Facebook, Hot Seat, Day Two — House Energy & Commerce Committee Hearing

This is a dedicated post to capture your comments about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before the House Energy & Commerce Committee today.

After these two hearings my head is swimming with Facebook content, so much so that I had a nightmare about it overnight. Today’s hearing combined with the plethora of reporting across the internet is only making things more difficult for me to pull together a coherent narrative.

Instead, I’m going to dump some things here as food for further consideration and maybe a possible future post. I’ll update periodically throughout the day. Do share your own feedback in comments.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) — every time Mark Zuckerberg brings up AI, he does so about a task he does not want to employ humans to do. Zuckerberg doesn’t want to hire humans even if it means doing the right thing. There are so many indirect references to creating automated tools that are all substitutions for labor that it’s obvious Facebook is in part what it is today because Facebook would rather make profits than hire humans until it is forced to do otherwise.

Users’ control of their data — this is bullshit whenever he says it. If any other entity can collect or copy or see users’ data without explicit and granular authorization, users do not have control of their data. Why simple controls like granular read/not-read settings on users’ data operated by users has yet to be developed and implemented is beyond me; it’s not as if Facebook doesn’t have the money and clout to make this happen.

Zuckerberg is also evasive about following Facebook users and nonusers across the internet — does browsing non-Facebook website content with an embedded Facebook link allow tracking of persons who visit that website? It’s not clear from Zuckerberg’s statements.

Audio tracking — It’s a good thing that Congress has brought up the issue of “coincident” content appearing after users discuss topics within audible range of a mobile device. Rep. Larry Buschon (R-Indiana) in particular offered pointed examples; we should remain skeptical of any explanation received so far because there are too many anedotes of audio tracking in spite of Zuckerberg’s denials.

Opioid and other illegal ads — Zuckerberg insists that if users flag them, ads will be reviewed and then taken down. Congress is annoyed the ads still exist. But at the hear of this exchange is Facebook’s reliance on users performing labor Facebook refuses to hire to achieve the expected removal of ads. Meanwhile, Congress refuses to do its own job to increase regulations on opioids, choosing instead to flog Facebook because it’s easier than going after donors like Big Pharma.

Verification of ad buyers — Ad buyers’ legitimacy based on verification of identity and physical location will be implemented for this midterm election cycle, Zuckerberg told Congress. Good luck with that when Facebook has yet to hire enough people to take down opioid ads or remove false accounts of public officials or celebrities.

First Amendment protections for content — Congressional GOP is beating on Facebook for what it perceives as consistent suppression of conservative content. This is a disinfo/misinfo operation happening right under our noses and Facebook will cave just like it did in 2016 while news media look the other way since the material in question isn’t theirs. Facebook, however, has suppressed neutral to liberal content frequently — like content about and images featuring women breastfeeding their infants — and Congress isn’t uttering a peep about this. Congress also isn’t asking any questions about Facebook’s assessments of content

Connecting the world — Zuckerberg’s personal desire to connect humans is supreme over the nature and intent of the connections. The ability to connect militant racists, for example, takes supremacy (literally) over protecting minority group members from persecution. And Congress doesn’t appear willing to see this as problematic unless it violates existing laws like the Fair Housing Act.

More to come as I think of it. Comment away.

UPDATE — 2:45 PM EDT — I’m gritting my teeth so hard as I listen to this hearing that I’ve given myself a headache.

Terrorist content — Rep. Susan Brooks (R-Indiana) asked about Facebook’s handling of ISIS content, to which Zuckerberg said a team of 200 employees focus on counterintelligence to remove ISIS and other terrorist content, capturing 99% of materials before they can be see by the public. Brooks further asked what Facebook is doing about stopping recruitment.

What. The. Fuck? We’re expecting a publicly-held corporation to do counterintelligence work INCLUDING halting recruitment?

Hate speech — Zuckerberg used the word “nuanced” to describe the definition while under pressure by left and right. Oh, right, uh-huh, there’s never been a court case in which hate speech has been defined…*head desk*

Whataboutism — Again, from Michigan GOPr Tim Walberg, pointing to the 2012 Obama campaign…every time the 2012 campaign comes up, you know you are listening to 1) a member of Congress who doesn’t understand Facebook’s use and 2) is working on furthering the disinfo/misinfo campaign to ensure the public thinks Facebook is biased against the GOP.

It doesn’t help that Facebook’s AI has failed on screening GOP content; why candidates aren’t contacting a human-staffed department directly is beyond me. Or why AI doesn’t interact directly with campaign/candidate users at the point of data entry to let them know what content is problematic so it can be tweaked immediately.

Again, implication of discrimination against conservatives and Christians on Facebook — Thanks, Rep. Jeff Duncan, waving your copy of the Constitution insisting the First Amendment is applied equally and fairly. EXCEPT you’ve missed the part where it says CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…

The lack of complaints by Democratic and Independent representatives about suppression of content should NOT be taken to mean it hasn’t happened. That Facebook allowed identified GOP-voting employees to work with Brad Parscale means that suppression happens in subtle ways. There’s also a different understanding between right and left wings about Congress’ limitation under the First Amendment AND Democrats/Independents aren’t trying to use these hearings as agitprop.

Internet service — CONGRESS NEEDS TO STOP ASKING FACEBOOK TO HELP FILL IN THE GAPS BETWEEN NETWORKS AND INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS THEY HAVE FAILED TO REGULATE TO ENSURE BROADBAND EVERYWHERE. Jesus Christ this bugs the shit out of me. Just stop asking a corporation to do your goddamned jobs; telcos have near monopoly ensured by Congress and aren’t acting in the best interest of the public but their shareholders. Facebook will do the same thing — serve shareholders but not the public interest. REGULATE THE GAP, SLACKERS.

3:00 PM thank heavens this beating is over.

Three more thoughts:

1) Facial recognition technology — non-users should NEVER become subjected to this technology, EVER. Facebook users should have extremely simple and clear opt-in/opt-out on facial technology.

2) Medical technology — absolutely not ever in social media. No. If a company is not in the business of providing health care, they have no business collecting health care data. Period.

3) Application approval — Ask Apple how to do it. They do it, app by app. Facebook is what happens when apps aren’t approved first.

UPDATE — 9:00 PM EDT — Based on a question below from commenter Mary McCurnin about HIPAA, I am copying my reply here to flesh out my concerns about Facebook and medical data collection and sharing:

HIPAA regulates health data sharing between “covered entities,” meaning health care clearinghouses, employer-sponsored health plans, health insurers, and medical service providers. Facebook had secretly assigned a doctor to work on promoting a proposal to some specific covered entities to work on a test or beta; the program has now been suspended. The fact this project was secret and intended to operate under a signed agreement rather than attempting to set up a walled-off Facebook subsidiary to work within the existing law tells me that Facebook didn’t have any intention of operating within HIPAA. The hashing concept proposed for early work but still relying on actual user data is absurdly arrogant in its blow off of HIPAA.

Just as disturbing: virtually nothing in the way of questions from Congress about this once-secret program. The premise which is little more than a normalized form of surveillance using users’ health as a criteria is absolutely unacceptable.

I don’t believe ANY social media platform should be in the health care data business. The breach of U.S. Office of Personnel Management should have given enough Congress enough to ponder about the intelligence risks from employment records exposed to foreign entities; imagine the risks if health care data was included with OPM employment information. Now imagine that at scale across the U.S., how many people would be vulnerable in so many ways if their health care information became exposed along with their social records.

Don’t even start with how great it would be to dispatch health care to people in need; we can’t muster the political will to pay for health care for everybody. Why provide monitoring at scale through social media when covered entities can do it for their subscriber base separately, and apparently with fewer data breaches?

You want a place to start regulating social media platforms? Start there: no health care data to mingle with social media data. Absolutely not, hell to the no.

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30 replies
  1. harpie says:

    Zuckerberg is also evasive about following Facebook users and nonusers across the internet — does browsing non-Facebook website content with an embedded Facebook link allow tracking of persons who visit that website? It’s not clear from Zuckerberg’s statements.
    Justin Hendrix retweeted: Alex Kantrowitz‏@Kantrowitz [Senior technology reporter at @BuzzFeed] 

    Facebook does track browsing activity. It does so through the like button on outside websites and the Facebook Pixel. Zuckerberg appears unwilling to say this. / Okay, I’ll answer some of the questions, using Facebook’s website! / […] Ah, and here’s the answer to “logged out” tracking! It’s yes. “If you’re logged out or don’t have a Facebook account and visit a website with the Like button or another social plugin, your browser sends us a more limited set of info.”

    • Trip says:

      Yes, look at noscript blocking, and you can see that facebook is tracking. Even if you aren’t on Facebook.

    • SpaceLifeForm says:

      JavaScript can dump back to tracking servers.

      They keep talking about 78 Million, but it is more likely 230 Million US citizens have been tracked.

      Via two angles. One being a user calls or texts another person that is a FaceBook user. The second is the tracking ‘cookie’ that is created via JavaScript embedded in a web page that the user visits, while their browser has JavaScript enabled.

      The combination of the two likely tracks everyone that uses a phone or computer whether they use FaceBook or not.

    • greengiant says:

      It is not just Zuckerberg.  The “like” button might as well be the called “share” button.  Facebook, search engines and EVERYONE else who has a site, or like button on someone else’s sites or buys or steals ad ware can get metadata of IP address and link from all web users.  These are just business records so the IC probably has them as well,  but should be connecting dots to who was data mining whom in 2016.

      Ad blockers do not prevent this.    HTTP field etag.  Read it here.    https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=233183

      (execute) “code if you want it to fire when the user is shown the popup on your website.”  https://help.sumo.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003801888-Using-Facebook-pixels-in-Sumo     Again no web user action is required for BIG DATA to book your Browser ID,  your IP,  and the web link you clicked.

      Is lying a crime if you aren’t sworn in?

  2. Trent says:

    “doesn’t want to hire humans even if it means doing the right thing.”  

    Humans increase the expense run rate year over year and artificial intelligence is a scalable one-time expense.

    Zuck (and every other corporate officer) is required by law as a fiduciary to maximize shareholder value.  Screwing the facebookers and society at large in pursuit of corporate profits minimizes his exposure to activist shareholders.

    Lovely.

    • Rayne says:

      It is wrong to think cost justification of doing things right under the law as well as ethically is not valuable compared to reducing cost to operate.

      Officers and managers have a fiduciary responsibility to reduce risks over the long term (goodwill, brand value) as well as the short term (quarterly profits), which includes making business decisions which are both legal and ethical though law and ethics may not be coincident. Doing the ethical thing would have reduced the long-term risk confronting Facebook today. Doing the legal thing would have avoided exposure under the 2011 consent decree.

      What we’re seeing is the result of emphasizing hard technical skills like math over soft humanities knowledge like ethics. All education systems from K-12 through secondary ed must do more to include and integrate ethics.

  3. Alan says:

    “AI” is the new ‘solution’ proposed for everything people don’t want to deal with or for which there is no palatable solution. It is also the proposed ‘solution’ for the Irish Border problem in Brexit. ‘AI’ is in other words the new effluent out the back end of a bull.

  4. SpaceLifeForm says:

    Acting Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Tayler resigns. Big whoop. He is still staying on. He feels the heat from Zucks comments. He knows CA is complicit *at best*.

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      As you’ve said, CA is a disposable subsidiary.  There’s no real change so long as these “former” CEOs retain their jobs and board memberships with parent or affiliated companies.

  5. earlofhuntingdon says:

    No one got an answer from Zuck, did they, about what hotel he stayed in while in DC.  Did he not answer because it was Trump’s?  Or did the billionaire stay at a private property arranged by FB or with a lobbyist or a friend?

  6. Alan says:

    Jesus Christ this bugs the shit out of me. Just stop asking a corporation to do your goddamned jobs

    As Adam Smith observed long ago, that’s what most of the legislature thinks their job is: colluding with merchants against the public interest.

  7. Bob Conyers says:

    I think the bigger picture question today was whether the House GOP was going to show any surge in brains or guts in the wake of Paul Ryan’s unstated admission that they’re really, really hurting going into November.

    The answer, predictably, is no. They are all going to continue barrelling toward the cliff’s edge at full speed.

    I have to think we will see no sign of Ryan using any of the still significant levers of power available to him as a lame duck. No legislation to protect Mueller will go to the floor, even though it could win a narrow majority. Ryan will not remove Nunes from the Intelligence chair, and we will absolutely not see any serious investigation of anything Trump related.

  8. Mary M McCurnin says:

    2) Medical technology — absolutely not ever in social media. No. If a company is not in the business of providing health care, they have no business collecting health care data. Period.

    Wouldn’t HIPAA take care of this issue?

    • Rayne says:

      HIPAA regulates health data sharing between “covered entities,” meaning health care clearinghouses, employer-sponsored health plans, health insurers, and medical service providers. Facebook had secretly assigned a doctor to work on promoting a proposal to some specific covered entities to work on a test or beta; the program has now been suspended. The fact this project was secret and intended to operate under a signed agreement rather than attempting to set up a walled-off Facebook subsidiary to work within the existing law tells me that Facebook didn’t have any intention of operating within HIPAA. The hashing concept proposed for early work but still relying on actual user data is absurdly arrogant in its blow off of HIPAA.

      Just as disturbing: virtually nothing in the way of questions from Congress about this once-secret program. The premise which is little more than a normalized form of surveillance using users’ health as a criteria is absolutely unacceptable.

      EDIT — 8:45 PM — You know what? I’m going to add this comment to my post to make sure any congressional staffers who might read the post see this point. Facebook is not acting in good faith and Congress needs to do its job.

      • orionATL says:

        go gettum.

        and i want to add about those senators the press yammers about z”not understanding facebook because of their technivcal ignorance or being to old to understand facebook”.

        that’s fresh media horseshit.

        old, senior senators have staff – lots, young staff, technically high-level staff. and if the old s’s (uh, that’s for senators) don’t have the staff they canput out a quick bid for a competent contractor.

        then it’s just a matter of careful listening, putting together a few talking po8nts and p’points and asking young mr. fitzfucker some hard questions.

        it is important to note though that the hearing had been set up to limit senators to five minutes each. that’s no where near enough. why not 30-45 minutes so young fitzfucker couldn’t run out the clock. we all know, right, that young mr. f spent two days holed up in a d.c. hotel gettings instructions from guess who.? why the sop corporate crisis management team, that’s who.

        you know:

        “now mark, you got to say, over and over, ‘i take responsibility’. now say it!

        “you can’t say it too often. you’ll be in the front page headlines.”

        “hey, mark, you got to look sincere.”

        “o.k. now let’s practice saying ‘i’m sorrry'”.

        alright. now on to ‘we are going to fix this thing’.

        “good boy, mark. good boy. what would you like for a treat”.

        • orionATL says:

          here is a nytimes article that is far more detailed and useful than what i have sketched out. it focuses on political will and lists multiple areas of operation to consider:

          https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/technology/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-hearing.html

          still, after questioning it, our reporter presents the “oh, my gosh its complicated” viewpoint.

          facebook ain’t all that complicated to regulate. set up a time-limited, signature-required, user-initiated only permission to collect data, together with a user initiated request to delete all collected data on that user and all other individuals associated with his/her facebook membership. this request must be acknowledged by fb in writting immediately and met completely within, say, one week. that ought to do the trick.

          then stand by and watch oath keepers promise to protect facebook:) .

  9. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Yes, Congress needs to do its job. Asking the target of proposed regulation how it wants to be regulated is like asking, “Was that good for you?” It is not conducting congressional oversight or effecting adequate regulation of an invasive monopoly.

    Senate GOP leaders would have been smarter to ask their questions of FB’s lobbyists. They would have received more honest answers and been compensated for their time.

  10. Kim Kaufman says:

    Thank you, Rayne, for listening/watching today so I didn’t have to.

    Connecting the world” – I’d like to see what fb does if there’s a serious and very large uprising. Or martial law.

    Enough with Zuck’s dog and pony show. What I’d like to see is another congressional hearing with outside experts to inform the numbskull congress critters.

  11. orionATL says:

    this showed up in definitions of “algorhythm”:

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/facebook-apologizes-for-but-doesnt-retract-discriminatory-real-name-policy?

    i was particularly interested in this quote from mr. z:

    “… We’ve also been treated to Mark Zuckerberg’s privileged, insensitive, and ignorant statement, made back in 2010, that “having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.” Easy for a billionaire to say…”

    the argument against using a psuedonym was among the very earliest internet arguments, almost always used againsy psuedonymists by frustrated brownshirts.

    • orionATL says:

      [either edit function was missing in above entry or i goofed]

      this sophistry was obviously no more than chairman Z trying to manipulate his customers in a way necessary to his corp maximizing income – a facebook user with a psuedonym is not readily permanently entered into a data base with confidence, tracked,or matched. you’d have to carefully match up her friends, likes, etc.

  12. Bob Conyers says:

    It turns out that one rep (Ben Lujan, a Democrat of course) pushed Zuckerberg on the issue of shadow profiles – all of the data Facebook keeps on nonmembers. And they keep a lot of information. Zuckerberg completely dodged the issue.

    This is a good summary of the issue and Lujan’s questioning:

    https://www.cnet.com/news/shadow-profiles-facebook-has-information-you-didnt-hand-over/

    Lujan rightly pointed out that the only way for a nonmember to get any sense of what Facebook has on them is, absurdly, to sign up for Facebook. No thanks.

    It’s mostly drowned out in other issues, but at least one guy is on the case.

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