Re:Facebook showed me my data is everywhere and I have absol...
by danShumway on Thursday April 11, 2019 @01:42PM
(#19637152)
It doesn't make it any less bad, but it does make me question the motivations of the reporter.
Either A) They know what their own website is doing and think it's OK, in which case there may be a conflict of interest. If that's the case, we should take any suggestions they have about how to resolve the problem with a gain of salt.
or B) They don't know what their own website is doing, in which case they've done a pretty poor job researching their own article. I don't expect a reporter to be a tech expert, but I do expect them to be inquisitive enough to think, "when people say that advertising pays for reporting, might they conceivably mean the same thing as when they say that advertising pays for Facebook?"
Facebook's privacy violations are bad. The hypocrisy of journalists calling them out doesn't change that. But in the privacy community, it should make us suspicious of their articles for the same reason we should be suspicious of a scientific study of sugar paid for by the meat industry. It should push us to double check their claims and question what their motivations are.
These are people who's interests either happen to align with ours temporarily and that might change in the future, or they're allies who haven't done enough research to be able to make strong claims about what our responses and policy changes should be.
It's not that Buzzfeed is wrong about Facebook. It's that they're not currently in a responsible or knowledgeable enough position to lead the conversation about Facebook.
Either A) They know what their own website is doing and think it's OK, in which case there may be a conflict of interest. If that's the case, we should take any suggestions they have about how to resolve the problem with a gain of salt.
or B) They don't know what their own website is doing, in which case they've done a pretty poor job researching their own article. I don't expect a reporter to be a tech expert, but I do expect them to be inquisitive enough to think, "when people say that advertising pays for reporting, might they conceivably mean the same thing as when they say that advertising pays for Facebook?"
Facebook's privacy violations are bad. The hypocrisy of journalists calling them out doesn't change that. But in the privacy community, it should make us suspicious of their articles for the same reason we should be suspicious of a scientific study of sugar paid for by the meat industry. It should push us to double check their claims and question what their motivations are.
These are people who's interests either happen to align with ours temporarily and that might change in the future, or they're allies who haven't done enough research to be able to make strong claims about what our responses and policy changes should be.
It's not that Buzzfeed is wrong about Facebook. It's that they're not currently in a responsible or knowledgeable enough position to lead the conversation about Facebook.