Zeynep Tufecki does a good takedown of Facebook's "14-Year Apology Tour" [0].

It's a long-term, calculated, deliberate strategy to methodically abuse privacy with disastrous consequences, then when caught dead-to-rights, say "oops, sorry, made a mistake, we'll fix it".

This game worked amazingly well for 14 years, will people fall for it again this time?

[0] https://www.wired.com/story/why-zuckerberg-15-year-apology-t...

More like the Non-Apology Tour.

http://neverusefb.blogspot.com/2018/04/accurate-reponse-to-f...

You can donate here: https://supporters.eff.org/donate

I have a data intensive startup and I would love to show we comply.

Facebook already declared that they won't extend their GDPR compliance globally. So if you're in the US, you're not protected by it.

Edit: Just read Wikipedia and another source and both define it for people within the EU. They do mention whether the company is outside the EU and how they would need to handle the data for people within the EU.

That being said, I do not think giving money to eff is enough to get the changes necessary to be implemented. I am at a loss for what could be done you actually make change happen and am open if anyone has suggestions or other links to take a look at.

I admire the libertarian sentiment on HN but I think it would be greatly beneficial to everyone to have more thoughtful, smart and balanced people running our Governments.

“Smart, thoughtful” people who are happier in the private sector is exactly who currently runs our governments. So your plan is already in action.

https://www.eff.org/fight

If you have time and money left over after that, the EFF isn't the worst place to spend them.

edit: looks like some payroll systems may take a cut. Be wary, or set up recurring donation directly.

This is not going to gusto, but it taken out as part of the services provided by FirstGiving their partner to handle the donations: https://support.gusto.com/hc/en-us/articles/220929687-Charit....

I wholly disagree. They don't have to disclose the data to anyone in order to use it to target ads. Their targeting system works by allowing advertisers to specify targeting criteria, and then using logic on Facebook's own servers to match users to targeted ads. They aren't selling or disclosing the data to anyone. People keep conflating the CA situation with the business of targeted ads. One has nothing to do with the other.

You might, if you consider your personal interests to be consistently and permanently aligned with the ToS which best serves shareholder interest of the entity which controls the exploitation of the historical data, and on-going surveillance capability.

The data is pretty much unregulated, and there’s no reason for it to ever be deleted; given it’s size and value it’s likely to live-on much longer than Facebook (the company/legal entity) as we know it today. If they got in financial trouble, the prudent thing would be to flog the lot to a data broker to be resold and repackaged indefinitely.

Facebook themselves have a long established reputation for doing whatever they like and apologizing only if and when they get caught, and doing the minimum possible to ward off regulation or churn.

Just like the use of the term “breach”, there’s a broader use of the term which makes sense given the expectations of a user-base that’s been kept in the dark for years (as opposed to technical people with an understanding of the industry).

For example, my contact list is not “private” if it’s exfiltrated from my phone without my knowledge or consent, to be used for whatever purpose makes most money to whoever controls it (currently Facebook), against a ToS which can change at any time without notice, with almost no legal protection, regulation, or oversight.

If you consider something so “private” that you would be upset that an algorithm on a secure serve might use it to target an ad to you - after you read and agreed to exactly that behavior when signing up - perhaps you shouldn’t have given it to them in the first place. At what point do you take personal responsibility for giving away this information you consider to be so private and valuable?

Informed consent seems like a reasonable place to start.

I don't understand why nobody is talking about the even bigger issue that Facebook (and Google and every other ad service) gets to see what people are visiting and when (articles, videos, porn, ...)!

Imagine the detailed profiles you can create with that amount of data...

It seems to me they have quite a lot to do with each other, in that Facebook has an enormous amount of valuable personal information about people (which in many cases was extrapolated without the target's consent, as opposed to explicitly given), and is entirely reckless about where this data ends up, as long as it isn't actually "public" as such.

...another word: NSA

Judging from [1], this wasn't any "mistake":

They came to office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.

This was a deliberate policy of allowing people "on their side" to access and use these data. Now, when it turned out people on the "other side" can do it too, it became a "big mistake" suddenly.

[1] https://twitter.com/cld276/status/975568208886484997

Do you have a citation for this? I've been trying to clarify the argument recently and am looking for other perspectives.

To use a wildly over-dramatic metaphor: this is what nuclear winter for data looks like. Sure, all the explosions are done, but the fallout will continue for quite some time.

Think of it like nuclear power: it has both advantages and problems, and it seemed inevitable until Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima killed it. What if we're watching the general public become aware of the downsides of the surveillance economy?

read in the voice of the South Park version of Tony Hayward.