{"id":177458,"date":"2019-09-14T19:16:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-15T00:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/09\/14\/rule-1-of-facebook-facebook-lies\/"},"modified":"2019-09-14T19:16:00","modified_gmt":"2019-09-15T00:16:00","slug":"rule-1-of-facebook-facebook-lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/09\/14\/rule-1-of-facebook-facebook-lies\/","title":{"rendered":"Rule 1 of Facebook: Facebook Lies"},"content":{"rendered":"
Rule 2 of Facebook is see rule 1<\/a>.<\/div>\n

They lied about not doing location tracking on their users:<\/p>\n

Facebook has been caught bending the truth again \u2013 only this time it has been forced to out itself. <\/p>\n

For years the antisocial media giant has claimed it doesn\u2019t track your location, insisting to suspicious reporters and privacy advocates that its addicts \u201chave full control over their data,\u201d and that it does not gather or sell that data unless those users agree to it. <\/p>\n

No one believed it. So, when it (and Google) were hit with lawsuits<\/a> trying to get to the bottom of the issue, Facebook followed its well-worn path<\/a> to avoiding scrutiny: it changed its settings and pushed out carefully worded explanations that sounded an awful lot like it wasn\u2019t tracking you anymore. But it was. Because location data is valuable. <\/p>\n

Then, late on Monday, Facebook emitted a blog post<\/a> in which it kindly offered to help users \u201cunderstand updates\u201d to their \u201cdevice\u2019s location settings.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

You may have missed the critical part amid the glowing testimony so we\u2019ll repeat it: \u201c… use precise location even when you\u2019re not using the app\u2026\u201d <\/p>\n

Huh, fancy that. It sounds an awful lot like tracking. After all, why would you want Facebook to know your precise location at all times, even when you\u2019re not using its app? And didn\u2019t Facebook promise it wasn\u2019t doing that?<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Well, yes it did, and it was being economical with the truth. But perhaps the bigger question is: why now? Why has Facebook decided to come clean all of a sudden? Is it because of the newly announced antitrust and privacy investigations into tech giants? Well, yes, in a roundabout way.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, in a moment of almost honesty which must have felt quite strange for Facebook\u2019s execs, the web giant actually explains why it has stopped pretending it doesn\u2019t track users: because soon it won\u2019t be able to keep up the pretense.<\/p>\n

\u201cAndroid and iOS have released new versions of their operating systems, which include updates to how you can view and manage your location,\u201d the blog post reveals.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s right, under pressure from lawmakers and users, both Google and Apple have added new privacy features to their upcoming mobile operating systems \u2013 Android and iOS \u2013 that will make it impossible for Facebook to hide its tracking activity.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, Facebook is admitting that they lied only because continuing to lie is completely impossible.<\/p>\n

F%$# Zuck.  Better yet, how about a serious investigation of allegation of fraud regarding false users and ad sales?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rule 2 of Facebook is see rule 1. They lied about not doing location tracking on their users: Facebook has been caught bending the truth again \u2013 only this time it has been forced to out itself. For years the antisocial media giant has claimed it doesn\u2019t track your location, insisting to suspicious reporters and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[365,368,387,367,366],"class_list":["post-177458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-business","tag-corruption","tag-hypocrisy","tag-internet","tag-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177458"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}