Anyone watching the Zuckerberg Senate interview?

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Zorba

Lifer
Oct 22, 1999
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Point taken but that did not appear to be the motive of the senators question
I can guarantee the senator has zero understanding of what you mentioned.
His question was more about should we break Facebook up under antitrust laws.
Which again is a valid discussion it’s just the how much does your service cost, buying different products questions sounded so uninformed.

Simply put a broken clock is right twice per day
Just because the users don't pay for it, doesn't mean they can't abuse their Monopoly. Not to mention, ad companies do pay for it, so the monopoly per could be abused on that side as well.

I didn't listen to it, but I could take it to mean basically everyone has to just accept with whatever policies you push because there aren't other choices.
 

sportage

Lifer
Feb 1, 2008
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Watching this is actually quite amusing.
Like two people living on two totally different universes.
Congress coming from the position that some logic can be made of all this, and z the bratty little kid who doesn't care what old mom and dad think. Nor could they understand.
Remember, z originally developed fb to break into college databases, steal and post photos of women attending those colleges, and pit woman against woman by rating boob size, looks, relationship status.
I doubt z has grown up much from that same kid he once was.
There is definitely a mix of nasty little boy and tech nerd still remaining within his personality.
I can only imagine the conversation in private with his "people" once the hearing(s) end.

Besides all of that, z has been lying his face (book) off.
Users can and often do create plenty of fake fb accounts.
Any child with access to a computer or smart phone can join fb regardless of age.
And, if one should remove their fb user account the data lives on within fb servers until the end of time.
If we are to have this conversation, we need to wait until the average age of those congressmen and congresswomen are under 30.
 

Jaskalas

Lifer
Jun 23, 2004
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He had a real hard time answering that "what are your biggest competitors" question. He tried to say Apple but Graham didn't understand that so he said "we have lots" and then finally settled on instagram which FB owns and is not a competitor.

Does Apple have a competing platform? Even if it's used by just a fraction of a percent, if something existed that respected privacy that might be worth while.
 

Commodus

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2004
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Did anyone go apoplectic?

Not apoplectic. I'd say they got over-spirited, maybe, but not furious.

Cruz, for example, was trying way too hard to be the stalwart defender of conservative media and making it sound like it was of utmost importance that Zuck answer who Facebook did and didn't ban. It made some of the other grandstanding seem measured and intelligent.
 

pcgeek11

Lifer
Jun 12, 2005
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Is everybody in the Senate Retarded?

I've never heard as many stupid questions in my life.
 

Commodus

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2004
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Is everybody in the Senate Retarded?

I've never heard as many stupid questions in my life.

There are two factors at work here. First... many members of Congress are fairly clueless about tech, whether it's due to age or just a lack of hands-on experience. Brianna Wu (the well-known game developer who's running for a House seat) has argued that getting tech-savvy people into American politics is a top priority, and I'd agree.

The other part is, of course, grandstanding... and both parties do it. They sometimes ask obvious questions more for the public show of concern than to get a meaningful answer. That probably won't change until the current batch of representatives is replaced with a younger generation, and even then...
 

pcgeek11

Lifer
Jun 12, 2005
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I had to turn the channel to something more intelligent....

Now watching reruns of the Andy Griffith Show.

:)
 

GagHalfrunt

Lifer
Apr 19, 2001
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There are two factors at work here. First... many members of Congress are fairly clueless about tech, whether it's due to age or just a lack of hands-on experience. Brianna Wu (the well-known game developer who's running for a House seat) has argued that getting tech-savvy people into American politics is a top priority, and I'd agree.

The other part is, of course, grandstanding... and both parties do it. They sometimes ask obvious questions more for the public show of concern than to get a meaningful answer. That probably won't change until the current batch of representatives is replaced with a younger generation, and even then...

Not even then. 99% of politicians on earth are concerned with one thing: re-election. And the 1% with term limits are concerned with setting themselves up with jobs and favors owed for when they get kicked out of office. They're all campaigning 100% of the time. This has nothing to do with protecting anyone, it's a chance for public parasites to kick an easy target and to get themselves on TV for name recognition. Scumbagerberg will promise to turn over a new leaf, pay a small fine, make a few donations to more politicians to better protect himself in the future and nothing will change.
 

PlanetJosh

Golden Member
May 6, 2013
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Sounds like Siren the tv series is more interesting. Not to dismiss the gravity of the issues involved.
 

IJTSSG

Golden Member
Aug 12, 2014
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Somewhat related to this I think . . .

Q. The GDPR goes into effect on May 28th. After that date if a citizen of the EU makes a request to be forgotten to Facebook, does FB have to comply? Will these hearings lead to a 'gdpr type' regulation in the US?
 

[DHT]Osiris

Lifer
Dec 15, 2015
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Actually the old guys does have a point.

In the previous millennium people worked to develop protocols. With a few apps on tops. Email, messaging, file transfer, terminal emulation. Most of those protocols were proprietary. IBM's SNA, Decnet phase-4, Appletalk, Novell's Netware, Banyan Vines, etc. You could chose between them. But they wouldn't cooperate. AppleTalk machines would never talk Novell machines, etc. Closed technology. Some company was in charge of a specific protocol, a specific technology.

Then IP won. The TCP/IP protocol suite, as it called. Nobody is in charge of IP, nobody owns IP. Protocols on top of IP, like email (SMTP, RFC822, POP, iMAP), FTP, or later HTTP made it so that different machines made by different vendors, with different OSes, could talk to each other. Openness was a goal. Openness helped.

Then fuckers came. Like Facebook. Like Twitter, like Whatsapp, etc. Building techology on top of open protocols (IP, HTTP). But in fact those protocols and applications are closed. Someone is in charge. Someone is the boss. Someone owns that technology. The exact opposite of what the Internet is about. No open communication.

That old man's question is very valid.
What do you do if you want a particular service, but don't want to use Facebook ?
Google's facebook ? Nobody is on it. Hyves ? What ?

I don't do Facebook.
But I do Whatsapp. I was forced to by my collegues. I didn't want Whatsapp on my phone. I rather had Telegram or something else. Preferably something that uses an open protocol. But I couldn't. Because I would have been alone on Telegram. There is no choice. You use Whatsapp, or you use nothing. At least in my country. I bet it's the same in the US.

It's a very valid question.
Facebook is a monopolist. What is the alternative ? The real answer is: none.
I'm kind of confused by your statement though. To make the obligatory car analogy, it's like asking 'what if you want a Chevrolet Camaro, but you don't want to use Chevrolet for that product'. I mean, Facebook is Facebook is Facebook, you can't use the service of Facebook without using Facebook, it's a nonsensical question. If the question is, how do you connect to 6BN other people without using facebook? The internet itself is doing that, Facebook is just linking everyone together for a big blob of advertising scratch. If a better service cropped up, everyone would move to that, but you'd still be under one roof... primary reason being most people don't want to keep up with multiple social media services because that's dumb and a waste of time (for most people). You can't force people to support a Facebook competitor, and you can't force a Facebook competitor to arrive and just operate in the black without people supporting it.
 

[DHT]Osiris

Lifer
Dec 15, 2015
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Somewhat related to this I think . . .

Q. The GDPR goes into effect on May 28th. After that date if a citizen of the EU makes a request to be forgotten to Facebook, does FB have to comply? Will these hearings lead to a 'gdpr type' regulation in the US?
I'd like to think so, one thing I'd really want to drill down on with Zuck/a FB engineer though, is that if you delete your account, is your stuff actually, no-shit gone. I mean gone gone, no more metrics associated with your account sitting out in DBs, all information regarding you/your connections to others, pulled from all 3rd party 'customers' of FB, to include anonymized/randomized data. The right to be forgotten needs to strip *the everything* from the tendrils where FB seeps, full stop.
 

realibrad

Lifer
Oct 18, 2013
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I'm kind of confused by your statement though. To make the obligatory car analogy, it's like asking 'what if you want a Chevrolet Camaro, but you don't want to use Chevrolet for that product'. I mean, Facebook is Facebook is Facebook, you can't use the service of Facebook without using Facebook, it's a nonsensical question. If the question is, how do you connect to 6BN other people without using facebook? The internet itself is doing that, Facebook is just linking everyone together for a big blob of advertising scratch. If a better service cropped up, everyone would move to that, but you'd still be under one roof... primary reason being most people don't want to keep up with multiple social media services because that's dumb and a waste of time (for most people). You can't force people to support a Facebook competitor, and you can't force a Facebook competitor to arrive and just operate in the black without people supporting it.

You are missing that people want to make FB like a utility. When a service gets big enough, it should not be left to the private sector to manage with all of their conflicts of interest. To these people, FB is so large and so many people use it that it has grown beyond being a product, and exists beyond what can or should be owned.
 

IJTSSG

Golden Member
Aug 12, 2014
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I'd like to think so, one thing I'd really want to drill down on with Zuck/a FB engineer though, is that if you delete your account, is your stuff actually, no-shit gone. I mean gone gone, no more metrics associated with your account sitting out in DBs, all information regarding you/your connections to others, pulled from all 3rd party 'customers' of FB, to include anonymized/randomized data. The right to be forgotten needs to strip *the everything* from the tendrils where FB seeps, full stop.
My interpretation, and my companies, is that the data needs to be completely gone unless there is a valid business need for the data to exist. FB would have no valid need to keep user data if the user said they wanted it gone.
 

[DHT]Osiris

Lifer
Dec 15, 2015
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You are missing that people want to make FB like a utility. When a service gets big enough, it should not be left to the private sector to manage with all of their conflicts of interest. To these people, FB is so large and so many people use it that it has grown beyond being a product, and exists beyond what can or should be owned.
But does Facebook really qualify for that? I'd argue that Internet access does (as 'the internet' is pretty diffuse as-is), but Facebook is just a service that some people use, and others don't. This isn't like the water company or electricity or something. Should Netflix be made a utility, because it's grown 'beyond a product'? Just because people don't like their business model doesn't mean you hand over the company to the Government or something, you just don't use the product anymore.
 

[DHT]Osiris

Lifer
Dec 15, 2015
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My interpretation, and my companies, is that the data needs to be completely gone unless there is a valid business need for the data to exist. FB would have no valid need to keep user data if the user said they wanted it gone.
I would agree, but I don't think they actually dump data that's used for metrics. That stuff's still valuable to FB and they can probably legalese themselves into saying 'yes, user data is gone' while still keeping a hundred thousand data points associated with your persona in the back-end relational databases.
 

IJTSSG

Golden Member
Aug 12, 2014
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275
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I would agree, but I don't think they actually dump data that's used for metrics. That stuff's still valuable to FB and they can probably legalese themselves into saying 'yes, user data is gone' while still keeping a hundred thousand data points associated with your persona in the back-end relational databases.
You're probably right but they would probably have to anonymize it. The reg and the ICO haven't been clear and it will probably end up in court to clarify the requirements.
 

[DHT]Osiris

Lifer
Dec 15, 2015
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You're probably right but they would probably have to anonymize it. The reg and the ICO haven't been clear and it will probably end up in court to clarify the requirements.
That's the kind of thing I'd like our congress to be doing, rather than a dog & pony show.
 

IJTSSG

Golden Member
Aug 12, 2014
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Part of me agrees but I'd be concerned with another Sarbanes-Oxley type reg.
 

[DHT]Osiris

Lifer
Dec 15, 2015
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Part of me agrees but I'd be concerned with another Sarbanes-Oxley type reg.
Considering the magnitude of the problem, and how long we've let it fester, we probably need something on that scale to tear control of our information back away from companies. I honestly could care less if 90% of digital advertising/data collating companies crash an burn as a result, considering the damage they've done to the Internet, and, apparently, our democratic process.