Posted on 03/20/2018 7:28:07 PM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
Chris Wylie, the whistleblower who brought to light Facebook's latest controversy, is having a hard time since the social network suspended his Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Over the weekend, the 28-year-old data scientist provided whistleblower accounts to The New York Times and the UK's Guardian and Observer newspapers about Cambridge Analytica, a consultancy he worked for that was hired by the Trump campaign. The firm allegedly harvested data from more than 50 million Facebook accounts without users' permission.
After he turned whistleblower, he was abruptly booted from Facebook's services.
"This is the power Facebook has," Wylie said Tuesday during an onstage interview at the Front Club in London. "They can delete you from the internet."
Facebook is so ingrained in our modern online experience, Wylie said, that his suspension from the social network has had a ripple effect.
"I know this sounds ridiculous," he said. "I can't use Tinder now, for example -- because you have to validate yourself with... Facebook." (One of the most popular ways to log in to Tinder is to link it to your Facebook account, however it's now possible to sign in using your phone number.)
The issue sounds trivial, but it does underscore how powerful and ubiquitous Facebook has become. It's a platform for 2 billion people to connect and chat with family and friends.
Facebook, for its part, said Wylie was suspended because he violated the company's terms of service.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnet.com ...
Worth repeating.
He wants his Facebook account solely for the reason that he can log into Tinder and use his Tinder rep to score better anonymous gay sex. The idea that we need to control or even care, in the least, about any of these stupid online services shows how far we have fallen.
That's about the most arbitrary segmentation possible. Plenty of useful platforms span those, other than the last mile, which many forget, is a stupid local monopoly. Leting the government define and enforce those segmentations would be extremely damaging to technological progress and freedom in general.
The Ma Bell monopoly was directly and completely responsible for the transistor that made this all this stuff possible.
I think ctdonath2 you may be on the wrong website.
I think IncPen needs to study history a bit more, particularly the advances and ideas even under the monopoly which allowed the explosion of better and cheaper services. The desktop OS was a similar monopoly albeit mainly with government and academic players. The upstarts nibbled away at that until it was destroyed and replaced with better and cheaper. But it's easy to forget the enormous contributions of the Microsoft monopoly.
>>The government is not giving them special treatment/privileges (like physical utility right-of-ways).
Obammy was sucking Zuck’s pluck with the so-called Net Neutrality that protected this and other monopolies and did nothing to protect their users’ access or content.
I'm having a hard time deciding where the 'crime' is in this instance. Facebook basically asks it's users to waive their privacy rights on a limited basis to Facebook. FB may sell that information -- within stated limits (which FB can change at any time). So if the information was obtained by Cambridge Analytica, and they didn't steal it, where is the crime? Oh, wait, they did it for Trump! There it is -- a political crime!
These people live in a digital world and seem to think they are immortal.....if they aren’t careful, some bad actor may “put that name to the test”.
Yes, 40 years previously. And then silicon chips replaced them. But because the entirety of Ma Bell's business was built on land lines, there was no incentive to innovate. It was other companies that drove the cell and internet revolutions, not Bell. Who even has a land line today?
But it's easy to forget the enormous contributions of the Microsoft monopoly.
If by Microsoft you're referring to enormous contributions like 'swiss-cheese security, marketing schemes that lead to dead-end upgrade paths, hostage-ware, theft of technology and design (the entire Microsoft empire was built on the theft of Gary Kildall's CP/M), and products like the Zune... well, you got me there...
Take your history lectures elsewhere.
Unlike the statists on this thread who believe government to be superior to the monopoly (when government in fact creates or sustains many monopolies), it is the capitalists that are on the side of the people. Many people love posting and reading their Facebook crap and whether they are getting screwed or their private information is being sold is irrelevant.
My final history lesson for you: government sucks, always!
LOL! This guy is so full of B.S. Can’t log into Tinder because you use FB accounts to log in? Bwahahaha! At least we know he’s of the Tinder-hearted persuasion.
This is absurd. CA did what FB’s business model OPENLY called for. Any idiot could start using their demographic data for mere pennies. I could market to find traditional-mass, gun-approving Catholics from Greenville, SC for under a buck. (So little, because you get fewer results.)
FB realized what Obama was up to, and they helped him do it. CA did the same thing for Trump, and now it’s a scandal?
Hell, the main reason their stock price is down is they’ve interrupted their business model for PC reasons.
You can still go somewhere else online.
They’re not monopolies.
The internet is much bigger than Facebook et al.
There’s even DemocraticUnderground.com for those of you who think the government should dictate use & ownership of a mere roomful of file servers.
Facebook is a private entity, but if their access rules are not reasonable, than anyone who invests money in a business plan — including one that involves political communication — that relies on Facebook should have a right to action when Facebook capriciously harms that investment. They cannot change the terms of their agreement unilaterally, any vagueness in the terms of agreement by law SHOULD be settled in favor of the customer.
That means if they say, “no politically offensive content,” they either must provide an objective standards for determining what is politically offensive. If they outsource to political lynch mobs, they should be financially responsible for the actions of those political lynch mobs.
You can’t just say, “well, don’t include social media in any business plan,” when it’s THE way to reach hundreds of millions of your customers. For countless fields, If you don’t engage in social media you’re an idiot. There’s no other word for it: you are absolutely stunting the potential of your business so severely you won’t be able to compete. Any corporation that would invest in your company should have its board of directors immediately fire any executive so incredibly stupid as to lend you any money.
Or break them up under anti-trust regulations because they’re so big that their private business practices interfere with your ability to access the digital commons.
One could go after Google and Twitter for anti-competitive practices.
Gab.ai is trying to be a rival to Twitter. Google bans it from their Android store and discriminates against it in search results, making it harder to find, because of its incestuous relationship with Twitter.
Liberals are using the lie that conservatives and Russians unfairly manipulated the system for Trump’s victory to purge conservatives and bias Big Tech even more to the left.
You're missing the point: Facebook, Google, and twitter are political operatives, misrepresenting themselves as offering a level playing field, then pulling the rug out from under one side while pouring resources into the other. All while selling personal information to be used against their constituents. What conservative cause or candidate got a leg up from these companies?
If the FEC is going to go after Kellyanne Conway, shouldn't they look into Facebook?
These companies are operating criminally– the same as the Washington Post ginning up the Watergate 'crimes' and driving Nixon out of office.
These are not benign offenses or victimless crimes. It's diabolical political manipulation.
They control 90% of online ads through their ads servers and anti-competitive agreements.
They control around 70% of search, and when they don’t like you personally or your type of legal product, you’re nearly invisible to the majority of would be customers.
I agree. Regulate the living bejeezus out of them. It’s what the Liberals who run Facebook always support politically, after all. Let them taste the other side.
We’ve got to get off of this ideologically “pure” position of hands-off because they’re a private company. That is hoisting us on the petard of our own virtue, Alinksy style.
SCROOOOOOOO that!!
I Call BS...... drivel
Facebook can delete you from facebook but not the internet
This particular “whistle blower” is a nutjob in his 15 minutes of fame.
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