important discovery of how Facebook is a surveillance ad company posing as a consumer product company leveraging monopoly. A few comments I would like to add to this thread which clearly got a lot of eyes because yet - even today - Facebook abuses its rock-bottom expectations. /1
All of this tracking is running into friction. Facebook was forced to reluctantly add a clear history tool (joke), Apple has started blocking it in Safari along w DuckDuckGo, Brave, Firefox in extensions/apps and Apple is about to kneecap Facebook’s app tracking on iOS. 🙏🏽 /2
Facebook likes to pretend that sites intentionally share the data with Facebook. I wrote about this in WSJ in 2014 and it’s a part of the antitrust reports, German Cartel Office case etc. Truth is Facebook misled publishers. I told them this. /3 blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2014/06/20…
We also learned these embedded FB tracking pixels tracking activity are on 8+ million sites thanks to evidence produced in UK Parliamentary hearings. ht @DamianCollins As we’ve studied, users don’t expect this to be happening and mostly don’t know. /4 niemanlab.org/2018/04/jason-…
A stat also commonly not understood is only 2 major tech platforms collect a majority of their data as 3rd parties (activities happening when they’re using other services) - those two companies would be Google and Facebook. They like market to think it’s mostly 1st party data. /5
This is a comical statement by Facebook which again shows the massive gap in expectations between Facebook’s *surveillance by default* and the public - this is why we need strong laws against tracking by gatekeepers like Facebook. Their dominance leads to data abuse. /6
A couple things specific to @zamaan_qureshi’s discovery. He perfectly illustrates the antitrust harm here. Especially for people attempting to engage in their community and education. This again is why @NewYorkStateAG and German Cartel Office cases are so vital to public. /7
And @zamaan_qureshi even discovers something not entirely evident in this anticompetitive behavior and would violate spirit of GDPR if Facebook and 🇮🇪 actually cared. If you don’t want t be tracked then you can’t use Facebook for sign-on either. What a bad actor they are. /8
And @zamaan_qureshi also absolutely nails Facebook’s business and profit model. I’m really heartened to see an entire new generation that has grown up with Facebook recognizing this so clearly. I think users are also starting to connect dots to Instagram and WhatsApp, too. /9
And this final claim by Facebook, I don’t even know what to do with considering their unanswered data breaches that very much collect Likes, tracking of our global activity to real-world harms even political engineering and erosion of democracy. /10
😂 , Google, a company with more lawyers, lobbyists, communications people and money than anyone made a clerical error and leaked out sensitive information about its alleged collusion and bid rigging. /1 wsj.com/articles/googl…
This is consistent with the antitrust charges in the complaint and now appears to be confirmed by Google in its *supposed to be* redacted filing. Hard to understand how it’s not trading on inside information. There is a nice illustration why it’s problematic in the complaint. /2
WSJ also reports that Google confirmed the existence of the deal with Facebook. Signed by Sandberg and including how the two companies would act if investigated. This matching of audiences appears to be new and seems like privacy circumvention to me. /3
ps this is a very bad take including the fact it wasn't just a phone number alone but the name, Facebook ID and other information that goes with it. For over 1/2 a billion people.
this was the topic of the session ICYMI. I actually think this is a bigger deal than the current press attention. @galloway@karaswisher also discussed on their podcast this week, more shoes will drop on it. The inconsistent answers to Ireland DPC 👀 .
“The next five years is going to be a lot harder for Facebook than the last five years.” - @karaswisher
“I think Facebook is the most vulnerable of all of them because they don’t control the end consumer experience and they have the most people gunning for them.” - @profgalloway with a timely comment as Apple is about to kneecap a majority of Facebook’s data surveillance.
ok Eric, I follow to be certain we’re not missing anything, listened to this session (and Kara’s). I couldn’t disagree more with your arguments - I could glean. Noteworthy, like Facebook’s campaign, you’re wrongly applying terms “targeted” and “personalized” ads as impaired.
After Apple rolls out ATT, which limits tracking, an easily good development for consumers (Cook did a masterful job and doesn’t need to present empirical research on a NYT podcast), targeting can still happen. Ads can be targeted without tracking or surveillance of users.
Towards end you make point 1st party data collection/use is no worse for users than tracking by 3rd parties - an odd point I often hear from adtech lobby. I can choose not to use an app if I don’t like its data practices (putting aside monopoly concerns for a minute).
We're up to a couple hundred people in this Twitter Space including the technologists who discovered the Facebook vulnerability, the 500 million personal data records, and others who have spent careers trying to get Facebook to be a better company. twitter.com/i/spaces/1RDxl…
Again, my only hope, in light of Facebook's (poor) messaging, was to get closer to truth, ID'ing public harms and solutions. A ton of press were listening in, too, and then of course we heard from @carolecadwalla who has very closely witnessed how Facebook covers up stories. 2/2