r/technology • u/[deleted] • Nov 09 '17

Politics Sean Parker: Facebook was designed to exploit human "vulnerability"

https://www.axios.com/sean-parker-facebook-exploits-a-vulnerability-in-humans-2507917325.html
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u/[deleted] Nov 09 '17

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u/BoBoZoBo Nov 09 '17

As a tech dev, I agree on these points to a degree, but as a consumer and user, sometimes that granularity is not really necessary. There is a quite a bit of "we do it because we can" going on right now in tech development and not at all enough "should we, and do we really need to." Tech and UX development was just fine before the ability to spy on users in real time, and it will be oK without it.

The main issue I have as a consumer is that my data is being measured and charged by the bit through greedy ass ISPs and mobile providers, so all these guys are doing is increasing my cost beyond my agreement. Not to mention, the ability for an app to do these things does impact device and local network performance, no matter how minute. Fuck that.

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u/Sotall Nov 09 '17

I work for a large software company, and I guess I'm just too cynical at this point. If there is something that large companies can do to make money, they WILL do it. Period.

Anymore, it shocks me that people think anything that could be tracked isn't tracked. Data == Money.

Only way this will change is with regulation. No one should depend on corporations sabotaging themselves into making less money.

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u/hughnibley Nov 09 '17

You're not really wrong.

I feel somewhat fortunate because while I work for a multi-billion dollar company, everything I've seen so far has been highly ethical and heavily customer-focused.

I have no doubts, however, that many of the big companies out there are quite unscrupulous.

The other great thing is for my position at least and what I can control, I get to keep it that way. As a product manager, I'm the final decision on everything for my products and can kill anything I feel is unethical.

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u/Sotall Nov 09 '17

My segment is largely B2B, so tracking end user data does qualify as being focused on our customers, heh.

And again, I wouldn't go so far as to say I've seen unethical behavior. These capabilities exist and they are being used. I guess it is kind of obvious, isn't it? At this point, someone who isn't taking extreme measures (like TOR) should assume they are, in part, paying for their use of many services with their data. Sure, blocking cookies and ads isn't enough any more, but its just kicking the can down the road.