4 ms·

What material fact did Facebook lie to their investors about?

by Pilfer 9y ago

craftyguy 9y ago
Yea I'm still baffled why this is 'news'. Facebook and Mark Z have been very upfront with investors and the public about the lack of privacy that users should expect when using their platform.
- smt88 9y ago
  They haven't been upfront. That's the whole point. They violated their own policies, allowed others to do it, and failed to disclose it.
  - craftyguy 9y ago
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/mark-zuckerbergs-theory-of-privacy/2014/02/03/2c1d780a-8cea-11e3-95dd-36ff657a4dae_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/mark-zuckerbe...
cryptoz 9y ago
From the article, > “defendants made false or misleading statements and failed to disclose that Facebook violated its own data privacy policies by allowing third parties access to personal data of millions of Facebook users without their consent,” according to the complaint.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- 734786710934 9y ago
  Users did consent when they approved CA's app. The only argument that can be made is that they didn't fully know what they were consenting to.
  - madeofpalk 9y ago
    Users that used the ‘CA’ mydigitallife app did consent, but the millions of other profiles that they were able to scrape in definitely didn’t consent.
    - 734786710934 9y ago
      This gets to the debate around if you can consent when giving up information about your friends. For example, is it OK for someone to give a company access to their phone's address book when the people in it haven't consented themselves?
      - vuln 9y ago
        Reminds me of Facebook and LinkedIn shadow profiles.
        madeofpalk 9y ago
        (which have been deemed illegal in some countries)
  - theptip 9y ago
    I'm not sure it's that straightforward -- from the Guardian's coverage: "The data was collected through an app called thisisyourdigitallife, built by academic Aleksandr Kogan, separately from his work at Cambridge University. Through his company Global Science Research (GSR), in collaboration with Cambridge Analytica, hundreds of thousands of users were paid to take a personality test and agreed to have their data collected for academic use." It's not clear to me whether the transfer of data from GSR to CA was legal, or covered in the ToS for the app. I'd guess that end users agreed to blanket sharing of data in the FB ToS, but again I don't think we can be certain that their ToS covers exactly this situation -- according to FB, CA / GSR were in breach of their ToS agreements, which might mean they transitively caused FB to breach their agreements with their users. I'd be interested to hear theories from anyone with legal expertise, but I imagine we'll hear more before too long. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analy...

What material fact did Facebook lie to their investors about?

by Pilfer 9y ago

What material fact did Facebook lie to their investors about?

Yea I'm still baffled why this is 'news'. Facebook and Mark Z have been very upfront with investors and the public about the lack of privacy that users should expect when using their platform.

smt88 9y ago
They haven't been upfront. That's the whole point. They violated their own policies, allowed others to do it, and failed to disclose it.
- craftyguy 9y ago
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/mark-zuckerbergs-theory-of-privacy/2014/02/03/2c1d780a-8cea-11e3-95dd-36ff657a4dae_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/mark-zuckerbe...

cryptoz 9y ago

From the article, > “defendants made false or misleading statements and failed to disclose that Facebook violated its own data privacy policies by allowing third parties access to personal data of millions of Facebook users without their consent,” according to the complaint.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
734786710934 9y ago
Users did consent when they approved CA's app. The only argument that can be made is that they didn't fully know what they were consenting to.
- madeofpalk 9y ago
  Users that used the ‘CA’ mydigitallife app did consent, but the millions of other profiles that they were able to scrape in definitely didn’t consent.
  - 734786710934 9y ago
    This gets to the debate around if you can consent when giving up information about your friends. For example, is it OK for someone to give a company access to their phone's address book when the people in it haven't consented themselves?
    - vuln 9y ago
      Reminds me of Facebook and LinkedIn shadow profiles.
      - madeofpalk 9y ago
        (which have been deemed illegal in some countries)
- theptip 9y ago
  I'm not sure it's that straightforward -- from the Guardian's coverage: "The data was collected through an app called thisisyourdigitallife, built by academic Aleksandr Kogan, separately from his work at Cambridge University. Through his company Global Science Research (GSR), in collaboration with Cambridge Analytica, hundreds of thousands of users were paid to take a personality test and agreed to have their data collected for academic use." It's not clear to me whether the transfer of data from GSR to CA was legal, or covered in the ToS for the app. I'd guess that end users agreed to blanket sharing of data in the FB ToS, but again I don't think we can be certain that their ToS covers exactly this situation -- according to FB, CA / GSR were in breach of their ToS agreements, which might mean they transitively caused FB to breach their agreements with their users. I'd be interested to hear theories from anyone with legal expertise, but I imagine we'll hear more before too long. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analy...