[1] https://www.c-span.org/video/?451963-1/google-apple-amazon-t...
From the press release[0] posted elsewhere in this thread
https://Qbix.com (see the video)
On the other hand, I feel like I’m shamelessly promoting/shilling my own company.
How to do it in a classy way? I really believe that there is a problem people are not recognizing enough to do something about it (Diaspora and Mastodon and Solid are exceptions).
And I spent the last 7 years and $700K of our company’s profits solving it. So it’s now solved. If Mastodon is “a decentralized Twitter creation kit” where you own your own data, then Qbix is a “decentralized Facebook creation kit” where you can assemble social apps from a growing marketplace of reusable components, some of which don’t exist anywhere. Here for example is a Group Rides plugin that basically makes a social Uber, and ANYONE can have it on their OWN social network:
OK, but we are perfectionists and are spending months polishing “the other 90%” so it’s not a flop when we release it to the public to create their own facebooks. We need really clean onboarding and measure engagement metrics and fix bugs etc. It took 7 years thus far.
For example this was last year, we are way more advanced now:
So, advice would be appreciated from people who have successfully done before. Maybe contact me (qbix.com/about has my email link). How do we get the story out there that Qbix is being built to FIX the underlying root problem of decentralizing social networking, so people’s data isn’t in one place?
Please if you have some knowledge about this, take a look at the above videos and let us know what advice you have to get stories actually published.
PS: one more thing, we managed to get tons of inadvertent press back in March including BBC and Newsweek, which you will find if you search for “calendar mining” or “qbix calendar”. BUT when I reached back out to thise journalists to cover an actual story of Qbix is actually doing, none of them replied. Many of them just want to break the sensational controversy because that brings notoriety. How do you make them write about SOLUTIONS to problems?
I was logged out of Facebook about 30 minutes ago.
“Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access to Your Shadow Contact Information”
Source: https://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-giving-advertisers-access-to...
'Facebook is clearly aware that losing its chief security officer and dissolving its dedicated security team, in the middle of all that’s going on, is not a great look. So many of the company’s statements today are clearly designed to address obvious concerns that arise.
“We expect to be judged on what we do to protect people’s security, not whether we have someone with a certain title,” a spokesperson said. In another statement, Facebook said it is “investing heavily in security to address new types of threats” and that its new security structure has “helped us do more to keep people safe.”'
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/1/17640852/facebook-cso-alex...
CNN many years ago accidentally left some of their pre-written obituaries for (living) world figures publically accessible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_premature_obituaries#T...
What makes it dated specifically? Versus let’s say https://joinmastodon.org/
Also did you visit from a mobile phone or desktop?
Essential infrastructure describes "assets that are essential for the functioning of a society and economy" [1]. Not things that can cause a lot of damage. Bombers aren't essential infrastructure. Facebook is non-essential.
I bet they're now really regretting keeping it around.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28093386
"Our results showed that overall, the use of Facebook was negatively associated with well-being."
Naturally, even if this study is accurate it isn't definitive; the causation could go in the other direction, that the unhappy use Facebook more often than the contented. But it's still quite suggestive.
I saw this study referenced from this article: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/21/17144748/c...
Along with React, GraphQL and a bunch of other technologies with various degrees of popularity https://opensource.fb.com
Along with various startups building around the projects incubated at Facebook - Asana, Interana, Phacility, Qubole, etc.
e.g https://www.slideshare.net/a16z/state-of-49390473/29-29Becau...
[0] https://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/roge...
It linked here: https://www.facebook.com/help/2687943754764396?ref=comms
BTW there are people who need data, not just people within US.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/world/asia/trump-china-el... "Mr. Trump did not suggest that China’s behavior was on the scale of Russia’s sophisticated campaign of manipulating social media and the release of hacked emails during the 2016 presidential election."
https://www.rappler.com/technology/news/211276-facebook-twit... Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, opened the hearing by citing the promise of social media before adding, "But we've also learned about how vulnerable social media is to corruption and misuse. The very worst examples of this are absolutely chilling and a threat to our democracy."
Already, Russia and Iran have sought to interfere by passing themselves off as American groups or people to shape the views of American voters, say lawmakers and technology executives. Facebook, Google and Twitter together took down hundreds of accounts tied to the two countries last month, a move that prompted Burr to open the hearing Wednesday by expressing fear that "more foreign countries are now trying to use your products to shape and manipulate American political sentiment as an instrument of statecraft."
Cambridge Analytica - Worked with some Indian Political Parties or the Government itself too.
Lawmakers aren't limited in the questions they can pose Facebook and Twitter. Sandberg's boss, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, faced questions in April hearings that extended far beyond the reason the hearing was called: Facebook's entanglement with Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy that improperly accessed 87 million users' personal information. Sandberg could also face questions on Cambridge Analytica.
I’m a EU citizen and I’ve always been intrigued by Estonia’s digital citizenship. I’ve only picked a few tidbits about how it works and they may be wrong, so take this with a grain of salt.
From what I understand, a digital citizenship is different from a normal citizenship. It allows you to, for example, open a company, but I don’t know if it gives you enough to make you a EU citizen. In Portugal there’s a bit of a kerfuffle about the Golden Visa programme[1] because it’s seen as a way to buy EU citizenship for cheap[2] and cause problems for nationals[3]. I’m not aware of the same happening through Estonia, so it makes it me think it doesn’t give you EU citizenship.
In addition, you have to actually go to Estonia to set up the digital citizenship; it’s not something you can do completely offline and be done with it.
Methods such as marriage are not that effective in Portugal, at least at the moment. I know of two people with legitimate reasons to get Portuguese citizenship and the process has been a chore, taking years.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portugal_Golden_Visa
[2]: Yes, you need to invest, but you keep your investment.
[3]: House prices in major cities and surrounding areas are through the roof.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/1/17640852/facebook-cso-alex...
A true statement is that Facebook's security teams have been shifted around in several reorgs. A false statement is that Facebook has dissolved its security teams. The latter is a mischaracterization of the former, because while some security staff have left Facebook for a variety of reasons, the company is not deliberately reducing its security staff nor encouraging their departure. It still employs a huge number of engineers specializing in every major domain of information security.
If you'd like evidence that Facebook is expanding its security presence, you can take a look at its careers portal. It's aggressively hiring security staff in satellite offices that previously weren't focus areas for security engineering.
In my opinion, Alex Stamos' company memo gives a clearer picture of what's happened in Facebook's security org recently.[1] You should read that in addition to media reports.
______________
1. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-alex-s...
And unfortunately Hillary Clinton did it to Putin first, probably using similar methods.
Nowhere on that banner does Facebook make it clear that there was recently a severe security issue that may have resulted in the loss of personal user information (Making it much less likely for the user to actually click 'Learn More'). It's misleading to title this with just "An Important Security Update" and make it seem like they've just updated their systems. No mention of the recent compromise until you click 'Learn More'.
If you heard about the NCIX story where they basically abandoned their servers filled with users data (over 13 years of data) and someone scooped them up and tried to resell them on the black market, one could think that a similar fate is possible.
source : https://www.privacyfly.com/articles/ncix_breach/
Obviously if Facebook was going under it would probably trigger a huge legal process on how to handle the data but it clearly doesn't happen for smaller businesses...
This discussion is mostly irrelevant to the fact that this particular company is completely reckless and unethical. The technology they accidentally produce while building a dystopia to make people click on ads[1] does not justify anything.
Alright then, where do we draw the line? Can I go buy a person? If not, can I invade Sudan?[1]
> Ethical consumption is a dead end.
Should we give up even thinking about it and just do whatever is most convenient?
Will that solve all our problems?
You know Amazon treats its employees like disposable shit. If you buy from them anyway you are putting your self-love above the love you should have for the folks working there. You know Uber is extracting value from their drivers[2] and will discard them without compunction when the robots come online. And they killed Elaine Herzberg. If you ride Uber you're rewarding them for all this and putting your self-love above the love you should have for those folks driving.
I'm gonna keep fighting for what I think is right. That means telling people that they are moral cretins when they are blithe about it. (I don't think violence solves anything, but a good rant can shake up a body's thoughts. I have friends that shop through Amazon and ride Uber and I don't chide them too harshly or often.)
Working at FB or one of the other emerging technocracies isn't an instance of "Never let ideological purity prevent you from effective action." It's a case of putting money above core values, or not having those values in the first place, or simply not paying attention.
If you're going to be a Morlock at least be a self-aware Morlock, eh?
> You can't even buy slavery-free clothing or food reliably.
You can try.
If you don't even try you're a moral cretin.[3] It's a common malady in this empty and abortive age.
[1] One of the few places where outright slavery still occurs in modern times. If that's not grounds for attack what is? Oil?
[2] "They don’t pay the cost of their capital. The wages they pay to their drivers are less than the depreciation of the cars and the expense of keeping the drivers fed, housed, and healthy. They pay less than minimum wage in most markets, and, in most markets, that is not enough to pay the costs of a car plus a human." https://www.ianwelsh.net/the-market-fairy-will-not-solve-the...?
[3] "Origin Late 18th century: from French crétin, from Swiss French crestin ‘Christian’ (from Latin Christianus), here used to mean ‘human being’, apparently as a reminder that, though deformed, cretins were human and not beasts." https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/cretin
I could be totally wrong, of course. Maybe they started naming holes in dilapidated walls that to bring tourists/pilgrims.
Did a quick google for pic examples; https://patmcinerney.wordpress.com/2014/06/30/the-church-of-...
> The first bug was that, when using the View As function to look at your profile as another person would, the video uploader shouldn’t have actually shown up at all. But in a very specific case, on certain types of posts that are encouraging people to post happy birthday greetings, it did show up.
> The second bug was that this video uploader incorrectly used the single signon functionally, and it generated an access token that had the permissions of the Facebook mobile app. And that’s not the way the single sign-on functionality is intended to be used.
> The third bug was that, when the video uploader showed up as part of View As -- which it wouldn’t do were it not for that first bug -- and it generated an access token which is -- again, wouldn’t do, except for that second bug -- it generated the access token, not for you as the viewer, but for the user that you are looking up.
> It’s the combination of those three bugs that became a vulnerability. Now, this was discovered by attackers. Those attackers then, in order to run this attack, needed not just to find this vulnerability, but they needed to get an access token and then to pivot on that access token to other accounts and then look up other users in order to get further access tokens. This is the vulnerability that, yesterday, on Thursday, we fixed that, and we’re resetting all of those access tokens to protect security of people’s accounts so that those access tokens that may have been taken are not usable anymore. This is what is also causing people to be logged out of Facebook to protect their accounts.
[1] https://fbnewsroomus.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/9-28-press-...
Some users are reporting that they are unable to post today’s
big story about a security breach affecting 50 million
Facebook users. The issue appears to only affect particular
stories from certain outlets, at this time one story from The
Guardian and one from the Associated Press, both reputable
press outlets.
...
The situation is another example of Facebook’s automated
content flagging tools marking legitimate content as
illegitimate, in this case calling it spam.
There are hundreds of more similar articles documenting hacking by China and Russia. The data breach at the parent of this article even is supposed to have been done by a coordinated nation states. How can a company ever compete against a nations resources? Expecting Facebook to magically secure themselves against attacks by a nation is wishful thinking. If you want to stop breaches like this, the nation's that are doing it must be held accountable. Facebook is an easy target, but that's just attacking the victim. China and Russia are much more intimidating but are the ones who are the true perpetrators.
People also want heroin. That doesn't mean it's actually a positive thing in people's lives. If anything the evidence is mounting that it is negative, e.g.: https://hbr.org/2017/04/a-new-more-rigorous-study-confirms-t...
I mostly agree with the rest of your post, though. I believe it's possible, though very rare, to work at Facebook and have a positive impact.
And there's definitely a total mismatch between regulation and the realities of big tech companies. I'm skeptical of government regulation solving privacy issues specifically (I think that stems more from a widespread cultural misunderstanding or unawareness of privacy concerns) but maybe it's needed for other ways these companies are negatively impacting the world.
This is a spearfishing attack... That's a totally different beast. Let me look at the gross mishandling of data that facebook had recently:
Remember the Cambridge Analitica scandal? That wasn't a hack. That was facebook deliberately letting apps access user data like it was candy, because that's what facebook does. It was done on purpose. Of course, they didn't expect someone to scrape the whole network at that scale, so it wasn't fully intentional. Still, it was absolutely gross negligence, and is absolutely a breach of trust that happened outside of external government interference: https://www.vox.com/2018/3/20/17138756/facebook-data-breach-...
What about the recent scandal revolving around the use of 2FA SMS numbers being used for ad targeting? Against, this isn't Russia coming in and hacking facebook. This is Facebook shooting themselves in the foot with a bazooka. They should have been aware that, when a user enters their phone number for 2FA, they expect it to be used for this feature and this feature only. Not for ad targeting, not for notifications. Again, facebook breached that trust. No outside interference, just facebook being either lazy, irresponsible, and incompetent around user data: https://9to5mac.com/2018/09/28/facebook-ad-targeting-2fa/
There are many other cases like the above. Facebook doesn't need china to attract hate. They can fuck things up by themselves well enough.
https://www.facebook.com/help/2687943754764396?ref=comms
Which is the issue at hand.
Remember, this is a company headed by someone who captured failed login passwords and used them to hack the email accounts of a journalist writing an anti-FB article. Yes, that was a decade ago, but that is a serious, criminal low.
http://www.theamericanmirror.com/flashback-zuckerberg-used-l...
I think that is clearly a fallacy.
Nobody is arguing that every individual within Facebook is an unethical person.
The argument is that the overall project is unethical and the ethical people within it should take that possibility seriously.
For more philosophical background on this idea:
Set your preferences to show posts of your native language only, start poking around the timelines, and follow people who post something interesting. Follow, boost, reply, it only takes a few days before you have plenty of interesting content in your feed.
There's zero chance on Mastodon that you'll get caught up in a gigantic data breach like this. Probably less chance you get caught up in any kind of breach -- it's too obscure to be a target, plus the code is open source so many eyes on it, etc.
And you'll enjoy these guaranteed benefits, as well:
- No longer subject to the most sophisticated data vacuuming adtech in the world
- If you get bored/annoyed you can just take a break from Mastodon because it doesn't own your life the way Facebook tries to
Its so bad that for certain systems we check the origin of your connection and will only trust you if you've come from the DMZ rather than internal.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/07/03/googles-de...