Paul H is a user on social.device5.co.uk. You can follow them or interact with them if you have an account anywhere in the fediverse.

I got told off by a Vice journo on birdsite yesterday for saying Facebook aren't trustworthy enough to handle building/running a revenge porn database.

I pointed out that every time FB is given data it finds a new use for it that the users didn't agree to then asks for forgiveness later.

He tried belittling me by asking me to find another similar company that was as commited as FB to solving revenge porn.

Paul H @paul

Firstly, "being committed" to doing something doesn't make FB any more trustworthy than they were before.

Anyway, today he publishes a puff-piece on FB's new anti-hate-speech policy which totally fails to criticise it or any of FBs previous half-arsed attempts to police it's users/content.

I guess he's made a few friends with some nice guys that work there and now isn't so keen on losing access 🤷

Anyway, I told him I looked forward to reading his story in a year's time "Nudes given to Facebook used for x without users knowledge"

@paul I would love a list of just who has given their nudes to Facebook because I’m pretty sure I could sell those people anything.

Oh look what's popped up in the news today

"The lawsuit claims the ability to read text messages on Android phones was also partially disclosed, presented to users as a way to make logging in easier, but Facebook deployed it to collect a range of other messages and the associated metadata."

theguardian.com/technology/201

This is also interesting from the article.

"Facebook has not fully disclosed the manner in which it pre-processes photos on the iOS camera roll, meaning if a user has any Facebook app installed on their iPhone, then Facebook accesses and analyses the photos the user takes and/or stores on the iPhone, the complainant alleges."

Sounds like FB is in some way processing camera roll images to extract data (location, time, maybe even contents) even when sync is switched off

@paul i would say that I'm not surprised but to be fair... when one thinks about this... it's incredible how damaging some of these apps are.

These are the apps we allow our kids and teachers to have.

@paul #Facebook goes to extreme lengths to try to identify people through image analysis.

They even patented a method for analysing dust/scratches on camera lenses, to identify the person taking the picture:

gizmodo.com/facebook-knows-how

@switchingsocial You would think there would be a point at which identifying friends just isn't worth the work involved for FB, but it seems they will invest endless money in it.

Makes me wonder if they're building social graphs for someone else

@paul

If this week's allegations are true, FB's income depends mostly on selling personal data to companies. Apparently FB technically avoid "selling it" by giving it away, but only give it away to companies that buy lots of ads.

If it is true, then in effect they are exchanging personal data for ad revenue, and the ads themselves are irrelevant except as a payment method for data sales:

theguardian.com/technology/201

@paul It would be nice if journalists could hold powerful people to account instead of being in awe of them 😟

@switchingsocial too much journalism is just regurgitation of press releases from companies/governments so most writers are in fear of being cut off if they are critical. Plus of course, they also have to keep their rich owners happy too so can't criticise the status quo too much