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Senator Kennedy of Louisiana confronted Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the transparency of the social media company's policies on Tuesday.
[...]
"I'm going to suggest you go home and rewrite it, and tell your $1,200 dollar and[sic] hour lawyer...you want it written in English not Swahili, so the average American user can understand," Kennedy said.
Source:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/10/senator-to-zuckerberg-your-user-agreement-sucks.html
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Senator to Zuckerberg: 'Your User Agreement Sucks'
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
I consider the day misspent that I am not either charged with a crime,
or arrested for one.
-- "Ratsy" Tourbillon
(Score: 5, Insightful) by meustrus on Wednesday April 11 2018, @09:58PM (21 children)
Nobody is forced to use the internet.
Nobody is forced to use cars.
Nobody is forced to use grocery stores.
Nobody is forced to use electricity.
What is Congress doing messing with any of these clearly voluntary things? Just because everybody is using them does not mean we should have any kind of direct control over them. After all, the free market is so great at making sure markets with little or no competition best serve their customers.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 11 2018, @10:05PM (11 children)
Facebook is an indispensable utility?! Like water, air, or even gasoline? You would suffocate if you cut off facebook?
You are the facechild of millenial dumbfucks.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 11 2018, @10:23PM (1 child)
And you must be a dinosaur that should have been buried a long time ago.
The libertarian type of stupidity around here is really damaging, sadly you think it is the opposite where you are "freedom fighters" or some nonsense. The reality is you erode the foundations of all our current freedoms with your naive idealism.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @03:58AM
Slavers always say it is for the good of the slaves.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday April 11 2018, @10:54PM (7 children)
At least one of my former employers required every employee to have a FaceBook account. And they insisted we use our real names. Made it difficult to have 2 separate accounts, and that's the way they wanted it.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 11 2018, @11:16PM (2 children)
That shouldn't even be legal. Regardless, I would refuse to work for such a person even if it meant living on the streets.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday April 12 2018, @03:41AM (1 child)
Seems most tech employees could really use a primer on how to handle management.
Taking an absolute stand is great and all, but it's inflexible. There are many other ways to handle improper demands than the nuclear option of quit and run. At the least, you can just politely refuse to do it, and dare them to fire you. Quitting makes it easy on them. To put them in the position of having to follow through on their threat to fire you is much more awkward for them. It's like in poker, you didn't fold, you called them. They may back down, in which case they were bluffing. Or they may fire you, and then you can sue for improper termination, and may well win. To avoid that, they have to build a case about how you failed to do this and that, weren't a team player, and so on, and that takes time.
Of course it's rough and tricky to work in a hostile environment. Although some of your fellow employees will be opportunists who see in you a chance to divert blame from themselves at your expense, you may have a lot of support from most of the others who have also been put in difficult positions, and would very much like to see someone, anyone, successfully stick it to management. You have to be very careful you don't hand them an excuse to fire you, and you absolutely must CYA, however tedious it is to insist on written orders so they can't deny that they told you to break the law or asked too much of you, or completely contradicted their orders of last week or whatever. There's always a little of that every workplace, but If it's bad enough, you probably should move on soon, just not too soon.
Another thing you can do is look for the loopholes, and use them to the max. So you have to have an FB account, okay, fine, make a new account with your first and middle names switched, something like that, and use it as little as possible, and delete it at the first opportunity, like a change in company policy or the end of that job.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @06:42AM
I'm not a tech employee. I own my own business (go figure) and would never make such absurd demands of my own employees. If your employer is making such unjust demands of you, chances are that workplace is utterly toxic anyway.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by insanumingenium on Wednesday April 11 2018, @11:25PM (3 children)
That, thats a hard no from me. Can't imagine why they would want to be so Orwellian. Only way I would accept those terms is if I was planning on getting me a facebook account and posing protected but detestable shit to anger them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @08:54AM (2 children)
The school has a programming class. Required for all students. The teacher- fresh out of uni - created Gmail accounts for all students using the class register. The course requires use of Google products.
How do you get your kid's info deleted from Google after the fact, and how does your kid do the course work if they don't have an account?
(Score: 2) by ewk on Thursday April 12 2018, @10:33AM
Seems like a problem of the teacher.
If (s)he does not manage to get the info deleted, sue the crap out of him/her.
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 1) by schusselig on Thursday April 12 2018, @02:15PM
I'm pretty sure there's laws in place to prohibit schools from sharing information about minors to third parties. Definitely talk to a lawyer, YMMV.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Thursday April 12 2018, @02:16PM
It always comes back to attacking the author, doesn't it? For the record, I am not on Facebook. I have never more than dabbled in it, and I deleted that account within months. I am concerned, however, that the day will soon come that Facebook's ubiquity will make my abstention irrelevant.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday April 11 2018, @11:08PM (5 children)
Actually, you almost are.
I got to hang out with a guy who has been living off the grid for over a decade, using windmills and solar panels and a generator and a battery system he built himself. He's on multiple occasions had to kick off inspectors that were certain he was stealing power from the lines.
If you're a landlord, you're generally required by law to provide an electrical hookup to each rental unit, or your units will be considered unfit for human habitation and it can be illegal to rent them out. And if you're the person renting from said landlord, they'll usually require that you pay for the electricity, which means a monthly fee from the electrical company regardless of whether you actually turn anything on.
On top of that, many building codes have requirements around electrical power for new construction. So unless you have an old house, and convert it to off-grid, odds are you're required to pay into the electrical grid.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday April 11 2018, @11:58PM (3 children)
However, it *was* possible to get permits to restore/renovate a historic (though badly run-down) home on the property that had never had electricity, without adding it.
Not a loophole that everyone can exploit unfortunately.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fliptop on Thursday April 12 2018, @12:54AM
I'm finishing up a wiring job right now that involved pulling out 60-amp knob-and-tube and putting in 200-amp new service.
Where I live the inspector had to look at the initial work I did (weather head, conduit, meter box, cut-off, cable, and 200-amp box inside the house) before the electric company would come out and switch the service over from the 60-amp old stuff. So more than likely you'd have to do at least that to get the inspector's blessing. The total investment is probably right around $400 for all the materials. Once the inspector has signed off and the electric company is given the go ahead to hook up, what would stop someone from not ever placing that request call?
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday April 12 2018, @01:30AM (1 child)
Another loophole in my area: If a building is considered "agricultural", it doesn't have to conform to building codes in the slightest.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by DeVilla on Thursday April 12 2018, @02:44AM
Do you still get a homestead tax credit that way? I would guess the Amish in the area found a way around this. Can't say I've thought to ask.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @08:14AM
Can't you just call the electrical company and ask them to cut you off now to spare their expenses, because you are not going to pay anyway?
(Score: 1, Disagree) by tftp on Wednesday April 11 2018, @11:53PM (1 child)
(Score: 3, Informative) by legont on Thursday April 12 2018, @12:11AM
Not exactly. One will end up in a murky area of suicide laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_legislation [wikipedia.org]
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @09:16PM
if you think accessing facebook is comparable to eating or driving to work, you are part of the problem.
( and people in many cities are forced to have electricity, and running water. Else your house gets condemned and you are kicked out )