At some point in 2015, Facebook executives began noticing a peculiar phenomenon in their Messenger in
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April 6 · Issue #114 · View online |
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At some point in 2015, Facebook executives began noticing a peculiar phenomenon in their Messenger inboxes. About a week after he sent them, chats sent from Mark Zuckerberg disappeared. When they asked around about why this happened, they were told it had something to do with security. “Once in a while I thought it was weird that he would have his messages deleted,” a former executive told me today. “But I guess I’d just thought to myself, well, he owns it so I guess he can.” Late Thursday night, thanks to the work of Josh Constine, the rest of the world learned of the scheme. Facebook had been secretly deleting all of Zuckerberg’s sent messages beginning around three years ago — not just to coworkers, but to journalists and apparently everyone else he communicated with on the platform. Here was the company’s rationale, as told to Constine: “After Sony Pictures’ emails were hacked in 2014 we made a number of changes to protect our executives’ communications. These included limiting the retention period for Mark’s messages in Messenger. We did so in full compliance with our legal obligations to preserve messages.” Of course, prior to Constine’s inquiry, the world was unaware that messages sent by Zuckerberg had any “retention period” at all. The assumption was that the CEO lived by the privacy rules that governed his platform — privacy rules that he has stridently defended in past weeks amid a series of intersecting crises involving data leaks, regulatory action, and Congressional hearings. “We have a responsibility to protect your information,” Zuckerberg wrote in a full-page advertisement published March 5 in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, along with several British newspapers. “If we can’t, we don’t deserve it.” The responsibility to protect people’s information would seemingly include a promise not to delete users’ conversations with the CEO in secret. But that assumption relies on the belief that Facebook’s privacy rules apply to all of its users equally. Last night a journalist forced the company to acknowledge that, in fact, they do not. Surely, many users — including Zuckerberg’s fellow executives — would appreciate the ability to unsend a message sent in error or bad judgment. The entrepreneur Maciej Ceglowski popularized the idea that our data is like toxic waste. In 2015 he wrote:
I would … ask you to imagine data not as a pristine resource, but as a waste product, a bunch of radioactive, toxic sludge that we don’t know how to handle. In a world where everything is tracked and kept forever, like the world we’re for some reason building, you become hostage to the worst thing you’ve ever done. Whoever controls that data has power over you, whether or not they exercise it. And yet we treat this data with the utmost carelessness, as if it held no power at all. Mark Zuckerberg knew this better than most. In 2010, Zuckerberg’s instant message history from college were leaked to Silicon Alley Insider. The most famous section reads like a satire of Facebook’s privacy policy: Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask. Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS Zuckerberg later said he regretted sending the messages, and that he had matured in the years since. (He was 19 at the time he sent them.) But his maturity went beyond a new commitment to user privacy. It extended to a new understanding, crystallized in his secret unsend button, of old messages as the toxic waste that they are. (The fact that he clearly understood this in 2010 made it rather odd that Facebook would attribute its decision to destroy user data to the Sony hack four years later.) But rather than bring that product to the masses, for three years he kept the feature to himself. This morning, as Facebook’s internal “storm tracker” PR tool awoke to a new backlash against the company, the communications team said that it would bring the feature to all users “ in several months.” The company will also stop deleting Zuckerberg’s messages until everyone else can. “We should have done this sooner — and we’re sorry that we did not,” a spokesman said. The good news is that Facebook knows how to build robust privacy tools when it wants to. The bad news is that it reserved such a powerful tool for the CEO, and admitted to it only under duress. That Zuckerberg deleted all of his chats, while leaving his recipients’ messages intact, says more about how he views privacy than any belated apology ever could.
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Facebook says it supports Honest Ads Act, cracks down on issue ads
Facebook, which had previously made appreciative noises about the Honest Ads Act, now says it fully supports the legislation. The bill would require transparency in online political advertising similar to what has long been required for broadcast ads.
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Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees Announce Joint Hearing with Facebook CEO
Mark Zuckerberg appears before Congress next Tuesday and Wednesday. The first hearing will stream live at 11:15A PT / 2:15P ET on Tuesday, and my colleagues and I will be live blogging it for you at The Verge! Here’s Sen. Jon Thune on the proceedings: “Facebook now plays a critical role in many social relationships, informing Americans about current events, and pitching everything from products to political candidates,” said Thune. “Our joint hearing will be a public conversation with the CEO of this powerful and influential company about his vision for addressing problems that have generated significant concern about Facebook’s role in our democracy, bad actors using the platform, and user privacy.”
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Facebook’s Zuckerberg long resisted going to Congress. Now he’ll face a “reckoning,” lawmakers say
Tony Romm previews the hearing. Zuckerberg’s gauntlet begins with a rare, joint hearing Tuesday before two Senate panels – the Commerce Committee and the Judiciary Committee. As many as 43 members, almost half of the entire Senate, are set to pepper the Facebook executive with questions. A day later, the House Energy and Commerce Committee plans to follow suit.
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Facebook fined $33 million for failing to aid Brazil graft probe
Brazilian prosecutors wanted to read WhatsApp messages as part of a corruption investigation. Facebook refused and got fined as a result. The judge fined Facebook for failing to give access in 2016 to WhatsApp messages exchanged by individuals under investigation for defrauding the healthcare system of Brazil’s Amazonas state, the prosecutors said in a statement. In an emailed comment sent to Reuters, Facebook called the fine groundless. “Facebook cooperates with law enforcement. In this particular case we have disclosed the data required by applicable law,” the statement said. “We understand this fine lacks grounds, and are exploring all legal options at our disposal.”
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Groups in Myanmar Fire Back at Zuckerberg
Nonprofit groups in Myanmar pushed back on Mark Zuckerberg’s claims earlier this week that Facebook had taken proactive measures to address incitements to violence on the platform. ( Read their open letter.) Civil society groups in Myanmar on Thursday criticized Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, arguing that he mischaracterized his company’s effectiveness at detecting and quashing messages encouraging violence in the country. Taking aim at comments made by Mr. Zuckerberg in a recent interview, the groups said that Facebook had no consistent methods for dealing with hate speech in Myanmar. The same problems keep recurring, they said, with the company routinely failing to follow up on their comments and suggestions.
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Twitter will start showing users its rules to encourage better behavior
Twitter is launching a new study to measure abuse on Twitter. (Measures abuse on Twitter.) Wow that’s a lot of abuse!
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Russia files lawsuit to block Telegram messaging app
Russia is trying to ban Telegram for failing to give Russian state security services access to users’ messages. Ranked as the world’s ninth most popular mobile messaging app, Telegram is widely used in countries across the former Soviet Union and Middle East. Active users of the app reached 200 million in March. As part of its services, Telegram allows users to communicate via encrypted messages which cannot be read by third parties, including government authorities. But Russia’s FSB Federal Security service has said it needs access to some messages for its work, including guarding against terrorist attacks. Telegram has refused to comply with its demands, citing respect for user privacy.
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FACT CHECK: Did Mark Zuckerberg Announce His Resignation From Facebook?
Snopes is having to shoot down a fake news story reporting that Zuckerberg resigned to sell a skin care product.
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Facebook’s Data Crackdown Has Two Winners: Facebook and Google
The ad industry believes that Facebook’s decision to lock down its APIs in the wake of its data privacy crisis will only make it (and Google) stronger over time. For years, advertisers grumbled about the “walled gardens” of internet giants — digital barriers Google and Facebook maintain to prevent outsiders from accessing user data while limiting their ability to independently measure and track ad effectiveness. Recently, the companies, which control 87 percent of digital advertising, have listened, granting more access. But this opening up could stop now. “Facebook is raising the walls around its garden,” Morgan Stanley’s Brian Nowak wrote. “The two largest online ad platforms will now be more aligned, focusing on their first-party data offerings and tool sets which we expect to enable Facebook and Google to continue to drive 90%+ of the online ad market.”
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First Apple, Now Facebook: What Happens When Tech Shareholders Turn Ac
In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the New York City comptroller is calling on Facebook to add three independent directors to its board: The head of New York City’s pension funds, who controls a $1 billion stake in Facebook, had a strong message for CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday: Step down as chairman of the board and appoint three new independent directors. “Data is being used without people’s permission, and that’s going to affect the brand,” New York City comptroller Scott Stringer said during an appearance on CNBC. “And that’s a brand I’ve invested close to $1 billion of people’s money in underlying their pensions.”
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The FDA Is Warning Facebook, Google, And Twitter To Stop Illicit Opioid Sales
The head of the Food and Drug Administration is calling for internet giants such as Facebook, Google, Reddit, and Yahoo to crack down on online pharmacies selling opioids — particularly forms of fentanyl — now blamed for a nationwide fatal overdose crisis. “Internet firms simply aren’t taking practical steps to find and remove these illegal opioid listings,” FDA chief Scott Gottlieb told the audience at the National Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit on Wednesday, in a speech given ahead of former president Bill Clinton.
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Facebook Bans Tobacco Ads, But The Tobacco Industry Finds Other Ways To Market To Teens On The Platform
Facebook’s ban on tobacco ads hasn’t worked, according to a new study: Facebook’s ban on tobacco advertising hasn’t stopped tobacco and e-cigarette companies from using the platform to promote their products — including to children under 18. That’s the conclusion of a study published Thursday by Stanford University researchers, who say the tobacco and vaping industry is taking advantage of Facebook’s lax rules in order to hook a new generation.
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Twitter might wreck third-party apps in June
Tweetbot, Twitterrific, and other third-party clients are at risk of losing access to the streaming API — the feature that lets journalists like me watch tweets cascade down the screen all day, alerting me to breaking developments. Here’s hoping Twitter steps up and fixes this — if it doesn’t, it has essentially ended Twitter support on the desktop. “Many folks don’t realize that their favorite Twitter app is about to break, so awareness is the first step. Together, we may be able to get Twitter to constructively address this state of affairs before the June deadline.”
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YouTube shooting: Last victim in hospital upgraded to fair condition
A spot of good news after a dark week. One of three victims in the YouTube shooting remains hospitalized two days after an armed woman stormed onto the company’s San Bruno campus, but the man’s condition improved from serious to fair overnight, officials at San Francisco General Hospital said Thursday. Two women, 32 and 27, were released Tuesday night after receiving treatment for their gunshot wounds. The third victim, a 36-year-old man, was admitted to the hospital in critical condition and has responded well to treatment, hospital officials said.
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Facebook says it’ll now require political-leaning advertisers to verify their identity
Facebook previously said it would require creators of campaign ads to verify their identities; it announced Friday that this requirement will extend to issue-based advertising as well. The company will also require owners of large pages to be verified, which could disrupt the common practice of growing large Facebook followings and then selling them to the highest bidder.
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Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, and the Regulator’s Dilemma: Clueless or Venal?
Former head of the Bureau of Consumer Protection David Vladeck finds Facebook’s explanations of the Cambridge Analytica data leak suspicious: I didn’t think that Facebook fell into the “venal” category when the FTC first investigated the company eight years ago. The company seemed to understand that it had pushed too hard to force users to make private data public and was willing (if not happy) to rein in the company’s drive to increase data sharing. But Facebook’s enabling of the Cambridge Analytica campaign suggests that I may have been wrong. Facebook is now a serial offender. And for much of the company’s fourteen-year life span, Facebook has faced justified criticism that it is not candid about the extent to which user data is shared with app developers and other third parties.
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The Russia ad story isn’t just about Facebook. It’s about Google, too.
Why has Google largely escaped scrutiny, asks Jason Kint? To date, the bulk of public attention has focused on Facebook. But this is not just a Facebook story. This is as much, if not more, about America’s gatekeeper to news and information and by far the world’s dominant digital advertising platform: Google. As Congress convenes hearings aimed at shedding light on Russia’s attempts to interfere in our election, it is crucial that lawmakers demand from Google the full accounting that it has yet to provide voluntarily.
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“This Is a Struggle of Regular Working People”
Nema Brewer, a school district employee and organizer in Fayette County, KY, tells Jacobin that Facebook was indispensable in organizing the recent teacher strikes that have swept the country. I heard West Virginia had started organizing for their strike by using a closed Facebook group. So in homage to West Virginia, me and my friend Blair called ours “KY United 120 Strong.” We started the group not even a month ago and now we have thirty-six thousand members. West Virginia showed all of us that it can be done. West Virginia is our neighbor, we share a lot of similarities. My daddy was a mineworker and I remember what it’s like to fight for your job, for your livelihood. But a lot of people in Kentucky have forgotten. West Virginia showed us that we’re not dead if we stand together. People saw that if you stand together you have better chance than if you stand alone — or if you just bitch about things on Facebook. When we started our Facebook group, it was consciously for action. We were very clear and upfront from the beginning. If you’re not ready to fight, then this group’s not for you.
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Harrison Weber / Twitter
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Until now, millions have been afraid to try Snapchat out of fear that the app may not contribute to human progress. Thanks to a tweet from Harrison Weber, we now know that Snap Inc. does, in fact, contribute to human progress, according to a line added to its investor website this week. Congratulations to Snap, and may all of you contribute to human progress this weekend.
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Questions? Comments? Messages you would rather delete? casey@theverge.com
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