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from the We-take-your-privacy-very-seriously dept.
Federal Investigation of Facebook Could Hold Mark Zuckerberg Accountable on Privacy, Sources say:
Federal regulators investigating Facebook for mishandling its users’ personal information have set their sights on the company’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, exploring his past statements on privacy and weighing whether to seek new, heightened oversight of his leadership.
The discussions about how to hold Zuckerberg accountable for Facebook’s data lapses have come in the context of wide-ranging talks between the Federal Trade Commission and Facebook that could settle the government’s more than year-old probe, according to two people familiar with the discussions. Both requested anonymity because the FTC’s inquiry is confidential under law.
Such a move could create new legal, political and public-relations headaches for one of Silicon Valley’s best known — and image conscious — corporate leaders. Zuckerberg is Facebook’s co-founder, chief executive, board chairman and most powerful stock owner, and a sanction from the federal government would be seen as a rare rebuke to him and the tech giant’s historic “move fast and break things” ethos.
Often, the FTC does not target executives in cases where it finds a company’s business practices have violated web users’ privacy. But critics said that targeting Zuckerberg could send a message to other tech giants that the agency is willing to hold top executives directly accountable for their firms’ repeated data misdeeds.
“The days of pretending this is an innocent platform are over, and citing Mark in a large scale enforcement action would drive that home in spades,” said Roger McNamee, an early investor in the company and one of Zuckerberg's foremost critics.
I wonder how many Soylentils (besides me) saw the privacy implications and never set up an account?
(Score: 4, Informative) by looorg on Friday April 19 2019, @10:10PM (3 children)
Does that even matter? I never signed up but I think most of us know a few people that did that also know you. After they take pictures and you are in them you are tagged, your friends and family allow Facebook to search their phones and now you start getting all them emails about you having friends/people on Facebook that you should check out. So even if I never signed up, they know me or know that I exists and it probably bugs them that I'm somehow resisting the lure. Not to even get into the whole shadowprofile thing where they track you anyway and you are a user they just have not officially matched yet -- or that is to say you have not acknowledged that their copy of you is you yet. So does it really matter anymore? They know that I know that they know ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @11:26PM
> and now you start getting all them emails about you having friends/people on Facebook
I must have done something right(??) I don't recall getting emails from FB as you describe. Maybe I've slipped through the cracks and I'm one of the last in USA not zucked in.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 20 2019, @12:24PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 21 2019, @01:58AM
Yes, it does matter. While Facebook probably still has a little bit of information about people who don't have accounts, it is still less information than if you handed over everything on a silver platter. Defeatism will get us nowhere and only serves the elites.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @10:12PM
When you buy enough congress critters, they throw in the FTC for free.
#BillionairesLivesMatter
(Score: 3, Funny) by MostCynical on Friday April 19 2019, @10:25PM (1 child)
when did "accountability" become a swear word?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @10:30PM
accountability is for the little people
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @10:51PM (2 children)
Sure, SEC regulation mandates annual privacy notice, but that's just ... you know what it is.
If I were Suckaberg, I would be scared of white nationalists rather than the fed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 20 2019, @02:30AM (1 child)
Yeah those 'white nationalists' are terrible people. Or you are hallucinating.
THIS is more worrying. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLjht9uJWgw [youtube.com]
What the actual fuck... Consider the number of andriod phones out there. Think of the number of searches people do. Think of the amount of junk bought on ebay and amazon.
That is a privacy nightmare.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 20 2019, @06:43AM
My account has been continuously active since the days when you had to have an invitation to open a Gmail account. And, it says "No activity." Do you think they are lying to me? Or, have I successfully blocked Google's attempts to archive my activity?
This is one of the reasons I haven't decided that Google is really evil. We are all aware that "consumers" ignorantly agree to any terms and conditions placed before them, because "Oh! Shiny!" The more suspicious of us can examine terms and conditions, and decide to NOT AGREE to them.
The subject of TFS, Facebook, is more aggressive than Google, IMO. YMMV, but that is my opinion. Even so, Facebook has relatively little on me, because I give them little, and block everything I can find to block. If I didn't think the wife would kill me, I'd just block Facebook at the router.
But, just for the record, I'll reiterate my position on data collection. All data collection should be "OPT IN" rather than opt out. No one should have to spend hundreds of hours researching how data is collected, any by whom, just to figure out how to stay under the radar.
Let's say that some hostile actor decided to harvest my data from Google, Facebook, Twitter, and all the other popular platforms. What would they come up with? Precious little. My searches for "Where can I hide a body quickly?" won't show up, either on my computer, or at Google, or at Duckduckgo, or anywhere.
Those of us who value privacy can attain reasonable levels of privacy, IF we insist on it.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @11:21PM
Too bad he let Trump win....
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday April 19 2019, @11:30PM (1 child)
And, nothing has happened to him. If he runs, possibly nothing will happen to him. Or possibly some people will do something. Who knows, right? All agree that the President has COMPLETE AND TOTAL POWER over F.B.I. Think about it!!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 20 2019, @12:37AM
Hey fake trump? How is muller time going? Have you paid the barr tab yet?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 20 2019, @03:18PM
by reigning in federal funding for projects that compel using social media services to begin with?
How many schools out there store all their student submissions on Google drive, compel their students to use gmail for all communications with instructors etc. And how much of that is set up with Federal funding?
And that is before we start talking about federal institutions doing dumbass things like this themselves.
Of course we know FB will see no criminal prosecutions. All this is, is a shakedown for campaign funding.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 21 2019, @08:04AM
Facebook is not at all about privacy, it is about controlled crowd manipulation at industrial scale. The puppet Zuckerberg failed to bring desired results, and for this he must be punished by his angry masters. Equivalent disillusion by the large scale results contradicting the original task is what caused urgent demolition of G+. In both cases, data are only an excuse.