Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook should be broken up

[Springfield]

https://www.recode.net/2019/1/30/18203231/apple-banning-facebook-research-app

 

Quote

Facebook is at the center of another privacy scandal — and this time it hasn’t just angered users. It has also angered Apple. 

The short version: Apple says Facebook broke an agreement it made with Apple by publishing a “research” app for iPhone users that allowed the social giant to collect all kinds of personal data about those users, TechCrunch reported Tuesday. The app allowed Facebook to track users’ app history, their private messages, and their location data. Facebook’s research effort reportedly targeted users as young as 13 years old.

As of last summer, apps that collect that kind of data are against Apple’s privacy guidelines. That means Facebook couldn’t make this research app available through the App Store, which would have required Apple approval. 

Instead, Facebook apparently took advantage of Apple’s “Developer Enterprise Program,”which lets approved Apple partners, like Facebook, test and distribute apps specifically for their own employees. In those cases, the employees can use third-party services to download beta versions of apps that aren’t available to the general public.

Apple doesn’t review and approve these apps the way it does for the App Store because they’re only supposed to be downloaded by employees who work for the app’s creator. 

Facebook, though, used this program to pay non-employees as much as $20 per month to download the research app without Apple’s knowledge. 

Apple’s response, via a PR rep this morning: “We designed our Enterprise Developer Program solely for the internal distribution of apps within an organization. Facebook has been using their membership to distribute a data-collecting app to consumers, which is a clear breach of their agreement with Apple. Any developer using their enterprise certificates to distribute apps to consumers will have their certificates revoked, which is what we did in this case to protect our users and their data.”

Translation: Apple won’t let Facebook distribute the app anymore — a fact that Apple likely communicated to Facebook on Tuesday evening. Apple’s statement also mentions that Facebook’s “certificates” — plural — have been revoked. That implies Facebook cannot distribute other apps to employees through this developer program right now, not just the research app.

 

Quote

The most important part of this story may be that Facebook appears to have pissed off Apple, a company that it relies on to deliver all of its apps to iPhone users around the world. It’s highly unlikely Apple would pull Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp from the App Store, but it’ll be telling to see if Apple tries to punish Facebook in some other way. 

The two companies already have a contentious relationship, and this won’t help. 

The story also shows how important it is for Facebook to collect data on other apps people use on their phones. It’s a big competitive advantage, and collecting this kind of data isn’t foreign to Facebook. The company actually collected similar user data through a separate app Facebook owns called Onavo Protect, which was just removed from the App Store in August for violating Apple’s guidelines. (It’s still available for Android users.) 

Onavo is a virtual private network, which means that users who downloaded it agree to route their internet traffic through a Facebook-owned server. Facebook, in exchange, helps people monitor how much data they’re using and will alert users for issues, like if their “internet connection is not secure.”

But Onavo’s real value to Facebook is that it allows the company to collect all kinds of behavior data from people’s phones — such as competitive data like which apps they use. Data from Onavo helped Facebook execs learn that Snapchat user growth was slowing after it copied Snapchat’s popular Stories product, according to the Wall Street Journal. Facebook also used Onavo to track WhatsApp’s growing user base before buying the messaging platform for $19 billion back in 2014, BuzzFeed found. 

In other words: There are a lot of reasons Facebook wants to know what apps people are using, which explains why it went to such lengths to get around Apple’s App Store guidelines.

 

Edited January 31, 2019 by Springfield

[Bozo the kKklown]

 

[PleaseBlitz]

45 minutes ago, BenningRoadSkin said:

 

 

I'm not necessarily in favor of breaking these companies up (except Facebook), but certainly there needs to be much more oversight of companies that have such an outsized influence on so many aspects of so many American's lives.  Amazon maybe less so than the other two for it's primary business, but Amazon is also involved in a lot of things besides retail.  

[China]

Apple aims to protect kids’ privacy. App makers say it could devastate their businesses.

 

Apple plans to change the rules it has for kids apps, raising concerns among some app developers about the way the tech giant wields power unilaterally over an App Store that has become an industry unto itself.

 

Under the new rules, which Apple had planned to implement next month, kids apps on Apple’s App Store will be banned from using external analytics software — invisible lines of code that collect extremely detailed information about who is using an app and how. Apple is also severely curtailing their ability to sell ads, which underpins the business model that results in many apps being free. The changes were prompted in part by some children viewing inappropriate ads, Apple says.

 

The new rules pit Apple’s privacy prerogative against an overreach of its power.

 

Apple says it is making the move in part to better protect users’ privacy by shielding children from data trackers, a move that has been lauded by some privacy advocates. But some developers say they fear that the new rules won’t protect kids — possibly exposing them to more adult apps — and could pointlessly reduce their businesses.

 

That’s what’s worrying Gerald Youngblood. He created Tankee, an iPhone app intended to be a safe alternative to YouTube, with the help of privacy experts and lawyers. While the app is gaining traction, ranking in the top 10 apps for kids ages 9 to 11, the new rules could limit Tankee’s ability to show ads and force Youngblood to abandon his model to make the app free.

 

Tankee shouldn’t be lumped in with the apps that are negligent and fail to protect children, Youngblood said. “We thought they were going to shut down these apps that are ignoring privacy and targeting kids,” he said. “We were built with privacy as a foundation.”

 

Apple says it was simply responding to parents’ concerns. Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said parents were complaining to Apple about inappropriate advertising shown to their kids while using iPhone apps. “Parents are really upset when that happens because they trust us,” Schiller said.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Amazon hosts thousands of unsafe or banned products, new investigation finds

 

Amazon continues to struggle to curtail the sale of unsafe or banned products on its site, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.

 

The probe discovered more than 4,000 items for sale on the company's site that have been declared unsafe by federal agencies, have misleading labels or are outright banned by federal regulators. The site shows numerous listings for toys and medications that don't include warnings about health risks to children, as well as sleeping mats previously banned by the FDA over concerns that they can suffocate infants, the Journal reported.

 

Following the report, Amazon removed or changed the description on more than half of the problematic listings, according to the Journal.

 

The company said in a blog post responding to the investigation that it requires products on its site to comply with "relevant laws and regulations." It also pointed to its use of automated tools that scan for noncompliant products.

 

"We have a dedicated global team of compliance specialists that review submitted safety documentation, and we have additional qualification requirements that sellers must meet to offer products," the company said in the blog post. "In 2018, our teams and technologies proactively blocked more than three billion suspect listings for various forms of abuse, including non-compliance, before they were published to our store."

 

The investigation underscores Amazon's difficulty overseeing the millions of third-party sellers on its platform. Earlier this year, the company changed its quality control standards for school supplies and children's jewelry sold on the site after an investigation by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson found they had unsafe levels of toxic metals. In recent years, the company has also struggled to root out counterfeit products and accidentally punished legitimate sellers after rivals reported them as selling counterfeits, CNBC has previously reported.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Who Is Blackmailing This Influencer?

 

On the afternoon of June 1, Kaitlyn Siragusa received a notification from Instagram: One of her posts had been taken down for violating the platform’s content policies. If she were to break the rules again, the alert warned, her 1.6 million-follower account could be disabled. Siragusa, a 25-year-old Twitch streamer known to fans as “Amouranth,” was puzzled. She was confident that the photo, which showed her standing poolside in a striped bikini, fully complied with Instagram’s policies.

 

It was the latest of nearly a dozen posts that Instagram had recently deleted, including some that she had uploaded long before their removals. In one case, she got a notification alerting her to the deletion of an “Instagram Story” that had publicly expired from her profile 10 days earlier. (Stories automatically disappear after 24 hours, though they may be saved to the poster’s private archives.) The streamer’s content had been disappearing so frequently over the previous several weeks, Siragusa told HuffPost, that she’d started a spreadsheet to keep track.

 

Four days later, on June 5, Siragusa received a mysterious email from someone claiming to work for Cognizant, an American tech firm hired to do content moderation for Facebook and Instagram.

 

“I’m sure you’ve noticed recently than [sic] many of your posts and stories have been removed,” said the email, one of several that Siragusa shared with HuffPost. “Perhaps we can reach an agreement privately.”

 

For monthly payments of 0.25 bitcoin (about $2,600), the emailer proposed, Siragusa could rest assured that her content would stay up. The emailer signed off as “Tampa” — the location of a Cognizant facility where content moderators have described being severely overworked and underpaid.

 

At first, Siragusa ignored the email. She’d never heard of Cognizant, and she assumed she was just being targeted by a scammer who was reporting her posts as violating Instagram’s rules over and over again until they disappeared and then posing as a content moderator to try to extort her. But there was something odd about the next messages that “Tampa” sent her in July, following more photo takedowns.

 

“I am sure by now you have noticed that two additional posts have been struck and removed. Your posts made on April 3 at 10:18 AM, and July 2 at 11:54 AM,” said one of the emails. Another simply stated: “July 12 at 10:34 AM.”

 

Siragusa had her agent get in contact with Facebook, which owns Instagram, to discuss the matter last month. The agent was able to arrange and record a phone call with a Facebook representative ― a rare line of communication that’s normally unavailable to the vast majority of Facebook users. Audio of the recording was shared with HuffPost.

 

During the 20-minute call, Siragusa’s agent explained three times that a self-proclaimed Instagram content moderator was trying to extort Siragusa for content protection.

 

“I can’t answer for the emails that you’re receiving,” responded the representative, who adamantly repeated that Siragusa’s posts had been “rightfully removed” for being “sexually suggestive.” The poolside photo was deemed inappropriate for Instagram in part because Siragusa had “her hand near her chest, and things like that,” according to the representative. A photo of her in a Hooters jersey, which was flagged as “nudity or pornography,” was removed because “she’s, uh, pouring water on herself.”

 

In the spring of this year, Instagram quietly started shadow-banning users’ borderline content that does not actually violate the company’s community guidelines, including vaguely “inappropriate” and “sexually suggestive” posts. Such content is subject to algorithmic demotion but, per Instagram’s own public policies, not deletion. When Siragusa’s agent reminded the Facebook representative that “sexually suggestive” content does not meet Instagram’s criteria for removal, the representative doubled down, stating: “We can’t allow that kind of content on our platform.” 

 

Frustrated and confused, having received no real answers from Facebook despite her rare direct access, Siragusa reached out to HuffPost.

 

“I feel like it is almost impossible for individuals — even those with millions of followers — to face down Facebook,” she said.

 

Contacted by HuffPost, Cognizant declined to comment for this story, instead deferring to its client. In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said that the representative with whom Siragusa’s agent had spoken is part of a team that “isn’t versed in the details of the Community Guidelines nor is it their responsibility to communicate them.”

 

Regarding the emails Siragusa received from “Tampa,” Facebook told HuffPost: “We take accusations like this very seriously. We investigated this matter and did not find any evidence of abuse.”

 

Click on the link for the full article and photos

[PokerPacker]

2 hours ago, China said:

Regarding the emails Siragusa received from “Tampa,” Facebook told HuffPost: “We take accusations like this very seriously. We investigated this matter and did not find any evidence of abuse.”

Ah, the good ol' "I've investigated myself and have not found myself to have committed any wrong doing."  Works every time.

[skinsmarydu]

7 hours ago, PokerPacker said:

Ah, the good ol' "I've investigated myself and have not found myself to have committed any wrong doing."  Works every time.

Kinda like the FAA being run by a former Boeing exec. What could possibly go wrong? 🤬

[Bozo the kKklown]

https://www.wsj.com/video/the-hidden-safety-risks-of-your-amazon-order/E53FAC97-401B-41B3-B4FB-05C6465D3EE7.html

 

Hidden Safety Risks of your Amazon Order

[China]

Facebook Might Know When You Last Had Sex

 

Some period tracking apps have been sending data to Facebook, BuzzFeed reports, including when you had sex, if you logged that using the apps. They also share other information you’ve logged, from detailed medical data to your mood to the fact that you’re using a menstruation app.

 

We know this because UK-based Privacy International recently tested several of the world’s most popular period tracking apps on Android, and published detailed information on what data they found being shared by two apps, Maya by Plackal Tech, and MIA Fem by Mobapp Development Limited. A previous report found that Period Tracker by Leap Fitness Group; Period Tracker Flo by Flo Health, Inc.; Period Tracker by Simple Design Ltd.; and Clue Period Tracker by Biowink. do not share detailed information with Facebook, according to the group’s analysis.

 

Why do period tracking apps want to share so much data? At least part of the reason seems to be for ad purposes. Advertisers would love to know whether you’re trying to become pregnant, your mood, and more. The period trackers in the report also asked about your use of coffee, alcohol, and tobacco, whether you’re having digestive issues, whether you use tampons or pads, what type of birth control you’re on, and more. You can also add your own notes to the app, and these get sent to Facebook as well.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

iPhone user sues Apple after claiming device turned him gay

 

An iPhone user is suing Apple after claiming an app on his phone turned him gay.

 

The plaintiff, identified only as D Razumilov, argues he became "mired in same-sex relationships" this summer after getting involved in a cryptocurrency app.

 

He is seeking one million rubles (£12,459) in damages, the Moscow Times reported.

 

In a complaint published on Wednesday, Razumilov says he received 69 GayCoins on a cryptocurrency payment app he downloaded onto his iPhone in 2017.

 

The unknown sender of the coins reportedly wrote a message in English for Razumilov which he interpreted as "don't judge without trying".

 

Razumilov said in his complaint: "I thought, indeed, how can I judge something without trying it?"

 

And so, because of this message, he said he began having same-sex relationships.

 

"I can say after the passage of two months that I'm mired in intimacy with a member of my own sex and can't get out," the complaint continues.

 

He said that since receiving the message, his "life has changed for the worse and will never be normal again".

 

The man has accused Apple of "manipulatively pushing me toward homosexuality", which he says has caused him "moral suffering and harm to mental health".

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Cooked Crack]

 

[Fergasun]

What the freakin frick.  I don't FB but I am sure they track me with my wife. 

 

I don't understand why influencers don't go to youtube or facebook alternatives... 

[China]

Google’s attempt to shut down a unionization meeting just riled up its employees

 

Management tried to shut down an employee-led talk on unionization at its Zurich office, but it happened anyway.

 

A group of dozens of full-time Google employees at the company’s largest mainland European office, which is located in Zurich, Switzerland, met to discuss unionization on Monday in defiance of their employer’s attempt to cancel the meeting. The tensions surrounding this meeting reflect Google’s growing struggles with employee discontent over workplace issues that go beyond just labor organizing.

 

The talk, titled “Unions in Switzerland,” was led by two representatives from a Swiss media and telecoms union called syndicom, and organized by Google employees. Last Wednesday, Google’s site leadership team attempted to stop the event by sending out an email announcing that it would be canceled, according to an email reviewed by Recode. In the email, Google said it was canceling the meeting because the company prefers to only host events on the topic organized in partnership with Google’s site leadership team.

 

Instead, Google leadership wrote in the note that it would host its own talks about labor laws and employee rights that bring “a diverse set of presenters and perspectives.” That upset many Google employees both inside and outside the Zurich office, who told Recode the company has been trying to block employees from hearing unfiltered information about workplace organizing.

 

Despite management’s notice that the meeting was canceled, employees in Zurich met anyway in Google’s on-site meeting rooms. So far, management has not stated it will take any action against people who organized or attended the meeting.

 

Google declined to comment.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

White nationalists are openly operating on Facebook. The company won't act

 

On 7 November, Lana Lokteff, an American white nationalist, introduced a “thought criminal and political prisoner and friend” as a featured guest on her internet talk show, Red Ice TV. 

 

For about 90 minutes, Lokteff and her guest – Greg Johnson, a prominent white nationalist and editor-in-chief of the white nationalist publisher Counter-Currents – discussed Johnson’s recent arrest in Norway amid authorities’ concerns about his past expression of “respect” for the far-right mass murderer Anders Breivik. In 2012, Johnson wrote that he was angered by Breivik’s crimes because he feared they would harm the cause of white nationalism but had discovered a “strange new respect” for him during his trial; Breivik’s murder of 77 people has been cited as an inspiration by the suspected Christchurch killer, the man who murdered the British MP Jo Cox, and a US coast guard officer accused of plotting a white nationalist terror attack.

Just a few weeks earlier, Red Ice TV had suffered a serious setback when it was permanently banned from YouTube for repeated violations of its policy against hate speech. But Red Ice TV still had a home on Facebook, allowing the channel’s 90,000 followers to stream the discussion on Facebook Watch – the platform Mark Zuckerberg launched as a place “to share an experience and bring people together who care about the same things”.

 

The conversation wasn’t a unique occurrence. Facebook promised to ban white nationalist content from its platform in March 2019, reversing a years-long policy to tolerate the ideology. But Red Ice TV is just one of several white nationalist outlets that remain active on the platform today.

 

A Guardian analysis found longstanding Facebook pages for VDare, a white nationalist website focused on opposition to immigration; the Affirmative Right, a rebranding of Richard Spencer’s blog Alternative Right, which helped launch the “alt-right” movement; and American Free Press, a newsletter founded by the white supremacist Willis Carto, in addition to multiple pages associated with Red Ice TV. Also operating openly on the platform are two Holocaust denial organizations, the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust and the Institute for Historical Review.

 

“There’s no question that every single one of these groups is a white nationalist group,” said Heidi Beirich, the director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) Intelligence Project, after reviewing the Guardian’s findings. “It’s not even up for debate. There’s really no excuse for not removing this material.”

 

Facebook declined to take action against any of the pages identified by the Guardian. A company spokesperson said: “We are investigating to determine whether any of these groups violate our policies against organized hate. We regularly review organizations against our policy and any that violate will be banned permanently.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Facebook Won’t Change Web Tracking in Response to California Privacy Law

 

Facebook Inc. has told advertisers it doesn’t need to make changes to its web-tracking services to comply with California’s new consumer-privacy law, setting up a potential early clash over how the closely watched law will be enforced once it goes into effect.

 

Facebook is one of several companies in the $130 billion U.S. digital-ad industry that maintains that routine data transfers about consumers may not fit the law’s definition of “selling” data. Other major competitors, including Alphabet Inc.’s Google, have introduced...

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Springfield]

So are we all going to cry foul if it’s crooked William Barr that breaks up google amazon and Facebook?

[PokerPacker]

51 minutes ago, Springfield said:

So are we all going to cry foul if it’s crooked William Barr that breaks up google amazon and Facebook?

He'll probably break them up to be absorbed as Trump subsidiaries.

[PleaseBlitz]

https://slate.com/technology/2020/01/evil-list-tech-companies-dangerous-amazon-facebook-google-palantir.html

 

The Evil List
Which tech companies are really doing the most harm? Here are the 30 most dangerous, ranked by the people who know.

 

1 is Amazon, 2 is Facebook, 3 is Google.  For the record, I disagree with a lot of the reasoning: for example, they knock Amazon for opening an office in NYC without any government handouts, and they knock Apple because "the company’s public stance against commercial surveillance gets them more credit than they’re due."  I'm not saying any of these companies don't have serious ethical issues, but if you are going to call a company evil, find a better reason than "they opened a new office" and "a good thing they do gets more credit than it should."

[PokerPacker]

8 hours ago, PleaseBlitz said:

https://slate.com/technology/2020/01/evil-list-tech-companies-dangerous-amazon-facebook-google-palantir.html

 

The Evil List
Which tech companies are really doing the most harm? Here are the 30 most dangerous, ranked by the people who know.

 

1 is Amazon, 2 is Facebook, 3 is Google.  For the record, I disagree with a lot of the reasoning: for example, they knock Amazon for opening an office in NYC without any government handouts, and they knock Apple because "the company’s public stance against commercial surveillance gets them more credit than they’re due."  I'm not saying any of these companies don't have serious ethical issues, but if you are going to call a company evil, find a better reason than "they opened a new office" and "a good thing they do gets more credit than it should."

a) Not sure why SpaceX is listed as Evil.  The knock on them is that their satellites inadvertently made some observations of the night sky more difficult, and are working to resolve the situation.

b) Phew, nobody I know is listed in the top 20.

[China]

Zuckerberg says Facebook's new approach 'is going to piss off a lot of people'

 

San Francisco (CNN Business)Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook will stand up for principles like free expression and encryption, even if it means facing a backlash.

 

"This is the new approach, and I think it's going to piss off a lot of people. But frankly, the old approach was pissing off a lot of people too, so let's try something different," Zuckerberg said at the Silicon Slopes Tech Summit in Utah on Friday.

The Facebook (FB) cofounder and CEO said his company's aim for a long time was to not do anything that would be deemed as "too offensive," but he is now changing that approach in the face of what he deems as excessive censorship.

"Increasingly we're getting called to censor a lot of different kinds of content that makes me really uncomfortable," Zuckerberg said, while acknowledging Facebook's responsibility to purge its platforms of content related to terrorism, child exploitation and incitement to violence.

"We're going to take down the content that's really harmful, but the line needs to be held at some point," he added.

Zuckerberg also said Facebook would continue to fight for encryption, another stance that has sparked controversy in recent months.

The company has come under fire for allowing politicians to lie in ads, at a time when Twitter (TWTR) has decided to ban political advertising altogether.

 

Click on the link for the full article and video

[PokerPacker]

What, exactly, are they pushing to encrypt?  Isn't their whole business built on selling all of your data?

[Cooked Crack]

 

[JCB]

Could anything more perfectly capture our politics than that? Good God.

[China]

Google tracked his bike ride past a burglarized home. That made him a suspect.

 

The email arrived on a Tuesday afternoon in January, startling Zachary McCoy as he prepared to leave for his job at a restaurant in Gainesville, Florida.

 

It was from Google’s legal investigations support team, writing to let him know that local police had demanded information related to his Google account. The company said it would release the data unless he went to court and tried to block it. He had just seven days.

 

“I was hit with a really deep fear,” McCoy, 30, recalled, even though he couldn’t think of anything he’d done wrong. He had an Android phone, which was linked to his Google account, and, like millions of other Americans, he used an assortment of Google products, including Gmail and YouTube. Now police seemingly wanted access to all of it.

 

“I didn’t know what it was about, but I knew the police wanted to get something from me,” McCoy said in a recent interview. “I was afraid I was going to get charged with something, I don’t know what.”

 

There was one clue.

 

In the notice from Google was a case number. McCoy searched for it on the Gainesville Police Department’s website, and found a one-page investigation report on the burglary of an elderly woman’s home 10 months earlier. The crime had occurred less than a mile from the home that McCoy, who had recently earned an associate degree in computer programming, shared with two others.

 

Now McCoy was even more panicked and confused. He knew he had nothing to do with the break-in ─ he’d never even been to the victim’s house ─ and didn’t know anyone who might have. And he didn’t have much time to prove it.

 

McCoy worried that going straight to police would lead to his arrest. So he went to his parents’ home in St. Augustine, where, over dinner, he told them what was happening. They agreed to dip into their savings to pay for a lawyer.

 

The lawyer, Caleb Kenyon, dug around and learned that the notice had been prompted by a “geofence warrant,” a police surveillance tool that casts a virtual dragnet over crime scenes, sweeping up Google location data — drawn from users’ GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and cellular connections — from everyone nearby.

 

The warrants, which have increased dramatically in the past two years, can help police find potential suspects when they have no leads. They also scoop up data from people who have nothing to do with the crime, often without their knowing ─ which Google itself has described as “a significant incursion on privacy.”

 

Click on the link for the full article