Facebook is Under Criminal Investigation for Data Sharing Practices

AlphaAtlas

[H]ard|Gawd
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Facebook's news coverage hasn't been particularly positive over the past few months, but they had a particularly bad day yesterday. Following a widespread outage that lasted over 14 hours, and likely cost the company millions in advertising revenue, the New York Times released a report claiming that the U.S. Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into Facebook over their data sharing practices. According to their sources, two major handset manufacturers have already been subpoenaed. At this point, Facebook's public image seems to be in "it couldn't possibly get any worse" territory, hence their stock price barely budged in response to the incident and the story, and is still significantly up since to the beginning of March.

"It's already been reported that there are ongoing federal investigations, including by the Dept of Justice. As we've said, we're cooperating with investigators and take those probes seriously. We've provided public testimony, answered questions, and pledged that we'll continue to do so."
 
This will go precisely nowhere. Although I am glad to hear about it. The best option is to not participate in these platforms if you are concerned. Unfortunately, even that doesn't assure you avoid having your information shared though.
 
This will go precisely nowhere. Although I am glad to hear about it. The best option is to not participate in these platforms if you are concerned. Unfortunately, even that doesn't assure you avoid having your information shared though.
Yeah it can’t go anywhere, people can disagree with it but it’s their data they can do what they want with it. You can't complain how somebody uses something you gave away.
 
People give up personal data to a data mining company in return to use said company's product. The data mining company in turn sells the data to a 3rd party to make money, and now someone is upset.

Am I missing something here?
 
Seems like everything and anyone who is anyone is under criminal investigation these days.
 
Unfortunately, a class action law suit won't be of much benefit to affected users of the FB platform, and the FB lawyers know it.

If all of FB's 2.7 billion users were to get in on it and a payout penalty/settlement of, say, $50 billion was awarded, then that's a pretty small sum to each user after the lawyers/courts get their typical cut of about 25% average.

$50B * 0.75 = $37.5B to class action members.
$37.5B / 2.7B users = Thirteen dollars and eighty nine cents each, equally distributed.

Of course, this only assumes that every user across the entire globe would be compensated equally from a single guesstimated lump sum.
 
They had to use twitter to get their information out that they were down which is hilarious. I really hope this manifests and Failbook crashes and burns.
 
Unfortunately, a class action law suit won't be of much benefit to affected users of the FB platform, and the FB lawyers know it.

If all of FB's 2.7 billion users were to get in on it and a payout penalty/settlement of, say, $50 billion was awarded, then that's a pretty small sum to each user after the lawyers/courts get their typical cut of about 25% average.

$50B * 0.75 = $37.5B to class action members.
$37.5B / 2.7B users = Thirteen dollars and eighty nine cents each, equally distributed.

Of course, this only assumes that every user across the entire globe would be compensated equally from a single guesstimated lump sum.
It would also then require every FB user to confirm their physical address or provide banking data for direct deposit....
 
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It would also then require every FB user to confirm their physical address or provide banking data for direct deposit....

Nah. Each FB user would receive FB ads credit, to be used for FB users to connect with other FB users whether they want to be or not.
 
I am angry and offended. I don't know why I should be, though, since I don't actually use Facebook.

I'm not sure this investigation means anything. I could see headlines where the Department of Justice decided to make some arrests, but before they could grab anyone Zuckerberg surrounded Facebook's headquarters with a fortress made of $100 bills. And then the Department of Justice appeared on the news and said, "We were gonna arrest some people, but they're inside a fortress made out of $100 bills, and we can't get through that shit, so we're just gonna forget about it and go home."
 
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Class action lawsuit.

As someone who has NEVER agreed to let facebook do anything with my image, my data, or anything else related to myself...I want a piece of them.
 
Class action lawsuit.

As someone who has NEVER agreed to let facebook do anything with my image, my data, or anything else related to myself...I want a piece of them.

You’ll get your check for $1.22 soon enough.

As for the criminal charges, what a joke. Nothing is going to happen to Facebook. Maybe a new friendly pop up that will explain what Facebook does with your data, worded in a way that sounds nice and friendly. It will have a big bright OK button at the bottom so 99% of their user base can just ignore it and get back to posting selfies and bitching about things online.
 
As for the criminal charges, what a joke. Nothing is going to happen to Facebook.

There's another tricky side to all this Facebook outrage - without laws establishing that it is illegal to collect this data, without laws establishing that it is illegal for a EULA to demand permission to collect this data, and without laws making it illegal to sell this data, any class action suit will likely get caught up establishing if a person was harmed by the collection and sale of the data.
 
Yeah yeah. Welcome to 2011 when Facebook was prepping to go public and Mr Z admitted he violated all the users' TOS and privacy agreements. Had to prove the data mining business model was viable.
 
Facebook can't die soon enough. Please shut it down already!

Maybe someone who is more versed in the stock market and such can explain how a scam like Facebook can go public and be over-valuated to such an extent.

Before I forget, the user experience on Facebook is garbage. Absolute shit. It's worse than filling out endless forms at the hospital, only here you have to tell them as much as humanly possible about yourself. Fuck you Zuckerberg & Co. for that craptastic user experience. If I want to brag and connect, there is always LinkedIn!

Zuckerberg = Sugarmountain
 
Maybe someone who is more versed in the stock market and such can explain how a scam like Facebook can go public and be over-valuated to such an extent.

Data and influence are the most powerful things in the world. People look to companies like Facebook and Google for their news/information, and Facebook and Google give them what those companies want them to see, not necessarily the truth.
 
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