FB Part 1
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All on Thursday, April 11, 2019 12:09:04
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Facebook's history betrays its privacy pivot
Posted: March 20, 2019 by David Ruiz
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg proposed a radical pivot for his company this month: it would start caring-really-about privacy, building out a new version of the platform that turns Facebook less into a public, open "town square" and more into a private, intimate "living room."
Zuckerberg promised end-to-end encryption across the company's messaging platforms, interoperability, disappearing messages, posts, and photos for users, and a commitment to store less user data, while also refusing to put that data in countries with poor human rights records.
If carried out, these promises could bring user privacy front and center.
But Zuckerberg's promises have exhausted users, privacy advocates, technologists, and industry experts, including those of us at Malwarebytes. Respecting user privacy makes for a better Internet, period. And Zuckerberg's proposals are absolutely a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, there is
a chasm between Zuckerberg's privacy proposal and Facebook's privacy success. Given Zuckerberg's past performance, we doubt that he will actually deliver, and we blame no user who feels the same way.
The outside response to Zuckerberg's announcement was swift and critical.
One early Facebook investor called the move a PR stunt. Veteran tech journalist
Kara Swisher jabbed Facebook for a "shoplift" of a competitor's better idea. Digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation said it would believe in a truly private Facebook when it sees it, and Austrian online privacy rights activist (and thorn in Facebook's side) Max Schrems laughed at what he saw as hypocrisy: merging users' metadata across WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram, and telling users it was for their own, private good.
The biggest obstacle to believing Zuckerberg's words? For many, it's Facebook's
history.
The very idea of a privacy-protective Facebook goes so against the public's understanding of the company that Zuckerberg's comments taste downright unpalatable. These promises are coming from a man whose crisis-management statements often lack the words "sorry" or "apology." A man who, when his company was trying to contain its own understanding of a foreign intelligence disinformation campaign, played would-be president, touring America for a so-called "listening tour."
Users, understandably, expect better. They expect companies to protect their privacy. But can Facebook actually live up to that?
"The future of the Internet"
Zuckerberg opens his appeal with a shaky claim-that he has focused his attention in recent years on "understanding and addressing the biggest challenges facing Facebook." According to Zuckerberg, "this means taking positions on important issues concerning the future of the Internet."
Facebook's vision of the future of the Internet has, at times, been largely positive. Facebook routinely supports net neutrality, and last year, the company opposed a dangerous, anti-encryption, anti-security law in Australia that could force companies around the world to comply with secret government orders to spy on users.
But Facebook's lobbying record also reveals a future of the Internet that is, for some, less secure.
Last year, Facebook supported one half of a pair of sibling bills that eventually merged into one law. The law followed a convoluted, circuitous route, but its impact today is clear: Consensual sex workers have found their online communities wiped out, and are once again pushed into the streets, away from guidance and support, and potentially back into the hands of predators.
"The bill is killing us," said one sex worker to The Huffington Post.
Though the law was ostensibly meant to protect sex trafficking victims, it has only made their lives worse, according to some sex worker advocates.
On March 21, 2018, the US Senate passed the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking (FOSTA) bill. The bill was the product of an earlier version of its own namesake, and a separate, related bill, called the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA). Despite clear warnings from digital rights groups and sex positive advocates, Facebook supported SESTA in November 2017. According to the New York Times, Facebook made this calculated move to curry favor amongst some of its fiercest critics in US politics.
"[The] sex trafficking bill was championed by Senator John Thune, a Republican of South Dakota who had pummeled Facebook over accusations that it censored conservative content, and Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat and senior commerce committee member who was a frequent critic of Facebook," the article said. "Facebook broke ranks with other tech companies, hoping the move would help repair relations on both sides of the aisle, said two congressional staffers and three tech industry officials."
Last October, the bill came back to haunt the social media giant: a Jane Doe plaintiff in Texas sued Facebook for failing to protect her from sex traffickers.
Further in Zuckerberg's essay, he promises that Facebook will continue to refuse to build data centers in countries with poor human rights records.
Zuckerberg's concern is welcome and his cautions are well-placed. As the Internet has evolved, so has data storage. Users' online profiles, photos, videos, and messages can travel across various servers located in countries around the world, away from a company's headquarters. But this development poses a challenge. Placing people's data in countries with fewer privacy protections-and potentially oppressive government regimes-puts everyone's private, online lives at risk. As Zuckerberg said:
"[S]toring data in more countries also establishes a precedent that emboldens other governments to seek greater access to their citizen's data and therefore weakens privacy and security protections for people around the world," Zuckerberg said.
But what Zuckerberg says and what Facebook supports are at odds.
Last year, Facebook supported the CLOUD Act, a law that lowered privacy protections around the world by allowing foreign governments to directly request companies for their citizens' online data. It is a law that, according to Electronic Frontier Foundation, could result in UK police inadvertently getting their hands on Slack messages written by an American, and then forwarding those messages to US police, who could then charge that American with a crime-all without a warrant.
The same day that the CLOUD Act was first introduced as a bill, it received immediate support from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Oath (formerly Yahoo). Digital rights groups, civil liberties advocates, and human rights organizations directly opposed the bill soon after. None of their efforts swayed the technology giants. The CLOUD Act became law just months after its introduction.
While Zuckerberg's push to keep data out of human-rights-abusing countries is a
step in the right direction for protecting global privacy, his company supported a law that could result in the opposite. The CLOUD Act does not meaningfully hinge on a country's human rights record. Instead, it hinges on backroom negotiations between governments, away from public view.
The future of the Internet is already here, and Facebook is partially responsible for the way it looks.
Skepticism over Facebook's origin story 2.0
For years, Zuckerberg told anyone who would listen-including US Senators hungry
for answers-that he started Facebook in his Harvard dorm room. This innocent retelling involves a young, doe-eyed Zuckerberg who doesn't care about starting
a business, but rather, about connecting people.
Connection, Zuckerberg has repeated, was the ultimate mission. This singular vision was once employed by a company executive to hand-wave away human death for the "*de facto* good" of connecting people.
But Zuckerberg's latest statement adds a new purpose, or wrinkle, to the Facebook mission: privacy.
"Privacy gives people the freedom to be themselves and connect more naturally, which is why we build social networks," Zuckerberg said.
Several experts see ulterior motives.
Kara Swisher, the executive editor of Recode, said that Facebook's re-steering is probably an attempt to remain relevant with younger users. Online privacy, data shows, is a top concern for that demographic. But caring about privacy, Swisher said, "was never part of [Facebook's] DNA, except perhaps as a throwaway line in a news release."
Ashkan Soltani, former chief technology officer of the Federal Trade Commission, said that Zuckerberg's ideas were obvious attempts to leverage privacy as a competitive edge.
"I strongly support consumer privacy when communicating online but this move is
entirely a strategic play to use privacy as a competitive advantage and further
lock-in Facebook as the dominant messaging platform," Soltani said on Twitter.
As to the commitment to staying out of countries that violate human rights, Riana Pfefferkorn, associate director of surveillance and cybersecurity at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, pressed harder.
"I don't know what standards they're using to determine who are human rights abusers," Pfefferkorn said in a phone interview. "If it's the list of countries
that the US has sanctioned, where they won't allow exports, that's a short list. But if you have every country that's ever put dissidents in prison, then that starts some much harder questions."
For instance, what will Facebook do if it wants to enter a country that, on paper, protects human rights, but in practice, utilizes oppressive laws against
its citizens? Will Facebook preserve its new privacy model and forgo the market
entirely? Or will it bend?
"We'll see about that," Pfefferkorn said in an earlier email. "[Zuckerberg] is answerable to shareholders and to the tyranny of the #1 rule: growth, growth, growth."
Asked whether Facebook's pivot will succeed, Pfefferkorn said the company has definitely made some important hires to help out. In the past year, Facebook brought aboard three critics and digital rights experts-one from EFF, one from New American's Open Technology Institute, and another from AccessNow-into lead policy roles. Further, Pfefferkorn said, Facebook has successfully pushed out enormous, privacy-forward projects before.
Regards,
Roger
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From
Daryl Stout@1:19/33 to
CHARLES STEPHENSON on Saturday, April 13, 2019 20:01:00
Charles,
what ads?? NEVER /ever/ *ever* click on ads, period! */ever/*...
Sucks when you ACCIDENTALLY click on a ad, then FB gets all excited and tayl CS>my ads for female products :\
Before my wife died, I got several ads for feminine hygiene products
in the mail. I asked her "What am I going to do with them??"...and she
growled "Don't even go there". <G>
I use a web browser add-on called "Fluff Busting Purity" (www.fbpurity.com). You set it up to block out things you don't want, and just have things you do want.
I'm going to have to check that out, sounds like something I REALLY need
The developer is constantly updating it, as Facebook keeps trying to circumvent what it does.
For one thing, Facebook ALWAYS wants you to view "Top Stories", and
will set it to that automatically. But, with Fluff Busting Purity (FBP),
you can set it to "Most Recent". Setting it to "Friends Feed" can make
it appear there are no posts (you've read everything already), and it
says "you can find and add new friends". I was using "Friends Feed" for
a time, but switched to "Most Recent" because of that. You can also TURN
OFF the ENTIRE NEWS FEED, within FBP.
With turning off the entire news feed, you can just concentrate on the
groups you're part of in the "shortcuts section". That way, you don't
spend half the day on Facebook.
It is suggested on first use, you go in (click on FBP at the top) to customize your settings. But, it makes for a much more enjoyable
Facebook experience.
I will admit I went in the other day, and unjoined a bunch of groups
and pages. I was spending far too much time on Facebook, and have got it
now to under 2 dozen groups and pages...mainly for where I'm an admin,
or where I post items on a regular basis.
Daryl
===
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