Im just making clear I am not trying to cause agitation. Thats not the intent.

I try to be sparing with opinions. I dislike having to type prefix or postfix statements with "IMO" again and again, but I want to make explicit what is only an opinion versus what are facts or observations because ("IMO") opinions are almost always worthless. I prefer facts and questions.

Most of the volume of posts I made the past few weeks were not opinions but were excerpts and pointers to articles: facts and some journalists opinions.

The truth is I waste too much time "interacting" with this addictive forum. Its a distraction.

If you ban me from ever posting anything ever again on HN, in all honesty, you will probably be doing me a favour.

Edit: Notice that youve toned down your original reply, which had statements like "No one cares about your opinions about Google, Apple or Facebook." It seems I have agitated you. I apologise.

https://sivers.org/openbsd

http://www.sacrideo.us/openbsd-on-macbook/

However I have not heard any reports of anyone running an alternative OS on iPhone or iPad hardware.

With every passing year I continue to think it would be interesting to observe how users would choose if Apple hardware and Apple software were sold separately.

Would all users choose Apple software?

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/users-would-have-p...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16779016

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

https://sivers.org/openbsd

http://www.sacrideo.us/openbsd-on-macbook/

However I have not heard any reports of anyone running an alternative OS on iPhone or iPad hardware.

With every passing year I continue to think it would be interesting to observe how users would choose if Apple hardware and Apple software were sold separately.

Would all users choose Apple software?

Expecting to take a little karma subtraction from the thought police for daring to entertain such a nonpermissible idea. Par for the course here and well worth it.

Sometimes it seems like there is an underlying, unspoken presumption that no progress, no innovation making use of the internet could occur unless funding comes from exploiting data gathered from its use.

Sadly it has reached the point where some of that "progress" and "innovation" is simply in the mechanism for gathering more user data, unbeknownst to users. The beast is feeding itself. I have no interest in funding that, either directly or indirectly.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/03/26/zuckerberg-m...

He believes that Facebook's board is susceptible to Silicon Valley groupthink and with Thiel there is clear conflict in interest due to Palantir.

He argues the board is "feeble" because Zuckerberg cant be sacked.

The author thinks Zuckerberg has made some "stupid" and "arrogant" moves.

For example last year as an experiment, he cut professionally produced news from the main newsfeed in Sri Lanka, Guatemala, Bolivia, Cambodia, Serbia and Slovakia making those countries "beta-testers" for "a political debate free of facts".

He recalls in 2007 he wrote two news stories about FB for a former employer. One was about some software that "connected to Facebook's then-new "social graph" and siphoned off personal information for resale." The other was about an advertiser, Vodafone, who pulled its ads from Facebook because it had been placed on a page promoting the British National Party.

He suggests that because stories like these could easily have been written as recent as last week, it shows how FB's problems are not new and how Zuckerberg has refused to acknowledge them for the last ten years let alone try to "fix" them.

He thinks FB should not be "fixed"; rather, it should be "broken and remade".

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-privacy/facebook...

Perhaps he will announce next that he supports competition.

Isnt it true that before being acquired by FB, WhatsApp charged users a subscription fee and did not show ads?

Not in the sense FB cannot make improvements. Of course they can.

What is too little, too late is reversing the direction that the Zuckerberg story has taken.

The media can build someone up and they can also destroy someone.

As the recent Rolling Stone article suggested in no uncertain terms, there has been great damage done to media and journalism (and arguably to society) by having FB as a "filter" between the reader and the news source.

They have not managed the relationships well enough it seems.

Have a look at this article:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/06/mark-zuck...

Anecdotally I have heard Zuckerberg discussed in the ways described in this article. I have no doubt he was trying to carefully craft an image for the American public.

But, today, who can trust this young man who has the personal lives of billions of people on his servers... now that they have seen how he reacts in a crisis? (Perhaps we should say "fails to react".)

There is a certain irony I see in the failure of Zuckerbergs PR team. Someone who has been in PR for many years once explained to me the effect of FB on PR. Needless to say, it wasnt positive. PR traditionally relied on the media and its ability to reach the targeted audience. To a large extent, FB controls this now.

Whether any of this will matter long-term, who knows? Ask Wall Street?

But if and when FB assures us that they have everything under control, I will have doubts. This is an evolving story. We are seeing only the tip of the FB iceberg.

FB appears locked in to a business model that relies on continually pushing the limits of invasiveness.

Does that model have a breaking point?

Does FB know where that point lies?

What has been the US legal/regulatory framework governing "privacy" that telecomunications operators have had to work within for the past thirty years?

Has Facebook had to operate within that same framework? As FB grew, has it been subject to the same restrictions?

Has Facebook, with the billions they have made through collecting and monetising user data, and with the competition they have given to the telecommunications providers, played any role in any "shrinking" of past privacy protections afforded telecom subscribers?

I have not lived very long but the big difference I see from past decades is that collecting user data and monetising it is viewed as a "core business".

While I was not yet born at the time, I am confident that the telegraph was not funded by reading peoples telegrams and trying to sell that information to merchants. As far as I know telephone service was not funded by recording peoples conversations and marketing the value of the collected information to advertisers. Even consumer internet service, first appearing in the 1990s, was not funded by collecting user data and trying to "monetise" it.

"Free" communication thanks to the internet has brought us a new type of company. It operates in a legal grey area, free from many of the restrictions that applied to its predecessors. Until proven otherwise, it appears that without collecting data on users and marketing it to third parties, this type of company cannot survive.

Yet, whether these new companies exist or not, as far as I can see communication over the internet is still "free". (The cost being the internet subscription fees.) Of course when a user chooses to utilise the "services" of these companies to "simplify" their internet use (or even their first introduction to the internet), that notion of "free" becomes rather complicated.

The message might "disappear" after a few seconds, but at that point FB may have already extracted the information they want from it, information they will use to further their business.

Assuming users want some sort of privacy, from whom is it that they want their messages to remain "private"?

Will there ever be options in FB "privacy settings" such as:

[ ] Do not share with Facebook

[ ] Do not share with advertisers, political campaigns, etc.

Absurdity aside, the mere feasibilty of this is itself debatable.

Do users want their messages to remain private from companies like Facebook?

How about from FB's clients, e.g., advertisers, political campaigns, hospitals, etc.?

How about from the rest of the general public?

We now know as confirmed by FB that this user data has been shared for years. Perhaps FB can argue this was "informed consent".

However users can change their minds in light of more information. They should be able to revoke that consent going forward.

Will all that "leaked" user data FB has intentionally shared self-destruct after some period of time? Unfortunately, no.

It seems to me that, in the main, the parties that have the greatest incentive to monitor users messaging are in fact companies like FB and their clients.

They have a financial incentive that is in the aggregate far greater than any individual (petty criminal, etc.). Collecting user data has become their business. "It is literally just what we do." Period.

Finally, thanks to the explosive growth of single websites into vast monopolies like Facebook that extend their reach into nearly every corner of the internet, they, the companies behind these websites, are in the best position to do it.

It should be self-evident but maybe needs to be restated: These companies cannot protect the user from the company itself. The amount of trust required of the user depending on these websites is simply mind-blowing (from the perspective of someone who has lived in times when no such trust was necessary).

Thats only an opinion. I respect any disagreement and welcome karma subtraction as a means to express it.

It discusses the issue of "the creepy line" and how to manage it in terms of getting informed consent to use electronic patient records.

He suggests NHS has "25 years of data on 50 million people" but because consent is required they cannot extract much meaningful information from it.

He tells that in an effort to "get around" this problem, the government proposed the concept of "implied consent".

A former shipyard worker in one of the authors workshops evaluated this concept plainly as thus: "Clearly some London-based bollocks. Nobody implies my consent."

1 https://www.digitalhealth.net/2018/04/joes-view-dear-mr-zuck...

I see the issue as one of Zuckerbergs choice of words, how he is portraying the facts.

It was his words in the interview that triggered the letter.

FB has now apologised for Zuckerbergs comment:

https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/companies/2018-04-06-faceb...

Facebook users and others are paying very careful attention to what Zuckerberg says.

Here is a piece that discusses why choice of words can be important, for example when giving testimony before US Congress. There are some provocative examples from past CEOs who have appeared to testify.

https://www.thestar.com/business/opinion/2018/04/06/what-to-...

Whether "trust" matters to FB business (selling ads) is another question.

Poll: Does FB need to have trust to succeed in the future?

The previous director quit after less than two years. There are videos on YouTube of motivational speeches for Building 8 projects. I watched one; it felt like cult-like.

One of these Building 8 projects, Aloha - a video chat device, was set to launch next month but they have sidelined it, for obvious reasons.

Apparently they took surveys and users did not trust FB; they were worried the device would be used to spy on them.

Then they considered marketing it as "a device for letting the elderly easily communicate with their families." They also considered selling it under a name other than Facebook.

Source:

http://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-andrew-bosworth-to-...

The three sources asked to remain anonymous for fear of "angering Zuckerberg".

But they still wanted to share their story with TC.

https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/mike-myers...