy stuff from the mafia and there's no problem."
It's the involuntary participation in facebook's arrangement that people are bothered by.
And don't use any site with the Facebook "Like" thumbs-up thingy, which is tracking what sites you visit.
Data they don't own. So I suppose, "noble" in the Robin Hood kind of way.
Also, "efficient" in what way? What metric do they optimize that lets advertising benefit society?
Information about you is not necessarily owned by you.
That's all great, but how can I opt-out? Even without a facebook account, they are collecting my data.
AOL: Hi, this is John at AOL. How may I help you today?
Ferrari: I want to cancel my account.
AOL: OK. I mean, is there a problem with the software itself?
Ferrari: No. I don't use it. I don't need it. I don't want it.
John disputes Ferrari's claim that he never uses the account.
AOL: Last year, last month it was 545 hours of usage.
Ferrari: I don't know how to make it any clearer. So I'm just gonna say it one last time. Cancel the account.
AOL: Well, explain to me what is wrong.
Ferrari: I'm not explaining anything to you. Cancel the account.
It goes on like this for 5 minutes.
Ferrari: Cancel my account. Cancel the account. Cancel the account.
From: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/13447232/ns/business-cnbc_tv/t/how...
IIRC, from the audio the AOL rep. just goes on about how he's "just there to help you". To me, this is the same. "We just want to give you the best advertising that is relevant to you!" So possibly these people just take them at face value. Which is usually a bad idea when there's a profit motive.
Yes the NSA takes privacy very seriously. The NSA spies on everyone else but doesn't spy on Americans, period. Oh, well yeah of course we collect data from Americans but if we find out we are looking at an American's data we're supposed to throw it away immediately.
Throw in a harmless joke about "big scary NSA" to lighten the mood. Nice salary, nice benefits. Most of the students ask for applications after class, it's a career forum for area studies majors and this is by far the most lucrative job presented in the semester.
It's honestly pretty easy to make a deal with the devil, especially if you're smart enough to argue that he's not the devil.
I feel just as violated as any American by the thought of NSA spying me.
2. A US entity is tasked with info collection on the rest of the world (and is good at it).
3. US entities funded by the US have rules that prevent them from spying on those who fund them.
Completely understandable and predictable.
Ah, so that's settled then. So, spying on normal people and prying into their private lives is ethical - as long as they aren't American?
What about American expats? How does the NSA distinguish between them and non-Americans?
What about the Five Eyes? Perhaps the NSA doesn't read about your juicy personal life but GCHQ does because the NSA handed Americans' private data over to them?
You'd have to be pretty blind to not see they in fact are the devil.
Keyword emphasized, and anyway ahat safeguards are there to ensure that they won't turn against "undesirable" Americans at any point in the future?
Like how the American citizens of Japanese origin were more-or-less extra-judicially just herded into camps back around WWII, and the perceived "risk factor" of American Muslims right now.
Now. I watched hundreds of technical presentations from Google and Facebook engineers. Did a presenter ever got into the details on how they track the user for what metric, and so on. Not a single freaking time.
Andrew Ng recently told in a presentation, that all data must be accessible in one place. Did he came across creepy? Not at all. He is such a professional person, that he can even weave in a remark about privacy just right beside the talk about the uber-data-warehouse.
That is professionalism. I expect Facebook to have a silent policy about talking about things developers and admins see on the inside.
Apart from this complex issue. Who inducts ethics for managers? Why do people come up with bad ideas (track all users all the time, or buying such data for that matter) in the first place? Hint: The problem is not developer ethics.
This is a human trait, people do not see the wrong on the things you benefit from.
For example, did you ate beef or fish lately? When was the last time you thought about the animals that were killed in order for you to eat them. Have you seen the sacrifice of an animal needed for eating it. In Mongolia or Middle East nomads will sacrifice the animal in front of you before eating so you know what you eat is the best they have.
Imagine that cows were able to think like humans, and remember what you did to their veal. As a children I worked feeding cows and they are not as stupid as people believe, and they like horses have emotions and personalities like humans have.
When humans personally benefit from something it is very easy to just rationalize it. Humans rationalize everything.
Workers on facebook are multimillionaires that are pretty happy about their life becoming the new central intelligence of the World. They will rationalize it as a good thing focusing on this service being needed and useful for the world, as it is.
The problem is that even when the best of intentions, Governments, and secret services of countries want to use this service for nefarious purposes in the same way that if you centralize money in one place, some people want to take it by force if necessary, if you place too much personal information in some place, some people will want to take it for their own use.
The question of ethics is weighing hard on me, even normally rational people who talk about human rights etc turn off their ethical circuits when question of meat comes up .. I think this points to a deeper question of how rationalising can affect morality ..
Does average human consider their wants above ethics he seems to subscribe? , why is hypocricy not making many upset? Many won't consider themselves as beings who put only themselves above others, they cry out for morality, but when question of ethical boundaries they themselves cross, it becomes question of rationalisation.
One has to really ponder, did a slaver in the past (sad that its not that ancient) who cared about ethics of his fellows , rationalised away his slavery?
If people really thing about this in terms of past people rationalising stuff away, if they feel upset about that, maybe it will lead to them thinking about ethical problems they too rationalise away
No, people very frequently do see that things have downsides. Only idiots think in black and white of 'right' and 'wrong'. For example, you just commented on a site that requires electricity to operate. This usage induces electrical demand and you have therefore contributed to global warming and assisted in killing polar bears. Will you choose to kill more polar bears to respond to me, or do you think it's not that simplistic now?
>Workers on facebook are multimillionaires that are pretty happy about their life
There are tons of people that work at facebook that are not millionaires at all. Most hires at facebook today are making standard SV salaries that could be made working for other companies.
> When was the last time you thought about the animals
> that were killed in order for you to eat them.
Engineer: Oh
SoftGooFace: You don't have to worry about employment ever after
Engineer: Oh
Soft: We are so powerful, we can dump unwanted OS upgrades on people Goo: We are so powerful, people are terrified of linking to other sites Face: We are so powerful, even heads of state better watch out before criticizing us
Engineer: Uh..
SoftGooFace: Every time someone makes a critical comment about your employer, you can look at your bank account and tell them to f-off
Engineer: Uh..
SoftGooFace: And we open source everything
Engineer: Oh, where do I sign up?
Note the sheer desperation to keep the pay secret so it doesn't turn into an auction for scarce resources for engineering talent the way it does with lawyers, bankers, MBA's. If you're in it fore the money don't work for facebrick.
Only to people who don't understand economics. I know the salaries in NYC are high as well, but I understand the cost of living that drives that.
the only reason the cost of living is so high in SF is because of grossly over paid employees who drive up the cost of living. its a private little island of inflation.
Sure. Like they open sourced their Blu-Ray cold storage system. Oh, wait, if they do that, people will realize they should be sued for using the word "delete", since you can't remove data from Blu-Ray.
It's worth remembering that ethics go beyond software rights.
I know what you mean though, it's like they're trained not to discuss topics with outsiders or something?
Pretty standard amongst companies to discourage employees from talking politics about the product.
Methods like this seem to be effective, but creepy and invasive.
Speaking for others is formulating emotional responses for someone else and then constructing a dialog that elicits those feelings in that person. Today, that can be done with software as has been shown time and time again with Facebook. In the past it's been the tool of choice for those who control others. Narcissistic parents or greedy corporations, the end result is the same: loss of choice for all.
* Zuckerberg has grown up and matured. We've all done stupid things at that age so we shouldn't measure him by his infamous line about how his early users were gullible idiots.
* There's no harm in retaining that kind of data. FB is handling the data responsibly because it's their competitive advantage. The only people who could get access are the government and we don't need to worry about the US government doing anything evil with it because that could never happen in the US.
* If you don't want to be on Facebook, don't use Facebook. Nevermind that Facebook will still track you with a shadow profile if any of your friends are on Facebook and staying off Facebook means you have no way to take down photos of yourself shared by others.
* If you don't want something about you ending up on Facebook, don't do it. If you have nothing to hide, you don't have to worry. And you can still ask for your information to be taken down if it does end up on Facebook.
* Facebook is just a company. They don't have any ulterior motive beyond creating a product users want. Market forces prevent Facebook from doing anything bad.
* Civil rights organizations like the EFF may be complaining about Facebook, but they just have a different opinion. They don't understand how Facebook works anyway.
* Who cares about politics? Facebook has a lot of interesting tech problems and it's a great opportunity. I can still go somewhere else if I decide I don't like it.
In other words: the Banality of Evil at work. Same reasoning that allows people to work for organisations like the NSA with a clean conscience.
Maybe I should add a disclaimer that all of the people I talked to were on the younger end of their 20s and most of them were likely drawn in by the opportunity to work on cool tech and the salary & benefits (like being hauled to conferences all over the world where speakers are often treated as celebrities).
Facebook hasn't actually done anything here that is harmful, not with the non-shocking data collection from third parties and not with the data you willingly give them by using their service.
Even the fake news situation, which is another supposed reason why Facebook is evil, is purely a result of the hubbub over having human editors. When the human news editors were around, the news links were interesting, of decent quality and unbiased.
Facebook really hasn't been on the wrong side of any moral or ethical debate, just the wrong side of public opinion (or at least the opinions of writers who need clicks/pageviews).
Imagine I am a producer of sugared water. Do I want you to delve into health issue associated with that? Not necessarily. As a owner of a site that lives from user interaction, do I want my users to go out without their phone and have fun without me? Well, do it, but only if you really must.
There is a conflict of interest here, but that's too disturbing to communicate. Period.
Most people don't have the time and money to check facts anyway, so let's just claim facebook is the internet (for example) - because, you know, without all this livestock, our investors get unhappy. Business as usual, I would say.
Who is it then that allows facebook like buttons and social widgets to be integrated into other sites?
That is actually an intended purpose of many social widgets.
I have no financial stake in Facebook (don't work there), but really don't see many moral problems with what it does. And I think their mission of connecting the world in a single easily discoverable network is absolutely world-changing and noteworthy. It's changed my world for sure.
I just think it's unfair to assume that these issues automatically make Facebook evil and that there's no good they do.
Will we see a Democrat apply anti-trust laws?
This story is utterly baffling.
In this particular case I cannot even see any shade of grey. I apply for a credit card. The application form states that the credit card company may pass the information about me to third parties. The credit card company tells Facebook my income. Facebook does not reveal to me that they know my income. Where is the deception?
As a general rule, I'm a lot more bothered by actual bad actions rather than hypothetical future ones. Facebook collecting all the data they want just doesn't even register as even sorta bad to me. (And no, I don't work there.)
Regarding hypotheticals, if you collect data, it is always there for someone to abuse, whether they are technically "allowed" to do so or not by laws, company policy, or otherwise. It can and does happen more often than we believe as I came to find out from friends and family who work in government and legal roles. I am more of the cautious sort and would rather try to make a best effort that might not be perfect to simply mitigate and minimize the issue of the wrong thing happening. Though these cases may never happen, I am in the camp of "let's not make it easier."
As an aside, a lot of feelings towards these issues can be influenced by environmental and contextual reasons. For instance, I was raised in a family that lost a lot of people due, but not limited to things like data collection, humans selling each other short, supposedly good people making bad choices, and individuals acting highly in self-interest despite their "ethics." Further, I also grew up in a country more under constant and tangible threat than the US for part of my childhood and served in its army against very real threats during wartime. I'm certainly no action hero as my job was more of the engineering and intelligence nature, though I have seen first hand what people can, will, and tend to do with data, especially if there is money or physical security involved. Especially on the other side of things (i.e. our enemies) if they are losing. As such, I am more sensitive than most when it comes to people knowing things about me. I assume "they" know everything, but as I implied, I try not to make it easier than it needs to be and I actively throw in disinformation about myself. It helps if you know a thing or two about algorithms and the best ways to confuse them :)