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Cory Doctorow #BLM

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25 Oct, 9 tweets, 2 min read

https://twitter.com/robleathern/status/1320164752870510592

For avoidance of doubt, this is a steaming pile of BS.

1/

https://twitter.com/robleathern/status/1320164752870510592

Here's the context. Ad Observatory is a tool that helps FB users scrape and store the ads that get shown to them. These ads are pooled by academics in a repository that is used to analyze Facebook's failure to enforce its own policies about paid disinformation campaigns.

2/

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1320130598074105856

FB has threatened to sue a university for maintaining this tool. They claim that they are required to do this by the FTC and as a means of protecting their users' privacy.

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1320130598074105856

What the FTC ACTUALLY ordered FB to do was crack down on political disinformation. The academics that this global multibillion dollar enterprise is threatening have documented, in eye-watering detail, how badly FB is failing to live up to its legal obligations.

4/

(I strongly doubt that FB would be expending legal blood and treasure to shut down this project if all that it demonstrated was the company's outstanding compliance with FTC orders and its own policies)

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Most galling, though, is FB's insistence that this protects its users' privacy. That is a grotesque zuckerbergian distortion of what privacy means. Privacy isn't "no one knows about me."

That is SECRECY, not PRIVACY.

6/

Privacy is "I get to decide who knows what about me."

If FB users want to choose to let the world know that they are being targeted by paid political disinformation campaigns that leverage FB's ad platform, there is no privacy interest in preventing that.

7/

Please, don't take my word for it! Read this fantastic explainer on privacy, which contains this genuinely excellent summary: "What you share and who you share it with should be your decision."

That definition comes from our friends at (checks notes)...

8/

Facebook.

about.fb.com/actions/protec…

eof/

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Surveillance companies assure us that they employ safeguards to ensure that their customers aren't abusing their products to engage in unlawful or unethical surveillance. And yet, inevitably, these companies abuse their tools THEMSELVES.

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It's almost as though being the kind of person who dreams of achieving incredible wealthy by spying on people makes you kind of an asshole.

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@Sally_Hubbard

MONOPOLIES SUCK is a title I wish I'd thought of - talk about "does what it says on the tin!"

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It's great.

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1/

Hubbard's got deep experience, and she brings the same kind of verve to this book that Zephyr Teachout delivered in her (also excellent) (and also brilliantly titled) BREAK 'EM UP:

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