[Plura-list] How Facebook will benefit from its massive breach

[Cory Doctorow]

Today's links

* How Facebook will benefit from its massive breach: Creating a problem
does not qualify you to solve the problem.

* This day in history: 2011, 2016, 2020

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current
writing projects, current reading

_,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,_

🧏🏻‍♀️ How Facebook will benefit from its massive breach

Facebook has *such* a sweet racket. First, they used the Roach Motel
model - data checks in, but it doesn't check out - to trap you and all
your friends in a mutual hostage-taking situation, where you can't leave
because they're there, and they can't leave because you're there.

All those address books they imported, the data they gathered from
publishers' websites through the Like buttons (which gather data whether
or not you click them), the data they bought or snaffled up through free
mobile SDKs is now permanently siloed inside of FB.

FB is a walled garden: when you leave, you leave behind your friends and
communities - you can't switch to a Diaspora instance or even Twitter
and exchange messages with FB.

To their credit, millennials hated this shit, especially once their
parents started joining FB and friending them. Those smart kids all
bailed for Instagram.

So Facebook bought Instagram, explicitly to ensure that wherever you
went, you'd still be in the Zuckersphere.

Facebook's surveillance data isn't that valuable, so it has to gather a
*lot* of it. Most of its ad-tech advantage is just fraud: lying to
advertisers about who saw its ads, lying to publishers about which kinds
of content generate the most revenue.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/11/number-eight/#curse-of-bigness

The data advantage itself is very short-lived; for example, location
data is highly prized by advertisers who want to show you an ad for
shoes while you're outside a shoe-store. This value is annihilated as
soon as you move somewhere else.

Data isn't the new oil, it's the new oily rag: a low-grade waste-product
that is only valuable when it is piled up in such vast quantities that
it poses an existential, civilization-ending danger.

https://locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oily-rags/

Facebook's insistence on warehousing all the world's oily rags means
things are on fire all the fucking time. They realized this a long time
ago and worked out an unbeatable strategy for making sarsaparilla out of
SARS: Facebook declared itself to be the world's firefighter.

"Hey guys! Have you noticed that the world is full of arsonists who want
to set our oily rags on fire?! Have no fear! Collecting and warehousing
oily rags made us so big and powerful that we - and only we - can stop
them!"

The corollary of which is usually (but not always) unspoken: "If you
take away our power - make us smaller, force us to release our hostages
- then we won't be able to stop the arsonists any more."

Cambridge Analytica didn't *abuse* Facebook, they *used* Facebook - used
the services that FB had set up and marketed to political dirty
tricksters to disseminate disinformation. That was the system working as
intended.

FB used the we-fight-arson wheeze to come out of the Cambridge Analytica
scandal stronger and more powerful than ever: they shut down the APIs
that potential future Facebook competitors used to help people escape
its walled garden, claiming it was an act of firefighting.

Under the same guise, they've threatened legal action against NYU's Ad
Observer project, which teams up with FB users to scrape the ads they're
served and verify whether FB is living up to its own promises to block
paid political misinformation:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/25/musical-chairs/#son-of-power-ventures

Get that? A group of activist-academics and a collective of FB users
teamed up to hold FB to account on its own firefighting promises, and FB
is threatening to sue them into a smouldering crater... in the name of
protecting users.

Here's a thing: Facebook lost control of 553 million user profiles:
"phone numbers, full names, location, email address, and biographical
information." They went up for sale on hacker forums months ago, but now
they're free.

https://www.businessinsider.com/stolen-data-of-533-million-facebook-users-leaked-online-2021-4

The data was scraped by unscrupulous actors and is being disseminated to
commit crimes against half a billion FB users, the "dumb fucks"
Zuckerberg derided because they "trust me."

https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-news/a19490586/mark-zuckerberg-called-people-who-handed-over-their-data-dumb-f/

I bet you a testicle* that Facebook's response to this will be to decry
the efforts in the UK, EU and USA to force Facebook to interoperate with
other online services, including co-ops and nonprofits.

*not one of mine

They will use the fact that the lost control of user-data and kicked off
years - decades! - of fraud against a group of people outnumbering the
combined populations of the US, Mexico and Canada - as evidence that
they should continue to be entrusted with that data.

They will say that any rule that forces them to open their data up to
third parties will make their job transcendentally hard; only they can
extinguish the oily rag wildfires.

In other words: creating a problem makes you uniquely qualified to solve it.

This is radioactively self-serving bullshit.

Not because privacy isn't important. Privacy is very, very important.
It's far too important to leave up to the whims of corporate executives,
especially *Facebook* executives. That's some next-level fox/hen-house
stupidity.

The right way to establish the boundaries for data-handling isn't to
give Facebook unlimited power to exclude competitors and hold its users
hostage.

It's to encourage interoperability and block anticompetitive mergers, so
there are lots of places FB users can go without giving up their social
connections.

The way you prevent bad actors from interoperating with Facebook in ways
that are harmful to users is by creating a federal privacy law, with a
private right of action, which allows users to sue companies that
violate their privacy.

All forms of interop are potential sources of liberation from Facebook's
historically unprecedented hostage-taking, including scraping and other
forms of Competitive Compatibility.

As my EFF colleague Bennett Cyphers and I detailed in our paper in Feb,
we *can* have privacy without monopoly:

https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy


_,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,_

🧏🏻‍♀️ This day in history

#10yrsago US Customs’ domain-seizure program punishes the first
amendment, leaves alleged pirates largely unscathed
https://torrentfreak.com/us-governments-pirate-domain-seizures-failed-miserably-110403/

#10yrsago Scott Walker gives cushy $85.5K/year government job to major
donor’s young, underqualified son
https://web.archive.org/web/20110406040138/https://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/04/scott-walker-hires-dropout/

#10yrsago Closing down Borders sign: “No toilets, try Amazon”
https://consumerist.com/2011/04/sign-at-borders-store-closing-in-chicago-tells-customers-where-to-find-a-restroom.html

#10yrsago Recording industry lobbyist appointed head of copyright for
European Commission
https://web.archive.org/web/20110401191310/http://www.keionline.org/node/1105

#10yrsago What is legitimate “newsgathering” and what is “piracy”?
https://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/why-arianna-huffington-is-bill-kellers-somali-pirate/

#5yrsago Iceland’s Prime Minister asks to dissolve Parliament
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35966412

#5yrsago Google reaches into customers’ homes and bricks their gadgets
https://memex.craphound.com/2016/04/05/google-reaches-into-customers-homes-and-bricks-their-gadgets/

#5yrsago Pollster explains how Chamber of Commerce can steamroller
empathetic execs into opposing progressive policies
https://gawker.com/business-execs-support-progressive-policies-but-the-ch-1768898477

#5yrsago Parent Hacks: illustrated guide is the best kind of parenting
book
https://memex.craphound.com/2016/04/05/parent-hacks-illustrated-guide-is-the-best-kind-of-parenting-book/

#5yrsago The Nameless City: YA graphic novel about diplomacy, hard and
soft power, colonialism, bravery, and parkour
https://memex.craphound.com/2016/04/05/the-nameless-city-ya-graphic-novel-about-diplomacy-hard-and-soft-power-colonialism-bravery-and-parkour/

#5yrsago Save Netflix! https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/save-netflix

#5yrsago The TSA spent $1.4M on an app to tell it who gets a random
search https://kevin.burke.dev/kevin/tsa-randomizer-app-cost-336000/

#5yrsago Iceland’s Prime Minister says he won’t resign, mass
demonstrations gain momentum
https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/politics_and_society/2016/03/31/anti_government_demo_planned_for_monday/

#5yrsago Panama Papers reveal the tax-avoidance strategies of David
Cameron’s father
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/04/panama-papers-david-cameron-father-tax-bahamas

#1yrago Landlord accidentally organizes rent strike
https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/04/a-mind-forever-voyaging/#bcc

#1yrago Private equity looting public health in a pandemic
https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/04/a-mind-forever-voyaging/#prop-bets

_,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,_

🧏🏻‍♀️ Colophon

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

* A cyberpunk noir thriller novel, "Red Team Blues." Weekend progress:
2024 words (50907 total).

Currently reading: Analogia by George Dyson.

Latest podcast: Past Performance is Not Indicative of Future Results
https://craphound.com/news/2021/03/28/past-performance-is-not-indicative-of-future-results/

Upcoming appearances:

* All the Teachable Things I Know About Writing, Apr 13,
https://www.changinghands.com/event/april2021/virtual-writing-workshop-cory-doctorow-all-teachable-things-i-know-about-writing

* Interop: Self-Determination vs Dystopia (FITC), Apr 19-21,
https://fitc.ca/presentation/interop/

Recent appearances:

* The Right to Repair Movement, Monopolies, and Solarpunk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmosdDCrL-4

* The surveillance state, digital monopolies, and why we should be
worried (Podsongs)
https://anchor.fm/podsongs/episodes/Cory-Doctorow-on-the-Surveillance-State--digital-monopolies--and-why-we-should-be-worried-eso43k

* Conspiracy Theories (Utopian Horizons):
https://soundcloud.com/utopianhorizons/conspiracy-theory-w-cory-doctorow

Latest book:

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone
technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political
cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution
and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet
analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a
solution.
https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59
(print edition:
https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907)
(signed copies:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new
introduction by Edward Snowden:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies
here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime,
gender, and kicking ass. Order here:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed
copy here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1562/_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer.html.

Upcoming books:

* The Shakedown, with Rebecca Giblin, nonfiction/business/politics,
Beacon Press 2022

This work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.
That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially,
provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link
to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are
included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the
basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

_,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,_

🧏🏻‍♀️ How to get Pluralistic:

Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

Pluralistic.net

Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://mamot.fr/web/accounts/303320

Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and
advertising):

https://twitter.com/doctorow

Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

"*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla*" -Joey "Accordion
Guy" DeVilla

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 195 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://mail.flarn.com/pipermail/plura-list/attachments/20210405/225cac92/attachment.sig>