undefined | Better HN

0 pointsjellicle14y ago0 comments

Look, here's the FTC's mandate:

"Unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, are hereby declared unlawful."

The FTC exists to enforce that. Now, it's fashionable nowadays for the ill-informed to insist that government is worthless, but in fact this law and similar ones underly every aspect of American society and you owe everything to have to their existence. Without government anti-fraud efforts, commerce does not exist, full stop.

Private enterprise are the applications. Government is the operating system.

But let's take another look at your point: your argument is that I should right now go and delete my account a couple years ago because I know today that Facebook was lying a couple years ago. For everyone who has a time machine, that is a good remedy - it will solve the problem for those people admirably. For those that don't, we need effective government enforcement of anti-fraud laws.

0 comments

DanielStraight14y ago

My argument is that Facebook has a history of mishandling privacy.

And further that users have been, at least on some level, aware of it.

I was on Facebook when they first implemented the news feed and got everyone upset. They've since introduced dozens of features that have gotten everyone upset (or at least a sizable enough minority to be noticeable). They make it clear that ads are targeted based on your personal information. They make privacy settings complicated. They continuously push you to supply more information, connect with more people, use Facebook for more things. They continuously make more things public by default, and add more features that make personal information discoverable (such as tagging in images).

If they weren't suspicious, they wouldn't have been investigated in the first place.

I'm not talking about a time machine. But let me observe a few things:

- I deleted my account a year ago (and knew I wanted to before that) without the FTC investigating anything. Because Facebook was clearly suspicious.

- You still have an account today even though you know about Facebook's lies today. You don't need a time machine to make changes today.

My argument is this:

Fraud protection is extremely important. There are many cases where there is no suspicion of fraud, no source of information about possible fraud, and consumers get taken advantage of. For example, people get taken advantage of by phishing every day.

But if you fall victim to increasingly bad phishing attacks from the same company over the course of years, you aren't paying attention. You are relying on watchmen to protect you and not watching out for yourself.

I am not blaming the victim. I am trying to empower the victim. Everyone who is reading this and still has a Facebook account knows that Facebook will outright lie about privacy in order to make more money from advertisers. They are still guilty of their actions if you get fooled again, but you don't have to get fooled again.

My argument is "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse