what the ...
they are handing out our personal detail including our names to advertisers???
how can that be legal?
Facebook has been giving advertisers data that they can use to discover users' names and locations, contrary to its privacy policy. The dominant social network tells users it won't share their details without consent, but according to the Wall Street Journal, it has handed over information that advertisers can use to look up …
Possible, and strictly speaking it may be that a user name alone isn't personal data: goodness knows there are enough JImCs on the internet, and maybe a fair few bexleys too...
However, given a bit of data mining with all the stuff people post on their profiles and elsewhere I imagine it starts getting pretty straightforward to identify the real people behind those FB usernames...
El Reg's FB coverage and followup is good, but can we please get the "Dumb fucks" part over and done with? You keep rubbing in something that took place more than 5 years ago.
Seriously, if we were to list all the nonsensical sh*t that this rag has posted over the years (just look at the SAP/Sybase horror that was unleashed this week) there'd be no end of it.
We all live and learn; please extend that thinking to your editorial process as well.
I think the reason this "dumb fucks" thing keeps getting repeated is because it shows His Zucker-ness's attitude, to people who trust him with their projects and data for him to exploit, from an earlier age. This is an attitude that doesn't seem to have changed in the last five years. All the various Facebook Privacy stories, go to show that although Mark continues to "Live", he probably hasn't learnt or changed much and continues to see users' data as his own to milk for revenue as much as he likes regardless of their privacy settings, or indeed Facebook's own privacy policy.
I have some sympathy with the view that if you don't want it public don't put it on the web, but its the way Facebook keep moving the goal posts by changing settings and reducing privacy options to serve themselves and at the same time against their users.
Its the same as Willy Schmitt at the Chocolate Factory and his comment about users who complain about privacy clearly have something to hide. Utter BS, and worth frequent reminders because if we apply similar logic we can assume that he stands by it until such time as he decides to retract it. I've not seen him keen to step up and provide chapter and verse on all of his personal details, so we can assume either he has something to hide, or its do as I say not as I do...
I can only imagine you're a Troll, or the Zucker himself?
By that strain of logic, I'm going forgive Jack The Ripper as he's not quite as 'stabby' as he was a few years back...that nulls his crimes, then.
The fact that it's being 'rubbed in' is because it's possibly indicative of the guy's mindset, and with all the recent kerfuffle it's actually pretty relevant. I'm a believer that Leopards don't change their spots and all that (unless we're talking about 10.6).
I left Facebook for other reasons, chiefly - but I'd be lying if I said privacy concerns weren't in there. Yeah yeah, I shouldn't have joined...blather blather, whatever. A lot of us of did, but now is the time to re-evaluate that decision in light of all this.
Here's why I quit, I hope I can at least get somebody else to consider (I've already scored me a -1)
http://manfromthezoo.blogspot.com/2010/05/why-i-left-facebook.html
and for that matter, I don't trust him or FB and never did - I've never created an FB profile.
Still, I think that holding on to a bit of IRC chat, taken completely out of context, many years ago is not relevant to what is going on today. Gods know I wouldn't want to be held accountable for many of the IRC comments I've made x years ago while tired, tiddly or otherwise none too sharp.
I have to agree that the Reg sometimes overuses its catchphrases. However, this phrase was *not* taken out of context; in fact, the context is MUCH richer than the epithet alone.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/
And it is entirely relevant. He was not talking about how he thought that Jar Jar Binks was cool, or how he loved to wank with his teddy bear. He was talking about the first several thousand users of the very same Facebook that he is running today. He held his users in contempt for being so stupid as to think that he would not do something to them that he wouldn't want done to himself. What's most interesting, the only thing that Zuck had to gain from the offer he made was a bit of ego gratification, like a malicious bureaucrat. No financial incentive required. He lives in a sociopathic world where those who trust others deserve to be used and abused to the maximimum extent that the user can get away with.
It's true that people do immature things in their youth, but not every attitude is changed by the passage of time. In the years that have passed, I expect that Mark "I'm CEO... Bitch" Zuckerberg has learned to be more careful with his words, but his need to have one over on people is there to stay.
While I agree with you to a point, the issue here is that Faceboob is supposed to lock down whichever details you want to whichever audience you want -- in other words if it worked as advertised then it would almost be as private as webmail and could actually be the email replacement some seem to think it is. My email is hosted on the web -- does that mean I should expect it to be shared with the world?
Yes, there's a valid argument that you shouldn't sign up for anything like this because of the potential fro privacy breaches and lots of IT people and other paranoid and/or techy types I know won't use this kind of thing, myself included.
But Facepalm appeals to those who aren't as aware of these potential problems so they have to go by the Ts and Cs -- which are evidently lies. This is the problem here.
People are not complaining that their details "are on the internet" they're complaining that things they were told would not happen have happened.
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Probably he is just as bad today, since he never had to deal with any world but his own.
He went from douchebag student at a school that gives its students a feeling of privilege, straight to being the CEO...Bitch! of a company with enough money to literally wall himself off from the opinions of others. Age doesn't apply the gloss, so much as facing the harsh reality that the rest of the world is not impressed with you at all. Think about when you first went looking for a job, except for the top 5% it is a humbling experience - the first of many - that the majority of folks go through.
Has he ever 1) been in the presence of anyone who pointed out what a douche he is, and 2) if so, has he ever been in a position where he couldn't blow them off as "Dumb Fucks"?
From another news site: "Self-styled internet entrepreneur Jason Calacanis is planning to delete his Facebook profile live online today, reports Mike Butcher on the Techcrunch blog. Calacanis decided to announce his intentions via JasonNation, a daily e-mail brief with over 23,000 subscribers. "
THAT is why FB has to go! The entire online world, well the one with self-obessed toss-pots, seems to revolve around what people do with their chuffing FB account! FFS!!
Only when it's too expensive to get caught ... err make an honest mistake... will Zuckerberg make it good and proper.
Exactly the same as the premium rate industry which permanently tacks against the boundaries laid down by PhonePayPlus, you decide how much P3 would fine you if you got nicked vs the amount you expect to clear and if the difference is worth it you run the campaign.
yes, just accept that there will usually be some price to pay for free goodness out there.
my opinion is simply that if you use FB (and other thinks like that), then your reasons for using such a service should be important enough to risk the pilferation of your stuff (yeah, i like making up words. k).
see it all depends on what you doing in there. if you just playing silly buggers then you take risk/pay price without reasonable cause (or thought)..
have people forgotten that these kind of things are tools, and not toys?
"It's just the latest privacy failing by Facebook..."
Hmmm, so that's why FB decided to let us all choose our own 'custom' URL for profile pages, not a failing at all, more like a plan to sell data that they thought they could get away with.
The only fail part about it was that they got caught
that we're, once again, being offered some "free" "service" that costs quite a lot to render. And those offering the service are employed in a "start-up" company, which is the silicon valley equivalent of a Las Vegas casino. They want to get rich. Thus it's quite naive to expect the business that's trying to grow a new crop of billionaires not to try to make money off of its users in any way possible.
The users are largely freetards walking a fine line with giving up personal details - in a time of rampant ID theft - in trying to get as much as they can for free and the businesses are trying to make as much money as they can off the users, walking a fine line with legalities and word play in their "privacy" policies.
So we have greedy bastards on either side of the line.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/12/business/facebook-privacy.html
Global .jpg map of the FBInternational Privacy Settings, with tips, clues and all. Imho: If, after the viewing thereof + a deep-read of the FB Proivacy Pwolicy with ones' Weasel+Badger Detector set to even half-sensitivity one *ever* comes away [still] with an account on that pigdog suckerbait sellout pseudoservice, well, one is inclined to believe that What The Zuck said about his firm's subscriber base just might apply to Guess Who.
So does that guy also somehow cheat his advertizers too...?
I have a Facebook account because many of my old school friends from over 20 years ago are on there. I have placed privacy settings that means that photos and so on are only available to my friends and my profile photo is only available to friends of friends. Also I hid my name from Facebook search. The problem is that even though I set these things up, Facebook comes round and changes everything to be public whenever they have a new change of privacy rules. Those that do not check their settings regularly will soon find out that their photos and so on are in the public domain.