The #deletefacebook Archive

Kevin Breuninger, reporting for CNBC:

Former President Donald Trump’s blog — a webpage where he shared statements after larger social media companies banned him from their platforms — has been permanently shut down, his spokesman said Wednesday.

The page “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” has been scrubbed from Trump’s website after going live less than a month earlier.

It “will not be returning,” his senior aide Jason Miller told CNBC.

I’m shocked that this didn’t take off. I mean, it’s not like Trump only acquired an audience because the type of people who wanted to listen to him prefer short, incendiary tweets and were seemingly allergic to any sort of long-form reading. He should write another book, I’m sure his base of voracious readers would tear through a several hundred page volume with glee.

Lauren Feiner and Salvador Rodriguez, reporting for CNBC:

Facebook’s independent oversight board ruled Wednesday to uphold the company’s January decision to suspend the Facebook and Instagram accounts of former President Donald Trump.

Facebook seemingly doing something good? Nah, you know there’s a “but” coming:

But, the board said, the indefinite time frame of the suspension “was not appropriate.” The board effectively punted the decision on the length of the suspension back to Facebook, saying it “insists” the company “review this matter to determine and justify a proportionate response that is consistent with the rules that are applied to other users of its platform.”

This is good news for now, but don’t count on the decision from this “independent oversight board”* to last for very long. I’d bet a thousand dollars that Zuckerberg comes up with some bullshit excuse to allow him back on the platform before 2023, and probably by the end of this year. The only thing that drives Zuck is profit, engagement drives profit, and Donald Trump drives engagement.

*Calling this entity an ”independent oversight board” is laughable. It’s basically a new arm of Facebook, paid by Facebook, to issue faux ethical positions on decisions made by Facebook proper.

#deletefacebook

Filipe Espósito, reporting for 9to5Mac:

WhatsApp recently introduced new privacy policies for its users, which includes new terms ensuring that the app will share data with Facebook as a condition of use. Although this was postponed at first, WhatsApp will now disable some app functionalities until users accept the new privacy terms.

WhatsApp was the longtime holdout among Facebook’s three main platforms (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) when it came to maintining some of their original identity and palatable privacy practices, but the sun is finally setting on WhatsApp. I’m frankly surprised it took this long, and I’m sure it won’t be too much longer before they start talking about getting rid of end-to-end encryption.

#deletefacebook

From the Signal blog:

Companies like Facebook aren’t building technology for you, they’re building technology for your data. They collect everything they can from FB, Instagram, and WhatsApp in order to sell visibility into people and their lives.

This isn’t exactly a secret, but the full picture is hazy to most – dimly concealed within complex, opaquely-rendered systems and fine print designed to be scrolled past. The way most of the internet works today would be considered intolerable if translated into comprehensible real world analogs, but it endures because it is invisible.

However, Facebook’s own tools have the potential to divulge what is otherwise unseen. It’s already possible to catch fragments of these truths in the ads you’re shown; they are glimmers that reflect the world of a surveilling stranger who knows you. We wanted to use those same tools to directly highlight how most technology works. We wanted to buy some Instagram ads.

We created a multi-variant targeted ad designed to show you the personal data that Facebook collects about you and sells access to. The ad would simply display some of the information collected about the viewer which the advertising platform uses. Facebook was not into that idea.

Facebook is more than willing to sell visibility into people’s lives, unless it’s to tell people about how their data is being used. Being transparent about how ads use people’s data is apparently enough to get banned; in Facebook’s world, the only acceptable usage is to hide what you’re doing from your audience.

Shamelessly hypocritical. Facebook is fine with your data being distributed, sold, and leaked to just about anyone on the planet, just so long as it isn’t you.

These fuckers are absolutely shameless. Rather than putting forth any meaningful effort to actually prevent data leaks from their surveillance network, they just want to convince you that it’s something you’ll have to live with and not really a big deal. It’s just a part of their larger to plan to keep user’s from realizing how much value all the data Facebook steals from them really holds.

#deletefacebook

Charlie Warzel and Stuart A. Thompson, reporting for The New York Times:

Surrendering our privacy to the government would be foolish enough. But what is more insidious is the Faustian bargain made with the marketing industry, which turns every location ping into currency as it is bought and sold in the marketplace of surveillance advertising.

[…]

A source has provided [The New York Times with] another data set, this time following the smartphones of thousands of Trump supporters, rioters and passers-by in Washington, D.C., on January 6, as Donald Trump’s political rally turned into a violent insurrection.

[…]

The sacking of the Capitol was a shocking assault on the republic and an unwelcome reminder of the fragility of American democracy. But history reminds us that sudden events — Pearl Harbor, the Soviet Union testing an atomic bomb, the Sept. 11 attacks — have led to an overreach in favor of collective security over individual liberty that we’d later regret. And more generally, the data collected on Jan. 6 is a demonstration of the looming threat to our liberties posed by a surveillance economy that monetizes the movements of the righteous and the wicked alike.

The data we were given showed what some in the tech industry might call a God-view vantage of that dark day. It included about 100,000 location pings for thousands of smartphones, revealing around 130 devices inside the Capitol exactly when Trump supporters were storming the building.

[…]

The data presented here is a bird’s-eye view of an event that posed a clear and grave threat to our democracy. But it tells a second story as well: One of a broken, surreptitious industry in desperate need of regulation, and of a tacit agreement we’ve entered into that threatens our individual privacy. None of this data should ever have been collected.

[…]

This collection will only grow more sophisticated. This new data set offers proof that not only is there more interest in location data than before, but it is also easier to deanonymize. It gets easier by the day. As the data from Jan. 6 eerily demonstrates, it does not discriminate. It harvests from the phones of MAGA rioters, police officers, lawmakers and passers-by. There is no evidence, from the past or current day, that the power this data collection offers will be used only to good ends. There is no evidence that if we allow it to continue to happen, the country will be safer or fairer.

In our previous investigation, we wrote that Americans deserve the freedom to choose a life without surveillance and the government regulation that would make that possible. While we continue to believe the sentiment, we fear it may soon be obsolete or irrelevant. We deserve that freedom, but the window to achieve it narrows a little more each day. If we don’t act now, with great urgency, it may very well close for good.

Excellent reporting, you should really read the full article. For additional context, also check out their 2019 piece, “One Nation, Tracked” as well as CopyrightBro’s commentary on it.

The thing to understand here is that it wasn’t just the insurrectionists at the Capitol that were being tracked, and they weren’t specifically targeted for this tracking beforehand. Granted, they’re probably a little bit stupider on average than most Americans, but probably not to the extent that they were more susceptible to the tracking and data collection that made it possible for a private company to compile all this information and recreate minute-by-minute itineraries of their little field trip to D.C.

Everyone’s phones (Android devices to a greater degree than iPhones, but still) are collecting troves of data about their lives and their behavior, practically at all times, and turning it over to creepy companies you’ve never heard of that can sell it or use it themselves to do astoundingly unethical, privacy-invasive shit like what we’ve seen here. Sure, there are some settings you can change to make it harder for them to spy on you, and CopyrightBro is committed to helping you understand what you can do, but this problem is too big to be solved by any amount of accountability journalism, hard hitting exposés from the New York Times, or even attempts by well intentioned companies like Apple to pressure their competitors to play by a fair, understandable set of rules. This problem requires sweeping regulation.

This is so much bigger than any one company, but it bears repeating: #deletefacebook

Rob Price, writing for Business Insider earlier this year:

In an email to Facebook's chief financial officer at the time, Zuckerberg said Facebook wanted to buy Instagram to give itself more time to fend off competitors.

"One way of looking at this is that what we're really buying is time. Even if some new competitors springs up, buying Instagram, Path, Foursquare, etc now will give us a year or more to integrate their dynamics before anyone can get close to their scale again," he wrote. "Within that time, if we incorporate the social mechanics they were using, those new products won't get much traction since we'll already have their mechanics deployed at scale."

Mark Zuckerberg.

Isobel Asher Hamilton, Katie Canales, and Paige Leskin, reporting for Business Insider last week:

The lawsuits allege that Facebook used a strategy of neutralizing competitors before they could threaten the company's dominance of the social-media market. The suits call out Facebook's decisions to buy rather than compete with Instagram and WhatsApp, and they allege it imposed "anticompetitive conditions" on software developers.

Both complaints seek a "divestiture of assets" for Facebook — that is, breaking off Instagram and WhatsApp from the social-media giant. Additionally, Facebook could be required to get approval from the government before any mergers or acquisitions in the future.

[…]

The coalition of attorneys general, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, began an investigation into Facebook in September 2019, and the FTC subsequently joined. Attorneys general from 46 states as well as Washington, DC, and Guam have signed on to the lawsuit. The only states whose attorneys general have not signed on are Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and South Dakota.

Forty six states. That’s more than enough to pass a constitutional amendment. Facebook is about to get fucked up.

This investigation (and any resulting regulation) is clearly focusing on antitrust issues, but I sincerely hope that congressional leaders take a long hard look at Facebook’s privacy practices while they’ve got them under the microscope.

I hope Facebook gets what they deserve for capitalizing on the destruction of privacy and the polarization of the American people.

#deletefacebook

Hartley Carlton, reporting for MacRumors:

Facebook has today attacked Apple in a series of full-page newspaper ads, asserting that iOS 14's privacy changes regarding data gathering and targeted advertising are bad for small businesses (via Bloomberg).

The ads are running in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, feature the headline "We're standing up to Apple for small businesses everywhere."

Earlier this year, Apple introduced a number of privacy changes that curb the ability of companies like Facebook to gather data on users and target adverts. In ‌‌iOS 14‌‌, Apple has made the "Identifier for Advertisers," used by Facebook and its advertising partners for ad targeting, an opt-in feature, providing more transparency for users who would prefer not to be tracked in apps and on websites. The update simply asks users if they want to agree to ad tracking or prevent cross-app and cross-site tracking to provide targeted ads.

I was going to post the text of the ad and pick it apart line by line, but it would be a waste of time. Facebook has committed a logical fallacy, completely misrepresenting what Apple has chosen to do (which is give people more control over what data they share with big companies) as some sort of offensive play against small businesses. It’s a strawman argument designed to make small businesses look like the victims of Apple’s “forced software update”.

John Gruber recently wrote about this on Daring Fireball, again making the salient point that the privacy issue boils down to entitlement:

The entitlement of these fuckers is just off the charts. They have zero right, none, to the tracking they’ve been getting away with. We, as a society, have implicitly accepted it because we never really noticed it. You, the user, have no way of seeing it happen. Our brains are naturally attuned to detect and viscerally reject, with outrage and alarm, real-world intrusions into our privacy. Real-world marketers could never get away with tracking us like online marketers do.

This so clearly isn’t about small businesses not being able to advertise as effectively, it’s about facebook no longer being able to run behind you with a shop-vac, sucking up every crumb of data you leave behind. Don’t think they aren’t still trying though, Apple’s privacy tools are just limiting their ability to do so a little, taking them down from an industrial grade shop-vac to a consumer grade Dyson.

But still, let’s humor Facebook for a second and respond to their strawman argument. Here’s my take: if you built a small business that relies on Facebook (for advertising or any other aspect of your business), then you built a shitty small business. You put all your eggs in one basket, so captivated by the reach they could offer you that you didn’t consider the risks of relying on a company whose business model was inherently unethical and who could pull the rug out from under you at any moment. The problem here is not Apple giving people control over their own data, it’s that your small business was built on a foundation of stolen information that facebook gobbled up and turned into something you could use to target potential customers with. Looks like it’s time for you to find a more honest way to reach potential new customers.

“The Social Dilemma” is a new documentary on Netflix that talks about the dangers posed by social networks and other big tech companies who draw large portions of their revenue from advertising. It details how the people who created platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google, and others intentionally designed features to exploit human psychology and make their products addictive. It’s a good follow up to “The Great Hack”, another incredible documentary that explores how dangerous these companies are through a more political lens.

“The Social Dilemma” features a long list of ex-silicon valley inventors and programmers confirming the fears I’ve had about social media for a while now. The whole problem boils down to greed. Companies that make their money from advertising are greedy, and they deal in the business of selling human attention. The more of your attention you give to them, the more they can predict and influence your behaviors, and they’ve demonstrated that they have no problems auctioning off your attention to the highest bidder, and subsequently allowing those bidders to use your attention and the mountains of data they have on you to manipulate your feelings and your behavior. We saw what this can lead to with the Cambridge Analytica scandal; political polarization is only getting worse, and it’s already to the point where people are practically experiencing separate realities because algorithms — that very few people understand, even within the companies — are presenting them with inflammatory ads that offer “alternate facts” based on what they think will keep them engaged with the platform. The more time you spend on a social media app, the more ads you see, and the more money they make. Their goal is to capture 100% of your attention, and they have more than a few unsavory tricks up their sleeves.

The picture this film paints is bleak, but we do have a chance of brightening it up. People have got to understand what’s going on, how if affects them, and where the path we’re currently on will lead us so that we can start a real conversation about these issues and demand that companies like Google and Facebook be regulated. On an individual level, the best thing you can do is to delete your accounts. Personally, I’ve deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts, and I’ve switched to using DuckDuckGo as my default search engine instead of Google.

I’ll admit that deleting your social media accounts is easier said than done. People are afraid they’ll lose touch with people or that they’ll be less informed. While I am in touch with fewer people on a regular basis, my connections with those people are much deeper and far more fulfilling. I’m more informed than ever, and my opinions are more reasoned and less reactive. I recognize that not everyone has the self control to delete their accounts, but there are some things you can do to reduce their influence over you. For starters:

• Never share anything that you haven’t personally fact checked from at least one other source (by the way, your friend who also shared it isn’t a source).

• In services that allow it, opt out of receiving personalized ads. Never click on ads.

• Turn off notifications so you’re less tempted to log on.

#deletefacebook

New reporting from the Channel 4 News Investigations Team:

Channel 4 News has exclusively obtained a vast cache of data used by Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign on almost 200 million American voters.

It reveals that 3.5 million Black Americans were categorised by Donald Trump’s campaign as ‘Deterrence’ – voters they wanted to stay home on election day.

[…]

Vast in scale, it contains details on almost 200 million Americans, among more than 5,000 files, which together amass almost 5 terabytes of data – making it one of the biggest leaks in history.

It reveals not only the huge amounts of data held on every individual voter, but how that data was used and manipulated by models and algorithms.

[…]

In Georgia, despite Black people constituting 32% of the population, they made up 61% of the ‘Deterrence’ category. In North Carolina, Black people are 22% of the population but were 46% of ‘Deterrence’. In Wisconsin, Black people constitute just 5.4% of the population but made up 17% of ‘Deterrence’.

This is a modern example of voter suppression.

Brad Parscale, the campaign’s 2016 digital director told PBS Frontline: “I would say I’m nearly 100 percent sure we did not run any campaigns that targeted even African Americans.”

This racist piece of shit was the campaign manager, how does he not know for sure? Don’t be fooled by this “nearly 100%” bullshit, he knows they targeted black potential voters, he just doesn’t want to admit it. Why anyone would try to prevent Brad Parscale from killing himself is beyond me.

But Channel 4 News has uncovered evidence that the campaign did target Black voters with negative ads designed to crush Hillary Clinton’s turnout.These included videos featuring Hillary Clinton referring to Black youths as “super predators” which aired on television 402 times in October 2016 and received millions of views on Facebook.

This story relates directly to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which was one of the biggest turning points for me in deciding not to vote for Trump again in 2020. It also happened to be one of the most damning revelations to come out about Facebook, and it sent them down the road of one PR disaster after the next, leading to public scrutiny and likely congressional intervention into their toxic, undemocratic business practices.

Whether President Bone Spurs himself was aware of the details or knows how targeted advertising works is irrelevant. He probably couldn’t understand it if he tried, and that doesn’t matter. I’m sure he was absolutely giddy when he found out what the crooks he employed were capable of doing with the wealth of stolen data Facebook supplied them with, even if he only had a slight grasp of how powerful that information would prove to be. Just because Trump is a babbling moron doesn’t mean the people around him are; he has authoritarian instincts, but he’s too dumb and weak to make anything happen for himself — the people around him and in his campaign are a lot more dangerous. Their whole game plan in 2016 was to use that data to target a handful of voters in just a few key counties they needed to win the electoral college, and to the nation’s election-night bewilderment, it worked.

Today, a Facebook spokesperson said: “Since 2016, elections have changed and so has Facebook – what happened with Cambridge Analytica couldn’t happen today.

Sure, let’s take their word for it.

#deletefacebook

Robert Burnson, reporting for Bloomberg*:

In the new lawsuit, filed Monday in state court in Redwood City, California, the company is accused of collecting, storing and profiting from the biometric data of more than 100 million Instagram users, without their knowledge or consent.

The practice violates an Illinois privacy law that bars the unauthorized collection of biometric data, according to the lawsuit. Under the law a company can be forced to pay $1,000 per violation -- or $5,000 if it’s found to have acted recklessly or intentionally.

Everything Facebook does is either reckless or underhanded. The company is defined by their old motto of “move fast and break things”.

The system needs to come down hard on Facebook. Clearly, they don’t care about legal slaps on the wrist: what they need is a hard, legal kick in the balls that causes them to double over in pain and take a beat to catch their breath. Prosecutors need to not back down and accept a measly settlement, they need to pursue every dime they can in the hopes that they get enough to teach Facebook a real lesson, and if it financially levels them and drives the whole operation into the ground, so be it. All of Facebook’s products are doing more harm than good at this point, anyway.

#deletefacebook

Kim Lyons, reporting for The Verge:

In the latest instance of iOS 14’s beta mode tattling on unexpected app behavior, some users reported that they were seeing the green “camera on” indicator while using Instagram when they were just scrolling through their feeds, not taking a photo or video.

An Instagram spokesperson said in an email to The Verge that the behavior was a bug and that it’s being fixed.

A bug. Sure.

Don’t forget that Instagram’s privacy policy (which is exactly the same as Facebook’s) provides them with the legal leeway to access your camera at virtually any time, and then do whatever they want with whatever they may happen to see. Convenient.

#deletefacebook