Facebook already has plenty of issues with people not trusting them. Lying about this and then being caught red handed would be devastating from a public opinion perspective. Even if you assume a completely amoral team that cares about nothing but ad revenue, do you genuinely think they’d risk something as dangerous as that? Especially given how much you can still achieve with the data that is known to be collected?
It would likely be a blip in the news, and then people would move on, as usual.
Remember the Sony rootkit fiasco? People still buy Sony, and most people probably either never heard of that incident, don't remember, or don't care. Buying whatever the new Sony gizmo of the day is is more important to them.
Microsoft has had endless spyware fiascos, and people still routinely buy Windows, as long as they can play their games or run Office, that's all that matters to most of them.
Then there have been scandals like Enron, where the execs knew that they were doing something that was clearly illegal, and that their company really would be devastated if what they did was ever revealed. These "smartest people in the room" did it anyway.
Corporate history is full of just such deceptive and destructive practices. I'm not sure I'd put Facebook above that sort of thing, a priori.
I remember when some news broke about Facebook doing something or other a year ago and the common response seemed to be to make an official sounding wall post saying "I do not give Facebook the right to do X with my data", sort of like Michael Scott yelling "I declare bankruptcy!"
I can see that happening again with voice recordings.
True. At the same time, there are pretty solid rules against recording the audio of someone's conversation that would be unambiguously illegal and allow for actual prosecution.
But it's an interesting question: if someone credibly proved that FB was "wiretapping" on such a massive scale, would they get prosecuted? How much could they do in their own defense? Are they so enmeshed that prosecutors wouldn't bother?
Feels like a case of "unstoppable force meets immovable object".
Speaking of badware: last week I found Mac Afee installed on the laptop of a relative that I manage. I assured me that he had not installed it himself (I had not installed anything actually). Could it have come from windows updates ?
No, Windows Update doesn't distribute third party software. And even if it did, MSE is technically a competitor to McAfee so there wouldn't really be a solid reason to distribute it.
Your relative probably installed something and pressed "Next" through all the dialogs including the ones asking if they want to install super helpful bundled software.
McAfee comes packaged in the installation of some other software, e.g., Java, where it can easily be installed by mistake if you aren't paying attention.
I've met a lot of people outside HN who believe FB is listening to their conversations through the mic. I haven't yet met one who has stopped using it as a result.
I think you wildly overestimate how angry users get about privacy violations. For examples, Target, Yahoo, Home Depot, and Equifax have not been screamed into rubble.
I can see someone having to install the uber app... but having to install the facebook app? just use the web app... that might be possible with uber too but I'm not sure because I don't use uber
> being caught red handed would be devastating from a public opinion perspective
For what it's worth, this public opinion backlash has not appeared with other companies: "Of course we're not working on leaked project [x]". "Look at project [x] we're working on!"
Even Facebook's own under-disclosed psychological experiments have been largely forgotten; Facebook has suffered few if any long-term ill effects from it.
The psychological experiments scandal was a nothingburger from the start. Facebook is not an academic research institution. They already operate with user's consent. Every business that engages in advertising or product design is performing psychological experiments.
Their customers love it, and with customers I mean advertisers. For users to leave there must be somewhere to leave to. And there needs to be another business model that does not depend on marketing. Maybe selling actual hardware, with built in social media.
in the current climate, getting caught doing anything just means you have to slime your way out of it, rename/rebadge the activity and then carry on when the attention goes somewhere else.
is uber still the most hated company or has the magnifying glass moved onto somewhere else?
