facebook

Apr 9, 2015 ∞

NJ lawyers need a social media policy for employees

Jennifer Marino Thibodaux of Gibbons writes:

The subject attorneys were retained to defend a town and its police sergeant in a personal injury action. One attorney directed his paralegal to conduct Internet research about the plaintiff. The paralegal accessed the public portions of the plaintiff’s Facebook page, and sent the plaintiff a “friend” request without disclosing her association with the attorneys. The plaintiff accepted the friend request, and the paralegal obtained information the attorneys could use to impeach the plaintiff’s personal injury claims.

The paralegal’s use of Facebook here, as you can tell from the headline, did not turn out well for the attorney-employer. This story is a simple, quick warning to New Jersey attorneys: implement a social media policy reflective of the Rules of Professional Conduct so your employees know (and you can show later that your employees knew or should have known) that it’s inappropriate to contact the opposing party on social media without identifying yourself and your employment.

Jan 2, 2015 ∞

Message scanning lawsuit against Facebook won't go away

Message scanning lawsuit against Facebook won’t go away

John Timmer reports at Ars Technica:

The court responded to this request by pursuing an extraordinarily rare course of action: it read Facebook’s entire terms of service. And, in this case, their vague language—typically used to provide broad immunity—became a liability: “[the document] does not establish that users consented to the scanning of their messages for advertising purposes, and in fact, makes no mention of ‘messages’ whatsoever.”

Be specific with those Terms of Service. Really specific.

Jul 22, 2014 ∞

Facebook is not free

If you use Facebook, this article is a must-read. It’s now common knowledge Facebook is always watching and analyzing how you use the service. But the breadth and depth of the company’s participation in the data brokering economy is staggering. The worst part? You literally signed up for it.

Facebook obviously doesn’t charge its users money, but the mere act of creating a profile affirmatively grants the company total access and usage rights over everything you do on the site. It even shares its data about you with data brokerage firms whose business model is monetizing you.

This is all stuff I have personally known and accepted for a long time, but as the ability to easily aggregate dossiers on anyone and everyone increases, it’s more important than ever to educate yourself and those you care about. Facebook is not free, and in fact it’s worth asking whether the price most people pay by clicking a harmless-looking “I agree” button is really worth it.

Jul 4, 2014 ∞

Facebook COO Sandberg apologizes for emotional contagion experiment

R. Jai Krishna, reporting on the reaction of Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg to the outcry over the company’s experiment on the emotions of nearly 700,000 unwitting users:

We take privacy and security at Facebook really seriously because that is something that allows people to share” opinions and emotions, Sandberg said.

The telling part about Sandberg’s reaction is that those who take privacy and security seriously don’t have to say it very often, if at all.

Jun 28, 2014 ∞

Facebook experimented on its users' emotions

Aviva Rutkin, reporting in New Scientist:

A team of researchers, led by Adam Kramer at Facebook in Menlo Park, California, was curious to see if this phenomenon [of contagious emotion] would occur online. To find out, they manipulated which posts showed up on the news feeds of more than 600,000 Facebook users. For one week, some users saw fewer posts with negative emotional words than usual, while others saw fewer posts with positive ones.

Forget about the filter bubble, Facebook is (and has been since at least 2009) a Petri dish.

Click through to find out the results.

Jun 18, 2014 ∞

Avoid Facebook's all-seeing eye

Avoid Facebook’s all-seeing eye

Violet Blue, reporting at ZDNet:

Facebook also announced Thursday it will begin tracking its users’ browsing and activities on websites and apps outside Facebook, starting within a few weeks

Her article is full of great advice for people who want to minimize Facebook’s tracking ability across desktop and mobile browsers. Be sure to have a look if the recent changes freak you out.

May 22, 2014 ∞

Mark Zuckerberg on survival of the most passionate

I actually think a lot of the reason why great stuff gets built is because it’s kind of irrational at the time, so it kind of selects for the people that care most about doing it.

A great point. That young man is going places.

May 5, 2014 ∞

Moves, contradicting previous statement, may share user data with Facebook under new privacy policy

When Facebook acquired fitness tracking app Moves, the two said user data would not be commingled. But Moves’ new privacy policy reverses course.

First, when fitness tracking app Moves was acquired by Facebook in April, it said:

For those of you that use the Moves app – the Moves experience will continue to operate as a standalone app, and there are no plans to change that or commingle data with Facebook.

CNET reported almost identical language from Facebook:

A spokesperson for Facebook confirmed the plans to keep the Moves app standalone and not commingle its data

Today, in an updated privacy policy, Moves said:

We may share information, including personally identifying information, with our Affiliates (companies that are part of our corporate groups of companies, including but not limited to Facebook) to help provide, understand, and improve our Services.

I suppose the updated policy doesn’t technically contradict the statements by Moves and Facebook because it’s feasible there were no plans at that time to commingle data with Facebook. But my initial reaction was incredulity.

After all, the Wall Street Journal reported Moves had been downloaded 4 million times. Surely Mark Zuckerberg acquired Moves primarily for its ever-growing trove of user activity data. Why else?

But none of the coverage questioned the initial statements, and I figured the companies wouldn’t say it so plainly if it wasn’t true. So I decided to wait and see.

Well, I’ve waited and seen. The lesson here is that it is wiser to pay attention only to what a company does, not what it says. If it looks like a data grab and smells like a data grab, it’s probably a data grab. Even if, especially if, someone tells you it isn’t a data grab.

Facebook deals in data, whether its hundreds of millions of users know it or care about it or not. And Moves would be stupid not to take the money and, more importantly, the resources Facebook can bring to bear on improving the app. So a data grab isn’t a surprise. Perhaps the “no commingling” language was an elegant public relations play meant to minimize privacy concerns in the press. That would seem to have worked: as of this article’s publication I couldn’t find a single story on the change.

Zuckerberg’s recently stated intent to grow via the acquisition and development of discreet apps and services raises another interesting issue. To quit Facebook, it may not be enough anymore to, well, quit Facebook. If I closed my Facebook account today, the company could still gather data about me for as long as I use Moves. Facebook has a growing list of acquisitions under its belt, so that concern is likely to increase with time.

This example of corporate self-contradiction is a good reminder: Always assume your data is a valuable and transferable commodity in the eyes and on the servers of the apps and services you use. Some people are deterred by that fact, while others are not. There is no right or wrong answer, just a continuum of personal comfort and preference.

While I wish the companies had been more forthright from the beginning, I won’t stop using Moves. I have personally always been relatively open in sharing data in exchange for convenience and utility. But that doesn’t mean I’m not alarmed by the increasing difficulty of using the internet and related apps and services for those who disagree with my position on openness.

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p>Share your perspective via email at joe@joeross.me, on Twitter or in the comments.

Mar 28, 2014 ∞

Facebook buys virtual reality company Oculus

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is betting virtual reality will follow mobile as the next major communication paradigm. While I’m not sure that’s true with VR tech alone, the massive user base and data stores of Facebook, used wisely despite a minefield of privacy concerns, may be just what VR needs to go mainstream.

That of course assumes Oculus can get the tech to a mass-marketable state. With a $350 developer hardware kit, consumer-level pricing looks within reach. So perhaps Zuckerberg is onto something. But it’s easy to be social when you’re clicking around in a browser. The real question is whether people will have any interest in a totally immersive digital social experience.

Feb 14, 2014 ∞

Facebook Opens Up LGBTQ-Friendly Gender Identity And Pronoun Options

Following up on my recent tirade, this made me happy. Facebook has massive amounts of influence, and is influenced by massive amounts of people, and changes like this are a positive step forward in how technology reconciles with shifting norms and modes of self-identificaiton. Good on ‘em.

Now, if Mr. Zuckerberg needs a good charity write-off for tax season, I would be happy to put him in touch with my student loan creditors.

Jan 2, 2014 ∞

Facebook scans messages for ad targeting

I know this is an unpopular stance, but if you operate on any assumption other than that this happens all the time on myriad services you use, you’re a crazy unrealistic person lacking in the minimum amount of cynicism (read: realism) required to use the modern internet in a fully-informed manner.

While I don’t have time these days to do the digging someone should do on this, it strikes me as very likely we all gave Facebook permission to skim all of our content for ad-related and any other purposes when we signed up.

Digital privacy almost always comes with an asterisk these days, and that’s not going to change any time soon.

Oct 11, 2013 ∞

Sheryl Sandberg: The real story

CNN’s Miguel Helft, in a great profile of Sandberg at the Money blog:

How Sandberg, amid all her Facebook activities, managed to write Lean In, orchestrate flashy book tours on three continents, launch a foundation, and become a ubiquitous spokesperson for the ambitions of women, remains baffling to most people.

Her advocacy for women in business is great, but what I find most impressive about Sandberg is not that she is a woman and an executive, but an executive with such a full plate who seems to truly love what she does.

Aug 14, 2013 ∞

Facebook Testing VIP App With Some Celebs

In case you thought I was becoming a Facebook fanboy, let me just say that this celeb crap is something Zuck will be adding to his list of regrets within the year.

Granted, that’s probably a very short list, but this VIP thing is a distraction an a gimmick and it’s going nowhere.

And yes, I’m prepared to try some claim chowder if I’m wrong. I’m just pretty confident I’m not.

Aug 14, 2013 ∞

101 million of Facebook's 128 million daily U.S. users are on mobile devices

101 million of Facebook’s 128 million daily U.S. users are on mobile devices

My headline says it all.

If you still had any doubt about the importance of mobile to anyone doing anything on the Internet, this stat should disabuse you of that uncertainty.

Amazing.

Jul 30, 2013 ∞

Facebook Said to Plan to Sell TV-Style Ads for $2.5M Each

Huge

May 2, 2013 ∞

The Perfect Empty Vessel

This is a good piece on how hard Facebook tries to keep the social juices flowing. Alexis Madrigal, commenting on Facebook’s designer-hiring spree:

As all these designers vanish into the bowels of the company, so, too, does their work. Facebook wants to create design that both allows and guides behavior without calling attention to itself. And what works in the Deep South must also work in southern India and South America. It must work for 16-year-olds and 86-year-olds.

I think this is the primary reason Facebook makes me uncomfortable: it’s too generic. Sometimes I want a service to be just a little in my way. I realize that you can’t generalize my preferences to hundreds of millions of people, but that just means I’ll never really feel awesome about using Facebook.

It feels like it’s been crafted as simply the most efficient way for me to send targeting data to advertisers…

…because it has.

Apr 20, 2013 ∞

Why carriers should be more worried than Google about Facebook Home

Ellis Hamburger, writing at The Verge:

Mirroring its rollout of free VoIP calling for iOS, Facebook has updated its Messenger app for Android to allow free calling for users in the US.

I think this is Facebook’s true sleight of hand: everyone is looking at Home and how they’re taking over the launcher and Android. Meanwhile they’re backdooring this VoIP technology that lets you call people using only wifi.

Facebook is asserting its primacy in the minds of millions of mobile users not only to dominate Android, but to put itself in a solid position to dominate carriers as well. Simple, user-friendly VoIP: one of the biggest and potentially most profound opportunities Google ever missed with Android.

Apr 4, 2013 ∞

Facebook announces Home, an Android launcher

I was right.

Oh, and in case you were worried, there will eventually be ads in Facebook Home.

Mar 29, 2013 ∞

Facebook To Reveal “Home On Android”

I predict Facebook will announce a custom Android launcher — a “home” screen.

Update April 4, 2013: I was right.

Mar 14, 2013 ∞

Dear Wall Street Journal: Why is Facebook's hashtag implementation news?

Dear Wall Street Journal: Why is Facebook’s hashtag implementation news?

I love that this is “news” at the Wall Street Journal. Perhaps the only news-worthy aspect of this story is that it’s one of those rare instances where Facebook is the one keeping up with the Joneses, instead of the other way around.

When will this vaunted hashtag implementation be completed? No one knows, despite WSJ's having talked to some of those ubiquitous and ever-informative “people familiar with the matter.”

What I think is really wonderful about this non-story is that it took not one but two people at WSJ to produce it, Evelyn M. Rusli and Shira Ovide. I don’t pretend to know the usual caliber of those journalists’ work, but I hope, for their sake, that the topic of this blurb is uncharacteristically dull.