Favorite editorial cartoons: June 2010
- Thread starter Mike Ventrella
- Start date
Fearless Leader said:
dear vapid cartoon "artist",
you are an idiot who has probably never used facebook. if you do use facebook, you are still an idiot and you obviously don't understand how it's advertising system works. as I am a generous capitalist, I will educate you the way your liberal schooling never did.
As an avid facebook advertiser myself, I have never received any data about the people on facebook. I tell facebook who my target audience is, this creates my price estimates for the ad campaign. I adjust it until i find the demographics and cost I am comfortable with and then agree to begin the campaign. Facebook then displays my ad to those people (people I do not have any access to) and they decide if they want to click on my ad or not to get further information.
what's it like to hate all businesses? is it money you hate, the people who make it, or just that they make more of it than you because of their hard work and good ideas? probably the ideas part since you seem to be fresh out of those.
disrespectfully yours,
-Robb Graves
Duke Frost
Baron
The inventor of facebook has a net worth of 4 billion dollars and is 25 years old. That's a dangerous combination.
Scott
Scott
Mike Ventrella
Duke
People need to remember that Facebook users are not "customers" -- they are the product. Their information is what Facebook uses to get advertisers.
That doesn't bother me. I use Facebook all the time. I understand what I am doing when I log on.
The cartoon, though, is about privacy, not capitalism. From what I understand, even conservatives care about privacy.
EDIT: Here's a link to the Wall Street Journal article about this issue: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 65596.html
That doesn't bother me. I use Facebook all the time. I understand what I am doing when I log on.
The cartoon, though, is about privacy, not capitalism. From what I understand, even conservatives care about privacy.
EDIT: Here's a link to the Wall Street Journal article about this issue: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 65596.html
I am saying, the internet is a whole new thing that man hasn't quite figured out how to cope with yet. the law (any law, any nation) is years if not decades behind it and it isn't sitting still to allow the lawyers to catch up. if your personal data (put there by you or someone else) is on the net, it is accessible. whether sold by a company or hacked by an individual. there is no privacy on the net. one could even say, "there is no privacy". but if you you live in a cabin in the mountains isolated and non-participitory.... there is... a little..
Robb Graves said:
The problem is that Facebook recently has gone in the direction of automatically sending all of your info to third parties and you have to opt out of it and it is not very obvious how to do it. Granted, this isn't anything to do with advertisements such as yours, but the fact remains that Tom has a blatent disregard for privacy and makes only the most perfunctory attempts to respect it in order to look good on the surface. Yes there is always a possibility that someone could get info you did not intend them to or that you agree to something you don't fully understand and thereby leave yourself open for viewing, but all that I personally ask of these sorts of online communities is that they make the best attempt they can and provide a system where you opt in to distribute your information, not where you have to opt out. I'm hoping the feature that's in beta right now is not fully implemented because it's a spit in the face of that ideal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook
This covers it better than I could.
jpariury
Duke
So, you believe that products like Facebook have some form of obligation to provide their services for free to users, unless the users choose otherwise?
I think one primary issue is that "privacy" is, at best, nebulously defined, if ever. What facts of a person are private rights, and which ones (for lack of better terming) public domain?
So, by extension, participation in society voids your right to privacy?Robb Graves said:
I think one primary issue is that "privacy" is, at best, nebulously defined, if ever. What facts of a person are private rights, and which ones (for lack of better terming) public domain?
jpariury said:
This has nothing to do with advertisements; this has to do with them taking personal info and sending it directly to third party websites. Facebook makes plenty money without having to do that. Facebook can start charging a fee for all I care. I'll just stop using it... just as I will stop using it if they don't provide an easy way to opt out of having my info accessible for data mining to those I do not wish it to be available. The biggest problem with that is that under the agreements of the site Facebook has unlimited rights to retain anything you post. If you "delete" your profile then your data is still on the site. This removes any possibility of opting out that isn't provided by Facebook once the account had already been created and information added to it. See the above posted link referencing critisism of Facebook.
In any case, more editorial cartoons please.
jpariury
Duke
Any information they obtain is information you voluntarily provided to them in trade for using their site, so I guess I'm confused by what you're saying.Vazhi said:
What does one have to do with the other? Is your argument that companies should only be permitted one revenue stream?
Then why sign up for it in the first place? Really, it seems like a good argument that people need to stop agreeing to EULA's without reading them (a point Gamestation made abundantly clear with it's April Fools joke this year). The idea that you would sign up for a service first and then complain about the terms under which agreed to its use seems a weak one at best.
Read it, not particularly convinced.
Take, for instance, the complaint that when you cancel your account, you must remove all of the content yourself, rather than have Facebook do it for you. If we consider the internet to be a public domain as much as, say, posting a letter to the editor of whatever newspaper you might consider, do you feel that when you cancel your subscription to the newspaper (let's pick the WSJ just for giggles), it is the responsibility of the WSJ to remove that letter to the editor from the archives? If not, why not? In what way is Facebook different from other forms of public discourse in which participants voluntarily provide certain key indicators?
markusdark
Knight
jpariury said:
I loved the April Fool's joke.
For the record, and as the joke hopefully highlighted, the ToS or EULA, although rarely read, does need to fit within a "certain expected norm." However, putting into a private company's EULA that they can retain the rights of whatever is posted upon their sites sounds like just good business sense. I'm personally surprised that Mike doesn't have some such legalese within the rulebook. I did it with AU so that if I decided to write a book based upon the games, I didn't have to worry about someone suing me for creative copyright issues.
I personally don't like using anything like Facebook, Myspace, etc. I find them somewhat silly/useless and having lost a really good friendship due to some blathering on one of the first of them, Live Journal, I only hit the other sites when there is something I want to see (like my girlfriend's latest modeling shoot).
Inaryn
Knight
jpariury said:
The problem is, take me for an example. I use an assumed name online. I do not post my real name or, when I do, I keep it to just my first name. That doesn't stop someone else on facebook from tagging me with my real name in a photo of me doing something stupid. It then also doesn't stop potential employers from looking for these nuggets that are suddenly outside my control but ultimately my private life and using that to deny me employment.
Now, I seem to have some supernatural ability to avoid the camera as the only two real pictures of me anywhere online are posted here and without my name attached to them. Which is, honestly, how I prefer it.
The point is, however, that just because your information is online, doesn't mean that you were the one that provided it.
And Facebook's privacy setting and policy don't really allow you to contest that private information being online without your consent, unlike other social networking sites.
Facebook doesn't represent itself as a newspaper. It is a social networking site, which to most people with a dictionary means "keep up with friends and possibly make new ones on the web". A letter to the editor is intended for the public at large, it is the opposite of private. Facebook statements, more often then not, are targeted at the specific audience the poster elects to send them to. Now, clearly they need revenue, and it would be foolishly idealistic to believe otherwise. But the need for revenue does not dictate the need to act like a [curse] about it. If the people you're addressing are "friends" that you have spefically allowed, that implies that your conversations are at least some degree of private. So it's really more like the post office keeping copies of all the letters you send, and using the information in them to send you magazines and coupon sheets they think you'l find enticing. Which is actually not legal. And if people are used to the postal service working like that, they may not be savvy enough to check and make sure other similar seeming operations are as well.
Mike Ventrella
Duke
Well, it's not as bad as some people think it is. Here's how I understand it:
Basically, advertisers with Facebook could, if you clicked on their link, follow it back and see exactly who had clicked to them. If you had made your information public, then they could learn a whole lot about you and perhaps target you with more specific ads and emails. But then, if your information was public anyway, you don't have a big claim for privacy.
The controversy is that Facebook promised people that they weren't doing that, and then they changed their policy and allowed it ... that's where the problem comes in mostly.
Basically, advertisers with Facebook could, if you clicked on their link, follow it back and see exactly who had clicked to them. If you had made your information public, then they could learn a whole lot about you and perhaps target you with more specific ads and emails. But then, if your information was public anyway, you don't have a big claim for privacy.
The controversy is that Facebook promised people that they weren't doing that, and then they changed their policy and allowed it ... that's where the problem comes in mostly.
Mike Ventrella
Duke
jpariury
Duke
I don't know that the LttE section of a newspaper counts as an extension of its journalism, but I'm more than reasonably certain that Myspace isn't equitable to a public service like the post office. Otoh, most letters to the editor-type sections of any publication (be it the WSJ, Time, or Penthouse) have much the same disclaimer that Facebook does - anything you send in (or post) is property of the publisher, so the "certain expected norm" criteria Mark mentions seems to be met. It seems like Facebook allows you more control over the content that is visible (by virtue of being able to delete such things on your own) rather than less.Dan Nickname Beshers said:
I'm confused how you doing something stupid in relative "public" (or at least, public enough for someone else to take a photo of you) and using Facebook as their means of sharing it is an issue of privacy that Facebook should be held accountable for.Inaryn said:
There's much argument made that "the laws need to catch up". I don't know how applicable that is to the situation at hand. ("Anytime someone says 'There oughta be a law...'") It seems more applicable to me that social awareness and responsibility need to catch up. Why is it objectionable to say "if you don't want to be caught doing something that might impede your employment, don't do those things"?
You seem to be playing "moving target". I thought the point was that Myspace was collecting data on you and sending it to third-parties. What data that you didn't provide is Myspace directly sending to third-parties? Or is your argument now going to shift to the idea that your information is merely available?Inaryn said:
What makes information private vs. public? i.e. if I go kissing guys in Central Park, is that private or public information? I seem to recall legal arguments that for privacy concerns to be considered, there must be a demonstrable expectation of privacy. i.e. what my wife and I do in the bedroom is a private matter, until I broadcast it on YouTube. In your hypothetical, I don't know that a case can be made for such a "reasonable expectation" (unless, for instance, the photographer was hiding in your wife's boudoir).
That's definitely not the insinuation made by the cartoon. They probably should do one about that.Fearless Leader said:
You missed my point or dodged it. The raised issue is one of perception: many users have trouble conceiving as Facebook as a different sort of creature than a more convenient and sexy way to send out mass emails. Email, of course, is expected to remain private; surely you agree that AOL has no business browsing your email for keywords and then selling that information to retailers. AOL also provides AIM, which again is primarily one person to another, just designed to be more immediate. Again, AOL is expected not to monitor and attempt to make profit off of the content of those messages, no more so than the post office. So if users are equating instant messaging with email with actual mail and all of those services carry the expectation of privacy, and Facebook seems similar in nature, they cannot be faulted overmuch for believing that Facebook has the same privacy policies in place. In the end, it's a debate about research versus education. Personal opinion, if a prospective user wants to learn exactly how Facebook provides personal information to third parties, than they should be required to look that up for themselves, although Facebook should have that information available to find. However, for the benefit of a prospective user who had not even considered their information might be given away, Facebook should be making it clear from the outset that it will provide certain types of personal information to third parties, so that people can make informed choices. Ethics.
jpariury
Duke
I'd disagree, as clearly the fault of equivocation is on the user, not on Facebook. Facebook doesn't advertise itself as nor suggest that the service they provide is equivalent. I would agree that it's an issue of education and research, though (not an "or", per se).Dan Nickname Beshers said:
As Mike said, at one time they did in fact say that they did not and would not engage in the mercenary use of subscribers' personal information that they are now doing.