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Facebook strips more of your privacy away, by default
by Dagmar at 11:44 am EDT, Jun 8, 2011 |
So, I'd dearly love to know why it is Mark Zuckerberg isn't being asked to stand before a judge and explain himself over hiring that PR firm to trash talk Google to the press. (Don't be a dolt--regardless of what FB claimed their motives were, that's exactly what they did.) It's pretty clear now the way they intend to "take on" Google is by stirring up press hostility for Google to keep them doing as little as possible with the information they could glean from their users--and then themselves deploying services that are exactly as fishy as the things they're "not quite" accusing Google of doing. Worthy of note is that Google actually walked away from an application to allow users to use facial recognition software to identify who is in a picture because they didn't like the privacy implications... but Facebook knows that your privacy is their money so they're going to sell it off any way they possibly can. By default, all the photos you might have put into Facebook are fair game for their software to work out better ways of automatically recognizing your face... the idea being that users can upload a picture of someone, and Facebook will tell them who it is (and companies who might want a really good way to snoop on random passers-by to find out who they are can pay Facebook to use that, I'm sure). So, once again, Facebook does something that exposes formerly private user information to new forms of public scrutiny, and you have to opt-out to avoid it. If Google has to have government snoops up in their business for two years over some packets that were the equivalent of wifi confetti, Mark Zuckerburg should have an entire committee devoted to watching him while he pees to make sure he's not up to something--just because the word "leak" might be used somewhere in a sentence. |
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RE: Facebook strips more of your privacy away, by default
by Dagmar at 11:51 am EDT, Jun 8, 2011 |
What really bugs me about this is that since the PR shilling, Facebook is still getting article summaries with phrasing like "Facebook lets users opt-out of face scanning" which is worded to sound pleased as punch to announce that Facebook is giving their users do something new. Meanwhile, the summaries for Google stories are still reading a lot like "GOOGLE WATCHES YOU WHILE YOU MASTURBATE (and tells your employer and landlord you do it badly!)", or just skip over the details and do things like run an article about the dangers of identity theft and or cyberstalking, and then put a link to a story about Google right in the middle of it, for, you know, no particular reason (other than "guilt by association"). |
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RE: Facebook strips more of your privacy away, by default
by Decius at 10:36 pm EDT, Jun 8, 2011 |
Thanks for posting - I opted out. But the threat applies in other contexts. We've already seen examples of law enforcement trolling facebook for evidence of under age drinking, etc... Automation of this is a no-brainer and you won't be able to opt out from that. |
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RE: Facebook strips more of your privacy away, by default
by Decius at 10:48 pm EDT, Jun 8, 2011 |
Dagmar wrote:
If Google has to have government snoops up in their business for two years over some packets that were the equivalent of wifi confetti.
The "outrage" over the wifi collection is as phoney as "net neutrality." Its a non-issue. Google knows its a non-issue. The politicians know its a non-issue. And beating that dead horse over and over again makes everybody happy, because it looks like they are "doing something" about privacy, they'll all say with a straight face that they are "doing something" about privacy, and a lot of them even believe it. Actual privacy advocates end up burning time on this stuff. Sitting in hearings and writing pages and pages of testimony so they don't have time left over to write papers on something that actually matters. Its a diversion, and it works. And you can't say they aren't doing something about privacy. They sure are. They've done tons of work on it. They're as busy as a pack of pissed off fire ants. But real privacy regulation that actually matters? Ain't gunna happen. Not in this country. Privacy is bad for business and bad for law enforcement and nobody else cares 'cept a bunch of wako liberal activists who are exactly the sort of idiots who fall for this kind of wifi confetti bullshit. |
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