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A comment on As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening for Tech Giants. Parent comment

Re:As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening f... by AlexandrB on Tuesday December 18, 2018 @10:03PM (#18712673)
> Facebook also allowed Spotify, Netflix and the Royal Bank of Canada to read, write and delete users’ private messages, and to see all participants on a thread.

At this point it’s hard to dispute that at Facebook “private” is synonymous with “public” for most practical purposes.

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Re:As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening f... by sneak on Tuesday December 18, 2018 @10:07PM (#18712689)
Shared under NDA with business relationships is not “public” for the common use of the term. Although I agree with your sentiment, your statement isn’t really accurate. Otherwise I would be able to read Spotify users’ facebook DMs, and I can’t.
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Re:As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening f... by AlexandrB on Tuesday December 18, 2018 @10:16PM (#18712725)
You’re kidding, right? If I send a “private” message, but everybody from law enforcement to my bank has access to it, it’s not private. It’s public knowledge as far as any background checks or loan applications are concerned. By contrast, if my bank worked out a deal with Bell where they get to record my all phone conversations they would still be committing a felony in almost all jurisdictions, NDA or not. That’s a reasonable example of “private” communications.
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Re:As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening f... by kerng on Tuesday December 18, 2018 @10:52PM (#18712873)
You have a very good point, and in an ideal world that's what one would expect. Unfortunately our mindset has to change and we have to be way more suspicious on what companies do with our "private" data.
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Re:As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening f... by pvg on Tuesday December 18, 2018 @11:25PM (#18713002)
It’s public knowledge as far as any background checks or loan applications are concerned.

You give permission for those and the data accessed is often not public. There are degrees of privacy - what you're trying to do make up your own definition of 'public' and then have message board fights about it. It's not really a sensible position, let alone interesting conversation.

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Re:As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening f... by AlexandrB on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @08:57AM (#18715591)
> There are degrees of privacy - what you're trying to do make up your own definition of 'public' and then have message board fights about it.

This is actually a fair criticism. I don't know why you're being downvoted for it.

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Re:As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening f... by elliekelly on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @06:44PM (#18721116)
> You give permission for those and the data accessed is often not public.

I'm not sure this was always the case with Facebook though. Let's say my friend John gives RBC access to his messages and I message him asking to loan me $50 because I'm struggling with money. Down the road if I apply for a loan from RBC they now have access to my "private" message, without my permission and can ostensibly then use that information when determining my creditworthiness. All without my knowledge or consent.

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Re:As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening f... by gowld on Tuesday December 18, 2018 @10:18PM (#18712737)
It's up for sale to commercial entities who pays up, and available to law enforcement with no legal expectation of privacy. That's public for the common use of the term.
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