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posted by janrinok on Friday June 15 2018, @11:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the do-you-trust-him? dept.

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

Facebook has consistently denied allegations that it listens to its users' conversations through their phone's microphone, but a new document suggests the tech giant has not ruled out doing so in the future.

Facebook users have been sharing circumstantial evidence for several years that suggests Facebook snoops on their private conversations in order to deliver more personalised ads. In April, US lawmakers finally brought the concerns to CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a hearing about data misuse on the firm's platform.

The social media firm released a 454-page document this week to follow up with questions posed to Mr Zuckerberg, after he was criticised for evading some of the most important ones.

Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-listening-conversations-phone-microphones-ads-app-mark-zuckerberg-a8398291.html

Documents can be found here:
Zuckerberg Testimony
Responses to Commerce Committee
Responses to Judiciary Committee

[Editor's Note: the two response documents are 229 and 225 pages, respectively for a total of 454 pages.]


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday June 16 2018, @01:34AM (3 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 16 2018, @01:34AM (#693815) Journal

    just a smear campaign

    You might have a point - if the Cambridge Analytica scandal had never happened. Facebook crossed a line, and you seem to have the attitude that the lines don't exist.

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @04:30AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @04:30AM (#693849)

    (not the same AC).
    Nah the main thing is just the Democrats and gang (pro Democrat mainstream media etc) are pissed off that Trump won and they are looking for someone else other themselves to blame. They were trying to blame racists, the electoral college but since a BLACK guy won TWICE with the same racists and the same electoral college they had to find someone else....

    Fact is before Trump won there was even talk that Facebook was biased against the Republicans and conservatives:
    https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/05/18/conservatives-stress-thought-diversity-facebook/84550870/ [usatoday.com]
    https://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-suppressed-conser-1775461006 [gizmodo.com]
    https://gizmodo.com/facebook-employees-asked-mark-zuckerberg-if-they-should-1771012990 [gizmodo.com]

    And they most probably were.

    Secondly, FB had no mens rea in the Cambridge Analytica case: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-cambridge-analytica-factbox/factbox-who-is-cambridge-analytica-and-what-did-it-do-idUSKBN1GW07F [reuters.com]
    Thirdly, most of the data collected was what FB users should expect to be collected from FB (e.g. everything they post, where they are, everything that their friends would know and they would know about their friends, etc). Only in a few cases were user to user private messages collected and that was from their opt-in: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/13/revealed-aleksandr-kogan-collected-facebook-users-direct-messages [theguardian.com]

    According to our records only a very small number of people explicitly opted into sharing this information. The feature was turned off in 2015.”

    The sad thing is Trump might win again if the Democrats continue not addressing the real reasons why they lost. You may not believe that could happen because of opinion polls etc, but I remember very distinctly in 2016 there were zillions of polls saying Clinton would win. Trump has actually been DELIVERING what a lot of conservatives want.

    FWIW Clinton was a crap candidate. And would actually have been worse than Trump from certain perspectives (e.g. the people living in the Middle East)- for example Trump actually tried to get USA to stop overthrowing Syria and focus on ISIS. Even to work with the Russians and Syrian Gov to do so. But every time he tried to do stuff like that, somehow conveniently "Assad starts gassing civilians"... In contrast Clinton was so happy to kill Gaddafi and screw up Libya. She would have gleefully helped to screw up Syria.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday June 16 2018, @03:16PM (1 child)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 16 2018, @03:16PM (#693967) Journal

      I do believe that you are awake!

      Trump win in 2020? I'm not willing to commit to that prediction, but you're right about one thing. If the Dems want to win, they need to come up with SOMEONE with a clue. History, especially recent history, tells us that the incumbent has to be a total screwup to lose. Even Bush won re-election!

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @04:24PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @04:24PM (#693992)
        Uh Clinton definitely had a clue. But a vote for her was a vote for "more of the same". So an illogical choice for those in the USA who were "drowning" already. Yes it was a high chance that Trump wouldn't improve their lives (and in most cases he hasn't) but he has proven he definitely is something different... So for those who were slowly "drowning" Trump might actually still be a better choice - drag everyone else down with them till stuff changes. If the Democrats still refuse to offer options that are better than Clinton then they seriously share the blame.