I think something might actually happen to reign in facebook. This testimony and well, everything else that’s publicly known about facebook has led to a real disdain for facebook. Take the outage: normally when a company goes down or has issues it all #hugops and demonstrations of compassion and empathy for those that are tasked with bringing them back online. This includes major companies that have teams upon teams for handling this stuff and also have pretty unclean hands: Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Uber etc. But still its compassion and empathy even from those that don’t like their business practices or how they treat those that build their products. But with the facebook outage, I didn’t see any compassion for the ops teams but more disdain because of how egregious facebook’s behavior has been. People really are blaming and trying to hold accountable anyone who works at facebook regardless of their job description or responsibilities.
So what will happen, I don’t know but that is notable that a lot of people used to looking the other way at large tech companies behavior are suddenly very interested in holding Facebook, the company and anyone who works for them accountable.
People really are blaming and trying to hold accountable anyone who works at facebook regardless of their job description or responsibilities.
People should hold them accountable. They’re enablers. “Just following orders” isn’t an excuse since we have free will and can choose to make our own decisions.
I don’t know. We’re responsible for our own decisions, but are employees who’s job responsibility not related to anything terrible a company does really responsible for those actions? I mean is the guy working at the fry station at a chic fil a responsible for what cooperate spends its money on? What about someone is in a position of power but actively fighting against abuses? How do I know what they’re doing internally? I think continuing to draw attention and applying pressure to change things is good, but I would stop short of actively blaming most employees at most levels of a company.
It was more or less a joke, I know the feds already get handed everything by US and EU companies.
Bottom line is you want private communication – stay offline.
I see someone is ignorant of the FBI capabilities pre internet.
I guess it could be argued that they have to do a bit more work without the internet. Fair I guess. Cosa Nostra in the US was largely dismantled before the internet entered the main stream.
Agencies have the data and always had. The problem with FB is that FB finalized stating the “informational exhibitionism” as the new norm. People rush out to publish their most intimate details on the net. And when somebody says: “no, I don’t have a FB account”, this person looks unnormal these days.
Semi-OT, but an issue with Facebook that I’m surprised doesn’t get more attention are its borderline bait-and-switch tactics to get businesses and other organizations onto Facebook. I’ve lost count of the number of times in the last few years that clients have come to me asking for help claiming “unofficial” pages for their orgs on Facebook (usually because they contained outdated or outright inaccurate contact info) – which existed because, so far as I can tell, if you search for a business or other organization on Facebook and they’re not on there, then Facebook prompts you to enter details from them.
And if you represent the actual organization and claim the page? Congrats, enjoy your stay in Hotel Facebook (you can check out, but you can never leave). Nine times out of ten, the next request from the client is “can you delete the page for us? We already have a perfectly functional website, don’t want the hassle of maintaining a less-functional one in parallel on Facebook” – and I end up having to tell them that while I can delete the page, it will almost certainly just ensure that the same problem will occur again a few months down the road.
Not to mention the anti-features that clearly exist solely for Facebook’s benefit, like the inability to turn off commenting. And I’ve encountered more than a few examples of organizations that have a legitimate reason not to want to be on social media (at least with commenting enabled) – E.g. a children’s aid society, whose “unofficial” Facebook page was filled with comments from “joke” accounts with names like “Hugh Janus”…
Another thing that’s affected me is the local town government has hosted some resources on facebook and as a member of the public I can’t even access it without a facebook account, which I don’t have. This should be illegal as the public should entitled to use the the government resources that our taxes pay for without a facebook account. I’m sure there’s no malicious conspiracy or anything, just a thoughtless government employee that made a bad assumption that using facebook is ok for hosting government functions.
I think something might actually happen to reign in facebook. This testimony and well, everything else that’s publicly known about facebook has led to a real disdain for facebook. Take the outage: normally when a company goes down or has issues it all #hugops and demonstrations of compassion and empathy for those that are tasked with bringing them back online. This includes major companies that have teams upon teams for handling this stuff and also have pretty unclean hands: Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Uber etc. But still its compassion and empathy even from those that don’t like their business practices or how they treat those that build their products. But with the facebook outage, I didn’t see any compassion for the ops teams but more disdain because of how egregious facebook’s behavior has been. People really are blaming and trying to hold accountable anyone who works at facebook regardless of their job description or responsibilities.
So what will happen, I don’t know but that is notable that a lot of people used to looking the other way at large tech companies behavior are suddenly very interested in holding Facebook, the company and anyone who works for them accountable.
People should hold them accountable. They’re enablers. “Just following orders” isn’t an excuse since we have free will and can choose to make our own decisions.
I don’t know. We’re responsible for our own decisions, but are employees who’s job responsibility not related to anything terrible a company does really responsible for those actions? I mean is the guy working at the fry station at a chic fil a responsible for what cooperate spends its money on? What about someone is in a position of power but actively fighting against abuses? How do I know what they’re doing internally? I think continuing to draw attention and applying pressure to change things is good, but I would stop short of actively blaming most employees at most levels of a company.
The enemy of your enemy is not your friend. Facebook’s racket just got too big and now the other bloodsuckers want in.
Oh please. Get out of here with that Ancap/libertarian crap. Facebook needs to get flushed.
Weak, weak, weak, weak.
She doesn’t want to hurt FB. She loves FB, and wants to see if change. Sorry, no. It’s nuclear grade waste and needs to get shot into the sun.
I can’t think of a better example to make to other businesses then getting rid of FB.
And what do they do with all that harvested user data… flush that too?
You can’t spell FBI without FB.
You’re assuming that those agencies don’t already have all that harvested user data …?
It was more or less a joke, I know the feds already get handed everything by US and EU companies.
Bottom line is you want private communication – stay offline.
I see someone is ignorant of the FBI capabilities pre internet.
I guess it could be argued that they have to do a bit more work without the internet. Fair I guess. Cosa Nostra in the US was largely dismantled before the internet entered the main stream.
Agencies have the data and always had. The problem with FB is that FB finalized stating the “informational exhibitionism” as the new norm. People rush out to publish their most intimate details on the net. And when somebody says: “no, I don’t have a FB account”, this person looks unnormal these days.
> “no, I don’t have a FB account”
The alphabet agencies’ ears just pricked up.
Semi-OT, but an issue with Facebook that I’m surprised doesn’t get more attention are its borderline bait-and-switch tactics to get businesses and other organizations onto Facebook. I’ve lost count of the number of times in the last few years that clients have come to me asking for help claiming “unofficial” pages for their orgs on Facebook (usually because they contained outdated or outright inaccurate contact info) – which existed because, so far as I can tell, if you search for a business or other organization on Facebook and they’re not on there, then Facebook prompts you to enter details from them.
And if you represent the actual organization and claim the page? Congrats, enjoy your stay in Hotel Facebook (you can check out, but you can never leave). Nine times out of ten, the next request from the client is “can you delete the page for us? We already have a perfectly functional website, don’t want the hassle of maintaining a less-functional one in parallel on Facebook” – and I end up having to tell them that while I can delete the page, it will almost certainly just ensure that the same problem will occur again a few months down the road.
Not to mention the anti-features that clearly exist solely for Facebook’s benefit, like the inability to turn off commenting. And I’ve encountered more than a few examples of organizations that have a legitimate reason not to want to be on social media (at least with commenting enabled) – E.g. a children’s aid society, whose “unofficial” Facebook page was filled with comments from “joke” accounts with names like “Hugh Janus”…
Another thing that’s affected me is the local town government has hosted some resources on facebook and as a member of the public I can’t even access it without a facebook account, which I don’t have. This should be illegal as the public should entitled to use the the government resources that our taxes pay for without a facebook account. I’m sure there’s no malicious conspiracy or anything, just a thoughtless government employee that made a bad assumption that using facebook is ok for hosting government functions.